5 Philosophies For Building Projects People Can't Forget

- February 3, 2026 (about 2 months ago) • 01:06:48

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	Today's episode is about one word: excellence. Whenever I hear stories about people who are excellent—or what it took to become excellent, or what it took to make something happen that was truly excellent—it makes me wanna run through a wall for the rest of the day. So that's the gift to a listener: if you're listening to this in the morning, you're gonna wanna run through a wall after you listen to this. "Sam, it's morning time. Would you like some FOMO pancakes? Because I'm about to drizzle some FOMO pancakes right in front of you."
00:29	Sam Parr	For some reason, when you say the word "drizzle", I... I'm out.
00:33	Shaan Puri	"You're out. Yeah, I've never been able to pull that word off." </FormattedResponse>
00:36	Sam Parr	Yeah, I don't think anyone has.
00:39	Shaan Puri	We, as you know, are hosting our annual event. Ben and I host this event, called Hoop Group, with MrBeast, and it's in about a week. I was just catching up with Ben—Ben takes the charge on, like...
00:52	Sam Parr	Everything in your life.
00:54	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah — doing the things. I just keep lobbing in ideas, and I'm basically the most annoying guy. He says, "Hey, here's everything we've got," and I'm like, "Can't we just make it better?" He's like, "Okay, well how?" I'm like, "I don't know — just think big." I say generic things like that. I'll be like, "You know, I just got off the podcast with this guy — what would he do?" He's like, "I don't know. What did he tell you about...?" I say, "I don't know, go listen to that, you get inspired, but is lab [unclear]."
01:19	Sam Parr	"Call it 'lobbying ideas,'" I said to my coach the other day. She said, "That's called swooping and pooping—yeah, when you fly in and just leave a bunch of crap."
01:29	Shaan Puri	Exactly. They've been working hard, and then you just swoop in and you poop. But I do it in the name of high standards. That's how you get away with anything. That's how you get away with being an asshole—you just say, "No, not an asshole, I have high standards." But my standards have been exceeded by what Ben has pulled off with this event. I just need to tell you some things about this event. Okay, for those who don't know: for the last few years, every year we host a basketball camp. It's kind of like a basketball camp for billionaires—that was the idea, the dream. There are lots of different conferences and networking events, and I hate conferences and I hate networking events. Despite me talking a lot on this podcast, I'm actually kind of an introvert. I don't really enjoy going to events. We wanted to do something, but the idea of just creating yet another thing that was very much like everything else that existed was not appealing. </FormattedResponse>
02:15	Sam Parr	What are you guys—just sitting around? Are conferences dumb? Well, it started with... </FormattedResponse>
02:20	Shaan Puri	We should do one. We have a big audience and we know all these interesting people—what if we hosted an event? At first it sounds like a networking event: "Yay, a networking event." But then it becomes, "No—what if people come and talk? Oh, a conference—yay." I learned this on my first business: a guy told me, "irritation leads to innovation." Back then it was a restaurant business and I was saying how much I hate food delivery. He said, "Well, that's the opportunity—make food delivery that doesn't suck." Suddenly you take something that's really bad and, just by making it not suck, the gap between where it normally is and where you are becomes really big. Similarly, we asked, what would be a conference we would want to go to? We started spitballing with a childlike energy: instead of icebreakers, what if it was based around sports? We love sports. What if we combine two things we really love—meeting interesting, inspiring business people and basketball? The idea became: we play basketball all day. What if we got an NBA trainer to come train us—like a fantasy camp—and we invite people who are really successful and interesting but who also love to hoop? First, we all play basketball. It's the ultimate equalizer and icebreaker; people get to know each other. Then at night you "talk shop." We all stay in a couple of houses and talk shop there. You've been to two of these we've thrown, so you kind of get the idea.
03:44	Sam Parr	"Yeah, it's great."
03:45	Shaan Puri	Here's just a snippet of the guest list. So, MrBeast — as you know, he helps co-host it. Shaq is coming this year. You're so American you may not know this name: Gerard Piqué, one of the world's most famous soccer players, who was married to Shakira for a time. He's coming. The richest man in New Zealand is coming. Four different NBA...
04:07	Sam Parr	Who's team? The richest man in New Zealand.
04:09	Shaan Puri	Nick Mowbray
04:10	Sam Parr	Oh, that's cool.
04:12	Shaan Puri	Scooter Braun is coming. We got... it's just crazy. Some of our favorites: Jesse Itzler, Hayes, Jesse Cole from the Savannah Bananas. Seventeen billionaires are coming to this event, which is pretty insane. I just wanted to tell you about it — give you a little bit of FOMO because you couldn't make it this year. I wanted to give you a little FOMO on who's in the room. </FormattedResponse>
04:31	Sam Parr	I think the only two people that gave me true FOMO there... Well, first of all — actually, wait, hold on, let me think. Jesse Itzler is awesome. I like him. I'm fortunate I've been able to hang out with him, so I have less FOMO, but he is amazing. He was probably the best person I hung out with there last year. Jesse Cole and Nick Mowbray — is that his name, Nick Mowbray? Yeah. Probably those two guys. Those two guys are who I'd want to meet most.
04:55	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I also just want to see Shaq in person. I think that's just going to be incredible.
04:59	Sam Parr	I don't understand. Shaq doesn't seem like a guy who goes to sleepovers.
05:05	Shaan Puri	Well, he's coming to ours, alright.
05:07	Sam Parr	Is he sleeping there, or is he just popping in?
05:09	Shaan Puri	Yeah, he's coming — he's an attendee. I bragged about how cool this event is, but there are a couple of downsides. The first is the event is not a roster of names; it's a vibe. It's how it actually feels to be there. I'm really worried this year that we might have screwed it up by inviting too many kind of big-name people who are used to being the center of attention. I think we got pretty lucky the first couple years: all the most interesting people were also great hangs — really down-to-earth and fun to be around. I don't think that's going to be true for your average billionaire or your average celebrity. Those people are just used to being the center of attention and being a little standoffish. I'm really worried about that. I hope we didn't screw it up. I might be coming back on here in a couple weeks and say, "Hey look — it was fun, but lesson learned: too much of anything is a problem." The other thing is, for everybody — Ben reached out and maybe there's 20 people who said no. Just the effort it takes to get people to come and to feel comfortable and excited to come to the middle of nowhere with people they don't even know... You've never heard of me, you've never heard of Ben, you don't know who any of us are. So I appreciate the people who took a leap of faith. But also, you only ever hear about the hits and never the misses. For every hit there's 19 misses on people that we wanted to come. I thought, just to counterbalance, that would be fair.
06:29	Sam Parr	I'm eager to see where Shaq sleeps. What does his bed look like?
06:33	Shaan Puri	Bunk beds, buddy. He's on top; I'm on...</FormattedResponse>
06:35	Sam Parr	Bottom is the bed. Alright, so this episode is all about excellence. A while back I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life, and the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30-day operating system. You can check it out right now. It breaks down the systems it took me 10 years to figure out and shows how I actually use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So, if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the show.
07:11	Shaan Puri	Alright, so I just want to tell you a couple of the philosophies that I think other people could steal to make cool projects or events like this for themselves. I kinda wrote them down because this is a point of pride for us. I was like, man—this thing started as a pretty wacky idea that we tweeted out. We really didn't know where it would go. And now—this is the fourth time we've done it. We’re doing it again, and you were there the first year. I mean, it was mostly just our friends sleeping in bunk beds—no programming, no idea of what we were supposed to do at the event.
07:43	Sam Parr	It was janky, but still very fun.
07:46	Shaan Puri	And it was still very fun. It was like there was some—there was a sense, a seed of something special. But it was pretty janky relative to how it goes now.
07:54	Sam Parr	It's funny—the things that were unimportant were janky. So, the accommodations... a lot of people think the accommodations need to be nice. No, they weren't. I shared a room with four guys on a bunk bed. It was perfectly adequate and fine.
