How LIV Golf Is Competing With PGA's Monopoly | Golf Wars

Big Fish, Small Ponds, LIV Golf, and Financial Freedom - August 16, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 01:10:06

This My First Million podcast episode features a meandering conversation between Shaan Puri and Sam Parr. They discuss various topics, ranging from historical anecdotes to business analysis and personal reflections. The conversation flows organically, touching upon seemingly disparate subjects but ultimately connected by underlying themes of ambition, success, and life choices. They close by discussing plans for future MFM events.

LIV Golf's Disruptive Strategy: Shaan details the emergence of LIV Golf, a Saudi-backed competitor to the PGA Tour. He highlights LIV Golf's aggressive financial strategy, offering massive contracts to top players like Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, even attempting to lure Tiger Woods with an $800 million offer. They discuss LIV Golf’s different model with fewer events, higher prize money, and guaranteed contracts.
Hidden Histories: Sam discusses the book Blitz: Drugs in the Third Reich, revealing Hitler's meth addiction and its potential influence on his decision-making. He then segues into other historical anecdotes where seemingly major decisions stemmed from personal motivations, citing Henry VIII's establishment of the Protestant Church and a myth about the King of Spain's lisp influencing the pronunciation of "Barcelona".
The Math Teacher Maverick: Shaan shares the story of Will Fraser, a former Wall Street banker who retired at 27, then became a highly successful math teacher in Florida. Fraser's intense focus on training and competition led his high school math team to win 15 out of 17 math competitions. His dedication has created a talent pipeline, attracting recruiters from top companies and universities.
Small Pond Big Fish: Sam and Shaan discuss the advantages of "Small Pond Syndrome" (SPS), where individuals achieve greater success and fulfillment by dominating a smaller niche rather than competing in larger, more saturated markets. Shaan recounts his personal experience of moving from a large high school in Houston to a smaller international school in Beijing, becoming captain of the basketball team. Sam expresses his own considerations of moving to a smaller city.
Profitable Businesses: Sam reveals revenue and profit figures from several companies in his CEO community. These include a pedal tavern business generating $5 million in sales, and The Peak, a Canadian daily newsletter with 90,000 subscribers and $3 million in revenue.
Building a Twitch Competitor: Shaan describes his attempt to create a streaming platform to rival Twitch. His strategy involved attracting top streamers with lucrative contracts, creating a critical mass of talent to draw viewership. He pitched this idea to Discord, who considered acquiring Shaan's startup but ultimately declined. He also reveals Twitch's counter-strategy of staggered streamer contracts to prevent mass exodus.
The Value of Saying No: Shaan introduces a framework for evaluating money based on what it allows you to say no to. He outlines different financial thresholds and the corresponding freedoms they unlock, ranging from rejecting undesirable jobs to changing societal rules. He and Sam discuss their hourly consulting rates and strategies for politely declining offers. Shaan emphasizes the importance of consciously choosing what to say yes and no to in life.
Camp MFM: Shaan and Sam talk about upcoming MFM events, including Sam’s large meetups in New York and Los Angeles, and Shaan’s more exclusive “Camp MFM” retreat in the Carolinas. They discuss the differences between parties and experiences and express interest in making Camp MFM a recurring event.

Transcript:

Start Time	Speaker	Text
00:00	Shaan Puri	Have you heard of this thing called LIV Golf? I think it's called LIV. I don't know how you pronounce it—LIV.
00:06	Sam Parr	no I don't what's liv golf
00:09	Shaan Puri	LIV Golf. Okay, so you know about the PGA Tour. It's like the main... yeah, it's like the NFL.
00:15	Sam Parr	tennis thing the thing
00:16	Shaan Puri	Right, no golf. So, LIV Golf is a competitor to the PGA that just emerged. Oh, the Saudi Arabia fact? Exactly, yeah. It's a Saudi-backed rival, and these guys are basically trying to spin up a new league by brute force. They're investing $100 million, which I appreciate. I think they pledged... yeah, me too. Big, big swing. So, this is not the opposite of SPS, right? This is BDE. Yeah, so basically, the Saudi Public Investment Fund put in... they pledged $400 million to start the league. I think they've even committed more than that, man.
00:56	Sam Parr	I thought they offered tiger woods like 500,000,000 or something crazy
01:01	Shaan Puri	News came out that they offered him $800 million and he said no, which is just kind of an insane thing. But they have signed other huge stars: - Phil Mickelson - Dustin Johnson - Brooks Koepka (who recently won like 4 majors) - Cameron Smith, this young star Some of the deals include: - Cameron Smith: $100 million deal - Dustin Johnson: $125 million deal - Phil Mickelson: $200 million deal They offered Tiger [Woods] and didn't get him yet.
01:36	Sam Parr	alright what's going on dude how are you
01:40	Shaan Puri	fantastic
01:41	Sam Parr	So, I have something that I've been thinking about that I've been wanting to talk to you about. I started... Have you ever seen that video of Adolf Hitler at the German Olympics in 1936? When he's watching the Olympics and he's like rocking back and forth? Have you ever seen that?
02:03	Shaan Puri	Bro, you can't be blonde-haired, blue-eyed, and come on here starting off saying, "Have you ever seen my favorite video of Hitler?" No.
02:09	Sam Parr	no no no have you
02:10	Shaan Puri	ever seen that video up the charts bro we're trying to go up
02:13	Sam Parr	Have you ever seen that video of him? So, there's this video that I saw a couple of weeks ago where he's at the Olympics. He's rocking back and forth, and he's very clearly on drugs—some type of coke or something. I started getting curious about it and looked into it. Someone in the comments mentioned a really good book called Blitz, so I bought it. It's right here; it's called Blitz: Drugs in the Third Reich. Basically, after reading it, I learned that Hitler and a ton of the Nazis, as well as many people in Germany starting in the 1930s, were using morphine, heroin, and meth. Meth was invented, and they used to think it was a miracle drug. Doctors would say, "Take this meth; it makes you feel great!" It was like a miracle drug—giving you euphoria, making you want to stay up all the time, and causing you to eat less. It was a wonderful drug. It was a legal drug that Bayer, the drug company, was selling. They even put it in chocolates. There was a chocolate that you could eat that had a little meth in it, and it was called "Always Satisfied" or something like that. It was so common. It turns out Hitler was a junkie; he was getting injected with meth for years. That's one of the reasons why, when they were getting bombed at the very last minute, he was like, "Oh no, we're doing great!" because he was hallucinating and had thoughts of grandeur—typical meth behavior. I started thinking about this: what other stuff in history was supposed to be one way and was happening for a totally different reason? I started looking into it. For example, Henry the Eighth... do you know what Protestants are?
03:54	Shaan Puri	no that's I've heard that word a thousand times I knew you wouldn't know what it is
03:59	Sam Parr	The Protestants... No, so like there's the Catholics and then there's the Protestants. It's basically like if you're an evangelical Christian, if you're a Baptist, or if you're one of these other different types of Christian religions, you're probably a Protestant. Alright, maybe by definition you are. Anyway, someone came up with it. Like, Martin Luther came up with it. In the 1500s, the King of England basically had like eight divorces because he couldn't have a kid. It was him; he was infertile. The Pope was like, "Hey, you can't have these divorces anymore. This is bullshit." And he's like, "No, fuck that! Then we're going to switch to Protestantism because that allows me to get a divorce and I can have all these kids." So now, like, there's a billion Protestants in the world because he just wanted a divorce. And then there's this story... You ever know how people from Barcelona say "Barcelona" really funny? Like, "Barcelona."
04:49	Shaan Puri	the lisp
04:49	Sam Parr	Yeah, there's like this urban myth that the King of Spain had a lisp. Someone's like, "Hey, you know it's pronounced Barcelona." And he goes, "No, from now on it's Barcelona," because you know, that's just how I say it. That's just...
05:04	Shaan Puri	it's my first million yeah
05:09	Sam Parr	it's like you know mike tyson ruled the world
05:14	Shaan Puri	I
05:14	Sam Parr	Was thinking about, like, what other stuff did we think was going to be for this grand reason, but it's really just, you know, like the guy's dad said something like George Bush invading, you know, looking for weapons of mass destruction because his dad was like, you know, "You're not strong like your brother." And he... or, you know...
05:35	Shaan Puri	because he couldn't find the remote one time now he's at this complex
05:38	Sam Parr	Oh, he had this leftover "Mission Accomplished" banner. He's like, "Well, we gotta do something with it," you know? Like, what else in history has been used just for... totally the opposite reason?
