Everything I Learned From 48 Hours With MrBeast (The +$1B Mindset) (#539)

Shaan Puri

Amongst this group of very successful people, it was clear that Jimmy is an outlier. He's an outlier because of his mindset, his ambition, his level of obsession, his work ethic, and his absolute disregard for social norms. So, let me just tell you some things that stood out. "What's up, Sam? I'm back! I'm back from camp MFM. You know, is it even called camp MFM if only one of us went? I don't know, we have to debate that. But I'm back! I have so much good stuff to share. This is a crazy event, honestly. It's kind of a batshit crazy event. I'll give it batshit crazy. It is so interesting what happened here. I have so many notes I'm going to share with you, but first, I saw something completely unrelated that I gotta tell you about."

Sam Parr

So, by the way, before we even get to all of that, we have to explain that you hosted this big event. Now you're going to tell me some amazing thing that you just saw. We do all of this for free, and all we are asking for our dear viewer here is, if you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button for us. That's all we ask for. People say that all the time, but you want to know what, Sean? What I want to make sure that our listeners and viewers know is that it takes them literally a second, but it means so much to us and actually changes our lives if everyone does it. So hopefully, people will see the dedication that we have in this content and pay us back by just giving us a subscribe. That's all I want to say.

Shaan Puri

Life just changed. A life today with one simple tap. Alright, so before I tell you all about Campo FM, I gotta tell you about this amazing "evil genius" affiliate marketing play that I saw somebody share on Twitter. I don't know if you saw this, but it involves 23andMe. So, okay, basically this guy points this out. He goes, "Check this out! This is the most evil genius thing I've ever seen." He points out this tweet that a user, her name is Stella, posted. She says, "Hey, my friend Elizabeth is looking for an unvaxxed sperm donor. Sam, you're halfway there!" She said, "I'm looking for somebody who's blue-eyed and white..."

Sam Parr

Which half? Like, I'm vaccinated, but I now need you to convince me to get my sperm or I'm on back.

Shaan Puri

You're half eligible. Alright, so blue-eyed, white, 5'11" or taller... blah blah blah. So it has this set of requirements.

Sam Parr

big o

Shaan Puri

But yeah, big O. But then there are some things in here that are a little bit interesting; they make you raise one eyebrow. So the first one, she says, "follows a healthy, meat-focused diet." Specific, but okay. Second, "no Jewish or African ancestry." Slightly racist, but okay. Then it says, "must be natural insemination." She will not do IVF. DM me. Okay, so she doesn't want to do the normal sperm donation process; she wants natural insemination when she's...

Sam Parr

Been vaccinated, 510, white guy who's unvaxxed. So basically, anyone who lives in Missouri, she wants to have sex with. Yeah, got it. So, okay.

Shaan Puri

You see that first thing? Then she tweets again, saying, "Hey, that last tweet got so much attention. I just want to add some detail." So she retweets it again, reiterating the criteria, but then she adds some photos of the girl too. She says, "As you can see, she is beautiful, pure-blooded European." Okay, code word: intelligent. She has a childbearing body, which I've always dreamed of having myself, and your offspring will be extremely well. They post a bunch of pictures of her, and it's like this kind of hot model-looking girl. So this guy points out, he's like, "This tweet got like almost 3,000,000 views." And if you DM the person, then they send you a link and they're like, "Hey, cool! You're interested? Awesome! You know she would love to naturally conceive with you, random 5-foot-11 white guy who's unvaxxed. You just gotta make sure you satisfy all the criteria. Take this 23andMe and submit your results, and then that'll say that you're eligible." But it's like an affiliate code for 23andMe. It's not this girl's... so probably, there's... I say this girl, there's probably no girl. What it actually is, is this fat guy in his basement tricking tons of guys who are like, "Maybe I'll impregnate this hot European model. I just gotta take this 23andMe." And basically, even if you get paid, the normal 23andMe referral bonus is $20 per person who does it. So if you just do the math on this funnel: 3,000,000 people see this tweet. Let's say that one-tenth of one percent are gonna actually go do this. That's 3,000 people that went and did this at minimum. That's $60,000 in revenue off this tweet of affiliate revenue. Isn't this crazy?

Sam Parr

That next week, 23andMe is sitting down. They're in their marketing meeting and they're like, "Alright, we have to look at the data and see who our target demographic is." Wow! Apparently, this marketing company just told us they did some research. Our new users love jorts. Should we have a bunch of white guys named Todd who wear jean shorts in our commercials? Is that our new target demographic? They're just like everything skewed now, where they're just focusing on this one type of person.

Shaan Puri

Totally, totally. They're like, "Oh, I guess Twitter's our best channel," and Stella appears to be our best retailer. Who's Stella?

Sam Parr

should we be advertising on twitch

Shaan Puri

Is this evil or is it evil genius? Because it's a fine line between evil and evil genius. I think it's evil genius. So let's go on to the next part: Camp MFM. Alright, so let's start with the following: Was it good? Was it great? Was it life-changing? I'm gonna go with life-changing. That's how it was.

Sam Parr

Everyone I spoke with who went said it ranged between the worst being "great" and the highest being "life-changing." So you had a good high end, yes?

Shaan Puri

So, let me just explain what we did. We basically took 20 people to Greenville, North Carolina, which is in the middle of nowhere. We stayed at Mr. Beast's house there. Last year, we did this thing once and realized, "Oh, this is really cool!" If we bring a bunch of interesting people that we know in the business world, along with a few entertainers and some people that Mr. Beast knows in his world, this can become a very interesting event. We did it again this year with 20 people. I have some highlights and some lowlights, but where do you want to start? How should I do this? I can't find this client info.

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Sam Parr

What I actually wanted to ask you about was the evolution of Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast. My perception of him last year... So, I went and hung out. I went to Loewen last year; I couldn't go this year. But last year, how old was he? Was he 24 last year when he went?

