I Did Nothing For 2 Weeks. It Made Me Better At Everything.

- November 12, 2025 (4 months ago) • 01:04:47

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	You know, I have a soft spot in my heart for immigrants.
00:02	Shaan Puri	You do love immigrants, dude.
00:04	Sam Parr	"Yeah, like Korean store-owner energy, so."
00:06	Shaan Puri	"It's almost racist how much you love immigrants."
00:15	Sam Parr	"Dude, what's going on? I haven't seen you in about two weeks." "Yeah, I had a baby, so I took time off." "You were doing some family stuff. What's going on?"
00:25	Shaan Puri	"Let's talk about your baby first, because it's much happier. I went to my grandpa's funeral, so let's not start with the saddest news possible. Tell me about the baby, you—yeah?"
00:33	Sam Parr	So, we were due—I think—on the twentieth... maybe the thirteenth or the twelfth, or something like that. My wife said, "I don't want to freak you out," and it was 10 p.m. She said, "My water just broke."
00:43	Shaan Puri	Dude, what an unbelievable sentence. She didn't want to freak you out — she's so considerate. As her water broke, that's unbelievable. That's the most Sarah thing I've ever heard.
00:52	Sam Parr	And so, we went to the hospital. We gave birth — she gave birth.
00:55	Shaan Puri	"It don't—[unintelligible]. Don't bring that weed shit in here. Okay? This is a space for realness."
01:01	Sam Parr	"It was great for me — no big deal. I mean, I was exhausted and I complained about it for a week. I took two weeks off, and it got me faking."
01:12	Shaan Puri	"Wait—before we even get to that, I need to know the birthing situation. What's your role? What are you doing? Are you a hand-holder, a coach, off to the side, or the cameraman? What are you doing?"
01:22	Sam Parr	She had to get a C-section, so I don't do anything.
01:25	Shaan Puri	So you're out of the room.
01:26	Sam Parr	Yeah, so I eventually came into the room, and she was like, "They give— they give her medication that makes her shake or whatever." I was basically just rubbing her face and calming her down. But my wife is very stoic, so I've been, by the way, lucky I don't... [sentence trails off]
01:38	Shaan Puri	Sometimes I get put in a situation and I'm like, "Oh — need that. This is where I'm supposed to be comforting." Then I realize I've never once done that. It's like when you swing a tennis racket: the pressure's all off. You don't really know how much force to apply or how much not to. Also—why is my hand so sticky right now? It's terrible.
01:56	Sam Parr	When I got engaged, I started to put my knee down to the ground. I was like, "a bat on the back will be fine." [unclear phrase: "a bat on the back"]
02:05	Shaan Puri	It's the little things that you've never practiced: that lunge, and then giving a speech upwards. This is, like, a very strange thing. </FormattedResponse>
02:13	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's just a handshake.
02:17	Shaan Puri	"Hey, put her there."
02:19	Sam Parr	Yeah, we.
02:21	Shaan Puri	We did a pinky promise, and that's held true. When my sister was giving birth, she had a longer labor—it was taking a while. My brother-in-law was napping on the couch in the room. She looked over at him and said, "Hey, get your ass up." He replied, "Oh, sorry... I'm just so, so stressed and tired." She said, "You're so stressed and tired," with pure venom in that situation. It was too much... yeah, for...
02:49	Sam Parr	There's this funny joke: "I'm so happy that women have to go through hours and hours of labor and pain so they can finally experience the pain that a man feels when he has a cold." We've had two children now, and I've experienced this. Basically, we are all built for things, and sometimes we rise to the occasion. Women somehow can fight being tired and in pain, whereas I'm just going to complain if I get anything less than seven hours of sleep a night. So yeah, women kind of become superheroes during those moments, and I'm happy that she did that so everyone's healthy and happy. I'm feeling great. I took two weeks off and was chomping at the bit to get back to it after, honestly, four days.
03:36	Shaan Puri	You're like, "I need a Zoom call. Someone—someone, hit me with a Zoom call today. What were we chomping at the bit to do, exactly?"
03:42	Sam Parr	You know, a newborn child doesn't do anything. They just sleep, and I'm so happy.
03:48	Shaan Puri	"You're bored, yeah?"
03:49	Sam Parr	Yeah. I'm so happy I got to experience this with her. In this particular case, we have a two-year-old, and I got to spend time with her—taking her to her classes and saying, "Just so you know, I love you so much, and you're important," even though all this new stuff is happening. That touched my heart, and I'm so happy I had that. But I didn't need more than two weeks. Two weeks is more than enough. Did you agree?
04:07	Shaan Puri	Yeah, 100%. Here—again, this is a zone of truth, so here's...
04:11	Sam Parr	"Yeah—let's clip this. This is gonna be a rage-bait clip that's gonna go viral: a tech bro's opinion on maternity leave. Go."
04:19	Shaan Puri	Let me tell you how it actually is: childbirth from the man's perspective. First of all, I would say a couple things. There seem to be two groups of people. There are the people who touch their baby, hold their baby for the first time, and their life has changed—the endorphins kick in and there's this entire inner, spiritual awakening. That didn't happen for me. It doesn't happen for a lot of people. It takes me like 15 months to love a baby. I care for the baby before then. I wish the baby well; I want no harm to come to the baby. But do I crave holding and touching and doing the things my wife loves about it? No. She's like, "Oh—smell!" and I'm like, "The smell? I don't even smell the baby. What do you mean? Why are you so... sniffing the baby?"
04:59	Sam Parr	Can I save you? You love your baby, but you may not be in love with them.
05:04	Shaan Puri	I mean, I might be a little generous. Alright — I was just trying to talk to a lifeline [unclear]. I cared for the baby. I wanted to love the baby, but I didn't actually feel anything for about fifteen months. After that, by the way, it blossomed — it's an incredible experience. My kids are: a one-and-a-half-year-old, a four-year-old, and a six-year-old. I can't get enough now. From the men's perspective, I think the second thing is paternity leave — it can be a little confusing. What I actually think is useful is to take the week off before birth to do little stuff around the house, just be there as a calming presence, and take some of the everyday load off your partner before birth. I think that's really useful. Then, for the first few days after birth, you want to keep the calendar clear because you never know what's going to happen during a birth. After that initial period, though, I wasn't particularly useful — I felt that way — and kind of wish I had planned differently. What I ended up doing with my other kids was spacing out time more intermittently. For example, the two-week window of the week before birth and the week after birth is a good window. Then consider another block around month three or four, when you might hit a sleep regression or other issues. Spreading out paternity leave like that is very useful. If you just sit there right after birth, the baby can feel like an inanimate object at the beginning — they sleep a ton. Assuming your partner's health went well (knock on wood), there's not a whole lot to do. So I kind of agree with you that initial paternity leave can be a lot of nervous energy and not a lot of productive help.
06:48	Sam Parr	Yeah, and it made me realize that taking time off and vacationing somewhere is kind of lame compared to taking time off and just sitting at home and walking around your town. That's actually a special feeling. It honestly felt like a week — a mini-retirement — because I was able to putter around in the morning and not rush. I read a ton. I would say almost a book a week. The reason I read so much is because my philosophy toward reading is: I want to see what worked for the winners I love and what strategies they used. Then I want to see what mistakes they all made, what common flaws they had, and I just want to avoid those. So HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025, and I did that. I listed seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life, and I explained the differences they had on me and the actions I took because of each book. I also listed my particular ways of reading, because I'm pretty strategic about how I read, how I read so much, and how I remember what I read. I put this together in a very simple guide — seven books that had a huge impact on my life. You can scan the QR code below if you want to read it, or there's a link — you guys know what to do, there's a link in the description. Just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide that I made. So it's the seven books that had a massive change on my life this year so far, and also how I'm able to read so much. So check it out below. Dude, have you ever read — have I told you about Aristotle? I've been interested in some of his work lately.
