Elon Musk And Mark Zuckerberg Agree To Fight In A Cage Match (#468)

Shaan Puri

He needs a "hold me back" guy. You're in a fight and you're like, "Hey, listen, I'm gonna go after these guys. I need you to hold me back so I'm not actually trying to fight this guy. I need it to look like I'm trying to fight this guy, and I need you to hold me back." And it's gotta be, "If these guys weren't holding me, I would've kicked your ass." He needs to find a "hold me back" guy.

Sam Parr

I think Elon's "hold me back" guy is going to be a hard sneeze. He's one hard sneeze away from getting like a back spasm, you know what I'm saying? Alright, we are live! What's going on, dude? Amazing hoodie! Sick hoodie! Do you like that Hampton?

Shaan Puri

yeah that is very nice

Sam Parr

I had a team off-site. We had all of our employees get together in Brooklyn, and the CEO, my CEO Jordan, organized this lovely event. He gave us all hoodies that say "Hampton" and then our city that we live in.

Shaan Puri

You're a stressful dude to organize an event for. I've never had to do it, but I've been a part of events where people are organizing for us. I'm like, they're like, "Oh yeah, by the way, everything... you know, the venue changed and we forgot, you know, there's only one chair on stage." I'm like, "It's cool, alright, no problem." And then you're like, "What the hell?" So, I would be very stressed if I had to throw an off-site or an event where you were my kind of core customer. Is that fair?

Sam Parr

Let me... yeah, that's fair. But let me explain my reasoning behind that, and this is very business-related. Number one, I believe the way you do one little thing is the way you do everything. What that means is, once you've proven to me that I can trust you, I'm all in and I don't question anything. Until you've proven that to me, I question everything. If there's not a good answer behind it, I doubt you. Once we get past that stage, I'm good. The second reason... there is no second reason. I actually forget.

Shaan Puri

what it is that was a good reason

Sam Parr

Oh, strong question. The second... here's the second reason, and we could actually talk about this for a second if you want. Basically, the second time around, you've done something, and everything is so much calmer. My entire reputation, my entire net worth, it's not tied up into this one entity, which is what many things I've done in the past have been. So, I'm much calmer. I'm way more subdued this time.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's true for sure. Do you find yourself thinking bigger now, as a kind of next step? You've got one win under your belt. What was the phrase that Justin Maris said? "Once you do whatever you gotta do to get your nut, after that go for your noble mission." So, you know, you've got your nut now. You're financially secure; you're safe. Do you not only feel calmer, but are you also more, I don't know, ambitious or long-term oriented in some way?

Sam Parr

Yes, 100%. I used to criticize founders if they would sell secondary. You read about this a lot; you typically only read about it when it's done in a bad way, of which it has been done in a bad way many times. You'll see a company that is going to go bankrupt, and the founders took $50,000,000 off the table, and it didn't work out. The reasoning behind that, I think, is great still. You give an entrepreneur $5 or $10 million, and they're like, "Wow, I can live a really nice life now." I think bigger; that's definitely the case with me. I think significantly longer term. So I think, "What's this like in 20 or 30 years?" as opposed to next quarter. I don't care if it fails, which is actually a good thing. It means I'm able to try more within it. What have I said? "Treat them mean, keep them keen." It's like that with trying to find a date and make money. The less I care, the more it happens.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the way I think about it is like this: you see examples on both sides. You see when somebody had no other option, backed against the wall, that's when they rose to the occasion. On the other hand, you can hear the scenario where someone says, "Because I was secure, I was able to play a long-term game." They were less emotionally invested in the ups and downs, therefore they were able to make better decisions. So, which one is it? I think the reality is that success is not based on either one of those. It's not based on how much money you had in your bank account when you had zero or when you had a bunch. People tell themselves stories about it either way. I think fundamentally, if a person is intrinsically driven, it doesn't matter whether that fuel comes from being a technologist who loves technology and wants to make something good for humanity, or from being insecure because, you know, in seventh grade Rachel dumped them. Either way, it doesn't matter what your driving force is as long as you have one. It's different for a whole bunch of people. There are examples of people with all kinds of chips on their shoulders. I think you do need to be driven, and it's just a question of by what. I believe everybody's got a different "by what."

Sam Parr

are are are you more calm now that you've had success

Shaan Puri

I'm definitely more calm, but I was pretty calm before. So, "calm" I would say is not really the word. I guess the way I would put it is I'm less desperate.

Sam Parr

like yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that has ups and downs. Again, like I said, when I was desperate to prove myself, you saw that I worked in that really fancy office. I also slept in that office. I think basically it was like one year; it was like 275 days out of the year I slept there. It was nice to sleep there; it's a really nice place. They had an apartment built into the office, so it wasn't like I was sleeping under my desk on the concrete floor. But nonetheless, that just sort of means I just didn't have a life. I didn't want to have a life. I didn't want to care about friends, dating, and other things. I cared about just making it. I just wanted to be successful really badly. And it’s not even that I was super productive all those hours, but I was like, "Look, I'm going to throw all my hours at the problem. I will sleep here; I will wake up here. That just seems more efficient." I'm just going to do that. I did that for several years. But now, I would say that desperation has been replaced with a different asset. I lost the desperation, which was serving me. What do I have now? I can operate more out of a place where I can choose things that I'm actually driven towards, like having a purpose, even if there's no short...

Sam Parr

term offensive as well

Shaan Puri

Yeah, there's no short-term path to success. Like, right now, for example, I'm writing this newsletter every day. I write this thing every day, and there are no ads.

Sam Parr

there's I subscribe no small boy or small boy

Shaan Puri

Right, small boy, small boy. I'm writing this thing. There's no ads, there's no premium, there's no upsell, there's no business model. So why am I doing it? I'm like, "Because I really like writing." More than I like writing, I enjoy finding interesting things to write about—things that scratch my curiosity. As I'm doing this thing that has no business plan, I'm seeing all these extra opportunities open up that I couldn't have seen at the beginning. Just by doing the thing I'm really drawn to, I'm doing my best work. When I'm doing my best work, these unforeseen things start to reveal themselves. I'm like, "Oh, the 24-year-old me would have never been able to do this." The 24-year-old me was desperate and needed a quick payoff. Now, I don't need a quick payoff, and I'm able to do things differently. I think that has a different advantage.

Sam Parr

Can we talk about this? Is there a new chip on your shoulder now that you... there's been a very... well, you tell me. Is the feud that you're experiencing right now, your internet feud, has that even made it to the point where you bring it up at the dinner table?

Shaan Puri

No, no, no. My wife is not aware of it, but she's like, "How come he's looking at his phone for like an extra 30 seconds longer?" It's because I'm coming up with a badass slam in my head. So it's actually happening. I'm wordsmithing a 7th-grade insult right now. And I don't know what my kid wants. What do you want? Hold on, Daddy's busy. I'm coming up with a "Yo Mama" joke to Jason Calacanis right now.

Sam Parr

The background of this is there's a podcast called the "All In Pod." They're great; I think they're good, but they're different from us. A lot of people will listen to both of ours, so maybe there's definitely some competition in there, but we can all win. In the last podcast, Sean challenged them basically to a $100,000 heads-up poker bet. There was some more detail behind it, but I shared that on the internet. Jason Calacanis, I thought he was coming hard at me too, but he came hard at Sean. He said, "Sam, you're great. Sean, you'll still learn," and he gave you a head pat. He also said, "Smart of you, Sean, to punch."

