The GameStop Guy Has Returned… (And Has A New $210M Bet)
Gamestock, Roaring Kitty, Ryan Cohen, and Millions - June 7, 2024 (10 months ago) • 59:05
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Shaan Puri | Sam, this podcast is not financial advice. But if I was going to give anyone financial advice, I would have said to rewind the clock to May 1st, just a month ago.
All you need to do, if you ever want to triple your money, forget Warren Buffett, forget Bill Ackman. All you had to do was buy GameStop... again.
| |
Sam Parr | On the Mount Rushmore of investing, there's Bill Ackman and Warren Buffett—these wise older men who just exude confidence and wisdom. Right next to them is Deep F***ing Value. That's the world we're living in right now.
A lot has happened with this guy, so let's tell a little bit of the background of who he is and what happened.
Alright, so it starts in 2020, during the peak of zero interest rates and while COVID was happening. A lot of people were streaming online and sharing their thoughts because they were working from home. There’s this guy named Keith Gill. I think he worked at MassMutual or just some normal, boring job—like a $100,000 a year job. However, he loves stock investing; he studies it and turns out he's a very charismatic guy. He starts streaming some of his picks and explaining why he likes certain companies.
Now, we all remember that in 2020 and 2021, the stock market went crazy. There was a subreddit called WallStreetBets, and a lot of people had extra income because of whatever was happening. They were betting crazy amounts of money on silly stocks.
Well, this guy, Keith Gill, has a username on Reddit called Deep F***ing Value, and he has a YouTube page called Roaring Kitty. He starts explaining why he likes GameStop and invests roughly $56,000, which at the time I think was all of his money. He goes on this campaign explaining why he likes that stock. It's kind of like an underdog story—this nobody, charismatic, cool guy versus the large companies.
The reason he starts investing in GameStop is that he finds out these large hedge funds are shorting the company. He thinks they're wrong and believes the company is great. So, it becomes a little bit of a Robin Hood, David and Goliath type of story. All of Reddit and Twitter get behind Keith Gill, Deep F***ing Value, Roaring Kitty, and the stock goes crazy. He makes something like $30 million off of his $56,000 investment.
He spends about 18 months to 2 years with his campaign talking about it, but then he makes $30 million and goes silent. Nothing happens. There's a movie made about him with Seth Rogen; it was an awesome movie. But at the end of the movie, they say, "We tried to get Keith Gill to comment on this movie and give us insight." He didn't say anything. He's been silent, and we haven't heard from him until last month.
What happened?
| |
Shaan Puri | So, great summary. Last month, Roaring Kitty, as he's known, has a couple of different names. There's his Reddit username, but then Roaring Kitty was kind of his streaming name. He comes back on Twitter and just posts a meme. It's the meme of the guy sitting in his chair and then starts to lean forward like he just became interested in something. | |
Sam Parr | The gamer lean.
| |
Shaan Puri | The gamer lean... the lean. Many of you listening to this podcast right now might have the gamer lean going, and I hope you do. But he posts that nobody knows what it means—cryptic. And then he starts posting some more cryptic videos, little mash-ups.
| |
Sam Parr | Tweak got 30,000,000 views.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, people are ready, and immediately the stock pops a little bit. But nobody knows what it means, and nobody really knows what happened to this guy during that run where he turned basically $56,000 into tens of millions of dollars. He held the whole way.
So, what everybody thought was great—the short squeeze was great. But what happens when people start to take gains? This whole thing is going to collapse. And sure enough, that is kind of what happened. It didn't stay at the peak. I think at the peak it was like $180, and it did start to come down.
But he had, as we say in crypto, diamond hands, and he did not sell during that time. Nobody knew what he was doing during that time, but there was no evidence of him selling.
So, he comes back, starts posting all these clips, and people start getting excited. What's happened in the last, you know, month or so is the stock has tripled. And it's tripled in spite of Robinhood and others halting the stock again. Because, like last night, in after-hours trading, it was up 100%. Your money just doubled last night if you had bought yesterday. Then they had to halt the thing because it's, you know, pretty abnormal behavior that's going on in the after-hours trading.
So, the internet's going crazy. He then goes and posts on Reddit and he goes into a subreddit called Super Stonk. He goes into Super Stonk and says, "Here's my GameStop YOLO update," and he posts the screenshot. The screenshot essentially shows that he currently has, between his equity and his call options, $200 and something million worth of GameStop.
| |
Sam Parr |
Which basically means that... people aren't exactly sure when all this started, but there's a Twitter handle called Unusual Whales (@UnusualWhales). They have a website, UnusualWhales.com, which I believe is an options buying platform. They noticed this trend and started reporting on it on their own platform a few weeks ago. They said, "Someone is buying..."
| |
Shaan Puri | $2,000,000 a day | |
Sam Parr |
And they're a whale... What is going on? They've been doing it for 3 weeks, and a call option - basically, and I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff - it basically just means they think the stock is going to go up. They leverage their money to buy a ton of options to purchase the stock at an agreed-upon price. I think his agreed-upon price was $20.
He starts accumulating that share, that stake. No one knows who it is, and just last night, I think, or the night before, he revealed it was him. He's been doing this all along.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, it's insane. So, you know, currently, right now, today, it's up another 24%. He's basically doing it again. The hedge funds, I believe, were shorting it again. So, I'm not... again, that's the part I'm not 100% sure on. Initially, the appeal for doing this was that he would say, "You know, I like the stock. I believe in the company." He would say those things, but it was unclear how much of it was his belief in the company versus his belief that the hedge funds had shorted more than 100% of the stock float.
So, it was like just massively, massively shorted. The way shorting works is you're basically betting that the stock is going to go down. As the stock rises, your losses... like normally, let's say you bought a stock for $100. The most you can lose is $100; that's what you bought the stock for. That's all you have. If it goes to 0, you lost your $100.
When you short a stock, you can lose an infinite amount of money. That's basically what happened to these hedge funds. They lost $1,000,000,000 by shorting GameStop because when Keith and then all the other people on Reddit started buying, it created a short squeeze. This means the price was going up so much that they were getting called in and said, "Hey, you need to cover your positions." They needed to buy the stock at this elevated price in order to cover their short.
That put, you know, a couple of them almost out of business. I think one or two went out of business, and another one had to get a bailout, basically. | |
Sam Parr |
And there's a lot of accusation of collusion, meaning these big hedge funds colluded together. Some of the hedge funds had a stake in the company Robinhood, and they allegedly called Robinhood and said, "Hey, we need your help on this. You can't let these guys keep doing this stuff."
So it was a David versus Goliath situation of like, can the little nobody retail investor somehow beat corporate America? Beat the big billion-dollar hedge funds?
| |
Shaan Puri | For what it's done, by the way, I think it's totally true. I don't think this is a whack conspiracy theory. So, I don't think they owned a stake in GameStop. What I think was, they were the market maker.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so they were one of... | |
Shaan Puri | The biggest market makers... and then, you know, everybody said, "No, we didn't call them and tell them to halt the stock." What they did was they halted buying but allowed selling, which is like, you know, that's sort of the most messed up thing you could do to a stock. People lost like their life savings in this.
