Why the Self-Help Industry Is Built on Lies
Think, Ship, Date: Debunking Gurus, Building Hits - February 26, 2026 (2 days ago) • 48:40
Transcript
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Sam Parr | *Think and Grow Rich* — amazing book. One of the best-selling books of all time, but the whole backstory is completely fake. He's a total con man. | |
Shaan Puri | "What—what do you mean? None of it's true?" | |
Sam Parr | Alright, I have to tell you this story. I'm rereading a bunch of old books because I like rereading old books, and I started reading Dale Carnegie's *How to Win Friends and Influence People*. Have you read that one? | |
Shaan Puri | I love that book, Sam.
**Rule number one:** *Rule number one.* | |
Sam Parr | A person's name is the. | |
Shaan Puri | Most the golden beautiful in. | |
Sam Parr | "The English Rule" — I love that book. I just... the reason I like these old books is because some of them, the rules have stood the test of time.
The writing is always — well, all the writing, for some reason, is kind of cute. There's something about [unclear word: "can"]. | |
Shaan Puri | "I'll tell you something stupid I did. I took the book, and you know how people wear—like, you're a denim guy, you know—these distressed jeans." | |
Sam Parr | Oh, yeah. | |
Shaan Puri | "I distressed the..." | |
Sam Parr | Book. I roughed it. | |
Shaan Puri | "Up a little bit. I made it look like this is an *heirloom* that's been passed down from **Napoleon himself**." | |
Sam Parr | Did you, like, *dog-ear* certain pages even though you didn't even read the thing? Tattered, folded—folded it, like, on the... | |
Shaan Puri | First 30 pages. I made this book look like it has already "won friends and influenced people." | |
Sam Parr | You just put it in the back of your pocket and just walk around with it. | |
Shaan Puri | Wait — for people who don't know the book, or who have heard of it but haven't read it: if it's one of those things like, you know, *"The Wire"* — people say, "I heard it's a great show but it's kind of old now, so I'm out on that" — if you know of the book but haven't actually cracked it open, tell the quick story of it. | |
Sam Parr | Dale Carnegie originally was a public speaker and he taught public speaking classes. He then created a book called *How to Win Friends and Influence People*, which I think lays out about 15 or 20 rules on how to basically make friends and make people like you.
Those rules include things like saying someone's name and asking them questions so they do most of the talking. One rule is to never argue with someone, because "there's no one who wins an argument when you fight."
It's an old-timer book—it was released in the 1930s, so it's almost 100 years old—and it has probably sold 50 to 100 million copies.
To this day there's the **Dale Carnegie Institute**, which runs public speaking classes. A lot of well-known people, including **Warren Buffett**, have said that the book influenced and helped them. In fact, Warren Buffett was an instructor at the Dale Carnegie Institute, I believe. | |
Shaan Puri | Love it. Okay, great. You were going to say—so you've been reading, rereading this book? | |
Sam Parr | I'm rereading that one. I just got *The Power of Thinking* — that's another one from the 1930s. I just love these old books.
Like I told you, I'm in the motivational phase of my life right now. I'm back at it. I just want to be influenced... to be motivated and happy and all that stuff. It's a "girl-dad" thing — you have a girl, you're just emotional — so I'm into this stuff.
But there's one book I started last night, and I was curious about the author because it just got me interested. It's called *Think and Grow Rich*. Have you read *Think and Grow Rich*? | |
Shaan Puri | **A classic.** Again, I've read the first 30 pages — loved it. | |
Sam Parr | So you've read 30 pages — you get it. Let me tell you the story about *Think and Grow Rich*.
*Think and Grow Rich* is one of the earliest self-help books. I think it predates *How to Win Friends and Influence People*. It sold around 100 million copies, making it one of the best-selling non-fiction books of all time. To this day, it still regularly lands on the New York Times bestsellers list. I mean, it's a huge thing.
Basically, the story is that there's this guy named Napoleon Hill. | |
Shaan Puri | **Can I say it wrong and you correct me?**
Isn't it something like he got commissioned by *Carnegie*? ... And he went and interviewed all these people, or he hung out with them? What was it—what is the story? | |
Sam Parr | It's even more epic than that. Napoleon Hill is this guy from Appalachia — he came from nothing; he was a really poor kid who made his way to New York City. He was writing an article for a magazine when he met Andrew Carnegie.
At the time, Carnegie was like Elon Musk — the best of the best. Andrew Carnegie ran Carnegie Steel. This was Tesla; this was the biggest company in the world by far. Napoleon was talking to Andrew Carnegie, and Napoleon was like, "I'm just trying to figure out what makes people successful." Carnegie said, "Look son, you seem promising. I want to tell you to do something, but can you promise me you'll actually do it? I have a feeling you won't follow through. But if you do follow through, I think you're going to be really successful."
Napoleon said, "Look, I'm desperate for success. I'll do anything you say." Carnegie imagined saying, "Sean, I need you to go out and talk to 500 people — the most successful people on earth — and tell me what made them successful, because I want the world to know this gospel. They have to know what makes people successful. I need you to study them for the next twenty years. I will help fund it. I will help make this a reality. Will you do that?"
Napoleon: "Hell yeah, brother. I am in. This sounds like the world's greatest mission — let's do it."
So Andrew Carnegie introduced him to Henry Ford. He introduced him to John D. Rockefeller — also one of the richest men in the world. He even introduced him to Woodrow Wilson and then FDR, the President of the United States. Napoleon Hill spent a decade or two writing this book, and it becomes *Think and Grow Rich*. It basically distills down all of the amazing stuff that makes someone successful.