08:07	Shaan Puri	Irritation leads to innovation. Take something that bothers you or that you think sucks, and instead of writing it off—“I don't do that, I don't like that”—get playful. Ask yourself, “What version of this wouldn't suck?” Use that as a brainstorming prompt. One out of ten times you might actually come up with something interesting. The “Yes Test.” As you get older and more successful, you move from opportunity-scarce to opportunity-abundant. When you're young, you don't have many cool opportunities, so you should be in the habit of saying yes to a lot of things: someone wants to get coffee—take a flyer on it; someone invites you to an event—say yes; go speak at something—say yes. But as you age, your time becomes more restricted (for family reasons or simply because more opportunities come to you). You have to practice saying no. That’s where the yes test comes in: ask yourself, “Would I do this thing for no money or even at a loss?” The best projects in my life have been ones I would have done for free or been willing to lose money on. For example, when I started this podcast I wrote in a Google Doc that the stated plan was: probably nobody will listen, and I’m probably going to lose $10,000 this year in production costs. But I’d have 50 interesting conversations with really interesting people. I was willing to lose money doing it, which was a signal that there were intangible benefits worth pursuing. Another example: this event. We don't charge anyone; we pay for it out of pocket. It’s going to cost us a couple hundred dollars to throw this event, and that's a cost we eat. The fact that we’re willing to lose that money forces a higher standard: how good must this be for us to say yes? It creates a forcing function—you have to make it a lot of fun, meet interesting people, create a core memory, and make it unique to our brand. Those additional benefits have to exist to justify the cost. When I look at the best things I've done, they've been things I'd say yes to even if I lost money. This year, for example, playing the piano was a money loser, but it’s one of the best decisions I made. Coaching the high school basketball team has been food for my soul—I make no money; I lose money doing it—but I love it. So, that's the yes test.
10:56	Sam Parr	It's so funny, because so many things in my life that I'm thankful for doing, I only did because they made money or because I wanted the end result. Like— I don't want to lose weight; this sucks. I don't want to eat this food. I don't want to exercise. I just want...
11:12	Shaan Puri	I call some of those "win-lose"—especially not things like losing weight or exercise, because those are fully in your control. But let's say it's like a business, right. Those are what I call win-lose, which is: if I get the result I wanted upfront, then this was worth it—it was a win. But if I didn't, I'm going to be kicking myself. I'm going to feel like I lost; I wasted my time. I think there are other "win-win" situations where you say, "Well, at the minimum I already win." With the podcast, it's like: at the minimum I'm going to have an excuse to go have 50 dope conversations with awesome people. I'm going to learn so much. I'm going to get to know them better. So it's already a win even if nobody ever listened and I lost money. But then, in the long shot—people start listening to the podcast and it starts to make some money, maybe from advertisers—well, then I win double. Great. So my two options were: I win small or I win big. I just think that's generally a better place to be when you actually are excited about the small win—not like a moral victory or "could be worse." Not that I'm saying you're not genuinely excited even about the basic win, but there you leave yourself room for the upside.
12:18	Sam Parr	So, can you remind me — the pod was started, I think, in July 2019, right? Yeah. And I'm almost positive it didn't make more than six figures for the first year and a half, if I remember correctly.
12:31	Shaan Puri	Yeah, probably not. I remember doing the first ad read, and the first ad read was: "This episode is brought to you by nobody." But think about it — this could be you. I needed to sell one ad. I had to pay for... I was renting a studio, so I was like, "Can I pay for the studio time — $100 an hour?"
12:46	Sam Parr	I don't remember. I think it was— it didn't make any money for about a year and a half. Then it made kind of a lot of money, and then a lot more. But yeah, which is pretty funny. Okay—what are the second two?
12:55	Shaan Puri	One is: "The bigger you go, the easier it gets." There's a fallacy that people have—that going for big things is hard or difficult, so going for smaller things will be easier. But actually, whenever you're doing something that is a new product, an event, or anything that needs differentiation, if you think smaller or play more reasonably, you are actually less differentiated. You're less interesting, and actually the harder it gets for people to... let's just take this event. Let's say this event was not about basketball; it was just a normal meetup or event. And let's say the guest list was a bunch of people you've never heard of, people who were easier for me to get in. Well, that would just make it harder for me to do everything I'm trying to do with this. It'd be harder to get the next guest, because why would they come? There's nothing special about this.
13:42	Sam Parr	This is true for business, too. By the way, the bigger your idea, the better people you can recruit.
13:47	Shaan Puri	Exactly. And then the better people you recruit, the easier it gets to do the thing. That's the third part. So having a bigger thing where it's like, "Yeah, we're gonna get the most interesting people"—people that have, like, you know, one-name recognition. I'm only able to get them because we're doing a unique thing. But because we're doing a thing and we get some of them, it makes it easier to get more of them, which makes it easier to do a more unique thing, because now you have all these really special people coming.
14:12	Sam Parr	And in your case—Shaq, or not Shaq—MrBeast was kind of the tentpole.
14:18	Shaan Puri	"The anchor... the."
14:19	Sam Parr	Initial anchor: "Yeah, yeah. How did you get in touch with Shaquille O'Neal?"
14:23	Shaan Puri	Cold email.
14:24	Sam Parr	Really.
14:26	Shaan Puri	Actually, sorry — Shaq was through a kind of a cold... it was like a cold request Ben saw. So the guy who started Ring [doorbell] is coming, and Ben — doing Ben miracle things that only Ben does — was like, "Who are the investors in Ring?" He looks at who the first investors in Ring were, saw that Shaq was an early investor in Ring and presumably made a bunch of money off the Ring investment. So he's like, "Hey, you think Shaq would wanna come to this thing?" The guy was like, "Hey, let me go, let me find..." and so it kind of made the intro and then went from there. But Jamie had never met him himself, so it's not like he could do a hard vouch for it, but it ended up working out. He cold-emailed a bunch of people — the founder of Airbnb came because he cold-emailed them — and he knew, "Hey, I know growing up you were a ball boy for an NBA team, so I'm guessing you love hoops just like I do. I was a ball boy too."
15:13	Sam Parr	Dude, just check out this camp, Ben. I mean—that's what this is. Good job. That's...
15:17	Shaan Puri	One of the principles is basically "the product is you pushed out." My trainer told me this one time when I was trying to figure out what to do — should I start this company or that? I was just mentioning it to my trainer in passing and he said, "What do you mean, you are the product?" I go, "What?" He goes, "You are the product. The product is just you pushed out. So just do you, but turn the volume knob up." He said, "Look at the podcast. Do you have to think before you go on the podcast — like, 'How should I act? What should I—'?" No. You're just being you. You and Sam just get on there and hang out like you and Sam would normally. So the product is you pushed out, and that's what resonated with people. That's the one that clicked. He showed me another project and said, "That's just you pushed out again." So with the camp: the camp is basically like basketball, which Ben and I obsess over, but it's basically a mix of, on my end, my version of a TED conference because we do these little mini talks every night. That's kind of it. Even my Twitter bio says, "I'm an idea dealer." That's the thing I get off on the most — the sharing of ideas and wisdom and picking up these nuggets from each other. The thing Ben loves to do is curate really interesting people and get them in a room together. Ben's not like a networker per se, but he loves to meet interesting people and he gets lit up when he meets somebody who's done something interesting — who's cool. So anyway, finding something that's basically you productized. I feel like the hustle for you was, in many ways, you productized big time in your writing voice, but also the sort of punk rock attitude — the hustle, the name "Hustle," the conference that you did — a lot of that was just your DNA.
17:00	Sam Parr	But you want to know where I screwed up? I built something I disliked. Have you ever done this with a company—built a company or a project and then grown to dislike the people and the culture? Not that they're bad, but... For example, when I started I was 24 or 25. By the time I was 28, 29, 30, I was like, "Well, I'm a little different now; I care about slightly different things." It's neither good nor bad. But have you really built a project that felt like your own prison?
17:26	Shaan Puri	Yeah, you can outgrow a project. I think, generally, an insecurity leads you to make a decision that's not in line with who you are. Therefore, you do that six times and you end up in an almost unrecognizable spot.
17:40	Sam Parr	And it's sort of like boiling water — you're in lukewarm water, and it just is slow.
17:45	Shaan Puri	"Don't notice."
