The Viral Marketing Strategy Behind Andrew Tate’s Rise To Fame (#463)

Shaan Puri

What else are the traits of the total man? The total man does not get caught up in BS drama. The total man does not act like a wussy. When things happen, you know, if David Goggins says, "I broke my foot," he responds, "Good! I'm finishing this 100-mile run." The stories they collect and pride themselves on are not about lifestyle balance. Recently, someone came over to my house and said to my wife, "It's okay to not be okay." I responded, "A total man would never say it's okay to not be okay." This is a lifestyle. You're turning into Sasha Fierce with that.

Sam Parr

Trying to calm down... Alright, we're live. I don't know who Sasha Fierce is, but I bet she's amazing.

Shaan Puri

It's Beyoncé. When she goes on stage, she has a stage character she calls **Sasha Fierce**. She gets into that mode, so no matter how she was before going on stage, she's like, "That wasn't me. I'm a new person now, and I'm doing my thing."

Sam Parr

it's hard

Shaan Puri

That's you. When you drink your Topo Chico, you take a big swig of that and you become Sam Fierce.

Sam Parr

where do you wanna go from here you drive

Shaan Puri

Alright, I got a couple of things that I want to talk to you about. I think this episode is not going to be for the faint of heart. I think it's not going to be for the sensitive. I want to talk to you about a concept that I've seen—two concepts that I've seen.

Sam Parr

the tie the the title of this episode is gonna be I'm not racist but

Shaan Puri

it's not illegal right

Sam Parr

like I'm not I'm not trying to be sexist but that's what this this episode is gonna

Shaan Puri

Okay, so let me tell you something. I'm doing this workshop that is clearly not a webinar today, right after this, with our boy Nick Huber. How many people signed up?

Sam Parr

can you

Shaan Puri

Take a guess. How many people signed up for a webinar? 100? 5,000 people have signed up for this.

Sam Parr

no shit really

Shaan Puri

Your boy pulls weight, I think is one conclusion. But the second conclusion is I got to see up close and personal how Nick marketed this thing. So, Nick does something I call "mob marketing." He basically angers the mob.

Sam Parr

nick who

Shaan Puri

Nick Huber is on Twitter, and his handle is @SweatyStartup. He has a big following, with a couple of hundred thousand followers. Some people love him, while a lot of people hate him. He's one of our only friends; we have this group chat of people who all got big on Twitter. He's the only one of us, I think, that gets death threats on a daily basis.

Sam Parr

dude his home address gets posted all the time

Shaan Puri

People will post his home address. They'll post pictures of his wife. They'll talk about how he's evil. They'll post on LinkedIn separately, not even tagging him, the next day saying, "He couldn't sleep at night just thinking about how much this bothered me," about what this guy said. He'll say things that definitely ruffle feathers. He does it. I would say there's some overlap. I can't decide. You know, it's hard to get into the mind of, like, you know, the Joker. Is that man?

Sam Parr

what's an example post

Shaan Puri

it's like someone who is so he'll be like

Sam Parr

I've never met someone who has purple hair and also has their life together he's like

Shaan Puri

I'm not saying it doesn't exist, but I'm 0 for 8. Some people think it's funny; some people will secretly kind of nod along but they'll stay quiet about it. Then a bunch of people are like, "Dude, what are you saying here?" and they're offended or they're offended on behalf of somebody else. And then he'll do that again. He'll be like...

Sam Parr

you know he'll he'll say I

Shaan Puri

I run my company and I have, you know, 20 people that are making $5 an hour in the Philippines. It's the best decision I made. Hiring my international staff has been, you know, an absolute game changer. I'm never hiring entitled Americans who care about A, B, and C again. You know, whatever. Then people are like, "What are you, anti-American?" And then they're like, "Wait, $5 an hour in the Philippines? Do you feel good taking advantage of this labor?" And I say, "Well, you know, I'm paying them double what they were making before. Otherwise, they wouldn't take this job. I'm not forcing anyone into anything." But okay, if you want to protect these people who like this job, okay, sure.