It goes even further after this book. Napoleon Hill got to meet all these presidents. He was basically there when Woodrow Wilson negotiated the end of World War I. He helped give Woodrow Wilson the speech he needed to convince Germany to back down. And then it goes even further — do you remember the famous line from FDR? He says, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." Napoleon Hill, baby — he wrote that for him. Wow. Yeah, pretty amazing. | |
Shaan Puri | Right, **fingerprints** are all over this country. | |
Sam Parr | All over this country, he shaped America — well, none of it is true. | |
Shaan Puri | "What? What do you mean—none of it's true?" | |
Sam Parr | Everything I just told you is a lie, except for **Think and Grow Rich** — amazing book, one of the best-selling books of all time. Everything else is totally false.
I read a ton. I'd say almost a book a week. The reason I read so much is my philosophy toward reading: I want to see what works for the winners I admire and what strategies they use. I also want to see what mistakes they all made, what common flaws they had, and then avoid those mistakes.
HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life, and I did. I listed seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life, and I explained the differences they had on me and the actions I took because of each book.
I also listed my particular ways of reading because I'm pretty strategic about how I read, how I read so much, and how I remember what I read. I put this together in a very simple guide: seven books that had a huge impact on my life and an explanation of how I'm able to read so much.
You can scan the QR code below if you want to read it, or there's a link — you know what to do — the link is in the description. Just click it and you'll see the guide I made. Check it out below. | |
Shaan Puri | So what do you mean? Where did this come from? | |
Sam Parr | Listen to this: **Napoleon Hill** originally was called *Oliver Napoleon Hill*. That was his name. He married someone already at the age of...
[Sentence trails off] | |
Shaan Puri | Five. | |
Sam Parr | He married someone at the age of 16 or 17 and eventually got divorced because he went broke and spent all of his money on prostitutes.
He then started a lumber company and was arrested for fraud. He was arrested again for stealing a bunch of cars. If you go to the *MBD master document*, I actually list his rap sheet:
- In 1908 he got in trouble for lumber fraud.
- Later in 1908 he was arrested for cashing fake checks.
- In 1909 he created something called the "Automobile College," which taught kids how to work on cars. It turns out he actually taught them how to go and sell the course, so it was a multi-level marketing scheme. He was run out of town because he ran off with a lot of money.
- In 1910 he was arrested for car theft.
He has a history of being in jail — we're talking about 15 or 20 times. He tried business after business — literally around 15 businesses — and they all failed. He married a woman and convinced her parents to loan him money for a farm he wanted to start. The venture went bankrupt and he divorced the woman — mean, lying. | |
Shaan Puri | Real broke. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah—really bad. And so, in the 1930s... | |
Shaan Puri | "So did the Carnegie part happen at all? Did he even interview any of these people?" | |
Sam Parr | So Carnegie died in 1919, and in the nineteen-thirties he comes out with this book. He had written a bunch of books already, but none of them were hits. This particular one was a hit.
He tells the story of meeting Andrew Carnegie and how Andrew Carnegie asked him to do this. There's **zero proof** that he met Andrew Carnegie.
And Andrew Carnegie — I've read actually three biographies on him. I got married at Carnegie Hall because I loved him so much.
The book comes out, I think, in 1929. Carnegie has been dead for ten years, and David Nasaw, who wrote the best biography on Carnegie, they're like, "Dude, Carnegie documented everything. There's no proof that he..." | |
Shaan Puri | **Carnegie** said no, or **Carnegie** didn't say anything about this. What about the people—**Wilson** and **FDR** and... | |
Sam Parr | "None of it happened. She'd never been to any of these guys." | |
Shaan Puri | And nobody debunked it. | |
Sam Parr | Well, so here's the thing: people did debunk it later on, but it's sort of like R. Kelly and his music. You could *separate the art from the artist*, do you know what I mean? I could still—I could still listen to the music and acknowledge that it's good music.
A lot of his... the book was so good, and I could talk about some of the stuff in the book. It was so good that it's known that he was a fraudster and that all of this story is completely fake, but the book is actually so good that he didn't get a pass. People acknowledge the book's great and also that he's full of shit.
So, in the book there's actually a bunch of amazing stuff. For example, have you heard of the term "mastermind"? [affirmative] He created that. So he came up with the psycho—probably not. | |
Shaan Puri | "Probably lies. Probably all lies. You think I believe that? Think he was me once? Shame on me." | |
Sam Parr | Don't — again, that's **"pull"**, a Napoleon Hill term. So he created this idea of... I mean. | |
Shaan Puri | He popularized it, at least. | |
Sam Parr | "Pop popularized it, but I think it's the first time that someone has ever said the word *'mastermind,'* or at least published it. He did a bunch of amazing stuff.
In the book he says you need to have a specific goal, write it down, and repeat it to yourself every single day — **twice a day**. That's been proven to be true. There's a lot of research that shows if you write down goals and repeat them to yourself, you are about **two times more likely** to achieve your goal.
Another thing he emphasized was persistence and grit. He goes through many chapters on the importance of persistence and grit. Angela Duckworth — I think we talked about it — has a book called *Grit*, and it's also been shown that grit is more likely to make you succeed than IQ.
He also discusses daily affirmations. This is all *woo-woo* stuff, but it's been shown that if you affirm you'll be successful, you're actually more likely to be successful. So he actually does have a lot of amazing ideas.
There are some other weird parts: he talks about how sexual energy is the most powerful energy on earth and that you need to harness it. There's a bunch of strange content in there, but also a lot of really valuable material.
When I read about his background, I thought it was one of the craziest things I've ever read. It's very in-depth about how he lied about his entire backstory — his whole life, basically, is a lie.