17:45	Sam Parr	"You don't notice."
17:46	Shaan Puri	So it's like... it's too late, right? Where did that poor decision come from? Why did you start making those turns—down the wrong roads? Usually the root of it is some insecurity. For me, when I've done the thing you're describing, it's: I'm so afraid this thing will fail, and I so badly want it to win. I badly want to make money, so I start trying to conform, thinking, "maybe that will work, maybe this is the thing." And then suddenly I've built a live-streaming app for Twitch streamers. Now, I do not stream video games. I don't play video games. I don't even watch Twitch, and yet here I am. "Kids, you might be wondering, how did this happen?" That's where I ended up—out of that insecurity of I just wanna be successful soon.
18:30	Sam Parr	I don't think that's bad, by the way. Like, you were a mercenary, right? In a way I felt like I started as a missionary — I was like, "This is my life. This is what I'm all about." Then it started working and I was like, "Okay, well, I have to hire some people," and one person's good, and you sort of become a mercenary some of the time. I still am envious of those people. For example, one of the reasons people are obsessed with Dyson — who you're joking about — is that he, and Brian Chesky (another guy at Airbnb), appear as though they started as missionaries and have remained that way. They are all in for the cause and they've refused to bend or sacrifice. But the thing is, you can get mildly or very successful even by bending and sacrificing. You don't actually have to stick to your values all the time to be a commercial success. Oftentimes, bending your values and doing what you think is expected of you — not what you want to do — is actually significantly more profitable. There have been many times I've made that sacrifice. Maybe I got what I wanted financially, but I was pretty upset with what I gave in to. In turn, the reality is I probably would have been significantly more profitable had I stuck it out the whole time; it just would have been more painful. Does that make sense?
19:40	Shaan Puri	"Well, you're saying both things, right? You're saying, 'I built something that I didn't even love,' which is just sort of a painful feeling. So that's kind of a bad outcome. But it was a commercial success, so it's a good outcome. Yeah. And so—can you make a commercial success while being mercenary about it? Absolutely. Can you also make a commercial success while doing something in line with your mission, or something that lights you up, or something that feels organic to you?"
20:09	Sam Parr	If you have good taste—correct—if you have good taste.</FormattedResponse>
20:12	Shaan Puri	But to me, I'm like, if I can—again: one is a win-lose and the other is a win-win. If win-win is possible, then I'm gonna pursue that.
20:19	Sam Parr	But it's not always that. My—it's not always that I have so many. I went to Belmont University — it's a music school, or a school that has a big music department. I knew so many people who were like, "We're gonna be musicians; this is the stuff we're gonna play." It was mildly interesting, but it wasn't like a pop hit or anything. Now we're all the same age. I talk to them and they're kind of bums and they regret their decisions. They're like, "I wish I would've chased the money." Casey Neistat has this funny story. Did you know that? Casey Neistat got famous, I believe, when he started vlogging every single day — I think in 2015. He did not turn on ads on YouTube; he thought that was ruining the art and he refused to do it. Then he did a talk recently, about a year ago, where he said, "How foolish of me." That would have added up to, like, $15,000,000 or something insane like that. He was like, now my advice is the exact opposite: take the money when you can take the money. So I guess there's this constant tension between doing art and doing what's cool versus taking the money. I think what you're saying is true, and also it's maybe not true for everyone.
21:23	Shaan Puri	So in that example you're giving, I think that — so what are these called? These are called dialectics. It's like two opposite things at opposing ends of a spectrum which can both be argued to be true. You would think, how is that possible — that two things on opposite ends of the spectrum can both be true? For example, patience is a virtue, but at the same time a lot of entrepreneurs would not be successful if they weren't very impatient. One person says, "Six months," and another says, "How do we do this in six days?" You have these opposite tendencies, and then you find the way that they link together. My favorite formulation about patience and impatience comes from Naval, where he says: > "Impatience with action, patience with results." That's exactly it. If you're patient with your action, you just don't do anything. If you're impatient with your results, you give up too easily; you get frustrated and make short-sighted decisions. So that's the right combo. I think there's a version of that here about building things. To what extent do I build the thing that I think is interesting, that feels natural to me, that is mission-driven — the impact I want, the type of company or product I want to build — versus optimizing for commercial success? Realize that the more commercially successful it is, the more interesting people you'll be able to hire, which will make the product better and let you do this for longer. As Disney put it: > "We don't make movies to make money; we make money so we can make great movies." You want to recognize that the money side is important, and you have to understand where it's going to come from and how it's going to work. You can't be blind to that. At the same time, money can't be the north star — if it is, you're going to build something compromised. I think I made that mistake of compromising. I've now done both. Now, it might be argued that you do the compromise first and that gives you the freedom to take a bunch of shots on goal, or gives you the skills, confidence, or story. I don't know. But if I could rewind it, I would go back and advise myself: "Hey, you should just keep building the things that you find most interesting."
23:27	Sam Parr	"Were you not interested at all? I mean, it's so funny—you didn't play."
23:30	Shaan Puri	I was interested in them because of their market potential. I was like, "oh — napkin math: this times this times this equals this."
23:36	Sam Parr	That's not — that's not wrong. I mean, that's... that's fine.
23:41	Shaan Puri	I don't think it is ideal, right? There's not a single "right" and "wrong." There's, you know... good, better, best, right? There are different grades.</FormattedResponse>
23:46	Sam Parr	Like, for example, I think MrBeast is... I don't—actually, that's an interesting question. I don't know if he cares. Does he care about making movies, or does he care just that "this was the game set forth and now I want — I wanna win"?
23:57	Shaan Puri	Well, he is interesting, right, because it's kind of both. He clearly loved to make content and wanted to be a YouTuber—almost at an identity level more than anything. That's why, for six years, nobody was watching and he just kept making videos year after year: 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 years old—nobody watched until he was 19. Even then, it wasn't huge; it was still small at that stage, but he kept going. He had said upfront: > "I'm either gonna be a famous YouTuber—I'm gonna die, die making YouTube videos. I'm gonna try—I'll die trying." In that way, he was pretty mission-driven. I don't think he was... yeah, there were a lot easier ways to make money if he needed to. Over time he could have given up and gone toward other things. Also, the types of videos he made were ones he obviously found interesting. More than being an artist asking, "What is the most artistic video I can make?", I think he's basically saying, "I want to make the best YouTube videos," and best is defined as what people want to watch. "I like making things that entertain the masses, that people want to watch"—that's the version he likes, you know.
25:05	Sam Parr	I think the video he did the other day got 100 million views in a few hours. For some reason, MrBeast's videos never pop up on my feed, but this one had all celebrities in it. I didn't realize he was doing that — 30 celebrities fighting for a million dollars. It's Paris Hilton and Kevin Hart and shit like that. Did you see that? "Yeah, I watched that one. That's crazy. Did you have a third or a fourth?"
25:28	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I got two more quick ones. One is: everybody — it doesn't matter how rich you are — everybody's a little kid. Last year, for example, you had this room full of people who can buy anything they want. What can't they buy, right? So we rented out the stadium for the final game of our tournament at the camp. They walked in and there were jerseys printed with their names, and everyone was so excited, like a little kid. It's these little moments between the big things that actually create the feel of the event. For example, this year we're doing a little touch where we play basketball in the morning.
26:04	Sam Parr	"We gotta tell—wait, Shaq, cover your ears."
26:10	Shaan Puri	So we play basketball in the morning, and then we go back to the house for lunch. At the house, you'll already see on the TV screen photos and little videos from that morning's game.
26:20	Sam Parr	Were you inspired by Steve Bartlett? I heard he does this: you record a podcast with him, and when you're done he hands you a book.
26:27	Shaan Puri	Oh, yeah.
26:27	Sam Parr	"Yeah, it's a photo album of the podcast."