Some people say, "Oh, they should have because they were just gambling." Okay, there is something that they call just gambling, but if the casino rigs the dice, that's not cool, right? And that's what appears to have happened here. If you shut down buying but allow selling for a period of time, you will relieve the pressure and the short squeeze, and the stock will start to fall. Then people start to sell because they think, "Oh, the game's up."
So, I took all my money... I don't know about you, but I took all my money off of Robinhood after that happened. I just fundamentally, morally was against what had happened. I believe that the CEO lied and continues to lie basically about what happened during that time. I also...
| |
Sam Parr |
I took all my money off Robinhood. I didn't have a significant amount, but Robinhood started as like the underdog story. This is a tale as old as time, at least in Silicon Valley, which is like:
1. The underdog is the coolest and the best, we're all behind them
2. Then they get big
3. All of a sudden they are "the man"
4. They start changing some of the ways they do things
And now I don't trust them.
| |
Shaan Puri | Right.
| |
Sam Parr |
But I actually... so I currently have two takes on this:
1. We've talked about the creator economy, which I think is mostly a lame thing to talk about. But basically, some of the cool stories are some of these creators like Logan Paul. They now have a $1 billion company with Prime.
2. Roaring Kitty is the exact same thing, but instead of selling Prime energy drinks or whatever, he's selling... not financial advice, but he's selling [his] take.
| |
Shaan Puri | Oh my God, I'm so jealous! I didn't have this take. Holy shit, that might have been the most insightful thing you've said in months.
| |
Sam Parr | This is his version of monetizing his audience, and it is beautiful. Here’s why it’s beautiful: Have you seen the movie, what’s it called, *Dumb Money*? It’s with Seth Smith.
So, they chose this actor to play Keith Gill, and I’ve seen a lot of Keith's videos. He is so much more charismatic than the actor who played him. If he would have been that actor, it would have been way better. When you watch his videos, you think, "I want to get behind you." He is so likable, and he is monetizing his fame in such an interesting way.
Alright, look, the question that Sean and I get asked constantly is, "What skill set did we develop early on in our careers that kind of changed our business career?" That’s an easy answer: it’s copywriting. We’ve talked about copywriting and how it’s changed our lives constantly on this podcast. We give a ton of tips, a ton of techniques, and a ton of frameworks throughout all the podcasts.
Well, we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document. So you can read all of it. You can see how we’ve learned copywriting, the resources that we turn to on a daily basis, and the frameworks and techniques we use. It’s in a simple document; you can check it out in the link below.
Alright, now back to the show.
| |
Shaan Puri | So, let me just clarify that. What you said is basically, we've seen all the creator brands. You've seen Feastables, you've seen Prime, and a thousand of these. He did it without having to sweat the actual business. He's like, "Oh yeah, cool. How about instead of having to actually sell products, fulfill customer orders, and do customer support, I'll just pick a stock and make the stock go up."
The product is, you might make money on this stock. I'm not saying that he intentionally tried to do that or whatever, but in a way, he did, right? He was streaming himself picking a stock and doing his analysis.
The one thing I will say, because I went and watched these videos, is I expected it to be a lot more like "pump and dump." I thought it would be either explicitly stated or implied, like, "Hey guys, let's just do this and make a buck." But he really doesn't say that or do that in any of his videos or updates.
Maybe it's because he had a job at a financial company and he knew not to cross that line. I don't know, maybe that's why. Maybe he genuinely just liked the company and the stock and was like, "Yeah, I think there's value here." In some ways, he got lucky. He didn't mean to start a revolution; he just did.
So, I'm not sure which one it is, but I am very impressed. I expected him to be a lot more unrespectable, but actually, when I watched his content, I respected him a lot. I thought that he was not trying to be a grifter trying to make a buck. | |
Sam Parr | He did not come off that way in the movie, which I think was a hit. They made him and his wife come off as very romantic characters. They showed the people who followed him, like a poor lady in the Bronx or something, who said, "I really believe in this guy. He's the best. We can't let the big guys win."
So, you get behind it. It's easy to get behind.
The second take that I have is that I think what he's doing is not illegal, but it might eventually become illegal. What he is doing is absolutely... so here's my opinion: we don't know what he has done between basically when he made his $30,000,000 and up until three weeks ago. We don't know what had happened.
If I had to make a prediction, I think he tweeted out this "Gamer Lean In" meme or whatever, and the stock jumped, I think, 80% that day, which is insane. Ultimately, I think GameStop at the time was worth $6,000,000,000, and then it was worth $7 or $8 billion. Yeah, you gotta go look at those numbers.
But he basically created something like $1,000,000,000 or at least $100,000,000 in value from a silly tweet. I think that there's a potential that he knew that him saying something online was gonna pop the stock and that he is profiting from that. Then, further after that, he bought the calls, you know what I mean?
| |
Shaan Puri | No, no. I think it's the other way around. I think that what would make sense is he buys the calls first and... | |
Sam Parr | It's cheap.
| |
Shaan Puri | And then he announces it. But his announcement... I mean, how are you going to get him in trouble? Like, you know, I posted a meme of this guy leaning forward. What?
| |
Sam Parr |
"It's not illegal," he repeated. "It's not illegal." It's very wise. And so, other tweets that he posted are... What did he post? The reverse Uno card. Just a picture of a reverse Uno card.
| |
Shaan Puri | Like we're running it back, yeah.
| |
Sam Parr | I think it's hilarious. I think it's hilarious that Nikita, our friend, said, "If you've been toying away at your startup for the last decade, just remember a guy in his basement with a webcam and a headband just made close to $1,000,000,000 in 12 hours." I think that’s pretty wild, and potentially there is going to be some blowback for Keith Gill.
But if you think about it, Bill Ackman announced, I think last week, that he's considering taking his company, his hedge fund Pershing Square, public. What Bill Ackman is doing is not terribly different than what Warren Buffett has done, what Howard Marks has done, and what Manish, the guy we had on the pod, has done. These guys have built a brand for themselves.
When you build a brand for yourself in the hedge fund or trading industry, it basically means, "Whatever Warren does, I'm going to follow because I trust him." So, it adds value to a company that is not necessarily in the fundamentals of the business. That is exactly what's happening with Roaring Kitty, and I find it fascinating.
I don't know if I am behind it because I like him and I want him to win, but I do have to ask myself, is this actually ethical and correct? It's borderline, I think.
| |
Shaan Puri |
So here's a couple of interesting bits:
GameStop stock is currently $28 as of recording this. If the stock hits $70 a share, he is a billionaire. Insane! Which is just kind of incredible.
| |
Sam Parr | Insane. | |
Shaan Puri | The second thing that's really interesting here is some open questions that I have.
And I think if it's not obvious by now, we're noobs when it comes to this. We are not stock traders; we are not options traders. This is not the world we live in. Both Sam and I are startup guys. We build businesses; we start companies that are tech companies. This is not our game.