Shaan Puri

Well, I don't know if he... So, the background is, while we were... I forgot what we were talking about. I think we were making fun of him a little bit because in the Rogan debate, people were like, "You know, it's raised $2,000,000 for this scientist to come debate this guy," like a kind of a famous internet challenge. And he's like, "I'm in for $10,000," which is funny because the answer to the record he was doing was $100,000 or more.

Sam Parr

I've never made fun of Jason. If it comes down to it, you have my loyalty. I will die for you. But so far, if you want me to, I'll gladly hop in. I've stayed mostly neutral; this is a you thing.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. By the way, I like Jason. For the record, I have nothing against Jason Calacanis. I've listened to "This Week in Startups" for a long time. I don't listen anymore, but I used to listen back in the day. I like the "All In" podcast. It's sort of like two thoughts that are both true: I like their content, and I have nothing against them personally. I've met them a couple of times in passing, you know, whatever. Totally harmless. There's no ill will there. Also, I think some things he says are funny and cringey. It's funny in a "laugh at you, not with you" type of way, and cringey. For example, the joke I made that he didn't like was when I said, "All In is billionaires talking about billionaire shit; MFM is millionaires talking about millionaire shit." Somebody goes, "Actually, it's more like three billionaires and Jason Calacanis." He came in for his own defense and said, "Actually, I'm a centimillionaire." I just thought that was cringe as fuck, which objectively and scientifically it is. I think he might have taken offense to that, and he didn't fully like it. But I would say my poker challenge to them is only for fun. I just think it would be a fun thing to do. I think it'd be a fun thing to watch. I'm just looking for some action. I love playing poker. They say they're great at poker, so okay, let's do a little celebrity challenge.

Sam Parr

nothing's been settled you're not doing it yet

Shaan Puri

Well, they didn't take the bait. I think, you know, he was sort of just like, "Well, you know, you're not famous enough for me to do this challenge. I have more to lose than I have to gain out of doing this." That was sort of the vibe I got, which honestly...

Sam Parr

Fair play. The problem with that is that that's not entirely true. Are they more popular? You could argue that for sure.

Shaan Puri

for sure

Sam Parr

but but we're there there's a ballpark and you know it's there

Shaan Puri

I'm in the stadium

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's not like calling a... you know, what do I say? It's not like calling a 5'10" guy "tiny," you know what I mean? Like, you gotta be at least 5'6" to get that nickname. You're 5'10" here.

Shaan Puri

you know

Sam Parr

what I mean not small enough

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, but the funny thing is, as I was talking about, you know, we should like on the podcast, I was joking. I was like, "Oh wait, is this fake internet beef? I would love to have some fake internet beef." You know, this is how rappers for generations have been getting famous. They did this, have fake beef. We should do this as podcasters with other podcasts. So I think that was the sort of fun behind it. We got one-upped big time! Just when I thought me and Jason Calacanis were getting some fake internet beef, Palmer Luckey comes off the top rope—the founder of Oculus—and Andrew comes off the top rope and just body slams Jason. People love that! And then, while that's going on, Elon Musk challenges Mark Zuckerberg to a fight. Now, I don't even give a shit about my own poker match; I need to see these guys fight! Let's break this down. We have to do this story.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so basically, I don't actually know how it started. Do you know how it started? But what I do is I'll fill in when Facebook—actually, Facebook officials replied with a beautiful response.

Shaan Puri

well there's there's a few steps to it so I think the first thing was I guess the old I think the origin of this was a presentation leaked out of facebook that was talking about the facebook's coming out with a twitter competitor I think it's called project 92 or something like that and it's a twitter competitor and their pitch was sort of like yeah it's a twitter competitor instagram people will be able to immediately have their instagram following on this so if you wanna if you're already famous on instagram you could just start sharing short form text like twitter on our new thing and you know it will be run by like run-in a sane way like it'll be managed in a sane way I think it was the something something with the word sane in it and so essentially implying that twitter is sort of insane and the way elon's running it is is reckless so that got out that that present internal presentation leaked maybe intentionally maybe not I don't know and so elon started making fun of of zuckerberg he's saying like you know zuck my blink you know like you know he's just sort of like you know tweeting stuff like that and then somebody somebody was like you know watch out zuck's been training and he got and elon replies and says I'll fight I'll fight zuck in a cage match so he says this and zuck screenshots it and posts on his instagram story with the caption send me location which for those who don't know is a iconic ufc slogan by khabib one of the the great I think I think one of the greatest ufc fighters of all time who was when he was fighting with conor mcgregor and mcgregor was like oh he's scared he doesn't wanna fight me blah blah blah and khabib just goes brother I'm not scared you want to fight me okay just send me location just send me location like basically where do I need to go I'll fight you anywhere and so zuck hits elon with the send me location and this triggers a chain of events that I thought was a joke so I thought first of all I've never seen zuck talk trash that was already kind of an amazing moment he he he he did a heel turn which is awesome the second thing is I was like okay well there's no no way this is serious and then elon sees that tweet and goes or sees that story and goes I'm serious I'll do it if he's down and then people are like wait what I don't know if you saw this today sam do you see that dana white's involved so dana white who's the president of the ufc comes out because again I'm sort of you know my greatest fantasy would come true if this if randomly 2 tech billionaire ceos went and decided to do a ufc match that's my 2 worlds colliding all of a sudden dana white comes out and he says I talked to marc and elon last night both guys are absolutely dead serious about this he goes this would be the biggest fight of all time floyd and and connor was one of the biggest fights of all time this I think triples it there is no limit on how much this could make he said it would be in las vegas it would pay per view and it would be about a $100 pay per view and you would have 51 year old elon musk against I don't know like 39 year old mark zuckerberg who's a £100 lighter than him and dude what is happening is this is this real

Sam Parr

And then, The Verge reached out to Facebook. A Facebook official replied to the team and they just said, "Yeah." They go, "The story speaks for itself," which is another way of saying, "It is what it is." There's a guy in the UFC that always says, "It is what it is," and that's exactly what Facebook just said. They said, "It is what it is." It sounds serious, and I thought that was a pretty baller move. I think this is hilarious. I think this is awesome. I love a freak show. Assign me!

Shaan Puri

So, I have some rapid-fire questions. **Topic number 1:** Most importantly, do you believe this will happen? Yes or no, and why?

Sam Parr

I believe Zuck will do it, and I think he would. I don't think there's a chance that Elon would do it. I think Elon would get very hurt just training for it. There's not a world where Elon does it.

Shaan Puri

So you think it's a no-no because of Elon? I, yeah, 100% agree with you. I hope it happens. I'm not saying it won't happen, but if I had to guess, I would say it doesn't happen because Elon realizes that he's going to lose a lot. He's going to lose, first of all, if he does this.

Sam Parr

he's gonna get destroyed

Shaan Puri

He's gonna get tapped out. If he does, I think he realizes that it's a pretty bad look for him to lose to Zuck. His cool factor is really high, and he needs to find a way out. He needs a "hold me back" guy. You're in a fight, and you're like, "Hey, listen, I'm gonna go after these guys. I need you to hold me back so I'm not actually trying to fight this guy. I need it to look like I'm trying to fight this guy, and I need you to hold me back." And it's gotta be, "If these guys weren't holding me back, I would have kicked your ass." He needs to find a "hold me back" guy.

Sam Parr

I think Elon's "hold me back" guy is going to be a hard sneeze. He's one hard sneeze away from getting like a back spasm, you know what I'm saying? The guy's not fit. He's a charley horse away from quitting.

Shaan Puri

Yes, winner by noogie, Mark. Yeah, alright, so that's my second question. How do you think, let's say our dreams do come true, this fight does happen? What do you think would actually happen? Like, predict the actual fight. What would happen? The fight starts, what happens?