05:48	Shaan Puri	I don't know, but I bet there's so much. I think about this with food all the time. When I see, "Oh, you know, people are like, 'Oh, you know that the active ingredient in Advil or aspirin comes from this oak tree' and blah blah blah," I'm like, how do we figure that out? Who was just gnawing on trees and thought, "You know what? This one... I had a headache earlier, and now I don't have it anymore." Right? Like all foods were like, "Oh, this one kills you; this one's good for you." It's like, okay, but who were the testers? Who was figuring this out along the way? I actually think that was probably the most fun time to be alive—when no one knew anything about anything. You didn't know what was food and what was not food. Like, how much random soil has been eaten by somebody thinking, "This has to be food"? And then somebody else sees a chicken running by and thinks, "No, I think under those feathers there's something there."
06:45	Sam Parr	dude there's all sorts of good stories like
06:46	Shaan Puri	that and I never research it
06:48	Sam Parr	So, like, have you heard about the invention of LSD? No? The guy, he was a European doctor. He was trying to...
06:57	Shaan Puri	he's a doctor right
06:58	Sam Parr	Yeah, he was just trying to make... I forget what it was, but some type of antibiotic. Just something normal. He got a little bit of the stuff on his skin, like he touched it accidentally, and he was like, "Oh my God, this is awesome!" Then he starts tinkering with it even more and he goes, "All right, let's try this." He gives himself a huge dose and starts riding home on his bicycle. He's thinking, "Nothing's happening. This didn't work." But then all of a sudden, it hits him. He has the biggest trip of his life, and then he, you know, changes everything.
07:24	Shaan Puri	Yeah, I feel like penicillin... there's a whole bunch of drugs that were discovered by accident, for sure. Yeah, it's... I mean, I don't know where you want to go with this topic, but...
07:35	Sam Parr	I don't want to go anywhere. I just thought it was interesting. This book—I've just been reading about drugs and the Nazis—and I was like, "It's crazy!" The book says that at the time in the thirties and forties, when World War II was happening, something like 60% of German doctors were addicted to morphine. They were the ones, you know, voting on what the laws were going to be around how these controlled substances are handled. It's crazy! It changed my... well, I guess it didn't change my perspective, but you know what I mean. It's just an interesting read.
08:06	Shaan Puri	Let me tell you an interesting story. Have you heard about this math teacher in Florida? No? No... these stories can go one of two ways.
08:17	Sam Parr	Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did the dog, was he on "Dog the Bounty Hunter"? I mean, this could go a bunch of different ways. Is there a funny, like, viral video of him in a 7-Eleven?
08:28	Shaan Puri	No, so get this. Brandon was telling me about this, and it's kind of amazing. There's this guy, okay? You know how there are school competitions, whether it's a spelling bee or math competitions or whatever? Well, there's this math competition, and there's a strange thing going on. One small school, which is not a private school, has won like 15 out of the last 17 of these math competitions. People were like, "God, what is going on at Buckholes High School?" The story is kind of amazing. There's this guy, Will Fraser. He starts as a banker on Wall Street, doing bond trading or something like that. This is in the 1980s, the heyday of Wall Street. If you've ever read those books like "Liar's Poker," it's like the heyday of people making tons of money. He retires by 27, having made a bunch of money, and he thinks, "Dude, this is too stressful of a lifestyle."
09:24	Sam Parr	how much did he make
09:25	Shaan Puri	I don't want to do this anymore. I don't know exactly how much he made, but it was enough to retire at 27. So let's assume it's, you know, like I would say $10,000,000 at least.
09:32	Sam Parr	okay
09:32	Shaan Puri	That's my guess. So, he buys a Ferrari and drives down to Florida. He's just dreaming of a slower, calmer life. He's like, "You know what? I'm just gonna go to Florida. I bought this Ferrari, I'm gonna play a bunch of golf, play a bunch of basketball, and I'm just gonna hang out."
09:45	Sam Parr	dude ferrari's shit yeah
09:47	Shaan Puri	For a decade, he's that guy you see on a Tuesday at 1 PM, just hanging out at the park. You're like, "How do you not have a job? What's going on?" He's that guy, and he does it for 10 years with no income. For 10 years, he's just chilling and playing a bunch of golf. Along the way, he starts to feel a little aimless. He doesn't have a great purpose in his life at that point. So, he reaches out to a local high school and says, "Hey, can I teach golf over there?" They're like, "Ah, sure." He comes over and teaches golf, and he realizes, "I actually like teaching." Even on Wall Street, he enjoyed teaching the young guys. He thinks, "What else can I teach? How about a finance class? I'm a former Wall Street guy who made it big and retired. Can I teach finance?" They respond, "No, we don't have finance, but you can become a math teacher if you want." He's like, "Alright, I'll do it." So, he goes and becomes a math teacher. On day one, he walks in and says, "Listen, let me tell you this right now: I don't need this job. If you guys give me any trouble, this will be my last day." The students are like, "Okay," not respecting him at all. After one day, he's checking his mailbox as a teacher and sees a math competition coming up. He's like, "Oh, that's cool. Let's try this." So, he enters the math competition, and they get smoked, finishing 5th out of 6th place. This is their second to last. He's like, "Dude, I couldn't even solve some of these problems. This is hard." But then, the competitive switch in him gets flipped. He realizes, "Actually, I like that competition. I've missed the competition of Wall Street, where it was completely dog-eat-dog and high intensity." So, he decides to do it again and again. They get 5th the next time, then 3rd, and so on and so forth. He basically decides that they are going to dominate these competitions. That's exactly what's happening.
11:37	Sam Parr	dude isn't that the best we're like
11:39	Shaan Puri	15 out of 17
11:40	Sam Parr	The 15 of 7, isn't that the best? When someone just sees a small opportunity and they're like, "No one takes us as seriously as we're going to take this. Let's do it!" You know what I mean? I love that.
11:49	Shaan Puri	that's exactly what I
11:50	Sam Parr	Just like that cheerleading movie that we watched on Netflix, it's like they just take it... yeah, they take it to the... the... the...
11:56	Shaan Puri	highest degree discovered
11:58	Sam Parr	yeah the one that you made popular yeah
12:01	Shaan Puri	So, the guy... people are like, "Dude, what's your secret? What are you doing differently?" Blah, blah, blah. He's like, "Oh, I just took a different level of intensity. It's just insane hard work." He goes, "You know, the average math teacher gets 72 hours of classroom time with their students per semester. Then they hope that after school, some of those kids come and learn for an hour, you know, once a week or whatever. That's what they're putting in." He goes, "Oh, I just switched it. First, I took all the good math kids and put them in the same class, kind of like a blended age group. But, like, I put all the best people in the same class so they would compete with each other. Then we used our class time to start preparing for these competitions." "Then I started creating summer camps where we could get 80 hours in 4 weeks. So, the equivalent of a full semester of teaching in this high-intensity thing is like... and I just developed a program. Because they're like, 'Are you the best at math?' He's like, 'No, I don't even teach the advanced math stuff. One of my former students teaches the hard stuff. I just build the program.'" "He's like, 'I put the high school students with the middle school students because the middle school students sort of idolize the high schoolers. They teach down, and then the middle schoolers rise up.' He's like, 'So I built this program where one alumna, basically, like the older kids teach the younger kids, and the younger kids even teach the even younger kids. We just put in way more time.'" "He's like, 'Then I started scouting. This is like, you know, Alabama football. So, he'll go and look at the scores of other schools and find the high-performing kids and recruit them to his program.'"
13:27	Sam Parr	that's crazy
13:27	Shaan Puri	And then the reputation got built where they started winning. So now, parents are coming inbound and saying, "Please take my kid." And he's like, "We only have so many spots. I'm sorry." So he's built this talent pipeline. Not only that, the talent pipeline goes even further. Now, companies like McKinsey and the big banks on Wall Street come to recruit from his high school, the big schools, and Ivy Leagues.
13:49	Sam Parr	interns and shit yeah
13:50	Shaan Puri	From his high school, because they want his students now, he built a platform where they can go, which helps them recruit even better students. So, where did you see this story? Like, when COVID happened, what's that?
14:01	Sam Parr	where'd you read this
14:02	Shaan Puri	it's just like I think that so it's been in just like the local florida news for a while and then I saw something
14:07	Sam Parr	yeah but what were you doing
14:08	Shaan Puri	brandon sent me an article
14:09	Sam Parr	who's brandon
14:10	Shaan Puri	No, he sent this article from the Wall Street Journal or something. It was behind a paywall, so I only got the first paragraph. I'm too cheap to pay for it, but I was like, "Oh, what's the story?" Then I found all these local Florida papers that had the rest. They said that during COVID, they were like, "Oh, you gotta teach remotely." He was just like, "Oh, okay, yeah, we're gonna downgrade the intensity." He said, "Hell no, I resign!" Then he went to a church, rented out the church, and was like, "Hey, if you guys want to come and train here, we could do this." A hundred and forty kids went and trained daily in his church during COVID when everybody else had to lower their intensity. He ratcheted it up.