Sam Parr

but the. Is is he posts stuff that he knows

Shaan Puri

He knows how to ruffle feathers. He takes a very polarizing approach to it. I would say in our world, in the business world, this is not common. Elon [Musk] kind of does it, but not really. He's the only one I could think of that's like that. Maybe there are a bunch of other examples, but on the business side, it's not that common. On the political side, you see it with Trump. He has a very polarizing approach in politics.

Sam Parr

trump did it before he he was doing it as a business person

Shaan Puri

Well, I think he was... I don't know, maybe it was because his whole business career was kind of pre-social media, so it's hard to say, right? I think he always was this guy. But, you know, when you do it at dinner parties, it's very different than doing it out loud on Twitter where anybody, anywhere in the world can follow you and hate you. Tucker Carlson is like this. All of the media pundits that get really big, like Hannity and whatever, they take a very polarizing view on things. Ben Shapiro, right? And then you have Andrew Tate. This kind of leads me into a point. First, I kind of noticed this mob marketing tactic. I was like, "This is very effective." I don't know if I would want to do it. It sounds like, you know, a lot of firefighting. I've been able to make it work without doing it, so I don't really intend to go do this. But it is one tactic that does work. The other thing that I've noticed with this is it ties into this idea I call "Total Man." I think Total Man is a new lifestyle that is popping up, and I'd like to tell you about it. So here's the idea with Total Man.

Sam Parr

is this a trademark phrase I tried

Shaan Puri

To buy the domain, it's taken. I'd like to own this domain, and I think that this is going to be, or already is, the next big kind of lifestyle brand trend. It's whoever owns this "Total Man" thing. I think Andrew Tate kind of did it, so I'm a little bit late to the game here. But basically, if you look at the following individuals: David Goggins, Joe Rogan, Jocko Willink, Andrew Tate, Donald Trump, and even Nick Huber to an extent, they all subscribe to this "Total Man" lifestyle. So, what is the "Total Man" lifestyle? So here...

Sam Parr

did I get did I get left off that bullet.

Shaan Puri

You're like half of them. I think you definitely... you're not a total man, you're half man. But half man, you might be.

Sam Parr

2% milk yeah

Shaan Puri

you might be trying to get to that to that level okay so here's so my trainer even said this he's like he's like I'm just trying to live the qual like I wanna be a quality man and I wanna have this lifestyle and I thought quality man that's a good phrase and I I said let me just sharpen that a little bit total man I said what do you mean by that he goes he's like I just wanna have my finances like set I wanna have I wanna be wealthy I wanna I wanna be fit like I don't wanna be out of shape I don't think it's cool to be out of shape I'm gonna push myself to be in phenomenal shape and you know I found some other characteristics that he didn't say these but basically somebody who's unapologetic so you see this with nick when the bob comes at him he never apologizes or backs down he pushes back again trump does the same thing andrew tate does the same thing they double down instead of backpedaling so they're unapologetic why because they live by a code I think you do that too they live by a code it's an internal code and the internal code could be a little bit flawed like andrew tate does some wild stuff but the fact that they have a code is actually quite admirable I think people are attracted to somebody with a code because they themselves don't have a code and so you you it's sort of like life is easier when you're just around people who live by their code what else is traits of the total man the total man does not get caught up in bs drama the total man does not act like a wussy so when things you know if it like david goggins is like I broke my foot good I'm finishing this 100 mile run like and the the stories they collect and pride themselves on are not about lifestyle balance are not about like someone came over to my house the other day and they she said this to my wife she goes it's okay to not be okay and I go total man would never say it's okay to not be okay these are lifestyles right I think there's one lifestyle and so let me keep going he knows what he wants out of life and then he has it so it doesn't matter if what you want is a bugatti and you know 3 model girlfriends what matters is that you wanted it and you sort of whatever quote unquote manifested it I think that's another trait of these people that do this total man lifestyle and lastly they have strong hobbies joe rogan goes bow hunting you know goggins does pull ups for fun these people have strong hobbies and lastly they are charismatic and they care about being charismatic so to me I think that you're gonna see a bunch of mega influencers and a bunch of brands being built like in the same way that there's like right wing conservative like that became a lifestyle and an identity and then a bunch of brands got built for that population I think you're gonna see a bunch of people you're already seeing it with andrew tate and others david goggins and others that are trying to do this total man lifestyle and then build a bunch of products for other guys who wanna be in this want wanna be a part of this religion and I think about this

Sam Parr

And this isn't anything new. I'm reading the biography of **Arnold Schwarzenegger** right now, and you know, he... like something.