Shaan Puri

5 now

Sam Parr

Okay, so he's super young. Here's my perception of him: when I met him last year, he clearly had this factor. I hadn't met anyone like him. When we talk about someone like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk—these conquerors—he had that "it" factor. It was very clear that this guy was crazy focused and he was insane in mostly all the right ways. However, he still had some aspects of a normal 24-year-old. He felt a little impatient about certain things. He had great conversations, but then there were other times where it was like, "Oh, you're just a normal 24-year-old," where maybe he said something rude or something like that. This year, I heard from someone who knew him from the year before. They said, "Dude, Jimmy has evolved so much." He's still only 25, which is insane, but he is now morphing into this proper visionary. I believe that he's going to take over the world. Was that true?

Shaan Puri

A lot of that is true, or you could definitely see the evolution, which is kind of crazy. So, for people who don't know, Jimmy is basically one of the most famous people on planet Earth. It's kind of bizarre when you look at the numbers. He is the biggest creator on the biggest app in the world. He's the number one most followed creator on YouTube. He's almost the number one channel on YouTube; there's only one channel that's bigger, which is this Indian music channel. He's the fastest growing, he's the biggest. He's the biggest on YouTube and the biggest on TikTok. So, the two biggest entertainment apps in the world, YouTube and TikTok, he's basically the number one creator on both.

Sam Parr

Where did the stats come from, like "1 out of 5"? What was it? Was it maybe like "1 out of 10 people on Earth see his videos once a month" or something? Like, some stupid stat like that?

Shaan Puri

Dude, you can look at this a hundred ways and it's insane. It's like more people watch his content than watch the Super Bowl every month. It's like, okay, well, what are we doing here? What does this even mean?

Sam Parr

I think like his average video gets 80,000,000 views you need to use

Shaan Puri

It's hard to even fathom that. Then you go outside with them, and you know, wherever you are, it's like a Michael Jackson level of fame, right?

Sam Parr

was it really I mean we didn't go anywhere last year but you guys like well

Shaan Puri

I don't know anywhere this year, but you could still see it. It still happens. So, it's kind of insane. That's the first thing—it's just hard to even wrap your head around that level of fame and success at this age. He's running a $1,000,000,000 company. His company is worth well over $1,000,000,000, which is the combination of his channel.

Sam Parr

is he the running it

Shaan Puri

yeah it's him it's his so the whole ship is him right like but does

Sam Parr

he have a ceo or is he also the ceo

Shaan Puri

He has a CEO, but the CEO reports to him. He's the owner. Wow! So, right, the owner is number one. Okay, so let's start with what changed from last year. The guy lost £30. After last year's camp, he watched the video of himself playing basketball and thought, "Oh my God, I'm so slow and out of shape. F this!" You could see that he is the type of person who can become the number one creator on YouTube by obsessing and focusing for 10 years. Guess what? That guy can transform his body in a year or two. So, he's on an extreme bodybuilder workout program. He's got his bodybuilder meals and a trainer who follows him around. They built a gym right outside of his studio that we went and hung out in. This is where he works out. He's big, and he said, "I only have three goals this year: grow the channel, get big, and sell chocolate." Those are the three things he's focusing on. Another interesting thing is that last year, when we talked to him—I don't know if you went to his studio last year, but we did—he had like ten things he was doing. It was like, "Oh, I want to do this mobile gaming thing, and then I'm doing this over here, and I'm doing this and this." Because why not? He could do any of those things, right? Like you and I find it hard to say no to opportunities. I texted Ben a...

Sam Parr

100 times more

Shaan Puri

Ben was so... every night, me and Ben—Ben Levy, my business partner—he helped organize the whole event. But during the event, we were basically not talking because we were just working different parts of the room. You know, me and Ben talk 24/7 anyway, so we don't need to talk at this event. At the end of the night, he would text me like, "Yo, alright, brain dump." We would just text random words. We don't need to explain them to each other. It's like, "We'll talk about this later. Here are some takeaways, insights, learnings, and ways that we could help somebody in this room," like whatever. One of the things I texted him was, "It's embarrassing, man. Jimmy has literally at least 1,000 times more opportunities than us." This podcast creates a lot of opportunities, and you know where we are in the tech world to create some opportunities, but he literally has at least 1,000 times more opportunities. He does less; he says yes to less stuff than we do. We have like four things going on, and he's doing two. That's insane! That just shows how poorly we are staying focused and committed to what actually matters, and being smart about saying yes and no to things. I said, "If this guy could say no to literally 1,000 or maybe 10,000 better opportunities than what we're saying no to, that's something to learn from." So, what changed? He lost a bunch of weight. His channel has basically doubled in the last year since we've talked to him. He's added, like, I don't know, 100 million more subscribers. His chocolate business has taken off. I really underestimated this chocolate business, Feastables, when I had a chance to invest in it during the earlier rounds. I was like, "Chocolate company? I don't know, why chocolate?" I get it; your audience is young, but chocolate's kind of low-priced. I mean, how often do people rebuy this thing? Shouldn't he be building, like, a mobile game or something like that? That's kind of what I was thinking.

Sam Parr

And last year, when we were with him, I think the results were like, "It's okay" or "It might be okay." It was kind of year number 3.

Shaan Puri

He was like, "Oh, I got Beast Burger." It's a burger chain, a virtual restaurant that's doing, I think it was doing like $100,000,000 gross or something at the time. They just said shut that down, and then, or he like doesn't work on that anymore. They had a couple of things in the pipeline. They had this translation service thing for YouTubers, whatever. They had all this stuff. Chocolate was like number 3 maybe last year, and now it's like every day I wake up and think, "How do I sell more chocolate?" Right? It's like that level of hyper obsession. And you know, they're going to do hundreds of millions in chocolate sales this year with a clear path to how this could become... like he's basically saying there are 5 chocolate companies that matter. They're valued in the billions, up to $30,000,000,000. We are eating share like crazy. You know, these guys can't touch us when it comes to marketing. So, we are just blowing through the retail doors, basically. It's like, "Yeah, get into Walmart." Walmart is the main thing, and guess what? I can drive more people to Walmart than these guys can. So, he has just really blown that business up, which is pretty impressive. You know, now it's pretty obvious that that's going to be a $1,000,000,000+ business. I would bet that he's going to sell that chocolate brand for $6,000,000,000. That's my guess. I think that's what's going to happen. If we fast forward the news 3 years from now, you know, Mr. B sells the majority stake in the chocolate business for a $6,000,000,000 valuation.

