The man who made a billion off blueberries

- September 12, 2025 (6 months ago) • 01:16:26

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	This guy's story is kind of amazing. So, this is basically a farmer billionaire.
00:04	Sam Parr	Love it. Okay.
00:14	Shaan Puri	Let me give you this one. This is kind of a crazy story. So, do the words "John Bragg" mean anything to you?
00:22	Sam Parr	No, they didn't mean it.
00:23	Shaan Puri	Anything to me either. Shout out to Shane Parrish over at Farnam Street. He did a great podcast with this guy that caught my attention. This guy's story is kind of amazing, so this is basically a farmer billionaire.
00:35	Sam Parr	Love it... in, in, in, like.
00:40	Shaan Puri	There were only two sources for this: Farnam Street and the Van Trump report had written about this guy. Those were the only things I could find. He also has a biography. Alright, so here’s this guy’s story. I think there are a bunch of factoids about him you’re going to love—his whole aura, his vibe. He is the billion of the week—cue the music: > "A million dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? A billion dollars." His name is John Bragg. He grows up on a family farm—like a sawmill or something—and when he's in high school he starts experimenting, like teenagers do. Not with girls or weed… with blueberries. He tries harvesting blueberries for the first time at 13 or 14. He gets the itch and goes to a local blueberry farmer and asks, "Hey, can I pick blueberries for you?" He picks blueberries all year. In his last year of high school, he and four or five other blueberry pickers end up making $4,000 each from picking blueberries, which was a lot of money at the time. He realizes he can pay for college by picking blueberries every year. College costs were something like $10 or $12 [per term?], and he's making $4,000, so he figures he can do it—his parents otherwise weren't really going to be able to send him. He makes more money the next year and the next year picking blueberries. When he graduates he has a couple of options. Plan A: become a teacher—with a salary around $3,800, plus an extra $100 if he coaches the basketball team. Plan B: go work in the family business, maybe buy out his dad on the sawmill. He chooses Plan C: he thinks the blueberry thing has potential, so he decides to start his own blueberry farm. He buys a little piece of land and starts harvesting blueberries. The first couple of years go pretty well, but then there's a problem in the blueberry industry: one year there's a huge supply glut. There are way too many blueberries and not enough buyers, so prices crash. He realizes he can't be at the mercy of prices like that again. He needs a backup plan—some kind of insurance. He decides he needs to build a packaging and freezing plant for blueberries. He has no money and no manufacturing or factory experience, but he thinks he can do it. He goes to the other blueberry farmers and says, "We all just got whipped—let's pool money and I'll build this plant and you can use it too if we ever have an oversupply." They do it. He borrows from the bank and gets money from the other farmers and starts to build the plant. In the first year that the plant is built, they have a capacity for 2,000,000 pounds, but they only produce 100,000 pounds because a crazy frost kills all the blueberry production that year. He owes a lot of money and the plant is mostly empty—about 5% of the estimated freezing capacity. It looks like disaster; the sensible move would be to declare bankruptcy and move on. Instead, he calls a guy he knows at McCain and asks, "What's something you need to make but don't want to make? Give me the last thing you want to do but should do." The guy says, "Onion rings." He sends a little booklet on how to make onion rings. Bragg says, "Say less. I'm never going to ask you another question. I'll figure this out." He uses the empty factory to make onion rings for that one season, which tided him over enough to continue. He carries on and eventually builds Oxford Frozen Foods, which today controls about 40–50% of the global supply of blueberries—roughly 70,000,000 pounds of blueberries every year.
05:11	Sam Parr	Do they still have onion rings, blueberries, and mozzarella sticks on their website?
05:16	Shaan Puri	You never forget— you never forget who got you there. He builds this absolute juggernaut over time and they become bigger and bigger. His brother invents this blueberry picker that can do the work of 35 humans. He's like, "Oh, amazing," and then what he does is he basically freely shares it with other blueberry farms too. He's like, "What's good for one is good for all." He wants the entire blueberry industry to grow because the more the blueberry industry grows, the better everyone does. "I don't want to be the biggest fish in the smallest pond," he says. He wants the pond to get bigger. We're competing with all the other fruits out there, so if we can up our production and have more blueberries, we can build more innovative products. This is going to be good for everybody. So he's got this very interesting business philosophy. He ends up going into a new business. It was around the time TV—cable TV—was picking up. He's from Nova Scotia (population 9,000). They held an auction: "Who wants to buy the cable TV rights for Nova Scotia?" Nobody shows up; he's the only guy there. He picks up the cable TV rights for that area and he's like, "Alright, I don't even know what to do with this. I guess I'll put some old recorded programming on here." There was basically no programming, but he's like, "Whatever, let's do this." He's in that business and he's losing money the first couple of years. His dad's like, "Bro, you gotta figure this out. You can't just keep bleeding money over here." So he cuts costs, tries to figure it out, and he finally gets it to kind of a break-even?
07:02	Shaan Puri	Or whatever he ends up—over the next couple of decades—building the largest private telecom company in the country. He owns cable TV networks everywhere. He does a bunch of acquisitions, takes on a bunch of debt, ends up buying up others, and he goes down the stack. Whereas most TV companies want to do the sexy, fun stuff—they get into original programming and content and they're like, "content is king"—he's like, "yeah, no. You know what's king? Fiber." He's going to own the underlying infrastructure for cable TV. He ends up building this juggernaut. So this guy ends up—now much older, in his eighties or so—and he's worth $1 billion. He built the largest fruit farm basically in the world, and he built the largest private telecom company in the country. Isn't this kind of amazing?
07:55	Sam Parr	"This is amazing. As you're telling me this, I've noticed there's a trend among this era of people. Was he doing it right when cable was getting started?" "Yeah, man — there's a trend. So Ted Turner, who eventually went on to start CNN, owned a billboard company which he parlayed into a radio station and then eventually a cable news network — CNN." "Do you know another guy named Jim Pattison? Have you heard of Jim Pattison?"
08:25	Shaan Puri	No, who's?
08:25	Sam Parr	"That dude—Google Jim Pattison, another Canadian guy. Look at what he looks like. He's like a..."
08:31	Shaan Puri	"Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen this guy before. He's like one of the richest guys in Canada, right?"
08:34	Sam Parr	Yeah. He's one of those guys — an energizer bunny, like a wind-up toy. He just can't stop moving. I think his story was that, at a young age, he opened a car dealership. Within three years he bought a plastics manufacturer or something — very out of left field — then another business, and another. Now he owns a telecommunications business, but he also owns Ripley's Believe It or Not. I think the Pattison Group, which he owns outright, has 100,000 employees or something insane like that. Another one is... his name's John Cat; his last name is crazy. I'm going to butcher it.
09:15	Shaan Puri	"It's casmangitis."</FormattedResponse>
09:18	Sam Parr	"Yes. Is that it?"
09:19	Shaan Puri	He's got a condition: "cat casmangitis."
09:21	Sam Parr	Do you know him? Do you know him? No. So he started a grocery store. I think it was called "Apple Foods."
09:28	Shaan Puri	Dude, let me just tell you this: any guy who looks like this—if I just showed you this photo and I said, "rich or poor"...</FormattedResponse>
09:34	Sam Parr	Yeah, you already know everything about him just by looking at him.</FormattedResponse>
09:36	Shaan Puri	"One photo."
09:38	Sam Parr	"Yeah — when this guy gives you a handshake, he's pulling you in. Do you know what I mean? You can just look at him and know what he's going to do: he's going to pull you in and smack you really hard on the back shoulder."
09:50	Shaan Puri	No chance this guy has one wife, by the way. Let me just look this up. I bet you — I'll bet you anything right now.
09:54	Sam Parr	Here we go. Let's just Wikipedia—if you Google "his kids."
09:56	Shaan Puri	New
09:56	Sam Parr	"Wife, they're beautiful. First wife—divorce. Yeah."
09:59	Shaan Puri	New wife, Margo.
10:01	Sam Parr	This guy started an Apple grocery store. It's like a 20—what? It's a 20-store chain in New York City. It's tiny, but then he bought a radio station, and that's how he got extra rich. I think he also bought a cable news network as well. And so... my being is—there's this, and...
10:20	Shaan Puri	Then, refining company and...
10:22	Sam Parr	Then an energy company—like an airline he owns. I think he owns a small private airline. He owns everything. There’s this type of entrepreneur who’s kind of a cowboy: they start in one thing and eventually get into media. A lot of that happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s when cable was getting popular. It was sort of like the first version of a SaaS business: recurring revenue, a huge total addressable market (TAM), kind of weird and unknown. People weren’t sure what to do. I believe a lot of the cable news networks were regulated by the FCC, and you could only own a limited number of satellites. There was a limiting blocker, so only a certain number of cable companies could exist. If you were able to get in on that, it was almost a near monopoly. Then Ted Turner came along. He was one of the first guys to petition Congress, saying, “This is nonsense—we need more competition.” That’s when CNN came about in this whole era.
