The Most Ridiculous Ways to Make $1M (That Actually Work)

- June 13, 2025 (9 months ago) • 01:06:32

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	So today we're talking about a very specific topic that I never thought we would go to. Sam, did you ever think we'd go here?
00:08	Sam Parr	"Maybe by episode 2,000, but I wasn't sure if it was going to happen this soon."
00:10	Shaan Puri	It's a little early. Today's episode is about the business of butts and guts. Cue the intro music. [intro music] Honestly, it's not an act of desperation to talk about this. Actually, this is us flexing on everybody. It's like, "Dude, we can take anything and we can make it entertaining and about business." I don't know if you've seen Larry Bird. One year he was playing against the Atlanta Hawks and, in the second half, he decided he was just too good and chose to only shoot with his left hand. </FormattedResponse>
00:43	Sam Parr	Yeah, saw that.
00:44	Shaan Puri	And then, for the whole second half, this is our [unclear: "shoot"] only with our left hand: to try to do a full, great business episode with the constraint that everything has to be related to butts and guts.
00:54	Sam Parr	Dude, we actually— we've done an episode on Rose Namajunas, the UFC fighter, when she was doing her walkout because we thought that was inspiring. We actually should have done a whole thing on Larry Bird's trash-talking. It doesn't relate to business, but just his ego. I love.
01:06	Shaan Puri	Also — one of the greatest nicknames ever. In fact, if I was white, I'd try to steal this. "The Hick from French Lick" is one of the greatest nicknames I've ever heard.
01:16	Sam Parr	"It's the best. I love stories where he walks into the all-star room and he's like, "I'm just looking around to see who's gonna get second in the three." Yeah. Alright, so we're gonna do Butts and Guts. That's a—that's a framework. That's something.
01:32	Shaan Puri	Our YouTube team was like, "Hey, guys — we've analyzed the data and you need to do themed episodes. Pick a topic. Don't just show up and shoot shit randomly. You gotta pick a topic that gets more views." So we were like, "Got it." I think they meant something like "three ways to make a million dollars before the age of 25" — you know, YouTube-y type of things. So we're like, "Guys, no worries. We got it. We're gonna do a butts and guts episode. It's gonna pop off. It's gonna be great."
01:57	Sam Parr	Do you have the first—first "Butts and Guts" story?
02:00	Shaan Puri	I have some butts and guts stories. Let me give you...</FormattedResponse>
02:04	Sam Parr	You go first, and then I'll give you a good one.
02:06	Shaan Puri	Okay, I'm gonna give you a quick one. This actually my wife taught me about. A few years ago—maybe seven or eight years ago, before kids—my wife and I were talking. I'm like, "Hey, what are we doing this Saturday? Do you want to go for a hike? The farmer's market? What should we do?" She's like, "I gotta go into the city. I'm taking a class." I say, "A class in the city? What do you mean?" She was kind of evasive: "No, no, I'll be back later. Don't worry about it." Her sister comes and picks her up. I'm like, "What's the class?" She says, "It's called the twerk out." I go home and Google it and see that there's this amazing business. I don't know if you remember when twerking kind of really came on the scene—about ten years ago. There was a woman who basically made it her business. I think she was called Lex Torkout and her name is Lexi. This woman was touring the country and making millions of dollars, teaching women in every city how to twerk. The class would be full. It was sold out months in advance. You would go and there'd be hundreds of women, and she'd be like, "Alright, ladies, put that dump out," and then, "Twerk—let me see it," and, "Get a baseline."
03:19	Shaan Puri	I couldn't believe this, and I started Googling it. Actually, there were several stories of women who jumped on the trend. It's like those businesses that started selling PPE during COVID. When the twerk trend started, there was a story of a woman who was a kindergarten teacher. She decided to take up twerk training as a side hustle and ended up making millions of dollars. It became a big issue because the parents were like, "That's Mrs. Henderson — what is she doing?" I just thought it was amazing that you could make millions of dollars literally just teaching women how to twerk.
03:50	Sam Parr	Where are they now?
03:51	Shaan Puri	So she initially — she was like, "this is the next Zumba." She did all these interviews saying it was the next Zumba: Zumba was this kind of Latin-dancing thing that they translated into a fitness class, and she said, "I'm doing that with twerking." She started getting all these celebrities to come to her events. Christina Milian was a huge fan, and there were other famous people I don't really know who they are. She was approached by investors who said, "Let's blow this up. Let's take this concept nationwide — no, international." Then I think it kind of fizzled out. She's now an aspiring musician — a female rapper. She made her money during that phase when the getting was good. I don't think it turned into the nationwide franchise they had hoped for. I don't know if she just got bored and moved on, or if it fizzled out and the numbers started dropping. But at the time, tickets were hard to come by; it was the hottest ticket in town.
04:49	Sam Parr	"So, did your wife learn how to twerk?"
04:52	Shaan Puri	The funny thing is, she already knew how to twerk. She was just going for a refresher course, you know what I mean? This is just a lifelong learner — a student of the game.
05:03	Sam Parr	My friend Josh had the most precious Instagram story the other day. His five-year-old wanted to learn how to play piano, so they took him to classes. He was getting a little nervous because, at the end of the six- or twelve-month class, you had to do a recital. Josh said, "Screw it—I'm gonna do it too," so he went and learned to play piano alongside his kid. I saw a video of his kid playing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at the recital, and then Josh goes up, sits down, and plays the same thing. I think that could be a really nice mother–daughter (or parent–child) bond your kids could have—they could play together.
05:43	Shaan Puri	This is generational twerking. All right, so that's my— that's my first one. That was just an appetizer, by the way. This is just, like, warm-up stretching for me here. All right, so that's just... I just kind of got my shoulder loose and gave you that one. Go ahead.
05:55	Sam Parr	Okay. fecal microbiota transplants — have you ever heard that term?
06:00	Shaan Puri	"Those are four words I've never heard together."
06:02	Sam Parr	Yeah. Well, it's three—it's three words, but you haven't heard those three either. I came across this in two ways. The first was that I was listening to a podcast with Shane Smith. Shane Smith is the guy who founded VICE, and for a little while—about ten years ago—he was the big man on campus, a big shot. He told a story about how he had colitis or Crohn's—some type of gut issue—and he got surgery where they took another person's poop, like a healthy person's poop, and put it into his gut. Have you heard of that? No. So it's called—fecal microbiota transplants. There's a 90% effective rate.
06:44	Shaan Puri	"It's... it's poop. Or it's not even just the bacteria—it's actual poop that goes in."
06:49	Sam Parr	Well, I don't know where you draw the line. Like, is it a minuscule amount or a tablespoon? I'm not sure. How much do you have to zoom in under a microscope before "poop" becomes just bacteria? Ultimately, it's still fecal matter that you're putting into someone's gut. I was talking to this woman recently who was working on a startup. It sounded ridiculous at first, but it was kind of brilliant and it opened my eyes. They found a handful of people with amazing microbiomes, took their poop, replicated it in a petri dish, and sold it to people. You can get a procedure—I'm not sure if it's technically defined as surgery—but basically you take someone's feces and put it into the recipient, and it changes their microbiome. It has about a 90% effective rate. Her premise was that they could work with fitness influencers. Instead of someone selling a workout plan or an ab plan, you could sell someone else's microbiome. A few promising uses of fecal transplants are for depression, Crohn's, colitis, and even anxiety. Some people even think it could help with autism, because people with autism may have something off with their microbiome, and you can potentially use this to improve those conditions. Harvard did a study in 2019 and found that elite athletes—specifically endurance athletes—have something special in their gut microbiome that gives them slightly better endurance. Specifically, they have a different lactate threshold. Without getting too nitty-gritty: your lactate threshold is how well your body handles lactate buildup during strenuous activity—how effectively it recycles that acid so you can keep going. When researchers transplanted certain endurance athletes' microbiomes into other people, those recipients' endurance improved by roughly 15–20%. This woman's hypothetical example was taking, say, Lance Armstrong's microbiome and selling it. I thought that was insane and incredibly fascinating. I looked up a lot of the research—openbiome.org is a nonprofit that's leading much of this work. It all seems incredibly legitimate, maybe not today, but in the next five or ten years. I thought it was so weird and so awesome.