Sam Parr

I think that, look, I box for fun and I spar. What I've learned is that it doesn't really matter that much. It matters a bit, but it doesn't matter how in shape you are or how tough you are. If you don't practice that skill set and you go against another person who doesn't have that skill set, it's just... you're light years away from one another. Just being comfortable getting hit, I think Zuck would finish him within 2 minutes. He'd probably get him on the ground and Elon would tap from getting his arm injured or something like that.

Shaan Puri

Yes, now the counterargument would be, "But Elon could train." Are you counting Elon out? This guy's proven he can do anything. He could train. What's the counter to that?

Sam Parr

He won't. I don't think he'll train, and I don't think any amount of training will help. Look, you can't make an overweight 51-year-old fit in any amount of time.

Shaan Puri

ozempic the magic powers of ozempic he's already on ozempic he's already lost like £30 on ozempic

Sam Parr

It doesn't matter. And so, keep in mind, Zack's still only 39, I think, or 38. No, I don't think that Elon can train. I don't think any amount of training will get him to the...

Shaan Puri

Where he's back, data people were on Twitter were like, "Elon, we love you, but man, I think Zuck would handle you." Here's what Elon said; he had three things that he mentioned.

Sam Parr

he oh I saw this

Shaan Puri

Number 1, he said, "I don't work out except for sometimes when I pick my kids up and throw them in the air." So, he doesn't work out at all; he doesn't exercise. Yeah, forget about fighting. The guy doesn't exercise. Secondly, he's like, "I'm so much bigger than the guy." You know, just for reference, Elon is like 6'3", 200+ pounds. Zuck is probably 5'9", I think 5'8" or 5'9", maybe 5'10" max, and is probably giving up easily 50 pounds in a fight here. So, weight classes do matter. And Elon says, "I have this move called the walrus." Yeah, I'm just like a walrus; I'll just lay on them. They can't do anything; they're just pinned. This is his plan.

Sam Parr

none of that matters

Shaan Puri

doesn't matter what the guy does jiu jitsu jiu jitsu people want to start on their back with you on top of them

Sam Parr

It doesn't matter. I'm not a practitioner of jiu-jitsu, but I've watched it enough that I feel confident, at least in this call. It was so one-sided. Exactly, it doesn't matter.

Shaan Puri

Way training... like, if you're a beginner in Jiu Jitsu, you can go to a Jiu Jitsu gym for 6 months and you'll still be getting your ass whooped by people who are just, you know, one year ahead of you. The learning curve is very steep to actually get good at this stuff. You don't pick up boxing or Jiu Jitsu very quickly. Boxing, I don't think it would be a factor. I think the fights go to the ground. Both guys are too uncoordinated; nobody's knocking anyone out. Both guys would look very unathletic and it would end in Zuck tapping him out. By the way, do you see this picture I put in the doc? Look at this picture of Elon wrestling a sumo wrestler. Have you seen this?

Sam Parr

ugh yeah

Shaan Puri

He said he's briefly done karate, briefly done judo, and has done a little bit of jujitsu. This is what Elon has said in the past.

Sam Parr

If I had to bet on Elon versus Mark in most everything, I think I would choose Mark Zuckerberg. Yeah, like whether it's business or fighting, I think both are a good hang. I think Zuck would be a better hang. I think Zuck would trump him in just about everything. Don't you agree?

Shaan Puri

On a good hang, I think a lot of people would pick Elon. I think Elon’s looser and more fun. It’s like, "Oh, he smoked weed with Joe Rogan; he must be awesome," right? This is like how most of...

Sam Parr

The rides work. I think he would be an awkward hang. I think it’d be very uncomfortable. I don’t think... I think Zuck is just Zuck.

Shaan Puri

dude they're they're both podium on the in the awkward olympics I mean let's just be real here

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah, but Zuck... Zuck, Zuck, Zuck. Like, you know, he reads books on where to place his hands when he meets people. Like, he's like, "Place on shoulder," you know what I'm saying? He actually studies it. I think that Zuck is going to win in every aspect. Do you agree?

Shaan Puri

I agree. I really hope this happens. There's this Dana White thing that gave me a slight hope. But there's a famous saying that people don't know: Dana White is like a world-class liar. In fact, if you ever go into the UFC communities on Reddit, one of the most famous taglines of the community is "Don't believe his lies." He'll sell you anything. He's a promoter, and he will try to drum up interest by doing whatever he's got to do. And this might be, by the way, the hail Mary to save Twitter. You know, like Mayweather and McGregor did $500 million. If he thinks this is going to do triple that, let's just pretend Dana White's not lying for a second here. If this fight did like $1 billion and Elon took home, you know, $200 million out of that net, hey, that's just another few months of runway for Twitter, which is currently unprofitable and, depending on who you believe, could be bleeding advertisers.

Sam Parr

I have to imagine that there's also a life insurance policy that these guys have. I wonder if it's like you have to have security with you. You can't ride a motorcycle.

Shaan Puri

Dude, they're just gonna do what billionaires do. They're gonna send in like a proxy. It's like, "Here's my bodyguard versus yours," right? In history, isn't this how conquerors fight? They don't go fight themselves; they send in their best gladiator. Like, the top engineer at Facebook and the top engineer at Tesla need to go in and fight for their own.

Sam Parr

Would still... I would still bet on anything Zuck does. Do you want to... can we talk about Beehive?

Shaan Puri

yeah let's do it tell me

Sam Parr

a little bit about the background of beehive

Shaan Puri

Alright, so what is Beehive? Beehive is a piece of software. If you want to create an email newsletter, Beehive, in my opinion, is the best way to do it. I'm biased because I invested in it, but I also used it before I invested in it. We used it for the Milk Row; we built our whole business off this. I basically saw what you had done with The Hustle and what the Morning Brew guys had done. You all did almost like what I'll call the homebrew version of Beehive. When I asked you, I said, "Hey, what should I use for this?" You were like, "Well, you know, here are some things you care about: you care about deliverability, you care about how easy it is for your writers to write, you care about a referral program, blah blah blah." There are five tools. What Beehive was, was complicated and expensive. What Beehive did instead was that the guy who worked at Morning Brew built out their referral and growth program. I think he left and basically asked himself, "How do I productize the internal tech that we kind of had at Morning Brew so that it makes it easier for anybody to create a newsletter brand?"

Sam Parr

And this is a constant discussion that we had at The Hustle. My constant answer was, "No, let's just focus on this one thing." And that's true; I made the right decision because it's so challenging for a media company to be a software company and vice versa. It's hard when you're doing one thing. I had ad salespeople, and I told them, "You guys can't sell software. It's just different." He has proven that. I actually predicted, "No, because we need to focus." Also, I don't think there's a market for it. So far, I think I've been proven wrong, but I haven't been proven wrong totally. We'll see if it actually works.

Shaan Puri

He spins it out. So, he creates Beehive. It's basically, you go on, you click a few buttons, and you've got a newsletter. You have your templates, you can create segments, and you can do all the features of a newsletter. Great! It's good. We use it for The Milk Road. We built our whole business off this thing. We sold The Milk Road after a year or so. Along the way, I got pitched by him, probably when you did. I was like, "Hey, I'm thinking about this Beehive thing. We're raising money. Big fans of you guys. Would love to have you involved." I had the same opinion as you. I was like, "I don't know, seems small." I think there are some newsletter brands that will be big, but I don't know if their underlying tech is going to be that big. I don't know how big that platform would be as software. So, we passed. I think the first valuation we looked at was maybe $10,000,000-ish.