11:24	Shaan Puri	It's like—I like how sometimes when we explain these things, it's kind of like when I explain stuff to my kids. They're like, "How does... how does the picture come on the TV? Where is this coming from?" And I'm like, "Oh—satellites." Then they're like, "But how does it get from a satellite to our TV?" I'm like, "It shoots it."
11:43	Sam Parr	It's like, "shoots."
11:43	Shaan Puri	The video—it's shooting "Gabby Dollhouse" at our—at that tower. I think, I think that's what the cables are for, or maybe that's electricity. I'm not sure exactly what's going on.
11:52	Sam Parr	It doesn't matter, though. Just go.
11:53	Shaan Puri	But you're like, "They rent—there were only so many satellites. You had to buy these letters, but they only had so many letters." Don't worry about the letters. Okay... fibers are...
12:02	Sam Parr	Still in.
12:02	Shaan Puri	Right, supply.</FormattedResponse>
12:03	Sam Parr	That is true. There's some spectrum available — yeah, we know a lot about spectrums. I do know there was a famous hearing where Ted Turner made a passionate speech to politicians to convince them they had to change the rules to allow small upstarts to get a satellite. But anyway, that's cool. I like this blueberry guy. A lot of people will talk about how you need a million dollars and three years of experience to start a business. Nonsense. If you listen to at least one episode of this podcast, you know that is completely not true. My last company, The Hustle, we grew to something like $17 or $18 million in revenue. I started it with like $300. My current company, Hampton, does over $10 million in revenue — I started it with actually no money, maybe $29 or something like that. So you don't actually need investors to start a company. You don't need a fancy business plan. But what you do need is systems that actually work. So my old company, The Hustle, put together five proven business models that you could start right now today with under $1,000. These are models that, if you do it correctly, can make money this week. You can get it right now — scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, back to the show.
13:20	Shaan Puri	Let me give you some of his little business isms—his philosophies. Okay. This is, again, some of it from Shane Parrish's stuff.
13:28	Sam Parr	Dude, you can just tell this guy is — he's Canadian. Midwestern people, where I'm from, they're the same. They're the same people, aren't they?
13:35	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's like it's a species in its own right. Here's a great line by him: "I have no reverse gear." I just thought that's an amazing line. He says that when things got hard — when the blueberry crop died and the factory was empty — he didn't consider going backward. He did not consider stopping or reversing course; it was just not a gear he had. He decided he had to find a way through, and the onion rings were the way through. Another thing I thought was interesting, and kind of counter to conventional advice: most people in the game of business — Buffett [Warren Buffett] and all the real estate guys — say the famous phrase, "You make your money on the buy; you don't make your money when you sell." If you buy it right, then you're going to make money.
14:22	Sam Parr	Dude, I read that line after I bought three real estate projects that I totally lost money on. I was like, "Shit. I'm being serious... it's not..."
14:34	Shaan Puri	Like, the fine print, by the way.
14:35	Sam Parr	This is.
14:35	Shaan Puri	"This is, like, the first thing you learn."
14:37	Sam Parr	I was reading a Warren Buffett book, and I read that quote. I remember thinking, "That was literally the exact opposite." Well—you were...
14:45	Shaan Puri	Just doing the John Bragg. So here's John Bragg's philosophy: "Intentionally overpay..."</FormattedResponse>
14:50	Sam Parr	Okay, I'm in.
14:53	Shaan Puri	So he goes, "Early on, I intentionally overpaid for acquisitions, and word spread fast: 'If you want to sell, sell to John Bragg. You'll get a fair price, quick close, no games.'" Which I love. I'm going to put that on our little mini private equity shop website.
15:11	Sam Parr	"I feel like..."
15:12	Shaan Puri	"You said."
15:12	Sam Parr	That advice typically isn't right, though.
15:15	Shaan Puri	Well, typically not. So, here are the caveats. > "The amateurs learn the rules; the professionals know the rules; and the masters know when to break the rules." This is kind of the "when to break it" idea. He says, "I will overpay as long as it's something that's only available once." When opportunities are scarce, you need to pay what it takes. I know many people who tried to nickel and dime and then spent the rest of their life regretting not getting that key asset. I think, in the realm of buying the TV rights—when they're only going to be available once and whoever gets them will own them—that's a time to overpay. Or, if it's a key asset that locks down a certain competitive advantage, don't quibble on price. In fact, come in over so that you make sure you secure that asset and you develop a reputation. He said something like, "You can't buy a reputation." I was like, I think actually what you're saying is you can buy a reputation. It's like, "Oh, but here's the reputation: I will overpay." Right? It's like SoftBank in the venture game right now — "you want a bunch of money and a huge crazy valuation, you go to SoftBank first." There is actually some merit to that strategy when you can get the things that have huge upside.
16:27	Sam Parr	"So, was he like an M&A guy? Like... or, yeah, was it?"
16:31	Shaan Puri	It was a lot of building the empire through M&A [mergers and acquisitions].
16:33	Sam Parr	And what was he buying—other cable companies or other farms?
16:37	Shaan Puri	Both — here's another banger of a line. He has 40–50% of the global supply, and about half of that is stuff he owns and operates: his farms. The other half are farms he's buying into or owns a big stake in. And he goes, here's the exact line: "We don't want to have 100% of the interest in the industry; that wouldn't be good politics."
17:00	Sam Parr	Dude, that's like...
17:01	Shaan Puri	Like, imagine having the choice to have a 100% market share, and they bet—that's... that's not polite. We'll... we'll...
17:07	Sam Parr	Skip that. What a baller.
17:09	Shaan Puri	Here's some Sam porn for you: focus is absolutely critical—probably the biggest single principle you can have in business. Here's a big mistake people make: they make their first $1 million and they think, "Now I can succeed in any business, even ones I know nothing about."
17:25	Sam Parr	Been there.
17:25	Shaan Puri	"Sam, Sam—buying the ranch."
17:27	Sam Parr	Yeah, there.</FormattedResponse>
17:28	Shaan Puri	And then he goes, "I just wanted to—" He goes, "I wanted to just stick to my knitting: figure out what I could do well and then just do more of it." Everybody else who came into this industry wanted to make a buck. I was this young guy who said, "I'm here to play this game for a long, long time."
17:44	Sam Parr	"This guy's awesome."
17:45	Shaan Puri	"This guy's awesome, right?"
17:46	Sam Parr	"I think he's my uncle."
17:47	Shaan Puri	Then he goes, "Here's a couple other great, great quotes." > "The guy who asked the question to me looks better than the guy who knows the answers." I like that. Done.
17:57	Sam Parr	Did you get all this from Shane's podcast with him?
18:00	Shaan Puri	A lot of this is from Shane's podcast, and there are a couple other people who have written about him. I didn't even get to watch the episode because I discovered this guy this morning—it was on my list of things to check out. As soon as I checked it out I thought, "Oh man, this is amazing; I gotta go watch this later." So I've actually only skimmed the transcript and related material, and I might be getting some of the details wrong. A couple other things: he's one of these Buffett types—he's a billionaire, but the vast majority of his wealth came after the age of 70. It's the same idea as with Buffett, where they just keep compounding. He had some other things I thought were pretty interesting.
18:35	Sam Parr	I would have thought he'd be richer. If you own half the blueberries in the world, wouldn't you be richer than 1.5 billion?
18:42	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, punk. Weak shit."
18:50	Sam Parr	He better be a huge—like—philanthropist and have given a lot away, because I definitely would have thought he'd be richer, right?
18:58	Shaan Puri	I mean, I guess I don't know. I'm not gonna—I'm not gonna knock him. He believes in Buffett a lot; he loves Buffett. Buffett has this great quote: > "I'm a better investor because I'm a businessman, and I'm a better businessman because I'm an investor." So at age 70 he was worth, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. He goes to each of the executives at his companies and says, "Today you're just businessmen; you're not investors." He gives them $10 million each—not as a bonus but as an investment portfolio that they get to run. He said, "I want them to see how strong companies operate and how weak ones fail." There was no penalty for losing the money and no bonus for the gains—it was pure education. Isn't that pretty wild to do?
19:42	Sam Parr	So, he gave—how many managers did he have?
19:45	Shaan Puri	"I don't know. Six teams, so $60,000,000."
19:48	Sam Parr	"He gave them what—like a stock portfolio, or did he give them $10 million in total?"
19:52	Shaan Puri	"$10,000,000 to go invest, to go buy businesses."
19:55	Sam Parr	Oh, within their portfolio? Sure. Wow. Okay, that's badass. That's crazy.
20:01	Shaan Puri	He said — and this was at age 70: > "Most people stop learning once they become successful, but the outliers never stop being students." I loved that; it resonated with me. Alright, what else resonated with me? Let me give you one more.
