if you didn't make progress in 2025, watch the first 10 minutes.

- December 8, 2025 (3 months ago) • 01:13:40

Transcript

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Sam Parr	"Wanna show you something that's honestly changed my life. Have I showed you this?"
00:03	Shaan Puri	Five-Year Diary.
00:04	Sam Parr	No. Okay, so let me explain how this works.
00:07	Shaan Puri	Dude, I am so jealous that I did not invent this journal.
00:16	Sam Parr	So, basically, here's how my five-year journal works. On every single page it says, "December 1," and then it has the first year, the second year, the third year, the fourth year, and the fifth year.
00:27	Shaan Puri	"Oh yes — I'm interested. You took this journaling thing from, like, 'Oh great — the most boring topic ever: journaling,' to 'Oh wait — that's pretty cool. I kinda want one.'"
00:39	Sam Parr	I started doing this in November, like the week of Thanksgiving, actually. And so you're always getting to last year's wait [likely "weight"]. </FormattedResponse>
00:46	Shaan Puri	Like a week ago, you mean?
00:48	Sam Parr	I started doing it a year ago last week.
00:50	Shaan Puri	Oh, last year. Okay.
00:51	Sam Parr	I've talked about this three times now. This is the third time, but it's the first time it's clicking. The reason it's been very special this week is that I'm going through my previous year's entries. I had purposely not looked ahead to remind myself. Do you want to know something? The biggest takeaway: I don't change.
01:12	Shaan Puri	Like... what do you mean — your habits, what you're doing, or how you feel?
01:17	Sam Parr	I have complained about the same stuff for ten or fifteen years. I have previous journals where I look back and I'm like, "I've complained about the same things."
01:28	Shaan Puri	"Give me an example. What do you mean?"
01:30	Sam Parr	So, is the way that I'm spending time right now even worth it? Is working on this business even worth it? Do I want to go all in on creating content, or do I want to go all in on being behind the scenes?
01:42	Shaan Puri	Right.
01:42	Sam Parr	Where should I live? Basically, I complain about the same things all the time. Why did I lose my temper today and make myself look stupid? Why didn't I pause for ten seconds and reflect before I snapped at my wife or a kid or something? I think I've concluded a few things. One: humans don't change. Actually — change is... let me rephrase that. I've concluded that change is unnatural. Change is not natural; inertia is natural.
02:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah, right. Inertia's the default.</FormattedResponse>
02:10	Sam Parr	And so you can change. I actually have changed a lot of big things in my life, and I was thinking about what causes change. I think a good representation of what causes change is in business. Typically this happens at the $10,000,000 mark. The difference between a $10,000,000 and a $100,000,000-a-year business oftentimes is systems. So I think it typically comes down to hiring great people and creating great systems. The reason I love business is because it kind of teaches you a little bit about life. What I'm learning about my own life is that the moments I've changed most are when I've had a system. A good system makes things more predictable by taking away how you feel in the moment. The way you feel at any moment should have nothing to do with the actions you take to get to the goals you've set. For example, the times I've lost the most weight and gotten the most fit are when I had accountability — a nutritionist holding me accountable, a trainer I had to see, or when I was following a plan. The times I've stagnated most of my life are when I haven't had a plan and I let my feelings that day dictate what I do. When I have a good company, your salespeople have scripts they follow. They have checklists for follow-ups. They spend the early morning doing outbound and the middle of the morning doing follow-up emails. It's a system. I just wanted to talk about: (a) do you have this, and (b) we should talk about some of the systems we've implemented in our lives that have actually made real change. Because I think the key to living a successful life — not just money, but success defined as getting what you want — is creating a system.
03:47	Shaan Puri	You brought up a pretty amazing topic. I think you started with the journal, which again is just incredible — the year-over-year journal. It's basically a time machine because you get to see where you were. It forces perspective that you wouldn't normally get. There’s also the vulnerability of realizing, "Dude, I don't change. I'm the same complaining, you know, mother effer that I've been for the last ten years." I think that's really funny and honest. Then you have the systems thing. The best quote of this, I think, comes from James Clear (or whoever he got it from) in his book Atomic Habits: "We don't rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems." You see this everywhere. I see it in my business, when I'm coaching basketball, and in my fitness life — you see it everywhere. It means you don't become what you want; you don't become your potential. You become what you regularly do. As the old Aristotle quote goes, "We are what we repeatedly do." So what do you do repeatedly? You do what's on autopilot, what's defaulted, what you have on an automated basis — not what's based on how you're feeling in the moment. If it were a graph, it'd be up and down, up and down, up and down. So I think you're — I mean, you're spot on — that this applies inside the company and outside of any of your work stuff.
05:09	Sam Parr	Let me give you an example. Here's what I wrote about on December 5: "I’m one text message away from going Amish. I’m so sick of digital distractions — it’s a drug." And then I wrote another section: "When I hang out with all these successful people, I have to remember my roots. I’m just a punk‑rock, skateboarding redneck from Missouri, and I shouldn’t get caught up in this fancy stuff or wanting to achieve all this fancy stuff." That’s an example. And the reason I’m bringing up the digital stuff and being distracted is that I wrote about that three weeks ago in the same thing.
05:44	Shaan Puri	Right. So there's one thing I think that goes underneath—and comes before—the system. You're basically saying you need a plan, you need a goal, and then you need a system that's going to get you to that goal reliably. A system that, if you just follow it, the mechanics—the physics—of the system lead you to a certain outcome. I think that's very true. But there do seem to be a couple of things underneath that. One is the blueprint: figuring out what to want. If you set up your systems toward getting some goal that wasn't the goal that actually changes the feeling you want, you will be perpetually on the hamster wheel. This happens a lot in business. We get a promotion and then immediately we're like, "I still feel kind of the same—stressed, anxious version of myself," so you think, "I just need a little more and that'll be the solution." So figuring out the right thing to want is important because then it says, "Cool—let me build my systems in that direction." I think it's a very uncomfortable place to be: figuring out what you actually want in life, because it sounds like it should be so simple.
06:49	Sam Parr	That's the hardest part, right? You can't optimize for a goal without a goal. We spend most of our time worrying about the optimization.
06:56	Shaan Puri	Yeah, or like, you know — the goal: did you pick a goal that's actually going to get you what you want? You never want the thing; you want the feeling you think the thing will give you. Right? You don't want the fancy watch or the car. You don't want the promotion. You don't want the relationship. You want the feeling you think you'll have if you were in a great relationship. You want the feeling you think you'll have if your team wins the game. You want the feeling you think you'll have if you are driving that car instead of this piece of junk. So it's the feeling you're chasing. If you're not very good at understanding your own feelings and practicing having the feelings you want, you're not just going to have them when the thing happens. We just adapt too quickly, and your base nature—your emotional home—is too strong. When you say, "I'm complaining about the same things," I would guess it's not that you're literally complaining about the same things. It's that you're having the same feelings about some variety of problem—some same genre of problem. The feeling is almost identical.
07:55	Sam Parr	Yeah, exactly.
07:56	Shaan Puri	So, what do you think you should do about that?
07:58	Sam Parr	I think a few things. I think that the way I'm feeling now—correct me if I'm wrong—do you feel this exact same way, or have you had the same issue?
08:05	Shaan Puri	I've had the same issue. I don't know what you're feeling right now, but yeah.