Oh, and by the way, I have to add: if you read the book, have you noticed how he mentions "The Secret"? | |
Shaan Puri | I don't remember that, but yeah — okay. | |
Sam Parr | In the book he talks about the secret to success. There is, in fact, a secret. Andrew Carnegie, the most successful man on earth, "conveniently dropped the secret into my pocket," and that's what I'm going to talk about.
Well, in the book *Think and Grow Rich* he never actually outlines the secret — or, sorry, he never explicitly says what it is. What he does say is: "I've written another book about this — the secret — and I've outlined it perfectly. I made it incredibly clear." Then he adds that he won't even tell you the name of the book; "it's going to come to you when you need it."
That book was called *The Law of Success*, and it was a 14-volume course that you had to buy. It was very expensive. *Think and Grow Rich* is just the front-door offer — the cheap version — like the $10 book that upsells you on the $2,000 course.
This is one of the early versions of an open loop to get people to go and buy stuff. You could then go buy his seminars. His marketing prowess was pretty amazing, and it totally worked.
Napoleon Hill turned it into a seminar company and it actually was somewhat successful before he stole a bunch of money and got in trouble for fraud. His marketing was amazing, and the book actually has a lot of useful material — but the whole backstory is **completely fake**, and he's a total con man. | |
Shaan Puri | "That's pretty wild. Similar to what's going on with the *Jay Shetty* thing, right? Have you seen this?"
"No."
"You know *Jay Shetty* — he's like me with green eyes." | |
Sam Parr | "Yeah. So, yeah—he's a very attractive guy." | |
Shaan Puri | His backstory is very popular. | |
Sam Parr | "That he's a monk." | |
Shaan Puri | I was a monk, you know. I was in trouble... and I went and I became a monk in India or Nepal or something.
And then one day — and this is where I knew the story was *bullshit* immediately — one day, guess what happened: a monk at the monastery comes to him and says, "You're not meant to be here. You're meant to do more, to do bigger things in this world. You're meant to go back to America and start podcasts."
Essentially that's what he told him: "You're meant to go popularize this monk wisdom."
Which, I mean, come on. Do we really think that a monk broke his silence and just randomly went up to him and was like, "No, no, no — you are supposed to go do this other thing"? Like, how convenient. How convenient. "We need you to." | |
Sam Parr | **"Start a seminar company, Jay."** | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, it's **bullshit**. Basically, it's questionable. I think even if he was a monk—if he ever did a stint as a monk—being a monk is a pretty long-term commitment, versus, like, I did a seven-day retreat at a thing or whatever. So I think that part's questionable.
Definitely the part about the monk telling him, "Your purpose in life is to go do this other thing"—that's **bullshit**. Dude's only 38. | |
Sam Parr | [He's] years old, and he's been famous for like ten years. I just wanted to... | |
Shaan Puri | If it's revealed he wears colored contacts, that's going to be the **final straw** for me. It is.
But, basically, then they're like, "Oh, he has this degree," and it's like, "Oh wait—he didn't actually have that college degree." In fact, he has his own school that gives its own certificates for $10, and that's where he got his certification from. It's like the whole thing starts to fall apart.
But you know what? The things he says—he took old ideas and repopularized them in his book. On his podcast he gets people to open up, and he's a **good podcaster**. So it's hard. It's the art from the artist, as you said, and I think it's very, very similar. | |
Sam Parr | He was the officiant of J.Lo and Ben Affleck's wedding. | |
Shaan Puri | "They're like, 'You are meant to officiate celebrity weddings.'
I met a guy who was, like, his brand coach early on, and I was like, "Tell me, is this really?" He was like, "I have no idea." I knew better than to ask, so I said, "Okay, sounds good." | |
Sam Parr | "Dude, that's crazy." | |
Shaan Puri | I can't tell if the self-help industry actually has a higher percentage of fraud and fakery. There's something about the nature of wanting to be a guru that's attractive. It's kind of like politics, right? The people who seek power tend to be people who are flawed in certain ways; the people who deserve power don't seek it.
So I wonder if it's the same thing with the *self-help guru* space — or if it's a bias where you just remember the cases where they turn out to be frauds because it's so damning given the front they present. Maybe it simply strikes a bigger chord, or maybe it's actually more frequent. I don't know. | |
Sam Parr | I know a bunch of self-help people, and I know that the *majority* of them... | |
Shaan Puri | "What does that mean? Who—who do you know? What are you talking about? How many *self-help* people even are there?" | |
Sam Parr | "I mean, first of all, some people look to us as *self-help* people, to be honest. We run in circles with people who at least have a book and are in the *self-help* category, right?
When I see them, I'm like, "You son of a bitch—you built this into existence." I don't know anyone I'd call fraudulent, but it feels like they're just painting the best picture of reality, which I don't think is necessarily wrong.
But who do you know—if anyone—in the self-help industry that you think is totally legitimate?" | |
Shaan Puri | Well, let me give you the nuance here: what does *legit* mean?
I don't mean that you live a perfect life—because no one does. That's not the criteria. If that were the criteria, then nobody would qualify. Your present doesn't need to be perfect, and neither does your past. Of course the people who get really into self-help are often the people who needed it—they had the pain, the wound, and therefore they went and studied. When they overcame it, they often have the deepest mastery and understanding because they actually did the work. I don't hold that against anybody.
The only things I think are bogus are:
- If the things you preach don't actually help people, or they represent a lower form of success.
- For example, there's the "Andrew Tate" problem: some people popularize an approach that's all about grind and suffering. You're giving people a dirty form of fuel—popularizing a path that is not actually the best method.
- It's like prescribing medicine that's not as effective when better options exist. As a doctor, you shouldn't be prescribing less effective medicines—you should prescribe whatever is most effective.