20:13	Sam Parr	"Well, how about?"
20:14	Shaan Puri	The fact.
20:14	Sam Parr	I just googled the Shane podcast. Shane went to his office, which is really cool. He's 84 years old and doing a podcast — that's amazing. He's with it, he's sharp, and he's had this podcast...
20:29	Shaan Puri	"Dude, when I'm 84, I'm gonna be in the metaverse. I'm gonna be so... just plugged in to what everybody's doing in the future."
20:37	Sam Parr	I hope.
20:38	Shaan Puri	Alright, do you want to do one, or do you want me to go?
20:41	Sam Parr	"Have you read about United Fruit? If we're going to talk about fruits, have you read about United Fruit?"
20:44	Shaan Puri	United Fruit — is that the "banana king" guy?
20:46	Sam Parr	Man, that's a great book. I'm in the middle of reading it, and it's the story of United Fruit, which is basically centered around bananas.
20:55	Shaan Puri	"You want to do the quick story? I think we've talked about it before, but it's on theme—it's on trend."
20:59	Sam Parr	In the late 1800s, I think bananas were discovered—perhaps in Nicaragua or somewhere in Central America—and they were brought to America. Americans were like, "Yeah, we want every banana we can get our hands on. We love it." It even got to the... where, like, I think in the 1920s, when immigrants would land at Ellis Island, we gave them a banana and that was like, "You're here now; this is this American thing," and it's sort of American because...
21:22	Shaan Puri	Like when you get to Hawaii and they give you the lei. </FormattedResponse>
21:24	Sam Parr	And, yeah—it was about bananas and the banana company United Fruit Company. It became so big that it was basically a monopoly, and they tried to hide that they were a monopoly for years and years. Sam "the banana man"—I think his name is Samuel Zemurray—was, I think, a Ukrainian immigrant. He started out with a fruit cart, walking the streets. His whole shtick was selling "ripes," meaning bananas that were already becoming a little brown—bananas others thought were throwaways. The way it worked: a banana train would start in one part of the country, I believe Louisiana, and it would slowly make its way up over seven or eight days to the northern part of America. Along the way it would drop off bananas at different markets. He would buy the ripes for a fraction of the price and be really fast at getting them to where they needed to go. He eventually became so big that by the time he was in his sixties, he took over United Fruit, and it's a big...
22:22	Shaan Puri	Well, he—he starts with $150, and by the time he's 21, he's got $100,000. This was way back in the day, right? So this is a lot... that's a lot of money. </FormattedResponse>
22:31	Sam Parr	And he keeps on going, and it gets to be... and so.
22:35	Shaan Puri	"So you're saying he basically starts as just a guy on the dock or whatever — like a guy on the side of the road taking discarded trash, hustling it, and selling it. By the time he reaches his peak, he buys the whole company."
22:50	Sam Parr	Yeah.
22:50	Shaan Puri	Where he was initially just taking their discarded trash.
22:53	Sam Parr	And the book is called The Fish That Ate the Whale because he was the fish and he eventually ate the whale. Samuel Zemurray has a lot of admirable qualities. He's a hardworking immigrant, pretty quiet and stoic, but he's kind of a warlord. At one point in Nicaragua, they had some kind of meltdown and a new president or dictator came into power and they wouldn't sell them bananas. So he funded a coup. He basically gathered a small unit of 10 or 20 men to help another guy assassinate the current leader and take over. That leader was like, "Alright, thanks for having our back. Now you can have some more bananas." So that's kinda the story of Samuel Zemurray—it's pretty badass.
23:42	Shaan Puri	"Got that killer instinct—let's go. Yeah, this is... it's pretty wild, right? Imagine a story like that today."
23:52	Sam Parr	Is there such a thing? I can't think of one. I mean, what Elon does with rockets is pretty... you're kind of dominating another planet, potentially. I mean, that's pretty crazy.
24:05	Shaan Puri	Two of the Republican Party this year, right? Like, going to be... actual funding of a militia. That's a...
24:14	Sam Parr	I guess Donald Trump is doing this where he's like, "for shits and giggles, I'm gonna play a joke and run for president," and it just kind of starts to work. I mean, it's a pretty crazy story. Yeah, so it's been great. I did something this weekend and I thought about you, and I've been holding this in, waiting to talk to you about it.
24:36	Shaan Puri	But, like, a man in "Lantor" or "November," holding it in. [Note: The word "Lantor" is unclear in the original audio.]
24:40	Sam Parr	Yeah. Oh man—yeah. If you know, you know. I saw a Broadway play for the first time ever this weekend. Phenomenal. Wow—phenomenal. It's called "Oh Mary." It's basically about Mary Todd, who was Lincoln's wife, and it's just like a comedy. It was fantastic. I've never really been to a play, honestly, my whole life.
25:04	Shaan Puri	Because you judged it, or it just happened to not go? What's the deal?
25:08	Sam Parr	Yeah, I don't know. It just went on the list of things to do. It just didn't — it didn't make its way into my life. I finally... the first thing I thought of was you, because you had made an offhanded comment a while ago that you cared about running a writing show. </FormattedResponse>
25:21	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I just thought it'd be cool. I went and saw one, and I was like, "Oh, that would be kind of a fun, fun thing to work on."
25:26	Sam Parr	"Yeah. So you had the same thing I did, which was, like, a new art form that you hadn't previously experienced. Then you go to it and you're like, 'I understand the appeal now.' Is that right?"
25:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. I had gone to a bunch when I was a kid, and so I think I liked it from that. I was a theater kid when I grew up, so I liked it.
25:42	Sam Parr	Now, how's it related to this podcast? Well, for one—if you Google "Oh Mary revenue" you can see there's a website called BroadwayWorld.com where they estimate the revenue of each show. I guess they look at whether a show is selling out and the average ticket price online. This thing, "Oh Mary" — I think it's been live since June 2024 — came out and it's been making about $1,000,000 a week, so it's doing quite well. It started off with about $4,000,000 in funding to get going. It all reminded me of this podcast we did about two and a half years ago. You didn't make it, but we had this guy named Michael Harris. Did you ever look into who Michael Harris was?
26:27	Shaan Puri	"He's—what was it? Death Row? Which record label was he with? The guy... yes, the founder."
26:31	Sam Parr	Yeah, so the short of it is: some people call him Harry O because his name's Michael — Michael Harris. They call him "Harry O," like "Harry O G" — gangster. Harry was famous because, in his early twenties, he was basically a drug kingpin. He made a lot of money selling cocaine at one point. In the podcast with him, I said — I was trying to be nice — "Instead of saying 'you are a drug dealer,' I said, 'I read an article. The article said that you were selling $1,000,000 a day in cocaine.'" He goes, "I think that article said $2,000,000 a day."
27:10	Shaan Puri	He's like, "I told that journalist it was two."
27:13	Sam Parr	I was like, "Yes, sir." Eventually, at the age of 32, he was sentenced to life in prison: one count for attempted murder and one for drug conspiracy (basically the RICO "kingpin" law [RICO = Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act]). He had a life sentence. Recently—about ten years ago, I think—Trump commuted his sentence, and that's how he got out of prison. When he was 32 years old, he founded Death Row Records with Dr. Dre and Suge Knight while he was serving a life sentence in San Quentin. That's how Death Row got started, and one of the reasons why it's called Death Row is because he...
27:46	Shaan Puri	"Wait — they co‑founded it with him while he was in prison? What did they want from him? What was he able to offer them while he was imprisoned for life?"
27:54	Sam Parr	Money, money. So his—his wife, gotcha. His wife was on the outside, okay, and she somehow had funds to fund Death Row Records [record label]... you. </FormattedResponse>
28:05	Shaan Puri	Know, right?
28:06	Sam Parr	Now, how does this relate to Broadway? Well, on the podcast that I did with him, he said something that I didn't pounce on because I didn't know anything about it. He made this comment to me: when he was 29, I think he was the first ever Black producer of a Broadway musical—or a Broadway show. He kind of told the story, but basically, somehow he got in cahoots... you know, he was considered, like, well known for being a "drug guy."
28:36	Shaan Puri	"I hope you said 'cahoots' to him, yeah."
28:42	Sam Parr	Right after I said, "okay."
28:43	Shaan Puri	He's like, "Do you end the podcast? Which button ends this podcast?"
28:50	Sam Parr	Yeah, I was like, "Holy moly."
28:56	Shaan Puri	"Harry—oh, you dog."
28:59	Sam Parr	Holy moly, Harry. So somehow he got in the loop with this, but he funded Denzel Washington early—Denzel Washington's first-ever play.
29:11	Shaan Puri	Damn.
29:12	Sam Parr	Michael Harris — Harriet O was the fund. He was the investor that funded the show with a million dollars. I think this was in 1993 or 1992, when Denzel was just getting going. He starts telling this story, and while I was at this play I was like, "Holy crap — this guy got his way into being the first ever producer of Broadway." While I was there I thought, "Oh my god, he was so much cooler than I even realized."