08:18	Shaan Puri	"You haven't told me about Aristotle. Go, go, go—on."
08:20	Sam Parr	So, Stoicism gets a lot of the credit right now. Stoicism's quite popular. </FormattedResponse>
08:25	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so hot right now.
08:26	Sam Parr	Yeah, so Marcus Aurelius is the Stoic guy at the moment, but Aristotle is one of the folks who influenced a lot of these guys. I'm probably going to get a lot of it wrong, so spare me in the comments. But basically, what I've been obsessed with is this idea he has — this idea of flourishing. I think the Greek word for it is [missing in transcript]. It's the idea that there are 12 or 14 virtues. In order to be courageous — which is one of his virtues — on the right-hand side is being reckless, and on the left-hand side is basically being, like, "a pussy" — I don't know the right word — like being soft or timid. The middle part is courageous. And then there's like 14 of them, which include being charitable... you want to... [sentence trails off]
09:13	Shaan Puri	"Oh, pretty cool. So it has the extremes, where the virtue becomes a vice on either side, right? Yeah — overdoing it and then underdoing it. Okay."
09:22	Sam Parr	I like... and then there's "charitable." On one side, that's being ostentatious—giving too much and actually hurting people, which is what a lot of rich rappers would do: give all their friends money.
09:32	Shaan Puri	And enable your posse.
09:34	Sam Parr	Yeah, and then the other one is, like, being bigger.
09:37	Shaan Puri	"Pussy again? Yeah, that's almost the left side."
09:41	Sam Parr	So, according to Aristotle, one of the ways to live a harmonious life that's full of flourishing—which is not just trying to be happy but to flourish—is to have these fourteen virtues. He also talks about leisure time and how many people think of leisure as a way to recoup from work. But according to him, a perfect life—a happy, flourishing life—needs some leisure time where you get to reflect. The reflection is the goal, not the time you take to refuel. I have been really obsessed with a lot of his work because it's an incredibly practical philosophy. A lot of philosophical stuff is not particularly practical, but I was experiencing work recently and I was going... I was so happy to go home to see my family. I was happy to get up in the morning to work out, and I was like, "Why do I feel this way? What's going on?" And I was like...
10:31	Shaan Puri	I'm flourishing.
10:31	Sam Parr	"I'm fucking flourishing. That's how I felt. I'm like, this is... I don't feel happy necessarily; I feel like I'm working hard, but at the moment stress does not equal pain — stress equals growth. I felt wonderful. Taking my two weeks off has just added to that. I felt refreshed, and I had so much time to reflect and to think about things, and I love that. Right — the importance of being at leisure and the importance of having unscheduled time, which I know you do. I think you said 20 days a year. What's interesting is that it seems as though you have come to a similar conclusion that Aristotle came to: the idea of leisure time just to reflect and to think. We've heard Bill Gates talk about that — he has one week a year to think, every single..." [sentence unfinished]
11:16	Shaan Puri	Week or whatever. Yeah.
11:16	Sam Parr	Yeah.
11:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I really like that. I think I'm pretty poor at one thing you mentioned, which is just making time to think. If I look at my calendar, I do have a lot of leisure time. I play the piano, I'll go to a tennis lesson, I'll play basketball, I'll do my workout, I'll play with my kids. I do a lot of other stuff besides work, so I get this kind of—maybe a fun life, a harmonious life, a balanced life. But what I don't do is spend a lot of time in silence—dedicated think time. I've been trying to get better at this, but when you try to get better at something, the first realization is how far you have to go. It's like flexibility: it's not top of mind until someone says, "Can you do this test?" and then you realize, "Oh my god, no, I'm not even close." That's how I am about think time. I would say, over the past decade, the amount of dedicated time I planned to think—like consciously deciding, "I'm not going to fill this with something else right now"—was basically zero. I honestly think it was zero. In the last decade of my life I don't think I ever actually consciously spent think time. Sure, I would think while driving or in the shower, but that was accidental. A happy accident. My brain was probably like, "We've got these thoughts queued up; we've been waiting for a moment where you're not stuffing new stuff into your brain through your phone, through your TV, through your computer, through meetings, through doing something, through reading..." So dedicated think time, I think, is extremely underrated. I'm at the beginning of that curve—I'm just starting to do it—and I'm realizing, "Oh man, this is so obvious," and I really wasn't doing this before. I remember when we met Tim Ferriss. I asked him, sometimes, "What does Tim Ferriss do day to day?" He's like, "Dude, this is the question I get a lot: 'What is my daily routine?'" People expect a really awesome answer. He's actually been asked by a writer from some magazine, like, "Hey, we want to follow you for a day and write a profile," or "We want to film a one-day documentary of Tim Ferriss' day in the life." He's always said no—not just because he likes privacy, but because it would be incredibly boring. He said, "I wake up and I sort of stretch, I'll drink some tea, I putter around for quite a while, and I have long periods of inaction where I'm just trying to think: What is it that I really want to do? What is it that I actually should do in this situation? How do I want to approach this? Do I really want to do this?" He actually spends time with his thoughts. I remember hearing that and thinking, "I don't do any of that stuff." It's like when you hear a really productive manager talk about all the thoughtful things they do to manage their employees, and you're like, "Oh—I just had a pizza party like a month ago. I thought that was good. I thought that was enough."
14:09	Sam Parr	I think you said something funny about shower thoughts. I don't think a lot of people realize that you can help engineer breakthroughs. There are things in your life that you can do to... engineer breakthroughs. I've been thinking about what that looks like for me: it's been slow mornings. I try my hardest to get up earlier than I actually have to because I like to walk around and drink coffee. Then I'll wake the children up or I'll exercise, but literally just thirty minutes to poke around. I have breakthroughs when I'm working out. I have breakthroughs when I'm journaling. I have breakthroughs when I'm reading. I also have breakthroughs when I schedule organized times to talk with people—without an agenda. For example, I'll have someone interesting at my office because they're in town and I'm like, "I don't know, man—let's just riff for thirty minutes. What's your story?" You had a breakthrough when you started the Milk Road after you went to a conference on a topic that had nothing to do with your usual interests. This is why conferences are great. This is why I hope Hampton is great. Sometimes people get a little bit of that feeling by listening to our podcast, where they feel like they're around us, but talking to other people and just listening to their opinions without an agenda is another great way to have a breakthrough.
15:13	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I've been writing. I told you I was writing this book, and the premise of the book was—well, it happened accidentally. I started... it was embarrassing. I was trying to be funnier, so I started studying comedy, which is not really what I think any naturally funny person has ever done. Probably not the best way to go about it. I got really into Seinfeld. Through that, I realized this guy isn't just about comedy; he has a way of working that's really interesting—an approach, a mindset, and a literal set of daily habits that are pretty admirable. I started studying other great people: how do all the great ones work? What are the habits of people who've done great things? Because I want to be a great person who does great things. Along the way, one thing surprised me. When you're researching anything, it's the surprises you look for. The thing that surprised me was how much engineered rest matters. I'll just give you three quick ones on this. Aaron Sorkin—who wrote The West Wing and The Social Network, a great Hollywood screenwriter—when he's writing a script, he takes eight showers a day. He says he will just keep showering because "I have my best shot thoughts in the shower." There's science about why warm water and a relaxed, distraction-free environment help your brain relax, let the muscles loosen a bit, and produce more out-of-the-box ideas. It's also just a reset: every time he gets stuck, he goes to the shower and quickly gets through the plateau because he does that. Einstein used to... did you know about Einstein's boat?