14:46	Sam Parr	how old is this guy now
14:48	Shaan Puri	So now he's like in his sixties, and he's been doing this for a number of years. He took... he was basically 27, he took 10 years off, so he's closer to 40. [He took] 10-11 years off, and then basically from 40 to 60, he's just been dominating this one thing. Isn't this incredible?
15:04	Sam Parr	This is incredible! I think there are a few things to consider. 1. Just the intensity. 2. I think sometimes, if you pick a lot of people—including me—we want to move to San Francisco, New York, or LA and try to become like a medium-sized fish in a big pond. I think there's so much to be said about being the best, or a big fish, in a little pond. You can make a name for yourself and have a way better life. Like, this random dude is having so much more impact by being the guy for this very small math contest versus, you know, a rich banker. He's probably way more fulfilled than just being another $100,000,000 banker.
15:42	Shaan Puri	Dude, I want to get diagnosed with a bad case of SPS. I want Small Pawn Syndrome. I am a huge believer in this. So, I lived in Houston in high school, and I went to a big public school with 5,000 kids from all over Houston. Basically, my life was basketball; I loved basketball. I remember a game in 9th grade. I was on the 9th-grade team, and the goal would be to someday be on varsity. The varsity coach was watching our game, and for some reason, I think I scored like two threes to start the game. Then, all of a sudden, the most athletic kid on their team decided, "Nah, this guy's not gonna see the hoop again." He starts picking me up full court. From the moment I can move, this guy's in my shirt. I literally can't get by him. I'm trying to go left, I'm trying to go right, but I cannot get by this guy. I don't know what to do, and I'm just getting frazzled. So, the coach calls a timeout. The varsity coach walks into the huddle, and I think he's going to give me this epic advice—maybe some varsity advice on how I'm supposed to get by this guy. Instead, he just says, "You will never play varsity basketball."
17:00	Sam Parr	oh my god
17:02	Shaan Puri	And I was like, "What? Thanks, Coach Hollingsworth." And he's just like, "If you can't handle this guy, you will never..." He's like, "I thought you might be..." and now I see it was some motivational thing.
17:14	Sam Parr	Then he just gave you a winchy and walked away. Exactly, exactly! Fucking nerds. Sword, yeah.
17:22	Shaan Puri	yeah exactly like hey I'd like to report a bully
17:25	Sam Parr	yeah
17:25	Shaan Puri	Yeah, is there a checkbox for faculty? But he was right. In the Houston pond, I was nowhere near athletic enough to be whatever. Now, luckily, my dad gets a job in Beijing, and we moved to China in the 10th grade. I go to China, and on the first day, I start playing basketball. You know, they ask for autographs. These kids don't get protein over there; everybody's scrawny. I'm blowing by everybody. The varsity coach walks over and he's just like, "Hey, what's your name?" I end up being captain of the varsity team. You know, I got a girlfriend. My life changed for the better. Everything got better because I caught SBS (Small Pond Syndrome) and I was able to be a varsity player over there, captain of the team.
18:15	Sam Parr	The captain of a football team in rural Alabama with 100 students... they live the life. Screw the big city, live that life. You know what I'm saying?
18:26	Shaan Puri	And there was a part of me, a foggy part of my memory, that remembered like, "You ain't shit, you ain't shit, you ain't shit, dude." The man made it... splashed that down, washed away. Yeah, it quickly got washed away. Oh no, forgot it.
18:37	Sam Parr	and I thought
18:38	Shaan Puri	It became like, "You're the shit! You're the shit! You're the shit!" And that's what you want to do in life. This guy, this guy is doing it right. I actually have this dream too. I was like, "I just kinda want to retire and coach high school basketball." I think that would just be a lot of fun. And... yeah, you know, this small pond thing, I think we're onto something.
18:56	Sam Parr	I’ve thought about this for a long time. I considered moving back to St. Louis for a minute, but my wife wasn't down. I was like, "Dude, I could just be the man here." You know, I could buy a $1,000,000 house and it would make the news. You know what I'm saying? Like, $1,000,000 in San Francisco or New York is a studio. But I was like, it would be one of the biggest purchases of the quarter. I would make the news; it would be awesome. But then I realized, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to do that.
19:26	Shaan Puri	bro what else you got I got fired I have straight fire today if you want if
19:29	Sam Parr	you want more than that I've got fire too I think did you see what I have in there
19:35	Shaan Puri	no I don't even have the thing open
19:36	Sam Parr	oh well fuck well you could screw give
19:40	Shaan Puri	me one
19:40	Sam Parr	Well, okay. So, I spoke to a bunch of different companies this week. They gave me all their revenue and profit figures. A few of them are interesting, and I could just bullet point and quickly go through a few of them. Do you want to do that?
19:56	Shaan Puri	By the way, explain why does somebody, you know, why does somebody just give you all the revenue and give you all the profit as you say? Because it sounds like: a) unrealistic, and b) like you sort of tricked them But that's not the case, is it?
20:09	Sam Parr	No, I said that. Okay, so I've got this community that I'm running, and I'm not going to talk about it yet, but it's like a CEO community. When they join, they tell me all types of interesting information so we can place them in the right group. I messaged eight of them and I said, "Hey, can I talk about you on the pod? Can you answer these questions? Am I allowed to reveal all of your information?" Well, if I am, am I allowed to reveal the information that you gave me? They said, "Yeah, sure." So that's how I got it. So nothing like crazy. Which one do you want to do? Alright, I got a couple of them actually.
20:43	Shaan Puri	give me the most interesting one first
20:45	Sam Parr	Let's do... Okay, well here's one that's actually not... I don't even think I put it on here, but have you ever seen those pedal taverns in like Nashville and Denver? It's like the bars that you pedal with... like a... They're honestly pretty obnoxious, but you know what I'm talking about?
20:59	Shaan Puri	no pedal what what do you have
21:00	Sam Parr	to do with the sale tavern so basically a bus
21:03	Shaan Puri	like if
21:03	Sam Parr	I guess you don't leave the suburbs of San Francisco much, but in a lot of other cities like Denver, Austin, Nashville... these "style cities," there's these things called pedal taverns. They kind of look like... imagine a bar in the middle, and there's 8 people sitting on one side and 8 people sitting on the other side. Now imagine that being on top of a 4-wheeled platform, and you're pedaling that platform while you're drinking booze. You've never heard of that?
21:30	Shaan Puri	But you're outdoors, right? You're outdoors on the street? Yeah, yeah. So, it's like some party thing.
21:36	Sam Parr	Gotcha! The guy who created one of the first ones is in the group, and his name's Pete. He bootstrapped his business from nothing right out of school. It's getting close to $8,000,000 a year in revenue. The pedal taverns alone do about $5,000,000 a year in sales, which is quite profitable. They're using the profits to buy the real estate that their pedal taverns stay in overnight. That's a pretty interesting business. Let's see, another one... Have you heard of this? You probably never heard of it. Here's an interesting one: there's this business called The Peak, run by a guy named Brett. It's a daily newsletter, similar to The Hustle or Morning Brew, mostly bootstrapped and based in Canada. Every day, it gives you the news you need to know about Canada—Canadian news only. They have a team of 10 and 90,000 newsletter subscribers, which isn't that much, and they're doing about $3,000,000 in revenue with $1,000,000 in profit. It's a pretty good business for a small team of 10. They have a 53% open rate and 67,000 monthly podcast listeners. The guys are kind of good writers, but not really that good. They just started writing, cold emailing people, and hiring writers. After 2 or 3 years, it's already at about $2,000,000 to $3,000,000 in revenue.
22:54	Shaan Puri	so what are they doing differently because that's more revenue per subscriber than most I think
23:00	Sam Parr	So, is that right? Yeah, it's pretty good. But basically, they just said that in Canada, there's not that many... there's not as many publications and B2B advertisers. Software companies, they don't have that many places to advertise. And so these guys have just done a really good job of getting: - The banks - The telecommunication companies - B2B software companies - All these high-end enterprise companies ...to advertise with them.
23:27	Shaan Puri	Gotcha, that's pretty good. Okay, we'll do one more. I want to tell you about a company.
23:33	Sam Parr	oh fine you can go
23:34	Shaan Puri	Okay, okay. I want to tell you about a company that you may have heard of. Have you heard of this thing called Live Golf? I think it's called LIV. I don't know how you pronounce it... LIV?
23:44	Sam Parr	or live wait liv
23:48	Shaan Puri	yeah just liv no
23:49	Sam Parr	I don't what's liv golf
23:52	Shaan Puri	LIV Golf. Okay, so you know about the PGA Tour. It's like the main... yeah, it's like the NFL.