Shaan Puri

he would be in the church of the total man would do is go read a arnold or biography

Sam Parr

For France, yeah, well, I mean, he's an eclectic person. He was selling workout plans and things like that because people are like, "Oh, you're on the..." He would do these photoshoots in fitness magazines of him holding a surfboard on the beach in LA. In the biography, he's like, "I've never surfed in my life. I could barely swim. Look at me! Have you seen a bulldog swim? Like, it doesn't happen a lot." And he's like...

Shaan Puri

you

Sam Parr

I don't really like... I'm not like that. But people wanted to look like him. They wanted to be around these hot girls. They wanted to live in LA, and he would sell these plates. So, of course, this isn't anything new. We're just seeing a different generation. Here's what...

Shaan Puri

I think is new I have this belief that like almost everything that becomes a big trend is in response to the world being a certain status quo the other way it's a pendulum that swings and so you had an era where it was like the world was very conventional and traditional and blah blah blah and then you start to see a bunch of unconventional untraditional things and this is people having different genders and pronouns and purple hair and all all this stuff and you see a big a big movement in that direction and then you see like I would say therapy and empathy and all these words have never been more popular and amongst men and women and I think in response to that I think there's an undercurrent of people who feel like it's all too soft the world's getting too soft we need hard men we we need we need the total man and and so here's how I know it works everything I described is the opposite of toxic masculinity it is basically being a man became something that got labeled as toxic masculinity and now I think there's a bunch of people trying to take that back and be like hell no we embrace masculinity and so that's what I see happening is people basically flipping that on its head and be like I'm not I'm not gonna apologize for being manly in fact I'm gonna double down on it and then there's this wave of people who have been craving something like that and I'll give you the example I remember when snapchat came out and I underestimated snapchat at first I thought oh disappearing photos for kids and is this just for you know bleep pics like you know what what is this is this is this gonna be a real deal what I underestimated was that snapchat was the response the pendulum had swung at when snapchat came out facebook was basically at the peak of its powers or had like sort of like was was facebook and instagram were like the top and what facebook and instagram were were every photo is public every photo is permanent every photo looks good and just trying to make you look look cool and what was snapchat it was the exact opposite it was every photo is private every photo is impermanent and it lets because of that you get to be silly you get to let your hair down you get to just send goofy pictures instead of pictures that make you look cool and so that it there to me the need for a product like snapchat only be only came out because the world had got so instagramified so facebookified where everything was public permanent and and and pretty and so I think that you see this anytime you notice that the world goes in one direction you could sort of anticipate that 2 or 3 years later the counterculture response is gonna be there the opposite is gonna become popular and so this is like a way for me to get like when I think about how to be ahead of the curve on trends I start to think about what what feels dominant today and in 3 years what would be the opposite because I think there's gonna be an emergence of that counterculture what do you think of this am I just am I just doing fake astrology there trying to piece things together

Sam Parr

No, your theory, I think, is exactly right. You know, there are things that I've been interested in. Have you heard of the **Lite Phone**? It's L-I-T-E Phone. Yep.

Shaan Puri

I've looked into buying one because I... me too. That... why? Because we're so... [Please note that the transcription is incomplete and lacks context for full clarity.]

Sam Parr

heavy that our normal

Shaan Puri

phone is

Sam Parr

It's like a $300 phone, but it has a screen of a Kindle, so no colors. I think you can only download... I think it's just Spotify, I think it's just Google Maps, and then phone calling. You might be able to text, but you can only text like a Nokia. So you have to type in like... yeah, in order to do 'c' you gotta hit '1' three times.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

And it came out maybe 10 years ago, or was it 8 years ago? It didn't really hit right away, but it's getting more and more popular. Another one that I've been preaching about forever, and that hasn't entirely taken off yet, is DuckDuckGo. So, DuckDuckGo is a search engine. It's just like Google, but you can't be tracked. If you Google "DuckDuckGo internet searches," they actually have a graph, and you can see the number of searches per day. It is growing exponentially, right? So, your theory, I think, is totally right. I think anybody who's...