09:40	Shaan Puri	Would you ever do this?
09:43	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah—for sure, dude. I mean, for sure, for sure. When someone talks about PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs), they talk about it like it's a bad thing. And I'm like, "I want my performance enhanced. I would love that—inject me with everything." I tried so many p... [trails off]
09:57	Shaan Puri	And P.S., "baby performance-enhancing poop" — this is pretty wild. Do you know roughly what stage that's at? Are people doing this? </FormattedResponse>
10:05	Sam Parr	People do. I think it's a wealthy-person thing. I think it's like plastic surgery: you have to have money to do it. You have to be in a certain category to justify it. But no — people for sure are getting this right now for Crohn's and colitis, right?
10:18	Shaan Puri	Okay — hold on. You said I would for sure do this, and that this is available. So, does that mean your appointment is booked, or what does that mean? </FormattedResponse>
10:25	Sam Parr	Well, so what it means is they are doing the... So there's, for example, colitis — that's an illness you have. </FormattedResponse>
10:34	Shaan Puri	"To have a condition to do it, you're saying?"
10:36	Sam Parr	Yeah, that's one of the reasons. Now, if you do it for anxiety or to make me run a faster 5K, I think that's a little more elective, and the money is not in that area at the moment. But studies are showing that it's incredibly promising, so people are doing it — it's just not a common thing.
10:52	Shaan Puri	That's interesting.
10:54	Sam Parr	Alright. I read a ton — I would say almost a book a week. The reason I read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is that I want to see what works for the winners I admire and what strategies they use. I also want to see the mistakes they all made, the common flaws they shared, and avoid those mistakes. 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 what actions I took because of each book. I also listed my very particular ways of reading, because I'm pretty strategic about how I read, how I read so much, and how I remember what I read. I put this together in a very simple guide: seven books that had a huge impact on my life, and also how I'm able to read so much. You can scan the QR code below [QR code] 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 in my life this year so far, and also how I'm able to read so much. Check it out below.
12:00	Shaan Puri	Okay, let's move to number three. Before we do, you wanna take a quick little walk through history here—the history of butts? Yeah, it's pretty interesting. So, back in the olden days it was a highly attractive trait—not for the aesthetic part, but because it was rooted in survival. If somebody has strong glutes or a strong pelvis area, they're going to be able to run, they're going to be able to hunt, and they're likely to have a very long and healthy life. People have studied this. They use a waist-to-hip ratio—you know this waist-to-hip ratio. 0.7 is the ideal waist-to-hip ratio.
12:35	Sam Parr	I think Sir Mix-a-Lot rapped about that, didn't he? Yeah. Wasn't that—did he? I think "Seven" was one of the layers.
12:41	Shaan Puri	The ancient philosopher Sir Mix-a-Lot also pontificated on this. Actually, it was a thing more for men than for women. The appeal of having a nice butt was more important for men because they were the ones who needed to go hunt and gather and all that. Then there's also this statue — I don't know if you've heard... I don't know how you say it — but it's the Venus statue. It literally translates to "Venus of the Beautiful Buttocks." Have you seen this statue before? </FormattedResponse>
13:07	Sam Parr	Let's see.
13:08	Shaan Puri	Okay. It's a Roman statue that was where this woman was just worshipped for having a great butt. </FormattedResponse>
13:13	Sam Parr	"Okay, so I'm zooming in on this statue's butt... I mean, it's fine."
13:17	Shaan Puri	But imagine—back in the Roman days, this was as good as it gets. Back then, they didn't have Kardashian genetics or the surgical enhancements, so this was it. By the way, the comments on this are so funny on Reddit. Literally, the top comment just said, "What am I on Stonehub? It's so good." So, dude, this is—this is very...
13:45	Sam Parr	"Like, this is mediocre—not even in the same category as someone worthy of having a statue that lasts two thousand years to obsess over." </FormattedResponse>
13:53	Shaan Puri	But just think about the honor at the time—to be immortalized in this way.
13:57	Sam Parr	The average person that was had a pancake ass. Then, if this was considered, like, art-worthy...
14:03	Shaan Puri	Right, right. And then there was this era — this is not now, the Victorian era. You might think that was just a phase. No, no: it's just translated from one era to the next. This little thing back here is called the bustle, and the bustle is basically an artificial enhancement to make it look like you have a big butt. This was kind of a Victorian-age trend, and it sort of lasted. It's been the thing for a very long time. Then there was a brief period in the '90s when flat buttocks and slimmer women became the ideal — think Kate Moss, yeah.
14:39	Sam Parr	Like the Kate Moss era. I'm not a fan of that era. Not my favorite era. </FormattedResponse>
14:43	Shaan Puri	Well, luckily the world came to its senses. Then, with J.Lo first, then Beyoncé... I asked AI, "Hey, could you explain how this all shifted?" And it was like, "Honestly, J.Lo."
14:55	Sam Parr	J.Lo
14:55	Shaan Puri	It was a huge influence here, and now it led to—well, what's kind of gone overboard, I would say. There's a new business, and that business is related. So, Tim, do you know the number-one fastest-growing plastic surgery there is? You can probably guess.
15:12	Sam Parr	"I'm guessing it's the 'poopy diaper' Kim Kardashian—what's it called, Brazilian Butt Lift?"
15:19	Shaan Puri	That's right — the Brazilian Butt Lift (BBL). This is a cosmetic surgery where you basically transfer fat. It's actually a double win: you take fat from the belly and inject it into the butt. It is the fastest-growing cosmetic procedure — it's grown 800% in the last decade, so it is growing very fast. "Do you want to see the guy's face who invented this, by the way?" "Yeah?" "Can I interest you in looking at this dude's mug?" "Alright, here we go."
15:49	Sam Parr	Oh, so.
15:50	Shaan Puri	This is the guy.
15:51	Sam Parr	"It's a happy this."
15:52	Shaan Puri	Guy Evo — Evo invented this, and he's actually kind of a legend in the medical profession. In fact, when the Olympics were in Brazil in 2016, he was one of the people chosen to carry the torch [they only select about eight people to touch the torch], so he was one of them. He was the inventor of the procedure, but it didn't become popular until later when they improved it. Originally it was somewhat dangerous and painful, and they've improved it since then. Now nearly $1,000,000,000 a year is spent on BBLs (Brazilian Butt Lifts) just in America. It is the fastest-growing cosmetic surgery, and there's a whole business around it. It's pretty interesting that people have popped up offering recovery services for BBL surgery.
16:37	Sam Parr	How much is it? I don't even know how much these things cost. How much does that cost?
16:41	Shaan Puri	About $12,000 on average. But if you're in Miami and you want the best doctor, you're more like $30,000–$40,000 to get a BBL. </FormattedResponse>
16:49	Sam Parr	That doesn't seem crazy at all, right? To get, like, a huge ass that you have for life. I, like...
16:54	Shaan Puri	So, you just called it a "diaper butt," dude.
16:57	Sam Parr	Well, I'm just saying — if you want your body to be altered, first of all, what are you going to look like when you're an elderly woman?
17:04	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I don't know. I don't think they've done a long-term study on this.
17:07	Sam Parr	But no — I think I've gotten tattoos that cost a quarter of that, so that seems like a steal. </FormattedResponse>
17:16	Shaan Puri	That's funny. Yeah—I don't know. I think it makes sense. It seems painful and dangerous, so there's a pretty long recovery. Actually, there's a whole business around recovery: recovery centers, recovery pillows. Check this out: there's a whole brand, and this is their pillow because you need a special pillow to sleep on. People have looked at it and said, "Alright, if there's a billion dollars a year spent on the BBLs, every one of those people is going to need recovery." They started selling recovery products to them. I've actually seen this trend happen now with pretty much every big macro health trend. We talked about this with Ozempic—when Ozempic's trend started to rise, people created auxiliary products. There's Shotzi, which is an app that helps you...