Sam Parr

That's insane! And what about his mindset? So, you said he focused more... what else changed?

Shaan Puri

well so joe rogan has this thing he says about david goggins where he goes he's uncommon amongst uncommon men so this room was really interesting because I don't know the average network or you know even take out joe who's like you know worth like 7 to $10,000,000,000 or something you know when we were doing the intros I was like you know between me and joe we're worth almost $10,000,000,000 it's just all joe the so so basically even if you take him out of it you know this is a room of very very successful people average is probably like I don't know $100,000,000 net worth or something like that amongst this group of very successful people it was very clear that jimmy is an outlier he's an outlier because of his mindset because of his ambition because of his level of of obsession because of his work ethic because of his absolute disregard for social norms so let me just tell you some things that stood out so basically he's he was very humble he was like you know he's like I he's like I've made every mistake you can make trying to run this business he's like I've hired and fired like 6 ceos I thought we hired the disney guy surely he'll know thanks no he doesn't know shit about youtube this is not gonna work we hired this person over here and then they build the whole thing out and I realized oh my god they built this round we gotta get rid of all that he's like so I've made all these mistakes he's like so I wanna learn from you guys because I'm I'm only 25 I've only been doing this for a couple of years now you guys might have been doing this for 20 more years than me right like there's people in the room who are 50 years old right so it's like it's a different different like level of experience he's like he's like I'm just making things up I'm sitting here in north carolina just making things up I don't even have access to people like you on most days to even ask questions so he'd be like so I'll tell you some examples so he's like we were like so what worked for you how have you scaled this thing up he goes oh I just create clones and we're like what he's like yeah I just wanted to clone myself because I was like god I know I could do this but I don't have the time so I need to clone somebody he's like really what do you mean what do you do he's like so I literally have somebody essentially move in with me and I just duct tape them duct tape them to my hip he's like you're gonna follow me everywhere to everything and for this 1st 6 months all you're gonna do is just shadow me and just learn exactly how I think and what I want and what I do and why I do it and then in 6 months you start getting your you start doing those things and he's like I basically now cloned myself several times and now I have and then they clone themselves he's like that's what we do and we're like so you literally have the guy live with you he's like yeah what that it would be better than if he didn't right and we're like yeah I was like what about his like family and stuff he's like yeah I mean I just do you you wanna do this or not and so like like one of the guys one of the guys who's like his right hand man now last year when we went he was a guy just like you know he does these channels like live in this circle for a 100 days and you get like half a $1,000,000 this was the guy living in the circle he was just like a random contestant but he had a background in video production and he had some experience and so they actually recruited him after that experiment to work with him and now he's like his right hand man that does everything with him he was with him 247 I was like dude you got like kids this is like a saturday are you supposed to be working he's like yeah I work every day I work all day every day and he's like I made a deal with my family I was like look I'm coming out here it's a once in a lifetime experience you're not gonna see me for like the next 9 months hopefully after 9 months I will have like set up a system where I'll be back you know home a little bit more but like this is an this is an adventure and I wanna go on it this is like the pinnacle of my career it's a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with this guy on this type of stuff so I'm gonna go all in and this all in mentality was just so pervasive I'll give you another simple example the guy who's currently his assistant we were like how'd you get the job as assistant and he's like oh we're like did you interview for this how did he like pick you is he not in an interview he's like they really wanted to play this board game but you know amazon prime was gonna take 2 days and so one of his guys hit me up because he knew I had the game and he's like fly here right now and we want this game now we wanna play now we don't wanna wait 2 days for amazon prime we want to play this game tonight he's excited I just got on a flight and I came and I handed them the board game and they were like cool if you're willing to do that you can like you can make it here do you want do you want a job you're extreme enough and he's like he's described so I was asking this guy I was like how do you filter for this because they were they were trying to pick up like how do we keep this culture as we scale of people who are just all in and he's like he's like now when I interview people we do like these psychographic like tests to get figure out your personality profile but he's like then I'm gonna talk to you he's like I'm gonna spend an hour convincing you how hard this is gonna be and how much you're gonna have to sacrifice to be here and I can just see in that do they flinch do they start asking me about vacation policies or do they get excited about like kind of like going on this mission like this mission to mars and our their their version of the mission to mars I thought that was fascinating that he's basically breeding this insane work culture the team has leveled up so much the quality of people he has around him from last year to this year has leveled up so much and he just breaks all the social norms like just being like yeah he's like one guy he's like I talked to his main like one of his like main content guys he's like editor thumbnail guy like this guy's job title is like master of thumbnails basically he just does thumbnails and I was like how did this work he's like well I had my own channel that was doing well how do you convince you to do this he's like well his channel was taken off he's like we were always talking about like strategies and ideas every day in like our little mastermind and we would just sit in discord all day and talk about what like what's working what's not studying the platform and he's like I just knew this guy's like hyper obsessed he's gonna make it and he offered me the he's like first I started helping him and he wasn't paying me or whatever I was just helping him out whenever I could he's like then he told me like hey I need you know I need a thumbnail for this like tonight he's like oh dude sorry I'm at a wedding and like by the way I don't work for you so you know it's not gonna work he's like so he wired me $10 and he's like he's like can you make this thumbnail please he's like so I told my girlfriend he's like I left the wedding and I made the thumbnail and I've never looked back since and since my role has grown and you know it's he's made it all worth my while to be here to shut down my own channel to go all in and I just thought it was fascinating the level of like like disregard for like convention partly because he doesn't know it and partly because he's like well we need this so what's the best way like can't we just theoretically couldn't we just find a guy with the game and tell him to book a flight and he'll be here in a few hours cool we're not limited by amazon shipping like 99 people out of a 100 would not try to bypass amazon's fastest shipping as like the way to get something