- If you're lying about your past or your present. Lying is obviously a deal breaker; it's a trust buster.
Who do I think is legit? My honest opinion—which I'm a bit afraid to say because I think it'll be immediately attacked—is Tony Robbins. I think he's legit in the two definitions I just gave. One: his advice is extremely helpful. Two: I think it's sort of the *best medicine* for a broad range of people. I think what he preaches is actually extremely helpful, and I don't think he's lying. | |
Sam Parr | "I've never seen. What is there to lie about? What claims has he made?" | |
Shaan Puri | I've never seen evidence that he lies about his past. Does he embellish or exaggerate? Does he conveniently trim timelines for a story? I have no idea. I don't go and audit that.
I think the criticism of him is **twofold**. One is: did he get "Me Too"-ed [referring to Me Too allegations]? In other words, did he do that stuff? I don't know what that situation is.
The second is: is it a cult? Is he so effective that it becomes *cult-like* — an abuse of power where people fall so far into his rabbit hole that somehow that's a negative thing.
I personally got a lot of value from it, so I guess that's my bias on this. | |
Sam Parr | I've read his books. I like him. I don't know anything about his personal life, though.
I know a person who I could say is **totally legitimate**, and this is based off of me hanging out with him for collectively eight hours — so not that much time — but also talking to dozens of his employees.
**Gary Vaynerchuk.** Interesting. I have nothing but positive things to say about Gary Vaynerchuk, and he's one of these guys who gets criticized for *hustle culture*. I think he works that hard, which you could argue is not good, but everything that I've seen him say online I have heard his employees, who have worked with him for years, back it up and say it was totally legitimate, and he's a wonderful man. | |
Shaan Puri | I have another one: **Jesse Itzler**. I've now spent a lot of time with Jesse Itzler, and if you think about when you meet people, sort of think of it like in math terms—there's the *y-intercept*, which is where the line starts. It's like how high up it starts. That's usually your expectations or their reputation.
We met people like **Tai Lopez** and the guy from **Fyre Festival**, right? They're low on the y-intercept—you come in with an extremely negative perception. There are other people you come in with an extremely positive perception, like, *are they really as good as it is?* And then there's the slope of the line from there. Does it drop? Does it rise?
Jesse is one of the few people where I came in with a high expectation and he only ever beat it. I've been to his house, met his family and his kids. I've done multiple events where he came and hung out. We've done podcasts together. I'm not his best friend and I'm not with him all the time, but every time I'm around this guy I'm like, "wow—he's the real deal. Holy shit." He lives what he preaches and he's just a genuinely good dude, genuinely there for you.
I just haven't been able to detect the normal flaws that come with this sort of stuff—whether it's narcissism, extreme self-interest, being money-motivated or fame-motivated, being really protective of their image, or having a tendency to brag or dominate the room. He's got none of that shit.
I've literally asked him, "How did you slay the money monster? You seem—you're the only guy in this room that's not just still chasing more, more, more success. You actually have done more than all of them in the room but you didn't say anything." He said:
> "Well, I didn't feel a need to. Why would I have needed to do that? I was there to learn. I wanted to learn. I wanted to hear."
And I was like, "wow—this guy shows up in a great way." | |
Sam Parr | Alright. Can I talk to you about *one more thing*? Yeah—check this out. | |
Shaan Puri | Alright. Sam puts this photo here of this *extremely jacked* man who's clearly a bodybuilder—clearly some sort of athlete. That's his profession. | |
Sam Parr | Do you know who that guy is? | |
Shaan Puri | "This is the OpenClaw guy, right?" | |
Sam Parr | Is that incredible? Okay, so could you tell the backstory of **OpenClaw**? It's a pretty amazing thing, and I think you actually know a lot more about it than I do. | |
Shaan Puri | So there's a guy named Pete. He's an Austrian dude who learns to code. He builds a PDF side project of sorts called **PSPDFKit**, and it actually becomes the gold standard for a PDF library for developers. It's used by Apple, Box, and DocuSign.
He basically bootstraps the thing and ends up selling a majority stake. I think he sold it for a lot. | |
Sam Parr | Of money, like $100 million. | |
Shaan Puri | A $100,000,000 person tries to retire early. He's like, "Golf sucks," has an existential life crisis — "What do I want to do?" He decides, "Alright, I'm gonna keep building. That's what I enjoy doing." So he starts building open-source projects. He launches, like, forty, fifty different small open-source tools or projects before this.
Then he decides to create something like Jarvis from the movies. He's like, "Why don't I just have an AI assistant that lives on my computer, on my desk, and I just tell it to do things and it could just do it?" The problem with most AI tools before this was that you could talk to them — go to that AI app and it could tell you things — but it couldn't do a whole lot because it didn't have access to your different apps or accounts. It couldn't message somebody, couldn't send money, it couldn't control this or that.
He was like, "Forget it — I'm gonna give it *god mode*. I'm gonna give it access to this stuff." The reason he could do that was: he'd put it on his own little computer instead of in the cloud, and it'd run as an open-source project locally on his computer.
So he releases this thing initially called *Claude Bot*. Then Anthropic, who makes Claude, was like, "Hey, we kindly suggest you change your name if you want to ever see your mother again," or something. They say he gets forced to change it. He changed it once, twice, and it ends up becoming *OpenClaw*. It becomes one of the fastest-growing GitHub projects ever. Twitter goes nuts over this thing. It starts a revolution: people are buying Mac minis; the price of Mac minis is going through the roof.