But I do have some very simple questions as a beginner here. If he's buying, basically, on average, I think $2 to $2.5 million worth of options per day for the last, like, you know, 11 days or something like that...
| |
Sam Parr | Where'd the money come from?
| |
Shaan Puri | Where'd the money come from? This is a guy who didn't have money. He made a bunch of money in GameStop. How did he have the ability to buy like $60,000,000 worth of these calls he bought?
| |
Sam Parr | That's my... I think there's more behind the scenes.
| |
Shaan Puri |
He owns $5,000,000 of 5,000,000 shares of GameStop, which is worth $115,000,000, and then he has $65,000,000 worth of call options. So there are some theories on this. The first question is: how did he do this?
The theories are basically... I don't know if this is true, but here's a theory that this guy Jonah Lupton posted on Twitter:
| |
Sam Parr | So, he's... | |
Shaan Puri | He goes, "I'm trying to figure out how Roaring Kitty ended up with $180,000,000, or what's now $210,000,000, of GameStop."
Here's my best guess: in late April or early May, he sold most of his equity and loaded up on calls. Then he came back to social media, posted the meme, and it went up 300% in like, you know, 3 days.
If he sold his calls near the top, that would give him cash back, which he would then use to buy equity. Then he decided to do this game again recently.
He's basically using this scheme of like: sell equity, buy calls, sell calls at the top. Now you have a lot of calls, which are basically like a leveraged way to buy. Take that leverage, leverage the gains that you have, and now buy equity again.
You know, rinse and repeat, basically. So he's like, "This is insane! I've never seen anything like this before."
| |
Sam Parr |
His Twitter page, instead of the word "post," it should just say a dollar sign. That's his ATM. Every time he clicks that button, he's like... That's how much power this guy has, and it's insane.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, everything about him needs a rebrand. Roaring Kitty is now like the fierce lion. This guy is just legendary. I mean, the tweets about this are also just hilarious.
The one with Brandon Boyle, he put these up: "I'm telling my daughter that this was Warren Buffett." It's just a kid's picture of him wearing his purple cat shirt in his dad's home. Trung, your boy Trung, posted: "Here's Warren Kitty and his $180,000,000 GameStop position rolling up to the stock market tomorrow."
And it's the wheelbarrow with the guy from South Park with giant balls in the wheelbarrow. I mean, these are really pretty crazy.
Another one, Quiver Quantitative, is saying depending on how GameStop moves tomorrow, his net worth is about to pass the other great stock trader in history, Nancy Pelosi. She's currently at $245,000,000 estimated, he's at $210,000,000. And they said, "Two legendary investors at the top of their game."
| |
Sam Parr | It's great! This is a very captivating story.
| |
Shaan Puri | Well, there's the obvious question: what do you do about this?
During the first GameStop run-up, I went through the seven stages of grief... or rather, the seven stages of FOMO.
First, I ignored it. I thought it was irrelevant to me. Who cares? Then, I became dismissive. I said, "Why are you guys wasting your time on this? This is stupid. This is not like GameStop; you're not going to lose your money."
Next, I became jealous as all my friends made money doing this. All the random strangers on the internet who were doing this "dumb thing" were making money.
Finally, I went to chasing FOMO and bought $100,000 worth of GameStop during that last grade.
| |
Sam Parr | No way! Did you really?
| |
Shaan Puri | I think I made, like, I don't know what I made. I made like $50 or something like that off of it. I made like 50%. I sold and I got out, and then I became confused. Then I went back to ignoring it again, and that was my cycle.
So the question is, what am I going to do during this cycle? I already ignored the first "lean in" meme. I saw that, ignored it, didn't even know what to do with it. I didn't pay attention to the next two tweets either.
I should be entering jealousy. Currently, all I need is a few text messages, and I'll enter jealousy. Then I'll chase, and then I'll read the consequences of that. We'll see what happens.
| |
Sam Parr | I think you should do nothing.
| |
Shaan Puri | I will do nothing. That's the honest opinion.
| |
Sam Parr | I think that is a mature answer.
| |
Shaan Puri | Even making money last time didn't feel good. Have you ever read Annie Duke's book where she talks about this term called "resulting"?
She's a poker player, and it's the idea that you play a bad hand in poker but you get lucky. You know, on the river, you get your card. Then your conclusion from that is, "I'm a genius, and this was a good play." Unfortunately, for a lot of people, that is how they think. If something goes badly, they assume it was a bad decision. If something goes well, they assume it was a good decision.
When actually, the decision and the result are, in many ways, disconnected. You should be able to analyze a decision without only basing it on the result.
So similarly, even though I made money last time, I think that would be resulting to say that was a good idea. In fact, all I did was probably waste three days of my attention focused on this random sock that, who gives a shit?
| |
Sam Parr | So, there's one person in this story that's not being discussed right now, and I think that over the next handful of months, he's going to be a lot more famous. That person is **Ryan Cohen**.
Ryan Cohen is most famous for starting **Chewy.com**, which was a pet food company. My co-founder, Joe, my business partner, also owned a pet food company first, and then Chewy.com came about. Their whole thing was, "We're going to raise $100 million, and we're going to spend like crazy on marketing. We're going to lose money on our customers for a long time, and we're going to provide such a wonderful experience that hopefully they come back to us and they like us so much."
Whatever he was right about, Ryan Cohen was right. Chewy.com worked. My partner Joe's company went out of business, and Chewy.com became a huge success. Ryan sold it for **$3.5 billion**.
When he made his money, I think he made roughly **$500 million**. He put virtually 100% of it into two stocks: **Apple** and **Wells Fargo**. There was this big article written in the *Wall Street Journal* about him, and that's when we started learning that Ryan Cohen is kind of... he's different. Not just among the average person, because he started and sold a company for that much money. He's different even among crazy people who are talented enough to do that. | |
Shaan Puri | **David Goggins** is uncommon among uncommon men.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, and so he starts becoming an activist investor. He begins buying stakes in companies that he thinks aren't doing so well. | |
Shaan Puri |
So, well, let's do the numbers:
- He put $250,000,000 into Apple in 2017. That stake is now worth over $1,000,000,000. Wow!
- I don't know what happened with the Wells Fargo one.
- He put $76,000,000 into GameStop back when it was like $4-$5 a share.
- So he owns 13% of the company... no, 10%... 10.5% now.
| |
Sam Parr | He's also the CEO now. So, he's been in... he's actually running the company now.
| |
Shaan Puri | That's bought himself a job.
| |
Sam Parr | It's working. He did the same with Bed Bath & Beyond, which was, for a minute, another meme stock.
He would buy, I believe, if you buy a larger than a 5% stake in a publicly traded company, you have to reveal it; you have to disclose it. He’s done that a few times and has become an activist investor. If he buys 5% of your company, that means something's going wrong, as in management is screwing up, but the company has potential.
Then Wall Street Bets and the rest of these crazy, degenerate retail investors see it and they buy into the company.
Anyway, Ryan Cohen has been present for all of this. Ryan Cohen is only 37 or 38 years old; he's a young guy. As of right now, I believe he's still the CEO of GameStop.