29:40	Shaan Puri	Dude, I invested in Denzel before he became Denzel. That's like — you know — how Jason Calacanis is always saying, "he's the fourth investor at Uber." I would never shut up about it.
29:51	Sam Parr	Google "Michael Harris Denzel Washington" — you'll see a photo of them together. Michael Harris looks like a well-to-do guy; he's wearing a suit. It turns out he was only, I think, 28 or 29 in these photos, and he was a drug kingpin. Kind of amazing, right? </FormattedResponse>
30:09	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's incredible — when he was 26 or something.
30:12	Sam Parr	Was he 26? Like, I think he...</FormattedResponse>
30:14	Shaan Puri	He was pretty young.
30:15	Sam Parr	Yeah. Very young and allegedly had made something like $100,000,000 selling drugs — pretty crazy. When I was sitting there in this play, I was like, "Obviously... what do you and I do when we do everything we..." We go to the play, and you type in "oh Mary revenue" on Google, and I started seeing the numbers, and I'm...
30:32	Shaan Puri	It's like the play's going on in front of you. You're turned around, counting how many seats are in the upper bleachers, and they're like, "Are you—are you watching the show? What are you doing here?"
30:40	Sam Parr	And this is how I remembered Michael Harris saying that — where it all clicked together, and I was like, "Oh my God."
30:47	Shaan Puri	"Do you know how much revenue these shows generate?"
30:50	Sam Parr	I'm looking at it. It's astounding. It's astounding.
30:52	Shaan Puri	So, the number one... I'm just gonna give you the top five highest-grossing Broadway musicals of all time. Number one: The Lion King grossed over $2,000,000,000 in just...
31:04	Sam Parr	"Crazy."
31:04	Shaan Puri	Just the ticket sales: - Wicked — $1,700,000,000. - The Phantom of the Opera — $1.3 billion. - Hamilton, which is newer, already crossed $1,000,000,000.
31:13	Sam Parr	Insane, right?
31:14	Shaan Puri	And, of course, our guys from South Park. </FormattedResponse>
31:18	Sam Parr	Are they number one?
31:19	Shaan Puri	They're number five. "The Book of Mormon" — number five, $850,000,000 on that. </FormattedResponse>
31:24	Sam Parr	Could be.
31:25	Shaan Puri	Us, dude. It could be.
31:27	Sam Parr	Us, dude.</FormattedResponse>
31:27	Shaan Puri	We just need to be talented and hardworking. That's all we're missing.
31:32	Sam Parr	They are so talented. When I was at the show, I was like, "This is..." — they're oozing with talent. One of the characters, Abe Lincoln, was played by—what's the guy from Silicon Valley? Kunal — is that his name?
31:44	Shaan Puri	"Oh, he's in the play."
31:45	Sam Parr	Yeah, he's in the play, and famous actors and actresses were in it.
31:49	Shaan Puri	"He's like a jacked Indian Abe Lincoln. What do you mean? What do you mean—he played Abe Lincoln?"
31:53	Sam Parr	It sounds crazy—and honestly, it is crazy. The guy who played Mary Todd was a guy, so it's all types of crazy. Yeah, it's a whole thing, but I just had to nerd out with you about this.
32:07	Shaan Puri	So, I looked into this pretty hardcore. It's definitely a, like, outlier-hits business, just like...
32:13	Sam Parr	Most of it’s angel investing.
32:14	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's angel investing. I was looking at the venues and thinking, should I own the best venue in San Francisco? Could I go buy the San Francisco— I forgot what it's called—the theater or the opera house? There are three or four different theaters for this. I was looking at them because the theaters make money either way: the shows have to pay rent. Producers will say, "Hey, we want to do 60 days on stage," and the theater's like, "Great—take your money," whether that show becomes a hit or not. They get paid upfront, so I thought that was kind of interesting. Then I was looking at the shows and how much it costs to produce them, because I had just seen the one about Lehman Brothers, which I recommend, by the way. It's too long—first of all, it's way too long.
32:55	Sam Parr	Dude, the one that I went to — we only went because it was 90 minutes. I can't sit there for more than 90 minutes.</FormattedResponse>
33:00	Shaan Puri	Yeah—"less is more," guys. Less is more here in the theater. It was great, and it was... it was business entertainment, which is what I considered to be my genre. I was like, "Damn, if they could take..." I wasn't even interested in learning about the Lehman Brothers, but they took an uninteresting subject to me and made it great. I remember the story because of it. This is cool. This is a really cool format. So yeah—definitely, definitely interested in that. If somebody actually knows how to do these things, I would love to talk to you. Email me; maybe we can make something.
33:29	Sam Parr	We were.
33:29	Shaan Puri	"I have a story in mind, but..."
33:31	Sam Parr	We had Tim Ferriss on the pod, and the top comment on YouTube was, "Rich guys finally discover board games" — like this...
33:41	Shaan Puri	All gotta be like, to the rich guy's part, it was like, "Yeah—hell yeah, thank you."
33:44	Sam Parr	No. This one's going to be like the Bros Discover plays.
33:49	Shaan Puri	Like, like, Sam — they were singing in the middle of your talking. One second you're talking, then they're singing. It's incredible.
33:55	Sam Parr	"And it's all part of the story."
34:00	Shaan Puri	Alright, I got one more cool business story for you. I'm watching a lot of sports lately — everything's kicking off. Football season just kicked off. Tennis was awesome, by the way. Did you see it? Have you been following? Do you follow tennis? You follow the... [trails off]
34:16	Sam Parr	US Open a little bit. I went last year and kind of watched a bit on TV. The Russian gal—she's an athlete, man. She's a freak. What's her name?
34:27	Shaan Puri	Sabalenka, I think.
34:28	Sam Parr	"She looks like a Terminator."
34:30	Shaan Puri	So I follow. I've gone in and out of tennis. There are many years where I won't even pay attention, and then there's like, "Oh my God, Nadal — he's amazing," and I'm watching these guys. A great tennis match is up there. It's very thrilling to watch a great tennis match; it's like a great UFC fight. There are some sports where the median game is really good — I put the NFL in that category — but then there are some sports where the peak is just peak drama. Boxing and UFC are like that: the average thing's not that good, but at the peak — when it's all on the line and it's just two guys going in there trying to take each other's head off — that's when it's most intense. It's hard for a basketball game to match that. So tennis is kind of up there in that sense. There's the new wave of tennis players: this guy Alcaraz and this guy Sinner.
35:24	Sam Parr	Did that happen? Did the men's final happen?
35:26	Shaan Puri	It just happened. Yeah. So, I really wanted Sinner to win because I just went down the rabbit hole of this guy's YouTube highlights — he's unreal. The other guy is also really unreal, but he's unreal in the sense of a guy who just does all the right things. He eats right, he works out, he prepares really hard. He's very talented and is maximizing his potential. There aren't a lot of flaws to attach to him; it's like, "You work hard and do all the right things — great." In fact, they showed the warm-up right before because I think Trump showed up at the US Open, so it was delayed by half an hour or an hour or something. The guys were in their locker room, supposed to be warming up. Alcaraz was doing a side plank in midair with his trainer, activating his core to get ready, and the other guy was playing dodgeball with his trainer — running around the gym and just throwing balls at each other.
36:26	Sam Parr	"Smoked his legs."
36:27	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so I was like, "Oh, I kinda like this other guy." Anyways, they go out there — Sinner loses. He just keeps losing to Alcaraz. He's been ranked number one because he beats everybody else, but Alcaraz has beaten him, I don't know, four out of the five last times they've faced each other. And he had this great quote — I thought, forget tennis, this is just a great mindset quote. They were talking about, you know, "It must be tough: you're at the top, you're ranked number one, but this guy seems to have your number. You've had some tough matches." And here's what he said: > "I was very predictable on the court today. He changed up his game and the style of how he plays, and now it's on me if I want to make changes or not. I'm definitely going to work on this. For example, I didn't use a lot of drop shots. I didn't do any serve-and-volley. You arrive at a..." </FormattedResponse>
37:16	Shaan Puri	Where you're gonna play this guy, I gotta go out of my comfort zone. So here's what I'm gonna do: I need to start playing more unpredictably. I might even lose some matches, but I'm gonna have to do it. I'm gonna have to make some changes. I'm gonna have to try to become more unpredictable as a player. That's what I have to do to become better at tennis. And at the end of the day, that's my main goal. I really just love this mindset from the number-one-ranked guy who's beating everybody else. He's like: > "You know what? I'm here, but the top of the mountain is still a little higher. This path I'm on doesn't get me to the summit. I gotta go back down for a bit and I gotta find a new trail." And that is so hard to do in life. It is so hard to go...
37:54	Sam Parr	One of these things where he's like, "to..." [trails off]
37:55	Shaan Puri	The bottom and reinvent yourself.