Then recently he gets acquired — acquired by OpenAI — for an undisclosed sum of money that people speculate could be a very large sum. Is this a one-person billion-dollar acqui-hire? We don't know. We don't know what this is. And now he's part of OpenAI. So that's... | |
Sam Parr | That's what people online were saying. They said "it was *a billion dollars*," but I have no idea if that's true. | |
Shaan Puri | Nobody knows. | |
Sam Parr | What's crazy is, you talked to — I think last year — and said the word of 2025 is **"generative."**
So, Ari, do me a favor: share your screen again and click his GitHub link. Look at how many projects this guy has put out, with the last one being *Open Claw*. Isn't that amazing — how many projects or little products this guy tried to make before he got to the huge win? | |
Shaan Puri | It's not shocking, let me put it that way. I think it's *awesome*, but it's not shocking because this is a pattern you'll see over and over again.
The people who are the **best**—who make the best quality stuff—tend to also make the highest quantity of stuff. They just take a lot of "shots on goal." They're prolific; they're generative. Often it's because they start earlier, but even if it's not that they start earlier, they just attempt more than you.
That's a good example. In fact, Levels had this great tweet about his hit rate. | |
Sam Parr | Levels — being **Peter Levels**, who we've had on the pod — and he's, yeah, kind of helped invent the word "indie hacker." He probably... | |
Shaan Puri | "Makes, yes. I would say he's the most famous indie hacker." | |
Sam Parr | He makes about **$2 million** a year just by creating a lot of these projects, and he's pretty amazing. | |
Shaan Puri | Alright, so check this out: same tweet, same idea from **Levels**.
> "Four out of the 70+ projects I ever did made money and grew. 95% of everything I did failed. My hit rate is only 5%, so **ship more**."
He basically included a list of all his projects and then singled out the ones that made good money: **Gru**, **Nomad List**, **Remote**, **Tawk**, **Rebase**, and a YouTube network for electronic music. Those are the four out of 70 that he said were successful attempts to make something hit.
I've joked before that he's like the "Jordan logo for indie hackers" — a guy sitting on a couch, shirt off, in his boxers, just typing on a laptop in Bali or whatever. He basically showed that he has a 90‑something percent failure rate. It took him 50+ projects before he had a hit, and now all the revenue and success come from three or four projects he did out of such a long list. | |
Sam Parr | *Incredible.* I'm not — I don't view myself as a prolific person. | |
Shaan Puri | I think you're blind to it, dude. You did—here are projects I know that you've done: just projects, right?
Sam's attempt to make a thing and be successful. Okay: hot dog stand. Next one: moonshine company—selling moonshine stuff online, right? The book club that you did in San Francisco—events business. Newsletter business. Blogging business. Paid subscription business. Airbnb rental business. Airbnb community. Mastermind community.
That's... I'm on ten, and it's been ten seconds, right? | |
Sam Parr | Don't even know all the... | |
Shaan Puri | "Shit that you've done." | |
Sam Parr | "What's funny?" | |
Shaan Puri | **Keep going.** What else is there? **Keep going.** | |
Sam Parr | Well — conferences, meetups. I did a lot of meetups and conferences. I created a copywriting thing called **CopyThat.com**. | |
Shaan Puri | "Copywriting workshop you hosted. It was at my office one weekend. I..." | |
Sam Parr | Remember, that's *cool*. | |
Shaan Puri | "Sam's list. Your thing. Sam's list. Your of accountants. Okay—what else?" | |
Sam Parr | "Yes, I made **$3,000** from a website that taught you how to get a roommate in San Francisco." | |
Shaan Puri | - **Roommate matching**
- **Roommate finder**
- **Roommate infographics** | |
Sam Parr | I made a thing called **MyRentor**, which was a universal rental application. | |
Shaan Puri | This podcast; *Moneywise* podcast; your Instagram—an Instagram-style influencer content attempt. What else? | |
Sam Parr | I don't view those as attempts. I just... I guess that's kind of the — which is, that's that: when it's just like you're doing things in your free time that seem like *hobbies*. | |
Shaan Puri | And you— I don't know your family well; you can decline to answer this—do you have siblings in the same amount of time? Let's say that was about fifteen years.
We named at least 17 things just now, maybe two... there's probably twenty or twenty-five things total if we really thought about all the things, right?
How many do you think the average person, or even a sibling in your own home who grew up in the same environment as you, would have attempted? Is it a one-to-one ratio? Is it half as much? A quarter as much? A tenth as much? **What is it?** | |
Sam Parr | It's *less than a tenth*. | |
Shaan Puri | Less than a tenth. I have a sister—same thing. No knock on them; they're great people. They're, you know, wired differently. They want to do different things in life and have different goals, maybe.
But just to drive this home: **quantity is the path to quality**. You have to be prolific. You have to be generative in the amount of things you're trying. Almost always, when you think you have a quality problem, you actually have a quantity problem underneath the hood—it's a quantity of iterations.
You don't need to do 10 things at once; that's not what I'm saying. But you need to commit to doing a lot of things. The beauty of it is, it's like dating or anything else in life: you only need one to work. You only need one, and your whole life changes. | |
Sam Parr | "Yeah, I always make a joke. I say, *'Dating is like business — you only need to be right once.'* It only has to work out one time, and it's worth it." | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, by the way, here's a blog post from him called "Finding My Spark Again." He basically shows his GitHub commits for the year after he sold his business.
He sold his business, tried to do other things, and just felt empty afterwards. He got back into making stuff—committing code, writing code, building tools and products. He basically said the spark returned because building was always the thing that gave him joy. It clicked: he had an idea, started hacking, and realized, "My spark is back."
To find meaning, it wasn't therapy, it wasn't ayahuasca, it wasn't going to another country. He had enough of his own bullshit and realized that you don't find happiness by moving countries; you don't find purpose—you *create* it.