16:45	Sam Parr	No, no — I wouldn't have pegged Einstein as a boater.
16:50	Shaan Puri	He was a prolific boater. The Coast Guard had a lot of problems with Einstein. What Einstein would do, in the middle of the day, was get on a tiny, no-motor boat and just float out into the sea. He would stay there for hours because, he said, "I do my best thinking out here in the sea." He did this aimlessly in the afternoons. The Coast Guard was really worried because they thought, "You don't have a motor attached to your boat—how are you going to get back if the tide pulls you too far?" Einstein's response was basically, "The further, the better." That's where he did most of his quality thinking. I was telling my wife this and she said, "Oh yeah, at work we had this lady come in—a neuroscientist—and she told us you do your best thinking in motion or in water. This is why so many people walk and why they swim." Pavel Durov was on Lex Fridman and talks about how he goes for four-hour swims because he does his best thinking when he's swimming. That's one of his routines: "I get fitness and I get thinking all at the same time." You can't be on your phone when you're in the middle of a lake for four hours—you're just out there. Another one: Darwin. Darwin used to go for walks whenever he was noodling on a problem. If he had a problem, he'd go for a walk. He used to walk laps, and on every lap he would kick a stone at the same spot—eventually knocking one stone off the bridge, his starting point.
18:21	Shaan Puri	He would talk about his problems as "four-stone problems" or "five-stone problems." He could measure the difficulty of a problem by how many stones it took, or how many laps of walking he needed before he felt he'd made headway on it. So this idea of engineered rest — which looks incredibly unproductive when you're doing it right, like taking a nap — is important. Some of the great inventors and artists took quick, twenty-minute naps; there's a lot of science behind why that works. These mini naps, or going for walks or going for a swim, literally look like you're not working. It looks like you're a "lazy bastard." But if you look at how the great ones actually work, this is part of their productivity routine. It looks completely unproductive, yet it's effective.
19:05	Sam Parr	Six or twelve months ago you were debating a big project. You were saying, "I'm being pulled in a variety of directions and I can't decide what I want to do, but my heart is telling me to do something creative—almost like a play." I was like, "Wow, that sounds pretty badass. That sounds amazing." It seems a book on creativity wasn't even on the list, but that actually sounds even more badass than all these other options because you're describing it so well. I'm like, I want this book. I need this. Not only do I want it—I have problems. I should go for a [three-stone walk?] and... give me more tips and tricks on how to solve my problems so I can think better. Tell me about the book. How many pages? Is this going to be like a 200-, 300-, or 400-page book, or is this more like... no?
19:45	Shaan Puri	So, the premise of what I'm doing... I guess this will be my announcement.
19:51	Sam Parr	No. We'll do a whole podcast dedicated to these.
19:53	Shaan Puri	No — I guess what I mean is, I can just go ahead and share what I'm doing. I've created this little—it's a bit like a franchise, like a series. I have this problem with books: I buy a ton of books, I want to read a ton of books, but I don't actually read a ton of books. One reason books are long and slow isn't because a 300-page book needed to be 300 pages — that's really a relic of the publishing industry. If you talk to publishers (I've done this), and you want to publish a thinner book, they'll say, "Oh, it’s not going to sell as well." Because when people want to spend, say, $15, they need to feel like they're getting value. They literally need to hold a heavier object. So whatever the size of your idea was, guess what: "We need 250 pages," right? Because we want to sell this book and it needs to have that sort of weight to it. I actually understand that — there's a cool physical component to it. But how many books have you read that could have been a blog post? It's like how many meetings could have been an email. A lot of books have a couple of great ideas and then 200 pages of fluff, and you're like, "Okay, I got it." One of my biggest pet peeves is that. When I studied how great creatives work, one thing they do really well is pay attention to their irritation. Seinfeld said, "Irritation is what breeds innovation." He used to hate being invited on late-night talk shows like Jimmy Fallon — he said they were so formulaic and cookie-cutter. That's why he created Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee — he asked, "What's the exact opposite of that talk show?" It was just, me and my friend in a car, driving to get coffee: no audience, no applause sign, none of that. He took his irritation with the format and did the opposite, using that energy to create something better. So I decided to create a series called One Hour Books. The idea is: can I create books that are life-changing if you read them, but that you can read in one hour — a single sitting? If you buy the book and read it in one sitting on a couch, you'll actually consume the whole book and get everything you need out of it — whatever the book's promise was. I'm creating this series on different topics that I've been obsessed with.
22:12	Shaan Puri	There was a time when I was really obsessed with value investing — you know, Warren Buffett and how these great investors think. I wanted to take the most powerful ideas: the best ideas I found in my research, the things that surprised me, the things I actually liked and started to use in my life. For example, this creativity book changed the way I'm approaching being a creator. I work completely differently than I did 12 months ago. It's because I basically stole shit from Seinfeld, Disney, Roop Rubin, and Pixar — all these people I went and studied to figure out a better way to work. So yeah, the book's only going to be, I don't know, about 75 pages. It will be the size of a book you could read in one sitting. If anybody from the podcast [podcast listeners] wants to check out the book early and see behind-the-scenes stuff, just go to 1hourbooks.co. I'll put it on the screen and in the description. If you go to 1hourbooks.co, anyone can sign up. If you're a fan of the pod, I kind of want to show you how I'm making the book, share the behind-the-scenes stuff, and give you a free gift when it launches. Go there if you want to check that out.
23:15	Sam Parr	"And is it—are you going to go through a publisher or self-publish?"
23:17	Shaan Puri	I don't know yet. It doesn't really matter. All that matters right now is making one amazing book. I can't really—anything else doesn't really matter. It's like one book that I'm like, "Oh man, if I read this, this would go on my top shelf. This would be one of my favorite books," because it actually resonated with me and the stories were really dope and made me laugh. Those are some of the goals with how I do this.
23:37	Sam Parr	If I had to bet, this is going to be the most successful thing you've ever done. My instinct — and I don't want to do this right now — is to be like, "Oh, can you just tell me all of the things that you learned from Rick Rubin, all these people? It's like I want to apply this immediately."
23:51	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. I mean, I could—and I will tell you all those things. But yeah, I think it's gonna be great. Honestly, the way I have this... I try to, when I do a project, find a kind of three-word, almost north star or campaign slogan for myself. As I wander through the idea, you start to go down different little rabbit holes and you hit little bumps and bruises. You sort of need something to come back to. Mine for this is "create the TED for books." TED today is not as cool as it was, but when I was younger, TED was the shit. It was the best—TED Talks, TED videos—those were amazing. And, dude...
24:29	Sam Parr	Going to a TED event was... I just imagined myself: "I'm gonna be hobnobbing with the President of America. I'm gonna be like Bill Gates." It was like an honor.
