4 Robot Businesses That Will Take Over The Fast Food Industry (#359)

Shaan Puri

The world has changed. There is now this **robotic arm** that serves as a general-purpose tool. Think of it like an **iPhone**; it's a piece of hardware that you can buy and program to do anything. When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, people were amazed. They said, "This is an iPhone. It can access the internet, it has GPS inside, and it can make phone calls." That was its initial functionality. From there, users figured out the rest. Initially, there wasn't an **App Store**, but once it was introduced, everything changed. Suddenly, you could download apps like the **flashlight app** or an app that turns your camera into a ruler to measure things. Then there’s **Strava**, which uses GPS for tracking activities. So, it's basically a **programmable general-purpose tool**. That's what's happening with these robotic arms.

Sam Parr

Alright, we're live, bro! What's up? Listen to this thing I'm going to tell you. I have been really healthy this summer. I didn't eat a lot of sugar—no added sugar, other than fruits and vegetables. Today, I decided it was my planned cheat day after three months of doing this, and I ate some ice cream. I feel miserable.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the cheat day is always underwhelming. It's always like I'm looking forward to it, I'm planning for it, and then I start doing it. I don't even feel good while I'm eating it.

Sam Parr

Well, it's like when you drink and then the next day you're hungover, and you're like, "Why did I do that?" But then you immediately do it again, like a few days later. I kind of feel like that, except instead of 3 days, it's like 10 minutes. So, I eat something, and 10 minutes later I'm feeling horrible. I'm like, "Oh, fuck it, there's still some left though. I should probably do it." Oh my god, I feel so sick.

Shaan Puri

You have such an extreme personality. You always go to these extremes. I also feel like this is why people hate fit people. They have these types of problems, and normal people are just like, "What are you talking about? What is the big deal? Why are you doing this to yourself? Why are you waking up in the middle of the night thinking about ice cream?" It's like the way that some people get annoyed about CrossFitters and, you know, people who love to talk about intermittent fasting. I think there are people who feel that way about us with business and money. It's just like, "Dude, not everything's a business. It's okay." I would say that if we succeed, we need to succeed in creating people that are as annoying as CrossFitters as our fans. I think that's my new goal.

Sam Parr

Yeah, you need freaks. Here, you've got a huge disadvantage. You know why, right? It's because you are what I like to call *normal*—emotionally stable. You have too much emotional health, good emotional health, in order to be extreme like some people. I'm reading this great book about leaders. The author looks at a lot of interesting leaders we like. For example, Abe Lincoln is one of the most written about figures, I think the most written about American figure ever. Winston Churchill and a bunch of people like that. His whole theory is that during okay times, a mentally stable leader can be adequate. But during bad times, mentally unstable leaders typically are the best at leading because they understand the ups and downs. They are kind of like crazy enough, similar to when an entrepreneur invents something or starts something versus the type of person who just runs it and keeps it even-keeled. You kind of need some extremes at extreme times. The book analyzes history on emotionally unstable people and looks at how they are actually the best during bad times.

Shaan Puri

Well, I think people underestimate this. In theory, it sounds like you want somebody who is stable. Let's say you join a startup or a small company; you want it to be like, "Oh, how do we make decisions?" You know, we talk about it as a group, we get a bunch of different perspectives, and then we sort of all chime in with what we think. We go with, you know, maybe the majority. It's like a democracy. Actually, that doesn't work in startups. It is not the norm, and that would be the outlier if it were to work. The norm is what they call the **benevolent dictator**. So, it's basically that we agree, for better or for worse, that person's the captain. They're the captain, and we're going on their ship. Either we're going down or we're going to the promised land. That's how the best startups work. They pick a captain, and they just go "ride or die" with that person. They say, "Look, for better or for worse, we need to make decisions fast." One person's going to always be faster than a committee. We need to be extremely decisive, so we can't be torn constantly by warring factions. One group wants A, the other group wants B; we can't have that. We need it to be a little bit extreme because, look, we're trying to do an extreme thing here. So maybe we need a bit of an extreme leader. I think in companies, you actually want a dictatorship. People don't like that; they're uncomfortable with that because that's not what you want in your country, maybe, or that's not what you want in your local city. But it is what you want in a company, and it is what you want on any creative project. That's kind of my view. You want a kind of crazy genius who's going to be the creative force driving the thing. Everybody else can get on board or get off. That's how you run the hustle; that's how I run my companies. It is definitely the way when it comes to creating new stuff from scratch.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and it actually makes sense. Let me explain how I was, and you tell me if you're the same way. If you look at a CEO, it doesn't really matter if there's a 30% approval rating. It's just about the numbers. Does it work? You know, for a publicly traded company, it didn't—unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it—matter if you're an asshole. Did the numbers go up? Did you achieve what you said you were going to achieve? So, it doesn't matter if your employees are happy. I mean, it matters if it becomes a retention problem. But if you have a 10% approval rating and your numbers are great, that's fine. If you have a 10% approval rating and you're the President of the United States, well, you're jobless. You know what I mean? You're not going to win the next election. So, it's all about appeasing to 1%. Because of that, we get used to this idea of democracy. You know, I don't want to be led. It's like, "Don't lead me, just get me involved." I remember when I started my company, I was like, "Yeah, that's how I'm going to run it." This is a meritocracy; we are all here working together. And it is that, but it is definitely more like, "Hey, I'm the boss. I will take input from everyone, but I'm making the decision, and this is the way that we're going to go." It's my job to make sure that you feel inspired to be here and all this other stuff. I remember feeling really self-conscious about that. There were times when I wasn't the leader. For example, when I joined HubSpot or maybe when you and I work on this podcast. It's like, "Well, I'm not exactly the boss." I actually felt a lot of security and comfort when I said, "Hey, who's the boss of this project?" And you just say, "This person is the boss." Great! "Hey, boss, what’s your decision, please?" I felt good about being a follower. Then I realized that maybe I think my employees need a boss. When you are the boss, it's kind of cool but also very stressful. When you're not the boss, it's like, "Yeah, I'm okay taking this role." I recognize we need a leader; just tell me what to do.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. What do they call it? "One neck to choke." It's like there needs to be one neck to choke when it comes to any situation or any problem. If I don't know who's in charge, if I don't know who actually makes the call, then you lose one really powerful thing, which is accountability. I think that's really important. I think that you're absolutely right. I don't mind whether I'm the person in charge or I'm not the person in charge; I just like that there is a person in charge. I want a benevolent dictatorship because that's what I have personally seen work best. I remember when I was at Twitch and we did the first executive off-site. So it's like, I don't know, the sort of 15 exec leaders in the company go to whatever fancy place they have, a spread of, you know, like whatever tea and crumpets, and it's Dave and Buster's.

Sam Parr

in daly city yeah fridays

Shaan Puri

you go to fridays during happy hour

Sam Parr

potato skins at the nuclear margarita yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah you you eat a loaded potato and you you start to decide the future of the company

Sam Parr

you gotta feel like your customers you know you gotta go to the applebee's and you gotta get the nachos

Shaan Puri

So, the CEO and the COO get up there and say, "Hey, look, we read the results from the last survey we did last quarter. It seemed like the big thing you guys wanted was that you felt the decision-making was too top-down. You didn't have a say, and you felt like your ideas either weren't heard or, you know, the groups... it was all just sort of mandated from above, and you just had to execute. You didn't feel empowered." So this time, we're doing it differently. They spent the whole day asking, "What are your ideas, children?" Then, everybody writes down their ideas on sticky notes. Awesome! Let's do a color voting system. Everybody vote on your top three.