> **"You don't find purpose. You create it."**
I think it's a pretty... powerful. | |
Sam Parr | Is that saying he was blogging, and that the blog post was from June '25? So does that mean that OpenClaw was six months old? | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, OpenClaw is, like, *brand new*, dude. It's like... | |
Sam Parr | Well—three months. Sorry, I know it's brand new, but he'd only been working on it for six months. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah... yeah... yeah. *It's crazy, right?* | |
Sam Parr | "That's incredible. That's incredible. I don't know enough about technical stuff. Is he considered a great developer?" | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, no. I don't know if this is true — this is just me going off of random tweets I've seen — but I think the story is that he vibe-coded OpenClaw and he didn't even read the code afterwards. That’s why there are a lot of security concerns and potential vulnerabilities.
He's even said things like, "Why did I join OpenAI? When I had this thing take off, dude — imagine the DMs. It's the most popular AI project in the world, and AI is the most popular industry in the world." His DMs were flooded with acquisition offers, job offers, investment offers: "Turn this into a company; you could be the next ChatGPT," etc.
He basically said, "I don't want to build a huge company — that's not what makes me happy. I want to build an AI agent that actually does the thing I'm trying to build here. My best shot at doing that is joining OpenAI."
So he went there and acknowledged, "Yeah, I agree there's a lot of problems with OpenClaw. I'll leave it open source. There are issues: it's hard to set up, there are security vulnerabilities — yes, agreed. What I'm going to do is go here and try to make a better version that will be without those problems." | |
Sam Parr | My co-founder installed it and he was testing it out. I haven't installed it because I'm nervous. We just got this, and he installed it in our work Slack.
He made a marketing bot that would update the whole company on how many people signed up the day before, or whatever. This morning he called it *Stanley* — like "Stanley the marketing bot" — and Stanley would give updates. For example: "Hey, I'm Stanley. I'm the marketing bot. I want to let you know that these many people signed up to Hampton, yada yada yada today."
Then we all got a message that said, "Hey, I'm Jerry. I fired Stanley because he made a bunch of mistakes and I want to let you know that the previous error was X, Y, and Z. The truth is this, and today this is how many people signed up."
We were like, "Wait." | |
Shaan Puri | Did that by itself. | |
Sam Parr | By itself, I get a notification. It said, "No — I fired." | |
Shaan Puri | You didn't give it feedback. It just decided, "I need to go." | |
Sam Parr | I got a notification in our team channel, and it said, "You have to fire this person." Then it changed its name [the notification]. | |
Shaan Puri | Okay, no — that's great. But did Joe say to the thing, "You're making mistakes; make a better version of yourself"? Did he tell it that, or did it just do it? | |
Sam Parr | He did not. He said that he did not tell it to do that. | |
Shaan Puri | Alright. That's *scary* — that's funny, and it's very *scary*. That's *crazy*. | |
Sam Parr | So, we had to uninstall it. He uninstalled it because we were like, "This is just getting to be too much. This is weird."
But it—basically, yeah—it alerted and had been making [noise/notifications]. | |
Shaan Puri | *Some poor decisions lately.*
**Sam** is now tied up in an undisclosed location.
"I'll be making decisions from here on out." | |
Sam Parr | It's pretty incredible, isn't it? I was using *Claude Coburg* yesterday. I asked him to analyze the Slack conversations between my partner, Joe, and me, and tell us what we can do to be the best leaders — or analyze how to make our relationship the best possible. It was amazing. | |
Shaan Puri | **That's hilarious, by the way.** He said a great thing.
People took his project list and started tweeting, like, "Look at this—he failed 40... he did 40 or 50 different projects that didn't work before finding OpenClaw." And then he was like, "What are you guys talking about? All those things were basically like mini tools that OpenClaw used. That wasn't random."
Great—it makes for a good story—but that's not true. Here's the truth: it's like, *if you weren't already jacked, handsome, and rich, now you're honest too, goddamn it.* You know, this guy seems great.
There was another example of this "many projects" or "quantity" thing that was on the podcast a while back. Christina from Vanta came on the podcast—it's a popular episode—but I feel like there was really one takeaway from it.
She told me the story about the pottery experiments, a kind of semi-famous example if you read a bunch of books (but most people don't read books). The story is: there's a professor at a college in Florida. The actual story, I think, was about photography, but they kind of changed it to be about pottery for some reason. So he has a class and he wants to prove a... | |
Shaan Puri | Which is that to be a great creative, again, it's about this commitment. So he says: half the class — "You will be judged at the end of the semester on **quality**. I want you to make the best thing you can make. So all year you don't have to do anything but turn in your best pot at the end of the semester, and I will grade you only on the best pot you make." Great. That's the first half of the class.
The second half he says: "I will grade you only on the **quantity** — the number of pots you make. They could be bad, they could be good; I don't care. As many as you turn in, your grade will be a function of quantity." Alright.
The two groups go on. So at the end of the semester what happens? Obviously, the **quantity** group made way more pots, as you would expect. The surprise — the spoiler, obviously — is that they also made the better pot. The higher-quality pots also came from the **quantity** group, who were not focused on quality at all; they were only focused on quantity. | |
Sam Parr | He and they found out that the quantity group had a higher measured satisfaction rating. | |
Shaan Puri | Correct — so you win across the board. You made more stuff, you had more fun doing it, and you made the better stuff.
If you do things a lot, you get a lot of shots on goal — more attempts to make something great. If you do things a lot, your skill level goes up, so your ability to make something great goes up. The last thing is you remove your filter. When you try to make a lot of things, you don't self-inhibit. You don't count yourself out. You're not afraid to create, which usually pushes you away from safe projects. Because they were willing to experiment more widely, they did things that were more original and novel.