18:00	Sam Parr	Track that. Your story's wild, right?
18:03	Shaan Puri	That's like a multi-million-dollar subscription SaaS business. It's an app to help you manage your semaglutide injections. There's more, too. People are selling drinks marketed as "Ozempic++" — essentially: "You're on Ozempic; take this to manage your gut health while you're on it," or to actually accelerate the benefits. They're piggybacking on the trend and creating sort of trend-surfing products.
18:33	Sam Parr	"Have you tried it yet, by the way—Ozempic?" "No, that's a shocker, man. I... I still, I microdose it every once in a while, just a little bump."
18:41	Shaan Puri	Biggest slam of the week right there. New segment: Slam of the Week.
18:46	Sam Parr	No, I just... I meant, because it's pretty amazing. It's... if...
18:50	Shaan Puri	"You tell someone, 'It's shocking you haven't tried Ozempic.' You know what that means. You know what that means to a fat person."
18:56	Sam Parr	I am not—I'm not alluding to that at all. I'm just saying that everyone had...
19:00	Shaan Puri	Dude, I had the funniest—funniest thing. I did this blood test and got the results back, and it was like... "Oh, dude," they said. They thought it was bad news: "Your TSH level's really high—your thyroid level's really high, really high. You gotta work on it."
19:15	Sam Parr	Mine was high, too.
19:16	Shaan Puri	And I was like, "Oh, sweet — I got a thyroid issue; that explains it." I was like, "It's not me. It's not my own lack of discipline and self-control that's the problem. It's that I got a thyroid thing." I was with Ramon at the time, and Ramon was like, "Dude, everybody wants to have a thyroid issue." I was like, "It's so true."
19:38	Sam Parr	"Do you think you'll ever try Ozempic?"
19:40	Shaan Puri	I don't think so. I don't think I would, mostly because I've heard such mixed things about it. Some people swear it's one of the greatest inventions of mankind. They say it has all these other benefits and that it's kind of a "no-brainer." Other people say it's going to kill you and sort of mess you up for life. I have no idea where the truth lies in the middle. If you have a way to solve the problem without it, it seems like you should just do that, right? If you don't need to intervene, you shouldn't. I'd like to prove to myself I could do it without it. That's kind of where I landed.
20:13	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm okay taking the shortcut, so—yeah, sign me up.
20:19	Shaan Puri	"Okay, I think this is a good transition for you to tell me about this research you did on our next Butts and Guts business."
20:26	Sam Parr	Alright, it's a big one — the big...
20:29	Shaan Puri	The one you've been researching — the one you've been a big fan of for a while.
20:33	Sam Parr	I have been a big fan of this one for a while. Okay, Sean — these guys are the man. That's who. </FormattedResponse>
20:38	Shaan Puri	They are — they look like your banker's banker, you know what I mean?
20:41	Sam Parr	They do well — they’ve got it going on. The guy on the left is James Phu-Bin Liu, also known as James Liu. I think he started Chegg, the textbook company, where he got wealthy. Then he worked at Amazon and a couple other companies. He’s basically an early Internet / Web 1.0 guy, so he made a lot of money being early on the internet. He crushed it, and now he runs this thing called Longview Capital. The guy on the right is Raymond Zajj — Ray. He runs a hedge fund and he's also a big shot. He lives in Singapore, so he must be incredibly wealthy; I'm sure he's there for some type of tax reasons. But he's definitely a billionaire. Those two guys are responsible for one of the best turnarounds in a long time. They are the largest shareholders in an app called Grindr, an app that is beloved by many. It’s an app that I had to download "for research purposes only" — which I need to disclose because every single financial analyst I saw talking about this app put the exact same thing. I found it hilarious that they included a disclosure saying, "I only downloaded this for research purposes." Anyway, do you know your buddy James? What's James's last name?
21:56	Shaan Puri	James Courier
21:57	Sam Parr	So James Currier had a partner named Rick Marini. These two guys created a bunch of apps. They created Tickle, which got huge — it was one of the first viral apps of all time. Then they helped create Monster... was that another one, or no — BranchOut? You remember BranchOut? It branched out, yep. Got you, like...
22:16	Shaan Puri	"It was like LinkedIn built on top of Facebook."
22:19	Sam Parr	Yeah, they created these viral apps, right? They were kinda like the OG guys of "going viral," actually. And that's actually where your old partner — the guy who founded Bebo, I believe — worked there. So it's like this whole...
22:32	Shaan Puri	Silicon Valley vibe. Original. Viral mafia.
22:35	Sam Parr	Yeah. So in 2019, I hung out with Rick Marini because he spoke at HustleCon. Rick Marini is just a very corporate-looking guy. Rick made this announcement that he and this other guy named Jeff, with the backing of Ray Ray and James, bought this company called Grindr. I had heard of Grindr, but it was one of those things where when I'd heard about it I was like, "Oh—I forgot that it was even a thing." They bought this app for $600 million, I believe.
23:04	Shaan Puri	"Was it public or was it private?"
23:05	Sam Parr	You know, it was private. Interestingly, it was owned by a Chinese company. It was started by a guy — a gay guy in LA — who was trying to solve his own need. He wanted to meet dudes and created this app, and it just grew organically. It wasn't very well run. A Chinese company bought it — a company that helped to make Clash of Clans — and the Chinese company was accused by the US government of blackmailing users. For example, on Grindr you can use features that let you be a closeted gay guy, so you don't have to give away your full identity to other users. You can even say, "I do or do not have HIV." The US government accused the Chinese company of using users' information nefariously, and they said, "You've got to sell this thing." That's where Rick, this guy named Jeff, James Liu, and Ray stepped in. They bought the company for $600,000,000 and, right away, they basically fired everyone. In one of their proxy statements they said they replaced something like 90% of the staff and rebuilt the company. I think when they bought Grindr it had about two and a half stars on the app store. These guys — with Rick Marini and Jeff at the helm — turned it around so much that if you Google "Grindr stock," it has outperformed every other dating app. Basically, if you look at Bumble — Bumble has $1 billion in revenue — they're not worth nearly as much, I believe, as Grindr.
24:36	Shaan Puri	Grindr — it's worth 4.6 billion right now, and the stock is up 30% this year, 155% year-to-date, and 120% over the last five years.
24:48	Sam Parr	It's been a very steady increase. This app—like, since their SPAC [special purpose acquisition company]—they're actually one of the handful of SPAC success stories. You know, SPACs got popular in, what, 2021, and like, they all sucked. These guys have absolutely crushed it. I was reading about their turnaround and what they did, and it's pretty freaking amazing how they've turned this business around to be as successful as it is now. I thought it was interesting that when it went public there was this dude named James, who's Asian. I think he literally studied rocket science at the University of Michigan. And then Ray Zaj, who runs a hedge fund out of Singapore, is the first billionaire of the crew—the first guy involved to become a billionaire.
25:33	Shaan Puri	Does Rick still run it, or no?</FormattedResponse>
25:35	Sam Parr	No, no, no, no. I think they're out. I think they did a proper turnaround and they bounced. It's pretty obvious why it works. You know, it's sort of like grind. Have you ever played Call of Duty or James Bond? Have you ever seen the mini-map on the top left with red dots, and you just run to that dot for immediate action? That's pretty much what Grider is. </FormattedResponse>
25:56	Shaan Puri	"It's so true. Way back in the day—2012, 2013—when I was at Monkey Fern, one of the apps we were trying to build was a dating app. We had this idea; I think it was called... this horrible name, like 'Get Out There' or something. The premise was a dating app where instead of messaging people, you actually go on dates. This was before Tinder had come out on the iPhone. There weren't any mobile dating apps really popular because, again, like I said—even Tinder hadn't come out. There were a couple that were doing okay, but I was downloading a bunch of them for research to find out what the user experience was. The most popular mobile dating app at the time was Grindr. I downloaded Grindr—for research, to see what the user experience was like. Dude, I don't know if anybody's ever seen this: it is a very stunning user experience. It's not like any other mobile app you ever downloaded. As soon as you load the feed, the feed is basically pictures of people's... private parts. There's no profile picture of their face—it's just that. You're looking at that, and then, like you said, you click the map mode and it's like, "Oh, there's a dude over at Nordstrom's in the dressing room right now." It says, like, "green—he's open, he's ready," and I was like, "What?"