I'm very curious to see what's going to happen with him over the next handful of months. I would love to get him on the podcast because I think he is a guy who is not just interesting for his Chewy business, but I think that he thinks very, very differently and is very strong-willed. We're going to see a lot from him over the next handful of months, I think.
| |
Shaan Puri | He only follows one person on Twitter, who unfortunately is not Roaring Kitty. It's just the GameStop corporate account.
| |
Sam Parr | Is that what?
| |
Shaan Puri | You mean, really, you should follow Roaring Kitty. He should either swap it or go to 2 followers on Twitter. Ryan, that's my only criticism of you; otherwise, I have no notes. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, so it's just a crazy story.
| |
Shaan Puri | Well, where is this guy now? Where is Keith Gill?
| |
Sam Parr | In the movie, he was in Massachusetts. And what do you know about Massachusetts in the wintertime? It's the worst, right?
| |
Shaan Puri | **Cold. Bitter.**
| |
Sam Parr | Cold, horrible. He disappeared for the last 2 or 3 years in Massachusetts during the wintertime. Very uninspiring. This guy just made a huge bet; he needed some inspiration.
| |
Shaan Puri | Where do... | |
Sam Parr | You think he would be going out?
| |
Shaan Puri | He should **voyage** around... No, that's not quite the right word. He should **scamper** around... No, no, no.
| |
Sam Parr | That's not it. That's not the right word.
| |
Shaan Puri | What do you think? He should wander around.
| |
Sam Parr | He should wander around. And that's today's sponsor, **Wander.com**. That was a good plug!
So, what is **Wander**? What is **Wander.com**?
| |
Shaan Puri | So, Wander is a dope business. Both you and I invest in this because we are big believers in it. We both like to travel, but when we travel, it's like you have a couple of options.
The normal options are: you go to a hotel, and you're like, "Okay, great! I'm staying in this kind of place. I get all the luxury amenities and the service, but I'm in this tiny box."
Or, you go to a vacation rental, maybe on a [short-term rental platform like] Airbnb or something like that. You might get a bigger space, you might get more rooms, and it feels like a home. But now, you don't have the service. It's like a box of chocolates; it's very hit or miss what you're going to get.
| |
Sam Parr | I was an Airbnb host, and I could tell you my internet was definitely the cheapest internet that money could buy. It was not very good.
| |
Shaan Puri | Sam's stunning views are right outside the windowsill, where his plants are.
| |
Sam Parr |
Yes, it wasn't great. So Wander basically operates a bunch of really fancy, luxurious properties that you could stay in. They built it so it's kind of geared for remote workers, but also high-end stuff. So every... or most of their properties have gyms, they've got work desks set up, so yeah.
| |
Shaan Puri |
Check this out. So I'm looking at a trip right now that I was gonna take with my family because I wanna, you know, get out of the house a little bit. I was originally planning for a hotel, but a hotel... I now have 3 kids that are under the age of 5, and a hotel room now is actually Guantanamo Bay if you put all 5 of us in a room.
Like, we just put the "Do Not Disturb" sign up there out of shame. We're like, "Don't come in here. You don't wanna know what's going on in this room." This room is like chaos, right?
| |
Sam Parr | Now, disturbed... yeah.
| |
Shaan Puri |
You know, it's Guantanamo Bay in there, so that's not working. But I would still want to be able to get shit done. So, like, check this place out. I'm showing you this one that's at Bandon Beach.
So Wander has this location... look how sick this is! All of their places are like this. They're just... pure. It looks like it's straight off of Pinterest or Instagram. It's like... it looks like a...
| |
Sam Parr | It looks like a desktop, like a screen.
| |
Shaan Puri | Look at just the work setup, the work desk setup at this place. It's like you have the standing desk, a big monitor, and an Apple keyboard. They say, "We have fast internet, for real." They're like, "We have a Razer mouse for you." They have everything.
It's like, "Here's where you could do the podcast, here's the gym, here's the views, and here's the beds."
| |
Sam Parr | This one has a sauna too.
| |
Shaan Puri |
They have like 24/7 concierge, they have a cleaning service, they have everything. Versus, you know, you have to do it all yourself. It's like you want to stay in a home, but it shouldn't feel *too* homey. Right? In the same way that you don't want your meat to be gamey. It's like... I kinda do like the luxury stuff, and that's why I like Wander.
So if you're looking to travel, check them out: Wander.com. They have amazing properties. I think like 200 now? These guys are growing really fast. They grew to about 200 locations in like 18 months or something insane.
| |
Sam Parr | Well, that's the plug. That was a great plug.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, if we don't say so ourselves.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, that was a great plug. **Wander.com**—check it out!
Sean, you've been gone for three and a half or four weeks now. How have you been?
| |
Shaan Puri | Paternity leave is harder than working, for sure. I couldn't wait to be done with it.
I've realized a few things about myself. One thing I've realized is that I love being an uncle and I love being a fun dad. However, being the primary caretaker of kids is so hard. Whoever created this myth of "you stay at home with the kids and I'm going to go do the work" is the greatest marketer of all time. That is a great reframe of what's actually going on.
It is so much work to be at home with kids, but it's great. Everybody's healthy, everybody's happy, so I'm feeling good.
| |
Sam Parr | Did you do any work over the last [time period] since your kid was born?
| |
Shaan Puri | Not really, no. Just a few voice notes here and there.
Did you enjoy that?
No, like I told you, I am again, like I did other work. It's just work that's more like changing diapers and cleaning up spit-up.
| |
Sam Parr | Stuff like that, like a lack of screen or a lack of thinking about business.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, so one thing I did do is I shifted to doing a lot more creative stuff. I read a lot more, which I normally don't do because I feel pretty unproductive if, in the middle of the day, I'm just like, "Yeah, I'm gonna take a couple of hours and just curl up on this couch and read a book." That seems completely unproductive, even though for my job and my life, it actually can be really productive for what I do.
But I just have guilt when I do that. So in this case, I had no guilt. I started playing the piano again, which was just a fun thing I could do with my kids. I'm playing the piano, swimming with my kids all the time, and reading books. I started working on some comedy stuff that I'd always wanted to do, just dabbling in like, "Oh, how would I do this?"
I went and saw a stand-up show and I went to see a play—just stuff I wasn't doing before that was very much more in an art and creativity mindset versus productivity.
Did you go by yourself?
No, I took my mom to the comedy show and I went to the play with some friends. The play is actually pretty interesting. Have you seen or heard about the Lehman Brothers play?
| |
Sam Parr | I saw you share it. Yeah, I think that, I mean, it sounded awesome. I've never heard of it other than your share.
| |
Shaan Puri | So, I feel like I wish there were more of these things. This is really cool.
There’s a Broadway play that’s basically the Lehman Brothers story. What I thought it would be is the 2008 crash; I thought it would be "The Big Short" but as a play. I was like, "Oh great, 'The Big Short' as a play? I'm in!" But that’s not at all what it is.
It’s basically the story of the Lehman Brothers. The play ends on the first day of the crash; it doesn’t even show the crash. It’s implied—you already know what happens with the crash. It covers the 100 years before that, detailing how the Lehman Brothers became one of the four biggest investment banks in the country.