Sam Parr

10

Shaan Puri

yeah you passed too at that time right same reason market might be too small

Sam Parr

And at the time, I was saying no to most stuff. But really, I also thought, "I don't think this can work. I don't think it could work at a venture scale."

Shaan Puri

And there's a classic lesson here, which is that sometimes there's such a thing as knowing too much. Often, the people who know the most about an industry have either too much scar tissue; they just don't want to be involved anymore. They want to go do other things and not think about it because there's too much. I spent seven years there; I left a piece of my soul over there, and I don't really want to worry about that again. The other reason is that you can get too defined by how things are, and you don't really see where it's going. This is why very few breakthrough innovations come from traditional industry experts. They often come from beginners. Why would a beginner be able to create a breakthrough and not an expert? Because they come in with a fresh perspective—a blank slate. They're not limited by the prevailing wisdom. So, that's happened many times over. We started using it, though, and I thought, "Oh, I'll be a user." So, you know, there's that. I'm not going to invest, but I'll be a user. So we start using it.

Sam Parr

and what did you think of the product

Shaan Puri

At first, it was good, but I kept running into these limitations. I would be like, "Hey, oh my God, they don't even let you filter by X!" Or, "Wait, you don't even have analytics for my growth side?" The referral program only does this, you know? I would find these limitations because it was very early on. We were like one of their first users, I think.

Sam Parr

and his reply I bet was the best reply on earth because that's what it seems like

Shaan Puri

It was the perfect reply, as always, which is: "I hear you. We agree. Already working on it, but let me see if I can get you something a little sooner." Yeah, we're planning to release this in two months, but let me see what I can do here. What they would do is either he would manually do a workaround for us. It'd be like, "Look, we don't have this analytics thing yet, but here's what I'm gonna do. I'll put a button on your dashboard. It's ugly, it's gray, nobody else can see it, but it's an export. It'll email you a CSV, and then can you just run the analytics yourself for now until we build it?" So he would take three hours and just make my life better. He would understand. He would also ask me a bunch of questions like, "So what are you trying to really do here? Let me just confirm I understand this," like a good product person would do. He's trying to really understand the needs. The second thing he would do is then they would actually ship the feature. So when he'd say, "That's two weeks away," I remember telling Ben many times. Ben would be like, "Oh yeah, they said they're coming out in two weeks." I was like, "Dude, are you a rookie? No way! Startups say anything. They don't... like, no engineers ever hit a timeline like this. Never happens." Sure enough, two weeks later, they proactively reach out: "Hey, the feature's out. Test it out. I want you to... I think it'll work for you guys now." And we would go do it. He just did that three times. So over the course of about three or four months, I changed my mind. I called Tyler and said, "We need to invest in this thing." I was like, "But what about your concerns about the market?" I was like, "I don't know, still might be true, but here's what I do know: this guy's an animal. He's making a product that's really good. And you know what? This might be an example where the market is bigger than you think," which has been the case for many big winners. Like, you know, what's the market for private black town car on demand or crashing on someone's house as an Airbnb, right? These things can become a lot bigger than you initially look at if you sort of squint.

Sam Parr

I've heard so many people say the same thing about him. I've noticed, because I found him online and I've only talked to him once or twice, that he is changing quickly. He is moving fast and changing the product rapidly. Whenever I saw that, I thought, "Damn, he's gonna do it." I don't know how big, but something's gonna get pulled off here. You could tell that right away.

Shaan Puri

And this is about two things. First, there's a framework that we had at my very first startup. We realized this while we were running a sushi restaurant. In the restaurant industry, there's this weird phenomenon: - Provide what's expected: 0 points - Mess up their order: -10 points - Fix the mess up: +5 points So, I was like, "Hold up! If we had just given them the right dish, they wouldn't care; they would just move on as expected." If we mess up their order, they're angry. But if we fix it quickly—not just fixing their order, but also giving them a freebie or making sure they're all good, or even taking it off their bill—suddenly, they have a tremendous experience with us. They'll go tell their friends. I was like, "What's with that?" I came up with this sort of "fix it theory" of restaurants, which is that mistakes are going to happen anyway. What you need to train for is not mistake minimization, but how fast and thoroughly you can fix it. That actually creates a higher net promoter score. That's beautiful! This guy's doing this with software, basically.

Sam Parr

did you make this up

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm sure there's some name for this. I don't know, this is like a whatever, or you know, discovered the hard way. But I'm sure there's a fancy name for that. Oh, I just called it the "Fix It Theory." Right? Like, if we fix it, it's all about how you fix it. And the "fix its" are where you get the die-hards.

Sam Parr

it's very good

Shaan Puri

I noticed that, and as he was doing that, I'll give you one other little beehive story, which is a little dark. Maybe he doesn't want me to share this, but do you know that at some point, Ben—am I right? The CTO passed away, right? His CTO passed away. So we were the biggest jerk of all time. He says the two-week thing, and something didn't happen in those two weeks one time. I was like, "Dude, come on! You said whatever. Where's that feature? We really need it. Don't you understand how important my newsletter is?" Blah, blah, blah. I'm being, you know, I didn't say those words, but I'm playing it up in a way here. We were just like, "Oh God, complaining. It's not ready yet." He's like, "I'm so sorry. We're just dealing with something right now." His co-founder or CTO had passed away during the startup, and that's a very hard thing for any entrepreneur to deal with. Yeah, he handled that as well as a human being can handle it. He was totally gracious and empathetic around what was going on, but also understood that he's gotta keep moving forward in some way. He's going to have to figure this out, and it's not an easy thing to figure out. I mean, there are all kinds of great things; you just don't know the passwords to have the things, right? There are all kinds of stuff that you don't even really think about because, knock on wood, this never happens. But you know, just seeing how somebody overcomes adversity and deals with really tough situations is another thing where you sort of see characters revealed in moments of difficulty and adversity. You see how somebody handles something, and you think, "You know what? I think they're going to figure things out." Fast forward to, I think he's...

Sam Parr

really young too right he's like 20 he's he's and he's probably 27

Shaan Puri

Yeah, something like that. He's pretty baby-faced. I don't know, he seems young-ish. I'll tell you two other interesting things. So, yesterday, the reason why we're talking about it is that they announced... we probably should've led with this. Yesterday, they announced they're raising... they raised a Series A, $12.5 million, from Lightspeed.

Sam Parr

at like a $50,000,000 valuation I think is what an an article said

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think a little more than that. So, they raised this money and he posted a graph of their ARR, or Annual Recurring Revenue. It's a hockey stick curve. It's $3,000,000 in ARR and, like, I don't know how long... Let me check. I think it's sort of like, yeah, $33,000,000 ARR in like 12 to 18 months, maybe something like that. It's really, really impressive. So, the run rate's, I think, $4,000,000. He's like, and he said in the thing, "We're trying to end the year at $12,000,000." Super impressive.

Sam Parr

and the end this year so go go from 4 to 12

Shaan Puri

That's what he's 4 to 12 trying to jump. He says they are currently at a **$4,000,000** run rate. They have **$3,000,000** of recurring revenue from their subscription product, plus another **$1,000,000** of revenue from their other services. For example, if you want to sell ads or monetize your newsletter, they'll help you with that as well. So, they have other products now.

Sam Parr

wow

Shaan Puri

And it says, "Yeah, I forgot he posted the chart, but I think it's roughly 18 months to 2, you know, maybe 24 months at the max that it did that."