37:57	Sam Parr	He's like, "I'm gonna—I'm gonna learn how to play tennis, but I'm really learning how to play the game of life." It's one of those types of moments.
38:02	Shaan Puri	Totally. To be like, "I'm gonna lose" — I'm probably going to lose some more matches because I have to learn this. I have to experiment with this new style, and that's going to suck, but I'm going to do it. And, like you're doing in life, that analogy probably holds for you right now. Whether it's you as a parent, the book you're writing, your job, or your business — whatever it is — I guarantee there's an element of: if I want to get to the next level, what I've been doing probably won't get me there. I need to be willing, when the time comes and I recognize the moment, to go back down the mountain for a little bit and then come back up a new way.
38:41	Sam Parr	Have you ever heard of this guy named Meb Gerflusky? If you googled him, that's a hard name. </FormattedResponse>
38:47	Shaan Puri	I make up names, I know.
38:48	Sam Parr	"Yeah, that's a hard last name to Google. But if you Google 'Marathon Meb' (M‑E‑B), you might recognize his face."
38:55	Shaan Puri	Marathon Meb.
38:56	Sam Parr	"Meb. You see Meb?"
38:59	Shaan Puri	I don't recognize this guy. He's 50.
39:01	Sam Parr	Yeah. So I think in 2004 he was the gold medalist in the Olympics in the marathon for America, but he's an immigrant. When he won, it was sort of one of those things where everyone got behind him because he's a nice guy — it was like the American Dream type of energy. I think it got to the point where he, like, spoke at Obama's — a bunch of Obama events — and whatever. He's a big deal; he's great. His brother listens to MFM — his brother Howie — and he reached out to me when he heard that I liked running. I've been friendly with him for a couple of years now. This past weekend was this thing in New York called the Fifth Avenue Mile. They get all these guys, these Olympian milers, and they get them to run one mile down Fifth Avenue, which is basically a huge street, and it's slightly... [unfinished]
39:49	Shaan Puri	Shut it down, or they're...</FormattedResponse>
39:50	Sam Parr	Just running out of—no, no, no. They shut it down. It was a big event, like a huge event, and there were tens of thousands of people there. I went with Howie, and I got to be his sidekick. Howie runs a management company. Originally, Howie was managing his brother, Meb. Then Meb asked, "Can you help me make more money?" and Howie agreed. Eventually he started managing other runners. He now manages, I don't know, 40 runners or so. A lot of his athletes were running at this race, so I got to be his assistant. He took me in, and I got to meet a lot of cool people. These guys were flying, by the way. I think the winner ran three minutes and forty-six seconds for the mile, which is crazy.
40:32	Shaan Puri	What's your mile time?</FormattedResponse>
40:34	Sam Parr	Dude, back in high school — 1 minute slower: 4 minutes and 47 seconds.
40:37	Shaan Puri	"Okay, Ted Bundy — now, what's your mile time now? Not what's your mile time 8 or 10 years ago. That was not my question." </FormattedResponse>
40:43	Sam Parr	Seven minutes. Not — I mean, seven minutes, like very recreationally, like average.
40:48	Shaan Puri	So, wait: did you run it, or did you just hang out with Howie?
40:50	Sam Parr	Hell no—I didn't run it. I was watching, just sitting on the sidelines. We got to watch these guys run and they look like gazelles. They look like animals. It's crazy. I was asking them, "What separates—" Because when I was watching the race, the winner and the guy who got third were really close. It doesn't seem very far when you see them, but a second... it's not that much, yet it is a lot when you're running. I was like, "What separates Nagoose, the guy who won? What separates him from the guy who got last? They kind of look the same—tall, skinny, like freaks. What's going on?" He said, "It's mindset." He explained that once you get to this level and you're already a nine out of ten, what separates the guys who get first versus last in these big races is when they step on the lines—they're killers. "He wants to kill you," he said. "He acts like a nice guy, but when they step there they think: > I am here to win. I am built to win. I am not trying to finish second. I'm trying to be the best, and I'm trying to win no matter what." I said, "Well, your brother seemed like a happy-go-lucky guy—he looks really kind." He replied, "Yeah, he is, but he would sit down for hours and envision winning the New York Marathon. Then when he got to the starting line, you couldn't talk to him—he was an animal. He was out to win." I thought that was really fascinating. I'm always finding it fascinating, particularly in sports—particularly in these individual sports: tennis, swimming, track and field, cycling. I think we had Lance on and we talked a little bit about this: what separates the freaks from the freaks? What makes you a freak among freaks? It appears as though it is not physical; it is absolutely mental.
42:33	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah—that's pretty crazy. Have you heard this phrase? You probably have, because you're into running. I don't run. Don't do it. It's not a—it's like motorcycles; I just don't get on that. One of the guys who was filming for us was talking about this. He wants to film a documentary about a woman who's an amazing long-distance runner. I don't know her name—you probably do. He was talking about this phrase called "pain cave."
43:04	Sam Parr	Yeah, we go to the pain cave.
43:06	Shaan Puri	"You go to the pain cave. Yeah. I wasn't into running, but I'll just take that phrase — that was a cool phrase." "He's like, 'So the pain cave describes when you're in these ultra-long races — a 100-mile race or whatever — and it's like mile 60 or 70. You hit this extreme level of physical, mental, spiritual exhaustion and pain, and you go to the pain cave.'" "And I'm like, 'But what do you mean? What does that mean — you go to the pain cave?' He's like, 'You go to the pain cave mentally.'" "Okay. Basically — and you probably describe it better than I can — my understanding was: you accept that there's going to be this stretch where you're in pain. You go to the pain cave; you're there. You become... not comfortable, but enough. You become acclimated to the pain cave and you're able to stay there where others want to quit. Others would quit. Then you push through and you end up getting to the second wind, you get out of there, and you get to the end." "Did I butcher the 'pain cave,' or did I describe it?"
44:09	Sam Parr	It's right. No, no. And a lot of... have you been?</FormattedResponse>
44:11	Shaan Puri	You visited.
44:11	Sam Parr	Well, I've been on vacation a couple of times. No — I was training for an ultra before, and it was miserable. I hated it. I remember going out for a three-hour run and it just... it's horrible. It's not a fun experience. What's crazy is doing a sport or an activity where even if you are winning, you go through hell. We had Brendan Schaub [former UFC fighter] on the pod. He said that one time he was fighting on a card and the guy who was fighting above him, Cro Cop — the main guy afterwards — was on a stretcher. Cro Cop had just won the championship, but he was still hurt. He was sitting on a stretcher holding ice on his head or something like that. He looked horrible, like he had just been beat up really badly even though he won. Cro Cop was like, "Give him a thumbs up," and Brendan was like, "These animals think that this is winning." That's why I'm not going to be the best — even when you win, you are beat down and broken, and they still give you a thumbs up like, "Yes, we did it." That's what separates the winners from the losers: the guys who are willing to go through the pain cave. In a lot of sports, I think it's so fascinating. I honestly think this way about business or anything really in life: when you win and you get everything you wanted, you still have to go through hell. That's kind of fascinating and interesting to me — the mindset of these winners who can just eat so much shit. Business is the same way. It's not as physical, but it's still emotional. Even if you think you're on top of the world or things are going well — I don't know if you've experienced this — everyone on the outside thinks, "Oh, you're the man, you must be killing it." I'm like, "Dude, it's really, really hard," and it feels like it's going to fall apart all the time.
46:03	Shaan Puri	Yeah. I find that phrases like "pain cave" — or whatever — have a lot of power. There's something useful about having a label to put on the thing. When you're feeling it, you don't have to panic or think it's a permanent, bad thing. You realize it's a temporary phenomenon. One analogy people have found helpful is the roller-coaster metaphor for being an entrepreneur. Intellectually you know there will be ups and downs, but when it's happening it feels awful — that stomach-dropping, you-want-it-to-stop feeling. Then you remember: you got in line for the roller coaster. You chose this. You knew this is the nature of it. There are no ups without downs; the downs are a necessary condition of doing this activity. So don't be surprised, don't play the victim, and don't think it's forever. A tactical thing that's helped me is a Slack channel I created called "highs and lows". [Slack channel] Anytime there's an extreme high or an extreme low, I immediately post it there and include my exec team. The beautiful thing is that when you scroll back, you see moments from four to six months ago that felt extreme in the moment and now hardly register. That perspective prevents you from swinging too high or too low in the moment, because you can see all the other moments that once felt huge and are now just part of the past.
48:15	Sam Parr	How often are [you] adding stuff to that?