It’s a pretty wild play because there are only three actors in the entire production. It’s three and a half hours long, which is way too long, to be honest. But these actors are super talented; they basically carry this thing for three and a half hours.
It’s also pretty fascinating because I did not know this history. It’s kind of like reading a biography but as a play. When I watched it, I was pretty inspired. I thought, "I wish there were more business entertainment like this." I am really into things like this. If I was this interested in the Lehman Brothers story, which I was not curious about before, I feel like there could be a hundred times more content like this. I’m kind of inspired to try to get basic...
| |
Sam Parr | That would be the greatest pivot ever. Not quite a pivot, but I think you should 100% explore this. I think that would be awesome.
| |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, I am exploring this, not only as a play. I'm not sure if a play is the exact form factor, but something more in this style of content. Not tweet, newsletter, podcast, YouTube... I think the whole world was tweet, newsletter, podcast, YouTube, and I'm just like, "I feel lame doing it." Whereas if I did something like this - like a grand creative act - I think it would be a lot more fulfilling. A lot higher risk too.
| |
Sam Parr | What's the play called?
| |
Shaan Puri | The Lehman Brothers Trilogy, I think.
| |
Sam Parr | And who wrote it? Did you research?
| |
Shaan Puri |
Yeah, I started looking into them and I started trying to figure out how successful this thing is. I started doing the thing, right? I'm counting the seats during one of the two intermissions of the play because it's 3 and a half hours long. They have 2 intermissions. I'm trying to figure out:
- How successful is this thing?
- How long has it been running?
- And all that stuff.
| |
Sam Parr | So, what's the background? I'm trying to look it up now. There's not... not many people have written about it.
| |
Shaan Puri | I think it started in London and then it kind of fanned out.
| |
Shaan Puri | This was opening night at the San Francisco location that I went to, and to be honest...
| |
Shaan Puri | There were a lot of empty seats, but I also didn't understand because when I went to buy tickets, there were like no tickets available. So I think either they screwed up their ticketing system or I don't know why half the seats were empty.
But yeah, anyway, my point is I think there should be more events like this, and I kind of want to create it. I'm also slightly intimidated because I'm like, I really have no idea where I would start. I've never done anything like this.
And so, which is a good feeling to be in because I know the answer is, well, you just start putting one foot in front of the other.
Like today, it's the Moyse quote that I've shared a hundred times on this podcast, which is: "Today I know nothing about deodorant, but in six months, I'll know everything there is to know about deodorant." That's how I would have to approach this because I know nothing about this.
| |
Sam Parr | Have you ever read the story about Sylvester Stallone and *Rocky*? He was a nobody, and he wanted to make this movie. He wrote the screenplay.
| |
Shaan Puri | No, no, no. The story's even better than that. He did not want to write a movie; he wanted to be an actor.
| |
Sam Parr | That's right.
| |
Shaan Puri | And he goes to auditions, and he keeps getting turned down. They're like, because I mean, if you hear Sylvester Stallone talk, his voice is like... his mouth moves in a weird way, and his voice is sort of strange.
So he just kept getting "no's." Instead of just taking the "no" and saying, "Well, I guess I'm just not cut out for this," he's like, "If they won't put me in a movie, I'll put myself in a movie." This is one of the greatest "big dog" moves anybody could ever have, right?
The opposite of "no"—small boy stuff—is to say, "If they won't cast me, I'll cast myself." He hates writing, so he's never written a movie before, and he actually hates writing. He's not good at it.
But the best part of the story is that he just ratchets up the intensity to level 12. He decides, "I don't know how to do this, so why don't I just not come out of this house until I've written the screenplay?"
So he wakes up, saying, "I'm gonna start writing. I'm not gonna do anything else. I will not leave this house until this is done." That's the only way I know I could force myself to get through the thing I don't like to do, which is writing.
| |
Sam Parr | How long did it take him?
| |
Shaan Puri | And he goes even further. He paints the windows black. He's like, "Not only will I not leave my house, I don't want to be able to look out the window." So he literally painted his windows black.
This has become a phrase that I use with Ben a lot, which is, "Yeah, let's paint the windows black on this." This means how do you have a phrase for what it means to turn the intensity knob up all the way where it breaks, and you're just holding the knob, and now the intensity's stuck at level 12? That's painting the windows black.
Then, in three days, he wrote the first version of the script for *Rocky*. The story gets even better. I don't know all the details, but here's the rough version of the story. I apologize if I get something wrong.
He goes to sell it, to get the movie made now, and actually, they like it. They're like, "We like this!" And he's like, "Awesome! I'm Rocky." They're like, "Not that part. We like it, but you're not Rocky." And he's like, "What?" He's like, "No, I'm Rocky. That's why I wrote this thing."
I think they were like, "You know, you could do this other role." He's like, "No way! Give me my script back." And they're like, "Look, look, we'll give you $200,000."
| |
Sam Parr | They offered up $300, which is the equivalent of $1,000,000 today. He said, "I had $106 in my bank account."
| |
Shaan Puri | In the bank account, he turns it down. Things are pretty rough. He ends up selling his dog to make ends meet.
| |
Sam Parr | What a dick.
| |
Shaan Puri | What a dick! He sells his dog, but I think he also couldn't afford to feed the dog because he couldn't really afford to feed himself either. So, he sells his dog.
| |
Sam Parr | What are you going to sell your kid?
| |
Shaan Puri | He had $100. Then he finally sells the thing for $25 or something—way less than what he was going to get. After "Rocky" comes out and it's a success, he goes back and buys the dog back for $35 because the guy was like, "No, I like this dog." He just makes him an offer he can't refuse: "I could give you $35,000 for this dog back."
That is the story of "Rocky," which is insane because the story of how "Rocky" got made is more inspiring than the actual story of "Rocky" in the movie.
| |
Sam Parr | And he wins an Oscar that year.
| |
Shaan Puri | Maybe that's my first play. It's the story of Sylvester Stallone writing "Rocky."
| |
Sam Parr |
That's a great idea! And he goes to the Oscars, they win the Oscars, and he goes, "Ten months ago, I was a valet driver. I was parking cars. I'm here at the Oscars today." This is a great story. This is *your* story.
| |
Shaan Puri |
To the half a million people that are gonna listen to this: **do not steal my goddamn idea**. We're leaving this in. Don't steal my idea!
That's actually the beauty of this... no one's gonna steal my idea because who the hell is gonna go try to make a play?
| |
Sam Parr | You turned me on to this guy on Twitter. I don't know, I think his name is Zach Prod.
So, Zach is this guy who's like a 210-pound beefcake. He's a big guy, which means if you look like a donkey, you're not exactly going to think, "This guy's going to be a good long-distance runner." But it turns out he likes running, and he's run the marathon now under 3 hours, which is really fast, particularly for someone who's that huge.
He's got this whole shtick called the "Year of Obsession." All he does is tweet out things like, "If I could, I would just run and lift weights 24 hours a day. I'm so sad I have to sleep." He tweets crazy things like that. It is a little cringe, but I think it's more inspiring, to be honest, than it is cringe. I actually think it's quite awesome.