27:10	Shaan Puri	Three away, right? Everything was based on a distance away from you, where there's a dude who's dtf right now. I was like, "This is the most aggressive thing I have ever seen in my life. I couldn't believe it. There's no other app that works this way."
27:26	Sam Parr	Do you know this? You know, the stereotype?
27:28	Shaan Puri	"The 'gold knight' thing is a perfect analogy. It's the only other thing that ever works that way." </FormattedResponse>
27:32	Sam Parr	It's like—imagine the stereotype of twenty construction workers catcalling a girl as she walks by. The woman being into it and catcalling back. It's immediate, yeah.
27:45	Shaan Puri	It's
27:45	Sam Parr	So they were talking in one of their reports. They were basically saying they analyzed the onboarding time of Hinge and Tinder, and it was about 15 minutes and 22 minutes. With our thing—Grindr—once you sign up, within 120 seconds you can go meet someone. They're optimizing for speed. I mean, it's just a hookup app, basically. I was reading a funny article—have you ever seen those that say, "It costs $1,800 a month to be a woman"? Well, a guy did the same calculation and said, "It costs $1,200 to be a gay dude in Manhattan." You gotta do this thing and then that thing, and you need your $40-a-month subscription to Grindr. It becomes—like—there's a cost to doing business to be a gay guy and to have this app. It's table stakes. They dominate the niche.
28:35	Shaan Puri	I'm on Rick's LinkedIn right now. He's a four-time founder with 25 years of operating experience. The guy's a Harvard Business School graduate... He built Tickle.com; they sold it for $100,000,000. It then says he's the managing partner of Catapult Capital, a private equity firm that focuses on consumer tech. In May 2020 they partnered with those guys you talked about and bought Grindr for $600,000,000. He became the COO. They rebuilt the team and every single system and process, grew revenue and EBITDA by 80%, and improved the app rating to 4.6 stars... After two and a half years of hard work it went public with a market cap of more than $2,000,000,000. So in two and a half years they turned $600,000,000 into $2.5 billion.
29:14	Sam Parr	It's wild, right? This is something that interests you. I know, with a lot of our guests, it's about buying companies—we've talked about that a bunch. I know it intrigues you; it definitely intrigues me too. But for some reason, you don't hear about this in Silicon Valley a lot. </FormattedResponse>
29:27	Shaan Puri	"Dude, we gotta have Rick on. Rick is — Rick is kind of a legend. We need to have him on the podcast."
29:31	Sam Parr	Rick is a legend. He's really low-key. I've hung out with him only a handful of times.
29:36	Shaan Puri	He's got, like, a lot of style. You know what I mean?
29:39	Sam Parr	Dude looks like Patrick Dempsey. He looks like Patrick Dempsey from Grey's Anatomy. He's a...
29:42	Shaan Puri	I was about to say, "Looks like McDroopie." Is that the guy's name? Is that what his... [trails off] </FormattedResponse>
29:45	Sam Parr	Real name.
29:46	Shaan Puri	Is... yeah.
29:46	Sam Parr	Yeah, so he looks just like him. I'm friends with Rick on Facebook, and he recently posted a photo of him and Patrick meeting. He said, "Finally we meet," because everyone says that to him.
29:57	Shaan Puri	He looks very much like him. That's crazy. He's cool.
29:59	Sam Parr	"This guy's cool. Someone was joking; they said, 'One of the reasons why this stock confuses a lot of people is because financial bankers and stock analysts — it's all straight dudes. This isn't something they're using in their daily lives.'" So, it's kind of been a little bit under the radar.
30:22	Shaan Puri	"Oh yeah, dude. Bumble's only 500 million right now, so it's 10 times bigger."
30:27	Sam Parr	It's ten times bigger than this because there are a bunch of reasons. One being: gay guys earn twice as much as straight men.
30:36	Shaan Puri	Dude, all of Match Group is 7,800,000,000. Grindr alone was 4.5.
30:43	Sam Parr	"They have way less, and they're working with a population that's like 10% of America. You know what I'm saying? Everything about this is sort of like—bumblebees aren't supposed to fly."
30:53	Shaan Puri	Sort of an underdog story — you're kind of inspired right now.
30:56	Sam Parr	Yeah, man, they've killed it — one of my greatest...</FormattedResponse>
30:59	Shaan Puri	Inspirations. Grinders. Thought, "It's wild, right?" That's what I'm saying.
31:03	Sam Parr	You don't hear about these turnarounds at all with a lot of Silicon Valley and internet companies, and they've nailed it.
31:10	Shaan Puri	Yeah, that's wild. Okay, I have one more. It's not really a good one to end on, but I'll do it anyway. Well, first of all, I'll do two quick ones: "Dude Wipes" — oh my God, great idea.
31:23	Sam Parr	Who? It's insane, right? You're gonna say—you're gonna say this.
31:29	Shaan Puri	"Touch the nerve of something."
31:30	Sam Parr	You need to say the stat. Here's an example. One time we had this guy messaging Sean and me. He had a company called Hostage Tape. It was tape you put over your mouth when you go to bed — supposed to help you breathe and sleep better. I think, Sean, you and I both said, "You're an idiot." He messaged me a ton of times. Then he texted us updates. Eventually it scaled to $20 million in revenue in about two years. Our initial gut reaction was, "Wow, this guy is so stupid." Then he texts us he's hit $1 million in revenue, and we thought, "Oh my God, people are so stupid." Then it hit $20 million, and you and I thought, "We are so stupid." That is exactly how I felt when I saw the Dude Wipes revenue number. Can you say what it is?
32:19	Shaan Puri	So, in 2024, they did $220,000,000 in revenue. </FormattedResponse>
32:24	Sam Parr	Insane, insane — who would have thought?
32:26	Shaan Puri	And look at this — actually, I gotta show you this. This is hilarious. As you're saying this, I'm on an article, and this must have been made by the team itself. It's literally a chart of their growth. Let's check this out: it says Dude Wipes now over 200,000,000. Then there's a slide that says "$20.20 40,000,000." It has a callout that reads "when the experts said our growth was done." It might as well have just said, "when Sam Power said, 'This is stupid.'"
32:54	Sam Parr	No. Even—yeah, I mean, I would have said it was stupid the whole time.
32:57	Shaan Puri	Yeah — pretty amazing, right? Back when we started the podcast, I don't know if they sent you, but they sent me a giant...
33:03	Sam Parr	Yeah.
33:03	Shaan Puri	Package of Dude Wipes that has—it's now $20.25. We started this podcast like in 2020 or 2019 or something like that. It's been like five or six years. I'm still living off those, like a prepper, you know, rationing out Dude Wipes. I've—these things, they've sent so many; it's lasted for so long. </FormattedResponse>
33:19	Sam Parr	"And so—everyone knows it's just what you wipe with, and it's wet. It's like a baby wipe, right?"
33:26	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's like a wet wipe. I don't actually know — maybe that's why they've lasted so long. I don't really use them; I actually use them only on my baby. But it's flushable, right? I think that's the key difference: a normal wet wipe is not flushable. You're not supposed to flush it — it'll mess up your toilet. I think Dude Wipes you can. It's basically like an alternative to the bidet, right? You don't need a bidet if you use this, I think, is the idea.