26:30	Shaan Puri	Yeah, which is a very, very great touch. We stole it from K Academy—Coach K does this, and they have that there, so we're like, "Oh, that's a great idea." Little things like that matter. After the final game this time, we asked: how do we make it? How do we give you that moment that you can't buy? What's the fun thing that would bring out the childlike energy in these people? So we were taking them to the locker room. You know, in sports, when you win a championship you have champagne and ski goggles in the locker room to celebrate, so we have that set up. The winners are going to get to go do that—just, I don't know, have fun. I think caring about these little details is important. Last time, after the event, we made this custom magazine.
27:08	Sam Parr	It was cool.
27:09	Shaan Puri	With photos of everybody—almost like Slam Magazine back in the day—and we sent it to each person. It took me a week to work on that. They were just like, "What do you do? Do you have a job? What do you do?" You know me in life: I'm not a man of the details. That's not where I'm from. But with this event, it's like pick and choose the few areas where you're not going to 80/20 in life. Pick and choose the areas where good enough is not good enough. Okay, this is one project where we're like, we're going to try to go all out to a ridiculous degree. They're going to feel that. They're going to know that we went all out for our own amusement and just to see what we could do if we really create something that's special. I'm excited to do that.
27:50	Sam Parr	Have you been working on this all year?
27:52	Shaan Puri	No. This is like the last six weeks, let's say.
27:55	Sam Parr	Wow — that's a lot you get done just in six weeks. Was this what you were focusing on the whole time — the entire six weeks?
28:01	Shaan Puri	No, I'm not focused on it really at all. I just meet with Ben at the beginning and say, "Here's some ideas — here's what I thought was good last time, bad last time — here's some ideas." Ben goes and does things. We brought on some event organizers to help us this time, and then every couple weeks we just sort of check in. He's not doing it full-time either, but it's a big chunk of his time.
28:19	Sam Parr	Well, the hard part is just inviting the right people and getting them to say "yeah."
28:22	Shaan Puri	I was doing—so I told you I was trying to write that book—so I basically became that Family Guy meme. I don't know if you've ever seen that episode where Brian has been writing a novel and Stewie is just trolling him. > "How's that novel going? Got some pages? Got some chapters? Beginning, middle, end — a little juxtaposition." Brian's like a classic writer who's just stuck in the mud, not making progress on the book. It's too big; it's intimidating him. I've had this idea to write the book. I'd done all this research, but I was slow. I would draft chapters, but I wasn't really writing the book — I was just drafting chapters. </FormattedResponse>
28:53	Sam Parr	Yeah, you were pretending.
28:55	Shaan Puri	I was pretending. Two weeks ago I was like, "Alright — who am I? Am I the kind of guy who's talking about this book? Am I going to write the book?" So two weeks ago I decided I would have a prototype of the book — not the full book, but a cover, opening, intro, first chapter, second chapter: a printed, physical book to show people in two weeks. In the last two weeks I wrote it and had it printed. It's getting printed right now. The last day of printing will be the date.
29:23	Sam Parr	Is it any good?
29:24	Shaan Puri	I threw myself into it, and it's good because it was such a good forcing function. There's a lesson I was telling Ben: Tony Robbins has this phrase. He goes: > "Peers aren't just the people near you—the guy you see to your right. A peer is somebody who has leverage over you." I was like, what do you mean, leverage over you? He's like, "A peer is somebody whose opinion of you you care about," so they have some leverage over you. That can be a good thing or a bad thing. The good version is: if you get the right people around you, and you care about their opinion, and they value the things that you value, you will sort of rise in accordance with wanting to be seen well by your peers. It's very hard to just become a monk and renounce it—be like, "I don't care what anyone thinks of me." Everybody likes to say that, but then you're all on social media posting and trying to get likes. Come on—we all care what people think about us. The trick is to pick who's going to care about you and what those people care about. So, you know, if you're a mom and you're around other great moms, then you're not going to want to look like a bad mom, and the result is good: it helps you be a better mom.
30:24	Sam Parr	January is the biggest month. January 2026 might be the biggest month of your professional career in the last five years.
30:32	Shaan Puri	Definitely the most productive. I mean, nobody tries to write a book. Well, I gave myself two weeks, and then I went to the printer and they were like, "Hey, yeah, we need seven days." I was like, "Oh — I got seven days to write this? Fantastic."
30:43	Sam Parr	So I...
30:44	Shaan Puri	Just pulled all-nighters for seven days, and pulled it off.</FormattedResponse>
30:46	Sam Parr	You wanna tell—can I tell you a cool story about excellence that I think is actually related to this? Yes. It's probably the only time that the sports I'm interested in are going to overlap—well, with sports in general that you might be interested in, I mean.
31:01	Shaan Puri	"Does this sport not involve a ball?"
31:02	Sam Parr	Or a...
31:03	Shaan Puri	Goal of any kind.
31:04	Sam Parr	No — the only sports I've been to are people beating each other up or people running away from each other. It's either chasing someone or what you do when you catch them. </FormattedResponse>
31:18	Shaan Puri	So which one is this? Is this a running or a fighting?
31:21	Sam Parr	It's a running one—okay, more boring but way more inspirational. I read this book a few years ago, and I was watching a documentary on the same topic last night. I really wanted to bring it up with you because I think you may have heard of it, but I don't know if you knew all the details. In the 1960s and 1970s there was this coach. His name was Bill. He was a track and field coach up in Oregon, and he was the man. He had served in the military in World War II, and he was this tough guy with a kind of scientific approach. He was all about efficiency. He kept asking, "What's the best way I can get these kids that I'm coaching at the University of Oregon to run faster—other than making them train more?" He got really nerdy about shoes. He started taking apart different shoes and thinking, How can I make these shoes better? Originally, the lore or the story is that he figured, "If you're six feet tall, you're going to take this many steps per mile. If I can reduce the weight of the shoes by only one ounce, that's going to save you 50 pounds per mile." That seemed like a big deal. So he's hanging out with his kids one day, and his kids...
32:30	Sam Parr	I think they're in their twenties. They came over for brunch, and his wife — Bill's wife — is making waffles for him. He was like, "I got it. I know exactly what to do." So he steals the waffle iron from his wife, pours liquid rubber into it, folds it down, folds it up, and says, "This is it." This became the sole for his new shoe, so he used that. They called it the "waffle" for the shoe, and it kicked ass. Now I think you know who I'm talking about, right?
32:58	Shaan Puri	Yeah, Nike. It must be Nike.
33:00	Sam Parr	Yeah. Bill Bowerman was the co-founder of Nike. The more famous co-founder was Phil Knight. Phil Knight was actually one of his athletes at the University of Oregon, and Phil Knight had a class on entrepreneurship.
33:12	Shaan Puri	"So are they, like, age-gapped?"
33:14	Sam Parr	Yeah.</FormattedResponse>
33:14	Shaan Puri	Twenty years, or something.</FormattedResponse>
33:15	Sam Parr	More — I believe, at least based off photos — he was probably in his late fifties, and Phil Knight was in his mid-twenties. He had created the idea of Nike as a college student, but at first, when he started the company in the 1960s, he was basically just importing Japanese shoes. He knew Bill liked to tinker with shoes, but it wasn't until about five or six years in that Nike actually said, "Bill, let's actually just make the shoes that you are already making." They were partners. </FormattedResponse>
33:42	Shaan Puri	Oh, okay. So they were in parallel. Phil Knight is trying to start a shoe company, yeah. And this is like... what is it called — "Blue Ribbon"? Or what's it called?
33:49	Sam Parr	They were basically importing Japanese shoes, and he called it "Blue Ribbon"—so importing other people's shoes.</FormattedResponse>
33:54	Shaan Puri	And then Bill, separately—his coach is experimenting, tinkering with shoes—and then they come together. What's the come-together story? Do you know? Is there a...
34:02	Sam Parr	Story. Well, Phil Knight was his athlete, and so Phil Knight wore some of Bill's prototypes.
34:08	Shaan Puri	"Like prototypes."
34:09	Sam Parr	But they were really rough. People used to complain that they were kind of rough, but they did work. I think they would only work for two races.
34:15	Shaan Puri	"It's like—it's the shape of a circle from the waffle."