Sam Parr

I remember years ago, over 10 years ago, my wife worked at Facebook. She was telling her father about working there, and I think she started when there were 6,000 or 9,000 people. I forget the exact number. My father-in-law was like, "Why do you need 9,000 people to run a website? What do all those people do?" Someone had mentioned that Jimmy, or Mr. Beast, has hundreds of employees working for him. At first, I was like, "How do you need hundreds of employees?" Then I had to rethink it. I realized he's actually running a movie studio. Instead of theaters, it's on your phone or on your TV. I thought, "This guy has just built the new Paramount or whatever the studios are, like Warner Brothers." It's crazy and fascinating because I did this a little bit with newsletters, but not with nearly that intensity. It was like, "Let's take a small thing, or something people think is small, and try to blow it up." At the time, it was email. People thought it was just something to disregard. I was like, "No, we can get like 5 million subscribers and turn it into a business." Of course, it was only a fraction of what he did, but that's basically what he has done with YouTube, but with much better results. He thought, "What's this one small thing that people are dismissing?" and he built a whole studio around it. It's pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri

And the other thing, you know, if you talk to him, he's like, "It's impossible to do what I'm doing better than me." He's like, "Because I'm gonna spend, you know, 10 times more than anyone. I use every waking hour of my day to think about this. I hire all the best people in the world. I reinvest all of my profits back into this, and I'm gonna do this at exact... and I think in decades, not years. So how could you beat that?" If you just abstract this away, like forget about the fact that he's doing that for YouTube channels, there's something to be inspired by and learn from that, right? If you are willing to work and think in decades, not years, work every hour, and every thought in your brain is consumed by, "How do I do this better?" You reinvest all your money and say, "I will spend as much as I can to make the best product possible to get this into as many people's hands as possible." Like, can you lose? What is there to fear? How could you possibly lose with that equation? I think that that is just a very fascinating mindset to see in practice. A lot of people could say that stuff; very few people can actually do it.

Sam Parr

And I know that he says he invests everything. We had Reed on the pod, and he kind of insinuated that sometimes what they do is a mess. They move so fast that we just miss some stuff, but that's okay. Do you think that Jimmy is cash poor then? Is he just like everything is tied up into his business?

Shaan Puri

I don't know; I don't want to speculate too much on that. But I think, you know, the reality is he raised venture capital. He is a venture-backed startup. He is doing what, you know, Airbnb did or what Facebook did, which is: "I'm going to lose a ton of money now every year building up all of this market share so that then I can make back, you know, I could become a $10 billion or $100 billion company." That's literally what he's doing. He raised over $50 million and invested all of that into content to build this enormous following of being the most followed creator on TikTok and YouTube, with hundreds of millions of fans. Then he used that to launch a chocolate business that's going to be worth over $1 billion. His back catalog is worth a lot of money, and his sponsorships and ad revenue will generate a lot of income. Any other business he launches will also make a lot of money. So, he just did... he is a movie production studio in terms of his operations, but he's more like a venture-backed startup than he is like a creator.

Sam Parr

Can you talk? When I hear about the way that he lives, I’m definitely inspired. But I’m only inspired because I’m not going to change the way I do things so much like him. That’s just not my personality, and I don’t think that’s what I enjoy. I prefer to be more well-balanced, which means I’m going to be less successful, and I’m okay with that. But there were other guys there. So, Joe Gebbia... I don’t know what his intensity level is like. I’ve only spent three minutes with him and I’ve read about him; that’s about it. Then you also had Sayed. Sayed is 32 and has businesses. He was on our podcast. He’s got businesses that no one will talk about because they’re not really that popular, but I imagine he’s in the realm of being a billionaire. Then you had Joe Gebbia, who is a multibillionaire, and his company is one of the biggest and best in the world. How did you learn different perspectives on how to crush it based on being around those three examples: Jimmy, Sayed, and Joe?

Shaan Puri

yeah 100% I'll give you a couple of quick observations so one observation is by the way there was probably like 2 or 3 more people that were like you know billionaires at this event so you get to see like a range of like oh how do people act how do people think how do people operate and it's like yes saeed's like small team simple business unsexy not gonna be famous don't wanna be famous don't want people knowing my name I wanna be able to walk around he travels the world with his son you know for 2 weeks out of every month that's what he wants in his lifestyle you talk to mister beast about kids and he's like it's a shame people have kids man they go soft right he's just like he's just like he's like damn he he literally like I don't I won't put words in his mouth but the the general feeling is like it sucks that people start off really ambitious trying to do big cool awesome shit and then like just get tired or they they either get tired or worn out or disillusioned or they just shift their focus to family and like he's just like that's not gonna be me and so you have totally different perspectives on these things and you know no judgment there's many ways to win each person should choose the game they wanna play but I will share a couple of observations number 1 this is probably just a good observation for me in general in life the smartest and most successful people in that room were the quietest they were the ones doing the most listening the least bragging the least kind of like you know you know word vomit of storytelling or trying to interject themselves oh you did that I did something similar too let me tell you about me me me me and it was the people who were the least successful and the least you know sharp in terms of like had the most wisdom or or intelligence on on a topic that were talking the most and I'm guilty of that I'm in the talk the most camp so I was like damn that's a real like takeaway for me from this was watch how those people operate you wanna be them you have to watch how they operate and you know they definitely do that the the sort of the ratio of 2 year 2 ears for every one mouth right like double the amount of listening as talking if not more and that was just so obvious to me at this event they had the and it was also the people who were the actually the most successful had the least kind of like I would say the whole group was pretty good about like not trying to brag or one upsmanship you know or try to like assert themselves but the people who were the most successful had that had that had that in in the least quantity which I thought was very very interesting the second thing I thought that was that was interesting was just back into inter there was like always these the people who were very very successful in one area more often than not if I ask them about some random side quest hobby they were also like world class at that thing like we were talking about you know joe was super successful airbnb he's also like you know extremely fit not unless like kind of fit he's extremely fit jimmy or mister beast you know the day after our event he's like oh I'm what are you doing tomorrow he's like oh I flew I'm flying in all of he's like I play this one board game that's super niche called dune he's like and I there's no tournament for dune so I created it and I'm flying in the the french champion the british champion the german champion like the best players in the world to come compete with me at this game he's like I did this last year and I won he's like I play you know these guys play 10000 hours a year or whatever a 100000 hours a year or something crazy like I don't have that time but I like you know when I do play I binge this thing you know that's my way of unwinding is to become world class at this random niche strategy board game and like we've heard these stories about how you know peter thiel is also a grand master chess champion