Sam Parr

and you're like mx

Shaan Puri

he's like

Sam Parr

You know, so you want to do a commercial with the Rolling Stones, Sean. You know that that costs $1,000,000. But okay, we'll take that into account.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, who here keeps writing? Billboards are back. Back from where? What is this idea about? Right, so it's like you basically go through this whole day process where everybody's talking about it. You can tell that these executives, in a way, they're interested, but they're also biting their tongue a bit because they're like, "Look, alright, we said we're not gonna just slam in with our opinion and overrule everything." They're thinking, "Guys, it's obvious we're doing 1, 2, and 3. What are we talking about here?" So they didn't do that. They let everybody do their thing, which is great. We come up and we leave the off-site. Fast forward either to the next quarter or the quarter after that—so 3 or 6 months later—we go for the next off-site. It's like, "Oh, we're in the feedback. We feel like we just don't know how decisions are being made. We kinda wish that the leadership would just step in and give us clear direction on what we're gonna do. Like, hey, we're ready. We just need some clarity from you guys."

Sam Parr

it's called the long con man that this is the long con

Shaan Puri

And so they basically were like, "Here, we'll let you try this." I was just like, "Am I the only one in the room that remembers what the last feedback was, which is the exact opposite?" Which is like, "It's too top-down." And now it's like, "Are the leaders going to be leaders or not? We need clarity. Your job is to give us these decisions." Like we feel you're just sitting back and then now it's mayhem. And so that was like the affirmation of something I always believed... [the second part]

Sam Parr

There's this skit from the Chappelle Show where he wants to get Oprah pregnant. He wants to have Oprah's baby, and he gets her pregnant and goes, "Gotcha!" That's how I feel Emmett is just saying to himself after like 3 months. He's like, "Gotcha!"

Shaan Puri

you guys did one of the chappelle gotcha clip no dave

Sam Parr

I'm pregnant

Shaan Puri

are you sure it's mine

Sam Parr

no no listen it's yours

Shaan Puri

that's you bitch what what's going on lucie

Sam Parr

hey hey hey

Shaan Puri

The second thing is **wartime and peacetime**. I think this also matters a lot. You want this sort of **dictatorship** when it is wartime. For a startup or for a company, there are usually two wartimes. There's the beginning when you're nobody. You have no customers, no product, no direction, no market share—nothing. Then, if you start to succeed, you will hopefully enter some version of **peacetime**. It's like the thing is working. We don't need to wake up every day and worry about dying or killing our competitors. During peacetime, maybe you're working on maintenance, fixing bugs, or talking to customers to ensure your support is adequate. These are things you kind of push by the wayside. Now, there's more time to do those things properly. You work on security and server robustness.

Sam Parr

the same thing but more and better a little bit every time

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you don't need to go and conquer new lands. You're basically taking your existing land and saying, "Oh, you know, we need to fix up some things around here that we ignored during the wartime rush." But then you went to wartime again inevitably, and that's when, you know, the competitive landscape changes. A new platform gets released, competitors emerge, whatever, and the economy changes. Being able to shift between those two gears is pretty tough. I think very few leaders can be the best wartime CEO and the best peacetime CEO. Usually, you're one or the other. You're an amazing peacetime leader or an amazing wartime leader, and then you sort of stay too long when the season shifts. So I think that's the other thing to recognize. People will always say, "Oh, this person's good or bad," and it's like, well, actually, maybe they're just amazing at one season, and the season has changed. Now, a different type of person would actually be best for what's going on now. And so that's the other thing about this dictatorship stuff that you gotta know: What season are we in? If we're in wartime, I want a wartime CEO. If we're in peacetime, I need a peacetime CEO, and I need to know when to shift.

Sam Parr

I always hated saying this because there are so many people who died, and it was so bad for so many people. But I remember thinking, like, "Dude, COVID was awesome." I loved being in the trenches, you know? It was actually quite exciting. It's exciting now because I know how the story ends, and things end well. At the time, I was quite scared, but looking back, I was like, "Oh, I feel alive. This is... this is yeah."

Shaan Puri

This is what it's about, and honestly, I kind of hate the war metaphor. Because, you know, first of all, there are people who aren't actually in war. So, yeah, that's true. It's a borrowed term, and they didn't give us permission. The second thing is, you know, our "war" is fought literally at a keyboard with clicks firing left and right. So, there's a part of me that just feels very lame. It's like, "Yeah, I felt so alive when I was logging into Google Analytics every morning and checking out, you know, what was going on." It's like, well, do you acknowledge that you're kind of a soft... you know? Right? Like, it's okay. As long as I acknowledge that, then it's okay to continue this.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

This metaphor... but let's acknowledge it is a metaphor. It is not real in any way. I know what you mean, which is that when these big shakeups happen or there's a downturn, most people's reaction is, "Oh shit! I'm sure you know this is bad for me," and they just go with the sheep of, "It's bad for me." Versus a lot of other people recognize, "Hey, this is happening whether I like it or not." Given that it's happening, the questions I need to ask are: What opportunities does this open up for me? Where am I now going to get strong in that I was otherwise weak in? What have I been neglecting that now it's time to put my focus on? Right? Just ask yourself better questions. Then you start to focus on, "Cool, I'm going to take market share in this area. I'm going to quickly pounce on this thing that I've otherwise been neglecting that now matters a lot." Or, "Hey, now that everybody's comfortable with remote work and stuff, what... oh, that opens up this new opportunity for us." Just ask better questions, and you'll get better answers.

Sam Parr

Dude, speaking of... so I've got two topics here that are kind of related to *Mad Men* and crazy people. The first: have you ever heard of this guy named Brad Brett Adcock? No? Have you heard of this company called Vettery? Do you remember Vettery?

Shaan Puri

not really okay but no I don't I couldn't tell you what it is

Sam Parr

so this guy named brett adcock he I just met him recently and he joined our community and I've been getting to know him listen to this guy's background so he's 36 years old he's from central illinois and in around 2,012 2015 he started a company called vettery and it's nothing particularly sexy it was just basically like a job site and it was a little bit like hired.com and eventually hired.com tried to bully vettery hired.com was also a similar business a job board but like you know more in-depth more technology and they raised north of a $100,000,000 fast forward 5 or 6 years later vettery ended up buying hired.com when hired.com went bankrupt and so vettery was basically a job website to help people recruit engineers raised $10,000,000 eventually was acquired for a 120 ish about a 100 150 I think so this guy brett he's 36 now so back then when it was acquired that was in like 2015 so he was in his twenties he made low digit tens of 1,000,000 of dollars so he didn't tell me but I would imagine in the $20,000,000 range but here's what he did tell me listen to this he put 100% of his money - a little bit of cash that he put down for a down payment for a house so when I say 100% he told me he goes I didn't own any outside equities I owned nothing I had my down payment my house and 100% of the earnings that I made which was low tens of the 1,000,000 tens of millions put into the business bank account and then he started a company called archer so basically they make like these car they some people call them flying cars they're basically like helicopters helicopters but they kind of look like a car body and I was like how did you learn about this and he said I learned it all on my own I read 50 engineering books and built 3 generations of electric aircraft in 2018 at the university of florida where I was doing engineering courses as an undergrad I had to build a lab there to have facilities big enough in 2018 and so with owning 0 public equities outside of archer the archer stock he he makes zero outside investments and he and he said because he needs extreme focus so we put all this money in archer archer eventually does a spac I believe they did a spac but they but they went public so they sold like $1,000,000,000 worth of these flying vehicles to united airlines or something like that takes it public for 3 or $4,000,000,000 now the stock is you know like most stocks in the in the growth space is it doing so hot but I still think it's a $1,000,000,000 company and his net worth skyrockets to a 1,000,000,000 I think now it's in the 3 or 400 range and makes all this money from archer and now I can't talk about his new start up but I can soon he's told me he took basically $200,000,000 and he's put all of it into his new company and still to this day he goes the only stock that I own is archer and my house that's like the only outside investments and then now the new business and so I go you know is your wife and family okay with this he goes I've been doing I've been going all in and been doing this for 20 years they're used to it now by now and I said well what do you what do you think about people who say you know you're kinda nuts why don't you square away a little bit of money while you can and he goes I don't care what people think I just wanna build the future and this guy he's not like one of these elon musk types where he's like hard to talk to and you like ask him a question he can't he's like you know so smart that he that he can't articulate it he's like fairly normal I guess normal in quotation marks but he's like easy ish to he's easy to talk to he's a personal personable charismatic guy and you're like oh you seem very reasonable and then he says he does this stuff and I'm like you are insane you're a madman and so really interesting guy totally under the radar from central illinois he's only 36 years old so I got along with him because I'm from missouri really fascinating dude

Shaan Puri

And on his Twitter, he's talking only about this thing called Polestar. Is that his new thing, or what's Polestar?