33:48	Sam Parr	Man, this is a great story idea. We definitely should have focused on this one. I cannot believe how they grew so fast. Did they grow through retail or online?
33:57	Shaan Puri	I mean, I think these things become an everything story. I don't know their exact story. I just know they did a lot of guerrilla marketing. They're sort of like Manscaped in that they used the disadvantage of their brand being kind of seen as a joke as an advantage to do shocking or interesting marketing — basically "bro marketing." It's like, how do you do bro marketing to grow? Liquid Death did this. Manscaped did this. I think these guys are another one. Dollar Shave Club was another that did this. Pretty impressive. Tushy, which is the actual bidet company, is also a nine-figure, over $100,000,000-a-year business. It's basically an attachment — you can turn any toilet into the kind of fancy Japanese toilets by attaching this thing. Tushy is one. There's also another interesting one. This is less fun to talk about, but I found it pretty interesting: can you go to gastromaryland.com? My buddy Diego — his wife used to work at this place — and he was like, "Dude, it's like a clinic that's just for doing colonoscopies and gut cleanses." It's a kind of standalone practice that's just focused on health. He's like, "Dude, they're booked up months in advance." We were talking about it and I thought this is actually a really good franchise concept. Everywhere you see locations of these — there's one in San Francisco (not the same brand, but I looked up one in San Francisco) — also very popular. I just thought, wow, this is interesting in the same way that med spas have become a big business. I think you're going to have the same thing: gut spas. More and more people will go there and look for help with their GI and digestion issues and their health.
35:54	Sam Parr	That's wild. You're a year older than me—have you gotten your first colonoscopy? Have you done any of that yet?</FormattedResponse>
36:01	Shaan Puri	No. Am I supposed to... What age did I get that? </FormattedResponse>
36:03	Sam Parr	I don't know. I haven't done it yet either. I think we're 40, so we're 4 years away. We have a few years... not looking forward to it.
36:10	Shaan Puri	You want to do it together?
36:11	Sam Parr	"Should we look at... so, hold hands?"
36:12	Shaan Puri	Do you guys allow doubles? There's, like, a couples colonoscopy that we could do.
36:16	Sam Parr	Like, put us out—like, kissing. Yeah, like, all that. That's... this is really fascinating, I...
36:23	Shaan Puri	There's another one in this, so I was like, "Oh, this is interesting as a franchise or as a private equity play." Of course—too late; the private equity guys are always on top of these trends. If you look at this company, Exact Sciences, they do something called the Cologuard tests, and they just crush it. They do cancer screening and have a noninvasive way to do the test. They had $2,760,000,000 in revenue last year.
36:46	Sam Parr	What from?
36:47	Shaan Puri	This private equity-backed play.</FormattedResponse>
36:50	Sam Parr	Have you seen the guy on Instagram that just asked—he's the most challenging person to talk to at a party? He was like, "Oh, that's nice. Are you guys PE-backed [private equity-backed]? I've worked at a PE firm."
37:01	Shaan Puri	No, but that's hilarious.</FormattedResponse>
37:04	Sam Parr	"Just—he just... everything is. Are you PE-backed? "Oh yeah. I just... because I'm a partner at a PE firm that owns you. This is insane. "So this is billions of dollars in sales. "Yeah. Oh my God, this is wild."
37:20	Shaan Puri	I mean, just in this episode we've basically talked about $10,000,000,000 worth of guts and butts businesses. That just really shows—you can. If you can't figure out a way to make it, it's on you. The opportunity is literally everywhere. There are products like "dude wipes" that seem like jokes. There are things like BBL cushions for after BBL surgeries [BBL = Brazilian butt lift]. You just have to spot a growing trend and ask, "Okay, what's the next product they would need?" The Warren Buffett question: then what? What happens after the BBL? That was a question you could have asked. Look at the Grindr turnaround—these guys made a huge play. Doesn't it blow your mind when you realize, "Oh man, there is an infinite set of possibilities I could go into if I wanted to build a successful business"? There's really no excuse.
38:09	Sam Parr	My in-laws live in this really nice building in New York City, and they're really successful. My mother-in-law is a Haitian immigrant, and my father-in-law is a high school dropout who started a moving company that boomed and killed it, allowing him to acquire this really fancy apartment. I'm sitting in their lobby and I'm like, "How many units are in this apartment?" He's like, "200." Then I'm like, "Well, there's like 10,000 buildings around here..." I don't know — there are so many buildings. I'll be in the lobby and I'll just start having conversations with random people. Every person you're talking to, you're like, "Well, you must have had many millions of dollars to buy this apartment," meaning you're very successful. You hear about what they're doing for work, and there are just a million ways to make a living. I remember thinking, "Well, my in-laws — they're one in a million, right? They're the American dream, the success story." But everyone around me is one in a million, and it's just absolutely astounding to hear all these stories of people who just kill it in the most random ways you would never have guessed.
39:09	Shaan Puri	Yeah, yeah. It's like those, you know, those TikTok channels where it's like, "Hey man, I just want to ask you — what do you do for a living?" as they get into a nice car. It's really shallow, but the general idea of what that person is doing is correct. You can basically reverse engineer what people do. You can ask them. People are generally pretty open about what they do, how they made it, and they generally had help along the way. They're often willing to help somebody else who wants to be helped. And, you know, success leaves clues. You can actually go and start to see patterns or see opportunities and say, "Oh, okay." Just like the way I saw that after the Ozempic trend people built these auxiliary side businesses. Now I see the same thing on the PBL side, right? When the next procedure or the next health and wellness trend happens, you could do the same thing because you've seen it two or three times before. You're ready to act when that moment arises. That's kind of what I hope — if people listen to this podcast, just listen for the laughs, I'm flattered. But if they listen and start to see the trends, start to see the dots connect, actually go and do the things. Be that listener. There's probably only one out of a thousand that actually... I mean, what do you think? If a thousand people listen to this podcast, how many do you think go from not having their first million to making their first million during their ten-year listen to this podcast?
40:24	Sam Parr	Well, we've had dozens—or maybe even hundreds of people messaging us, saying we inspire them to do X, Y, and Z. Sometimes I think a large percentage of them were already doing something amazing, and they're just using that as an excuse...
40:34	Shaan Puri	Right.
40:36	Sam Parr	But I would say that there's at least 50 people — I don't know how many have listened, tens of millions — I think there's gotta be at least 100 people who have made $1 million from what they've learned from this podcast. What do you think, 50 to 100, at least?
40:49	Shaan Puri	"I mean, that number is shockingly low, right? Let's just say—on just the full episodes—I think we did somewhere between 25 million, roughly 25 million views and downloads last year. Maybe 30 billion; I don't know how many. Obviously there's a bunch of repeats, so let's just even take the low end. Let's just pretend, for just math, that it was just one million people—one million individual humans who listened. Take out the people who were already successful—maybe that's the top 10% who were already very successful. So now you have 900,000 people left. Of those 900,000, how many do you think actually end up making it, achieving what they wanted to achieve?"
41:29	Sam Parr	Okay. Out of 900,000, achieving — for example, being worth $50 — getting to life-changing money.
41:37	Shaan Puri	Yeah — get to a couple million dollars: life-changing money.
41:40	Sam Parr	But you don't. So, from nothing to $2,000,000 in the course of four years. I think the threshold is probably two or three hundred. Maybe. What do you think— is that too low?
41:51	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I think that's a little low. I'd say maybe 1,000, but maybe a couple thousand (≈2,000). But you're right — a lot of them would have gotten there anyway. We're just, you know, a little bit of wind in their sails; we're not the tide that's actually pulling them there. So I think it's higher. I think it's because the type of person who would listen to this was already going to be — they're probably seeking knowledge and inspiration and trying to make shit happen — so they were going to make it happen either way. It's gotta be high. I think it's actually probably a much higher number.