23:58	Sam Parr	tennis thing
23:59	Shaan Puri	Right, no golf. So, LIV Golf is a competitor to the PGA that just emerged. Saudi Arabia, in fact. Exactly, yeah. It's a Saudi-backed rival, and these guys are basically trying to spin up a new league by brute force. They're investing $100 million, which I appreciate. I think they pledged... yeah, me too. Big, big swing. So, this is not the opposite of SPS, right? This is BDE. Yeah, so basically, the Saudi Public Investment Fund put in... they pledged $400 million to start the league. I think they've even committed more than that now.
24:39	Sam Parr	I thought they offered tiger woods like 500,000,000 or something crazy
24:44	Shaan Puri	News came out that they offered him $800 million and he said no, which is just kind of an insane thing. But they have signed other huge stars: - Phil Mickelson - Dustin Johnson - Brooks Koepka (who recently won like 4 majors) - Cameron Smith, this young star Here are some of the deals: - Cameron Smith signed a $100 million deal - Dustin Johnson: $125 million deal - Phil Mickelson: $200 million deal They offered Tiger [Woods] and didn't get him yet, but...
25:13	Sam Parr	and phil can only be on it can only be on liv and not pga
25:18	Shaan Puri	Exactly. So, it's a competitive thing. The PGA has about 60 events a year, and then there are four majors. What these guys are doing is like, there are eight events, and they all matter. They're going for more of the NFL model versus baseball. Baseball has almost 200 games a year, and they don't really matter, but there's always something on. The NFL, on the other hand, has about 17 or 18 Sundays, and each one is significant. So, that's what these guys are trying to do with the golf model. To put this into context, Tiger Woods has earned $121 million in all of his PGA winnings over time. Obviously, he makes more through sponsors and other paid events, but just from the PGA, his lifetime earnings are $121 million. Now, LIV is coming out strong and basically giving these guys Tiger Woods' lifetime money as a guaranteed contract. The way the PGA works is that there's a prize pool for every tournament—$9 million for every tournament. The winner gets $3 million, and everybody else gets a piece depending on how they finished. They do this over and over again, with 48 events a year. So, LIV comes in and they are basically giving away guaranteed money instead of saying you have to win in order to be there. The PGA makes about $1.5 billion.
26:38	Sam Parr	I'm looking at it right now revenue 1.5 a little over 1.5
26:43	Shaan Puri	And you know, 85% of that is like their tournaments, the media rights, and ads - all that stuff that comes from that. They have like a 9-year... they're in year 1 of a 9-year contract. And then "Mister Steal Your Girl" comes in and is starting to just take these stars away and basically is trying to compete with them. They also have prize money as well, and so they need... you know, they would need to generate like $1 billion as well to sort of have similar economics.
27:10	Sam Parr	But what's the play here? Do Middle Easterners watch a lot of golf? Is that the shtick?
27:15	Shaan Puri	No, I don't know if that's why. Maybe... you know, there's that weird thing where Russia really loves women's basketball. I don't know if you know this: If you're a great women's basketball player, you play college in the United States, then you try to make it to the WNBA. And the WNBA pays you basically nothing. You know, you'll make like $70-80k.
27:35	Sam Parr	yeah like a shoe salesman salary
27:37	Shaan Puri	and then you'll get like 300 400 k for playing the off season in russia
27:41	Sam Parr	yeah and everyone's like
27:42	Shaan Puri	Why does Russia care this much about women's basketball? Like, nobody asks questions. It's a little bit... whatever. I don't know exactly what's going on there, but they disproportionately like that sport. So maybe there is something in Saudi Arabia for this, or it's just that they have a huge amount of money and see the business opportunity. The PGA basically had a monopoly on this, and if you can create a successful sports league, these are worth $1,000,000,000. We both love the UFC. The UFC sold for, I think, $4,200,000,000, which, in my opinion, is undervalued for where it is now. The UFC is like fringe compared to the NBA, NFL, and these major, major leagues.
28:22	Sam Parr	what's more popular golf or p or or ufc golf right
28:28	Shaan Puri	I think golf is not more popular but it generates more revenue
28:31	Sam Parr	but what's more lame
28:31	Shaan Puri	Because it's like, sort of the welfare: who beats up who? A golfer with their club or a UFC fighter with his hands?
28:40	Sam Parr	Dude, I fucking hate golf. I hate golf. I cannot just stay at golf. Golf's not a sport; golf's an activity.
28:51	Shaan Puri	It's just, honestly, how much of your thinking at the end of the day boils down to "who could beat up who" most?
29:01	Sam Parr	I think that's something we're all afraid of... like the guy who, at the end of the day, is like, "Oh, I can kill anyone in this room with my bare hands." He is, you know, the true dog. He has nothing to fear.
29:20	Shaan Puri	Somebody said this once. I was reading NFL scouting reports during the draft. There were four quarterbacks, all top prospects. It was like, "Who's going to go number one? Who's number two?" The guy who does the draft said this line that I thought was so badass. He goes, "If they were all on vacation and going for a road trip, you know, they're walking out to go to the car, they would all throw the keys to Mark. Like, they would check the keys to Mark. Mark's driving." And there it was, this alpha male thing. I was just like, "What was this analogy and why did I love it so much?" Like, if you just said, "Hey, Elon, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, go out to dinner..."
29:58	Sam Parr	who's paying
29:59	Shaan Puri	Who's picking up the check? Yeah, yeah. You know who ordered the Uber? Yeah, because none of these guys are driving, do you?
30:06	Sam Parr	when you're in a room like at a restaurant
30:08	Shaan Puri	who sits aisle
30:09	Sam Parr	How... what percentage of the time, when you're at a restaurant, do you look around and think, "Whose ass can I kick and whose can I not?"
30:16	Shaan Puri	0 really% but I know that you do which is why I asked you this question because it's hilarious
30:21	Sam Parr	think about that
30:24	Shaan Puri	0 0% of the time
30:25	Sam Parr	Dude, I cannot stand golf. Any sport that you wear khaki pants to play... it's not a sport. That's not a sport, it's an activity. It's a hobby. It's checkers, but it's not... you know, like, it's...
30:40	Shaan Puri	Barely a job if you have to wear khakis. Barely a job. Yeah, like a sport is out of the question.
30:47	Sam Parr	Because khakis and a collared shirt... that's not a sport. I mean, that's not a sport. You don't sweat. It's an activity, it's a hobby. This is amazing though. I... let's get rid of the Saudi Arabia thing. I think it's pretty cool, but if you're Phil Mickelson and you have "fuck you" money hardcore, and Saudi Arabia, who has... you know, a lot of human rights issues, offers you this, what do you do? Do you take it or not? So you double your net worth, probably, if you're him.
31:18	Shaan Puri	So, I think you can't take it alone in a vacuum. You're not trying to go sit on an island doing nothing by yourself and lose all your relevance. You lose your future earnings if you do that. What I do is I say to them, "Look, I'm in. If you can go get 40% of this list to join, you could tell them that fills in if you're in." I would basically say you need to sweep a critical mass of us so that this is relevant and considered the top class. I'm not going to go play in the B league or the D league by doing this, and I would tell them that. I would say, "I'll do it, but you're going to have to cut the fattest check of your life, and you gotta go get 40% of this list."
32:01	Sam Parr	there's a there's a price that you would take for sure
32:04	Shaan Puri	Oh, of course! If somebody said, "Hey, you gotta go to this podcast on Android," I'd be like, "Is Android even... is there a podcast player on Google?" And they'd be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's... we're putting a lot of investment into it." I'd be like, "Alright, alright. I'll do that. I'll take this podcast to SoundCloud, I'll take it to the Google Play Store, but I'm gonna need to see $7.5 million." That's what I would say about this podcast. I would move this podcast for $7.5 million. That is my price.