Sam Parr

Is Polestar like a subsidiary or their partner with Volvo? They make really cool cars. Is that what the tweet is about? I... I don't know.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's just talking about Polestar cars the whole time. Okay, wow, amazing. So that's incredible. So they basically... is it the... are they actually planes or are they what they call VTOL, like vertical takeoff and landing aircraft?

Sam Parr

The second one is kind of like a helicopter. It looks like a helicopter with four blades, like Ford helicopter blades, attached to a Honda Civic.

Shaan Puri

right and why do you need this what does this do differently than a helicopter

Sam Parr

I have no idea

Shaan Puri

I feel like... question. Here's Sam's question, buddy. Does he ask you? It's usually, "Name, where you're from?" And then instead of, you know, "What do you do?" it's like, "What other equities do you own?" and "How much of your personal net worth are you rolling into your next company?" Wow, okay, let's focus on that. I don't even want to know why you've created this.

Sam Parr

no idea

Shaan Puri

what the actual helicopter does

Sam Parr

That's what a website's for. I don't know, to take cool pictures? I don't know, what are planes for? It's just like a plane. I don't know.

Shaan Puri

I mean, I'm looking at the website. Oh, it's also just cool pictures of the aircraft.

Sam Parr

yeah I don't give

Shaan Puri

a fuck what the widget is he makes it's a widget

Sam Parr

it's it's

Shaan Puri

There's this beautiful Black woman getting into a helicopter in a dress, and I'm like, "What's she doing? What's the purpose here?" And then the next photo is she's on a sand dune in Dubai, and it's like, "Oh, did she just fly to the desert?" Yeah, she had like a... Is that the easiest one? Amazing. Yeah, she had a ghost of her... I don't know.

Sam Parr

I don't know if she's got a date

Shaan Puri

It showed us something. Sorry, Brett Adcock, we did not do it justice there on the actual thing. But okay, so hold on. There's a little question or a plot hole about the story. It said that he was an undergrad in 2018, but you said he sold his company in 2016. So did he go back to school, or was he in school when he sold the company in 2016?

Sam Parr

so did he go back to school

Shaan Puri

or he was in school like he went back to school to learn

Sam Parr

how to do

Shaan Puri

this stuff oh my god

Sam Parr

even more incredible this guy is acting right

Shaan Puri

became an undergrad yes and he told me he goes he goes whenever

Sam Parr

I do something; I go all in. For example, I'm going all in on my latest thing. I went all in on Archer. He goes, "When I was starting Veteri, there was a time where I took a personal loan for one month because I didn't have any money in my personal account and we had to pay rent." He said, "This is just what I do." He also mentioned that he wanted to learn about electric cars or whatever this cool stuff is, and he went and learned about it at the University of Florida.

Shaan Puri

Wow, okay, that's incredible! Speaking of people who go all in, you know my buddy Fircon? He's been on the podcast; we haven't had him on in a while. We should bring him back on. Basically, he was my co-founder at my last startup. It was called Bebo, and we sold it to Twitch. Since then, he left, and I was like, "What are you going to do?"

Sam Parr

well you gotta say what he did before that

Shaan Puri

Oh, before that, he's got a kind of crazy story. He was a co-founder of a company called AppLovin that went public, and it's like... I don't know, $15-20 billion? [It's a] mobile ad network and mobile gaming company. So, like, one of the...

Sam Parr

fastest growing companies ever

Shaan Puri

Yeah, just an incredible story. They've only ever raised $4,000,000. They took that $4,000,000 of external capital. So, they took, I think, $4,000,000 from the founders and $4,000,000 from strategic investors. They turned that into basically like $20,000,000,000 of equity value, which is...

Sam Parr

and it makes

Shaan Puri

insane capital efficiency

Sam Parr

3,000,000,000 a year in revenue so it's like a big business

Shaan Puri

And they rotated; they were a mobile ad network. When they went public, it was like a mobile ad network, but their comps were not very good because most mobile ad networks were not doing very well. Even though they were like, "Well, our business is actually really good," they just kept getting compared to these low multiple other mobile ad networks. So, they basically executed a pivot mid-flight and said, "Well, on our ad network, the number one advertisers are games. That's who makes the most money on our network; that's who pays the most money on our ad network: mobile games." So, they thought, "Why don't we just build mobile games and buy mobile gaming studios?" They built up this mobile gaming arm that I think does over $1,000,000,000.

Sam Parr

a year in revenue

Shaan Puri

I think they did 2,000,000,000 on just

Sam Parr

the like the amazon basic of games

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. So, they started buying up these little partners, buying up studios, and building their own studio in-house. Then, they would just use their existing reach and their ad network to grow their own games. It's insane! They got valued much higher because they had a different story than just "we're a mobile ad network, and that's it." So, anyway, Furkan's been doing crazy stuff. He's been going all in since he was very, very young. When he was 15, he worked at a dot-com during the dot-com boom. His dad was like, "Hey, I met this guy. They raised, like, I don't know, November.com. This guy raised $50 million on a PowerPoint. He needs somebody to build his website. He doesn't know how. You know how to build websites, so why don't you go work over there?" At 15, he's working at a dot-com. Then, he starts his own e-commerce site that's selling cool mods for computers. You know, people like to trick out their cars with rims and stuff. Yeah, he was doing that for gaming computers or stuff like that. You can have a see-through case with blue liquid going through it or stuff like that. He goes to San Jose State, so not like a fancy school. Freshman year, he's like...

Sam Parr

is he an immigrant isn't is he from

Shaan Puri

Well, yeah, his family's Pakistani, but they... they've lived here. He grew up in the Bay Area, so he grew up around that. That's part of the magic. It's like his dad worked, I think, at IBM, and when he was about 5 years old, his dad would bring home the early computer or the early printer and be like, "Let's assemble this together." So that's how he learned how to do things. So, anyways, he's a freshman at San Jose State. He's like, "Dude, I just keep leaving the classroom to take calls because, you know, we're out of inventory or whatever." So he just quits San Jose State and goes all in on the e-commerce thing. He figures out one hack with the e-commerce thing, which was like back then, I think on Google or Yahoo or somewhere where people were searching for stuff, you could just sort by cheapest. So he just wrote a bot that would always price their main high-selling SKU 1 cent lower than whatever the cheapest price was. It was like his loss leader, and it would always bring somebody to the site. That's when he decided to quit school. He was in a class, and they were describing what a loss leader is. He's like, "Oh, that's the stuff I'm doing with my... like, I'm selling this stuff at a loss to get traffic." He's like, "I don't need to be here. I'm learning this stuff in the real world." So he just left and dropped out. Then, he spends a couple of years playing poker and doing a bunch of different crazy stuff. He comes back and starts doing startups. Now, after AppLovin goes public, the guy never needs to work again. He's got all the money in the world. I'm like, "So what are you gonna do?" And he's like, "I wanna... like, I'm gonna buy a big space." Basically, it's like he's creating his heaven on earth.