08:07	Sam Parr	I mean, this — I don't change fast enough, or I'm not coaching myself fast enough, and I'm not adapting. More often than not, the listener — you and me — we don't need to be taught new stuff. We just need to be reminded of the same things we already know. I think we don't give enough credit to reminders. Let me give you an example. When I have a newborn, I read a book a week. I read a lot. I love reading; it brings me so much joy. There have been so many times I've read a book about some president or some topic, and a year later I can't remember much about it. I can't tell you the details. I think a lot of the time we go too wide and consume too much stuff, instead of repeating the same thing over and over to master it and be reminded of it. Another example: when you're training an employee on a sales process, the majority of the time you have to repeat yourself seven, eight, nine, ten times in a sales meeting. If you have a daily sales stand-up, you need phrases people can remember constantly. They don't necessarily need to be taught what to do; they need constant reminders. So reminders are important. I also think a system of accountability matters. When I hire employees for my business, I'm like, "Ugh, I don't want to do that — I could just do this on my own." But I've noticed that when I hire people, I then feel like I have to keep feeding the system because I'm held accountable. It's painful, but I get significantly better results. When I back myself into a corner where I must perform — otherwise I'm going to let others down — that's when I get the best results. If you want to hit your goals, you need a system. I worked with HubSpot to put together a step-by-step process showing how I use ChatGPT as a life coach. I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, and my goals. The output is that I now have a GPT I can ask about issues in my life, like: "How should I respond to this email?" or "What's the right decision?" It's literally changed my life. If you want that, it's free. We'll send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about 20 minutes, and I'll show you how I use it. Check it out — the link is below in the description. Back to the episode.
10:35	Shaan Puri	Have I told you what I've been doing lately? I texted you something this morning.
10:39	Sam Parr	So, it's 12:15. At 11:55, when I logged in, I got this text from Sean. It was this really good—like an Instagram reel, but it wasn't on Instagram—and it was Sean telling the story about how he has quit being a business person and is now fully focused on coaching a basketball team. Is that right?
10:57	Shaan Puri	So, here's the story of how I stepped down as CEO of my companies, and I'm now an unpaid high school assistant basketball coach. This is a decision I've made.
11:08	Sam Parr	They were high school kids. These guys looked like they had beards.
11:11	Shaan Puri	They're high school kids, so I love basketball. As you know, one thing you probably don't know is that, growing up, I didn't watch cartoons. You know how you mention Dolly Parton and I couldn't tell you who she is? Or you'll be like, "You know that Elvis song?" I'm like, "No — I don't really know." That's also true if you ask me about Sesame Street or Rugrats. As a kid, I never watched cartoons.
11:30	Sam Parr	What did you watch—World Series of Poker?</FormattedResponse>
11:32	Shaan Puri	I watched two movies on loop: Home Alone — a great movie — and The Mighty Ducks 2 (D2), specifically. You know, things you do as a kid sort of imprint on you, right? So, in the movie The Mighty Ducks, Gordon Bombay is this hotshot lawyer who gets a DUI and is assigned community service, where he ends up coaching a hockey team.
11:58	Sam Parr	Right into his limo in New York City or sub-city, and he's coaching... the street kids who somehow also play hockey.
12:06	Shaan Puri	Exactly. The business guy who grew up playing hockey but has given it up now has to go back into the world of sport. He ends up being the coach to this shitty, ragtag group of kids — these underdogs — and then they, you know, go on a run and sort of make it to the top. He, you know, finds his love and his passion; he realizes, "Oh my God, this fills my cup." I watched that movie a lot of times, and I had always said — I don't know if I'd ever told you this — but I had said, like, bucket list item: my retirement plan was to go coach a high school basketball team, at least for a year. I tried convincing my brother-in-law. I was like, "Hey, what if we got an AAU [Amateur Athletic Union] team? Could we do that?" I've been kind of poking around to see if there is a way to do this. I think it would be really good for the soul. The opportunity presented itself about a month ago when I hired a coach to train me in basketball, just as a workout. This guy used to train NBA players before the draft — things like that — so I worked with him over the summer.
13:05	Sam Parr	Did you get better?
13:06	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I mean, of course—you get better when you practice, right? Systems matter. I showed up two to three times a week. We practiced the same things every time: the fundamentals. And guess what? You get better.
13:15	Sam Parr	"Was it good exercise, or did it hurt you?"
13:18	Shaan Puri	Oh, dude, it's great.
13:18	Sam Parr	Exercise. It was good.
13:19	Shaan Puri	"I'm like, you know, you're drenched with sweat—which I would never get in the weight room, type of thing."
13:23	Sam Parr	Same.
13:25	Shaan Puri	It's like your full body, right? You can't make them move without rotation.
13:28	Sam Parr	You're doing lateral movements and stuff.
13:30	Shaan Puri	Yeah — things you want to do on a stationary machine or barbell. He tells me, "Hey, I don't think I'll be able to coach you anymore. I got this job. School starts in a week — I'm the head basketball coach at this high school." It's a small Division 5 high school. I didn't know if the divisions go to five, right — D1, D2, D3... all the way to D5. So five is small. Five is very small. I was like, "Okay." Then I said, jokingly, "So you need an assistant?" He said, "Yeah, actually. I don't have any — there's no staff. I'm a first-time coach, so I'd love an assistant." I told him, "I'd love to show up maybe once a week." I thought this would be something I'd do the way I do everything — half-assed, baby. I figured I'd make a fun commitment in the moment and then sort of back away over time. I've done that many times with many cool ideas in my life. But this year I'm trying to be a different guy, right? So I'm going to play the piano. Guess what? I sit there and I practice scales. I play the piano 4 times a week, and I'm getting good at it. I'm doing the boring things, and I'm sticking with it. I'm not giving up. I did the same thing with coaching: I said I'd show up. Dude, when I tell you that this is the most fun thing I've ever done in my life, I am not lying — this is incredible. Now I'm spending like 15 hours a week doing this. I'm basically going to practice four days a week. I commute, which — you know me, I would never commute — it's like a...
14:57	Sam Parr	Don't even know you had a driver's license.
15:01	Shaan Puri	It's a thirty- to forty-minute drive. Basically, I coach these kids from the beginning of the season tryouts. We just had our first game last night — our first official game. The video I showed you was our first preseason game, where we got smashed by 30 points. Then, four days later, we had our first real game and we actually just won. We won by 30 last night, and we did a Gatorade dump on the coach because it was his first win. Here I am, this assistant basketball coach. Like in The Office when Dwight says, "I'm assistant regional manager," and they're like, "No, no, you're assistant to the regional manager" — that's what I am. I'm assistant to the head coach; that's a more accurate way of saying it. I'm so emotionally invested in the entire process — you would not believe it. I'm so invested in these kids and in getting them better day by day: system by system, habit by habit. I'm breaking down game film of other high school teams we're going to play, and I'm sending clips. We have a kid who was struggling in school and got kicked off the team, and I'm helping him with his math homework, trying to get him back on the team. I am so in — it's not even funny.
16:06	Sam Parr	So, are you... I don't know much about sports, or at least basketball. I don't know much about basketball. Can you tell a player to make minor changes and have it actually impact the game? Or is it just like, if you're seven feet tall, you're going to win? </FormattedResponse>
16:19	Shaan Puri	Well, this is why I brought this up. You were talking about repetition, reminders, habit systems. Sports are, of course, the great teacher of life. It's this little petri dish — a simulation of life. You as an individual, working with a team, going up against competition, facing defeat regularly, getting to go to practice, and then seeing if that translates into the real world. There have been so many times when we would tell the kids something, and then the first scrimmage would happen and we would just get our butt kicked. We told them this — the exact thing we've been telling them — and then we had to take a step back as coaches and be like, “Oh, that's because the job is to drill this 50 times.” Yeah, we did one of 50. Our perspective was wrong, which was thinking, “I'll tell them once and then they'll get it, and they'll just do it live in action when the moment happens.” No. You won't. You will default to inertia, baby. You will default to the thing that you already do — the old you. So now, as coaches, we're basically giving this mindset: If this matters, you can only tell them two or three things that matter. You can't give them 15 things to change at once. Pick one to three things. And let's be honest: we're going to need to say this 50 times with the same level of enthusiasm. We're not going to get discouraged if it doesn't happen at, you know, number 42, because it takes 50. That's the mindset as a coach. But it's the same thing in your own life, which is like: seek progress, not perfection, and reminders matter a hell of a lot more than some new strategy, some new play, some new thing that nobody's ever done before. You want that new answer because you're like, maybe I was just missing the thing. Actually, no — it's because you didn't internalize the answer that was already on your plate. Reminders, like you said, are extremely undervalued, to the...