48:17	Shaan Puri	Alright, so the last one was four months ago. It was: "Oh cool—Trump just tariffed all of our goods at 150%." So imagine: an item used to cost us $10. Now we pay the $10, but then we pay an extra $15. That same item costs us $25—that's the full sale price of some items. You know what I mean? Like, "Oh cool—we make no money now." Got it. Business makes the money thing out of our control. And then there was another one. Two months before that there was a high: a celebrity with about 6 million followers was posting about our brand. Like, "Oh, that's awesome." But now that I look at it, I'm like, who cares? I don't care—nothing. My life didn't change for either one of those two things. We got through the low, and I already forgot about the high. Another one: Rihanna's manager emailed us asking for product. Like, you know, "Rihanna wants her stuff." That's cool. That's exciting.
49:16	Sam Parr	"Wait, wait—hold on. Was Rihanna asking for free stuff?"
49:20	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. They always ask for free stuff. Really? Yeah, rich people don't pay for things.
49:25	Sam Parr	"That's insane to me."
49:27	Shaan Puri	"You thought rich people buy things. They request things, and you gladly give it to them."
49:32	Sam Parr	"Have you DM'd? I—I think I've done it maybe twice. Have you DM'd people asking for free stuff?"
49:38	Shaan Puri	No, I've never DM'd anyone asking for free stuff. I think the lowest I've stooped is saying, "Yo, this is great—if anybody wants to send me one, I'm happy to take it." That's the thing I can recall. I don't think I have; maybe I have—I don't remember ever DMing someone to ask for free stuff. In fact, we usually go the other way: if it's a friend's product or somebody we know, we promote or support them instead...
49:59	Sam Parr	About it.
49:59	Shaan Puri	We want to be their first customer, and we want to purchase it to show—because, you know, it kind of feels good.
50:05	Sam Parr	Right.
50:06	Shaan Puri	Seems like the right thing to do. Another one — Christmas Eve. This last year, the Mexican president blocked all imports. So, like, "hey, that's cool" — our warehouse is in Mexico, and on Christmas Eve all imports were blocked with no notice. There was nothing you could do.
50:25	Sam Parr	But.
50:25	Shaan Puri	Dude, think you cool the shit at the port.
50:29	Sam Parr	"Do you have a coup staging team?"
50:32	Shaan Puri	This is just in one business. This is just in the e-commerce business. This is not even including that I have five other businesses. So imagine: if this has a high or low every two or three months, now multiply that by six businesses. That means every single month you're getting hit with a high and a low in one of the businesses.
50:51	Sam Parr	I think it was cool. You said something, actually, that was quite good, which is: "It feels nice to label certain emotions because it makes you feel better." I went through a... It's sort of—what's that? That's... we always reference that meme where, like...
51:04	Shaan Puri	Midway.
51:04	Sam Parr	Yeah, this is like the opposite of that. When I was really young and not very successful, I consumed tons of motivational stuff. Then I started doing some things, and I was like, "Oh, that's for weaklings."
51:16	Shaan Puri	"I'll bullshit you."
51:17	Sam Parr	Now I'm like, "No — I actually do like reading about other success stories..."
51:21	Shaan Puri	Love me a good quote nowadays.
51:23	Sam Parr	Yeah, I actually do love that stuff because it feels nice to label something. It's sort of like when you read a book and you're like, "Was this the best book?" People say the same thing about them — they go, "Everything they said was obvious," but it felt nice for them to say it out loud for me to read. To be told what to do, to be reminded of the right things to do — that has helped me all the time. That's like... I pretty much read lots of that, or it's actually my YouTube page; it's like only motivational shit.
51:53	Shaan Puri	Here's the trick: I've rebranded it—just "liking motivation." That's a pretty low-class thing to do. Okay... oh, that's — that's, you know, very low.
52:02	Sam Parr	Status: low.
52:03	Shaan Puri	"Status shit. Oh—oh, I need motivation. I'm so, so weak." I mean, it's like I need a blood transfusion. It's basically what you're saying: "You don't need motivation. You don't like motivation; you like wisdom." Oh my God, "class thing to like" [unclear]. "Alright there, I helped you out." </FormattedResponse>
52:19	Sam Parr	I listened to tons of wisdom. I think it's inspired — yeah, my favorite wisdom.
52:26	Shaan Puri	"I'm a Wisdom Channel speaker."
52:28	Sam Parr	Yeah, there's this YouTube channel called "Motivation 4 U" — best, the best wisdom. </FormattedResponse>
52:33	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. I'll give you another little label. I was reading this book — another high-class thing to do. I found this old book, out of print; I had to call a guy to get it, and it's amazing. It's such a thin book and it's really amazing. It's called... I'm not even gonna tell anybody about it; it's my secret gem. In it, he talks about how to have better ideas. He's this great advertising exec. Somebody asked him a question; he laughed when they asked it and then realized he didn't have a good answer. He started thinking about it and couldn't get the question out of his head. He says: > "I have now come to the realization that producing great ideas can be as reliable of a process as Ford producing Model Ts on the assembly line — and here's how the assembly line works to produce great ideas." One of the things he says in the book — this is just a great quote — is: > "The brain, much like the body, has a second wind," because he's talking about, like, there's gonna be this...
53:31	Shaan Puri	Like "pain cave" — there's a point in the process where you kind of fatigue out. He's like, "Jess, I need you to hang in there. Give it a chance — there's gonna be another one. You have a little, like, 15% left. You're just gonna give yourself a chance for the brain to have a second win, much like the body." Literally, for the last two weeks as I've been working, I've hit this where I'm ready to stop and get distracted. I'll think, "I wanna open up Twitter, or I wanna go eat some food, or do something." The brain has a second one: "Let me just give it a second here." Then I push through for another fifteen minutes, and it's actually been very, very productive — this one little simple idea.
54:08	Sam Parr	"Can I make a guess as to who wrote that? Ignore this if it gives away too much. It was by a copywriter, if I had to guess. Is that right?" </FormattedResponse>
54:15	Shaan Puri	It was by an ad man. Yeah—so he copyrighted it.
54:18	Sam Parr	It's crazy. Copywriters—there's this weird underground world. I don't know if you've ever noticed this: there are copywriters who have a sort of weird, mystical wizardry about them. They end up learning copywriting, but to be a great copywriter you have to understand how humans think. If you could be a master copywriter, you're basically a master at learning what motivates human beings and, thus, you can teach about life. I've come across these guys—old-school internet marketers and people who were around even before the internet. They often have these weird auras around them. If you find a bunch of their old landing pages, they explain some of the things you're talking about. You get on their web pages and you're like, "I have to give you my money," and there's not even a buy-now button—you have to track them down. I've come across a bunch of these guys. One of them is Bill Bonner, the guy who started Agora. Agora Publishing is like a billion-dollar-a-year newsletter business that is quite shady. Another one is Mark Ford. Do you know who Mark Ford is?
55:23	Shaan Puri	"No, who's that?"
55:24	Sam Parr	So he has this book called Ready, Fire, Aim on Business, and he's a pretty under-the-radar guy. I think he's probably in his seventies at this point. But he helped make Agora really popular. There's Eben Pagan—do you know who Eben Pagan is?
55:37	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, Double Your Dating."
55:39	Sam Parr	Eben Pagan was a guy who was one of the first internet marketers because he got going in the nineties when the internet was just getting going. He had an ebook called Double Your Dating, and he wrote it under a pseudonym called David DeAngelo. Eben Pagan is another guy where, if you Google Eben Pagan and come across his courses or books on copywriting, you get entranced. It sort of becomes a moment where you're like, "I used to think this way; then I read this; now my life has just changed." Eben Pagan was one of those guys. A lot of old Russell Brunson stuff is like this, but there's a copywriting world where you come across these old guys—or they're not old. Russell Brunson's not old.
56:16	Shaan Puri	These guys are our age.
56:17	Sam Parr	No. Yeah, I mean... like underground. I don't know how to explain it.
56:21	Shaan Puri	No—yeah. It's almost like they ruled the world, but they're not. Today they're less relevant and not on the forefront or in the center of attention as they were 15, 30, or 40 years ago. There's a bunch of people like that.
56:36	Sam Parr	Yeah, and what happens — and a lot of people don't realize it — is you can just copy exactly what they do and it still works. You don't have to invent anything. I'll give you an example: there's this guy named Dan Kennedy. We talked about Alex Hormozi, and a lot of people say this to Alex as if it's an insult. I don't think it's an insult at all, but they'll say, "You just ripped off Dan Kennedy." So I started reading a bunch of his stuff. It's not an insult at all. It's totally okay to steal from the greats. If you read a lot of Dan Kennedy's work—first off, if you Google Dan Kennedy you're going to see what he looks like and you're probably... you'd probably dismiss him, be like, "Oh, what does this person know about business?" because he literally looks like a cowboy. But you read his books and his advice is beautiful, so long as you come with an open mind, and it's incredibly effective. It's sort of like we talked about books where you say phrases like, "it's banned in prison because it's too powerful." They all have catchphrases like that.