Sam Parr

did did he buy that space or did he rent it it looks beautiful

Shaan Puri

He’s renting that one, but he was looking at buying before then. When COVID started happening, he said, “I’m just gonna lease these. They’re all like dirt cheap leases now,” and like, “I don’t know how to buy.”

Sam Parr

sick place over on presidio

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so he's in Fort Mason. He's got like, I don't know, maybe 10,000, 20,000, 25,000 square feet or something like that. It's crazy. He basically created his heaven on earth, which I've come to realize is like... that's actually what I respect the most. It's like, I don't respect... because people would be like, "Oh, on one hand you guys go all in on Elon or Brett Adcock, these guys who go all in. Is that what you love? But you also love this guy who's got this amazing lifestyle and works 4 hours a month." They're the same thing.

Sam Parr

they're the same

Shaan Puri

They’re creating their heaven on earth, and I think that is my best description of what I admire and what I want to do: create my own little heaven on earth, which takes two days.

Sam Parr

Even like that description, I say they're taking the world and they're just bending it over their leg to have the shape that they want it to be. You know what I mean? They're just...

Shaan Puri

they're just spanking their they're spanking the world

Sam Parr

Yeah, they're dominatrix, and the Earth is their recipient. No, they're just like making the world... because that's what it feels like. It feels like they're forcing things. They're forcing.

Shaan Puri

see an industry

Sam Parr

and they say

Shaan Puri

and they

Sam Parr

spank it

Shaan Puri

Billy, go get my belt. And then they bend the industry over and they spank it. Yeah, exactly, it's a clip. Billy, go get my belt. That's another one. So, he's also an all-in kind of guy because he basically immediately created a lot of work for himself. He rented out the space and there are 40 people working in there. I went there to visit, and I'm like, "Who are all these? This is like a bunch of young brown dudes."

Sam Parr

like who

Shaan Puri

are all these indian dudes everywhere what are the did I invested

Sam Parr

In one of them, because they're just part of his thing, I was like, "Firkcon, are these guys legit?" He told me this huge explanation. I was like, "Alright, so just say yes or no." And I...

Shaan Puri

Just say yes. Say less. Yeah, I actually want to just invest in the index because, individually, all of the ideas are a little bit crazy.

Sam Parr

they're all crazy

Shaan Puri

But I'm like, "One of these is gonna work." I just don't trust myself to pick the right one. So I actually am talking to him about, "How do I just index into all of your crazy?" I would like a piece of every brown dude under this roof here. How do I do that? I think I'm gonna work it out, but I want to tell you about one of the things that I saw there. So, dude, the guy I invested in was a white guy. Shit! Oh, I mean, yeah, you're the NBA GM drafting Kyle Korver. It's like, "Dude, you should take LeBron." I think so. One of the guys that I met in there, they were doing something called Orangewood Robotics. Have you ever heard of this company?

Sam Parr

no but obviously I'm in

Shaan Puri

Orangewood. Yeah, so I go in, and there's a reason it's called Orangewood. I'll explain in a second. So I walk in, and there are a bunch of people at their computers. The big thing he wanted to do was, you know, a lot of engineers want to work in a space with other smart engineers. That's cool, but one of the things that engineers struggle with is... the first thing I bought when I got money was a 3D printer. Then, you know, I got this robotics thing, and then I bought this drone thing. He's like, "I just want to have a whole bunch of hardware available for free to engineers that are building stuff that requires very expensive tools." This way, they can come and hack on these tools without needing to buy a $15,000 machine that just does one thing. So that's what he did. When I walk in, I'm like, "What's going on in there?" There's basically a room with a bunch of robotic equipment. I walk in, and there's this company called Orangewood. What these guys are doing is... I was like, "Explain what this is." They go, "Oh, we have this robot that can paint stuff." I was like, "Okay, why?" And they're like, "Well, you know, look around this room. You see that? There's this process called powder coating." I asked, "You ever powder-coated something?" And I was like, "You obviously don't know who you're talking to." Yeah, so I was like, "No. Is that for donuts? What is that?" And he's like, "No, basically it's this process where you need to paint..." I still can't explain it.

Sam Parr

by the way that was a that was a good one

Shaan Puri

Thank you. You do that thing in text where you're like "6 out of 10" or "8 out of 10" on any joke.

Sam Parr

that was a good one I like that one the powder coating for doughnuts

Shaan Puri

So, basically, they're like, you know, it takes a specialist. You have to hire labor. Labor's really hard nowadays, and it's also a chemically intensive process. It's not really that...

Sam Parr

Good to you. Powder coating, like I do it with motorcycles. So, your motorcycle frame is just metal, and then they powder coat it. It kinda looks like paint; I don't actually know exactly how it works, but you do it in a sealed room. You do it with gloves on, and it's like you're putting... it looks like a powder on it. It's like a sealant/protective thing/paint.

Shaan Puri

right so they basically train this robot to do it and what they do the trick is that the world has changed where there's now this like robotic arm that's a general purpose robotic arm so think of it like an iphone right it's a piece of hardware that you could buy that you could program to do anything right so when when steve jobs came out with the iphone they were like this is a iphone it can access the internet it has a gps inside and it can make phone calls like that's what it could do and from there you guys figure out the rest right like initially they didn't have the app store but then when they did have the app store now all of a sudden you get the flashlight app and then the app that turns you know it's like a ruler it uses the camera like measure something then you get like strava it's like we'll use the gps to do this thing so it's basically like a programmable general purpose tool so that's what's happening with these robotic arms these guys wrote software to teach that robotic arm they bought how to powder coat things and then they taught it how to paint floors and then they taught it how to weld things so this thing can literally just weld shit together they taught it how to you know pick and pack things so it could takes it could sort take things out of one place and put it into another place based on what it looks like and and the way you do it is like you just write a program that that does each of these functions and you need to specialize it and then there's there's more sophisticated ways they'll put a camera on top and they'll teach it to like recognize stuff so like my cousin was doing this where he was teaching this robotic arm literally I went to his office and it was straight up a robotic arm in a like a hole and his whole thing was can I get the arm to go in the hole and I was like what's going on here guys like this is a little like sexual robot someone is and he's like no this is we're basically in the future electric cars are gonna get need to get charged but when they're self driving there's no driver to get out of the car and plug it in he's like so you need the the charging station to be able to automatically attach to the car otherwise we're never gonna have self driving cars that work that are electric because who will fill them up you'll need a a person there always to be able to go do this and they'll need basic gas attendants at every gas station to do this which in my mind I was like that doesn't sound so bad but like you know there's a reason he pivoted but the the?

Shaan Puri

Is they were training this arm to be able to use the camera to find the hole and exactly get in without scratching the car. So there's like this whole industry of people that are doing this. They're just figuring out how to program these general-purpose robotic arms, and they're making very interesting businesses off them. So these guys are doing it with painting. I thought that was pretty cool because it's like a high-value thing. You rent it for $500 for the day, and it'll paint all your stuff. It's cheaper than hiring a person to do it and more reliable, maybe, because it'll do it perfectly even every single time. You don't have human error. And so the other one that's interesting is Cafe X, which you've probably heard of.