Sam Parr

or travis kalanick was ranked number 3 in wii tennis

Shaan Puri

Wii Tennis globally, right? And it's like, yeah, yeah. Jimmy literally won the competition against the other best champions in the world at this board game. They were so bad, they're like, "We gotta run this back." He's like, "Great, let's run it back. Let's do it again this year." He put up a $20 prize, but there's like no prize pool for this thing because it's such a niche game. I thought that's also kind of interesting. Once you develop this laser beam that can come out of your eyes and you hone that laser beam on your main thing, if you ever shift your focus to something else, you're like Homelander. You can just burn a laser through whatever that next thing is because you have practiced the art of obsession, focus, excellence, breaking something down into its core parts, and building it back up again. That was the other thing where I was like, "Dude, how do you describe yourself? Are you an entertainer? Are you like a chocolate guy now? Are you a businessman because you're in a room with business people? How do you... are you a YouTuber? What do you call yourself?" You know what he said? You gotta take a guess at what he said.

Sam Parr

I don't know a business builder

Shaan Puri

He's like, "I'm a data junkie." No way! He's like, "Yeah, I basically just studied the algorithm. I studied the platform and I figured out what's going to work. I decided I'm going to study this more than anyone studies anything." And he's like, "Then I've basically figured out what type of content is going to work. Through my experimentation, I figured out what's going to work." Like when we put up a thumbnail for our YouTube channel, we put up one thumbnail and then sometimes we're like, "You know what? I don't know if that's a good one." And then we're like, "Screw it, we'll A/B test."

Sam Parr

our youtube team is gonna hear this and gonna be freaking out I think they put up a lot more than that

Shaan Puri

No, no, they don't. They're a B test. There's A and B, that's it. You know what he does? He'll put up, like, they will test hundreds of thumbnails in rapid succession during the first release of a video. They will cycle through hundreds of thumbnails programmatically to try to find the winning one during that time. Then they're also like, "Well, our loyal fans, our hardcore viewers, come first. They're going to want to see Jimmy's face." But after that, after, you know, basically the 24-hour mark, it's going to be more fans that are from the platform—just people browsing YouTube. They don't know Jimmy; they don't want to see his face. So let's just put this, you know, this bathtub full of snakes or whatever the challenge is. Let's make that the thumbnail.

Sam Parr

Jack told me about that, and I asked, "Jack, is he doing that because he's so big, or is he so big because he did that?" He said the second one.

Shaan Puri

he's so big because he did that

Sam Parr

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, he's successful because of that. He doesn't do that now because he's successful.

Shaan Puri

Another random nerdy takeaway I had... and actually, I'll just leave it as this last one. So, the random nerdy takeaway is that he is attacking the biggest TAM on YouTube. TAM is this idea of Total Addressable Market. I could think of a viral idea, maybe something that's kind of juicy, but his ideas are like, you know, an 8-year-old in the Philippines, a 25-year-old in the United States, or a 40-year-old woman in the UK would all be interested in his video. Why? Because his video is something you don't even need words to explain. You could literally just use the thumbnail or like a hieroglyphic to explain it. For example, "Man trapped in room for 100 days." Alright, I'm interested. What is that? Or, "First to leave the circle loses." It's like, okay, I get it. And then there's "$1,000,000 for the first to leave the circle loses." Or he'll do a video that's like, "$1,000,000 if this FBI agent can catch me." These are very simple premises that appeal to a really broad audience. That was something I hadn't really appreciated before. I thought he was making kind of like viral clickbait-type stuff. What I didn't factor in was that he will only pick ideas that can literally appeal to like 1,000,000,000 people. That's just different from what most people do on the platform. Most people, like our channel for example, the stuff we talk about is not meant to do that. It's meant to appeal to a narrow niche of people in a deep way. He plays a different game: appealing to the entire world in a small way.

Sam Parr

What did you think of hanging out with guys like Jack Smith and Val? So, that was the first. I had Val on the pod one day when you weren't here. Val's a guy who has like four different companies, with two or three of them in the $100,000,000 a year range. What did you think of hanging out with a guy like Val? He's cool, right?

Shaan Puri

Everybody had interesting things to share. Can I tell you the lowlights? Because I don't want to just say all the good things. Can I tell you the bad things? Yeah, for the big... the worst thing was not getting to invite everyone. We only invited 20 people this year. We invited fewer people than last year because last year was kind of a lot to manage. We had almost 30 people last year. This year, we targeted 15, so we tried to cut it in half. It ended up being 20 in the end. But that was the worst part because, you know, it's really, really hard to say no to people or not invite people who you're friends with. You just didn't want... you know, you're trying to create an event where there are new people there. And so therefore...

Sam Parr

you just

Shaan Puri

I can't do it. That was... that was shitty. Also, another thing: I hate hosting these things. I know it's good; I mean, there's so much value in hosting this. People feel so rich.

Sam Parr

lot of work

Shaan Puri

It's a lot of work, and honestly, I'm okay with work. It's just socially, I feel drained. You know how sometimes you say this about the podcast, like, "Dude, I feel drained after these"? I'm like, "Dude, I could go all day." At the end of the night, after every one of these, I'm like, "I am so over-socialed out." I am... I'm an introvert, actually. It turns out.

Sam Parr

you're performing as well

Shaan Puri

And I want everybody to have a good time. It's like, "Dude, you can't control if people are having a good time." Yeah, you're working basically. So, socially, I felt so exhausted. "Socially exhausted" is the right word. The last one, or a couple of other ones, basketball was kind of mediocre. It was pretty sloppy because the overlap of people who are super successful and interesting that also are good pickup basketball players is surprisingly low. Also, people lie. We're like, "Yo, do you play?" They're like, "Yeah, love to!" They show up, and I'm like, "You? You don't play. You want to play?"

Sam Parr

with the next year do fighting do fight camp

Shaan Puri

that so we agreed to do a fight camp

Sam Parr

I talked to Michael Bisping before. Michael Bisping, the UFC guy and YouTuber, would be interesting because if he would, everyone would want to be Jimmy or Joe. Having Michael Bisping would be cool, I bet. I mean, you know, some UFC guys have listened to us and DM'd us. That would be fun.