32:33	Sam Parr	there's there's a price to pay to be a whore I'm down but
32:38	Shaan Puri	so we actually were gonna do this so at one? In time I had a startup that was based on like streaming video games and twitch was the like 900 pound gorilla in the room that was like it was the big streaming platform and we were just like we were trying to build a tool that worked on top of twitch like streamers could use it when they use twitch and it was working and every day we'd come into work we'd work really hard on this tool but like there was definitely a part of us that was like dude how did we end up here we're making this like tool for twitch streamers that like is free and then we're hoping that we could like after they all use it then we might be able to monetize this other way we're just like this guppy in this like in the in the in the ecosystem of this food chain we're like that little fish that like swims in front of the whale's nose like whatever that thing is called like we're that and I was like I like the fur kind I was like man don't you just wanna be the whale and he's like I just so badly wanna be the whale and I'm like yeah so what can we do and we just like made we went to the room we just white boarded we're like how would you like compete with twitch itself how would you just beat twitch and I was like just look at the numbers so we we like ran the numbers we're like twitch has this insane power law where you can see that the top you know x 100 streamers if you take the top 300 streamers they basically make up all the viewership all the all the meaningful viewership like I don't remember what the exact ratios were at the time but like any power law it's like you know the top 1% or whatever make up a very significant portion of viewership so let's just make up some numbers let's say the top 300 made up 50% of viewers at any given time I was like so twitch is worth twitch sold for a $1,000,000,000 like a decade ago or whatever 7 years ago it's probably worth 5 $7,000,000,000 now you're saying that if we could take you know half of that half if we can get to a quarter of that we'd be worth a bill you know we we might have the 25% of the traffic would be worth know a quarter of what they're worth which is like a $1,000,000,000 today how much money would it take for us to throw at those people right go get 25% of that through top 300 how much money would it take for us to go throw at them to be like come join our new thing and we like game theory the whole thing out we're like alright this guy makes this much today we basically need to offer him like 10 times what he's making today
34:51	Sam Parr	how much to come move much do do some of these guys make just on twitch
34:55	Shaan Puri	Shortly after that, the contracts exploded. At that time, the top guys were making like single-digit millions per year off Twitch. So, let's call it between $15,000,000. Those are some endorsements you don't really know how to track, and they sell some amount of T-shirts. It's hard to know. Then it sort of exploded. This guy started signing like $10,000,000 to $20,000,000 deals, but they're multi-year deals—3-year deals or something like that. So, you know, they're making $6,000,000 guaranteed, or something like that, $5,000,000 guaranteed, $10,000,000 guaranteed. That was like the kind of estimates we had for the very top guys. We thought, "Okay, so how much would we need?" We basically did the math and were like, "Okay, I think you need..." I don't remember what the number was today, but let's just pretend it was $150,000,000. We need $150,000,000 to go through with them. But it's like if I told you, you could go raise $150,000,000...
35:47	Sam Parr	And you're saying you needed $150,000,000 in order to pay the streamers and tell them, "Bail on Twitch, come to our platform." When you come to our platform, you're going to bring your audience, and we're going to make all this money eventually through other people coming.
36:00	Shaan Puri	You get this much guaranteed. All you have to do is just continue to stream, and you have to promote it in this way and let us promote you. Can I make a prediction? $5,000,000 to build this platform.
36:09	Sam Parr	my prediction is that would never work I don't think that works
36:12	Shaan Puri	okay so tell me why I'll tell you how how it obviously it didn't happen so so you know you're partly
36:16	Sam Parr	I think it could
36:17	Shaan Puri	tell me why you think
36:18	Sam Parr	Well, I know that you didn't really try to do this, but... or I don't know, in earnest. I don't know if you didn't raise $150,000,000. I think maybe the PGA Tour could work, but doing this for consumers, you need to have a brand and you need to have some magic about it. It's kind of like, you know, even if you put all of the resources into creating a boy band, sometimes that just doesn't work. Even though everything on paper looks good—like, "We got the blonde-haired kid, we got the mixed-race kid, we got the dancer, we got the singer." On paper, this checks out, you know? This should work. You know what I mean? We should be popular in Korea by this. And it's just... there's just no magic, right? Shit just happens. Then you have some kid who just sings a funny song and makes a joke about wearing a cowboy hat, and he gets hugely famous, like Lil Nas X or something. Shit just happens. I think that there's a bit of magic that probably would be missing out when you're... because with consumers, it's quite challenging to grab their attention. It's like getting a cat to play with something. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.
37:22	Shaan Puri	right so so so I do think that that that's part of it but there have been instances where people have thrown money at the problem and it actually worked right for every quibi where you just raise a bunch of money you go try to do the thing it doesn't work for every one of the or every 10 of those there's one where you're like no actually they did kinda just brute force their way in I don't know if you remember this but when tiktok first launched tiktok was lame as hell dude tiktok was lame as hell it was pigeonholed as like the lame version of musically which was a pretty lame thing it was like 12 year olds lip syncing videos and now tiktok is huge and one one thing that happened in between I remember meeting a guy and he was like yeah you know tiktok is gonna spend $1,000,000,000 marketing the app because I was like dude there's billboards in san francisco like at bus stops to download tiktok I was like do they really think this is gonna work and we had an intern not an intern like a kind of just like a junior guy working for us he was in 9th grade and he worked at our company and I was like he he started mentioning tiktok and I was like is tiktok actually a thing he's like yeah you know we just kept hearing about it kept hearing about it kept hearing about it and then they started just paying all of the top youtubers and vine people to just make tiktoks and like it works you know eventually it just worked like it's like we all think it's lame but like we all kinda started to use it and then sure enough the lame thing fell away too right by the end of it and it like you know became like a pretty mainstream thing like tiktok really did brute force their way down they did a bunch of other things right good product great algorithm they did a bunch of other things right I'm not saying they didn't do that but it's not like they started with this like brand love and authenticity and like loyalty and things like that so let me tell you how this this twitch thing played out so I had a hunch that you might be right so I approached discord and I said hey discord you wanna buy us and they're like maybe who are you and like what do you wanna what do you do and I was like oh we do this thing today but here's what we would do with discord we would help you compete with twitch you have brand love like discord is one of the most loved brands in gaming it's like you have the brand you have brand love but you don't do this today we will build the platform and like we can use this strategy to do this and they were like woah okay this is kinda like a crazy big pivot idea like respect the audacity
39:27	Sam Parr	who did you email what role I don't
39:29	Shaan Puri	know ceo and you
39:31	Sam Parr	Hey CEO, I'm Sean. This is what I do. Can I come to your office and pitch you? Then you went to the office and told them that, or you told them this all.
39:37	Shaan Puri	Exactly, exactly. Why did he take your meeting? At the end of it, his take was basically like: > "We will acquire you if you want. I don't know if we'll pay the most, so... I don't know if the deal will happen, and I don't know if we would do this, but the fact that you can come in here and whiteboard this on a wall makes me want you to come here and do things." And that was his take, essentially.
40:00	Sam Parr	that's the biggest bullshit artist thing I've ever heard of and you almost pulled it off what was the guy like
40:06	Shaan Puri	he's amazing he's a young
40:07	Sam Parr	guy he's a young nerdy dude
40:08	Shaan Puri	Jason Citron: Yeah, I was like... I never met Zuck, but I was like, the way he talked about their product, their strategy, and his calm, confident demeanor... His quiet, nerdy confidence. I was like, "I don't want to compete with this guy." And I see why they've kicked everyone's ass. Like, this guy's really smart and just really has a [clear] point of view about the way this needs to go. And it's just simple, it's understandable, it's different.
40:34	Sam Parr	why do you think he turned
40:35	Shaan Puri	It’s amazing. I feel like he’s going to execute on that. I think I had gotten a warm introduction through his lead investor. I told his lead investor, “Hey, we’re thinking about selling.” I went to him and I was like, “Hey, we’re thinking about selling. Would you do this deal or not?” He was like, “Well, you should first talk to the Discord guys.” I was like, “Great! That’s exactly what I was hoping for.” I just need to create a bidding war of some kind to get the best deal possible. So, can you make that introduction? He just emailed them and was like, “You guys should meet,” or, “Here’s his email.” He said, “I think he warm-introduced you. You should meet.” I just said, “Hey, I’d love to come by the office today. In about 40 minutes, I’ll sketch out what I have in mind, and you can decide.”
41:14	Sam Parr	that's so funny
41:15	Shaan Puri	nuts or if I'm genius so I'm nuts and you can decide for your but
41:19	Sam Parr	he respected it
41:19	Shaan Puri	I don't know what I said... Yeah, he was just like, "You know, would you like to come be one of the C-suite type people?" Because I don't think we're going to do that plan that you outlined, but I like you, you know? This is like... you know, there's not... I don't... we didn't get that.
41:34	Sam Parr	dude this is how
41:35	Shaan Puri	wish you could be a leader
41:36	Sam Parr	Everyone needs the confidence of a Sean Purry. This is a great story. This is proof that you can just create something out of thin air.