34:18	Sam Parr	Yeah... it was weird, but it was really effective. Then they teamed up, and he was like, "Let's import these shoes." Then, Bill—you give them to the Nike guys or to the Oregon team—and we're going to go from track meet to track meet. It wasn't really a company, but it was almost like if I started a honey company and started going to farmers' markets. Somehow that turns into "burpees" [unclear word]. Right now, it doesn't cap it overnight. Okay, so that's not the story I actually want to bring up. What I really want to talk about was Steve Prefontaine. Do you know who Steve Prefontaine was?
34:50	Shaan Puri	So he was a runner, also. Was he, like, the first athlete? He broke some record. He's wearing Nikes. Is that his story? </FormattedResponse>
34:57	Sam Parr	Sort of, kind of — you're in the ballpark.
34:59	Shaan Puri	"Lost a leg, or that's the Canadian guy." </FormattedResponse>
35:00	Sam Parr	That's Terry Fox, who I made fun of once in Canada. They booed me on stage. Well... don't let...
35:08	Shaan Puri	"Hey — you swung and missed with some of these jokes, alright."
35:10	Sam Parr	Yeah, basically, Terry Fox was this guy who ran across Canada with one leg that he lost to cancer. I saw a sign—or like a statue—of him all over Canada. Sean and I did a live podcast, and I was like, "Who the hell is this Terry Fox guy? He's everywhere." It did not land.
35:25	Shaan Puri	"The definition of punching down?"
35:27	Sam Parr	Yeah, so—Google Steve Prefontaine. We were talking about kind of punk rock and not compromising.
35:34	Shaan Puri	"Guy's a hunk."
35:35	Sam Parr	He's a hunk, right? Is this guy the hunkiest of hunks? So, Steve Prefontaine.
35:39	Shaan Puri	By the way, Hunk is pretty underutilized. I think we can — I think we should own that.
35:43	Sam Parr	"Word here is that what he wants to be known for is bringing back the word."
35:47	Shaan Puri	Amongst a few things, I put that in my top five.
35:50	Sam Parr	Steve Prefontaine was born in a small fishing town called Coos Bay. He was badass—he was badass in high school, where he just crushed everyone. At the time (this was in the late 1960s), Bill Bowerman basically pioneered the word "jogging" in America. Running was not even a thing. Bowerman was like, "Everyone, you should run; it's good for your health." That is when housewives started running, because previously people would see someone running in the streets.
36:15	Shaan Puri	This blows my mind, by the way. This is not that long ago. What did you say — it was like in the sixties or something, wasn't it?
36:19	Sam Parr	"The jogging revolution was in the sixties, and that's when..."
36:23	Shaan Puri	That's crazy. It's like... you know, my dad is like a teenager or something. Jogging seems like it's just been around since prehistoric times.
36:32	Sam Parr	No, it wasn't a thing.
36:33	Shaan Puri	To me, that's an incredible marketing story—how they got America to jog.
36:38	Sam Parr	Do you know what inspired Bill? He was in World War II, and at one point he and his unit were surrounded by Germans. Bill was an outdoorsman—into physical fitness and hiking. He noticed that the more fit soldiers around him were able to survive longer. He eventually overcame the Germans, somehow conquered them, and made them surrender. It was at that time he said he realized how important fitness was. “Jogging is a really good example of how to get fit,” and so he popularized jogging. He wrote a book called Jogging, and it went viral. It was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 1960s—that’s how jogging...
37:12	Shaan Puri	I saw a newspaper article about this strange phenomenon taking place in the suburbs of America.
37:19	Sam Parr	Yeah.
37:19	Shaan Puri	People are going outside and running, like something's come over them. It's like an alien invasion has happened, and people are exhibiting this strange behavior now. </FormattedResponse>
37:29	Sam Parr	That was Bill. Bill popularized this, and that's one of the many reasons why, when Steve Prefontaine was in high school, running was not very popular. Now, occasionally you get a freak like Usain Bolt and people say, "That's really cool," but back then running was more of a niche. Bill Bowerman was sort of that guy in the sixties and seventies—people thought, "This guy invented jogging; how cool." It wasn't a "cool" thing so much as a neat thing. Then this kid, Steve Prefontaine—who was the exact opposite of Bill—crushed all the competition in high school and was recruited to the University of Oregon to run for Bill. Bill was very methodical and scientific. He hated front-running. His idea was: the goal is to win the race. The goal is not to look cool or to lead the whole time; it's to do the least amount of work to get the desired result. That was not what Steve Prefontaine was about. Prefontaine had a famous line: > "If I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it with style." His whole shtick was to run the race from beginning to end as hard as he could. He was short, and he used to joke that he wasn't gifted—though he clearly was. He would say: > "To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift." He also said: > "A lot of people run a race to see who's fastest. I want a race to see who has the most guts." What he was famous for was running all-out, as hard as he could.
38:52	Shaan Puri	Hunk.
38:52	Sam Parr	"Hunk, right? Like... in."
38:55	Shaan Puri	"The hunk-book-like" attitude.</FormattedResponse>
38:57	Sam Parr	Dude, it gets even hunkier in the book that I've read about him. They used to talk about his gaze. I don't know if you could Google, like, Steve Prefontaine... I'm...
39:03	Shaan Puri	Giving a little too much now.
39:03	Sam Parr	Google — well, hold on — Google "Steve Prefontaine posters." This is important. It's actually about branding. Steve Prefontaine posters are famous for his intense gaze—he would stare really hard at things. That poster is one of the most iconic posters. If you were a nerdy high school kid who cared about running, you had that poster. This guy was the boss. It turns out that in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, he did his front-running thing. With three or four laps to go—which is still a lot—he takes hold and leads the Olympic 5,000-meter race. It doesn't work out: at the very end another runner outkicks him and he finishes fourth. Tragically, he dies about a year and a half later in a car crash; he was drinking and driving. But he was Nike's first sponsored athlete. What Phil Knight says is, even though Jordan kind of made Nike most famous—that's how people know Nike now—they say that Steve Prefontaine was the soul of Nike: this idea of fierce independence and competitiveness. Phil was like, "I didn't really have that. That was Steve. Everything Steve was about, I took it from him and I made it into a brand called Nike."
40:07	Shaan Puri	That's sick. It's like—if the man was a brand, and they basically built Nike in that image, right? Like, that attitude.
40:14	Sam Parr	It's badass. Yeah, so before Nike was Nike, it was called Blue Ribbon Sports. Then they changed it to Nike, and they were like, "Steve is the brand that we're trying to be like." The reason I think this interests me is I love these punk-rock, maverick, renegade guys. But I'm also interested in stealing from the past—finding good ideas. So yeah, I was thinking about Bill Bowerman, and he has this famous book called Men of Oregon, and Steve Prefontaine... I was like, what can I steal about his branding? He has a bunch of really cool branding. For example, when he was at his peak, he was kicking everyone's ass. Someone made a shirt that said, "Go Steve, go"—or, sorry, it said "Go Prix"—and he made a different shirt that said "Stop Prix."
40:55	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I'm looking at that right now.
40:56	Sam Parr	He put it on a stop sign, and these T-shirts got really popular: "stop pre".
41:00	Shaan Puri	Wait—why did he do the opposite? The first one was supporting him, but he was just like, "No." </FormattedResponse>
41:05	Sam Parr	"It was a joke, but it was just kind of like, 'Look — I'm so good that people have to stop me.' It's pretty cool. That T-shirt is really cool; I love that T-shirt. Then, if you look..."
41:14	Shaan Puri	At these quotes, look at this quote: > "No matter how hard you train, somebody will train harder. No matter how hard you run, somebody will run harder. No matter how hard you want it, somebody will want it more." I am somebody.
41:27	Sam Parr	"How good is that? He's got so many of these quotes."
41:30	Shaan Puri	When you get this combo—like athlete-poet—and you get Ali, or you get MacGregor, or you get... Steve Prefontaine, it's the best.
41:39	Sam Parr	And I think that you can. A lot of times, people don't realize this, but there exist certain personality types and attributes that supersede a sport, a genre, or a niche.
41:51	Shaan Puri	Totally. I love this guy — I don't even care about running.
41:53	Sam Parr	You don't care about running.
41:54	Shaan Puri	But I would buy this guy's shirt.