Shaan Puri

I want to... this is what I want to do. I want to take any of the hobbies and then mix, basically integrate them. Rather than having a work-life balance where there are things I like to do and then there's work, and they are separate, always trading off time against each other—no, no, no! I want to integrate them. So, take something I love to do, which would be like boxing or sparring in some way, or basketball, and integrate it with a networking event, basically.

Sam Parr

Is what we do here. You lost. Last year was crazy because this is when I saw that Jimmy was insane. We were all just hanging out on this basketball court, and he didn't even make an ordeal of it. He was just like, "Hey Sean, if you can make this half-court shot, I'll give you $10,000." He didn't even say, "If you don't make it, I get this," or "You only have three shots to make it." There was no stipulation. I was like, "What the fuck, Jimmy? Why would you make this bet?" He was just insane, and he did it. You did it in like number five or three or something, and he gave me $10. I heard this year you lost $10 doing the same thing that someone does.

Shaan Puri

Another lowlight: I lost the half-court shot this year. I lost $10 to Joe. It's one thing to lose $10,000; it's another thing to lose $10,000 to a multibillionaire. I was like, "Oh damn, this has a little extra kick to it." So yeah, you paid for it.

Sam Parr

his all the time minutes 15 minutes fly time on his jet

Shaan Puri

Exactly, exactly. And actually, because we lost the game, we had to go and do the ice plunge in the freezing cold lake. That was also part of the penalty for losing the final championship game, so that kind of sucked. Yeah, so those are some of the lowlights.

Sam Parr

Someone mentioned to me... they didn't say that you guys discussed this, but I assumed because he kept bringing it up about Prime and Apparent. So, this is pretty mind-boggling. The Mr. Beast stuff is mind-boggling too. He has a chocolate company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars. I looked up Prime. So, Prime was started by Logan Paul and KSI. Publicly, they said that the business, in its second year, did $2,000,000,000 in revenue. I imagine that Prime must have come up in your conversations. Someone said that the two guys who founded it alongside Logan and KSI were like young kids. They implied that they were nobodies, like they had no business getting into this industry, and it has just crushed it. I guess my mind is blown by the fact that $1,000,000,000 in sales is worth, if you're Prime, a really high multiple because of how fast it's growing. That's worth $1,000,000,000. So, you basically have created $1,000,000,000 in value off of a creator. It's mind-boggling. Did you learn anything interesting about Prime?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so I think some of that's accurate and some of it's not. They did over $1,000,000,000, by $1,300,000,000 in what’s kind of like its first full year. You know, it launched in 2022, so the 2023 numbers are the first full calendar year of business. That’s bonkers, right? Obviously, that’s bonkers. What business does over $1,000,000,000 in revenue in its first year? That’s pretty crazy. They’re not kids; I think they’re in their twenties, but they’re not kids. They are also not completely inexperienced. Remember we talked about those status signals, the green flags of when you’re young? Like being a video game player, a hacker of popular things, or running your own Minecraft servers. Another one is sneaker flipping. So these guys were sneaker flippers. That’s how they kind of got their start in business—by selling sneakers. Then they created a couple of things, but they ended up creating something called Alani Nu. I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but it’s kind of this posh drink that started with an Instagram creator. She’s not anywhere near the level of like a Logan Paul or whatever, but they started this thing. They’ve done partnerships with Kim Kardashian and others. They made "Kim Aid," like the Kim Kardashian flavor thing, Alani Nu. They did this before Prime.

Sam Parr

like an energy drink and a pre workout supplement

Shaan Puri

yeah but it's like for women and it's like high end it's like the you know equinox or whatever

Sam Parr

got it

Shaan Puri

And it's Alani Nu that does over $100 billion of profit per year. So, that itself is almost a $1 billion revenue-generating entity. That is probably a multibillion-dollar company that they built before Prime. So, these guys have this hold code called Congo Brands. They don't want people to know about them. You go to LinkedIn, great picture, but you go to Congo Brands and there's not much story. If anybody asks who owns Prime, they say Logan Paul and KSI. In reality, these guys own 60% of that company. Logan and KSI own, you know, sort of like 30 to 40% of that company. So, that brand, Prime, is going to be, my guess, that it ends up being like a $20 billion brand. It's crazy.

Sam Parr

that's insane and

Shaan Puri

You know, that is gonna make Logan Paul a multibillionaire off of Prime. So, you know Celsius, that energy drink?

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

Celsius just sold 8% to Pepsi for $550,000,000. So, Celsius is valued at $6,000,000,000. Prime is bigger than Celsius; it's going to be bigger than Celsius, or it already is bigger than Celsius. What an insane story! That guy, Trey, you know, Mr. Beast, Jimmy, he was like, "I call him every day. That guy is so helpful to me with Feastables. I'm calling that guy all the time. He is so smart—so much smarter than everybody else in this space. It's insane!" He said, "I am just getting so much learning from that guy. That's why I like to meet people that I can learn from." He mentioned how much value he sees in that. He said, "If you took my channel away, I could rebuild right back to where I am in three years." He feels the same way about Trey with CPG. He's just trying to find who that person is for all the different fields. He said, "I want to meet them."

Sam Parr

yeah what's crazy is if you Google trey like his name like you barely get anything

Shaan Puri

There's no interviews. I... I try. I've tried hard to find, you know, some of him on YouTube or an interview with him. Nothing. That's insane.

Sam Parr

last question alright so you did this thing

Shaan Puri

you know what we call that lasagna

Sam Parr

I know it

Shaan Puri

tell them why tell them why we call this a lasagna sam

Sam Parr

what is it you move in silence it like

Shaan Puri

the move in silence like lasagna

Sam Parr

Alright, so you did this thing. At worst, it was fun; at best, it was life-changing. If it is life-changing, how are you going to change?

Shaan Puri

laser focus my friend in fact during the thing

Sam Parr

you should have just listened to me 4 years ago

Shaan Puri

Should have listened to you then. But the thing is, you don't really have the same level of inspiration and motivation that Mr. B says.