41:44	Shaan Puri	value
41:44	Sam Parr	yeah you can create value
41:45	Hubspot	out of thin air this like at my last start up the the best thing I did ultimately in that in that company was I did right by the team and the shareholders of like at the end I put my best foot forward to try to get us the most value we could that was like you know of all the things I did that was the best one and like I tried to do many other things well I tried to find product market fit I tried to scale I tried to hire a great team and I did some of those okay some of those poorly the one thing I did great was this this process let me let me finish the story here so then so I'm like okay these guys don't wanna do it but maybe we could still do it and so we start trying to set up a meeting and I realized pretty quickly oh you have to do this as one you have to do this as like a coup because it's kind of like a rebellion and I was like we need to do 2 things we need to wait till people are pissed off about something that twitch does which big companies will shoot themselves in the foot they'll come out with policies they'll they'll make some statement they'll change some feature they'll change the revenue split and people will get annoyed I was like so we need to capitalize on that and then secondly we need to get everybody all at once you know that movie that's out that people like every everything everywhere all at once that's I was like that's how we need to do this we can't just get we can't just slowly negotiate 1 by 1 it won't feel like there's enough momentum and so I was like we need to do this at twitch's big conference where all the streamers will go to all the big streamers go because most big streamers they don't leave their house they're like they're like me but they actually have like you know they're actually fit you know rich and famous from their streaming but they can't leave their room that's like their job and so they they go on vacation very little they take very few days off the one thing they do is they often go to twitchcon because they can meet their fans and it's the big event so I was like we need to do like a dinner the day before the day before or the day after the conference probably the probably the day before I was like you know this might be the worst time because they're gonna be up in you know the twitch kind of like ecosystem but it's the only time we can get them all in the same room I was like and we'll lay out our case which is basically look you guys are gonna make stupid money if you all are in there's no risk to any of you individually because you're if you're all there this will actually work and c like you don't have to bit play by twitch's rules anymore like you have a say in this thing I can't find this client info have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases hubspot grow better
44:04	Sam Parr	Dude, there's this famous meeting that happened in Atlantic City in the 1930s. That's when all the mafia guys got together, like Al Capone and all these guys, and that's when they formed "the syndicate" or whatever, you know? Like the mob. It's us versus everyone... That's basically what you did. You had like your little mob meeting, and that sounds awesome.
44:23	Shaan Puri	I didn't do it. I wanted to do this, I didn't even get there. Why? Because there was one thing that happened... When we ended up getting acquired by Twitch, Emmett was like, "Hey, let's grab a drink, we'll celebrate." So we go to... the first time I met him like out of the office, and we go to this bar. You know, we're talking about stuff and I was just like... I was like, "What do you think? How would somebody beat Twitch?" He's like, "It's pretty hard. We do have like a pretty good business and, you know, hard to compete against these like marketplaces once they get [established]." Do you...
44:52	Sam Parr	know about your meeting
44:53	Shaan Puri	But you know, no, no... so I go, I go, I go. We had an idea. I don't know if this would have ever worked. We got very close, so we didn't pull the trigger ultimately. But I always wondered, like, would this have worked? I told him the idea, and he goes, "Yeah, we thought about that." I don't want to quote him, but the gist of what he said was, "If you were gonna do it, that's the only way to do it." But we knew that, and that's why we started signing exclusive contracts with all these guys. Specifically, exclusive contracts that don't line up. We would make one expire in June, another expire in January, and another one expire in the following year. He said, "So that nobody could ever... they're all off-cycle payment, all off-cycle contracts, so that nobody could come and like, 'Oh, they're all gonna be full agents if we sign them all right away.' Tiny ass detail, tiny detail, right?" And I was like, "Wow." And then sure enough, this actually did end up happening. Somebody did try to do this. Microsoft came out with this thing called Mixer, and they went and tried to get the top streamers. They gave Ninja, like, I don't know, some stupid $20-30 million to come stream on Mixer. He said yes. He's like, "Dude, if I'm making $4 or $5 million on Twitch and these guys will give me $30 million guaranteed to go sit here for 2 years, alright, I'll do it." And they told him, "This is integrated with Xbox; it's gonna drive me a bunch of new viewers." Cool. Then they tried to get Shroud and a bunch of others, but they did it too slowly. So this attack did actually end up happening when it happened, but that was...
46:18	Sam Parr	out of business didn't it
46:20	Shaan Puri	Yeah, because they couldn't get the critical mass. They couldn't get enough people to say yes. But like, this did happen. The Chinese streaming platforms tried to do it; a whole bunch of people tried to do this against Twitch at the same time. Twitch did a, you know, a fairly good job of not only this off-cycle contracting but also figuring out... It's crazy! There was this theory: how many of your favorite streamers need to move before you move? So they looked at it like this: okay, if I'm a viewer and I spend 100% of my time just watching Sam, and Sam leaves, I have a high likelihood of leaving. But as long as I can get you to watch like four people, the odds of all four leaving are very low. And if one leaves, I'm like 95% chance to just stay.
47:02	Sam Parr	How about the fact that they probably hired some MIT rocket scientists? He's thinking for years, "I'm going to help get man to Mars. I'm going to be part of saving the world, the human race. I'm just a small part of this, but I'm helping." Then he gets his job offer from SpaceX, and it's $135,000. He also gets a job offer from Twitch, and it's like $140,000. He's like, "Man, they got free lunch, though! The office is down the street from my house. This space thing will always be here. Their office is beautiful." Then they take that Twitch office and spend the next eight years of their lives figuring out how to make it so a streamer can click a button and like a cat pops up on their shoulder, like an emoji, you know what I mean? Or it's like, "How do I make it so on Monday Night Football, the yellow line moves perfectly with the down line?" You know, space will always be there, but how do I get this right?
48:10	Shaan Puri	right right
48:11	Sam Parr	Yeah, just imagine someone dedicating their lives to that. That sounds horrible to me.
48:17	Shaan Puri	That is not far from the truth. In fact, some people try to use that to their advantage. Like, you know, Steve Jobs did that thing where he was recruiting John Sculley. He said, "When are you going to stop selling sugar water to kids and come help change the world?" Scott Harrison, the CEO of Charity: Water, came to Silicon Valley to recruit for his organization. I remember thinking, "How do you recruit from Google?" He was trying to hire someone from Adobe, and I recall him saying, "Yeah, she makes four times as much as I'm going to offer." I thought, "How? Why would she take a huge pay cut like that, like four times less?" He replied, "I just gotta hope that she wants to do something that actually matters." And he actually succeeded in recruiting a bunch of really interesting people. But, you know, it does happen. When you're at these companies, you start to wonder what percentage of your life goes towards things like, "Can we get chat engagement up by 0.2%?" Or, "If I add this emoji of a bouncing cat, are you 34% more likely to come back next week?" There's just a lot of life that comes down to this. If you work at a big tech company, you're working inside of a slot machine. You're looking at this person sitting down on the stool, thinking, "Can I get another four quarters out of them?" And you ask yourself, "What do I need to let that light flash over there? Hey, hey, cherries! You got a flash? Yeah, that'll do it."
49:41	Sam Parr	My wife, you know, went to this fancy Ivy League school. She's this brilliant woman, and she was at Facebook when we started dating. She was telling me what she did. She said, "I'm a PMM." I asked, "What's that stand for?" She replied, "Product Marketing Manager." I was like, "What does that mean?" She explained, "Oh, well, we just help people. We want more people to use Facebook." I asked, "Are you guys like the thing that puts the jet above India so they get free internet access?" She said, "Oh no, not really." I pressed further, "Well, what do you do?" She said, "Well, you know, I create different products to help people use Facebook." I responded, "Okay, but what do you really do?" She explained, "I'm making it so you can put a sticker on your picture, and more people will spend just a little bit more time on this app." I said, "Oh, okay, yeah, you should quit, right?" And that's when she quit. She said, "Yeah," and then did something that she actually cared about. I remember hearing about that and thinking, "Oh, that's why you went into debt for all these universities and did all that." So you can, you know, walk around the Facebook campus for like three hours a day and make a sticker of like Poo-Jean the cat or whatever the heck that thing was called. You remember that thing, Poo-Jean? Or what was that thing? It was like a Japanese cat.
50:52	Shaan Puri	no idea what you're talking about
50:53	Sam Parr	It was called... like Poo, remember? How Facebook, they would have all these Japanese cartoons? There was like that dog with his tongue hanging out. I don't remember, it's a thing. It was like Poo Jean, it was like a cat that was Asian, and it was like a series of stickers that...
51:06	Shaan Puri	Yeah, it's the thing in Snapchat, that dancing hot dog, which has been seen more than like any cartoon or animation ever. I think it's been seen like 10 billion times or like 100 billion times or something like that. It's like... yeah, this hot dog is actually more popular than Mickey Mouse.
51:20	Sam Parr	Just like the stupid way to waste time, it reminds me of that TV show Silicon Valley. One of the apps that they said was amazing was "Nip Alert," and it alerts you of erect nipples in your vicinity. I'm like, "Ah, this sticker thing, that sounds good."
51:36	Shaan Puri	Yeah, honestly, when I was there... when I was at [the company], I didn't think it was, you know, a waste of time and energy in that sense. Like, I don't know, maybe I think Twitch is...
51:46	Sam Parr	Actually, okay, because Twitch is like this cool subculture. We're nerds, and no one likes us. We finally have a space where we can do this stuff. Facebook, I think, is different.