18:05	Shaan Puri	We're not only undervaluing reminders; they're sort of discriminated against. Reminders are like the minority class of self-help, right? When you tell somebody something they already know, what's their reaction? It's not, "Oh, that's helpful." It's, "I know, I know." It's defensive — like, "That clearly can't be important because I already know it." But no, no, no — it's coming back up again because it's that important.
18:30	Sam Parr	Dude, this is hilarious. This has happened— I don't know if the listener can tell— so many times where you and I come up with the same exact thing without even realizing it. If you're an entrepreneur listening to this, you're gonna be nodding your head. How many times have you come up with a brilliant idea, gone to your company, and in the all-hands said, "This is what we are doing now," and it's new and different? So many times, right? Yeah. I've come to the conclusion that a company can basically only do one new project maybe per quarter, but definitely it could be every six months. When I say "project," I mean something relatively small. For us, we had never advertised before; now we're starting to advertise. It's like, just do Meta—just do Meta and get really good at that. [Meta = Facebook/Instagram advertising] You think, "Well, we should advertise on LinkedIn, we should buy podcast ads, we should do this, we should do that." It's like, no, no, no—just that one thing. Let's really master it, and it's gonna take six months. So it's kind of funny that you're hearing that. I don't know about basketball, but what are you telling them to do—just that one thing? Or you said three things. What are those? Okay—three?
19:39	Shaan Puri	These are a little bit nerdy basketball things, but here's one: something called playing off two feet. So, how do I explain this? When you play basketball by yourself with no defense, you think, "I'll go do a layup." You run in, jump—usually off one foot—and shoot a layup. That's great when there's nobody there. When there's defense, that's a lot harder to do. It's not only people in the way, but when you run and jump off one foot, you commit to that path as your only option. What we have is a lot of undersized guys. Our guard is, I don't know, 5'7" or something like that. We don't have 6'4" athletes who are just going to be dunking and finishing at the rim across the board. We have, I think, one guy who can dunk pretty much. So we had to teach them another way of playing. It looks a little less sexy, but it's really effective. When you get into the paint and you're among the giants and the crowd, you do what's called a jump stop. You land on both feet, and now you have options: you can pass, pivot, shoot, step through—you can do a bunch of things. You're more under control. It's almost like a slower way to play. It's not what you practice when there is no defense. When there's no defense, you naturally do the one-foot layup. But in the real game there's always defense. So we're going to practice what happens in the game and do things that match our athleticism. This is a habit you guys don't have, so we're going to drill this—not once, not twice, but every single day. You're going to get reps at doing this, and you're going to hear us say the same phrase: "play off two." "Play off two, play off two." You'll hear that until you hear it in your dreams. That'll be one of the core principles—a change we need to make—because change requires that level of repetition to form a new behavior.
21:34	Sam Parr	You're gonna say it until someone hears it in their dreams. That's what we have to do — that's exactly what I mean about reminders: they have to… it's like, that's so funny. Number two is… what?</FormattedResponse>
21:43	Shaan Puri	And, by the way, the actual test is: you say it until you hear them saying it to each other. Once they're saying it to each other, your job as the coach is done — you have successfully incepted the idea into them. This happens also as a CEO. Whether it's habits and how we do meetings, or what matters and what the priorities are, you've done it well when they're saying it to each other.
22:04	Sam Parr	Okay, I used to.
22:05	Shaan Puri	Do this test with companies: if I would invest in them or they were running into trouble and they'd say, "We're trying to do X," almost always the little magic trick you can pull is this. Take—say—however many people. It could be just their top five executives or, you know, 15 people at the company. Ask everyone, "Please write down the top three priorities of the company—what actually matters right now." Then look at the CEO. You see the CEO start to realize, "Oh shit, we are not on the same page. I have not done a good job." They don't even remember what we're supposed to be doing. I have not successfully communicated the priorities. What people will do instead is focus on their own problems—"my little problems in my part of the world"—or on recency: what's the most recent fire someone put on my plate. That's just what they're thinking about. They kind of forget all the other stuff we talked about at that all-hands, at that meeting, or at that off-site where we made our plans. This is the same whether it's a team, a sports team, or a company.
23:12	Sam Parr	I heard this story about NASA in the 1960s. Before we went to the moon, they had an amazing leader. They're telling this story about how they knew he was amazing. One day a reporter sees a janitor mopping the floor at the NASA center. He asks, "Sir, what are you doing here?" The janitor replies, "I'm helping us get to the moon." That was the best story ever, because they all knew the mission — we were all playing a part in getting to the moon, right?
23:36	Shaan Puri	By the way, this is one of those funny things that happen. One kid came to practice about ten minutes late and we're like, "Dude, can't be late." He said, "Sorry, was at work." We look at his hands — hands are covered in grease, like he's a mechanic. I guess he's like our guard — like a mechanic. Then he comes to practice and, like, this other guy — wait...
23:56	Sam Parr	In high school, he's a—is he? Yeah.</FormattedResponse>
23:58	Shaan Puri	They have jobs.
23:59	Sam Parr	You know, is he Vinny? Does he, like... dude, this?
24:02	Shaan Puri	The player's named Vinny. Yes — fuck it, man, Vinny's amazing. Like, Vinny. Yeah. So, anyways, there's all these little things where you're like, "Oh, you forgot what it's like to be, first of all, a teenager." But secondly, you forgot how much of the basic habits have to be installed in somebody that will serve them not just here, but also in whatever they do. Right? Because most of our guys are not gonna be in the NBA — none of them. So it's: how do I teach you something that's useful today for you on this team so we win and have fun, but that's also a master skill that's gonna serve you in the future? I'm not—I'm not doing my Gordon Bombay if I don't actually do both for them.
24:40	Sam Parr	"Do you think—what percentage of a difference would it make? So, let's say, hypothetically, your team is a five out of ten, just average. With good coaching, what do you think that would change?"
24:55	Shaan Puri	I think good coaching can take a five‑out‑of‑ten team to an eight.
24:59	Sam Parr	Which is great.
25:00	Shaan Puri	Which is dramatic, yeah.
25:02	Sam Parr	I think in my leadership position in my career I've only been average. I've seen great leaders, and I've particularly loved reading military books—about Navy SEALs and stuff like that. I think I get good examples of what a good leader looks like. I think the difference, with all else being equal... I've read, and I think Jocko has this story in his book (I forget what it's called—something Leadership). He talks about how, during BUD/S [Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training]—the week where you become a SEAL—they have six different groups of eight guys carrying rafts on their backs and they have to race. They assign leaders, and all they do is change the leaders after each race. What they notice is that the leader determines whether the boat wins or not—not the other seven guys lifting the boat.
25:54	Shaan Puri	Right
25:55	Sam Parr	And when I heard that example, I realized I'm not that leader at this moment — I have to become one. I think the difference is more than from a five to an eight; I think it's potentially almost a ten. I just think that leadership is so important, and it's just so challenging. It's one of those things where, if you're like you and I, you think, "Oh, I'm charismatic; I'm probably already good. I don't need to learn — I can convince people to do stuff," or "I'm an idea guy; my ideas are good." That's just not the case. Just like basketball, leadership is a skill. Learning how to get teams to operate effectively is a skill, and I'm learning all of this in real time. It's been very challenging.