Sam Parr

True, and I'm not nearly as successful as them. If I had a few zeros behind my bank account or my Instagram account, maybe you would have listened. But it just sucks you couldn't have listened to them.

Shaan Puri

It's laser-focused on content, specifically because, you know, one realization is you gotta know who you are and what you're into. For me, I think I'm probably like a B+ entrepreneur, but I think I could be an A+ in the content game. I think it would be impossible for me to be an A+ as an entrepreneur. I don't think it's where I'm naturally talented, and I don't enjoy it enough to go as hard as you would want to in order to be at that top tier. But I do feel that way about making content, and so that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to try to build the largest content brand or audience around entrepreneurship—around people who are into the same stuff we're into, right? MFM has been awesome, and it's kind of shown that that can be true. But it's never been something I'm laser-focused on, and I also don't think podcasting is the right vehicle to do that. So, I'm going to do it off of podcasting because podcasting is not viral, which is what you want—to be able to spread your gospel to as many people as possible. The problem with podcasting is that it's like the bottom of the funnel. It's where people form a deep relationship; it's not where they meet you.

Sam Parr

Do you get envy? So, like, when I thought about it... I've thought about that as well. I'm not into content creation as much as you are, so that's not going to be the path for me. But I have used it as, you know, like a miniature Logan Paul Prime thing—very, very, very mini compared to them. Do you think that, for entrepreneurship, that sort of means that you're going to be B2B? Like, you know, selling something that businesses might buy? Or something that we could call the "prosumer"? So, like, not just a drink, but maybe someone who buys something for their job. Do you think that there are as many opportunities in that space as there are in creating a drink or a makeup kit or whatever other consumer goods?

Shaan Puri

I’m also not even worried about that. Like, that will exist and it'll be what it'll be. It doesn't really matter. But yeah, it does. You know, I don't think Tim Ferriss, when he started the "4-Hour Workweek" or even his podcast, would have been like, "Yeah, and then what I'm gonna do is invest in Uber and make $100,000,000." That's what happened, but it's not what you would have predicted. Of course, how does he get into that deal? Because he's Tim Ferriss. That's who people want to rope into things. So, you know, getting into Shopify and Uber early on is how he made all the money. You couldn't really connect those dots at the beginning, right? It's only something that later, after the fact, you could see how that all connected together.

Sam Parr

And are you prepared to be a 38-year-old YouTuber hanging out with a bunch of 22-year-olds all the time while you're...?

Shaan Puri

wearing I didn't say I was gonna do hoodies

Sam Parr

I didn't say I was gonna do I didn't say

Shaan Puri

I was gonna do

Sam Parr

YouTube. First of all, my good friend Noah Kagan, he runs a really successful business that's worth $100 million, so he's successful. But he has a YouTube channel, and I always make fun of him. I'm like, "Dude, you're a 42-year-old YouTuber, you fucking dork! You're hanging out with all 22-year-olds who are like, 'Yo, yo, still!' What are you, like, grow up, Peter Pan?" And so that's what I'll be making fun of you about. So you could go and do all those... Dude, you and I had to do a photo shoot recently because MFM wanted to upload the title or the picture. In that photo shoot, we had to stand there and do like 10 emotions. They were like, "Alright, act like faces. Yeah, thumbnail faces! Act like you're someone who just said something stupid and you think they're full of it." Inevitably, every picture is just this shocked look. We had to do these things. First of all, I hated that. I hated that! It was horrible. Dude, there was one where you had your hand like this, like you were going to smack someone.

Shaan Puri

yeah they they were like you're angry and then I did the bitch slap hand thing and I was like was that good

Sam Parr

like what

Shaan Puri

are you doing

Sam Parr

Yeah, and then they had to... I just had to hold up 5, 4, 3, so they could use my hands for different numbers. I hated that. I hated doing that. So we're going to be seeing that, but I can't... like that's just not in my DNA. But that's going to be you now. Congratulations! It's hard for me.

Shaan Puri

to be a little bitch but I hope you enjoy it

Sam Parr

Yeah, no, it was just like, "Oh, you know, a lot of the YouTubers..." and this is a good thing. They're actors, they're performers, they're entertainers. We sort of started this just like hanging out.

Shaan Puri

When we go to places and people are like, "Oh my gosh, Sean! I need your autograph! Oh, can I take a picture?" I'll be like, "This is Sam," and then I'll introduce you. Okay, so don't worry.

Sam Parr

Well, it was just great. You have a little bit more of that acting DNA, but they like you performing a little bit. These guys are like hard... they're YouTubers. I mean, YouTubers are actors, and so it's... yeah.

Shaan Puri

because you're saying youtube I didn't say everybody do youtube necessarily

Sam Parr

I know you didn't say that, but I'm still gonna make fun of you for doing that. Don't let reality get in the way of what I'm gonna mock you for.

Shaan Puri

Can I tell you? Okay, so one of the things we did at this camp—by the way, I'm not going to tell you what was in it, but I'll tell you what we did. Last year, I was too afraid to structure it. Meaning, last year I was like, "Yeah, we're just gonna hang. It's gonna be cool, it's gonna be casual, it's gonna be great, it's gonna be awesome. Just hang in, no problem, just super cool." Because I was like, I don't want to be the second-grade teacher and be like, "Alright, everybody sit down. You know, give me your bunny ears and let's..."

Sam Parr

dude in reality you need that you need that

Shaan Puri

One of the best things last year was when somebody finally impromptu said, "Hey, do you guys want to do some intros or like an icebreaker? Who are you guys and what do you do? Can we learn something from each other?" So this year, I arranged it where I said, "Alright, we're going to do these things called tiny talks." At night, we're going to have people do kind of like a flash, you know, 5 to 10-minute talk on their thing. Because everybody in this room is world-class at something; otherwise, you wouldn't be in this room. So tell us what you're world-class at and how you do it so that we can learn from it. For example, Mr. Beast does his YouTube master class. He's like, "Here’s my channel, here are the analytics." He logs in, screen shares, and says, "Here’s how we think about this. Here’s what I did, here’s what worked, here’s what didn’t work, and here’s this trick we do on our thumbnails that makes this work better." I mean, you couldn't pay for this, right? He did that, and Joe Gebbia did one on his first startup before Airbnb and the kind of lessons he learned there.