Sam Parr

seen yeah

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah in the malls which is basically a product version of starbucks

Sam Parr

Yeah, and like you see it and you're like, "Oh, what was this stupid?" Then you start thinking about it and you're like, "Oh my God, the implications here are quite big."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, no, I saw that and I was immediately like, "This is one of the smartest ideas I've ever seen." So if you haven't seen Cafe X because you're not in San Francisco, imagine Starbucks but now shrink Starbucks down to the size of a jumbo vending machine. It's see-through, and inside is just a robotic arm. You go, you place your order, you're like, "I need my cappuccino. I want it, you know, whatever, double shot." I don't drink coffee, so I don't make that, but like, you know, oat milk and two sugars. Basically, the arm then starts to move around inside and it makes your coffee. Then it hands it to you, waves, and does a dance. You get to walk away, and basically, you pay $2.50 and you're getting a robotic coffee. The reason this is dope is it takes up like one-tenth of the real estate of Starbucks. It has no labor cost or very, very low labor cost. It's just the person who comes and cleans the robot at the end of the day and refills the ingredients. So there's, you know, very low labor cost. The robot never gets tired, never calls in sick. It just runs all day and makes the exact same coffee all the time. It could do that with, you know, a hundred drinks or something like that. So Cafe X hasn't quite taken off. I think they did some stupid things, and I remember hearing that like at one...

Shaan Puri

Like in the seed round, the founder only owned 4% of the company or something. They really messed up their cap table or something like that. I heard about that too. So, you know, that particular startup, I don't think is going to work. But I'll be damned if this is not going to be a thing. This is going to be a thing; it just makes too much sense. It has such an economic advantage and it only has technology risks. I think people really underestimate that because most businesses have extreme market risk. We don't even know if the customers want it, and we don't know if they're going to adopt it. But this has a clear demand. If the customer wants it, it's not really a question. If a customer wants a fast, delicious coffee, yes, that's not that hard to do. Instead of making Starbucks a place where you go to sit, it's optimizing for people who want to get in and get out, like subway stations and stuff like that. People who are quickly on the go have such a big financial advantage if they can do it because of the real estate and the labor cost. Now, the only question is, can you make the robot arm work well enough? Actually, that's a problem that engineers are good at solving over, like, a 10-year period.

Sam Parr

So I'm trying to just do this math to make sure I'm right. Wow, okay, so check this out. I know a few of these guys doing these startups that involve... a lot of them use the word "humanoid." Have you heard that word?

Shaan Puri

yeah I don't like it

Sam Parr

Yeah, I don't like humanoid robots, but basically, it's robots that do the jobs of humans, like a gas station attendant. So, I was just curious. This Cafe X is interesting. There's another one that's doing it for pizza. I think it's called Zoom? Is it called Zoom? That was one.

Shaan Puri

of the popular ones softbank put like I don't know $500,000,000 into it or something ridiculous

Sam Parr

Which sounds silly, but I... and this is, I only did this research while we were talking. I could be way off, but I'm looking at a government website; it seems legit. Do you know what percentage of working Americans work in fast food?

Shaan Puri

Oh man, it's gotta be high, but I'm gonna give you the homie move and I'll say **7%**. No, that was way too much.

Sam Parr

I asked that poorly. So, about 3.5 million Americans work in fast food jobs, which is significant. That's about 10% of those who work at McDonald's. So, McDonald's employs like 250,000 to 300,000 people. It's kind of astonishing. I'm a fairly libertarian person, but when I think of these things, I'm like, "What are these people going to do for work?" I mean, we're only talking about fast food. If you talk about all these other things, potentially 5 or 10% of Americans are workers. It's like, you know, they maybe don't have that many skills. When these things happen, I'm like, "I don't know what's going to happen with these people." It's not a good situation. It almost is more scary than it is interesting, you know what I'm saying?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, people always say that. I don't know, I just feel like there are really two questions. First, is this new? No. For forever, technology has been making things easier and getting rid of jobs. Like, okay, you know, maybe we were doing stuff by hand in the fields, and then we got the tractor. That maybe reduced the number of people you needed by 10 times in order to run a farm. And, you know, with all the automations...

Sam Parr

By the way, the farming industry has massive subsidies. I mean, there are some farmers that are so efficient and so good. There's more nuance to this, so someone's going to correct me, but basically, some farms—my parents work in the agriculture industry; it's kind of how I know this—are so big and so good that the government will pay you money not to grow a crop. They say you're going to screw up a whole market if you overflow us with corn. Really? Yes, it's called the Farm Act, I believe. Or is that the Farm Act? There are a couple of acts, a couple of bills in America where they will pay you money not to do anything because they say you're going to disrupt things. You're going to make too much, and we don't want you to screw this up. Yeah, and so the farming thing is a good example. What has happened is the government is heavily involved.

Shaan Puri

that sounds that sounds so stupid

Sam Parr

I really oversimplified that, but it is basically the case where you get paid not to do something because you will disrupt the market too much.

Shaan Puri

That's insane to me. I mean, aren't there people that need food? And aren't prices higher than ever? Like, that's crazy to me that we're...

Sam Parr

Not for like corn. I mean, corn... I mean, like America does a few things really well. 1. We produce really good entertainment. Our biggest export, you could say, is culture—movies, music, and fashion. 2. The second best thing is corn. Our ability to create corn is phenomenal. We create corn so well! I mean, corn syrup is in everything. Ethanol fuel is made out of corn. Everything's made out of corn. We are really good at making corn. So, I don't know, I think with corn, we kinda nailed that one. That's a home run.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay. I don't know enough about this to really speak on it, but I guess what my point is: over time, technology has just gotten more and more pervasive. It's like, what happened to all the horse carriage drivers? What happened to all the people that worked in factories? What happened to all the people that did this and that? The reality is, they shift. They shift around. So, you know, some people will become robot attendants. They'll become good at managing and cleaning the robots and fixing them when they bug out. Some people will shift into a new type of labor. Whether that's becoming entertainers on social media or other new jobs, there will be new roles created from every single advancement. And, you know, the other question is: what's the alternative? Do you pump the brakes on making things better, faster, cheaper? That doesn't seem possible or real.

Sam Parr

I'm not going to let my feelings get in the way of progress and technology. I'm just saying that it doesn't mean that it's not frightening.

Hubspot

Yeah, I just think, you know, there's a little bit of carnage whenever any change happens, whether it's change for the good or change for the bad. Right? I think in any situation, there's a little bit of collateral damage along the way. The question is, you know, that also creates opportunities. Because if you create a business that reskills people, not only are there going to be a lot of people that need reskilling, but maybe the government will pay you to help reskill workers in the economy. So, the free market can come up with a solution to how to absorb this labor, how to reskill this labor, and do things like that. I don't really worry about stuff like that. But I do think that it's very interesting to me that these robotic, like, general-purpose robot pieces can now be programmed to do just a variety of things that are otherwise, you know, today human labor. I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned—no out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot: grow better.

Sam Parr

have you seen this tv show called the bear

Shaan Puri

I've seen a few episodes I haven't finished it I'm not like looking

Sam Parr

For the episodes, the background in the show is not necessarily the important topic here, but it is a topic I want to ask you about. The background is basically a restaurant in Chicago. The owner kills himself, and the brother inherits this restaurant. It's a mess, and the brother is a trained chef from French Laundry, which is like the best restaurant in the world. He comes to this kind of shithole restaurant, and he's got to turn it around. So that's the whole premise. I'm watching this show, and I used to work at a restaurant. Like most kids, if you know, 15, 16, 17, 18, I worked at a restaurant. This show reminded me how miserable they are. This goes on the list, like right below music festivals, of things and businesses that you should never start and run from, almost no matter how good they are. And... or like this... wait.