26:34	Shaan Puri	I'll give you an example I took from the podcast. I think you were on there talking about company values—you were like, "Oh, at Hampton we're trying to come up with our values," and you listed what you thought they would be. I pushed back a bit, like, "Yeah, I kind of expected it to be like this," and you said, "Yes, okay, let me..." and you were working through it. Right after I got off the podcast, I drove over, grabbed my whistle and my clipboard, and went to basketball practice. When we got there I said, "Hey, it's the start of our season," to Danny, our coach. I told him I thought we should install the two or three things we hang our hat on—what are we all about? In sport they call this your team's identity. There are famous teams with a real identity: the "Bad Boy Pistons"—the name told you they were tough, mean, had a nasty streak, and you couldn't push them around. In the modern day, Heat culture is a big one. The Miami Heat are known for having almost a military standard. For example, they're the only NBA team I think that tests weight and body fat every single week. You're either fined or you don't get to play if you're not keeping your numbers—doesn't matter who you are. You can't just coast by on talent. They demand it from day one. By the time you show up to training camp you need to already be in shape; you don't come to training camp to get in shape. That's a known standard. It doesn't matter where you played before—when you go there you already know what they're about. You've heard the stories, so you either buy in or you're out. So on our first day we did it all wrong. We said, "Okay, what do we—you're all about playing hard." So effort was going to be one of our things. We told them three values: effort was the first, then we had two others. At the end of practice the athletic director wanted to talk to the head coach, so he had to leave. He said, "Coach Sean will finish up the practice," and that was me. I didn't really know what to do, but I went ahead and helped the guys finish. I huddled them up and said, "Alright, how did we do today on those? We started practice saying these three words—this is our identity. Who can give them to me?" They couldn't even remember. They got one of the three—effort—and that was it. They wanted to remember but just couldn't. That showed me it's a tier-two thing: repetition and reminders are super important. Then I asked, "So how did we do on effort?" One guy kind of nodded with a shrug—"pretty good." Another guy just shook his head no with no explanation. Another said, "Yeah, good effort." I reminded them of what I was telling Sam about Facebook's old value: "move fast and break things." It wasn't just speed—everyone can say, "We're moving fast"—it's like, are you moving so fast you're breaking things? If you're not, then you're not even playing at our speed.
29:51	Sam Parr	So what's yours? What was...</FormattedResponse>
29:52	Shaan Puri	So I was like, "Oh, if we just said the word is 'effort' then some effort's fine... I guess pretty good—effort's fine." Like, "Wait, guys, what is it? Is it pretty good effort, whatever?" There's one kid on the team who always beats everybody in the sprints. He's not the most talented kid, but he plays the hardest. Whenever we make them run, he always finishes first. His name's Max, and I was like, "Oh, perfect." I go, "Alright, we have a new standard: it's called Max effort." I was like, "If you're not playing as hard—" It's like a pun, right? But I was like, "If you're not playing as hard as Max, it's not effort. That's not what we do. We play with Max effort." That's the only one of the three that stuck because it was like a campaign slogan and it worked, you know? It's actually a bar you could pass/fail, whereas most of the other values were like, 'Yeah, we want to be really competitive.' It's like, alright, we're kind of—there's no pass/fail. You can't test it. Versus, everybody knows: did I actually go at Max effort today or not? It's a very simple pass/fail. So taking these things from business and trying to apply them here has been very, very interesting.
30:54	Sam Parr	Yeah, I think that we—we too often think about marketing to customers when we should be marketing to ourselves, our teams, and our families. This sounds eye-roll-y, but my wife and I have been asking: should we have values for our family? What should they be? We're at the age now where our children are old enough that we can form traditions. We're like, what traditions should we have? What do we want to teach them? I joke with my daughter and we do daily affirmations. I say, "Repeat after me: 'I'm bold, I'm tough, and I won't conform to anyone.'" That's her daily affirmation because clearly I care about that type of stuff. We had to sit down and ask, "Alright, what collectively should we care about so we can teach our kids?" Also, what traditions can we have? I was thinking about my own framework. I have what I call my Four F's: family, fitness, finance, fun. Those are the categories I value and the metrics I weigh myself on. I need to have that for my family and for other parts of myself. If I'm being a weak leader, I need to come up with a cool phrase I can remind myself of in times when I want to revert back to the old me. This whole episode is about change, and these little phrases—I'm telling you, I just dismissed them by calling them "cute phrases"—but they work. So much at Hampton we have this thing called the Three C's: commitment, candor, and confidentiality. We have to repeat it—we've found we have to repeat it roughly six times to our customers—for them to understand and remember the Three C's. It all has to be in a memorable format.
32:40	Shaan Puri	So, I was kind of studying this last night. I was like, how do you actually do it? Because you said that, right — they need to be memorable. Alright, Sam, tell me: how do you make them memorable? It's like... well, there's a couple frameworks. But I'm not an expert on that, and I don't think you're an expert on that either. We actually care about this and we should be good at this. We're pretty good at writing and pretty good at talking — it's kind of what we do for a living — and even we aren't that far ahead. Okay, so who is great at this? Who's in what group of people is amazing at this? I don't know... marketers. Marketers — the people who come up with slogans specifically. Another one is: where is it life or death? Where do you have to be great at it?
33:24	Sam Parr	Military or police?
33:26	Shaan Puri	Military and politics—you gotta get elected, right? And so "Make America Great Again," right? Okay. That's... that's a thing. If he repeated it a thousand times, it was enough to stick. It was polarizing, interesting, repeatable—something you could get behind. I was studying this last night and there's this phrase called—I don't even know how you pronounce this—chiasmus (C-H-I-A-M-U-S). Alright, so here's an example of one, Sam: if I said the following phrase, "Ask not what your country can do for you..." what would you say next?
34:04	Sam Parr	"Ask what you could do for your country."
34:05	Shaan Puri	Exactly, and that's a chiasmus. It's basically a sentence structure that is an earworm. I don't even know when—when was that said? When was that phrase said? It was said like 50 years ago or something like that.
34:19	Sam Parr	JFK said it in 1963, I think.
34:22	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. So this is more than 50 years ago, and yet—off the tip of our tongue—you and I can say this phrase that was said about 20 years before we were born. That's how powerful that phrase is. So what is that structure? It's basically this: if you break down the sentence, it's the "they say this" A B B A structure. The first part is about asking, right? For example: > "Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country." The first half is the A, the "your country can do for you" is the B, and then you switch the order and ask "what you can do for your country"—so you switch the sentence structure. There are these two overall structures you can use. There's, like, A B B A, and then there's—I'm sorry—A A B B A, and then there's also A A B A B or A B B A. So it's like there are two structures that you could use. What you start to do is find two phrases that individually are valid, okay? For example—I don't know if you've seen that podcast clip that went viral—people are like, "Oh my God, I hate podcasts," where there's that girl trying to be motivational and she says—she's like, "Don't... don't love your job. Job your love."
35:39	Sam Parr	Oh, yeah — and the blonde-haired lady.
35:42	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and everyone's just like — it's the ultimate groan. The reason why that chiasmus doesn't work is because [unclear: "job your love"] doesn't make any sense, right? You have to find two individual statements that make sense. For example: > "Ask what your country can do for you" and "ask what you can do for your country." Both are individually valid. Then you structure it this way and it becomes incredibly memorable. If you go look at that JFK speech, there are like three of them that he uses in that one speech if you break the speech down. </FormattedResponse>
36:10	Sam Parr	> "Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate."
36:15	Shaan Puri	Chiasmus — these phrases sound beautiful. They're very satisfying to the mind. When you understand how the mind works, you see that the mind loves order; it loves structure. If you look at why a face is beautiful: symmetry. The more perfect the symmetry of a face, the more beautiful it appears to people. Another example is the game Tetris. Why is Tetris so addictive? Why are games like Candy Crush and Tetris so addictive? They tap into a part of your brain that's almost a cleaning instinct. There's a mess, you put one block in the right place, and it evaporates the mess. It creates order out of disorder, and the brain loves that. It just wants to do it again and again. This is the basis of the game design of Candy Crush and Tetris. The brain likes what it likes, so if you want to change your brain—which is the result of multi-thousand years of evolution—that's very hard. But changing the structure of how you speak so that you tap into what the brain likes and give it what it wants—so that it becomes memorable, sticky, and effective—is obviously the much better way to go.
37:25	Sam Parr	"This is... this is pretty profound. This is very fascinating. What did you read to learn this? You said last night you were curious about this."
37:36	Shaan Puri	Well, I started asking different questions. I even said it earlier: "Whose life depends on this?" Anytime I want to get good at something, I try to figure out who — who is this a nice-to-have for, and who is it a must-have for? So let's say you want to lose weight. You would go look at bodybuilders training for a bodybuilding competition. If you want to know the logical extremes of how to get the maximum muscle and the lowest body fat, go watch what they do.