Sam Parr

oh you got a call out in the in the techcrunch article he said used by milk road

Shaan Puri

Hell yeah, that's right! I'm in the ballpark, baby. So, you know, I think that this is a good and interesting example. I'm curious to see how this plays out. I could see this going one of two ways. You know, I'm an investor, but I could totally see this being a great business that isn't venture scale. Meaning, he might sell this thing for $100 million. They might get to $25 million in revenue and sell for $200 million. I think that could be the expected outcome, to be honest.

Sam Parr

would that be would you be happy with that

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'd be happy for them. I mean, we would make some money. It wouldn't be like the type of return we would like, you know, that you would expect in a startup portfolio. You're obviously looking for these like $1,000,000,000+ outcomes. But hey, you know, a win's a win, and I would be really happy for their team. So, you know, I think that would be life-changing money for him, and it'd be a great outcome. I think that's like... if they do well, if they execute well, I think that's on the table. I think the question is: how big does this kind of newsletter media thing get? Can this get to the scale where, okay, if they're trying to get to $10,000,000 ARR this year, they're at $4,000,000, trying to get to $10,000,000? If they get to $100,000,000, right? If they 10x from there over the next, you know, 5 years, that's now a $1,000,000,000 company. The question is: can it become that? What would they need to do to achieve that? I think that's going to be the challenge or the big question for them.

Sam Parr

I don't think that's gonna happen. If I had to bet, I think there's a **nine-figure exit** that's gonna happen here that will make them wealthy and be a huge success. I don't think a **$1,000,000,000** company is gonna happen. I think it's too challenging. I am an investor in ConvertKit. If you Google "ConvertKit" and then the word "Baremetrics," you can see all of the revenue and the churn on ConvertKit. ConvertKit's been doing it for **eight or nine years**, and they're a little bit more focused on small businesses as opposed to Beehive, which is like freelancers turned one-man or two-man companies. You can look at their churn for ConvertKit, and I would think it's better than Beehive. It seems very challenging to get to **$100,000,000** in revenue in a venture timeframe.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think that's... I think that could be totally, totally, totally the case. So on ConvertKit, their MRR [Monthly Recurring Revenue] right now says basically $3,000,000 a month, so $36,000,000 a year.

Sam Parr

So, it's **$36,000,000** a year. Yeah, **$36 million**. And look at the churn; I think it's **4%** a month.

Shaan Puri

yeah 3.5% a month

Sam Parr

and so does that mean that most people churn out after 1 year is that what that math means

Shaan Puri

no I don't know I don't know

Sam Parr

I can't math

Shaan Puri

Do public math. Definitely, definitely don't try to do monthly compounding to extrapolate that for 12 months. That's not easy for me. But I think 3, you know, 3 to 3.5% churn per month is, you know, obviously not great, but it's also not like bleeding in SaaS metrics.

Sam Parr

No, not at all. I think that I would rather be Nathan Barry and own 90% of that company. Of course, Nathan probably had money or had some income coming in, so he had the ability to do this. Like you said, everyone's gotta get their nut and get it how you can. So, I think it's going to be a massive success. I just don't know if it's going to be a $1,000,000,000 company. But I think that the takeaway here for myself, for you, and for the listener is the speed of shipping new stuff, making iterations, and more so, talking to your customer constantly. Hearing what they have to say and asking them, "Why?" Not just "What do you want?" but "Why?" And I'll come up with a solution. I think that's the takeaway here. I think the fix-it menu thing or the fix-it framework is really, really, really good. Is that what you call it?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'll give you two other little frameworks around this. One is from Paul Graham. Paul Graham wrote this essay once where he goes, "A thing I've noticed, like, you know, in successful entrepreneurs..." Paul Graham created Y Combinator, so he saw, you know, over 1,000 entrepreneurs try to come through there and he picked very well. He goes, "One of the things I would say is most commonly linked with success is: can you describe this person as an animal?" What that means is not, "Oh, he's like a giraffe; he's got a long neck." No, it means could you just be like, "Dude, that guy's an animal," or "She's an animal." It basically just describes the sort of tenacity, intensity, and speed with which somebody moves, figures things out, gets through obstacles, and breaks through plateaus. That one piece of investing advice has really stuck with me and served me well because it's really easy to get analytical about the market, about the product, about the industry, about the competitors. And you should; that's good. Look at it from all angles. But whenever I'm like, "This person's an animal," I'd make a bet, for better or worse. I'm just going to err on the side of betting on people when I can describe them as an animal because that type of person could figure things out. I think, on balance, it's just a higher predictor of outsized success. Also, the opposite is true. I've made some mistakes in investing when I'm like, "Oh, I love this market, love this product," and I'm sort of projecting, "If somebody was just a beast and took this on, they would just crush it." I kind of overlooked the fact that the person going after it is sort of soft and timid, seems to lack aggression, and doesn't seem to know their stuff. They don't really know their numbers well. When I ask about the customers, they don't really...

Sam Parr

know linkedin a lot

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they keep wondering about stuff. When I ask them what's going on three weeks later, they don't really have clarity on what's changed, what's better, or what they're focused on. You know, when they hit, they get overwhelmed easily. I've also talked myself into market investments. I guess for me, early-stage investing is very important. That is the person. An animal is just a very important test. That's one.

Hubspot

Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous.

Shaan Puri

I think I

Sam Parr

I love our new CRM. Our software is the best: HubSpot, grow better! I got an update from a company I invested in, and they were talking about their new LinkedIn content series. That was the main thing. This is a software company, and I was like, "Okay, but how about revenue, profit, and like how fast?" You know what I mean? I was like, I don't care. Also, I don't care about the new hires, frankly.

Shaan Puri

I'm 100% sure I'm going to criticize my own portfolio this way. I said this the other day to my investment partner, Ramin. I said, "Ramin, man, I feel like maybe 15%, best case 20%, of our portfolio writes good updates." I said that makes me worried because really, there are two buckets: there are people who just don't write updates at all, or they're inconsistent. You know, they pop up when things are good or they need something, and then they disappear for 9 months when things are going tough. Paul Graham has also written about that, which is when you stop talking, that's when things go bad. The people who survive are the ones who continue being in communication even when things are tough.

Sam Parr

and when you omit information

Shaan Puri

when it's like exactly

Sam Parr

Hey, so why didn't you just put how much your burn was and your lot? Why didn't you include your cash balance in there?

Shaan Puri

exactly

Sam Parr

like like you know I could do the math

Shaan Puri

We invested in one company early on. That's a pretty famous company in Silicon Valley. It was really hot for a period of time, and now it's like people have gone sour on it.