42:17	Sam Parr	There's sometimes people who message me, and they'll— I don't know if they're saying this just to win favor — but they'll say, "You guys inspired me to do this and that," and they've made more money than I have off this podcast. And I'm like, "Shit, I should have just done that." But there have been two, three, or four examples. Have you ever had one of those?
42:41	Shaan Puri	Yeah, well, dude... The other day there's a guy who listens to podcasts. He's probably worth, I don't know, $50 to $100 million. I find out his new startup is an idea I said on the podcast not long ago. I was like, "Dude, let me invest." He's like, "I don't know." I was like, "I gave you the idea — that's my idea. Actually, I should be letting you run this company."
43:04	Sam Parr	I know that. So, for example, Mixergy—Andrew Warner, a buddy of mine—I attribute a lot of my success to him. He used to interview people, and I learned about newsletters via Mixergy and Andrew Warner. There were about eight interviews he did on that topic that I literally used to plan the business model. I have done that with other people for sure.
43:25	Shaan Puri	Of course.
43:26	Sam Parr	I did it with Mixergy. What I use now is the podcast Founders — David Senro's podcast. I use it a lot for inspiration and education. Who do you listen to now, actually?
43:39	Shaan Puri	I don't listen to Founders regularly. Once in a while I'll put it on — I like what he does, but I don't play that game. James Curry had this great phrase. He said, "Some people... you gotta decide what game you're playing." I forgot the exact options he listed, but one was the "great life" game: you're trying to build a great life for yourself. The other was the "global greatness" game: you're trying to compete at a global level and do things that impact the world. He called it "global greatness." That's the game people like Elon and the people on Founders play. I'm actually playing the great life game: it's about how I create a great life for myself and my family. That's the number-one objective — not proving myself or becoming an extreme outlier of success only in the career space.
44:32	Sam Parr	Who do you listen to to help fuel that? Because I've always wondered — you know, there are a lot of people who look up to us. I grew up, and I still look up to way more people who are way above us. I've always wondered: what do they listen to, or where do they get this motivation from? Because even the biggest of big shots have some type of "rah-rah" listen.
44:54	Shaan Puri	Yeah. So, I think everybody does. It's a lot harder to find somebody in the "great life" bucket because usually part of that bucket is that you're not going around and you're not as famous. It’s not that famous to be like, "Yeah, he's a great daddy." He actually, every day at four, takes some time and goes places — you know, tennis. I put Jesse [unclear].
45:12	Sam Parr	Kessler in there, though. Jesse—it's just content.
45:15	Shaan Puri	That's exactly what I was gonna say. But it's not from his content, because his content really is more about, like, kinda how to make it in life.</FormattedResponse>
45:23	Sam Parr	But I can't hang out with him all the time, so I gotta...
45:25	Shaan Puri	But you don't have to hang out all the time. For example, Ben and I made a list: who are the five people we really respect, admire, and love to hang out with? We want our world to look a little bit like — to be inspired by — the world they've created for themselves. Jesse was one of those guys. I said, "Let's make an excuse to go hang out with him. Hey, let's just wake up and do whatever you're gonna do — let's hang out, let's talk. I want to meet your kids," you know, that sort of thing. He did, and Jesse was like, "Cool, yeah, anytime." Ben did, too, and then he kind of shared his impression. He said, "Yeah — we pick up a lot from that. You pick up a lot from going to someone's house."
46:00	Sam Parr	So, what did you pick up? </FormattedResponse>
46:02	Shaan Puri	A ton of energy. A huge part of it is how much energy the guy has and what you want out of life. It's not just the things you achieve; it's the type of person you are and what it's like to be around you. Jesse is that person: super high energy, laughs a ton—very funny—and doesn't take himself or life too seriously. He has his hands in a lot of pots, but in an interesting way. For example, he has this one business... I have this tension all the time: I have more business ideas than I have time. How does somebody like Jesse do this? I really like that his career was so varied. He had his jingle company, he was a rapper for a while, then he did ZICO Coconut Water, and then he did his private jets startup, which was his big, intense one.
46:45	Sam Parr	Was it linear—like this, then that, then this—or is it blended?
46:49	Shaan Puri	Love your pronunciation of that — it sounded like "finance." Yeah, like Bob Lanier. Okay, it was... linear. So, yeah, he did them one at a time, not all in parallel. And then, over time, now he's got more things in parallel. He's got his calendar business, his speaking business — he's got his 20... what is it, 2029 or something?
47:07	Sam Parr	9029
47:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah, so that's kind of his fun races — people get to run or do the equivalent of hiking Mount Everest, but you don't have to go to Mount Everest to do it. You can do it in lots of different cities around the country. We looked at that and asked, "Okay, what is he actually doing? Are you sort of reverse-engineering it?" He's like, "Dude, I take the things that I already want to do for free," — his passions. One of his passions is being outdoors, running, doing these races. He does that anyway for free, then uses his business savvy to wrap a really interesting brand around it. Instead of just being another race, naming it the height of Everest and letting anyone have that sort of semi–bucket-list item of hiking Everest — that little branding and positioning was genius. The way he started that business was interesting. I guess it was like his buddy said, "Oh, I really want to do a business with you," and he replied with rules. He said something like: > "Alright, we'll do a business, but here's the rules: I'll help you with it, but the operations of this business — I want to work one day a year and I need to make a million dollars." That's the constraint. They worked backwards from that constraint to build a business that had to satisfy it. I don't know if literally it's one day a year and $1,000,000 — I don't know if that's the literal definition of Jesse's involvement — but even just hearing how he approaches it changed the way I'm approaching some of my businesses. I also have people who want to do things with me and I have a bunch of ideas. I used to think it's all or nothing, but there are other ways to do this. For example, Zico, the coconut water brand: he was not the operator — there were other operators. He was a certain type of energy and hustle that opened doors and changed the trajectory of that business. I have a business right now that's like that. I have operators who run it, and I just do a certain set of door-opening activities that changed the trajectory of the business. I'm trying to learn from him how you have it all. He's got, I think, four kids and he's very involved as a dad. He has his own fitness thing, a good marriage, a fun life, adventures with his friends, businesses, and interesting investments. It's like, "Okay, want to go hang out with him? Download his blueprint." I can't get that out of a YouTube video or a podcast right now the way I can with him.
49:16	Sam Parr	That was such a long answer, and it was so good. I want to keep.
49:20	Shaan Puri	I'm asking, "Sorry," and "You're welcome."
49:23	Sam Parr	I asked you what podcast you listen to. You could've said, like, "How Stuff Works" or "Cereal."
49:32	Shaan Puri	But there is no podcast for that. In fact, I would hope that this is the podcast that's closest to that, right? Because it's the thing I'm trying to achieve. So, if I'm just talking about stuff that's relevant to me along the way—about the great life, by your own definition—then this should be it. But I don't know: where would I go? Who has a podcast like that? </FormattedResponse>
49:48	Sam Parr	Yeah, I don't know.
49:49	Shaan Puri	You know, I don't watch a lot of "Modern Wisdom." I watch clips from Modern Wisdom—Chris Williamson's podcast—because I think he pulls wisdom out of people. I think wisdom is what's lacking, not knowledge, for me. So I'm trying to avoid knowledge-based things and look for wisdom on how to live—a life well lived. Actually, the real answer to your question is: it's not podcasts. I read a lot of books now, and I really wasn't reading books at all two years ago.
50:19	Sam Parr	I distinctly remember us doing a podcast. I asked you — you were telling me about this book that you had read — and I asked you a question about it. You said, "Well, I don't know... I'm actually only ten pages into it." Yet you did a whole spiel on the podcast about this book and how amazing it was, and I was ten pages in.
50:34	Shaan Puri	Incorrect. It's a great book.
50:39	Sam Parr	And so now you read books.
50:42	Shaan Puri	Now I read books.
50:43	Sam Parr	"That's great."
50:44	Shaan Puri	"So put some respect on my name."