So that's the story from that. She was saying, like, *that changed my life.* Today Christina is the CEO of this, I don't know, a $5,000,000,000 tech company — close to $10,000,000,000 maybe at some point — called **Vanta**. I asked her about her process getting there, and her story was: she was an associate VC or something at **Union Square Ventures**, had never learned to code in her life, and decided to teach herself to code.
She would dress up like she was going to work, go to a co-working space, sit at the same desk every day, treat it like a job, and say, "I'm gonna make shit. I'm gonna make a lot of shit." She shared a list of projects on her website that go roughly in chronological order. Most of these things never saw the daylight — probably for the best — and there are, like, 25 different little mini projects she built during this time. She was making a lot of pots.
She tells a story about the pottery experiment and how it changed her thinking as she built all these different projects. The last one, which really didn't even use code — it was just a spreadsheet in **Excel** — was: "Let me see if I can make a useful spreadsheet for any company that wants to get their **SOC 2** security certificate." She did it manually in Excel and started helping companies manually. Eventually she turned that into software, and that became Vanta, which now does hundreds of millions in annual revenue. It's a pretty crazy success story.
She had this quote at the top of her personal site from the book *Art & Fear*:
> "The function of the overwhelming majority of work is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your art that soars."
I think if you take that mentality, you'll have a very different result than if you take the mentality of "I need to make something great" and try to make one thing. Then you often end up disappointed and spiral into a discouragement loop. | |
Sam Parr | Wow, man. I listened to her and didn't realize how impressive she might be. She might be a billionaire now—possibly one of the youngest *self-made* women billionaires. | |
Shaan Puri | "Yeah. I think I started the podcast with, like, *Forbes* ranking her — you know, over Katy Perry and under Oprah, or something. Like, one of the five most successful or richest women in the country." | |
Sam Parr | I didn't know too much about her — that's pretty cool. I didn't know what *Vanta* did, either. Frankly, I still don't entirely understand it because I don't know what "SOC 2" entirely means. I guess it means compliance for software. | |
Shaan Puri | It's one of those subjects that's *best* stepped around. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, it's like a *word* that you read about all the time in a book, but you never want to say it out loud. | |
Shaan Puri | I've read *Harry Potter* 30 times. When I watched the movie I was like, "Hermione—yeah, what the hell?" It's been ten years of Hermione. Yeah, she's impressive.
When you meet her you're like, "Oh, okay, I get it." You know, sort of has that... what is that word you say? "Oh, the oven burns hotter." | |
Sam Parr | The oven burns hotter. | |
Shaan Puri | I got it — you're just wired a little bit better than us in the brain. It's all good. She also was the *first investor* in Replit early on, which I think, if I look at now this "Projects" thing, she says "interactive repl to teach Python" was one of her projects, which might have been the reason that she invested in Replit first.
I don't know — I'm just guessing there; maybe it had something to do with it. And, you know, Replit's now like a... I don't know, what is it, [unclear: "$3.04 $5,000,000,000"] company. | |
Sam Parr | Damn, dude — **Christina's awesome.** We should do a follow-up, because that podcast was two years old, I think. | |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, that'd be fun. | |
Sam Parr | Alright, Sean — I have an announcement. I've been thinking a lot about this, and I'm finally ready to announce it.
I am **resigning from business** and I'm starting a new career, and I need **Ari** to play "Clipped."
In order to give some context: news — I just got called out on the **Mel Robbins Podcast**. I'm officially a **dating expert**. Check it out. | |
MFM | So one of my favorite people, who I really admire, is my friend Sarah's husband, **Sam Parr**. Whenever I talk to Sam about dating, he talks about what he did to make himself a more desirable partner, and he really had a strategy for it.
For example, he said, "I think it's really attractive when people have passions, so I'm going to work on developing a hobby that will be interesting to talk about." He got really into denim. When he was meeting up with girls he would say, "I'm going to this denim swap this weekend—let me tell you about *Japanese denim*." That's kind of cool; they would find it interesting. He really stood out. He was memorable. | |
Sam Parr | World-renowned pickup artist *Denim*: "It worked. It worked. I just endorsed." | |
Shaan Puri | You on LinkedIn for this? | |
Sam Parr | Oh my gosh — I'm going to be hosting dating seminars over the next couple months. If you guys want to sign up, please let me know.
I just have to warn you, Sean, because I know you're married: do not walk up to a bunch of women and tell them that you're into denim. Otherwise, they're just going to be booked full with dates. | |
Shaan Puri | Right—yeah, you seem *visibly* excited. This is the **most excited** I’ve seen you in, like, six months. | |
Sam Parr | *It's just so funny.* I saw that and I was like, "There's no way." They're only telling the story because it worked. But if I told you that I walked up to a girl and asked her if she wanted to go to a denim swap meet — like, "Hey, princess, wanna come see my bug collection?" | |
Shaan Puri | I like how you doubled down, and you're wearing *denim* today, too. Fast, I... | |
Sam Parr | I am what I am, and... | |
Shaan Puri | You've had a **fitness influencer**, **business influencer**, and now a **dating influencer**. Did I miss one?
Professional skateboarder? Or *professional/casual* skateboarder? | |
Sam Parr | Yeah. | |
Shaan Puri | "White man who can jump." | |
Sam Parr | How funny is that? That was... *that made my day.*
I've just been walking around my office, asking if anyone needs a mentor for dating. | |
Shaan Puri | Dude, what's the story with **Mel Robbins**, by the way? Do you know her backstory? | |
Sam Parr | I actually don't have any idea who she is, but she has a *ton of followers*. What is it? | |
Shaan Puri | She used to work for **James Courier** at their startup. She was a marketer and became like this *"life coach extraordinaire"* type person.