Sam Parr

I know what you're talking about

Shaan Puri

and they said they like would write they would first when they were when it was really hot they would write these very surface level updates like we hired this vp and this person and this person and we brought on this new investor it's like cool but what what about the business how's the business going and you're almost like it's almost like don't ask about the business so it's like what's going on why why is that the feeling and then sure enough 18 months later oh bad news coming out you know we had to do layoffs and there's bad hit press article and all the stuff and we're just you know we really need to raise money but it's not looking good it's like what's your burn rate oh we burned 3,000,000 a month I was like dude what and why haven't you been saying this right like it's unbelievable and then and if you asked him like okay what's the problem right now it's like oh the problem is you know the funding market right now and this that it's like no the problem was you were burning $3,000,000 a month for a long. Of time without the corresponding like you know reward for that burn you know you weren't growing in proportion to that burn and you were reckless with money right like that's the the reality that's the honest lesson out of it you might be telling yourself some other story similarly with our portfolio I'd say about 20% are writing good updates and a good update is here's anatomy of a good update I might actually just release a template for all on this but it's basically hey guys as a reminder we are hampton what we do is this right like first just like say what you do not that like your investors forget but in general you're not top of mind for people and you should have a real clear punchy thing that you're drilling in this association whenever this whenever you think of this word think of us whenever somebody has this problem think of us and so like first start with that then say last month was and your answer you're a great month good or bad answer that question and then write the kpis and the kpis gotta be revenue active users or active usage active customers in some way the the negative of that so some churn or you know cost number associated with that net burn maybe cash balance you know how much cash do we have on hand and then you wanna write the number for we have to write the number for what it is in parentheses you wanna write how much is that up month over month and what is your goal

Sam Parr

right

Shaan Puri

How are you doing against your own goals? Our annual goal is to get to $10,000,000 in revenue or to reach $100,000,000 in revenue. To do that, we need to be doing X, and we're actually either above that, below that, or on track. That's the honest way to start an update. Below that, you can write whatever the hell you want. To be honest, you gotta write that part first. The next part you should write is why that happened. For example, "Revenue's down because..." or "Revenue's up because we tried this affiliate thing and it's actually working pretty good. We're going to double down on it." You might say, "Revenue is down because blah blah blah," or "Users are flat because we didn't do X, Y, Z," or "We are doing X, Y, Z and it's just maintaining." We gotta figure out how to get to the next level. So, you have your sort of two-sentence commentary on the metrics. Then, after that, you could put your ask: "Here's what I need from you." Below that, you could put in whatever the hell updates you want. Honestly, I don't...

Sam Parr

like the fluffy shit

Shaan Puri

Fluffy stuff, yeah. Like that, what you don't want to do is what a lot of people do. "Hey, we have this article. Can you share?" That's the start of the update. Just a quick update on our end: good month for us. We made these four hires. I want to welcome, you know, Steve. It's like, "What do... why are we talking about Steve, your VP of Marketing?" They just go on, "You know, Steve used to work at Visa, but now he's over here, and that's really great," blah, blah, blah. Oh, on the product side, we released these new updates. It's like, "Dude, this is not where you put patch notes." Your investors care about something, and you don't want to go over here and wave your hands about all this other stuff that's not actually the core relevant information. I think it's just wild to me that people don't get that. I refuse to... I'll die on that hill. That's how investor updates should be written, and it's crazy to me that people don't just do that consistently.

Sam Parr

Yeah, when I see that, I just think you're lying about something. This goes back to what I said about the way you do one thing is the way you do everything. If you're not honest about it, I think that you're lying about other stuff. I just think it's really important to do these things in the right way. I used to do this all the time at the hospital. I felt... I think you used to get mine right.

Shaan Puri

Used to send me your updates, and they were phenomenal. They were perfect. It was exactly in this format, and you were like, "You know, you're just the university of common sense." It's not like you were getting mentorship or advising, or it was just your fifth startup. It was just like, "Alright, what are people gonna care about?" Like, obviously the key metrics, how it's going, what I think about those key metrics, and what we're gonna do next. That's basically what your update was.

Sam Parr

I think what I understood is that people basically want to get rich, they want to get laid, and they want to have power. Most of my things in life are rooted in knowing those three things. The problem with a lot of Silicon Valley companies is they think that "I learned a lot" is good enough. When it's like, "No, man, I give you my hard-earned money; I expect a return." You need to be a... what do they call it? Scott Belsky told me this: "You need to be a steward of capital." I heard that and I was like, "Oh my God, you make it sound so official." I sound like a knight, like I'm just deploying money. I'm like a knight in shining armor doing this. So, there's that. Basically, I'm a small business owner trying to make money, and my business is investing in your company. You just took money out of my family's mouths and food off our table. That's how I feel. If a person isn't doing everything in their effort to give me a return on my investment, I get really pissed. If they work really hard and they fail, or if they make errors, I'm cool with that because I know I'm playing the lottery here. But if they do this soft stuff and aren't honest about it, it kills me. It kills me. It kills me.

Shaan Puri

In the sense of lying, I actually think that's the minority case. I don't think people are actively lying. I think if they're lying to anyone, they're lying to themselves. I think what's actually...

Sam Parr

happens is it's it's lying through omission it's lying through omission is what it is

Shaan Puri

So, I think there are three scenarios: either you know the situation and you don't want to say it, or you just don't even know the situation. You're not on top of these things, which is really bad.

Sam Parr

it's usually the first

Shaan Puri

Or, you know, you don't want to say it, and you're intentionally withholding the information in order to mislead or misrepresent... or whatever. The worst! It's really bad, bad, or badder, right? Like, you know, bad, badder, or baddest. It's like there's really not a good explanation. The only good explanation that I will accept is that there are some companies that are doing so phenomenally well, and they know that investors are actually kind of a leaky bucket. They don't want... they want to get ahead; they want their rumor mill to go ahead. Now, let me tell you, the number of times it's that out of a hundred is one out of a hundred.

Sam Parr

I had that happen to me. Did I tell you about this? So, alright, the hustle was supposed to sell. The deal was supposed to close on February, let's say, 5th. February 5th was also supposed to be their earnings call, and that's a big deal for a variety of reasons. There are legal implications here; you know the SEC's involved. It could be as simple as if I told someone that we were about to sell our deal, which wasn't big enough to do this. It did happen, but it wasn't because of us. The stock price can change significantly at the announcement. If I told someone and they made a big trade—which has happened multiple times, not with us but multiple times—there's insider trading, and that's against the law. You go to jail for that. So, there's that implication, and there are also other implications around like, you know, it's just not cool. It makes you look bad. Well, anyway, we were supposed to close on, let's say, February 5th. Someone told Axios on February 4th. I get an email from Sarah Fisher, I think her name is. Someone leaked it to her. I had only told a small amount of people who were helping me. I think I told you, who were like guiding me. I also had to get some people to sign some paperwork, and I explicitly said, "Don't tell anyone. This is a big deal." I think I told them, "This will ruin the deal if you tell people," which isn't true, but you know, I told them. On February 4th, the day before I was supposed to announce it, I get this email from Sarah. She goes, "I have a source saying that you guys are selling," and she told me a bunch of facts about the deal that I was like, "How on earth do you know this?" It did, in fact, get leaked. We're not a big company; we weren't big enough that this should be gossip, but it happened, and it freaked me out big time. So, I understand that perspective of not telling people certain things with my company. Now, with Hampton, things are going well. I'm not going to talk about it too much. When things are going well, shut up. I think that you should.

Shaan Puri

shut up yeah shut up and push the gears

Sam Parr

Yeah, I understand that perspective, but it happened to us, and it drove me crazy. I suspect it was one of three people. To this day, I hold a grudge against that.

Shaan Puri

all 3 just as preventative measures

Sam Parr

Just preventative. I just stare at what they do, and I'm like, I'm plotting. I'm plotting to, A, find out intel that they did it, and B, I already have my revenge planned. I'm just waiting. I check up on them constantly, and those people probably know who they are because they see me looking at their LinkedIn all the time. I want them to know that I see them.

Shaan Puri

They're like, "Oh, I love how Sam, you know, keeps tabs on me. What a good guy!"

Sam Parr

Oh, I'm looking... I'm looking a lot. I have a feeling who it was, but can you tell me about this Black Rifle story? Because I have a little bit of information about them too.

Shaan Puri

yeah this is a kind of fun moment so we so a few episodes ago we did this

Sam Parr

what's black say what black rifle coffee is

Shaan Puri

Alright, Black Rifle Coffee. It's a coffee brand that I would describe as kind of patriotic. It has an American vibe to it.

Sam Parr

The customers are mostly middle America or Southern. They are probably right of Southern.