57:25	Shaan Puri	I love copywriting. I think there are certain professions where it's almost Darwinian. If your goal was to be a copywriter — or, extending that, an adman like the Ogilvys of the world — the only way to survive is to have breakthrough ideas and be super persuasive with the written word. It's like an animal on an island that had to develop a shell to survive. If you wanted to survive in that climate, sharpening that one skill was the only option. If you want greater persuasion and to be great at the written word, you can learn from many people. You could study Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, but those guys had to excel in other disciplines to do what they did. They might be good — maybe even really good — at copywriting, but for some people, copywriting was the only way they could make it. Those people honed that skill intensely. You see the same pattern in other fields. With a lot of investors we have on the podcast, you expect talk about stocks and analysis, but 95% of what they focus on is mastering their own psychology: disciplining themselves, developing impulse control, thinking independently, and being comfortable in their own skin. That combination of independent thinking, self-control, playing the long game, and patience is what was required to be great in the investment world. And then you talk to people who are, say, comedians, and they often turn out to be truth-tellers in a different way.
59:10	Sam Parr	Yeah.
59:10	Shaan Puri	It's like, well, yeah... that's kind of what comedy is. It's basically seeing things for what they are that nobody's saying out loud—and then we say it out loud. Everybody laughs because everyone already knew it. So you realize, "Oh—these comedians are actually pretty wise and pretty spot-on at spotting the underlying truth." He's like, "Yeah, because if they don't do that, they don't make anyone laugh. They get booed off the stage, and it's horrible." So the ones who survive are the ones who figure out how to do that one thing at a world-class level. You could study different disciplines where the Darwinian—you know, the pressure of natural selection—forced them to become like an A+ at a certain thing.
59:48	Sam Parr	Who do you think falls in that category—where you learn about them and they've done the same thing to you, where you went to them for, let's say, writing, and it changed your life?
59:58	Shaan Puri	Seinfeld — Seinfeld is the easiest example. I wanted this year to, like, make myself funnier. I just sort of assumed that growing up you're either funny or you're not. In my house, my sister's really funny, so it was always: she's the funny one and the great storyteller; I was the nice kid. From a young age I had a desire to be more like her — to be as funny as she is. People from the podcast would say, "You're a great storyteller." I'm like, "Yeah—haven't seen my sister; she's amazing at this. I'm just okay." Over time, as I've grown up, I've realized a lot of these things that seem like you either have it or you don't — creativity, humor, storytelling — are actually skills you can develop. If you just try, you can get way better at them. So humor was one I focused on. This year I decided to work on it: I thought, "Let me just take two weeks and see what there is to learn; let me see if I can make myself funnier." I went and studied Seinfeld for the jokes, and I came away thinking this man is wise and has one of the best creative processes. The way he works has changed the way I work — a complete, night-and-day difference.
01:01:06	Sam Parr	In what way?
01:01:08	Shaan Puri	Seinfeld does this thing in the morning — you may know about this, but maybe others don't. For the last forty-five years, Seinfeld has had a morning routine. Seinfeld's morning routine is very simple. He says, "If you want to be a comedian and you want to write — to tell great jokes — you've got to write jokes every day." So he wakes up in the morning, sits down with a yellow legal pad, a pen, and a coffee, and he has two hours where he's pre-input, pre-everything: no meetings, nobody can call him. He doesn't read the newspaper or check social media; he doesn't do anything else. He's like, "I'm going to do two hours of this, and then I can do whatever I want for the rest of the day." He sits down and does his two-hour morning block. It's a two-hour morning routine he's done every day for forty-five years. There’s a photo where he took the pages from his yellow legal pads over the forty years and laid them out on the street [I think in New York].
01:01:56	Sam Parr	"No way, you."
01:01:57	Shaan Puri	I haven't seen this.
01:01:58	Sam Parr	No, I'm gonna...
01:01:58	Shaan Puri	Google it. It literally becomes the yellow brick road.
01:02:01	Sam Parr	"This is awesome. Are you kidding me? This is so cool."
01:02:04	Shaan Puri	So, to promote his book—he published a book basically of all his scrap jokes that he didn't put into his stand-up—it's called Is This Anything? I think that's the name of the book. To promote it he did this "yellow brick road" of all his yellow pages. For example, before this, my routine was: wake up, check Slack, check my email, then start to think about what I'm going to do. Then I get kind of hungry, so I go do that. Then, oh, I had a meeting scheduled at nine, so I'm going to get to my main thing at eleven. Seinfeld's like, keeping it sacred: "What's your main thing? If you're going to be creative, you're going to spend two hours in the morning creating. That's it." Tim Urban from Wait But Why told me the same thing. He goes, "All I have to do in life is wake up and spend the first two hours writing. If I do that, life is amazing. If I don't do that, my life sucks." He says, "And by the way, it's only two hours. It's not eight hours, it's not ten hours. I don't have to keep grinding all day. Two hours is more than enough if I actually do it." Seinfeld does that, and he talks about writer's block. People ask, "Jerry, what do you do on days where you don't know what to write?" He says, "What do you mean? Of course we've all felt it—there's writer's block." He replies, "No. No, no. There's lazy, there's afraid, there's having too high of expectations, but there's no writer's block. Let's be clear." He describes the security of "writer's block"—you accept your own mediocrity. He says don't sit down and think, "Today I'm going to make this great thing; it's going to be so amazing; the words are going to flow; I'm going to make this funny joke." That's what stops you. What you need to do is almost an anti-affirmation. Sit down and say, "Today I'm going to sit down. It's going to be hard to write. The thing I'm going to come up with is going to pretty much suck. I'm going to look at it and hate it. I'll want to crumple it up and throw it in the trash. It's going to be that bad. But I'm going to put it down on paper anyway, because every once in a while there'll be a little nugget of something good. After I find a little nugget, I might be able to polish it with a ton of work later and make it great." I have taken that and completely stolen it as my daily process from this guy. I went to learn about how to make people laugh, and I'm like, "That's awesome. I learned how to work, how to live." He talks about transcendental meditation. People say, "Oh, that's really great—you love meditation?" He says, "No. I just want to write great jokes." He says you have to "whip the mind, whip the body." He explains: "Why do I work out? To be a better comedian. Why do I meditate? To recharge my battery so I can be a better comedian. All this stuff I do is to be a better comedian." He says you'll learn pretty quick: if you don't work out, you're leaving some of yourself on the table from being able to do your best work. If you don't do something like meditation to recharge your mental battery, you're going to do worse work. It's just as simple as that.
01:04:41	Sam Parr	That's so great, Jerry. I listened to a lot of his YouTube videos and his interviews because it's the same thing — I learn more about life than anything. There's a famous one where he talks about consultants and comedians and making jokes... what's he say about that?
01:04:58	Shaan Puri	So the joke is: he's getting interviewed by the Harvard Business Review, and they say, "You and Larry David famously wrote Seinfeld together with no writer's room — just the two of you. You wrote every single season, every episode, and burnout was one of the reasons you stopped the show in the end. Was there a more sustainable way to do it? Could McKinsey have helped you find a better model?" And he goes, "Who's McKinsey?"
01:05:25	Sam Parr	"Wait—did they really ask that?"
01:05:26	Shaan Puri	"Yeah." He goes, "Who's McKinsey?" and they go, "It's a consulting firm." He goes, "Are they funny?" They go, "No." He goes, "Then I don't need them." "If you're efficient—if you're efficient, you're doing it the wrong way. The right way is the hard way." "The show is successful because I micromanaged it: every word, every line, every take, every edit, every casting. That is my way of life."
01:05:46	Sam Parr	Did you have this up right now?
01:05:49	Shaan Puri	Dude, I have a dossier on Seinfeld. Like I told [you], I studied this man. I went deep on this.
01:05:55	Sam Parr	"That's awesome. Have you ever seen him live?"
01:05:59	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I've seen Syphalo. Honestly, it wasn't that funny, but I was...
01:06:02	Sam Parr	"I'm going to say the same thing. I was going to say the same thing."
01:06:04	Shaan Puri	He's a guy. Don't love his comedy, actually.
01:06:06	Sam Parr	His stand-up is meh. His writing is the best, but his stand-up, for some reason, is just fine.
01:06:13	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, it's like... just okay."
01:06:15	Sam Parr	"I've been upset."
01:06:16	Shaan Puri	But it's — it's important. Why I really love this guy, right? Because he's been touring for 50 years as a comedian. Fifty years. This is unbelievable. LeBron James is jealous of Jerry Seinfeld's longevity. It's like 50 years — unbelievable longevity as a touring comedian. He's also, I think it was remarkable, one of the first and only billionaire comedians, mostly because of Seinfeld the show. He sold "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee" for about $100,000,000... like he's...
01:06:42	Sam Parr	"Did he really?"