50:46	Sam Parr	I noticed — I'm [unclear: "freighter"] — what you tweet is what you're interested in. I noticed that you have been saying you want to spend time with dead people and dogs, or something like that. Then you also tweeted, "Why do people like history?" It was something like: when you read something historical you think, "Wait — I kind of like this, but do I like this? Why do I like this? What are we doing?" Someone had a great answer that you put in your newsletter. You said it's "knowledge wrapped around a story," or something like that. And I was like, "Oh — finally. Sean is clearly starting to read historical stuff, right? Is that right?"
51:22	Shaan Puri	Whatever you're doing, I tend to do about seven years later. So I would probably be getting a fecal transplant or whatever in seven years. I should just book that in now. Wait — are you reading history now? I'm reading anything that's interesting to me. Right now, one of the books I'm reading is the Warren Buffett biography, but that's for a specific reason. "Which one?"
51:40	Sam Parr	"Snowball, or the other one."
51:42	Shaan Puri	I'm reading Snowball right now. Snowball's good.
51:44	Sam Parr	It's really long—it's a thousand pages. In order to read a thousand pages, you've got to really love the person. Yeah, yeah. That's good, because that's like three months. Well, that's cool. I'm happy you're reading now. I'm happy you like books. Can we tell you?
51:58	Shaan Puri	Some other books I'm reading.
51:59	Sam Parr	Yeah, I would love that.
52:00	Shaan Puri	I'll give one more. That's good. Let's see — have you ever read Seneca's letters? I think it's called 50 Letters of a Roman Stoic. That's pretty good. I like...
52:11	Sam Parr	That's a lot. So you're reading Stoicism? That's pretty cool. So Meditations and Marcus Aurelius and all.
52:16	Shaan Puri	That's just the book I mentioned.
52:17	Sam Parr	"That's just the one."
52:18	Shaan Puri	I read this book called — I think it's called Kill the Cat — and it's about how to write a screenplay. I found it pretty fascinating, like how people write movies. Have you ever read Five Dysfunctions of a Team?
52:36	Sam Parr	Yeah, by Patrick Leon. Patrick L.
52:39	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I think that's kind of an underrated book.
52:41	Sam Parr	It's pretty. I read that book.
52:42	Shaan Puri	"And I was like, 'Dude, this book really describes an experience that I've had in, you know, the core of corporate life and, sort of, management life.'"
52:49	Sam Parr	And, like, I think Charlie Munger—he stole this idea. Charlie Munger gave a famous speech that he stole from someone else, which is like: "I don't know how to live a happy life necessarily, but I'm gonna tell you how to live an unhappy life." Right? Step one: have envy. He explains all these attributes you should have to be unhappy and then says to avoid them. That's what that book is about—it's cool. He tells a story about the five things that losing teams have. It's pretty good.
53:14	Shaan Puri	Yeah. Exactly. Anyway — yeah, I'm reading books now.
53:18	Sam Parr	"That inspires me to reread that book, because I don't remember The Five Dysfunctions."
53:22	Shaan Puri	Especially when you're operating a company now, I think it's very useful. When you're operating a company, you'll be like, "Oh, yep — we're doing that," or, "Oh yeah, I did that."
53:29	Sam Parr	So what I do right now is: whenever I read a book I download it and convert it from a Kindle file to a text file. Then I upload it to ChatGPT so I can reference it. For example, with The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, I'll type out an interaction I had with my company or screenshot an email interaction I've had and ask, "What would Patrick say about this?"
53:53	Shaan Puri	Can I show you something amazing? Yeah. So I told you that I was like, "Did I convince Diego—who, my buddy Diego—who..."
54:01	Sam Parr	To live there.
54:02	Shaan Puri	We hired someone on my team — I convinced him to move out here. I didn't know what would come of it, but I just knew working in person could obviously be more fun. I'm not trying to have an office; I can still work from home, but he comes over sometimes. We don't have a big team. Our team is very small: me, Diego, Ben, and my assistant. How do we actually work? This is something amazing he started doing. He just drops off, once a week, these binders that say "Scratch the Itch." In them he pulls a bunch of super interesting blogs or articles that he knows I'm going to like. Maybe we even have a channel where we put stuff like, "Oh, I'm gonna read this later," but he prints it out for me and marks it up. I'm going through it — it's basically like our own book club but for blog posts. So it'll be, like, an annual letter from 1999 — Bezos, when the market crashed — or 2000 when the market crashed. Then it'll be a really interestingly explained technical explainer (but not too technical) about how ChatGPT actually works. I have these, which are not books, but they're just amazing brain food.
55:11	Sam Parr	Dude, two years ago I almost launched a business that would sell that. What I thought about doing was, instead of an email newsletter, a physical newsletter. It was literally going to be a binder of things that I read — my notes on them and why they interested me. I think that tactile experience of doing what you're doing right now is wonderful.
55:30	Shaan Puri	It's a total game changer. I mean, this is lucky, right? He curates it, he marks them up for me, he organizes it, and he delivers them to me. You know, this is my version of luxury. What's a Gucci bag to me? This is a Gucci bag, right? It's right up my alley. Thank you so much. I... I can't even.
55:48	Sam Parr	[I] believe he does that once a week.
55:49	Shaan Puri	He does it at random. There's not even a schedule. It's roughly once a week or every two weeks; he'll drop one of these off.
55:55	Sam Parr	That's amazing. That's actually pretty cool—hold it up. I actually like how he makes it look; it scratches the itch.
56:02	Shaan Puri	And what does he say at the bottom? Then it says it's the Charlie Munger quote. He says, "Go to bed smarter than when you woke up." And then...
56:09	Sam Parr	"That's amazing."
56:10	Shaan Puri	It's amazing, right?
56:11	Sam Parr	And the bright colors — he makes it look like an eighth-grade binder. That's awesome. </FormattedResponse>
56:15	Shaan Puri	"You want to see something else he's doing?"
56:17	Sam Parr	Hold on one.
56:17	Shaan Puri	Show you this too. So, you might see just this box of little truffles—little chocolate truffles here. So we call, like, a... what we were trying to—just did—we were trying to describe what we like to do. It's like, what do we—what do you really do? What are—what are you really good at? It's like, what's the common thread across all the shit you do? And one thing we—somebody had this analogy of a "truffle pig." They're like, "You're like a truffle pig."
56:38	Sam Parr	And he sniffs up out.
56:39	Shaan Puri	You just go and sniff out these little — like truffles — these high-value things. He delivered this. I thought it was chocolate, but actually it's this little thing. You unwrap it, and inside he's printed out, like, just a golden nugget — just something.
56:56	Sam Parr	Is Diego your coworker, or does he run the daycare?
56:59	Shaan Puri	We’re big into arts and crafts — Diego and I. As the world goes AI, we’re super tactile. Everything is: no, no, no, we’re going to do everything very analog. We’re either going to be extremely AI and digital or extremely analog. Ideally, we take things from the digital, pull them out, and make them analog. For example, if you could see my wall right now, we have things printed out that represent this month’s learnings. We’re diving into the biggest things we want to not just read, nod, and say, “Oh yeah, that’s cool,” and then move on. Could I just tell you this real quick? That’s the number one takeaway I have so far from the Buffett biography [Warren Buffett biography]: when he was eight or nine years old he read the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" because he knew he was socially awkward. The guy was buying stocks at age seven and bought a farm when he was 14 — he wasn’t a normal kid — so he wanted to be better socially and didn’t know how. There’s a line in the book which basically says: > Unlike most people who would read this book, nod along, say "Gee, that makes sense," then put the book away and forget about it. Warren made it like his religion to study this book. He would read it, immediately try to apply the principles, and regularly come back and reread the same sections because it was really important to him to actually get the wisdom out of the book — not just the information.
58:23	Sam Parr	He even taught a class on it.