38:01	Sam Parr	Yeah, whose next meal is dependent on getting this right?</FormattedResponse>
38:05	Shaan Puri	Exactly. Right now I'm writing the book, and I told Diego yesterday—he's helping me—that we're doing this process where I write in the morning, then I do a bit of a show-and-tell with him. I show him what I'm doing and then I get feedback. The problem with our feedback is: I want you to like it. I want to show it to you, but I also want your honest feedback because I want to make this better. You're trying to be polite and not hurt my feelings because you see I tried very hard this morning, but you're also trying to help me make it better. Those two things are at odds with each other. We don't even know how to give feedback in this way. I need to be able to share so I can get better, but I don't need my emotions swinging based on "yay they liked it, I did a good job" or "oh, they didn't like it, I did a bad job." That's so lame and a waste of energy. On your end, I don't need you having one part of your head saying, "How do I say this the right way because I want to be nice and supportive?" versus, "Hey, how can I tell you what I'm feeling or give feedback?" This art of giving feedback on something subjective—I don't know how to do this, and you don't know how to do this. Who has already solved this problem? It's a must-have skill for them. So I thought, let's text a couple of comedians. Comedians have to figure out, "Is this funny or not?" Once they've heard the joke 20 times, it's not funny to them anymore; they can't tell. How do they do it? How do musicians do this? They play a song and ask, "Is this a good song?" After playing it ten times, they can't tell anymore if it's any good. How do they get feedback? So now we're going to go find the people—for whom this is a must-have—and learn from them.
39:51	Sam Parr	That's actually—first of all, there's... I keep talking to the listener today, but there are two or three takeaways. The question of "whose life depends on this?" — that's a great question. I'm very curious, actually. I want to know the answer because I create a little bit for a living. I want to know how you know if something's hitting. If I had to guess for a comedian, they would probably just say, "I perform it in small audiences and I suffer the pain of bombing."
40:18	Shaan Puri	Right. Yeah. Then that might be it for them, and it's like, "Oh, cool—so what's my version of an open mic with 20 people and testing if it bombs?" Can I do that in my world? Is there a way I could set that up? Okay. Maybe if it's not that, how do musicians do this? You sort of start to figure out: how do they do that? How do they get feedback? What's the language there? Pixar—I think they wrote this book, Creativity, Inc.—they talk about the "brain trust" that they have, how they show raw material, not even a whole movie but a single scene, and how they created a dynamic of trust. There's actually a great story: when Disney bought Pixar, Pixar had been making hit after hit after hit, and Disney animation had been bombing for years. So they put the Pixar guys in charge. They were like, "Great—we'll merge these two companies and then we'll just start making hits like Pixar."
41:05	Sam Parr	They just want to fire all the Disney people, though. </FormattedResponse>
41:07	Shaan Puri	No, no, no. I think what he did at the beginning — the main guy, Ed Catmull — they were like, "Oh, what a perfect A/B test," what a perfect, you know, randomized controlled test. So what they did was they didn't blend the teams together; they kept the teams separate. He basically took the Pixar method and taught it to the Disney folks. He's basically like, if we just took our process but not our people, could we make those same people who have been failing succeed? Kinda to your question earlier about how big of a lever leadership or coaching is — can it take a five and turn it into a ten? They actually started creating hits once he taught them the process of doing this. For them, I think trust was the underlying thing. If you don't have trust, you're not going to share your work at the right times. You're not going to give real, candid feedback. You're not going to receive candid feedback in the right way because you distrust what's going on — you think your project's going to get killed if it's bad, or you think this guy's going to come steal your thunder if you let him collaborate on it. You have all these fears that are basically a lack of trust. Once they installed their sort of "trust process," Disney Animation started making hits too.
42:16	Sam Parr	Well, I think one of the other points from that book was—he said, "we have hit makers." He said, "we've got these two or three people who are just typically more... they're more right more often than other people, and we listen to them." He did a pretty funny thing about that. So, okay. For MFM we've done a handful of challenges, like the MFM fitness thing. We should do a give-back thing because... Tell me about it: I haven't really given my time to give to others. I don't know if you consider coaching giving. Is it like—you rescued a dog, but you say the dog rescued you? Is it that type of thing? That's exactly it.
42:57	Shaan Puri	Right... like.
43:01	Sam Parr	"You thought—you thought—that you were going to go and do it for these kids."
43:04	Shaan Puri	To be perfectly clear, my choice was selfish. I wanted to do it. I thought it would be fun—and it is very fun—so I do want to do it. It's not like this burden I'm carrying. At the same time, in the last two years I had given some money to charity and felt nothing. Maybe I did some good in the world—it's hard to know. You give the money and it mostly goes into a black box, and hopefully something good happens, hopefully someone's life is changed in a positive direction, but I don't know. I didn't feel anything, so I didn't want to triple down on that. My trainer has this great thing he says. Basically he always talks about, "our economy, our economy." I wondered why he talks so much about the economy—like Jim Cramer or Powell, interest rates, the macro stuff. But he meant something else. He meant us: "me and you and my other clients." Because he trains my mom and she referred another person, it's all like a web. He said he's talking about our local economy—he wants that little economy to thrive. He doesn't care what's going on in the macro; he wants the local to thrive because that's what he can affect. If that's thriving, it improves the lives of people he can see, feel, and touch. If everyone did that in their local little bubble, the big picture would take care of itself. He even went further with this cute idea. I asked, "If the normal economy measures GDP (gross domestic product), how do you know if your economy is doing well?" He said, "Baby smiles per hour." He explained, "I just want everybody to be smiling. If I make you laugh and you carry that vibe into the house with your wife and kids, and they carry that into school, that's how it works. Whether it's your mood, doing something for them, thinking of them, or having an experience together, it has this carry-on effect. They take that smile into the next interaction—that's how it spreads." I started buying into this. It's about your local economy; it's about "baby smiles per hour." So I asked myself, what can I do that's a kind of give-back, but not the way I did it last year—when I put money into a black box, into some multinational nonprofit, and it just disappeared? I don't know what happened and I didn't feel anything. So the idea of going to a local high school, taking an unpaid job, and contributing my time, talent, and effort—affecting a group of twelve guys—sounds small but feels very big. Other thing...
45:42	Sam Parr	For sure.
45:42	Shaan Puri	"Solving world hunger sounded very big, but it felt very small—like there was no feeling. I don't know... I don't know if this is the right direction or wrong, but that's the one I've gone."
45:50	Sam Parr	I don't—I'm not charitable. I want to be, but I'm a little... I don't know how to be. I don't want to just write a check to someone and not feel anything. I want to be selfish; I want to get value out of this—just a feeling. So I talked to—do you know who Mike Beckham is? He started Simple Modern.
46:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah, the hugely successful water bottle company.
46:13	Sam Parr	He told me all the numbers and said I could share them. He's worth about $200 million because the company does around $200 million a year in revenue and about $50 million a year in profit. His net worth—because he owns half of it and with the multiple—means, as he told me last year, "I'm worth probably $200 million," and/or he said "$1.90." He said he has about, I think, $3 or $4 million to his name, but he pulls $5 million out of the business every year. He takes $1 million of it and gives away $4 million. If you guys Google "Mike Beckham Sam Parr," you'll see a post I wrote about it. I think there's a chance I got the number slightly wrong, but basically he said he takes something like $5 million and gives the rest away. "My family spends $25,000 a month," he said, "so we take enough for us to spend—after taxes—and I give, you know, $4 million or $4.5 million away. I give it away." I was like, "That's insane, man. Why do you do that?" He replied, "Well, it's not generous to do this when I die, because that's not hard for me. It should be some type of challenge. This should feel like—I should feel a little bit of pain." Then he said something really great: "The more that I give, the less loud the greedy voice in my head becomes." He explained that he feels this greediness, this voice in his head that says, "Make more money, buy more stuff," but the more he gives, that voice becomes a whisper because giving feels significantly better than acquiring a bigger home or another car. He said, "I drive a $30,000 CR-V because I know that if I bought a $90,000 car, that's $60,000 less that I can give to people, and it makes me feel good to do that." And so his whole—... </FormattedResponse>
47:53	Sam Parr	Of him telling me this — he wanted to get me to give now versus when you're old or dead. I thought that was very inspirational. Not that inspirational because I haven't done it yet, but more admirable. Yeah, inspirational. It inspired me. Like the Rocky movie: "I should get into boxing one day."