Shaan Puri

In fashion, or whatever, is gonna know this thing. But like, yeah, duh! When everything goes to skinny jeans, guess what's coming back next? Bell bottoms and whatever the loose, you know, the baggy stuff. They're the high-waisted, loose stuff or whatever.

Sam Parr

But you have an issue. Here's a flaw with this premise, this particular one. It's not a flaw; you're stuck in this California bubble, man. You gotta come to where I'm from in Missouri. I think this has been gaining momentum now for a little while. I think the difference is that California types, you know, the people who... if I'm from a place that's generally right of center, now the left of center people I think are also craving a bit more than before. Right before, it was like kinda cringey guys, and then they start evolving a little bit to being a little bit more holistic. So, for example, do you know who Andy Frisella is? Yes? So he's in our world, and technically we compete against him in the podcast charts. But I had no idea who he was. He’s the number one business podcast typically in the charts each week, and he talks a ton about politics and stuff. I believe he's right of center, but that's mostly a stereotype of just the way he looks and some of the phrasing that he uses. His podcast used to be called the MFCEO. Then I started listening to him, and I'm like, "Oh, you're way more eclectic than I originally judged you for." You're actually really interesting. I think that’s what's happening. There are people who don't entirely fit into the previous bubble of whatever I would stereotype these guys as being, right? Which is like lower IQ, big-ass meatheads. It's like, "Oh no, you're actually way more thoughtful than I thought."

Shaan Puri

Totally, I think that's completely true. So, yeah, I’m keeping an eye on this, and I think that they've been very successful. Like, David Goggins is kind of stunningly popular now, and the same thing with Andrew Tate.

Sam Parr

well so is jocko you saw

Shaan Puri

andrew did you see andrew tate came out of prison and did an interview do you see this interview on bbc

Sam Parr

just it ended mid interview didn't it

Shaan Puri

well there's a the full thing got posted on like rumble or something like that like what

Sam Parr

Yeah, no, I didn't watch it. I mean, it's kind of a headache. The thing about him is, like, if you listen to his messages, maybe 70% is good. You know, a man is someone who exercises; they give what they want. But then, like, there's 30% where I'm like, "Oh, bro, I don't want to be associated with that." Like, you crossed the line there. But yeah, some of the stuff he says is awesome.

Shaan Puri

so for example yeah the the the bbc so it's a woman she comes into his home and she's interviewing him and she goes you are you know how how can you say these things that are you know toxic and dangerous and whatever you've been named by the uk commission committee of whatever as the most dangerous man in the united kingdom you he's like dangerous man in the united kingdom he's like he's like he's like what am I preaching that that is so dangerous he's like he's like I don't I'm muslim I don't drink I don't do drugs I tell people don't drink don't do drugs I say work out I say work hard get rich and you know like like build yourself into a quality individual who lives by code and he's like you know that's what I that's what I preach what is dangerous about that and she's like well you said on an interview that if your wife does onlyfans you're entitled to have her earnings or whatever or like that you know if your wife is your wife that she is your your property as a man or whatever and he's like he's like did you listen to the actual interview she's like you said that that is that's what you said he goes yes but what's the context of the interview the context of the interview is or the context of the podcast is on me and several women are on a podcast were joking around because one woman says if my man owns a car and I'm dating him that's my car I own that property too and then he countered as a he's like he's like I basically as a joke countered if I'm dating a girl and she has an onlyfans then I I get half of that too and he's he's like well the same logic right and he he's like so that's what I said and she's like so you're saying it's a joke he's like yeah I'm saying you're taking it completely out of context and he's like you know he's kind of like trying to defend himself and they're arguing back and forth and then he's like he asked her a question and she's like no I'm asking the questions here he goes no no no you're in my house I invited you here I'm doing you the favor you know you're you've been begging me for interviews and I I let you in here we are equals there you do not hold any authority over me we are equals if I ask you a question you you you can choose to answer if you ask me a question I don't have to answer either you know that's how this is gonna it's a conversation and she like was like rejecting that premise and then you hear their handlers in the background that are all like getting really nervous about how the whole thing's going because it's like going off the rails