Shaan Puri

why music festivals what's wrong with music festivals

Sam Parr

Dude, any business that you could spend 18 months working on, and if it rains that day, you're completely screwed. Like, that's a one out of, you know, 365 chance. I mean, more than that. It means more than one time a year. But like, the odds that rain comes and ruins your whole year's work, that's... I don't want to join that business. I mean, like music festivals, they're just horrible. They're horrible because the bigger and more people that go, and the more money that you make, the worse the experience gets. That's why I always disliked conferences. Because, like, damn, the better I make this for me, the worse it is for the attendee, and thus harder.

Shaan Puri

for the

Sam Parr

Get them to come back over and over again. With the restaurant, you see inside this kitchen at "The Bear"—I think it's called "Chicago Beef." You see the behind-the-scenes of the restaurant. It is impossible. This is playing business on the hardest mode possible. People are angry and vulgar all the time. I remember when I used to work at a restaurant. There was a huge contingency of drug addicts. You know, you get off work at 2 AM. What are you going to do? You're going to immediately go to the bar, get messed up, and then come back to work the next day at 11. Lots of drug addicts, lots of people calling in sick for work, and lots of people angry—bouts of vulgar hostility. This looks like a horrible business to be in. Your sushi restaurant was probably a little bit different than this, but was it at all similar to what I'm seeing in "The Bear"?

Shaan Puri

Well, ours wasn't just because, A, we only ran it for 3 months. You know, we were only open and live for 3 months. And B, we were the labor for most of that. We only had a couple of other people. But the way I experienced this was we went and worked in other restaurants to shadow and learn how to actually run a restaurant. Right? So, like, we worked in other sushi restaurants. My buddy Dan worked inside of a Noodles and Company to see how a fast casual process works or whatever.

Sam Parr

and how does that work

Shaan Puri

with a lot of salt

Sam Parr

oh yeah no shit

Shaan Puri

He was just like, "Dude, I..." because we used to eat at these places. He's like, "Don't order the tomato bisque." I was like, "The bisque is a soup; the soup is the good thing." He's like, "Don't order the tomato bisque." I was like, "What? What's wrong?" He's just like, "Bro, you've never seen salt like you've seen in the bisque." I was like, "He's..." he's like somebody who was just traumatized by what they saw. And he's just like, "Dude, those people in the back don't give a shit. They're gonna put whatever they want in this. And the things that they're supposed to put are so bad for you. This stuff just sits around." And like, he's like, "Don't eat this stuff." I was like, "Okay, yeah, sometimes the less you know..." Like, I remember when we were working in the kitchen. We worked out of a commissary kitchen, so there were other people there. The food truck people would come prep there, the caterers. And the worst was the guy who would sell hot dogs. He had like a hot dog stand. No offense, but like, he would just come in with 350 hot dogs. He would pour them all into the sink, and we're like, "That's the sink where we do our dishes!" It's like pouring your hot dogs in a hot tub. And then he was like, just started turning up the water, was just washing them, and then he was just like chucking them to the side after they've been rinsed.

Sam Parr

second yeah fuck

Shaan Puri

I was like, first of all, why are you washing the hot dog? Why did this need washing? It was like, if it came out of a package, you washed it. You washed it in the grossest sink possible and then just threw it on the side. I was like, somebody's gonna eat that in like 6 hours. I was like, I will never eat a hot dog again. That's like, forget about what even went into the hot dog, which I think in itself is gross. When you watch these documentaries about, you know, farming and stuff like that, I was just watching this dude wash the hot dogs before taking them to the ball game. I was like, this is, dude, by the way, sick.

Sam Parr

You saying "no offense" is now gonna be my new neg. So I'm just gonna be talking about it. I think like, "Yeah dude, I was around this guy and he smelled so bad, no offense."

Shaan Puri

And I'm just gonna start saying, "No offense."

Sam Parr

it was like all the time

Shaan Puri

and like I was

Sam Parr

out walking around the streets and they were disgusting no offense and

Shaan Puri

This person was so annoying. No offense, I mean nothing wrong with annoying people, so no offense. I'm gonna start.

Sam Parr

saying no offense I'm gonna throw no offense there in there all the time

Shaan Puri

that's amazing

Sam Parr

That's disgusting, but anyway, this show... what's interesting about it, though, is the lot of similarities I see in what you and I do, and what a lot of our friends do, and a lot of listeners do. They are so passionate about this thing. At first, I was like, "Why are they so passionate about this?" Then I started to realize, "Oh wait, no, this is just their shtick." You know, my outlet's a little bit different, but it's the same type of obsession. They love it; they love it. So anyway, cool show. I wanted to bring it up because I wasn't sure if it was similar to your restaurant experience.

Shaan Puri

I think it was like... we used to do this thing where you get off at 1 AM. Then, you know, the restaurant closes at midnight. You gotta clean up and prep for the next day. It's 1 AM before you get out of there, and now you're hungry and tired. You didn't want to eat your own food, so you go to another restaurant. They're getting off too, and they'll just cook for you for free. But then, like, you know, two people are doing cocaine in the bathroom, and you're like, "This isn't the most productive lifestyle." The restaurant industry, I would say, has a lot of bonding. The camaraderie is amazing, and there's something very soulful about feeding people. That's really great. But then the hours are brutal. It is business on hard mode, and there's a lot of degeneracy. The same thing goes for poker. I used to play poker; I love the game. However, I hated sitting in a casino playing poker because I felt like I was surrounded by so many degenerates. I was like, "This is not a high quality of living." Just sitting here in this kind of artificial air with this guy who's fallen asleep next to me because he's been here for 42 hours straight... this is not who I want to surround myself with. I need to get out of this situation. Let me tell you about something that is the opposite of that kind of inspiring work environment. I saw this TikTok, and I want to tell you about two TikToks. I'm not going to play them here because it'll take a little too long. Maybe in the YouTube video, we can play them. But I want to know if you've seen these. One went viral. Did you see this viral clip of the pitcher on the Mets coming out to pitch? He's the closer, so he was coming out to do his thing. Normally, on TV, they just cut to commercial in between the lineup change because it's like, whatever, it's going to be two minutes. The guy's gotta warm up; he's gotta run out from the bullpen. That takes a little while. Baseball's slow already. He's gotta warm up, then whatever. Usually, they come back, but this time they stuck with it. Did you see this clip, or should I describe it?

Sam Parr

keep going keep going

Shaan Puri

So, the show features a shot from behind the guy, like walking out from the thing, emerging basically into the stadium. They have a dope camera shot.

Sam Parr

oh and they're using that ufc lens have you noticed all these guys are using

Shaan Puri

like that yeah the the

Sam Parr

ufc has got this beautiful lens where it like blurs out the back

Shaan Puri

and the special yeah yeah and then they and the guy normally comes out to this song I don't even know what it's called it's like whatever I don't know the guy timmy timmy trumpets is like the singer you know who's featured on it so this guy with his trumpet but the mets had brought the guy there live and so he was kinda hiding and he comes out he's got his little trumpet and he's got a microphone on the end of the trumpet and he starts playing the song and he's playing the song live the guy's running out into like the roaring crowd and it's just so dope 1 2 3 inning and now timmy trumpet takes center stage as edwin diaz gets ready to come in alright business is cool but like god sports and music just have this special thing this special moment these special feelings that you you can't there's nobody is that passionate about our podcast nobody is that passionate about this piece of software but when this moment hits the guy runs out he's the hero the trumpet guy's there he's playing the crowd's going nuts and it was just like this special moment and it was a lot of showmanship and so I I I watched that and I get this feeling I'm like that was dope I'm glad that they went that extra mile for that showmanship does that create I will never watch baseball but like I'm a fan of like this guy that song

Sam Parr

you don't watch baseball at all

Shaan Puri

right now way too slow

Sam Parr

for you

Shaan Puri

Right, too slow, too boring. I used to love it when I was a kid. So now, I swipe up on TikTok, and the next video is this teacher. It says, "Revealing the Musical: Part 1." I'm like, I don't know... I just hung around for an extra second to watch. He goes, "Alright, and this year the musical's gonna be..." and he reveals the whiteboard. There's nothing there, and then there's a small envelope. Everyone's like, "What?" Then he opens up the envelope and says, "It's gonna be... hold on, this just says turn on the computer." The students are like, "What's going on here?" Clearly, the teacher had set this up a bit to make it more fun. Everybody loves this because here's this teacher of a middle school or high school or something like that. They didn't have to do this. You know, most teachers are just sort of like, they want to roll out the TV on the black trolley and just be like, "Alright guys, just watch this movie for an hour," and then leave. Being a teacher is exhausting, and it would be very easy to phone it in. Most don't, and some, like this guy, go the extra mile. So now he clicks his computer, and it's a video of him. He's like, "Hey, it's me from the future." It's a silly bit, but he's talking back to it. He's like, "What are you doing here?" The other him responds, "I don't know, I read the envelope. It said to turn the computer on." He's like, "You just gotta do whatever the envelope says." It goes back and forth, so he's doing this skit with himself.