48:19	Shaan Puri	Totally, but...
48:20	Sam Parr	I did think it was really awesome.
48:23	Shaan Puri	You know, I've read this a few times on Twitter where somebody will say, "Oh, I started either microdosing or I started taking, like, you know, Ozempic or whatever," or "I've the..." [sentence trails off]
48:32	Sam Parr	Done. All those things — you can just ask me.
48:34	Shaan Puri	Okay. So, maybe you had this too: they talk about "food noise hell," which was not a phrase I had ever heard before. I don't know if that is common, but they basically said the biggest change is not the weight loss—it's the "I don't have food noise." Basically, this is the part of my brain, this chatter in my head about the next meal, about whether I should have something, or about wanting something...
48:56	Sam Parr	Let me give you an example.</FormattedResponse>
48:57	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, is this real?"
48:58	Sam Parr	"Yes. I have an addictive personality. I had addiction issues before. Tell me if you've ever experienced this: you get a piece of dessert, like a cake. You eat half of it and put the rest in the refrigerator."
49:13	Shaan Puri	Oh, and then it's... you lay.
49:15	Sam Parr	In bed, and you're like, "But it's still there and it's uneaten." I think the fork that I used might still be in the sink. I could probably just use that... maybe. "Well, what are the—I'll just go up and get a little bit to bite." So you go, you get in bed, you eat my little bite, you put it back. Then I will do this seven times until it's gone and then it goes away. And I say to myself, "Shit. Well, I already did this; I might as well eat this entire sleeve of Oreo cookies."
49:39	Shaan Puri	Right.
49:40	Sam Parr	"And before you notice, you've done 1,000 or 1,500 calories of binge eating. But it's all based on one urge—that is, the food voice. When you take GLP‑1s, not only does that voice get dimmed, other addictions get dimmed too. I noticed I bit my nails less. I noticed I wasn't craving like I used to. If I smelled beer walking past a brewery, I'd be like, 'Let's go see what's up.' Not anymore."
50:06	Shaan Puri	"What is up when you go see what's up the..." [transcription truncated/incomplete]
50:11	Sam Parr	The secret is: you should not go see what's up. But you smell the hops, and you're like, "Oh, that's nice."
50:16	Shaan Puri	Right.
50:17	Sam Parr	But yeah, so yeah, it definitely turns it down.
50:20	Shaan Puri	So I wanted to ask you about this — the "money" voice, the loudness of the money or "more" voice in your head. A few podcasts ago, we did an episode where the front half was about something kind of silly, but the back half was us talking—like we mostly did today—about what's hard for us in life, what's some of the wisdom that helps, and just trying to figure shit out out loud. Right? Yeah. Doing that in front of a bunch of other people, a bunch of strangers, is a little bit uncomfortable, but you do it. In that episode I mentioned something that had come up: I have a lot of friends who basically have all the success and then they go start another company. It's like, did they stress out, lose some hair, gain some weight, and try to build another company... and I...
51:06	Sam Parr	Well, you said the best phrase ever, too.</FormattedResponse>
51:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah, this is the phrase that a lot of people DM me afterwards, which is like: "You've already earned the last dollar you will ever spend, so why are you trading good hours for bad dollars now?" That's something I had thought of for myself when I saw others. But that doesn't mean I'm immune to it either. I'm still in the same boat — I think I have it to a lesser degree. In the same way as that food chatter you were talking about: that guy's got a megaphone in my head, whereas for other people it's more like a whisper. I want to do two things. I want to ask you about the voice in your head, and then I want to tell you about a ChatGPT coaching conversation I had about money. I kind of want to read you what it said to me a little bit. But first, I want to ask you this: You are also in that boat — I believe you have earned the last dollar you'll ever spend. You're a pretty frugal guy in general; you're not like Mike Tyson buying tigers. You had a great exit with The Hustle, and you have earned the last dollar you'll ever spend. But here you are, starting more companies and maybe making some investments. Every day you wake up, you take your life energy and you go to an office with other people and you do this. I'm not saying that working and the mission is bad — that's not what I mean. I guess what I mean is: how do you think about money and wanting more? Are you honest with yourself that you do want more, and how do you square that circle of "I don't actually need more because I have already earned the last dollar I'll ever spend" — or do you not think that's true? So I just want to hear: what's that chatter in your head? How loud is it and what does it say?
52:50	Sam Parr	I think—okay—nothing is all or nothing; there's a priority of lists. The number one priority for me is that I just don't know what to do. I don't know how to spend my time. When I sit around, I feel like I'm missing out or that I'm not contributing, and that feels bad. Yet when I spend all my time working, some days I have bad days and I think, "What am I doing? I should be doing this other thing." So that tension exists. The one right below that is "I'm not good enough." My self-worth is directly correlated to the success of the thing I'm working on.
53:26	Shaan Puri	My self-worth is my net worth, basically. Yeah.
53:30	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah, yeah — you could say that. That's probably from years of trauma and believing something; it's hard to break. And then the last thing is: more money does feel good. Yeah, it definitely feels good. What I have to do... I do the math all the time, where I'm like, "I don't need more; everything that I want, I have." But I can't break that, I guess. I guess, if you wanted to be a therapist or a psychologist, you would say the reason you don't want to change—or the reason you don't change—is because you don't want to. You know, you like how it feels.
54:07	Shaan Puri	"Do you like how it feels?"</FormattedResponse>
54:08	Sam Parr	I love when things go well at my company. I do feel on top of the world. The problem with building companies is you typically only feel like that 10 percent of the time, right? You know... things are bad most of...
54:19	Shaan Puri	The ineffective way to get that feeling — yeah.
54:22	Sam Parr	So I say, "I don't gamble. I don't do drugs or alcohol. Instead, this is like a dopamine slot machine."
54:31	Shaan Puri	Yeah. Okay.
54:33	Sam Parr	So it's like, "Do you like being addicted to gambling?" </FormattedResponse>
54:35	Shaan Puri	You.
54:35	Sam Parr	"Say no, but when you win, it's so amazing that it makes you..."
54:40	Shaan Puri	"But at least it's not heroin, is what you kind of just..."
54:44	Sam Parr	Yeah. And then I also justify it by saying — and this is a bad justification, and I'll prove it to you — "I'll go ahead and do the work for you." You say to yourself, "I don't want my kids to just see me sitting around. I want them to see me working really hard. I want to set a good example." But then they probably would rather be with you.
55:06	Shaan Puri	Yeah, they want to see me.
55:07	Sam Parr	Yeah. I don't know… I think I do okay: I go to the office from nine to four, nine to five. Then I also say, "I'm doing this for them," and it's like — what is this for them? How does that make sense? They don't need anything physical. They don't… what do they need that I can't give them already, right?
55:29	Shaan Puri	Yeah. Is fifty-hour weeks the most effective way to give them the general principle that you should work hard at things? That might not be the most efficient route to that answer. Okay, so I wrote down three things. I wrote down imagination, which I think is the first part. The first one you said was basically: "I don't know what else. I kinda don't know what else to do. I want to do something, and I don't want to do nothing; therefore I do this thing." I think about that a lot. I think that Sully came on the podcast a while back, and he said something where he goes...
56:00	Sam Parr	Sully, being your good buddy who is presumably worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is one of the more successful entrepreneurs we know.
56:06	Shaan Puri	Correct. He's my great friend, but he's also the person I respect and trust the most when it comes to entrepreneurship and business.