41:56	Sam Parr	Yeah — or like Lance Armstrong was another one. Like, Lance Armstrong: you're telling me this guy's going to be the most famous athlete on Earth for a couple of years, for a handful of years, via cycling? Are you kidding me?
42:07	Shaan Puri	Right.
42:07	Sam Parr	And even, frankly, I don't remember exactly, but when I was a kid, golf was a loser sport until Tiger Woods. It wasn't that big of a deal. Same with Serena Williams and Venus Williams — it was kind of interesting, but then that movie "Marty Supreme" came out, and it's about table tennis. I remember watching that table tennis sport and thinking, "Oh my God, this guy's punk rock. I love table tennis now."
42:29	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's so good. I love when people, like you said, transcend the sport.
42:35	Sam Parr	I've told this story before.
42:36	Shaan Puri	But I've always— I always remember it. At our company we used to take breaks and just play FIFA, or any kind of video game really. A lot of it was FIFA. I told you that Steve Bartlett used to work for us, and he would always play my CTO, [name unclear], in FIFA all night. We would play for an hour as a break; they'd play for an hour, then go back to work. Then, starting at nine or ten, they would start playing FIFA again and play till two or three in the morning every night. Steve, I think, was getting the better of [name unclear]. He used to talk so much trash. The biggest trash-talk line was: "Even when I leave, even when I go back to the UK, you're gonna remember me because I'm not a man—I'm a concept. I'm a concept. I'm just a concept." He just kept saying, "I'm just a concept." I remember laughing because I had no idea what he was even talking about. It had nothing to do with FIFA, but I've always remembered that. Actually, that is the highest thing: when you're a concept, you're not even in your physical form anymore. To me, I see Prefontaine and I'm like, Prefontaine is a concept.
43:37	Sam Parr	And it's also... it's kind of messed up, but it's kind of better for the story that he—I think he was 25 or 26 when he died. There are a bunch of these guys who die very young, and because they died so young it makes them significantly more mysterious. The mysteriousness makes it way more compelling. So Steve Prefontaine... I don't know if we have a "Billy of the week"—I guess that would be Bill Bowerman—but Steve would be in that category.
44:03	Shaan Puri	"Legend — legend of the week. So, why does Phil Knight get all the props? Is it because Bill Bowerman isn't around anymore, or did he take it over? Or what—what's the deal?"
44:12	Sam Parr	Bill was never particularly active. He was sort of like Steve Wozniak.
44:18	Shaan Puri	"How much did he own of Nike? Did he get to keep a chunk of it?"
44:22	Sam Parr	Or—yeah, yeah. They're multi—multi-billionaires, but he was much older. So look at when he died. Did he die in the eighties? I think so.
44:32	Shaan Puri	"'99"
44:32	Sam Parr	"Oh — he made it that long? Okay. I didn't even know he died in '99. No, but he was out of the picture starting in the 1980s, I believe."
44:39	Shaan Puri	At his passing, his stake was worth $390,000,000. He sold most of his shares during the 1980s but stayed involved.
44:46	Sam Parr	He was like the genius, and Phil was the commercialization guy.
44:51	Shaan Puri	What's the genius of Phil Knight, and what's more of his story? I haven't read Shoe Dog, by the way—which I know is supposed to be mandatory. I started it, and I was like...
45:00	Sam Parr	So, I've only read Shoe Dog, and I've read Bill Bowerman's book. I've never read too much about Phil Knight other than that one, Shoe Dog. No—I think Phil Knight was a dog. I think he just kept at it. He was relentless. The book Shoe Dog only covers the first ten years of Nike. The first ten years were from 1968 to 1978. The Jordan stuff didn't happen until the nineties. I believe Jordan was choosing between Converse and Reebok, and those were the "Nikes" of the era. My guess from reading about him is that Phil Knight was pretty good at operating. He was very scrappy. He was good at hiring people and letting them do their thing.
45:41	Shaan Puri	Have you seen Air, the movie about the Jordan signing?</FormattedResponse>
45:44	Sam Parr	Yeah, and in that movie they made Phil Knight kinda look stupid, which I think was very unfair.
45:48	Shaan Puri	I don't know if they've sensationalized it. I don't know how accurate that movie is to reality. But yeah — they made it seem like he wasn't particularly involved or particularly helpful, from what I remember in the Jordan signing.
46:01	Sam Parr	I also like to think a lot of people don't realize this because of Air Force Ones and stuff like that: Nike was explicitly a running company.
46:09	Shaan Puri	Right.
46:09	Sam Parr	It started in a not-popular, not-cool niche. I mean, I guess basketball wasn't particularly popular in the 1970s either, but it was a running company. So I guess it took Phil Knight to say, "Let's go after basketball." But I don't particularly think he was the most creative guy ever.
46:25	Shaan Puri	Who have you seen that follows the "Nike playbook"? What made Nike such a powerful brand? And who's applied that in another space — what comes to mind? </FormattedResponse>
46:34	Sam Parr	"What would you say the Nike playbook is? Is it sponsoring baller athletes?"
46:38	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I think they did. Obviously it takes a thousand things, and you tend to overestimate the credit to a small number of things. But okay — what seemed to be the big levers? So fundamentally they had a simple brand that could be international. A short, memorable name — that's the foundation of the brand puzzle: your actual brand identity. Okay, then what comes next? They basically went down the athlete route. They said, "Let's get the greatest athletes." The athlete is aspirational, and if the best athletes wear Nikes, that will sort of trickle down. Suddenly you have the dad-bods walking around the neighborhood wearing Nikes — that's where you make your money. You don't make your money off the top prep athletes buying Nikes; you make your money off everybody buying Nikes. So how do you get them to do that? What they did brilliantly was that they don't talk about the shoes. It's counterintuitive. The ads are never about the product. They don't tell you how many whatever squishes are in the Air unit, how many ounces are on the toe, or how many millimeters wide the heel is — they don't do any of that.
47:47	Sam Parr	And
47:48	Shaan Puri	So they focus on the feeling, the emotion, the storytelling, and the simple fact that Nike celebrates greatness. The great athletes use Nike, and if you consider yourself—if you're trying to be great—Nike will become a default for you. Who's applied that in other areas? It's kind of interesting, right? Like Apple—I think they famously tried to do this with the "Think Different" campaign. It worked. And there’s that great Steve Jobs speech where he's talking at some university—or maybe it's an Apple brand meeting or something—and it basically unveils the campaign. I think Apple was sort of on a bit of a downswing. Steve comes back, he simplifies the product line, and then he also launches this brand campaign: the "Think Different" campaign, with Einstein and Gandhi and all these rebellious, mischievous world-changers—people who changed the world. The implication was, even though they didn't have computers, if they did, they would use Apple. It was like, "Oh, okay. Yeah, I get it." He sort of—
48:50	Sam Parr	"Pretty funny, right? That's like the greatest influencer campaign ever. I'm just gonna find people who are dead who can't say no."
48:57	Shaan Puri	"Make them a deal they literally can't refuse."
48:59	Sam Parr	Yeah, and it's not even a deal — I'm just gonna say.
49:03	Shaan Puri	And so, I think Apple obviously did a good job, but those are sort of cliché. I'm seeing this a little bit in the health space. I invest in this company, Superpower, and I think Superpower is going to try to do this. I think other companies, probably in the protein space, have tried to do this, too. How do you create a Gymshark athlete, right? You basically sponsor all these Instagram-famous people because maybe that's where the attention is now. They don't have to tell you why those sweatpants are the best or whatever — you just know they are. It's not like, "Hey, buy these pants." It's "I am a Gymshark athlete. I am a whatever," right.
49:42	Sam Parr	"It's like, 'Have you seen Nick Bear? Do you remember Nick Bear?'"
49:46	Shaan Puri	Yeah, of course.
49:47	Sam Parr	I don't remember if you were on the times we talked to.</FormattedResponse>
49:49	Shaan Puri	Him? I was, yeah.