Sam Parr

the bbc handler or the oh handlers because it he he has them

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he has people who are like... I wouldn't say "handler" is the right word, but he has this kind of PR-type people who are like, "He's answered the question already. Why do you keep repeating the same question six times? Just move on to the next thing." Like, "Wait, you're stuck here. He's answered it. He's not going to answer it any differently. He's answered it five times now. Just move on to the next question." You could hear these voices in the background in the unedited version. Even when they take a break, they're like, "However, we gotta... the camera died. We gotta reset the batteries. Hold on." Then you could see what happens in the break. She immediately is just like, "No, just make eye contact." She's looking at her notes only and does...

Sam Parr

he go like good interview

Shaan Puri

I mean, and his aunt was like, "We don't have to do this. It's fine, it's fine." This is good actually. I want people to see how this goes. He's like, "I want people to see how the mainstream media... how they don't do their research, they lie," blah blah, and he's got his like spiel. But during the break, there's like maximum tension. It's like that's actually probably the most interesting part of the whole interview.

Sam Parr

So, I'm not convinced. Personally, I'm not willing to sign up for that. I don't want to deal with that headache. Agreed, I'm willing to make sacrifices in some parts, but not of my code. It's just that my code is not that hardcore, maybe that's the right way to put it. I've met a lot of people who run companies that are worth hundreds of millions, and some that are actually worth billions. I'll see them do certain things that are common now, like using phrases such as "bring your whole self to work." This is kind of a funny, controversial statement to some people because some say, "No, just bring your work self to work. We don't need any of this other stuff." Then there's a crew, and they'll do certain things that are typically categorized as "woke." I'm like, "Dude, I know you don't believe that." I see them say things privately like, "Yeah, but I want to win, and this is the game I have to play in order to hire all these people." I don't know how I feel about that. When I hear about it, I'm like...

Shaan Puri

Had a funny experience with this. So, when we got acquired by Twitch, now in a 2,000-person organization, Twitch literally has, I think, 5% of the staff with purple hair. I don't mean that as a knock; I just mean we're in San Francisco. We are the stereotype of what people talk about when they refer to left-leaning social media companies. People think that's about Twitter or Facebook, but I would say Twitch is probably more like that in terms of the staff. So, I'm in a meeting, and I joined about 3 minutes late, as I tend to do. I ask, "Do you have time?" There's a presentation on the screen, and I don't really understand what's going on. I'm like, "What is this presentation about?" I Slack somebody, and they're like, "Oh, it says it's just kind of updating our copywriting," or whatever. I'm like, "Oh, copywriting! I love copywriting. What are we talking about?" It was talking about how we use gender from now on. They said we only say "they," and then, woof! They were talking about women, and they said, "We don't say 'women'; we say..." and they spelled this word: W-O-M-X-N. And I was like...

Sam Parr

I was

Shaan Puri

Like, how do you even say that? What is "woman's"? I don't know what that is, or is it just "women"? What do you say for that? And like, this is now how we say this. I was like, "What does that mean?" Sorry, dumb question, but like, who’s offended and what does this mean? I was like, "Oh, this is inclusive of people who were maybe not biologically born women but now are women." So this is like the inclusive term. I was like, "How do you say this?" And all of a sudden, I could feel a bunch of heat on me. Like, why are you asking all of these questions? There’s kind of an undercurrent in the way I'm asking the questions, which is sort of like, "Are you sure?" That's kind of all I was thinking. I was like, "Wow, this is overnight. We're just changing. Like, we don’t say that and now we say this. This is a pretty big change, no?" And so I'm hearing this, and I'm like, "Okay, I guess, you know, that's cool." And then the funny thing is, the company that tweeted out for International Women's Day, they tweeted out "International Womxons Day" or whatever, right? They tweeted it out like that.

Sam Parr

uh-huh

Shaan Puri

And then they got tons of blowback from the transgender and LGBTQ community, being like, "Don't use that phrase. Just call us women. Why are you trying to make us seem different?" I was like, "Oh my God, they backfired!" Their attempt to, you know, placate actually backfired. I was like, "Wow, this is really... there are a bunch of landmines." I don't know, you don't even know.