I do think that crazy people like that are pretty cool. But that's what your life needs to be over the next year: the Year of Obsession.
| |
Shaan Puri | **Paint the windows black, baby.**
| |
Sam Parr |
His whole thing is he does a running club in New York City every Monday at 7 AM. All these people meet and go for runs with him. He goes, "Here are the rules: you've got to be at this place at 7 AM, we're gonna run this many miles, and then we're gonna sprint afterwards. And you must wear black."
So his whole thing is everyone who's following him or who's into this, they put a little black emoji next to their name. I think it's awesome.
That's what you need to do. You already wear the black t-shirts, now you gotta paint the windows black and you're gonna write the Sylvester Stallone story.
| |
Shaan Puri | Yeah, that's really good. By the way, you said this thing about run clubs. What's the deal with run clubs nowadays? I feel like I'm getting my Seinfeld on... "What's the deal with run clubs?"
I saw this TikTok that really spoke to it. This guy posts and he goes, "Was there like a thing? Did I miss something? Maybe you know, the pandemic was a pretty crazy time. I was inside for a lot. Did something happen where everybody started running?"
He's like, "Everybody I know runs now, and that's cool. Running's good, but why did everybody decide to start running? And why are the run clubs an insane thing now?"
Have you been paying attention to this?
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I have, and I'll explain to you what I think happened. So basically, there's this guy, Nick Bare. We had Nick Bare on the podcast. I don't think you've ever met Nick, have you? Yeah, maybe we... I did.
| |
Shaan Puri | One with him. Yeah, but then I tried to leave. You know, it's kind of like when your roommate hangs a sock on the door. I was like, "Okay, let me leave Sam alone with..."
| |
Sam Parr | The beefcake.
| |
Shaan Puri | Like, you guys can admire each other's nipples for the next hour and a half. That's cool. I'll just take the pot off.
| |
Sam Parr | Nick Bare is a beefcake amongst beefcakes. He looks like... if you like...
| |
Shaan Puri | He's the Wagyu version of the obsession guy.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, if you were to take a Greek statue and put it into a white guy who's raised in the Midwest, it would look like Nick Bare.
So, Nick Bare owns Bare Nutrition, which is a supplement company. He has this schtick called the "Hybrid Athlete." The hybrid athlete basically means someone who likes to lift weights and run. Typically, runners don't look great; they often look very skinny. You could be "skinny fat" and still be a great runner.
His whole deal was, "I'm going to lift weights while I run." He's been doing this for many, many years now. He has 1 or 2 million followers on YouTube, and I think he helped popularize this concept.
Now, a lot of young men who like to lift weights are saying, "I actually want to go running as well." They've made it popular to go running, and it's also a very social thing. In Austin, run clubs have been getting very popular.
On the trail that I would walk, ride my bike, or run, you see tons of groups of runners. It's very popular, and you're starting to see it pop up in other cities. In fact, the woman who runs my little project, Sam's List, used to work for a company that was trying to make money on run clubs. I think that's a stupid idea because I believe it's incredibly challenging to make money off that. But it's a cool idea that they exist.
| |
Shaan Puri | Cool, guys. Start running, right? Influencers. So, have you seen this one in Austin called the Raw Dog Run Club?
| |
Sam Parr | No, that sounds awesome! The branding is...
| |
Shaan Puri | It's a run club, beautifully done. The branding is amazing.
So, go to [instagram.com/rawdog](http://instagram.com/rawdog) (spelled D-A-W-G). Here's the profile: Rawdog, Austin, Texas.
**Sexy faces at sexy paces**. Saturdays at 8 AM. The location is posted weekly. It's open to all, just show up!
| |
Sam Parr | I've seen this guy, yeah.
| |
Shaan Puri | Look at the photos. The photos of this... it's Coachella, it's Lollapalooza, it's every festival you've ever seen. But they're just running instead of, you know, drinking and listening to music. They made it really fun. They made it sexy.
I love the branding of this. This is kind of like the pink window washing branding level thing. I've never done this, and I would never do this because I hate running. But I really respect the way these guys are building the community and the brand around this.
If you want to go down a kind of interesting branding and community rabbit hole, study these guys. I think they're doing a lot of things right. Go look at their TikToks, go look at their Instagram, go look at their website. Go look at everything that they're doing, and I think that they are doing a lot of things well.
I also think that if I'm one of these influencers, like a Cody Ko or whoever, I would 100% lean into making a national run club. You know, the way we're doing our MFM meetups, which, to be honest, we didn't do anything, so we should take zero credit for this. But the way that the community started self-organizing MFM meetups so that a bunch of like-minded dreamers and schemers get together in some city and they hang out, they get to learn about each other's businesses.
It has nothing to do with us, but we were the reason that they got together, that they found each other. From there on, they had their own little community, which is really great.
And by the way, we should shout out... I don't know what the URL for that is. It's like getriver.com or something.
| |
Sam Parr | I don't know if you...
| |
Shaan Puri | Wanna go to a meetup? You should do it! I think that is one of... not GetRiver.com for sure. That is something else altogether.
| |
Sam Parr | What is that? It's called GetRiver.io.
| |
Shaan Puri | I think I just opened up an OnlyFans, basically.
| |
Sam Parr | It's GetRiver.io, and if you go to the website, you'll see I think we're on the front page, so you'll see it.
| |
Shaan Puri | August 1st, there are meetups in the San Francisco Bay Area, wherever, right? So, getting people together in real life for a real-life experience off of your online community, even though you're not there as the creator, I think is a really smart move for whoever does that.
Whoever, like, you know, if I'm Nick or if I'm Cody Ko, if I'm one of these guys, I'm going to lean into that because it deepens people's connection and relationship with you. It creates this kind of grassroots movement.
And if you end up building a business around that, right? Because you could sell, you know, those products that people have. What are those things? Like goo and like what else? All the products, right?
| |
Sam Parr | Or the electrolyte drinks, by the way. So the club that you're referring to, Rawdog, they're based in Austin. The guy who started it, they're all young kids, so they look like they're 23, 24, 25. He actually works for Nick Bare and he's a former professional bodybuilder. So it is sort of rooted in that.
And in this, like, 20 people who have kind of started this thing, there's another good example. We talked to Jesse Itzler. He didn't tell us too much information, but do you know this thing called Jesse Itzler? He started a company with this other guy, and the other guy recently joined Hampton, and that's how I got to talk to him.
The name of the business is the height of Mount Everest, so it's 29, 29,029. I don't know if you pronounce it 29029; I don't know how you exactly pronounce it. But they do 8 figures a year in revenue. What they do is they have these events all over the country, and they pick a really tall hill or mountain. You climb up that short mountain as many times as it takes to equal Mount Everest.
So it's like all their shtick is that you can climb Mount Everest, or at least the height, without actually having to go to Asia and do that. It's a great company; these guys do really well. I think they have 100, for sure dozens of events throughout the year, and it's one of the events that I've seen that's killed it.