56:19	Sam Parr	"Like strategy."
56:20	Shaan Puri	Yeah, and I've met a lot of people wealthier than him, but he consistently has the highest signal—best judgment of anyone. Just the way he approaches a tax business—he's such a winner. So he came on the pod and he goes: > "I used to think I was limited by some lack of resource—like maybe I didn't have a skill I needed. I needed to learn how to code. Maybe I didn't have enough money. Maybe I didn't have enough time. Basically, I always thought I lacked the network; I didn't know people. I just assumed I lacked some resource. Now I realize that all I ever lacked was imagination. The thing I lacked the most was even figuring out what to want, what the possibilities were of what I could do, and how I might be able to go do those things." That sounds kind of hand-wavy, I guess. But the more smart people I meet, the more that side of your brain grows: you are analytical, good at making plans, executing them, and operating. The better you are at that, the more disproportionately bad I've noticed people can be at imagination. So, for example—kinda what you said—it's like, "I don't know what else to do with my hands." There are a lot of things. There's actually a ton of things. In the stupid example I gave earlier—this wouldn't be the right thing for you, but it was the right thing for me—what if, instead of chasing down the next investment or starting another company when I had a bunch of deals and ideas, the right, fulfilling thing was to take four months, one season, and coach a high school basketball team? That was the right answer for me—totally out of left field. It doesn't even make sense; it wouldn't be the right answer for other people. But it's the thing that totally fills my cup in a way that another successful business never would.
58:11	Sam Parr	Yeah, but I think you're not — or maybe you are — but it's way harder than you think. The imagination game is quite challenging. For example, if you said, "You have a billion dollars today — what do you want to do?" I'm like, I don't have an answer. We might get flayed in the comments here... All we're talking about is, I call it second-mountain problems, but whatever. I was thinking, "Why do I want all these employees?" We're moving to a new office down the street and we just signed a lease — it's a $1 million lease. Over three years it's going to be $1 million, and we're building out this office. It's a lot of money. I've never done this before, and I was like, why am I doing this? I thought, maybe I'm lying to myself again. I was like, I care about capabilities. What I hate is that you have an idea — like, how often do you have an idea for a small project and you're like, "Ugh, now I have to go get the people and train the people," and you don't think they're going to be any good.
59:09	Shaan Puri	"Yeah — all the time, yeah." </FormattedResponse>
59:10	Sam Parr	I was listening to Ari Emanuel talk. He was like, "We have this thing and this thing and this thing." I thought, how cool is it that your company — and you — have all these capabilities? You have an idea and you say, "Wouldn't it be cool if this existed in the world?" It's not just a business idea for him; I think he cares about the show. He's like, "Wouldn't it feel awesome if, like, at the UFC we did [blank], or we bought all these tennis tournaments and we offered food at a discount?" I don't know. I love the idea of having lots and lots of capabilities, and I think that's why business building is fun.
59:43	Shaan Puri	Mhmm. Yeah—I have that right now. I actually forgot to say this, but one of the things I've been talking about for a while on here, and have not executed—my walk hasn't matched my talk—is this realization: Video is the language of the internet. If the internet were a country, it would be the most important country in the world. It would be more powerful than America. People live and spend a lot of time online, so the question becomes: do you speak the native tongue? If you come to America and don't speak English, you're at a massive disadvantage. Likewise, if you don't speak video, you're not speaking the important language of the most important country. Video is how people communicate online—whether long form, like this on YouTube, or short form, which is growing more and more popular across YouTube Shorts, Reels, TikTok, etc. If you don't have the capability to communicate, tell your story, or connect with others in that medium, you're missing the primary way people exchange information. In fact, it doesn't really matter where you were born or what you were doing or how hard you worked. If you were born anywhere in the world, the best decision you could make for your life quality and upward mobility was to move to America and learn English—even if that meant starting at the bottom or being uncomfortable. In the long term, that short-term pain was the best thing you could do. There was no amount of hard work in Somalia that was going to make up for that one decision. </FormattedResponse>
01:01:16	Sam Parr	"Dude, is this the most charismatic and epic way to just say you're going to start posting on Instagram?"
01:01:23	Shaan Puri	"Yeah, I'm gonna start posting on Instagram. Could I not just sell you on the fact that I'm posting on Instagram?"
01:01:33	Sam Parr	Dude, imagine—imagine your wife at the dinner table just telling this story, like: "Listen. Years ago our grandparents lived in India. The best thing they could have done was learn English. Now here we are today, the year 2025. Sean, are you going to start posting on Instagram?"
01:02:04	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. In fact, I'm going to start specifically posting a story series about the coaching thing I'm doing. So, basically, day one — every week I'm just going to post the thing I sent you.
01:02:18	Sam Parr	Dude, that was a good video. Do you get inspired by Marshall?
01:02:20	Shaan Puri	No, not Marshall. There's actually these young guys who are doing this. There's this format where...
01:02:26	Sam Parr	Airbnb — the Airbnb guy, Fire, and the bar guy.
01:02:30	Shaan Puri	His name, I think, is Rajan. I don't know exactly what his first name is—it's his handle or something. They're building, like, a luxury Airbnb in Virginia. There's a guy who bought an old bowling alley and he's rehabbing it. It's basically like: "Yo, I'm doing a project for shits and giggles and I wanna make it happen." I'm kind of new to this, so I don't have it all figured out, but I'm going to share as I go. I just like the format. I think it's fun, and I want to do it specifically on something that's not business. It's very hard for me to get motivated to be like, "Now I'm gonna give you business-guru content." Even if I like business, it's just very hard for me to sit in front of the camera and do talking-head content about business, about myself, or about, you know, some new SaaS company. But I was like, "This one I would wanna follow, so I'm gonna make this content." I'm going to make a coach account—it's gonna be like Coach Sean or Coach P or something. I'll put the link in the Instagram [or in the comments of this], or I'll put it on the screen. I won't be able to follow it because I'm going to post videos on here, but I think they'll be great.
01:03:28	Sam Parr	That's so funny. I've been doing the Instagram thing — it's pretty fun because you start trying to... it's basically because we're the old guys now. It's sort of like when people wanted to start newsletters or something, and it was like, "Dude, you're writing way too tight; you gotta be a little loosey-goosey."
01:03:46	Shaan Puri	Right.
01:03:47	Sam Parr	Right. I've done the same thing on Instagram where I start talking to the camera and... get official. "You're gonna—you're gonna have fun." It's very pop.
01:03:55	Shaan Puri	"Pop those two buttons down."
01:03:56	Sam Parr	Dude, it's so intimidating. If you go to my [page], I start — I do all of our videos now where I'm holding a spatula as a microphone, because we had to have fun and such. </FormattedResponse>
01:04:05	Shaan Puri	Genie of you.
01:04:07	Sam Parr	And it totally has.
01:04:09	Shaan Puri	Office. Hey.
01:04:12	Sam Parr	"Fellow kids."
01:04:13	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. It's so funny that you say that — your content is pretty good. The problem with it, though, and the problem with all social media, is when someone says, "I'm gonna try to post good short-form content." That's basically saying, "I'm gonna go to the bar and not get drunk." It's so easy for your mind to get wrapped up in the vortex of how many likes.
01:04:34	Sam Parr	So easy.
01:04:34	Shaan Puri	How many views did that get? Is that good? Is that bad?
01:04:36	Sam Parr	And so easy.