24:39	Shaan Puri	And what they did was create a format. They're like, "Yo, here's what we're gonna do: 18-minute talks on this kind of beautiful stage." It's going to be a certain quality of person who comes at you with one big idea—one counterintuitive idea or one powerful idea. And then the mission was "ideas worth sharing." I actually fuck with that. I think that's incredible. Although TED has kind of fallen off, it did help me because as I'm doing this I'm like, "Alright, well, I'm trying to find the best ideas worth sharing, and I want to create a format that's consistent and a clear proposition: I'm going to spend literally 10,000 hours researching this, and I'm going to give you all of the best stories and ideas structured together in a one-hour book." Ten thousand hours of my time for one hour of your time is just an incredible trade that I think anybody should make, because I'm going all in on this. I've been working on this for about a year now, and it's tough—it's a hard thing to do—but I think it's coming out pretty good.
25:31	Sam Parr	What makes—so, I always hear people say "writing a book is hard." Tim Ferriss was like, "I don't wish it on my worst enemy." And I'm like... really? I mean, I've never done it, but I'm like, this sounds pretty great. You just spend all this time thinking and writing, and you get, like, two years to do it. That sounds lovely. But what are the downsides?
25:48	Shaan Puri	Well, I mean, there are a ton of downsides. You don't do this if you're looking for anything quick. You don't do this if you're looking for a high chance of success. The two things I think most people want are a high chance of success and for it to happen fast. Books go the exact opposite way. It's typically a one- to two-year process, sometimes five. George R. R. Martin is still trying to write a book after 13 years. So, books take a long time and have very low odds of success. Even when they do succeed, it's nothing compared to, say, if I went and built a company. In my portfolio right now, there are things that are far easier and far more valuable to do. Podcasts, for example, are far easier and far more valuable than writing a book. You don't write the book for other people—you write the book for yourself. I think that's the only way to do it. One of the great things that happens when I talk to people for advice is this: a hundred people come to me because, "Oh, you wrote a bestseller," and people want to ask about a book. As a result, you learn that everybody wants to have written a book; nobody wants to write a book. So the very first thing is you have to figure out: do you want to have written a book, or do you want to write a book? That's why I chose a subject that is currently fascinating to me and applies to me. I get to be the lab rat—actually doing the things that are in the book and using the principles—because it's the book I needed right now, even though it's probably not the thing I know the most about or the most relevant or the most marketable.
27:15	Sam Parr	Dude, this is badass. This is so exciting, and... I don't think I've heard you light up about a project for a while.
27:21	Shaan Puri	Well, I was looking for a challenge. I was looking for something new—something hard for me. This is like the opposite of who I am. I'm an improv guy. I'm a quick guy. I'm an unscheduled guy. That's what I've known and what I've done well with, so this is very different. It requires consistency. It requires sitting down every single day and a don't-miss-a-day mentality, which is good. It's also what I needed to get in shape, and it's what I need to do to learn the piano. All the things I'm trying to do right now require the same set of internal muscles to actually succeed. The other hard thing about it is this: when you do projects where you're like, "I'm gonna make a hundred of these—any one doesn't matter," that's different. With a book, you're like, "I'm gonna make one. I'm gonna make this one book and it's gonna be what it's gonna be." The level of internal pressure you put on yourself to make it great is intense. You can't say, "Oh, I'll just get started and then we'll iterate from there." It doesn't really work that way. You want to put one great thing out. There's a craftsman-like nature to that, and there's something cool about the constraint: you're only really going to write this thing once, so you better do it the best you possibly can. It's not something where you're going to get a hundred shots on goal at the same idea.
28:30	Sam Parr	I could never do this — or maybe I would one day. The best books that I read... think Ron Chernow is one of my favorite authors. He wrote "Titan," which is the story of John Rockefeller. He wrote "Hamilton," which became "Hamilton," and he's written one on Mark Twain and a couple of others. These are biographies; he's a biographer. Same with Robert Greene. If you've ever read Robert Greene, every sentence is packed — every sentence is very purposeful. And those two authors aren't particularly easy to read, but every sentence is full of stuff, and the books are like 800 or 1,000 pages. I'm just in awe. It's sort of like when you go to Yosemite for the first time and you see Half Dome and you're like, "I can't believe that something is as big and beautiful," and I don't even like the outdoors. Every once in a while I've read a book where I'm like, this is a religious experience — not necessarily because of the content, but because of how much effort the person put into it. It's a marvel. When I think about "Harry Potter," I'm like, how on earth did this one lady invent this world? She literally invented a language. I don't even like "Harry Potter," but I'm in awe of this.
29:38	Shaan Puri	That's another example: you get your best ideas in motion or in water. The idea for Harry Potter sort of drops into her head when she's on a train ride. She's in motion, sitting there idle, doesn't have Internet access, and can't do ten other things. There's nothing else you can do when you sit on the train except think, and that's when your brain is open for, you know, creative inspiration.
29:58	Sam Parr	"Do you think that doing deep work is harder today than it was before the internet? When you're talking about writing a book, I'm like—I struggle to get people to stop messaging me. I'm absolutely addicted to my notifications; I can't have an unread text message. But then I have texts, Slack, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and email."
30:16	Shaan Puri	Well, let me give you one of the quotes. I think this is going to be in one of the first few pages of the book. Shonda Rhimes, who is a prolific creator—Netflix gave her $100,000,000 not for stuff she's already made but just to make new things. Like, "you're getting paid $100,000,000 for your reputation, your ability to create great, great stuff in the future." She created Bridgerton and Grey's Anatomy and a bunch of other hit shows. Okay, so she lived
30:42	Sam Parr	In my little town of Westport.
30:44	Shaan Puri	Really well. She was talking about her process and she said, "Okay, like, know what they're—like, how does your creative process work? How do you work? Again, the same idea: how do the great ones actually work?" And here's how she described her morning: > Imagine a door five miles away, and those five miles to go—the five miles—that's you writing crap and doodling and just trying to have an idea. Sometimes you are surfing the internet, hoping like hell you're not going to get so distracted that you give up. Worse, those five miles that you've got to run are lined with cupcakes and episodes of Game of Thrones, and Idris Elba wants to talk to you. There are really great books you could go read. Every time I sit down to write, I mentally have to run those five miles past all that stuff to get to the door. > > It's a long, hard five-mile run, and sometimes I'm almost dead by the time I get to the door. That's why I keep doing it. The more often I run the five miles, the fitter I become. The fitter I become, the easier it is to run, and the less fresh and exciting all that stuff on the side of the road starts to seem. I mean, how long have those brownies even been sitting there? > > More importantly, the fitter I run, the faster I run. The faster I run, the faster I get to the door. Behind the door is where all the good shit is—that's where the great ideas lie. It's behind the door.
31:53	Sam Parr	"That gives me goosebumps."