I've always been interested in these racing events. For example, Ironman. Right before COVID happened, Ironman was acquired by a Chinese billionaire, and they've tried to make it significantly larger. I think they've done a good job of that.
Some of these events are actually really fascinating. Have you heard of this other one called, I think it's called the Country Marathon? Have you ever... no, or no, sorry, maybe it's called the Rock and Roll Marathon? But anyway, what it was is in Nashville, they had this where for 26 miles, every mile they had a band play. So it was called, like, is it called the Rock and Roll...? | |
Shaan Puri | Rock and rock and roll running series, I see.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, and I believe that business was acquired for **nine figures**. It started as a kind of small niche thing where they had music every mile.
There are actually some really interesting endurance event businesses where they just have one cute stick on it, and that makes it kind of cool. There's another one called **The Speed Project**. Have you seen **The Speed Project**?
So, listen to this: **The Speed Project** doesn't have a website. You can find it on Instagram, but it's invite-only. The race has, I think, only one or two rules.
The race starts at the **Santa Monica Pier**, and you either go by yourself or with a four-person crew to make it to **Las Vegas**. The rules are basically: you can get there any way you want, but you have to be running. So, you can't get in a car; you have to run the whole time.
Number two, you just gotta get there. You can take any route, and there's no website other than the fact that you have to be invited to do it. They don't really announce when it's going to happen, and whenever it does happen, it kind of goes viral. You see a handful of influencers who are like, "What is **The Speed Project**? Why are they there?"
It's super fascinating. My friend did it and got second place.
| |
Shaan Puri | I have two things to say about this.
**Number 1:** If you're the type of person that likes to organize events and you're world-class at it, hit me up at [email protected]. I have a small Google Doc of ideas that I thought would make for a really awesome event—something that would just be fun and exciting if it existed. However, I will never do the work myself to organize these.
**Number 2:** What is the "pickleball" of running? I'll let you ponder that.
What I mean by that is, pickleball took tennis and made it faster, cheaper, smaller, and more accessible to all ages and sizes of people. So, who is going to do that for running? Who can make running less of a marathon or an Ironman? I mean literally the other direction. Who's going to shrink it down? It might just be sprints. Maybe sprinting is more like pickleball.
| |
Sam Parr | I was a sprinter in college. There are no sprint events for grown men, and sprinting is way better for you anyway.
| |
Shaan Puri | **Hamstring insurance is needed for sure if you're going to put adults in, like, "Hey, just come out here and sprint."**
But I do think that there's got to be something like this. We made this joke on the podcast where I was at a dinner, and this guy goes, "Yeah, every Saturday morning we walk the trail. We walk a mile to our favorite brunch spot, we drink a beer, and then we play pickleball for an hour or something like that."
He's like, "I call it the suburban Ironman." I was like, "Holy shit, he's got something here with this branding of the suburban dad bod version of a fitness competition."
It's more about the fun and just getting out there and doing something. I think in the jobs to be done of what's going on in these races, you have many things that are being bundled. You have the fitness component, you have the social component.
I think a lot of these run clubs, by the way, have a big dating component because you want to meet people in a context where everybody's, you know, sweaty. It's sexy, and just, you know, everybody's in a positive vibes community. You're going to talk to everybody and approach anybody.
So you have the social, you have the fitness, you have the photo component, which is, "How do I do something that I can brag about on social media?" Right? How can I go post something on social media that makes me feel better than the average person? That's how Tough Mudder and Spartan Race became huge for them.
So I think there's a bundle of things that you're getting out of these. And then, you know, the last one is kind of like getting people out of the general feeling of softness in their life, which is very real. I think it's only going to increase over time as we spend more and more time on our devices, and AI makes our lives even more... you know, everything you want at the touch of a button.
People still want something difficult and physical to go do. So I think you can unbundle as part of that and maybe ramp up the social and tone down the physical, or ramp up the photo component. Whatever it is, I think you can unbundle that in a way.
| |
Sam Parr |
So let me tell you something really quick, and then we'll wrap up on this segment. Google "HYROX" (I think you pronounce it "hi-rocks"). It's spelled H-Y-R-O-X. Don't go to the website, just click on images.
This guy, I think his name is Christian, used to work for Ironman - the company, not the superhero. About 7 years ago, he started this thing called HYROX. They have events throughout the year as well as a world championship. The world championship just happened on Saturday.
| |
Shaan Puri | Oh, I saw this on Twitter. Somebody was like, "These high rocks things kill," and it was a photo that just looked massive in scale. It's like an airplane hangar or something. What is this thing?
| |
Sam Parr | So, they rented out this year; it was in Brooklyn. I imagine they rented out like a whole pier. The way it works is, I think the event changes every time, but I'm not exactly sure.
Basically, they rent out this huge area, and you have to do a series of five exercises in a row. The first person that wins, wins the whole thing. The exercises are something like lunges with a weight on your back, rowing a certain amount of meters, running a certain amount of miles, and then throwing a weighted ball in the air. You have to throw it in the air a bunch of times.
It's basically the "My First Muscle Challenge," but like real men. The winner did it in an hour, which means I imagine the race is an hour to three hours, depending on how slow you are.
If you look at the photos, it's all people wearing all black, and they're all smoking hot. Everyone who does this is good looking. It's sort of like CrossFit, but CrossFit kind of has a douchey component to it. This somehow tones it down and adds a New York, all-black, Brooklyn swag to it, and it's awesome.
So, Lance Armstrong competed in it this Saturday.
| |
Shaan Puri | It's literally the equinox version of CrossFit.
| |
Sam Parr | It's the | |
Shaan Puri | It's the equinox aesthetics.
| |
Sam Parr | Of CrossFit, I think they're killing it. This Ken Rideout, who was a guest on our podcast a few times, or once, I hung out with him recently. He was like, "Hey, I'm gonna be in New York. I'm gonna do this race." He got 3rd or 4th or something like that.
I went and looked at the Instagram of the people who won it, and it's their whole life. Now they're dedicating their life to this. When I saw that, I was like, "This business is gonna be huge."
It's like a lot of ex-college athletes who are like, "Oh, this is an interesting outlet where I can make a little bit of money and continue to train because I'm not good enough to be a professional at whatever sport I was doing."
I think this business is killing it, and I think we're gonna see a large exit from these guys.
| |
Shaan Puri | Very interesting, man. This is a much bigger space than I would have guessed.
| |
Sam Parr | For sure. I think you're seeing a COVID bounce.
I don't know about you, but as I work from home all day, I normally don't really like hanging out with people. However, I'm like, "I need someone to touch me." I just need a man to put his arm on my back and ask how I'm doing. You know what I mean? I feel like I need more touch and stuff.
And like, dude, if you're 22 years old and you're working remotely, I feel really sorry for you that you don't get to experience some of the things that we got to experience. I feel sorry for myself, frankly, that I'm still not experiencing it.
So, as someone who doesn't like to go to these events, now I'm like, "I want to go meet people. I need to go do this stuff. I need to find my tribe." I think that's what's happening.
| |
Shaan Puri | That's very cool! Yeah, this is a great, great segment. Can I leave you with one interesting thing that happened to me in our catch-up segment here?