49:50	Sam Parr	Yeah, that was years ago — I think during the pandemic. There's a joke in his fitness world about this thing called the hybrid athlete, which is basically a big, ripped, yoked, meathead-looking guy who is also really good at running. He's sort of, in a lot of people's minds, kind of invented that. There's a joke on Instagram: "Don't forget your hybrid athlete kit," and it's like they're all wearing the same hat, the same shorts, and whatever. He appears to have done quite well with this hybrid-athlete thing. Nick owns a company called BPN that sells protein, and very rarely is he promoting the protein or electrolytes — he's always promoting the lifestyle of lifting weights and running far.
50:31	Shaan Puri	Yeah. Being a hybrid athlete — and maybe even more, the grind culture of workouts — where they're like, "I didn't want to wake up today, but I do it." That sort of thing: "I got it in today under these circumstances — raining doesn't matter, cold doesn't matter, I wasn't feeling good doesn't matter." That attitude. So you can kind of elevate it — not just "hey, we're athletes," but "what kind of athletes?" We're more in that David Goggins sort of "no excuses" athlete category. You could take something like that — like what Prefontaine did — and apply it in other spaces. I'm surprised this doesn't happen more.
51:07	Sam Parr	"I think it's hard to pull off, for example..."
51:09	Shaan Puri	Of course.
51:10	Sam Parr	Like the people who—but you — it's not just hard in a practical sense; I mean it's hard emotionally. For example, you told the story where you said, "With my company, with your e-commerce company, my business partner—or my friend Sully—told me, 'Don't do anything except spend this much money on Facebook ads.' He didn't tell you to, like, do cool stuff, like sponsor, you know, cool people. He said, 'Just do this because the ROI is instantaneous. And within 12 hours you'll know what's working and what's not, and you're going to make small incremental changes.'" You're willing to do that because you have bills to pay and it will pay the bills. But then turning that off and doing stuff that doesn't make sense on paper, but feels right—potentially, but also feels like a huge bet—that's a scary thing to do.
51:52	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. It's true. I think it's hard and scary, but... you know, it's the big prize. Brand is always the big prize, right? Because brand is you living in the person's head rent-free rather than you paying for every impression you get on Facebook, a billboard, a display ad, or anywhere else. I think Seth Godin has this great example where he says: "If I told you that Hilton Hotels was making a shoe, could you even imagine what that would look like? But if I told you Nike made a hotel, you could probably imagine what that might look like." That's brand. I thought that was always a great differentiator — they own a piece of real estate, a meaning in your head, whether it's quality, design, greatness, excellence, health, wellness, recovery, whatever it is. Different brands can be about different things. A simple test of a brand's strength is: if they went into an adjacent space, could you imagine what they would do? And would you be excited about it?
52:51	Sam Parr	That's actually really hard to think about and to pull off. Alright, so if you think about how to pull that off — well, you have tons of employees. For example, my company, let's say, has 25 employees. How do I get everyone to be consistent with the marketing? It's actually really hard versus just following what's profitable. So, for example, at your company and my company, if we're buying ads, you meet once a week or every day and you're like, "Let's change this image to this other image because the click-through rate will be higher," because we know this other company is running a very similar image. You are iterating — you're there, iterating yourself toward wherever it is you're trying to go. But at no point do you say, "Wouldn't it be cool if we did this other thing that is just cool?"
53:34	Shaan Puri	Well, that's kind of what I'm saying. Remember the thing at the beginning about the opposites, right? On one hand, you have this extremely data-driven, measurable, scientific, small-iterations—let the data decide—approach to building, to marketing, to acquiring customers. On the other hand, you have the exact opposite: it's emotional, not data-driven. There's no scorecard immediately; there are no immediate payoffs—only long-term payoffs. And yet, there are obviously examples of people who have been able to do one or the other, or both. The best companies, obviously, have been able to do both.
54:05	Sam Parr	But you know what's cool is—you were just... so you're using Nike, and we were using some other upscale brands. You know what's funny is, speaking of Shaq... Shaq does general insurance. Is that what it's called? 1-800—you know what I'm talking about. I don't know. So Shaq is a spokesperson for an insurance company called "The General." The spokesperson is "The General" — it's a little "general." You know the jingle? It's like...
54:29	Shaan Puri	It's called "The General."
54:30	Sam Parr	Is it the general? That's what I thought. Yeah, okay. So if I—if I'm almost...
54:34	Shaan Puri	"He's standing next to this, like, mustached general."
54:37	Sam Parr	Okay. And so that little general—that company, I think it's like a low‑cost provider.
54:41	Shaan Puri	Mm-hmm.
54:42	Sam Parr	And we've only been using fancy stuff, but actually Shaq is a great brand. He's famous—I think he is a Walmart spokesperson.
54:52	Shaan Puri	Icy Hot, and yeah.
54:53	Sam Parr	Like people who don't have a lot of money who want to acquire certain things — Shaq is like that guy, and that's pretty cool that he's able to pull that off. So I guess it's not just examples of Nike or Ferrari or whatever. That's who I was thinking of, but Shaq does a...
55:05	Shaan Puri	Good — here's another one: Airbnb. I think they did a great job of...
55:08	Sam Parr	This
55:08	Shaan Puri	So Airbnb spends — or spent, at least in the past (I don't know what they're doing now) — a lot of money on Google ads and things you would need to do if you're in the travel space. If somebody wants to go on a trip, you need to be showing up as a place to stay. You're competing with Booking and Expedia and all those other sites. Booking and Expedia and those other—Kayak—I feel nothing. I recognize the names, so it's not like they've done nothing; they've built a brand. I could tell you those names off the top of my head. Could I tell you what's different between Expedia and Booking and Kayak? No chance. Could I tell you anything about them, anything about their story, what they represent? If I told somebody else that I use Kayak, does that somehow accrue status or value to me? No, right? Airbnb could have been Couchsurfing. They could have been positioned as the cheap way to get a place to stay — sleep on someone's couch, their bed, their air mattress. Airbnb literally started as an air-mattress, bed-and-breakfast type of thing. Over the years they actually built the brand around traveling like a local, and they made hotels seem nicer, providing more service and usually being in better locations. If you just look at a hotel: someone comes and cleans your room and tucks the sheets in so tight that you're going to have to kick them out, and they do that for free every day. It's often in a better location, it's safer, it's a more known quantity, it's standardized. There's a commitment to a certain quality that you're going to get. Somehow Airbnb made hotels seem like the generic choice — the sort of, "well, you could just choose to go stay in a box" — while Airbnb leaned into the idea of "authentically travel, live like a local." They leaned into it the same way food does: you can eat at a chain or fast-food restaurant, or you can eat at a local joint. Airbnb did a great job of leaning into not the low-cost, sleep-on-a-couch thing, but the idea of traveling and living like a local when you travel — actually experiencing the city versus just being in the city. I thought that was a kind of genius emotional move, because travel is escape. Either it's to a place where everything is handed to you, or it's to a place of authenticity. With Airbnb, it's like: clean your own stuff, pay an extra fee, you don't know what you're going to get. There are all these downsides, but they make those seem like the upside. I talked to a guy who ran events, and he said, "Dude, the best thing Burning Man ever did was something called 'radical self-reliance.'" He went on to say, "You know how smart that is from an event."
57:47	Shaan Puri	"Of course it means we're gonna do nothing for you. Oh — you got lost? Radical, radical self-reliance, baby. It's not our fault, right? We don't have lighting over here — radical self-reliance. Oh, we don't have water fountains; you gotta figure out how to get it from the community. Come on. This is what it's all about. This is the experience you paid for."
58:03	Sam Parr	Is that what?
58:04	Shaan Puri	That's amazing.
58:05	Sam Parr	Dude, I'm gonna steal. That's that for.</FormattedResponse>
58:06	Shaan Puri	Such a.</FormattedResponse>
58:06	Sam Parr	Good. I'm stealing that for Hampton. </FormattedResponse>
58:10	Shaan Puri	Oh — at the office, bro. Radical stuff. Reliance.</FormattedResponse>
58:13	Sam Parr	Dude, we're doing this thing. We're moving into this new office on February 20 or something. I'm implementing a new rule: every Tuesday, between 3:00 and 3:20 AM, we're cleaning. Well... we're</FormattedResponse>
58:26	Shaan Puri	I saw you posted this. You—who was it, the Japanese?