31:54	Shaan Puri	I know, right? Every day I wake up and I spend two hours—what I call "eating shit for breakfast." It's the idea that you're going to make something that probably sucks today, but you're going to sit down and make it. You're going to do your five-mile run. You're going to ignore the distractions of the world. You're going to do deep work on the one thing that matters: the main project, your Mount Everest in your mind that you're trying to create. All it takes is two hours, first thing in the morning, without any other distraction. At the beginning, when you sit down and start to do the thing, your initial work kind of sucks. The first few sentences you write suck. The first few ideas for that marketing campaign kind of suck. It's all going to kind of suck, and you just have to keep going to get to the door. Behind that door is where the good stuff is. If you have that mentality, what ends up happening is you push past where the amateur will give up. The amateur will sit down, start something, and when it kinda sucks they'll seek a reason to stop—whether it's a distraction, talking themselves out of it, or settling for one of many easier things. You might think the difference between pros and amateurs is talent—that pros just have better talent, so when they sit down they make good stuff and when I sit down I make bad stuff. No. Actually, when the pro sits down they make the same type of bad stuff you do. They just keep going. They sit down more and stick with it. They're able to face their own mediocrity and tolerate it much longer than you can. </FormattedResponse>
33:21	Sam Parr	Paul Graham has an amazing article on procrastination that kind of changed my life. [Paul Graham — founder of Y Combinator (YC), one of the most successful business incubators of all time] He says there are three types of procrastination. Type 1: You just don't do the thing you're supposed to do. This is the most common form. Type 2: This is incredibly common among ambitious people. They tell themselves, "I'm researching," or "I'm writing a to‑do list," or they use other professionally sounding tasks — but in reality it's procrastination. It's completely worthless. Type 3 (the best type): This is the good kind of procrastination. He says, "I'll explain what it is," but first he describes the stereotype of the forgetful scientist — the Albert Einstein type who has mismatched socks, hasn't showered, and looks kind of disheveled. That kind of procrastination can be good because if you are doing your life's work, you have to ignore other things. Sometimes that means ignoring things the world thinks are really important, like wearing matching socks or worrying about your appearance. He points out that people made fun of Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg when they were young for wearing hoodies and pajama bottoms and not dressing nicely. At the time they didn't have a good answer, but the reality was they were focused on their life's work. They weren't focused on how to look good or how to appease other people — they were doing the best type of procrastination. To be great, you have to avoid the first two types and focus on the third. That will annoy and piss off a lot of people, but that's how you do your life's work.
34:54	Shaan Puri	"I love that. I mean, this type of stuff just fires me up, so that's great. I love that."
34:59	Sam Parr	It's great, man. I like when I read that. I was like, "so good," was like...
35:02	Shaan Puri	You just might have gotten yourself quoted in the book, my friend.
35:04	Sam Parr	Yeah. I was like, "Hey, if you actually Google Sam Parr procrastination, I wrote an article about it." I told my wife, and she was like, "Yes, Sarah—like, get off my back."
35:14	Shaan Puri	Doing my life's work over here. She's like, "You're on Twitter."
35:17	Sam Parr	Repeat after me, Sarah: "Life's work — not take trash out." It didn't land. I just printed off his article. I slid it over during dinner and I was like, "Read that."
35:31	Shaan Puri	That's amazing. I do want to share something I think you'll appreciate. I didn't plan to share this, but I think you'll appreciate it, so I'll say it. As you know, my grandfather died—he was 98 years old.
35:42	Sam Parr	Was he in America?
35:44	Shaan Puri	In America, he lives in D.C. [Washington, D.C.], so I flew to D.C. and we went to the funeral. Funerals are what they are — they're sad. But I think he was 98 years old. He had a great life and was healthy for almost all of it, almost until the very end.
35:57	Sam Parr	"Are Indian funerals like traditional American funerals, or do you guys ham it up?" </FormattedResponse>
36:01	Shaan Puri	They do the cremation, and there are also some... I don't know, parts where you're like, is this what we're supposed to be doing right now? They basically have the casket—this is kind of too much info—but they have the casket or whatever. I think, in American funerals (I don't really know exactly what happens at American funerals), you sort of go, give your thoughts and prayers, maybe put a flower down or something like that. At eighty four [unclear: "eighty four"], right before they have the send-off—the final thing right before cremation—the guy breaks out a gallon of milk, a bunch of food, and you basically pour all this stuff on top of the body. It feels completely blasphemous. I put, like, a drop, and he's like, "No, no—the whole gallon."
36:42	Sam Parr	Was like, "Grandpa's thirsty, Sean."
36:44	Shaan Puri	[At a funeral] Pouring milk all over this man — this was ridiculous. That part was a little strange, but the rest was, I would say, normal. People gave their eulogies and whatnot. So my dad goes up and gives a speech. My dad had told me this story before. You just had a kid, so this is kind of for all the dads out there. The best thing my grandpa ever did as a dad — which I'm going to steal, and I think others should steal it too. My dad and my family — my dad's family — grew up dirt-poor in India, like the middle of nowhere. On Google Maps you have to pinch to zoom three times to even see the little town my dad grew up in. Somehow that kid was born there and now, sixty-something years later, he's got a mansion in San Francisco and an iPhone in his pocket. It's kind of crazy that that kid ended up doing this. It doesn't really make a lot of sense.
37:36	Sam Parr	So, imagine your dad saying, "My son is going to be a famous YouTuber in America, you know what I mean? He's going to be writing books on creativity." It's a wild journey.
37:47	Shaan Puri	It doesn't make any sense — "million dollars to talk." How do you get from there to there? He was telling stories about growing up poor. "We couldn't afford anything. I hadn't seen a movie until I was 16. One day we got one bottle of Coca‑Cola and split it among the four kids. That was a highlight of my childhood." He still remembers that memory today. One of the things he says his dad did for him was this: "My dad... he didn't have money. He couldn't give me fancy anything. He couldn't send me to a fancy school. We didn't have a lot of toys. He didn't give me anything in that area. But the one thing he did give me was he gave me this belief from the very beginning. He brainwashed me that I was special." "There was no evidence — I didn't do anything special — but he just felt like, 'I'm special,' and he just kept saying it." He would say it in public. He would take me to his job. My grandfather worked, I think, at kind of a government, almost a weapons factory, and he would take me there. The manager would say, "Oh, there's the little one — there's my guy. Here, wear the hard hat. Someday you'll be here. You can run this place." And my grandfather would go to his boss and say, "No way. This boy — my boy — he's not going to work in a factory. This boy's special. You don't know. This boy's special. He's going to do incredible things. He's going to be in America. He's going to be doing incredible things someday. He's not going to work in a factory." He kind of breathed this belief into me. He always said it. He never explained why he believed it or how it would happen, but he was so sure that I became kind of sure, and I started to believe that about myself. He says that was almost like a magic bean — this bean was my belief in myself. I see this all the time with my kids. It's very easy to criticize kids — they do dumb stuff all the time. It's very easy to tell them off for not doing things the right way. It's very easy to mix praise and criticism. My brother‑in‑law has been doing the same thing with his daughter, who showed a little talent in soccer. He went all in. He created an Instagram account called "Raising Ronaldo." He's like, "I'm raising Ronaldo right now. This is not my daughter; this is the next Ronaldo." He puts posters up and just continues: "When you're playing pro, I'm going to be in the crowd. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that."
40:20	Sam Parr	"Is this Aaron?"
40:21	Shaan Puri	Aaron, yeah — he's been saying this for like eight years now. She's 10, you know. She's young, she believes, and she works like somebody who is the next… like she's training seven days a week, no days off. On vacation they take the ball and go to a hundred, you know — when they keep the ball in their juggles, like a hundred juggles in a row. They don't do breakfast before that. It's incredible, and it reminded me of… "I'm gonna read you this."
40:45	Sam Parr	Is Brother Aaron's daughter into it?