Shaan Puri

red sea

Sam Parr

which is like off target

Shaan Puri

Kind of like a... you know, just to put it in a box, which I'm sure they don't love, but like whatever, just for simplicity's sake. It started by veterans, I think.

Sam Parr

so it has like that's the 3

Shaan Puri

Of the 4 guys, or 4 of the 5 guys, were former military, marines, or something like that.

Sam Parr

and they're hampton members by the way oh

Shaan Puri

There you go. So, they start this thing, and there's a kind of interesting origin story to this. It becomes a really popular brand. In fact, not only did they sell a lot of coffee, they sold enough product that they basically went public. So, let me see their stock as of...

Sam Parr

I think it's 3 or $4,000,000,000 market cap still

Shaan Puri

It's a little less now. Maybe the whole market's gone down. So, the current market cap is **$1,100,000,000**. They built a **$1,000,000,000** DTC (direct-to-consumer) brand with basic consumer packaging.

Sam Parr

Do you know how they started? One of the owners had a bunch of Facebook pages. I think he had like 30 Facebook pages, ranging from "stuff for moms" to "veterans." He started selling a ton of stuff. He was looking at all the things they were selling and thought, "Damn, we should make our own thing." That's how the coffee business, I believe, started.

Shaan Puri

so I did a call with him one of the one of the guys

Sam Parr

which one

Shaan Puri

richard and so he because I think he might be in hampton too so he he had said something slightly different he didn't talk about facebook pages he talked about youtube so he was like I was like what's your story he's like well I was like you know he's like wanted to be an actor he goes to hollywood it's like whatever it's not really working out exactly great he's been in a couple things but he teaches himself to code he starts making iphone apps really early on in the iphone app store does pretty good with that ends up getting hired by I think verizon or something like that to do like something on the marketing side for them and along the way he starts doing youtube fairly early on and so he's doing youtube videos and for the brand but then also for himself like personally doing youtube videos and he starts building a pretty big youtube following and then him and his buddies start trying out different products and they're trying out you know this and that and oh should we do a I I don't know what the examples were but it's like you know let's just pretend t shirt brand and it's shoe brand and let's do you know this this thing and that thing hats and then coffee was one of them and the coffee one took off and that's kind of like how they they rallied around black rifle coffee to this day I think they do like tens of 1,000,000 in merch sales not the coffee but just like people love the brand so much they'll buy the t shirts and so tens of millions of merch that there's t shirt comp there's fashion companies that do tens of 1,000,000 and that's their whole business this is like their their spin off business that's like how strong the the brand is in fact when I'm on the zoom call with him his background I'll I'll put a picture up on the youtube channel but it's just like a great example of like this kind of like the subtle branding that exists today when you're on a zoom call it's like your background your clothes like says everything about you because that's how we meet now right so you can actually bring a full story in about your home and everything and he's got like you know on the wall he's got his his camo thing he's got his gun he's got his like he's got all the stuff that's kinda like that same vibe that you know like kind of you know the american tough guy military veteran you know like that sort of vibe so we're talking he's telling me the great story and the reason why we're talking is because he's like dude I was listening to the pod and I heard you talk about the total man thing he's like oh

Sam Parr

that's awesome

Shaan Puri

Just hit me. He's like, "I just love that. I love the total man thing." I went on and saw that somebody had the domain, so I bought it. I was like, "Oh cool!" I didn't think it was available. He goes, "Oh no, no, I bought it off somebody. I think he bought it probably for like $10." He's like, "Yeah, I just want to gift it to you. If you want to do something with it, great! That'd be awesome."

Sam Parr

that's a baller move

Shaan Puri

I hope I can write this off or something. But, you know, I just wanted to do this. I was like, "A baller move." It's like when Darmesh, I think, has done that for you. Like on your birthday, he bought you your domain. He bought...

Sam Parr

A $20,000 domain... it could've been more, right? But it was CopyThat.com. He bought it from me.

Shaan Puri

So, a baller move. I was like, what resonated about the "Total Man" thing? He's like, "I don't know, man. I just felt like the way you and Sam talked about it, just like, look, it's important to me that I stand for something of my own. I live by a code. I care about fitness. I care about these things. I care about being a man, and that's important to me." And you're right that society has really pushed this idea that if you're trying to be a man, it's toxic masculinity. It doesn't have to be that way. You don't have to be a jerk or rude in any way, but why is it bad to want to be manly? I think it just kind of resonated with him. So, we bought this thing. It got a lot.

Sam Parr

of shit for that you see people some people were angry about that and that shock

Shaan Puri

I think there was an understandable reason that they were angry. When we were talking about it, we were like, "You know, I think you're seeing the craving for this type of content and this movement embodied in people who take an extreme version of that, like Andrew Tate or stuff like that." People just immediately hate Andrew Tate so much that they get blinded by rage. They're like, "You guys are saying Andrew Tate's awesome and this whole man thing is about Andrew Tate." It's like, no, no, no. I'm just saying that when you look at it objectively, this guy is extremely popular. He's the number one most Googled man in America right now.

Sam Parr

it it it's all under an umbrella

Shaan Puri

And we're saying, "What is the appeal?" I think part of the appeal—not the whole thing, but part of it—is that this guy preaches that you need to live like a... like a fucking man. He's like, you know, "Be hard. Don't be soft." Mentally, be tough. Physically, be fit. In your relations with people, don't be a softy. Don't get pushed over. Don't keep apologizing and groveling. Carry yourself like a man. And I was like, you know what? We had said that I think the pendulum has swung too far in one direction. A lot of people are preaching a sort of... I don't know what you would call it—almost like a softer, genderless identity thing where it's not cool to be a man. I think that's building up a craving for people to want to be a man. So, I don't know, whatever resonated with that. He bought the domain, and I was like, "Yeah, we should do something. We should try to just make it an open-source movement." When I mapped it out, I did a little five-minute brainstorm the other day with Ben. I was like, "Yeah, what does a total man mean?" I was like, "Part of this is a good branding lesson." At first, I went down the path of like, "What matters to me?" I care about freedom—like financial freedom. I care about fitness. I'm trying to get more and more fit. I want to be somebody who is free to move their body in certain ways and is a very fit individual. But I also care about family and whatever. And I was like, "Oh, I think I just described something generic." I said, "What's the real appeal of this total man thing?" It's not this well-rounded appeal; it actually appeals to nobody. Sam said something once on the podcast that made me laugh, but I kind of wanted to make fun of him, and I also kind of liked it. I was jealous and wanted to make fun of him at the same time.

Sam Parr

what was it

Shaan Puri

You said this thing. It's going to sound so simple; it's going to sound dumb, but you said, "It's important to me to be a fucking man." I was like, "What? What are you even saying? Isn't that ambiance?" Then you said, "Yeah, it's just important to me to be a man and to be like... you know, I don't even know how to explain it." Maybe you didn't even explain it that well. That was the beauty of it. I don't...

Sam Parr

I don't remember exactly, but I say it to Sarah all the time. I go, "I take care of bidness." I go, "We take care of our bidness." You know, like, that doesn't mean money. That means, you know, like I'm gonna provide emotionally, financially, spiritually. I got you. Like, we take care of bidness. Whatever you need, I got you. I'm here for you.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

And it's like, I'm not gonna... I'm going to try my hardest not to get too emotional. If you're emotional, I'll be your rock. I'll treat you with respect. I'm going to take care... I'm going to handle business right. That's what we do.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. I was like, I think it's more that it's basically... I don't think it's about this well-rounded blah blah blah because it dilutes the message.