58:24	Shaan Puri	Exactly. I thought if there's one predictor of success, it would be that. And I think if there was one superpower to have over the batch of other smart people who are also listening to podcasts, also reading books, also on Twitter, etc., it's this: Most people do exactly what Buffett said. They just read something, nod, say, "Yeah, it makes sense," and then move on with their life. They don't actually internalize it or do anything with the thing that made sense. If something's kind of obviously true, they're like, "Yeah, I get that. I know that," versus actually doing it. So you don't actually know it. I find that one trait about Buffett so important. That's one thing I'm trying to do—whether I'm reading or learning anything: can I develop the skill of noticing the big idea and then not just moving past it? Taking that big idea and saying, "I'm going to work on this idea until it's like playing a piano piece"—until I can play it fluidly from memory. Then I actually know the song.
59:25	Sam Parr	They didn't act on everything, but they did a good job. Finally, they had a bank of stuff—they had their "spank bank" for investing. There's a story about how Munger had a Barron's subscription [Barron's — financial newspaper]. A guy who worked for Munger said: > "Yeah, he read this freaking newspaper every week for fifteen years. He told me that he got an idea from it. He goes, 'This is the one idea I've ever gotten from Barron's.' He goes, 'I've been reading this constantly, looking for this one idea, and I just found it, and it took me fifteen years.'" They did a really good job. Am I not supposed to call it—can we not say "ideas bank"?
01:00:03	Shaan Puri	No, that's beautiful. I loved it.
01:00:05	Sam Parr	I saw Ari roll her eyes. That's what it is, right? If I just said "a bank of ideas", everyone's gotta be thinking that.
01:00:11	Shaan Puri	Dude, did you watch the actual second Monash episode that I did? Because, yeah — in it he pulls out the Moody's Manual. He's like, "When people say Buffett read this, this is the thing he was reading." He showed me — it's like size 4 font — and he reads page by page. It's not even a book you're supposed to read page by page, and he did. Then he was like, "Oh, then he read the Japan Company Handbook" — like the version of Moody's for Japan — because he wanted to look for companies in Japan. The bet that he made was insane. So he reads that Japanese book and he notices — he's like, "There are these exchanges in Japan, like the stock market exchanges, and they basically have a monopoly. Nobody really builds new stock markets and you can't really get a new stock market off the ground." He's like, "There are these incredible businesses that are kind of undervalued." Then he went and borrowed, like, ¥5,000,000,000 [¥5 billion] in Japanese yen and bought a chunk of all the exchanges at a 0% interest rate. It's just this unbelievable asymmetric upside trade that has paid off in spades. I feel like people don't even talk about that. If you talk about Buffett's bets, it's all just GEICO, Coca‑Cola, See's Candy — like, that Japanese trade is unbelievable.
01:01:23	Sam Parr	Maybe I should read Snowballs. I... I've read the shorter one.
01:01:27	Shaan Puri	"I don't even think that's in Snowball, because that was more recent."
01:01:29	Sam Parr	I should read this. I should read Snowball, and we could have a book club and talk about it. He—he interests me. He doesn't always interest me; I don't want to trade stocks, but I just love his... I think that, just how you describe Jesse, that's not quite how I would describe Warren. His personal life was a little wacky, but there are so many philosophical things you can learn from him.
01:01:51	Shaan Puri	Totally, totally.
01:01:52	Sam Parr	By the way, last night I was watching the UFC on Saturday night. On the East Coast it was like midnight. I opened my living room door to let some air in because it was kind of hot. I just wanted fresh air to watch the UFC, you know, as one does. I was sitting there and thought I saw a moth flying around. I was like, "Damn, get that moth out of here." I kind of swatted at it and then saw it again but didn't really pay attention. It took me about 45 minutes to realize—oh my God, there's a bat flying over my head.
01:02:26	Shaan Puri	"In my living room right now."
01:02:28	Sam Parr	And I jumped up and flipped out because that's a — that's a weird phobia. Bats are just one of the scariest things to me. I ran out of the room and woke up my wife. I go, "Sarah, there's a freaking bat in the room." I had no idea what to do. I put on a hoodie and all these gloves, ran in there, and opened the door again to see if I could get the bat to go outside. The next day I had to get a rabies shot. So last night I was in the ER [emergency room] getting a freaking rabies shot. My wife and my little girl had to get it, and it's insane.
01:02:59	Shaan Puri	Because it didn't even touch you, right? Why did you have to get the rabies shot?</FormattedResponse>
01:03:02	Sam Parr	Rabies has a 100% fatality rate, so if you get rabies, you die. Okay, and do you know how many rabies deaths there are in America per year?
01:03:11	Shaan Puri	No idea. Three, three... I
01:03:15	Sam Parr	I was gonna try to lowball it with a 100—no, three. There are about as many shark attacks that end up killing you... there’s like none. Every doctor I called said, "You have to go get this rabies shot. You have to go get this rabies shot." I was doing the math and I was like, well, let's say... first of all, the odds that it bit you and you don't know about it are super low, right?
01:03:34	Shaan Puri	Like.
01:03:35	Sam Parr	Right. So it had to have bit you, and I had to not realize it. And I'm like, "Okay."
01:03:39	Shaan Puri	You thought a moth was a bat, and they're very different sizes, so, you know.
01:03:43	Sam Parr	Yeah, but imagine sitting in your living room and seeing something in your peripheral. You're like, "Oh, I think a moth just flew in." Then I was like, "Oh my God — it's a rat with arms." It was just... freaky. So I had to go get this stupid shot. I was thinking of the odds and asking Chad, Chubby T, and they're like, "There's probably, like, 0.001% that you have rabies right now." But I had to get the shot. It's incredibly painful, and you have to go four times. So I've got to go back in the next three days for the next shots. Did you get...?
01:04:12	Shaan Puri	Me to get it two four times.
01:04:14	Sam Parr	Dude, it's ridiculous that my kid—no, she's gotta get it twice. It's very painful, and my kid wasn't even in the room. It's just ridiculous. I just realized I gave in to so much fear-mongering because, like, 60,000 people a year or something die from driving cars, right? I'm like, "I'm not afraid to do that." But three people a year die from rabies, and I went and got this freaking rabies shot. My arm is killing me; it was such a painful shot. It costs $25,000 if you don't have insurance. These shots are $25,000 each, so what's that—$75,000 worth of shots that I had to get last night for freaking rabies? Is that ridiculous? </FormattedResponse>
01:04:51	Shaan Puri	You know, I don't know if you've ever seen those memes where they have a silhouette—a ghost of a person's face—to make it transparent. We just need RFK's face, shaking his head at you for what you just did.
01:05:04	Sam Parr	But it's such a... there are so many cognitive biases or thinking flaws I've made regarding whether I should go and get this or not. There's also the idea of me "foaming at the mouth," because they say that when you show symptoms of rabies, it means you're going to die. </FormattedResponse>
01:05:23	Shaan Puri	"It's too late."
01:05:24	Sam Parr	It's too late.
01:05:25	Shaan Puri	Yeah. So maybe — maybe it was not a bad decision. Maybe, you know, you avoided potential ruin for a pain in the arm. That's okay.</FormattedResponse>
01:05:32	Sam Parr	Have you ever gotten that?
01:05:34	Shaan Puri	No, no, no. That's never happened to me. He said this super-absurd scenario, like, "Did that happen to you, dude?" People...
01:05:41	Sam Parr	Get rabies shot, all.
01:05:42	Shaan Puri	First of all, I'm not from the 1910s. I don't like opening up the doors to create a breeze. I just turn the air conditioning on if I need a...
01:05:50	Sam Parr	Dude, do you want to know the breeze? Here's the truth: I didn't want to tell my wife — I wanted to pee in the yard.
01:05:58	Shaan Puri	Dude, they need rabies to get away from you. You live with this feral man.</FormattedResponse>
01:06:05	Sam Parr	Frankly, I deserve this: Butts and Guts. That's it. Best of pod.

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The Most Ridiculous Ways to Make $1M (That Actually Work)

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