Sam Parr

that's good

Shaan Puri

And then he's like... and it freezes. Then it says, "Wait, everybody look under your desk." One kid has this special thing, and it was like this elaborate, almost like an escape room, leading up to this reveal. I saw that and...

Sam Parr

so what was the play video

Shaan Puri

goes viral the play was like I don't even remember it was like it was like not something like that cool it was like you know les miserables or whatever it was like some like old play I was like who cares like but like by the end the students are going nuts because they're so invested at this. They they sort of midway through they realized okay this is cheesy but I'm into it he's doing this for us and like alright I wanna know he built up tension and the reason I bring up these examples is because there's a word that my trainer uses all the time and nobody else in my life I know talks about this my trainer all the time goes yeah you gotta have a little showmanship and showmanship is a word that I think like for most of us doesn't even enter our brain on a day to day basis and my trainer will always tell me he's like you know he'll be at starbucks before you know he'll he'll go get a coffee before our session and he'll always tell me these stories he's like you know I I decided to add a little showmanship so I told him my name was blah blah blah and they wrote it on the cup and then by the time the person was done you know I told them like you know whatever you know he'll like he'll he'll say you know bond james bond and then they'll just laugh they'll have a little chuckle and then they'll write bond he's like add the, james bond and then they'll do it they'll laugh a little more and now he just like made their day a little more entertaining than it was than it had to be if he just said my name is john and okay cool you're just another john and so he always talks about adding showmanship and it's just like walking through life and just identify little moments where you could do something slightly different than like than the norm and I have a like I have kids now so I do this with my daughter all the time like we used to have a such a hard time getting her to eat and my mother-in-law came over and like you know as a classic sort of like mother-in-law thing she's like always being like do this do that you guys are doing this wrong like you know it's true she's got like I don't know 30 years of parenting experience we got 2 but like it's also really annoying to be told what to do and how to parent better and how to like do this do that so we're normally my default was kind of annoyed but one day she was like she was like like the milk bottle was like way less I was like how'd you get her to drink the milk and she's like oh she loves to drink out of this like little measuring cup instead of like the normal cup and she goes change of presentation and I go and I was like and so now me and my wife will always joke because we're always like oh god so annoying she was telling us what to do but then like like sometimes she does pull this like rabbit out of her hat and like you know we'll do something my dad doesn't wanna do it and then we change the like change the presentation of how we're getting her to do it and all of a sudden she's super locked in like I do this now when I feed her I I couldn't get her to eat vegetables so I decided to create like my own version of the show chopped so I'm like okay close your eyes I'm gonna put one thing in front of you and in front of your brother and like take the bite and then you need to tell me is it 1 thumbs up 2 thumbs up or thumbs down and then I do a huge reaction based on the score they give me and she's like I wanna play the closed eyes game I wanna play the closed eyes game because she and I can get her to eat a whole meal if I'm willing to basically create a television show out of it it's really like exhausting for me but honestly it's like also kinda fun and it gets her to eat anything whereas otherwise that's actually even more exhausting to try to feed her something she doesn't want and so this idea of showmanship keeps weaving its way into my life and I wanted to bring this up because for somebody out there they're gonna basically use this as like your word of the day find a way to like weave in a little more showmanship into what you're doing a little change of presentation as we say have you do you think about this at all

Sam Parr

I do, and so I was... I wanted to go find it. Have you heard of this guy named Trend Griffin? He's like in his sixties, maybe a little older. He's a white dude, and his Twitter bio just says, "I used to work with Bill Gates at Microsoft." So you're like, "Oh, you're automatically wise and interesting." He has a blog called *25 IQ*, and I was reading it the other day. He had this article titled, "A Dozen Beliefs About Business, Money, and Life That Kanye West Shares with Other Great Entrepreneurs and Investors." I thought, "Oh, that's an interesting title." The very first line has always stuck with me. It's from Kanye, and it says, "For me, first of all, dopeness is what I like the most. Dopeness is about people who want to make things as dope as possible and, by default, make money from it." I always think about that quote because I also get caught up in, "Well, this does this, and this does this, and this is how it makes money." Then I realize, "Oh yeah, but this is super lame and not that cool." I'm like, "This sucks my soul. What am I doing? This isn't awesome." And it's like, "Well, what is awesome?" I don't know exactly how to explain it, but I do think about that all the time. I'll try to nickel and dime things about what I'm going to buy. Like the other day, I bought some Air Force Ones, and I was trying to get the cheap ones. Then I thought, "Bruh, I can get the $250 Air Force Ones, and I don't have to justify it. If they're cool, they're cool. They're dope. I'm doing it no matter what." I always have to justify certain decisions to myself. I was like, "This is just cool. Do it because it's cool. I only have one life." Right? So yeah, I think about this all the time.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, do it because it's cool. I think it's great. For most people who listen to this podcast, they're probably high achiever types. They're probably rational and analytical about a lot of decisions. So, I think for that audience, you actually need to add more of this other ingredient, which is the "yeah."

Sam Parr

for sure

Shaan Puri

Do it because it's cool. If it doesn't measure up, then honestly, the same thing can either be done boring or dope. It's not the thing that's dope.

Sam Parr

yeah it's like yeah

Shaan Puri

You do the thing that's dope or not dope. The broccoli itself wasn't dope, but when I turned it into this game, I made it more dope for her. Therefore, she has a different experience, and I have a different experience in doing it. If I consistently do that, well, there are just more experiences throughout my day that are dope. What's a dope life? It's a bunch of dope days. What's a bunch of dope days? It's a bunch of dope experiences throughout the day, right? You can break it down into moments. You could break it down into its atomic unit and realize that the boringness or routine of your life is in your own hands. If you just add a little showmanship to yourself and to the people around you, you can kind of change how the experience feels. You'll do this in many ways, but I'm seeing how this helps me, and I wanted to share this little framework.

Sam Parr

do you remember boosted skateboards

Shaan Puri

Yeah, these are all over the place in San Francisco. People would skateboard up the hill because, you know, San Francisco is so hilly. It looked like magic how they were going up this.

Sam Parr

And now, electric scooters are the norm, like the Bird scooters and all these other scooters. That's considered normal now. But about 8 years ago, Boosted Skateboards came out with this longboard skateboard that would go 25 miles an hour. I remember I bought one, and it was crazy. It was so cool! I met the founder, and I was like, "Tell me about your background." He said, "Oh, I worked at NASA, and I was doing this other thing. Then I thought about working in the government and sending people to Mars. I thought that would be interesting, but I decided to launch this skateboard company." I asked him, "Well, are you interested in skateboards?" He replied, "No." I then asked, "Were you interested in this other thing?" He said, "No, not really." I was curious, "Well, you know, why'd you go to skateboards?" He responded, "Because it's fucking awesome." I remember him saying that, and I was like, "Well, yeah, you got a point. It is awesome." When he told me that, I felt a shift happen in my life. It was like, "Oh yeah, that's a good addition. I gotta add that to my box of checkboxes, you know? Like, it makes money, it makes my mom proud, and it's effing awesome."