Sam Parr

Well, here, and I also said, and then I'll let you go. I said, "When I like to exercise, I want to be able to outrun... or what did I say? I said I want to either kill and eat everyone in the room or outrun them." I stole that from Galloway, from Scott Galloway.

Shaan Puri

I was like, "Don't you feel that way?" and I was like, "Hell no! I don't feel that way. What are you talking about? It's a ridiculous thought." You took your most ridiculous thought and then said, "Don't you feel that way sometimes?" No, I've never once in my life looked around a room of men and thought, "I could eat and kill all these people or outrun them." Not once. But when you said it, it stuck in my head. It was provocative. I wanted to make fun of you, but I was also like, "You know, there is a nugget of truth in this madness." And that is where a real brand is built. So that was my little branding revelation to myself when I was doing this exercise around what we should do with this total man domain. I was like, "Honestly, it's real simple. It's about being a man." What does that mean? We don't need to explain it. It's somebody who handles their business. You can come up with all the examples you want. It's not a checklist. That's not the total man attitude. It's having some predefined criteria or checklist. No, in all situations, be a man about it. And that's when I was like, "That's it."

Sam Parr

take care of take care of business

Shaan Puri

That's the brand, baby. Be a man about it, no matter what the situation. Be a man about it. I was like, that's the total man philosophy. You could apply that to whatever situation you're going through in life.

Sam Parr

But what are you going to do with it? So, is this going to be... I know Jesse Itzler, who we're going to have on soon. I've been emailing with him. He's got this really cool thing where it's like you run up this mountain a bunch of times, and that's like climbing Everest. That's kind of cool. I mean, an event is the obvious one, but you can go a bunch of ways.

Shaan Puri

Here's the idea, fresh off the dome. You just said, "What do you want to do with it?" You asked a great question. My brain came up with an answer. It's inspired by **75 Hard**, which is also...

Sam Parr

a very total man exactly

Shaan Puri

And it's great. Total men don't always join movements; sometimes we create them. So, we're going to create our own version of this, and it's going to be the **Man Month**. What is the Man Month? It's basically 30 days where you commit to working towards being the total man in a few ways. For 30 days, we're doing cold showers and 50 push-ups right when we wake up, or 100 push-ups right when we wake up. First thing. It doesn't matter if you're late. Alright, you're 10 minutes late? Go right ahead. Uh-oh, you can't do 100 push-ups? I'm waiting. Keep going! We'll stay here until you're done.

Sam Parr

so alright so push ups and cold

Shaan Puri

Push-ups and cold exposure, I think, are two. We just need a third. It's going to be, "You do these three things, you're just going to do them for 30 days straight, and we're just going to harden you up." It's going to harden you up a little bit. So, what's the third? What's the third in this thing?

Sam Parr

Well, is this too soft? You gotta tell the woman in your life how you feel, or the man in your life. You gotta tell them. You gotta be kind.

Shaan Puri

You gotta tell someone how you feel. It could be kind, or it could be, "Oh, you've been avoiding confrontation." It's time to say it.

Sam Parr

you gotta have a tough conversation have to have a tough conversation

Shaan Puri

Oh, you really appreciate somebody? You better show it, right? So, you're going to send a message, voice memo, or text message to your mom, your coworker, or whoever. We could do that every day.

Sam Parr

gotta have a tough combo

Shaan Puri

Gonna do that every day for 30 days: a tough conversation, a tough shower, and a tough morning. That's how we're doing it.

Sam Parr

alright well you gotta call it total right a total conversation

Shaan Puri

a total yeah a total one and so

Sam Parr

I think it's good I I my my feedback you need to add 2 more things

Shaan Puri

my my only 5

Sam Parr

or 6 things

Shaan Puri

critique of my own thing here it's a little too easy I think it needs to be a little bit harder potentially

Sam Parr

It's got to be so hard that you're like, "Ugh, I can't believe I'm doing the 75 Hard thing." It's pretty hard.

Shaan Puri

and people have to look at you and be like are you nuts

Sam Parr

Yeah, the cold thing... you're onto something with the cold thing. That is quite challenging. But you gotta have a few more hard things. Fifty push-ups? If you're fit, I could do 50 push-ups in one sitting. Yeah, that's actually a...

Shaan Puri

A lot more than the original thing I was thinking about because I was like, "What would it mean to...?" A lot of this also inspired when Zuck did the Murph thing. I was like, "Whoa, Zuck's kind of been a man right now. What's going on? This is pretty cool. Could I do that?" I don't think I could do this. I can't do 100 pull-ups; this is something I can't do. Alright, so I started working towards it. The next morning, I woke up and I did my little quarter Murph. I ran the... oh, he runs a mile hard. I'm going to run the quarter mile. I'm going to do a quarter of the push-ups, a quarter of the pull-ups, and a quarter of the squats.

Sam Parr

hard right of the run again and I'll

Shaan Puri

Do it again until that's easy. When that's easy, I'm going to make it harder. I'm just going to keep inching it forward until I can do the full thing. I was like, "Yeah, that's the way to go." It's progress, right? It's about progress. So, I think you're right. I think we kind of need to workshop the actual difficulty level because, to hit the brand right, it's got to be something that other people think you're crazy for doing.

Sam Parr

yeah I I think that's great

Shaan Puri

it can't be reasonable

Sam Parr

You could also be a little self-serving and make it like a post on social media so you get that little hashtag going around.

Shaan Puri

by the way you

Sam Parr

know you gotta share the results

Shaan Puri

We're not charging money. This isn't a program you buy; it's just a movement. You're either in or you're out. That's it. If you're in, you gotta do it. If you're out, pay out.

Sam Parr

When... so, I've known you for close to 10 years now. Did you ever think that 10 years ago you'd be about this life?

Shaan Puri

never never

Sam Parr

it feels good though right

Shaan Puri

it feels good to me man yes

Sam Parr

It feels good. It feels good! Look, I think it feels good. I agree; I think it feels great. I remember when I moved to San Francisco. People would make me feel really nervous. I was like, "People are going to call me a redneck because I moved from Tennessee." I remember when I first got to San Francisco. When you moved there, you'd have to interview for an apartment because they had so many applications. I remember going to one of these interviews, and people were like, "This was in 2012, right? I guess right after Obama was elected." They asked me who I voted for in order to get this apartment. I was like, "I gotta hide." I think we voted for Obama, but I had to hide a bunch of stuff about myself. Not anymore! Things have changed, my friend. This stuff is actually a lot more popular. If you go to San Francisco, things are a lot different. Muscles are not quite in, but they're more in than before.

Shaan Puri

and fitness is more in than before and hard conversations are more in before so I think it's

Sam Parr

It's good that you're trying to capitalize on this. We're not chasing trends here; this is timeless. People have been trying to be...

Shaan Puri

People have been trying to be hard for their whole lives, you know, since the beginning of time. In fact, the only thing that turns me off is if this is a trend.

Sam Parr

Alright, total man. You're sounding harder already. Do you have to wrap up now? I see you're looking at your phone, by the way.

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna do my elizabeth holmes and start talking with a deeper voice on purpose

Sam Parr

dude people make fun of me on our youtube they say I've got a high voice

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

and the so so now I'm like thinking in my head I gotta talk lower too

Shaan Puri

Dude, I think that's why Mike Tyson became Mike Tyson. I think he had to overcompensate for his voice and just turn into an absolute savage.

Sam Parr

oh so you're agreeing I have a high pitched voice

Shaan Puri

oh it's not low

Sam Parr

Oh my god, that's ridiculous. That is ridiculous. That is ridiculous. Alright, that's the pot.