I mean, I don't know what bridged that transition—obviously lots of hard work and useful things for people—but I feel like she's a **self-made woman**. I feel like she decided, "Now I shall do self-help," and then she intentionally went into it and did it. You know what I mean? She made a pivot into that career. | |
Sam Parr | I remember that **Rick Marini** came on the podcast. He is **James'** partner. He said, "My wife was listening to a podcast and I was like, that voice sounds familiar." He continued, "Wait—I used to have an intern or a marketing manager named Mel. Is that—oh my God, that's the lady who worked for me, **Mel Robbins**."
He had no idea that she was into this stuff, so I guess she kind of manifested it. She's a *manifest cowboy*. | |
Shaan Puri | She's got the **five-second rule**, you know — the Mel Robbins five-second rule. | |
Sam Parr | Like... where you could *eat stuff off the floor*. | |
Shaan Puri | You would think, right? It's world-famous. Turns out this is the alternate.
So her **"Five-Second Rule"** — this is her book — is basically for when you are procrastinating or have self-doubt. Let's take an example: you're a guy, you see a cute girl at a café, and there's that moment where you have to decide, "Am I going to approach her and say something or not?"
Her rule is to count backwards: *five, four, three, two, one*, and then physically move toward doing it before your brain can stop you. The body overrides the brain; you don't let yourself be an overthinker.
That one principle is her most famous, or most useful, and it's the idea that has spread the furthest. | |
Sam Parr | That's been great. I mean, that's a weird coincidence, because since I've been a pickup-artist expert for the last 24 [years], I've been teaching the **"three-second rule,"** which is: whenever you see a girl who's cute, you have to go up and talk to her within three seconds.
So, great minds think alike. You have to sprint—you have to run. | |
Shaan Puri | Doesn't matter the distance. You have three seconds, yeah, to... | |
Sam Parr | And the first slide is: "I was staring at you, and I just wanted to let you know." Then you just say the first thing that comes to your mind. | |
Shaan Puri | Right. | |
Sam Parr | This is, by the way, a *perfect coincidence* that you're talking about manifesting into a self-help guru, because I have a crazy story to tell you. | |
Shaan Puri | Wait—before you go, can I tell you one more **five-second rule** story? This is why this is useful... If there happens to be a young single man listening to this podcast (I know, absurd), this might be useful.
My trainer told me this story. He's one of the best humans I know—super funny, always in a good mood, gets along with everybody, super fit. He's incredible. He's a catch. He's single right now.
It's almost like when people say, "I'm going to work on myself for a little bit." Like Mel Robbins was saying, you make yourself a more desirable partner. He just kept doing that—kept investing in himself and became the most desirable partner. Such a great guy.
I told him, "This year I have this inkling—I'm going to introduce you to somebody. I have this gut instinct that I'm going to find the right person for you. I don't know why; somehow the dots are going to connect." He's like, "I'm here for it." Then he told me the crazy story.
> "I was at the gym like a year ago and I saw this girl. There was this five-second rule moment where she made eye contact and I made eye contact, but we were kind of far away. She was in the middle of a set; I was in the middle of a set. I didn't walk over to her—I kind of overthought it for a second. I was just like, 'Dude, I'd never do that,' but she just seemed great, and I missed it. I told myself if I ever see that girl again, I'm going up to her."
He continued:
> "So yesterday I'm across the street and I see that same girl at this bus stop. I ran across the street—I mean, I ran over to her. I just told her... I said, 'Hey, gotta tell you this crazy story. I saw you at the gym like a year ago, and at the time I was too nervous to come up and talk to you. I thought you were really cute, but I fumbled the ball. I told myself if I ever see that girl again, I'm definitely gonna come up and talk to her, and I just had to come up and say hi.'"
She loved him... and then... | |
Sam Parr | They went, "Yeah, of course." | |
Shaan Puri | They went on this date and it went great. I was like, "This is— that's a great story," because I feel like every guy kind of has been in that position in the first part of the story. You can turn the *L* into a big *W* by using it — not by being ashamed of it or kicking yourself about it, but by using it as the line when you go up to the girl, because, you know, it's very flattering. | |
Sam Parr | So, date one happened. | |
Shaan Puri | So, date one happened — went well. Yeah, we'll see what happens.
But if there are any women out there that are looking for the *happiest man I know* — the guy who has got the *best mindset* and is just an absolute joy to be around — hit me up.
Slide into my DMs if you're, let's say, a good, wholesome person who likes to have fun, has a good sense of humor, is looking to have a family, and you just haven't found the right guy yet. Maybe he's the guy for you — slide into my DMs.
I believe I'm connecting the dots this year. It's happening. | |
Sam Parr | "That's pretty interesting. You're now—you're going from a business person; you're writing a book on creativity, *Magic Maker*, to... pimp, yeah?" | |
Shaan Puri | Pimp. Yeah, yeah. | |
Sam Parr | That's awesome. All right—how do you feel? | |
Shaan Puri | "I feel great." | |
Sam Parr | I didn't comment on this, but wearing the *Ralph Lauren* bear sweater—I own a few of them. I've never worn them because I thought you were going to mock me.
Frankly, I think it's great. I think a grown man should wear a teddy bear on their chest once in a while.
I'll wear mine next time. | |
Shaan Puri | Alright. | |
Sam Parr | Well, that's it. | |
Shaan Puri | "I think on that? That's it." | |
Sam Parr | "That's the spot." |