Shaan Puri

and I remember him

Sam Parr

saying that and I I was like oh yeah you're you're right

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah. Tony Robbins has this thing he says, which is like, "You will only meet your standards, not your desires." Basically, a standard is more of a must. A standard is like, "I'm not going to eat at a restaurant if I see flies flying around." That's below my standard. So, an important thing to figure out is, what are my standards for the things that I do in my life? It sounds like for this guy, one of his standards for what he works on is, "Is this awesome or not?" Whereas for a lot of people, that stuff is completely optional. Nice to have, for sure.

Sam Parr

it's like I pay the bills

Shaan Puri

It's not part of the standard. Then you meet certain people, and this is the best thing you could do. Like, why do people have that phrase, "You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with"? It's because fundamentally, you will adopt the standards of the people you're around. It's not because they'll teach you things or give you good advice; it's because fundamentally, you will adopt their standards. I remember we have a couple of friends who are like you. You're one of my friends who's very fit. I have other friends who are also very fit or care about being fit. Whenever there's a question of, "Alright, you know, let's go grab some food. What do you guys want to eat?" I know that I can't suggest, you know, the Cheesecake Factory. That's not on the list. I can't take these guys there because their standard is that that's not what they eat. So, you know, I automatically start to only suggest and therefore only go to places that I know meet their standard of what they consider just food.

Sam Parr

The record? I messed with Cheesecake Factory hardcore. Get that Chicken Piccata all day. Yeah, I'm not above it.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we have a couple of friends that are like, "Oh cool, what did you order? The Gordita? What's good here? I've never been to this place." Dude, can I talk about something that...

Sam Parr

I can't decide if it's awesome and dope or not. So basically, I want to give people perspective on you and I's behind the scenes. You and I, Sean and I, get DMed or cold emailed all the time. A very common thing is, "Hey, can I give you content to share? I'll do it for free," or something like that. The bad thing about free is you kind of get what you pay for. So when it's free stuff, you're like, "Oh, this is too much work. I don't want to share your stuff on Twitter. I don't want to share your stuff on whatever." It's just not good. I don't want to work on it. For some reason, I gave one of these kids a chance. I say no to everyone, but I gave this kid a chance. He DM'd me, and I was like, "You know, I'll give you my password to my TikTok, and I want you to impress me. Go send me a picture of your social security card, send me a picture of your boss, and send me a picture of your driver's license." And he did. I go, "Alright, if you..."

Shaan Puri

I was

Sam Parr

Like, if you... because I was like, "If you screw me over here, I'm gonna get you back." So, like, I have your information. Here's my password to my TikTok. I gave him the password. Showmanship.

Shaan Puri

By the way, yeah, that's great showmanship. A threat is also showmanship. That's what I mean.

Sam Parr

I go, "Look, if you do something bad to me, I'm gonna get you." So, I gave him my password to my TikTok.

Shaan Puri

Your mother's address because I will be mailing her your index finger in an envelope if you mess this up.

Sam Parr

well because there's like

Shaan Puri

no information

Sam Parr

that I could get to like get back at this person you know what I mean like I'm like I need you to have something yeah

Shaan Puri

We're like in balance. You could really screw me by posting on my account. What am I gonna do? I need to equally be able to screw you. Okay, I get it. Can we continue?

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I gave him the password to my TikTok. It's been one week. So, in one week, this kid has taken our videos and posted them daily on TikTok. In six days—maybe I think one week is tomorrow—he's gotten 1,500,000 views. I went from basically 0 to not having an account to about 8 or 9,000 followers as of now. A handful of videos have done really well; one got 500,000 views, another got 700,000, and a bunch got 50,000+, with 150 or 200,000 likes and tens of thousands of comments. I'm like, "That's kind of interesting," but I don't exactly believe that this is true. I don't know if this is true. So, I was like, "Post a video where there's a call to action." We did a video about my favorite book, and it shot up the charts. I'm like, "Alright, people are actually engaged. They're like buying a book."

Shaan Puri

the charts like on amazon you mean

Sam Parr

Yeah, so this is the second time that I did this. One time, I recommended a book, and right before I recommended it, I took a picture of its rating on Amazon. Then I recommended it, and the next day it was number 1 in the Entrepreneurship category and number 1 in the Business category. I took screenshots of it to prove it. The book is called *How to Get Rich*. That tweet reached 2,000,000 people. This other video that I did, I talked about the same book, and it shot up. I think now it's number 1 in Entrepreneurship again, and that video has been viewed over 500,000 times.

Shaan Puri

Let's write our own book. If you have this kind of Oprah influence, I mean, why are you referencing this guy? He's dead; he doesn't need your help. Come on, let's write our own book.

Sam Parr

Let's see... okay, yeah. "How to Get Rich" is now number 30 in all of Audible, and in Originals, it's number 1 in the small business category. Yeah, look up "How to Get Rich." Go look at it right now. Look at the categories; it skyrocketed after this video. I can't decide if this whole TikTok game is actually doing...

Shaan Puri

It where it's like these are simpler, which is just like if you're a real person. I don't know if these TikTok views are real or not. If you're real, just put like a one in the... just type the number 1.

Sam Parr

on the top I am going to

Shaan Puri

See, who's going to do that? You know, because I feel the same way about these TikTok views. It's like our favorite words: little, little *fugazi*. There's a *fugazi* element to these TikTok views. It's like, how do you know if this is really 1,500,000 people? What does this mean? Did they actually watch it? What's going on here? If so, that's amazing, but you know, some things could be too good to be true. But that's cool. Yeah, you've been showing up on my feed for what it's worth. I think it's because I have like two TikTok friends, and you're one of them.

Sam Parr

This book video got 414,000 views. A couple of them got 70,000 and 50,000, and one got 700,000. There are lots with 20,000 views. I can't decide if this is real, and if it is real, I don't want to sound like Gary Vee, but I'm like, "Oh, everyone should do this." This is easy! This kid in Miami is just doing this, and he's just spudding this up, and it's working wonderfully. And like you, I don't... I mean, I think you're actually better than me, but I'm not that charismatic. I'm not that good. Why is this game so easy? Is this game real? And also, honestly, is it worth it? I'm not convinced that it's worth it.

Shaan Puri

Well, if you can spike a book to number one on the charts, that shows that there's some value there. There's some influence there. It's not just a number, but okay.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's kinda lame. Like, most of TikTok—there's a lot of amazing stuff on TikTok. Basically, these 18-year-old kids are like the most creative people I've ever seen. But then there are guys like you and me—these money people and influencers—and everyone's doing the same *fucking* circle jerk, Alex Hormozi stuff. It's really lame. So, I don't know how to make it interesting. Right now, what I'm doing, I think, is not interesting, but the results are incredible.

Shaan Puri

yeah but is it effing awesome to go back to your standard

Sam Parr

You know what's **effing awesome**? It's when you create content and then someone like legitimately famous and cool, like Hassan, hollers at you. You're like, "Yeah, this is the awesome part about it." That, you know what I mean? That's worth all the lame tweets that you and I have done. It's getting to hang out with a couple of really cool people.

Shaan Puri

you know what's cool about selling your soul sometimes someone pays the

Sam Parr

price for it you know what's cool about being a whore

Shaan Puri

That is the money. Yeah, that's out. We're out.