51:55	Shaan Puri	And I respected the game theory of it. I was like, when this whole contract thing was going down, they were like, you know, the basic question of how much should we bid? I was like, I don't know. You know, it's like in sports, there's this Moneyball movement where you're trying to figure out the value of a player. If you can accurately forecast the value of a player, you have an edge in winning in the league. The same thing is true now for all these big media platforms. In Twitch's case, they were bidding for content. So they're bidding for this. I went and met with people who talked to people at Netflix, and I asked, "Hey, how do you decide how much to spend on the production of this? How do you figure out if it was worth it to spend, you know, whatever, $100,000,000 on House of Cards?" You go there and you meet the guy who's doing the same thing, right? The brilliant data scientist whose job is to A/B test the thumbnails of the new Garfield movie to figure out which one is going to lead to higher engagement and lower churn. It's like, yeah, you know, you're A/B testing thumbnails for Netflix and YouTube and all this stuff. It kind of feels like, you know, bringing a gun to a knife fight type of thing. You're like, "Damn, really? This is where all this..."
53:08	Sam Parr	Credit card goes... it's a scale, it's not binary. It's a scale, you know? And so for some companies it's like, "Oh no, this is just way too lame." For others it's like, "This got a little pinch of lame, little half a cup of lame, but it's mostly pretty cool." Right? You know what I'm saying? Netflix, I actually think that's cool. It's like, "Oh, I'm giving the world a little bit of entertainment." Facebook, it's like, "I'm just making people hate themselves."
53:28	Shaan Puri	yeah the thing that I the way I ended up thinking about it was like do I matter here like if I left like who cares I I call this the jenga law like if you remove this block from the jenga tower tower still there okay I guess that wasn't a key block like you know sure we'd love to have it there it's more it's better if it's there but like nah nobody really cares if it leaves it's like well if I don't really matter here then like it's very hard for me to get excited right and that's kind of an ego thing but it's also like an impact thing like if I at a startup like I can I can just by myself create a product give value to customers that didn't exist and I can capture a huge amount of value and at a big company I'm neither the key person creating the value nor the key person nor the person who captures any of the value right like your value capture inside of a company is is is fixed like you you get paid what you get paid in most cases you know aside from like maybe a bonus that you could get whether your product succeeds or fails which is why a bunch of products fail or go really slow inside these companies because it doesn't matter you don't get you don't get a prize if it works you know you get you get praise and so and and then the other side which is like you know does this matter and I think there is a counterargument like I talked to this guy josh elman and and actually even the the chief product officer at twitch this guy dan I was like dan why why do you always join you know worked at Google worked at nextdoor worked at twitch I was like why are you doing this big companies like have you ever wanted to go do your own he's like yeah but I wanted like impact scale and I was like I was like oh that's weird like in my head it was always if I'm at a small company I have a bigger impact because I am big relative to the company he's like yeah but that's not how you think about it like here if I can improve one product that 10,000,000 people use or at Google you know a 1000000000 people use search you know every single day and so if I can make that better he's like I created the book search you know feature I was you know on the books team we created that project so now you could like search for books and like a bunch of people on earth do that not a startup but it'd be very hard for me to do that and I was like okay like that is the counterpoint is like if you're if you're working at apple and you're working on the app store like you know the app store if a billion people use it every single day I guess like making that better reaches a 1,000,000,000 people you know making their life 1% better or whatever you know that that day is is higher impact than than at a start up but it doesn't feel that way the action doesn't feel the same to me
55:53	Sam Parr	no I agree you wanna do another topic
55:57	Shaan Puri	Can I give you a framework that I think is pretty dope? I heard it while talking to someone about money. I guess I can't really say what I was talking about, but it was sort of like, you know, the topic of money. Like, "Should I do this? Is it going to yield this amount of money or not?" The person said, "Well, the way I think about money is, you know, the value of money is what can you say no to if you have this money?" I was like, "What do you mean by that? That's interesting." He actually didn't even respond, but I thought to myself, "That's interesting. I've never heard that before." So I started thinking about it, and I realized it's true. People always say, "I want financial freedom. I want freedom. I don't care about money; I care about freedom." That's a common thing you'll hear. But what does that actually mean? I thought, "Oh, it's actually not the freedom to do something; it's the freedom from having to do something." So it's like, "What can I say no to?" Let me give you an example from my own life. When I had $25,000 in my bank account, I could say no to a really crappy job. I didn't have to go flip burgers or be a janitor because I could pay my monthly bills. I could do that for like 6 to 12 months, and that meant I didn't have to get a bad job today. Then, at $100,000 in the bank, I could say no to a bad manager. It's like, "Okay, I can't just retire, but I can quit this job, take a gap, and find another job without feeling that financial stress." So, $100,000 lets me say no to a bad manager. I was thinking, at half a million, that's when I could say no to work for a couple of years. I could just say no to work for a little bit, temporarily. Say no.
57:39	Sam Parr	to work like a 6 to 12
57:40	Shaan Puri	I could go for a year. I could try a startup or go backpacking or whatever. I could pursue a passion of some kind. So that's a new thing you could say no to. It's like working for a little while, then at kind of like $3,000,000, you could just say no to jobs. You could say, "I'm only going to work for myself. I can bet on myself and give myself enough time to figure stuff out without having to stress about it." At $10,000,000, I think you just say no to working in general. It's like, "My money makes enough money. I just don't need to use my time to make money if I don't want to." And then it kind of goes on, and at $20,000,000, you say no.
58:15	Sam Parr	Well, I've been thinking about this as well. At around $100,000, I would say no to having to be in one location. For example, right now I rent a place in one location and I own a place in another location. If I had $100,000,000, I'd probably own 3 or 4 homes. This way, I could just go from place to place without having to spend any time organizing a rental or anything. Then, maybe around $200,000 to $300,000, I would say no to wasting time at an airport. We only fly private.
58:48	Shaan Puri	I think it's that, but the numbers are a little bit less. I said at $50,000,000, I think you could say no to any inconvenience that money can solve.
58:55	Sam Parr	you could I think you could right like but you could fly
58:57	Shaan Puri	private at 50,000,000 you don't have to own the jet you could fly private you sure
59:01	Sam Parr	for sure
59:01	Shaan Puri	You can hire assistants to do anything you need. You can hire chefs, drivers, errand runners, accountants, and anything you don't want to do, you don't have to do. I talked... once you get to sort of the $50,000,000 range.
59:12	Sam Parr	I talked to a guy the other day who owns a jet, and he said it's about $2.5 million a year in expenses. Right, and he owns it. If you want to rent it, I think you could go to most places and spend half a million dollars a year. If you have $50 million, that's doable, but you can't own: - An $8 million house in Brooklyn - A $3 million house in Austin - A $5 million house in LA But you could own pretty nice properties in those places.
59:37	Shaan Puri	Right, and so, you know, like the top ladders... You get to $100 million, and I think you could say "no" to the way the world works. You get to change some rules. And at $1 billion, I think you say "no" to: - Politicians - The police - A bunch of people When you get to a billion, because you have the ability to kind of fight back. They... there's a different level of respect. So to me, I like this framework of: "What does this amount of money allow me to say 'no' to that I want to say 'no' to?"
01:00:06	Sam Parr	Did you? Yeah. What hourly rate would you say no to right now for a project that you don't want to do? For a one-hour phone call, what would you have to accept?
01:00:17	Shaan Puri	So, like, I think there's what you say and then there's what you actually... like what the market clearing price actually is.
01:00:24	Sam Parr	So, you would... right now I charge $2,000 an hour, and I take about 2 hours a week of phone calls. Would you do that or not?
01:00:33	Shaan Puri	So that's the exact borderline. On GLG, that's like what you could... the max you can set my rate to is $2,000. If I get a bid and I'm like, "This phone call doesn't sound like it's gonna be a lot of fun," it's right at that borderline where I feel like I kinda should... Like for an hour, I should... Dude, I don't take it and I...
01:00:55	Sam Parr	I I don't take the calls because I need the money I take the calls because I feel guilty saying no and so
01:01:00	Shaan Puri	It's the same thing, right? Like feeling like "I should" means feeling like I want to say no, but I don't think I should. And therefore, if I say no, I kind of feel like I've made a... you know, I'm guilty, right?
01:01:10	Sam Parr	I've done this... I've used the app Intro, and I just... For example, I'm flying down to your event and then I'm flying to LA. I schedule it so I know when I'm going to [arrive/depart].
01:01:20	Shaan Puri	be sign the money well I
01:01:21	Sam Parr	I know when I'm going to be in the Uber, and I just make my availability there. So I'm like, "Sick, I'll just take this in the Uber." Now I can afford... I could justify a $200 Uber Black because I'm making $2,000 in this hour, and so I'm going to be comfortable. I'll order even early so if I arrive early at the airport, I can just sit outside of the airport and finish this call. That's kind of how I've been justifying it now, but... it feels weird selling time per hour, and I don't even know if I like that in general.