58:29	Sam Parr	"Rakuten" — yeah, Rakuten did it, and I wanted to do it. I did it in my last company. People freaked out, and it just did not stick. But now we're moving into a new office because I hate clutter. It makes me anxious when there's stuff all over, particularly in an open-office plan. I'm going to hold myself accountable to stick to this, hardcore. </FormattedResponse>
58:49	Shaan Puri	Dude, nobody is giving more thought to their office and their culture than you right now. I feel like you are really planting some seeds, and I'm very curious. Either in two years from now you're going to be like, "I over-indexed on that — you know, some of it was helpful, but a lot of it was wasted energy; I should have been focused on this," or you're going to be like, "It was the best thing for me. I wasn't sure, but I felt it in my gut — I trusted it."
59:13	Sam Parr	Because I refused to become.
59:14	Shaan Puri	Made no sense, and in two years you're gonna be like, "That was the best thing we ever did." It's gonna be one of those two.
59:18	Sam Parr	I just don't want to make the same mistakes I've made before—where I created my own prison. You know what I mean? I don't want to do that. And so, culture is just an example... or just a [sentence trails off].
59:27	Shaan Puri	Yeah, but you're not being specific. What was the problem? What was bad? Like, what are you going to change this time?
59:32	Sam Parr	For example, I had a team — someone who worked for me — and they wanted to lay off someone who worked for them. They only wanted to give a two-week severance to a person who had worked with us for a long time. They were like, "Well, that's normal. That's fine. That's expected." I was like, "But this person has worked here for two years. They're a good guy — they're just not getting results — and this just doesn't feel right to me." I went along with it. I did the two weeks, and I remember that feeling — I hated it. So we established a value called "Build with Pride." The idea is: if I'm going to lay someone off, I do it for two reasons. One, so I don't feel guilty. Two, if you create a halo effect by treating people well, I'm going to shower them with significantly more severance than the industry standard. That's one example.
01:00:22	Shaan Puri	Okay, alright — I like it. Yeah, I'm very curious to see how it goes. I think it will definitely be good. It's just a question, maybe of two things: First, which bets have the biggest payoff? I think you're going to come out with a bunch of learnings on that. Maybe it'll be the small things. Maybe it'll be the ten minutes of cleaning a day. Maybe it'll be this off-site you do every year. I mean, whatever. I don't know which bets are going to have the biggest return, but they're not all going to be even. I think you're going to get a good learning from that. And then the other thing is proportion. Like, Seinfeld has this great quote where he says, "They're like, 'Why didn't you do that one last season?'" — because he holds the record for most money turned down. Yeah.
01:01:01	Sam Parr	"The TV series—eighth season or seventh season?"
01:01:04	Shaan Puri	I think—whatever the last season was going to be—it was $110,000,000. He turned it down, and they were like, "Jerry, one more season—why didn't you do it?" He's like, "Because in art it's all about proportion." He says, "Too much of anything—too much cake, too many jokes—too much of anything is a bad thing. The secret to making anything great is proportion." It's so true. Ever since I read that, I see it everywhere. I used to be more simplistic—black and white: this is good, that is bad. But too much affection becomes clinginess and smothering; too much space becomes distant and cold. So it's not a question of whether affection is good or bad—it's how much. You can use that in anything you do; in a dish, the proportion matters. I'm interested to see whether you got the proportion right of how much time and energy you're spending on the leadership, the culture, and the environment you're putting together here. </FormattedResponse>
01:02:05	Sam Parr	There also is a world where you think I'm spending more time than I really am on it, just because I'm vocal about it. But you could be right. Yeah, I mean, it'll be interesting to see. You know, what'd be funny is to see all these companies who we think have crazy cultures — like the big guys we should go talk to. I've always been curious to go talk to middle management or the new staff. It's like, "Are you drinking the Kool‑Aid? What's the deal?" You know, like Patagonia or something like that, right?
01:02:32	Shaan Puri	I had the same idea yesterday. I was in a restaurant and I was walking out, and I saw the values on the wall. I had a not-so-great experience at the restaurant. As I was walking out, the sign said, "Don't just serve delight," and I was like — I just had the opposite of delight in this restaurant. You know, I ordered something gluten-free for somebody who's allergic to gluten. They messed it up, and then they refused to just give us the gluten-free version. They wanted us to pay again for it. I was like, "What is going on? You almost killed somebody just now. What are you talking about?" I was thinking it would be so funny to go to 100 companies. I guarantee you: go to 100 companies, and at every company you stand outside the office and take a random sample — the first 50 people who come out of the building or walk into the building in the morning. You just say, "Hey, we're doing a little game, a little test. I'll give you $50 for every one of the values of the company you can name, but you have to get the word for it — the actual phrase." I'm just curious how many people will know any of the values. I think it's going to be a histogram or chart like: most people know zero or one, almost nobody knows two, and nobody knows three or more. I want to have that for 100 different companies because I think values are probably the most overrated exercise that companies do. If it's not in the people's heads, then what was the...?
01:04:01	Shaan Puri	"They're not doing it."
01:04:01	Sam Parr	You want to know what's funny? Have you seen... you know how Netflix is famous for values?
01:04:05	Shaan Puri	I've heard... seen their culture deck, yeah.
01:04:07	Sam Parr	I was looking it up, and I was like, "What actually are the values you should look up? It's like..."
01:04:12	Shaan Puri	I know... one is like, "We're a team, not a family," right?
01:04:15	Sam Parr	That's not even — no. I mean, they literally have written out the values, and it's 18 of them. It's like: > kindness, curiosity, courage, candor, selflessness, judgment, creativity, inclusion, resilience It's just... it's pretty funny. It's just a list of stuff. I was like, "oh."
01:04:33	Shaan Puri	They should slip a derogatory term in there and just see if anyone ever notices. Nobody would know — he's just slipping the "f-word" in between "courage" and "inclusion" to see what happens.
01:04:47	Sam Parr	Reed Hastings seems like a pretty big baller. (laughs) He's the CEO of Netflix — or former CEO — and he was talking about their culture. I was listening to a podcast with Patrick O'Shaughnessy about him. He was saying the coolest shit ever. I thought, "He's talking all about values — let's go see what they are." I went to the website and saw... like this. I was like, "Like, 'do what'?" That's way less intense than he sounded.
01:05:11	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly — it's only about actions, right? Not words. So the question really is: what actions do you take that are any different than anybody else's? What actions do you take that are any different than what my default behavior would have been if I switched over from an adjacent company to yours? So, like, your severance example is a good one. For example, if your value is "treat people like family" or "treat people well"—whatever it is—and you're like, "cool, here's an action," here's the default actions: our default actions are different than the other default actions. So maybe these companies do have great default actions, or they're... [sentence trails off]
01:05:43	Sam Parr	Able. I don't know.
01:05:44	Shaan Puri	Part of.
01:05:44	Sam Parr	I think it's impossible to do that when you get past a certain point. We should actually ask Darmesh about this—Darmesh wrote The Culture Code, or the...
01:05:50	Shaan Puri	They all have to drink the Kool-Aid. Nobody can be honest about this when they're in their company. Who's gonna get out here and say, "It's all shit"?
01:05:58	Sam Parr	"Don't nobody."
01:06:01	Shaan Puri	Knows.
01:06:01	Sam Parr	"It's just a bunch of bodies to me." </FormattedResponse>
01:06:03	Shaan Puri	We come in and we look at revenue and we try to figure out what's happening. That's what we do, right? Nobody's going to ever be honest about that sort of thing until they're out. Then they're disillusioned, and they're seen as having "gone crazy" if they were to talk about it.
01:06:15	Sam Parr	Well, where do we go from here? Is that it? Is that the pod?
01:06:20	Shaan Puri	Yeah, our value is the Irish goodbye. We talk, we laugh, and then we suddenly decide, "I think I've said enough today. Alright, that's it."
01:06:29	Sam Parr	"That's a pop."

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5 Philosophies For Building Projects People Can't Forget

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