I got a phone call the other day that kind of blows my mind and makes me feel simultaneously grateful, embarrassed, and inspired. You might be wondering what could possibly make me feel grateful, embarrassed, and inspired at the same time. Here's what happened:
Scott Harrison calls me the other day, and I see this voicemail from Scott Harrison. Scott Harrison is the founder of Charity: Water. He's been on the pod once, and he's an incredible guy. I've told his story before, but I'll leave that out for now. He's definitely somebody in my top five people I admire. If you said, "Which entrepreneurs do you admire?" I'd be like, "Scott Harrison is up there."
The short version of why is that the guy is using his entrepreneurial talents to kind of save the world in a way. He's providing clean water to people who don't have it. Once you see firsthand, you feel like something's wrong in the world that people don't have clean water to drink, bathe in, or for sanitation.
He's been doing it for a long time. He could be making himself rich some other way if he wanted to, but he decided to devote his life to this. The best part of why I admire him is because he didn't start that way. There are some people who do amazing things, and you're like, "They're just sort of born Mother Teresa." This guy was like a...
| |
Sam Parr | Partier, right? | |
Shaan Puri | **Party boy**... you know, he’s like, “I was living every deadly sin you could for a period of time, for 10 years of my life.” He decided to make a shift and ended up doing this.
Anyways, here’s the story: Scott calls me. I missed the call, so I call him back. “What’s up? Do you need something? Is there something I can help with for Charity: Water? What’s going on?”
He said, “Hey man, I’m listening to the podcast and I had some feedback for you. Unsolicited feedback.” I said, “Sure, hit me.”
He said, “You want to do this right? Like, you really like doing this?”
“Yeah, I love doing this. And this is like your thing, right? You want to make this your thing?”
“Absolutely! I think I could be great at this.”
He said, “You gotta say ‘less oof.’”
I was like, “What? Here, there, you heard it again?”
So I tell him, “What do you mean?” He said, “I was listening to this episode that you guys did. Great episode, but I think you said ‘like’ 700 times.”
I’m like, “Oh no, he’s right.”
And he’s like, “You know, I used to do the same thing. It’s hard to get rid of, but you can get rid of it. I wanted to tell you that I think you do it too much. It doesn’t add to what you’re doing. I think you could fix it, and you will be better if you fix it.”
I just wanted to tell you that.
And I was like, “Man, I had two thoughts. First, how do you get rid of this? How do I improve that? Is it like you said that you improved it? How did you do it? Was there some technique you did? Did you hire a coach? What’d you do?”
And he’s like, “Don’t worry about that. It’s just once it’s in your awareness, you’ll fix it.”
| |
Sam Parr | You're like, "I am worried about it."
| |
Shaan Puri | Basically, the answer was to pay attention to it, and you will obviously start to reduce it. You'll work on it; that's all. It'll just take reps.
The second thing I felt was, "Dude, thank you." I'm not that close with Scott Harrison. I like him; I would consider him a friend, but this was the first phone call in 5 years, let's say. We don't talk that often.
So for him to do that, the courage and the care it takes to call somebody and be like, "Yo, some feedback for you," I thought that was an incredible friend moment. I was, again, simultaneously grateful, embarrassed, and inspired by it. Since then, I've been thinking about this: how can I...
| |
Sam Parr | Just call and insult people. Call.
| |
Shaan Puri | People just ruin their day. No, I'm like... but like...
| |
Sam Parr |
Hey, [expletive]! I've been thinking about you. You're only 5'5"? We gotta add a few inches to that, dork. Radical candor out. Bye!
Oh my god, you're welcome.
| |
Shaan Puri |
No, seriously though, this is a gift. He gave me a gift, and I was thinking about this: how many of those gifts have I given people? Very few. Very few.
I think it takes a lot of guts to do that. I think it takes a lot of care to do that. There are different ways to show somebody you care, there are different ways to give, you know, an act of service for somebody. And I was like, this is one I can do. For the people in my life that I know, like me, would take it as a gift, I'm going to do that.
Of course, I'm sure that it can go the other way where some people do not take it well.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, Neville... Neville Madora, my best buddy, does that to me all the time. He'll be like, "Hey, can you come over for a few minutes?" And I'm like, "Yeah, sure." Then I'll go over and he goes, "Hey, so last Friday night..."
| |
Shaan Puri | Do you need something? He's like, "No, you do. Come over."
| |
Sam Parr |
Well, he goes, "Last Friday night I had a party over and this one woman brought her parents there. You did not let the mom talk nearly enough. You're kind of talking over her, and I think it made you look really dumb. And I don't think you are dumb."
He has done that to me so many times. That's one example. Another example: I stayed at his house and I didn't make his bed right. He goes, "Let me show you how to be a better guest in someone's home. Did you see how I had that bed made? Because, Scott, I really care. I need you to make it this way. Come, let's make it together. I'm gonna show you how to do it."
And that's what I...
| |
Shaan Puri | Expect from you. | |
Sam Parr | He does it all the time.
| |
Shaan Puri | That is amazing. Also, kind of big and dodgy there. I like that. But, well, he's older than me.
| |
Sam Parr |
He is kind of like an older brother to me. I've always looked up to him, but he's done... When I was about 25, I think, he stayed at my house. I had a towel that smelled like mildew, and I gave it to him to use. He goes, "Come here, Sam. Let me show you something. This is not how you treat guests." Or like... anyway. It's always really helpful. He's always said that to me, and I think it's great.
But I will say, I know you say "like" a lot. I kind of like it, to be honest.
| |
Shaan Puri | Oh no, I'm getting feedback. Whiplash! Wait, is this my thing? Maybe it's my thing.
| |
Sam Parr | We should do a charity thing with him. We should do something else.
| |
Shaan Puri | You weren't on that podcast when we did one. So, we did one where...
| |
Sam Parr |
I know, but we should do like a proper campaign. Just like the way we did "My First Muscle," we should do something. Whether it's that one... anyway, we should...
We've done a few things where we are kind of charitable, but not really. Whenever we do those, it's like the right thing to do and it feels good. We gotta do... we gotta do a little give-back thing.
| |
Shaan Puri | And I'll post an update on the one that we already did, which was the campaign that went to India. We provided clean water and wells to people in India, and I think we raised something like $50,000.
I want to provide an update on what happened with that and the impact, which is one of the key innovations that Scott had with his charity. He decided to change the way that charities work. He said, "I give money to charities, but I never hear back from them. I don't know what happens with the money." Then they just come back again the next year and ask, "Can we have more money?"
He wanted to create a closed loop so that when you donate, you actually get to see where the money goes and what impact it had. You get to see the photos. He literally installed little IoT devices, like flow meters, so that you can see the well you helped build. You can go in the app and literally see how much water is flowing through that well right now.
He did a lot of experiments like that to change the feeling people get when they give, where they actually get to feel the impact. His belief was that if people could see how much good it does, they would do more. He was totally right; that's why Charity: Water has raised so much money.
| |
Sam Parr | Alright, is that the pod that's...? | |
Shaan Puri | It’s the pod.
|