01:04:37	Shaan Puri	I don't even know, physically, if — even knowing that — I know I don't know if it's physically possible to go in and not want that. So I could easily see myself aborting that process six months from now. Even though, in this case, it's like I'm doing it for just this basketball season, which is just three months, and it's only content about this random side quest that I'm on. It's not like, "Here's my personal IG — I'm gonna create short-form content every day." </FormattedResponse>
01:05:02	Sam Parr	But let me tell you something: I've been telling myself this, and it's been helping so much. A few things. One — the algorithm on Meta is so good right now that the right people see the right stuff. I'm pretty sure the camera knows what I'm wearing, what my background looks like, what I look like. I posted a skateboarding video; it knows I'm doing a skateboarding thing and shows it to the right people. Somehow — I don't know how it does it. The second thing is that I've only been doing this for a handful of weeks, and I'm going to be doing a lot more. People text me when something hits, and that is so much cooler than the number of likes or the comments. It's just those texts. The cool thing is, once you have a business — which in this case you're actually probably not doing it for business — you don't need that many people to watch it. I'm seeing it's changing our business; we're getting customers. I've made a lot of money off of it already in a very short amount of time with very few views. I think my most popular thing is getting 70,000 or 80,000 views. It's not a lot for Instagram, and the right people are shown the right stuff. You don't need that much to make it cool. There is something weird about Instagram right now, and I know that any 21‑year‑old listening to this is like...
01:06:17	Shaan Puri	Yeah, duh.</FormattedResponse>
01:06:18	Sam Parr	"Duh. But, like, if you're above 30 or whatever and you grew up with this stuff, I've never posted on Instagram up until recently. The algorithm is way different than what I used to think it was."
01:06:27	Shaan Puri	That's cool. Yeah, it makes a ton of sense. I think you're doing a good job. I think the spatula trick is a good trick—I like that. Everybody's gotta have a shtick. That's yours: you're the spatula guy.
01:06:38	Sam Parr	Great.
01:06:41	Shaan Puri	"That's where we thought we'd land in life."
01:06:43	Sam Parr	"Let me write that in my diary."
01:06:45	Shaan Puri	I mean... Have you ever had the thought, "What did your grandfather do?"
01:06:48	Sam Parr	Dude, when I think about my grandfather, I think: if I were him right now, I'd have 18 confirmed kills under my belt in World War II.
01:06:55	Shaan Puri	Know I am.
01:06:56	Sam Parr	"With a fucking spatula."
01:06:58	Shaan Puri	An ammunition factory in India.
01:07:00	Sam Parr	Yeah. Okay, so that...</FormattedResponse>
01:07:01	Shaan Puri	Is my grandfather—his thought, his idea of what work is?
01:07:04	Sam Parr	As you're talking to a microphone with a sheep on it that says, "Sorry I'm late."</FormattedResponse>
01:07:08	Shaan Puri	Yeah, my shirt literally says, "Sorry I'm late — I was dilly-dallying." That's what I wore to work today. </FormattedResponse>
01:07:14	Sam Parr	Dude, your grandpa lost three fingers before the age of 28.
01:07:20	Shaan Puri	"I was like, 'Ari, is this shirt too wrinkly right before the butt?' And she's like, 'I think it fits what it says.' It's like, 'Yeah, yeah, that's true.' So, but just this—it's a kind of mind-bending thing, right?"
01:07:30	Sam Parr	My grandpa was a sheriff. He was a cop.
01:07:33	Shaan Puri	Okay, so a job that you can buy an action figure for. Yeah—soldiers, policemen, you know: a factory worker, construction worker. Doing a real thing that the world critically needs. That's hard and completely unglamorous. And then I think about his son—what did his son do? My dad... he sat in a cubicle, in an office, not a factory. He mostly typed on a computer and wore a suit—this big, expansive suit for some reason. He would sometimes fly on an airplane to meet with somebody, shake their hand, talk to them for a while, and then come back home. So he did these business meetings. That’s what I grew up with. To my grandfather, what my dad did kind of looked like a joke. And now my dad looks at me and he's like, "You're wearing a shirt with a sheep on it that says 'abdillydalen' [unclear]. You're talking to your friend on this tiny screen. You're podcasting—who? What is a podcast? You make...?" I'll still go to family gatherings and they'll be like, "So how do you earn money, though?" And I'm like, I don't know—how do I explain this? "Ads." And they're like, "But where and how?" I'm like, "Have I told you about HubSpot? My uncle has a CRM." I don't know why. But to them, what we do is like—yeah, you're talking into a cell phone to strangers so that they can join... so that...
01:09:06	Shaan Puri	One percent of them will go spend $10 joining your membership community. You think, "What is this?" And then you think about what your kids are going to do — it's going to be completely unrecognizable. Work is going to be unrecognizable from one generation to the next. That's what I'm realizing. </FormattedResponse>
01:09:23	Sam Parr	"And I feel like such a fucking pussy doing it."
01:09:28	Shaan Puri	But, like, no — our kids are just going to be livestreamers, right? Like, you know that girl who, as comments were coming in, would be like, "Woo-hoo, cowboy!" every time there was a cowboy hat gift? That's what our kids are going to do. Something that seems even worse: it's going to be like, "Yeah, I'm an AI therapist." It's like, "Do you mean..." It's like, "Well, I sort of... I talk to AIs to make them feel better." "Say what? What is that? Is that a job?"
01:09:50	Sam Parr	"I think about your mom all the time."
01:09:52	Shaan Puri	"Well... inappropriate."
01:09:54	Sam Parr	Well, it could go either way. I think about your mom coming to America all the time because the way you told the story was really good. I saw myself in her situation — not having much, being on a plane for the first time, coming to America where you didn't speak anything. You were just dropped off in Berkeley, I think, and you're like, "What do I do?" I felt a little — not even close, but sort of like that — when I moved to San Francisco, but on a much smaller scale. I think about her all the time. I think about immigrants who come here with nothing, and I'm like... I'm complaining about this. I'm complaining that my apartment, which is already huge, isn't big enough. I want more, and I'm sad about it. I'm going to pay a therapist money where they can hear me complain about this. What?
01:10:39	Shaan Puri	The idea of a therapist is like someone you pay money to, and complain to. It's so funny.
01:10:47	Sam Parr	I just think about that — how ridiculous is this? Yeah... Sacagawea — or Sacajawea — carried her three-month-old kid across America for two years, for two years. She carried that kid and a piece of leather.
01:11:02	Shaan Puri	Yeah, but the car rental place only had forward-facing car seats.
01:11:06	Sam Parr	And I need four strollers. She carried him in a leather sack without diapers. I think about that all the time. I think about this stuff on a regular basis. How soft are we?
01:11:19	Shaan Puri	It's so funny because, you know, what's that famous Ernest Shackleton—like, you know, the "journey will be hard; people will die" job posting? What's that?</FormattedResponse>
01:11:28	Sam Parr	Famous. Yeah, so Ernest Shackleton — honestly, the greatest book I've ever read.
01:11:32	Shaan Puri	I think I said his first name. Like, he's just like Ernie from Sesame Street, and then I called him "Shackleford." What's his name? </FormattedResponse>
01:11:38	Sam Parr	Shackleton is his name, right? Or Shackleford... but whatever. He's just like the hardest dude of all time. The book Endurance is probably, honestly, one of the top three books I've read of all time. The story is basically: in the early 1900s he was on a ship—without power—that sailed down to the bottom of the Arctic or Antarctica (I forget which one). The ship gets so deep into the cold that the water—the ocean—freezes around it, and he walks for three months to get to, like, the tip of Brazil.
01:12:12	Shaan Puri	So here's the job ad: > "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in the event of success." > > — Ernest Shackleton, for Burlington Street That's the job. That's the job posting.
01:12:33	Sam Parr	Dude — such a good book.
01:12:35	Shaan Puri	"Wanted: cardboard box cutter. Lots of Amazon packages—it's getting a little bit unwieldy in the laundry room. Take off your shoes when you enter. Please bring own box cutter."
01:12:49	Sam Parr	I don't have tools softer than cream cheese, man. I'm so soft. I pride myself in trying to be hard, and it is... there is no pride.
01:12:59	Shaan Puri	It's like, "Why do I smell like chives? Oh—softer than cream cheese, baby. That's all this is. Ridiculous." Alright, so we started off talking about Dear Diary.
01:13:14	Sam Parr	Dude — the softest entry. The softest.
01:13:16	Shaan Puri	"Softest entrant, softest exit you'll find in podcasting... that's..."
01:13:20	Sam Parr	The episode — that's the pod.

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