Sam Parr

Read the title and only give a one-sentence summary of the takeaway that you had.

Shaan Puri

how I went from 0 to 1,300,000,000 in real estate in 10 years the one sentence summary is this guy has an unfair advantage that lets him play the game differently and I should just give him my money to invest that's what I'm doing okay so like yeah unfair advantages do exist and when you have them just part you know press push your push your chips into the table alright next one why I bought 23 gas stations and was it a good idea so last year at the camp somebody shared about why the how they owned a cup you know 10 gas stations or something so one of the guys went and bought 23 gas stations after that and funny story and actually it probably was a good idea for him because you know he had sold his business and he needed something that would give him a lot of depreciation in year 1 a lot of bonus depreciation and gas stations do do that so in that sense it was a smart move but now he holds all these assets that like he's gonna have to figure out if they were the right thing on in the long term I think there's a different thing another guy did a presentation on why venture capital mostly sucks and why people play the game totally wrong and he is a vc so I thought that was a great talk at the end of it he did this thing called the mount rushmore of death that I thought was interesting he's like we were like dude how did you even think of investing in this one company that that took off it sold for like $3,000,000,000 and he goes well he's like I first was taking like a 1000 meetings a year like most vcs do and they're just like it's so inundated with data that they actually like lose the way to think so so then I stepped back and I was like okay I'm not gonna do just like constant inbound meetings just worried about missing the next big thing instead I'm gonna figure out where would the next big thing live and I'm gonna go find it so he did this thing called the mount rushmore of death which is like these four things cause death more than anything else combined right like these make up 80% of all the reasons for death peter atea calls these the 4 horsemen but he did this guy did mount rushmore it's like heart disease diabetes cancer and dementia and yeah like dementia alzheimer's so like neuro neuro cognitive degeneration and he's like so then I just went and looked for what's the best company in biotech that attacks one of those 4 in a way that I think is plausible to to work and then he ended up finding a big winner in that space I thought that was kind of interesting another guy he goes mike talks about the 3 d's of biz of buying businesses death divorce and distressed he's like you know the the best opportunities come if you can buy a business from somebody who died and the kids don't wanna inherit the business from somebody who's going through a divorce and they have to you know sell their business or distressed you know somebody took on too much risk and you can basically go buy it for less than the intrinsic value of the business and so one guy there he had bought a business he was looking at buying this business he would have had to pay like you know 15 $20,000,000 for it on top of the inventory that they had and instead he ended up own now he owns the business for the cost of the inventory that they own like he's like literally like I just paid for the inventory and I now own the whole business and he's like you know and that was one of my suppliers so it cut my cogs in half so it's just like these great you know what are the what does a great deal look like and you really start to learn what does a great deal look like so those talks I thought were badass

Sam Parr

Alright, let's wrap up. Let me make one suggestion: **don't turn this into a business**. This is perfect as it is. **Don't mess it up.**

Shaan Puri

this up business

Sam Parr

camp mfm this is awesome

Shaan Puri

of course not

Sam Parr

This is perfect. Don't mess this up. Number 2: Do it again. Number 3: Keep it at whatever size, 20. I would be bad at picking because I would want everyone to come. That is so stressful. But hopefully, you don't ruin this because this is definitely a gem. I'm so mad.

Shaan Puri

The list of people we would want to come was 142. So, you had to go from 142 to inviting 15. It was terrible.

Sam Parr

I don't regret my decision. I had to put family time in, but I had an immense amount of... [incomplete thought].

Shaan Puri

all of that you didn't regret your decision

Sam Parr

No, I don't regret it. I don't regret it, but I have massive FOMO. I wish I was in a position where I could have made it. I had a huge amount of FOMO because Ramon, Jack, Val, Ben, and Nick were giving me updates. I would just text people like, "How's it going? Is it fun?" and they would send me pictures. So, I sort of got like 1% of the ongoing updates. It sounded awesome.

Shaan Puri

Everybody at the event was just calling it "Sean's bachelor party." They were so happy to be at Sean's bachelor party, which is hilarious because I didn't have a bachelor party. But if I did, this is exactly what I would have wanted to do. It's basically a group of guys who are all a lot of fun. Tons of jokes, playing basketball, playing poker, and talking business—it's the ideal bachelor party. So I think maybe we should just rebrand it to that: my annual bachelor party.

Sam Parr

well no keep it camp fm so I by default always get an invite

Shaan Puri

no dude you blew us off this year hey around you know

Sam Parr

how it is you would have thought the same thing and if it went off people

Shaan Puri

were like where's sam and I was like oh you know he just had a baby they're like wasn't that like 3 months ago

Sam Parr

and I

Shaan Puri

was like yeah and they're like did you cut in

Sam Parr

It was two and a half months ago. I made the commitment that the first three... I'm at home. I gotta do what I gotta do.

Shaan Puri

laser focus on that baby I like it I appreciate that

Sam Parr

We, you know, I was actually getting... I was laying with her and I was shirtless. She was just in her diaper, and I was changing her diaper when she pooped all over me. Somehow, as I was getting a text from Ramon, being like, "Yeah dude, now we're lifting weights and doing all this stuff," I was like, "Oh cool, let me wipe this poop off of me real quick," because the poop just ran down my belly. Any tips?

Shaan Puri

to how to get diarrhea

Sam Parr

out of a coma yeah dude

Shaan Puri

is there a time to talk about that

Sam Parr

She literally puked on my face this week because I was holding her up by my shoulder and she threw up. I got puke all over my face. I was reading these texts and seeing Nick Huber do like a DEXA scan, and this is Joe Gebbia jumping a lake, and I'm like, "Oh..."

Shaan Puri

That's, oh yeah, we had a DEXA scan in his gym, and we put Nick on it. Then we played a game where everybody had to guess his body fat percentage. I was like, "Yeah, this would get everybody canceled nowadays," or this is like, you know, fat shaming. I'm pretty sure this is the definition of fat shaming. But he loved it; it was great.

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's baller! I definitely wish I could have been there. Alright, that was a good episode. That was a good recap.

Shaan Puri

alright