01:01:48	Shaan Puri	Yeah, exactly. So I would say my true answer is, if I don't want to do it right now, I think that the number is something like $2,000 or $3,000 for an hour. If I just don't want to do it, I actually just don't do it. But if it's borderline, if I'm not sure whether I want to do it or I don't think I would like it, but it's not so painful, I think that's my current thing. I'm actively trying to get away from it. Like, what was it? Something came up yesterday that was like this, and by default, I was just going to say yes. I was like, "Should I say yes to this?" Let me just recheck what I want to be saying yes to. Because I think that one of the most important decisions in your life is determining what are the things I'm going to say yes to and what are the things I'm going to say no to. So there's your default box, which is like, "Oh, I obviously say yes and no to these things." Then, what are the non-obvious things? It's like I want to be saying yes to things that I know will be fun and help me grow, but scare me a little or put me out of my comfort zone. Right? So it's like I know I want to say yes to that. I know I want to say yes to if my friend is in town, I want to go pick them up from the airport. Or if my mom needs to get to the airport, I want to drive her there. I want to say yes to tasks that I don't want to do, but I actually want to be the person who does those things. So I'm just deciding consciously what are the things that should be moving into the yes box and what should be moving into the no box. What's some stuff I do today that I should be saying no to?
01:03:08	Sam Parr	do you have a polite way of saying no to all the inbound or do you just ignore
01:03:13	Shaan Puri	I used to just ignore, and then I realized it's totally fine to just say, "Hey, this sounds cool, but I just got my hands full. I don't want to do anything else." Or like, "Hey, thanks for reaching out. I don't want to do any more phone calls than I'm doing right now, but if that changes, I'll let you know."
01:03:34	Sam Parr	yeah
01:03:34	Shaan Puri	And like, I'll just say something. I think, you know, people A) they just appreciate a response more than a blow-off, and B) I think there's some level of respect for...
01:03:44	Sam Parr	thoughtful emails yeah
01:03:46	Shaan Puri	For, you know, somebody just being honest and like just saying, "Look, I don't like... I don't want to do that." You know, I've decided I want to travel less. So I'm saying no to travel.
01:03:58	Sam Parr	Dude, I had this guy messaging me saying he wants to come on the pod. I was just like, I ignored it. I ignored it because I hate it when people ask to come on. I'm like, dude, why are you going to make me say no? I say no to practically everyone, even good friends. So, we just say no to most everyone. This guy was like, "Can I come on? I'm a huge fan." I just said, "Thanks for reaching out." I didn't even engage much; it was quite obvious. Then he said, "Hey, so can I come on?" I replied, "You know, this isn't a good fit, but I really appreciate you listening." He asked, "Can I get some feedback?" I said, "It's just not a good fit." He responded, "Okay, but why?" I was like, "Okay, because you're not interesting and you're not that successful." He got angry at me, and I was like, "Dude, what the hell?" I mean, I was trying to, you know, make a...
01:04:42	Sam Parr	Of like avoiding this topic and being kind. But if you're going to ask for feedback, I'm going to tell you what it's about. Don't get angry.
01:04:50	Shaan Puri	right
01:04:52	Sam Parr	He's like, "Well, yeah, I... what's not interesting about it?" He said, "I go, it just... there's, you know, I just don't care about you."
01:04:59	Shaan Puri	So, my Goldilocks thing here was that I was too cold when I just blew people off because they didn't like that. Then, they would just stop. You know, I found I missed opportunities because I wouldn't reply to things—missed opportunities that I cared about in the long run. Then, the too hot was I would just be like, "I don't do phone calls." I realized, okay, you know, you're sort of a jerk for just saying, "I don't do phone calls," or "I don't meet with people I don't know," or "I don't do this." It's like too hard of a rule. I found that the sweet spot was somewhere in the middle. I would just say, "Hey, thanks, but I'm trying to do less of this right now." Or sometimes, when someone asks, "Hey, did you want to do this?" I'll say, "You know, I haven't decided." I don't even know what I want yet, so let me get clear on what I want, and then I'll come back if I ever get clear on it. But it's not about you; I just don't know exactly what I want to do right now. I'll just say something honest like that, and I found that tends to work a little bit better.
01:05:57	Sam Parr	Dude, we went from Hitler to Saudi Arabia to saying no to people.
01:06:05	Shaan Puri	mental models
01:06:05	Sam Parr	Yeah, mental models. Good pod. I'm gonna be in LA on Sunday. You're not coming, right?
01:06:15	Shaan Puri	to la on sunday no I don't think so
01:06:16	Sam Parr	but then I'm gonna see you in what
01:06:18	Shaan Puri	are you going to what are you going to la
01:06:19	Sam Parr	I told you about it. I'm hosting an event there, dude. For the New York event that I'm hosting, we've got like 1,300 RSVPs. I'm eager to see how many.
01:06:27	Shaan Puri	show up you gotta cut that down right you can't you can't do it you're gonna do a 1,000 person event
01:06:31	Sam Parr	No, that's how many people said they're coming. But it's free, so maybe half will come. We put up $10.
01:06:37	Shaan Puri	You're going to do a 650-person event. Dude, it's all guys, by the way.
01:06:42	Sam Parr	it's all guys I like scrolled through it's all dudes
01:06:45	Shaan Puri	I could smell that event already
01:06:47	Sam Parr	Yeah, it's messed up, man. So many Chads are gonna be there. And then I'm doing the same thing in LA, and that one has like 500 or 600 RSVPs. I just... you and I were talking about an event, and I was like, "Actually, this is like a toilet decision." I just wrote it on Eventbrite on my phone and posted it right away. People signed up, and it said we're committed, so we're doing that. Then I'm gonna be... and then we're gonna go to the Carolinas for the thing you're organizing, which everyone's been reaching out to me about. Did we talk about it last pod?
01:07:18	Shaan Puri	yeah we benched at the end of last pod
01:07:19	Sam Parr	dude so many people are reaching out
01:07:21	Shaan Puri	did reach out about
01:07:21	Sam Parr	They want to come. Basically, people are wanting to come, and I'm like, "This isn't... no, no, sorry, it's not my thing."
01:07:29	Shaan Puri	So, I came up with an idea. I was like, "What do we call this?" and I thought, "I want to call it Camp MFM." So it's Camp MFM, and I was thinking we could do these, but we could do a bunch of them. We could just do like adult summer camps, basically. Great idea! What's something that's really fun? Because I don't want to go to something that's like... even this, like a 1,000-person meetup. I'm sure it's cool and there are cool people, but...
01:07:50	Sam Parr	like that a different purpose it's a party versus an experience yeah
01:07:54	Shaan Puri	So, I want to have experiences. You know, when you were like, "Yeah, I'm a fucking artist, man." You know, that's all I have. I want to have experiences.
01:08:01	Sam Parr	this is gonna be a good one now we gotta come up with another one let's go to like hope
01:08:04	Shaan Puri	And so, some of these will be like this one, which is ultra-exclusive. There was only supposed to be 12 people going, but it's expanded to 24. You know, that's a lot. I wanted it to be more like 12, but I'm like, there'll be those. I think we should do some that are for, like, "Dude, if you can like, if you know the phrase, you know we don't do public math, manifest cowboys." You know, Sam wants to own a lake. If you know the inside jokes of this pod, then that's your admittance into this camp. I was like, I think we should do these like twice a year that are just fun and awesome and get people together. Exactly! I mean, Camp MFM should be the thing. I never wanted to do the work for this, and neither do you. That's one of the challenges, but...
01:08:49	Sam Parr	but it wasn't a lot of work for this one was it
01:08:51	Shaan Puri	I kinda feel like it is a lot because as soon as I try to do something, I'm like, "Well, let's make it fucking awesome, Ben." So, like, all of a sudden, for this basketball thing, we got Nike giving us all these sneakers from one of their players. We're getting custom swag, we rented these dope Airbnbs, and we have a chef. We have all this stuff coming together. I was like, "Well, if we're gonna have good people, let's get some good names in here. Let's get some people we're excited to meet." And then it's all coming together, but with each one of those, now I'm like, "Now I want it to be awesome if we're gonna do it."
01:09:22	Sam Parr	Dude, we got what we have, like, you know that, don't we? We can get a sponsor to say, "Alright, you get $300,000 a year to do cool shit, but we get to be there at all the events."
01:09:34	Shaan Puri	Yeah, okay. If somebody wants to sponsor Camp MFM, you could do this. All the money will go to basically hiring a planner to actually do these things for us. Secondly, it will go towards the venue and logistics of it.
01:09:48	Sam Parr	alright that's a pod I'm out

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