40:49	Shaan Puri	And, by the way, she’s into it, which makes it sound like, “Oh, that’s easy. My kid wouldn’t be into it.” Well, I was there, and it’s not as black or white with a kid. Some days they’re into it; some days they’re tired and cranky. Some days they have a hard— you know, he puts her— she only plays basically against boys, and so it’s harder to play against boys that are a year or two older than her. Sometimes she doesn’t get to dominate and she has a tough game or whatever. On those days, guess what? She doesn’t want to go do it again the next day. He doesn’t force her to do anything, but he never wavers in his conviction. That, over time, has overwhelmed her—he’s completely brainwashed her in the positive direction. I want to read you this story from this soccer player, Marcelo. This guy basically told the story about his grandfather. They were talking about what it feels like to be the star player for— I think he played for Real Madrid, one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world. You make millions of dollars, you’re adored by fans everywhere. He goes, this is the quote: > “You have to understand where I come from, brother. I can see the scene like it’s a movie in my head still. I’m eight years old. My family had no money in Brazil. We couldn’t even afford gasoline in our car to make it to practice. So my grandfather— I didn’t know this— but he made a sacrifice to change my life. He sold his car, got a little bit of money [in a bad deal], but that was enough to take the bus every day. So he takes me to training every day on the public bus, side by side, on the crowded bus in the heat, all the way across Rio de Janeiro. Every day, no matter how I played, he tells me, ‘You’re the best. You are Marcelino. One day you’re gonna be playing for Brazil. One day I will see you in the stadium.’ > > “I could still see this, that talk, every day in my head. I can smell the inside of that bus. My grandfather gave his whole life for my dream. His friends used to tease him that he was broke, and he would take out his pocket, show that it’s empty, and say, ‘Hey, look at me, man. I don’t have a single penny, but I’m the happiest mother effer in the world.’ He believed in me. We were partners in this endeavor.” He also talks about his village, how there was his grandfather who did this for him but also the shopkeeper. He couldn’t afford a ball, so he went to the local shop and asked, “Hey, can I have a ball?” The guy’s like, “Yeah, sure. It costs as much.” He goes, “I don’t have the money, but when I’m a professional player when I grow up I’ll come back and I’ll pay you.” He was eight years old, seven years old at the time. The guy just laughed and said, “Alright, take a ball.”
43:09	Sam Parr	You deserve it.
43:10	Shaan Puri	He's like, "Make sure you pay me when you become pro, right?" It kind of pulls on the heartstrings. When he became a pro, he came back and basically bought unlimited balls for every kid in the town — forever — and was just like, "No kid will have that problem now." I hear these stories, and it reminds you of the power that a father or grandfather can have in shaping a kid. Actually, the best thing you could give them is fundamentally a belief that they're going to be great. People will rise to your assumption if they don't have a strong assumption about themselves, and kids don't have strong assumptions about themselves yet, so you can give them a stronger frame that they'll live up to.
43:52	Sam Parr	Where did your grandpa end up? We'll have the link to this one, but Sean has this amazing story about his mother coming to America and seeing a plane for the first time. I think about that story weekly — it's pretty amazing. Where did your grandpa end up? So he made it to America with his family. Did your father come first and then your grandfather? Yes.
44:13	Shaan Puri	He gets my—my dad. He gets his son to go in, like, kind of a crazy set of circumstances. You know what it is?
44:20	Sam Parr	It's like the Indian Institute—it's like the Indian Technical College, right? The important university in India. But then didn't your dad go to Berkeley?
44:28	Shaan Puri	So he went to IIT in India — basically like Harvard for India. It's even harder to get into because it's like a billion people trying to get into one top school. He got in there by happenstance. Again: when you believe something about yourself, you'll take chances that other people wouldn't. He didn't even know what IIT was. He didn't even know he was supposed to be taking entrance exams. He sees a guy — his friend — on a scooter. He says, "Hey, you wanna come play?" The friend replies, "No, no, I gotta go take this test." He's like, "What test?" The friend says, "I'm trying to get into IIT. It's the best." He asks, "Why do you care? It's so far away — why would you wanna go to school there? Go to school here." The friend says, "Because if I get in there, I can go to America." His grandfather had told him, "You're gonna be in America someday." He hears that and literally hops on the back of the dude's scooter and goes to take the test blind. My dad was a pretty good student because, again, when you don't have anything else — no TV, nothing — all he had were his textbooks, so he studied. He ended up getting into IIT; I think he ranked like 39th in all of India — something crazy like that. He got a scholarship to come study at Boulder University in Colorado and arrived in the dead of the night.
45:36	Sam Parr	Becomes a pothead a week later.
45:38	Shaan Puri	Yeah, well, he could've easily... He arrived in the dead of night. He had a scholarship — that was the only way he could go there. When you come from India, I don't think people realize this: you're not allowed to bring in assets. Not that my grandma and my family had assets, but you could only bring in a very small amount of money — like $6 or something like that. My dad had $6 when he came to America. Basically, he had to figure things out. He was told, "Don't worry — housing and tuition are paid by the school." But he arrived in December, and the admissions office was closed for winter break. So he's literally just outside in the cold — in winter, in Colorado — thinking, "What do I do?" He had never been on a plane before; everything was new. Then some French student — another international student who wasn't home for the holidays — sees him and says, "Dude, what are you doing?" He replies, "I'm trying to get into this place."
46:21	Sam Parr	Trying to go to school.
46:22	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so that guy just takes him in. He's like, "Come stay with me," so he just lives with this guy. So, you know, again, somebody helps him out along the way. Anyway, my dad brings my grandfather over when he gets here.
46:32	Sam Parr	How old? Wait, wait—hold on. So your father was, like, college-age?
46:36	Shaan Puri	21 22
46:37	Sam Parr	And he—he was only 21, and he brought his father over.
46:40	Shaan Puri	He brings his... over. Over the next few years, he brings his father over, brings his brother over, but he gets everybody over, right? That's, like, the role of that kind of the eldest son—to, like...
46:49	Sam Parr	So, your dad was the shit.
46:51	Shaan Puri	Well, yeah. I mean, what he did changed the direction of, kind of, his tribe. My grandfather would come over, and I remember when I was a kid we used to go with him to his vending. He had a vending-machine side hustle. We would collect all the quarters out of four vending machines he was running at the time. Then he upgraded—he got a little snack shop in the office building, and we used to sit at the cashier there doing that all day. He basically just kind of had some hustles. The other thing I thought was kind of admirable was that when he was in his seventies or eighties, when the computer came out—I don't know if you remember, we had a computer room in our house with one desktop computer for the whole family—he would come in and he would try to learn how to type. Now imagine a 75-year-old or 80-year-old guy...
47:33	Sam Parr	Doing it like this.
47:34	Shaan Puri	You know, he's not just trying to use the computer — he's literally saying, "I want to learn how to type, like a skill." I asked him, "What do you have planned? What are you going to do with all this typing?" He didn't care. He said, "No, this is the new thing." He basically never gave up on himself. He was like, "Never too… too old." Most older people are like, "That's too bad, that's too complicated, that's for young people," but he never had that attitude. He was like, "If it exists, it's for me." He worked at Circuit City in the DVD section when he was about 80 years old. People would be like, "Do you know anything about movies or music? American movies or—" and he'd say no. He would joke, "They can't fire me though because I'm so old — it would be discrimination." It's hilarious. They were too afraid to fire him even though he didn't know much about the job. Circuit City had to go bankrupt before they could get rid of him. He was kind of stubborn in that way. He would never take medicine, even at the end. Last month he broke his femur when he fell — breaking your femur is the biggest bone in your body; it's a pretty rough break. Even when he was in the hospital and immobilized, he would be doing arm exercises because he'd say, "Oh, I'm gonna be back, and I gotta keep my body active." That was always his mentality. Those are a lot of the things I admire and will always remember about him.
48:44	Sam Parr	How did you get to D.C.?