01:06:42	Shaan Puri	Netflix picked it up for $100,000,000. He's a superstar—an outlier. The great thing about Seinfeld is that, if you see him, he's not naturally just oozing charisma and talent. Some people can do amazing impressions and you think, "I could never do that." Other people just have a knack—a gift of gab—you can see it in how they grew up. They just seem so funny. Seinfeld, though, looks like an HR manager. He doesn't look like the most naturally talented guy, and that's kind of why I love him. He's the most successful comedian because he's a craftsman. He squeezed everything out of his natural talent. How often does that really happen? How often do people really maximize their potential? Very rare.
01:07:27	Sam Parr	I remember when I was starting The Hustle, I cold-emailed Scott Belsky and asked him to invest. He didn't want to invest at first, but I added him to The Hustle and started writing extra-good emails. He eventually replied: "This is so good. Can I invest a very small sum? But I just want to let you know — you're fantastic. This is great." He also let me hang out with him. For anyone listening, Scott Belsky is known as a legendary investor. But before he was this amazing investor, he had started Behance, which he sold for about $175 million. He was nearly the CEO of Adobe, one of the largest companies in the world. I think now he works at A24 — is that right? — like the big-shot Hollywood production company.
01:08:13	Shaan Puri	He's been, like, Chief Strategy Officer and something else.
01:08:16	Sam Parr	And I didn't listen to his advice when I met with him, and I always regretted that. I didn't understand it until now. He was basically saying the exact opposite of "scale, scale, scale." I was thinking, "I need to automate this, I need to hire more people, I need to stop writing this email every day and making it great, I need to add more revenue, I need to get more advertisers." He, on the other hand, was like: go in a room, not have anyone around, and write this email every single day for about four or five years. He used a word I'd never heard anyone use in that way—"steward." He said, "You need to be a steward of greatness and a steward of taste for your audience." I didn't understand what that entirely meant at the time. In my head I thought, "But you're wanting me to act like a small business owner, like a craftsman. I'm not trying to be some garage band—I'm trying to be Lady Gaga. I want to sell out stadiums. What are you talking about being a craftsman? Why would I act small? I want to sell out." It took me years to understand what he meant: you can become this huge, successful person and also be a craftsman who honestly does great work. It seems silly now, but look at Dave Portnoy—he's had his hands in it and has been consistent for about 25 years. He's ridiculous, sometimes obnoxious, but he's done exactly what Scott Belsky said: be in the thick of it, focus purely on creative work, and be a steward for taste. I didn't understand what that meant until I was about 32. I think he told me this when I was 26, and I remember thinking, "Scott, how are you so successful? You don't know anything about business, and you're telling me not to focus on scaling and all this?" </FormattedResponse>
01:10:12	Shaan Puri	"Gaga, Scott, Gaga."
01:10:14	Sam Parr	But now that I know some of these people who are actually making the most money are still craftsmen. I distinctly remember thinking, "I want to sell at stadiums. I'm trying to sell out." I'm not trying to be a small Korean family-owned bodega; I'm trying to take over the world, baby.
01:10:32	Shaan Puri	You said Dave Portnoy. There's another guy who's like that: Bill Simmons. He's probably—you're right—he's probably the reason I'm doing a podcast today. I was back in college, I don't know, that was 2007, listening to the "BS Report." I used to fall asleep listening to the "BS Report." At the time, podcasts were nothing. He had been a blogger before that, then he was an ESPN columnist, then he did the podcast, then he did "30 for 30" documentaries, and then he... he got fired from ESPN because he started The Ringer. </FormattedResponse>
01:11:05	Sam Parr	"Why do you get fired?"
01:11:07	Shaan Puri	He was pretty outspoken against Roger Goodell, the NFL commissioner. </FormattedResponse>
01:11:11	Sam Parr	"He's like..."
01:11:11	Shaan Puri	"This guy's kind of covering shit up. It's not that he doesn't care."
01:11:17	Sam Parr	He could be contained. That—that was like a domestic.
01:11:18	Shaan Puri	There was a whole violence thing — concussion stuff — and he would make jokes, but the NFL and ESPN were his biggest partners. He got suspended a couple of times and they decided he was too hard to work with. They killed his project, Grantland, and they fired him. He came back after licking his wounds a little bit with The Ringer, which is basically Grantland again. He’d been doing that for a long time, and he ended up selling it to Spotify for $200,000,000. There’s a great tweet that was going around the other day. The tweet showed a video of Bill Simmons walking through the office carrying a chair — like a school chair — and a microphone. Someone behind him is filming and says, "Bill, what are you doing?" He replies that a trade had just happened in the NFL — the Mike Parsons trade had just happened. It wasn’t a huge story in the grand scheme of things, but it was the biggest story that week for them. His company had like 15 other podcasts, and there was an NFL podcast going on, so he said, "I gotta go talk about this." He barges in, sets down his chair and microphone, and wants to talk about it with the guys. Someone tweeted, "Honestly, respect — this guy’s been doing this for like 20 years, he’s worth like $200,000,000, and yet on a Thursday he can’t wait. He’s literally carrying his chair and microphone and wants to sit with his friends and do a podcast about this trade. That’s kind of goals." That stuck with me. That’s really what you want: a job that’s so fun and so you that the money in the bank doesn’t matter. You just want to do the thing.
01:13:04	Shaan Puri	Where you're just going to carry your chair down the hallway and try to find a podcast to go do about it, you know? I thought that was great.
01:13:09	Sam Parr	Where is he now? So, is Grantland still a thing?
01:13:12	Shaan Puri	Grantland died with ESPN. He created The Ringer. The Ringer sold.
01:13:14	Sam Parr	Or the ringer.
01:13:15	Shaan Puri	I mean, Spotify... so it's part of Spotify, and he's been making bank ever since.
01:13:22	Sam Parr	"Why haven't we been able to get him on here? You've talked about him four or five times, as if he's your number one."
01:13:27	Shaan Puri	He's like, "That girl at the dance — I don't want to approach."</FormattedResponse>
01:13:30	Sam Parr	Yeah.
01:13:31	Shaan Puri	"I'm like, 'Hold on. I just gotta—like, I'm gonna fix my shirt real quick. I gotta put on my shirt. I gotta go. I gotta go get some punch; I'm thirsty. Yeah, I gotta do... I'll do everything else except ask him.'"</FormattedResponse>
01:13:41	Sam Parr	Yeah, I mean, he looks pretty awesome. I don't really know anything about him. I would love to talk to this dude—he seems great. And you've talked about him like he's prolific. Yeah... is he? Is he...?
01:13:53	Shaan Puri	Yeah. I mean, to go from a dude who couldn't even get hired by a local paper to starting a blog early on the internet, and then parlaying that blog into getting his own section—eventually becoming the highest-paid sports writer at ESPN. But the thing is, it's not just that he was the highest-paid or successful. He did it his way. He created an entire style of writing on a publication like ESPN. He basically wrote like a blogger on ESPN—nobody did that. He wasn't impartial. He was like, "No — I love the Red Sox. I love the Patriots. I'm from Boston. What are you talking about? I'm gonna write like a fan." Sometimes he'd be pissed at what his team was doing; sometimes he'd be excited about it. He'd make a bunch of references to MTV, Road Rules, The Challenge. He did what interested him, even though none of it was by the book. Then he got into podcasting early on, and later did the documentary series. He built the most successful sports documentary series.
01:14:47	Sam Parr	What—"30 for 30"?</FormattedResponse>
01:14:48	Shaan Puri	"30 for 30" — he liked it; it was his brainchild. He conceived it and created it inside of ESPN. Nobody believed in it, basically, and he kind of fought for it, got it done, and it became super successful. He's epic, dude — what he's done is incredible. Even on the podcast, you would never know. He never references the fact that he's basically richer than a lot of the athletes he covers. He's super well connected to them, but he tries to never let that creep into his content. Also, he didn't really rub it in ESPN's face, which he very much could have. They literally kicked him to the curb and didn't believe in him. They told him Grantland—the idea—was a failure: "that's a money loser; it doesn't work." He replicated the same business and sold it for $200,000,000, so he could have done a victory lap and never did.
01:15:37	Sam Parr	That's awesome. I'm a... I'm a Bill Simmons fan now.
01:15:40	Shaan Puri	There you go.
01:15:40	Sam Parr	"Should I interview him without you?"
01:15:42	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, I think he should."
01:15:43	Sam Parr	I would.
01:15:44	Shaan Puri	Love that, actually.
01:15:44	Sam Parr	"So, Sean's not here today."
01:15:45	Shaan Puri	But he's.
01:15:46	Sam Parr	Too much? You're his inspiration; he would do anything for you. There's not a...
01:15:50	Shaan Puri	"A couple of these guests where you fangirl—that would be one where I'd be—I'd be too much of a fangirl, and it really would be counterproductive to the podcast."
01:15:58	Sam Parr	That would be great—to get you rattled. You're not normally someone who gets rattled. Alright, that was a good episode. I enjoyed that. But yeah, that's—that's the pod.

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