48:46	Shaan Puri	When they came over, it was like, "Where are we going to live?" They lived with us for a while in Colorado. Then, when it was like, "Okay, that's enough living with us now—thank you," it was, "Here's DC [Washington, D.C.]," where some of the other siblings live. So we got them a house there, and they live there.
49:00	Sam Parr	I've been thinking—like we've been thinking—about some slogans for Hampton. I've been obsessed with this idea of building what outlives you. The phrase "build what outlives you" is something I've been fixated on. That doesn't necessarily mean business—it could—but the idea is broader. What's interesting is that your grandfather has been the best example so far of building what outlives you. Telling the story about how he gave his son this attitude, which then my father gave to me—you know, my father passed it on to me—is the best example of building something that outlives you. In this case, a positive attitude is what outlived him. I find that very fascinating. Frankly, I find it to be the most admirable thing a man can do: to build what outlives you. It's legacy—not legacy in the sense that your name will be on a building or whatever—but that I live a certain way because this man lived a certain way. Because this man lived a certain way, and because that grandfather lived a certain way, I now treat people wonderfully. That's the most beautiful example of building what outlives you.
50:01	Shaan Puri	"Yeah. Do you know your family history? I've heard this sometimes where people are like, 'My great-great-grandfather did this,' or 'We were actually warriors,' and then people really take that as—'So that's in my blood'—and it really gives them a lot of belief. I didn't even know half the shit about my grandfather until the funeral, when they were telling the stories about his upbringing."
50:21	Sam Parr	No. Frankly, I did not have this. Where I'm from in the Midwest, my people have been here forever—in St. Louis. All my grandparents were dead by the time I was three, and so I lacked a massive sense of belonging. I remember meeting a Jewish guy and him telling me about the traditions of Judaism and having this Friday night meal. I thought, "Oh my god, I crave this tribe. I crave this so much." I also remember moving to San Francisco and walking around the Stanford campus and thinking, "Oh my god, I would love to have this Stanford logo on my LinkedIn," just so I could meet other people who share these values. I've been desperate my whole life for a sense of belonging because I never had that as a kid.
51:04	Shaan Puri	Right. Can I tell you— we talked about books earlier. Can I tell you about this idea for a really interesting business that I had never heard of? Have you ever heard of Little Blue Books?
51:14	Sam Parr	"No, what is it?"
51:15	Shaan Puri	Little. Okay, so check out what I have in my hand: you see this? This is a little blue book. It's not blue, by the way, but it is tiny.
51:22	Sam Parr	So, for the people listening, I googled it. Sean just showed it. It almost looks like you pulled the cover off a book.
51:28	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's a little paperback. I mean, even the paper—it's just paper, like stapled together. Literally, there's a staple on the side, and it's like a three-inch-high book. These were called Little Blue Books. Guess how many copies of Little Blue Books sold?
51:43	Sam Parr	"I have no idea."
51:45	Shaan Puri	Just take a guess.
51:46	Sam Parr	"Oh my God — I just saw the number. Oh my God. Oh my God. Really? Okay."
51:53	Shaan Puri	So, there's been... something like a low-end estimate of 200 million and a high-end estimate of 500 million copies of these books sold.
52:02	Sam Parr	Did you take your idea from this, or did you have your own idea and then realize...?
52:07	Shaan Puri	I was talking to Craig Clemens about my idea for One Hour Books. He said, "Do you know about *Little Blue Books?" I replied, "No." He said, "Oh, dude, you gotta check this out."
52:14	Sam Parr	"Oh my gosh — the titles are the best."
52:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so this one I'm holding right now. By the way, for reference, Harry Potter sold something like 600,000,000 copies. So this is a Harry Potter–level phenomenon that existed a long time ago. This one—the title is The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.
52:32	Sam Parr	Oh my gosh!
52:33	Shaan Puri	He's telling me The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F. "Didn't steal from that," right? Or it'll just be like this one—Proverbs of Turkey [unclear]. They're about popular Shakespearean quotes. A Rapid Calculator: How to Make Rapid Arithmetical Calculations in Your Head. There's one book about doing mental math.
52:49	Sam Parr	- How to Dress on a Small Salary - The Psychology of Leadership - The Puzzle of Personality - Man and His Ancestors
52:56	Shaan Puri	Yes. So they're good at titles; they're good at copywriting. The books themselves, by the way, are not actually good. I spent an afternoon trying to read them because I was like, "Oh—I found this hidden pearl of wisdom from the past." Personally, I didn't really love any of the books, but...
53:11	Sam Parr	Did Craig like this because of the marketing?</FormattedResponse>
53:14	Shaan Puri	He was just like, "This was a— I mean, this was a phenomenon. You should study this and just steal something from what happened so long ago." The reason I bring this up, and why it's related to what you talked about, is: why did these things succeed? I thought maybe they were just incredibly popular or really well written. But they're not—right? Today this could be an Instagram account or something equally simple. The reason this worked was basically: back in the day, before there were public libraries, books were rare. They weren't something the average person could afford or had access to. So there was an access problem and books were in low supply. Then they came out with these small books that cost almost nothing—about 5¢. You could buy one for $0.05 and carry it in your pocket because it was so small. It was portable, affordable, and it became ubiquitous. They sold them at every newspaper stand and corner store—you could put one anywhere because it was so small.
54:12	Sam Parr	It's basically a podcast episode. Exactly.
54:15	Shaan Puri	It's like YouTube videos. What I found interesting was, man, in a time when that's scarce, this could sell 500 million copies—because information was scarce back then. It was actually hard to get information. You couldn't go on Google or YouTube. You couldn't even get a book from a library or afford a lot of this information. So where would you get that information about how to dress on a small salary, or, you know, the quotes from Shakespeare or the proverbs of Aristotle, right?
54:41	Sam Parr	You would hope that your dad would tell you.
54:43	Shaan Puri	Correct. Most people don't, so that became incredibly valuable. Fast forward to today: information is ubiquitous—it's like running water. You can get it anywhere, instantaneously, in whatever style you want. Sometimes, if you go to your feed—Instagram or TikTok—you'll get information you didn't even ask for but might find interesting, curated by this sort of all‑knowing algorithm. So information is now abundant. Something like this, I don't think, could ever work today. The interesting question became: what's scarce today? If information was scarce then, and there was a need for little blue books, what's scarce now? I think it's what you just said. I hate even saying the word belonging, but basically—being part of a tribe is incredibly scarce today, at least in America and in the lives I see around me. Organized religion did this for a lot of people. Group exercise classes like CrossFit and SoulCycle did this job for many. Now, run clubs are incredibly popular. Book clubs are getting more and more popular, which seems counterintuitive to the trend. I think people need this sort of in‑person tribe with rituals, a tribe leader, a banner, and events that you attend. I think that is what is scarce today, and people crave it. Those who properly build that are going to prosper in the future. I think you're doing it with Hampton Byway.
56:11	Sam Parr	Gee, I'm trying to do it. I met this guy—he came into my office the other day. Pomp (Anthony Pompliano) introduced me to this guy, and he was like, "You had..."
56:18	Shaan Puri	Did you just drop that, just like that?
56:20	Sam Parr	Is there a day we need to pick up? I just dropped—did I just drop that?
56:25	Shaan Puri	Your Democratic president.
56:30	Sam Parr	Anthony was like, "You gotta..." I call him Anthony, by the way. It's like on All In sometimes they're referring to the SEC chairman and they're like, "Yeah, look, Tim's doing a great job." So my version of that is Anthony.
56:43	Shaan Puri	Anthony
56:43	Sam Parr	Yeah. So he was like, "You gotta meet this guy." I said, "Well, yeah, whatever—sure." He set it up: "If you're in town, come to my office." I met him, and I was like, "What's your deal?" He's an Italian guy with a thick Italian accent, and he's got this company that's basically making $100 million a year curing loneliness. If you go to weroad.com, the business is crazy. Let me tell you what the product is. The product is basically traveling for 20-, 30-, and 40-year-old professionals. What they do is: if you want to travel, the issue for a lot of young people is they want to travel alone, but they don't literally want to be alone while they travel. They don't want to team up with their friends; they want to go do what they want to do, but with other people who want to do it with them. Their customer base is roughly 80% women and 20% men. They have categories—adventure, nature, historical, and others. You pick a trip you want to go on, and then seven to maybe 15 other young people like you will go on that exact same trip. You'll have a tour guide leading each trip.
57:44	Shaan Puri	So, for example, I clicked "Patagonia Trekking through Argentina and Chile." There are beautiful photos — it just looks unbelievable. It's a thirteen-day trip. You pay $3, and you're going to go with a group of eight to 15 people. There are twelve nights in a hotel or guest house, and breakfasts are included. You get a domestic flight to Buenos Aires. From Buenos Aires, you go from there to the start of the adventure. They list the itinerary day by day: "Day 1: here's what we do," "Day 2: here's what we do," all the way to Day 13.
58:14	Sam Parr	This company, I think, was started in 2020. It's only about five or six years old this year. They're going to do $160,000,000 in revenue. Last year they did $100,000,000 in revenue. And their gross margins — he said "I could say all this" — are 30%.
58:27	Shaan Puri	I've never heard of.
58:27	Sam Parr	This company is amazing, right? I've never heard of it either. So on a $100,000,000 in revenue, after they pay the hotels and the person leading the tour guide, they keep 30%. So a $160,000,000 in revenue—what's that? That's like $50,000,000 in net revenue to their company. Absolutely astounding that this company exists. It's one of these ideas that you told me about and I was like, "Yeah, that sounds like a cute little hobby." They've totally crushed it. I was asking him, "Why do people like this?" He's like, "Well, because people are lonely and they don't want to be alone. We're just one example of how you can solve loneliness, because you go on this trip with strangers and you're going to come home best friends." He said that, in a lot of cases, sometimes people will come home as boyfriend and girlfriend — that happens a lot. I thought this was an absolutely amazing product to solve loneliness. It's like there are these macro trends: physical experiences, things like that, and loneliness — and then there's how do you package that into a solution that you can sell. I'm trying to do it with Hampton in one way; this is a totally other way of doing it. It's crushing me. So that was probably — this is a very, very nice way to package it. It would be nice if I could have my company doing $160,000,000 in revenue in five years, but isn't this pretty cool?
59:43	Shaan Puri	And they do something that looks way more fun and they hook up, so it's basically better in every dimension that I care about. Yeah, this is cool. I mean, my parents do this—my mom does this with seniors as well. She and her siblings, two to three times a year, take these guided tours. It's basically groups of seniors, and because they're like, "we don't have to think," they're going to organize all the sightseeing, all the hotels, all the food—everything. They keep you safe, they have the insurance, they do all that stuff. Then you're with a group, so you can grow with the group or kind of make friends inside it. When you're young, your friends may not all be able to synchronize a trip together, or you don't have enough friends—that's one thing. The other is, if you're empty nesters or seniors, you've got way more time and money on your hands, but travel is still a little difficult and daunting.
01:00:39	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I did it when I was in college—or high school, maybe. An EF tour—is that what it's called? An "educational tour." The company's called EF Tours. It's like a multibillion-dollar company that does that for students. Everyone knows that you can...
01:00:53	Shaan Puri	Do they have an incredible on-campus marketing machine, where they basically have kind of affiliates and then do events?
01:01:01	Sam Parr	An MLM, basically.
01:01:02	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, it's an MLM."
01:01:02	Sam Parr	It's started by a Swedish guy who's a recluse, but he owns the whole bill business. He does about $5 billion in revenue. It's one of those things where you don't realize how big it is.
01:01:12	Shaan Puri	I was too dumb at the time to pay attention to what was happening. But now that I look back with my business lens, that thing was brilliant.
01:01:20	Sam Parr	EF Tours does $11 billion a year in revenue.
01:01:25	Shaan Puri	Dude, if I'm one of those popular travel YouTubers—the fun, adventure-type—I would create something like this. I mean, this is very hard to create, to be clear. But I would steal operators from these companies and be like, "You're going to build this, but you're going to use my brand, my face to spin it up," because these don't really have a strong brand and they are way overdue.
01:01:51	Sam Parr	Interestingly, this guy actually has a San Francisco connection. The guy who started EF Tours—I didn't research this in advance, so I'm just looking at [Wikipedia]—started EF Tours in 1965. They now have 52,000 employees, and his last name is Hult (H-U-L-T): the Hult International Business School, the Hult School in San Francisco, which was, I think, down by Fisherman's Wharf. But anyway—crazy way of solving loneliness. Dude, this was a fun episode. I'm happy we got to catch up. I also think there are times on this podcast when maybe you don't want to talk about something personal because you don't know if people are going to enjoy it or get entertainment or education from a little personal story. But I have to say that I'm incredibly impacted by that story of your grandfather. I have a soft spot in my heart for immigrants, so I loved hearing the story of your mother. I've never heard the story of your father.
01:02:41	Shaan Puri	You do love immigrants, dude.
01:02:42	Sam Parr	"You love immigrants. I love immigrants. Like... I, you know, I kinda categorize first‑born in America, so I even count them as immigrants as well. In that regard, every one of my friends is an immigrant."
01:02:54	Shaan Puri	"It's almost racist how much you love immigrants. Yeah — just playing."
01:03:00	Sam Parr	But seriously, just shut up about it, dude. I married into an immigrant family.
01:03:07	Shaan Puri	By the way, that's one of your phrases that stuck. A lot of people, when they email me about an opportunity, will say, "I got that Korean—what is it, Korean restaurant? What is it, Korean corner-store-owner energy? Or something like that. Like, I got that immigrant mentality."
01:03:19	Sam Parr	Yeah—like Korean store owner energy. In New York, there are corner markets and they are all owned by Asian families. Typically it's a Vietnamese family, and I like to go and talk to these families. I literally just ask them, "What's your story?" The smaller ones are usually owned by Indian families, but there are also a lot of Arabic families. It's very interesting. Then you go to Dunkin' Donuts and that's always Indian, right? And motels are always Indian. I love going and I just want to learn what's going on. I love learning about this stuff—I think it's so fascinating. Immigrants have this us versus them mentality, which I've always craved. I always want to be the "us." Turns out... turns out... turns out I'm on the "them," on the against them. Yeah, you know, like [unclear: "I'm iceland and the muddy ducks"]—like I'm the bad, or I am like the bad guys, you know?
01:04:16	Shaan Puri	Gutter stall over here.
01:04:18	Sam Parr	"I'm the them. I wanted to be the us. I'm the them. That's weird."
01:04:25	Shaan Puri	Alright, that's a good spot for us.
01:04:27	Sam Parr	Alright — that's it. That's the pod.

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I Did Nothing For 2 Weeks. It Made Me Better At Everything.

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