Sam Parr

but then what if the executive were you like hey executive team what are you thinking

Shaan Puri

You can't ask that, but I was like, I said it in a different way. I said, "We're talking about questions." I was like, Amazon has this thing where, when you are doing your yearly planning, one of their questions is, "What are the dogs that are not barking yet?" It's from this old Sherlock Holmes story. A crime occurs in a house, there's a break-in, and there are no clues. Sherlock can't figure it out, and he figures it out because he's like, "Well, the dog was here, right? Surely the neighbor heard the dog." And they're like, "No, the dog didn't bark." He's like, "Ah, that's it! That's the clue, Watson." And Watson's like, "What?" He's like, "If the dog didn't bark, it's because he knows who the intruder was. That means this was an inside job." So he figures out who it was because of the dog not barking. So they have this thing in Amazon, which is when you're doing your annual planning, they said, "What are your dogs not barking?" Basically, like, "What are you not hearing that is actually telling you something?" Or it's a different way of saying, "What is something that's not being said out loud but could signal something that's worth talking about?" So I said, "I think we should decide how woke we're gonna be and like where, like, is there a line? What does that mean? Who do we want to be?" We should say it out loud what we want to be. Then literally, my Slack just blew up. It was like DMs being like, "Abort! Oh, fucking don't say this! Don't bring this up! What are you saying, dude? This is like, you know, a suicide mission." One girl goes, "I didn't appreciate that. We don't use the word woke anymore." And I go, "Who? I go, we? Like, there's a company policy you can't use the word woke?" I was like, "I didn't even mean it as an insult. I thought it's just like a..." Yeah, because at the time, it really wasn't. This was many years ago, like four or five years ago now. "Woke" became a little bit more derogatory over time. At first, it was "stay woke." It was like the kids were saying it as like, "Yo, if you're not, you're not like awake to what's really going on."

Sam Parr

dude I think twitter had t shirts that said stay woke yeah it was like a positive

Shaan Puri

Thing, and then it turned into a criticism later. So somewhere in the middle of that, I was like, "We should decide on 'woke.'" And she's like, "We don't use the word 'woke' anymore." So I said, "I appreciate if you don't do that." I go, "Who’s 'we'? Is there a committee that decides what words we can say? That sounds pretty non-woke to me." Then she links me a Vox article. I'm like, "Oh, you read this Vox article and you decided that I can't say this?" I was like, "Oh, this is just too much for me." There was only one piece of advice that I needed. It was a piece of advice I got on this podcast from a guy very early on, Daniel Gross. He's a super smart guy who got acquired by Apple. I asked him, "What was that like in that acquisition? You were there for three years. What was the best advice you got about navigating that?" He goes, "Don't give yourself brain damage." I go, "What?" He goes, "Yeah, when you get acquired, it's a really tempting thing as an entrepreneur to think, 'I see things that are wrong in this organization,' or 'I'm going to be a challenger voice and not just another person who follows the company line. I'm going to challenge maybe our innovation cycle or our policies or anything. I'm going to be the one who brings change.' He goes, 'It's just brain damage. Don't try it.'" I was like, "Oh, I'm doing it. I'm giving myself brain damage."

Sam Parr

how'd the woke story end

Shaan Puri

It ended with that one person telling me, "We can't say these words anymore," which was backed up by nothing. I was like, "Oh cool, so you read this article and you decided that I am not allowed to ask this question? Okay, gotcha. Just clarifying. Great, thank you." You know, [they were] whatever... head of [some] important thing inside the company. Like, "Yeah, I'm glad that... I'm glad this is how this works." You know?

Sam Parr

Do you think, without calling him out, that Emmett, who is the CEO, seems... I don't know him, but he seems like an awesome guy. However, I don't know if you can answer this without calling him out. What do you think he thinks, or someone like him? Can I say someone like him?

Shaan Puri

Someone in his position, someone in his position with his name and face... What would they say? Yeah, I don't know. I can't speak for him, but I guess my impression of it was basically... I think he's mostly shielded from this stuff. So like, I don't think most of this gets to his plate, and then by the time it does...

Sam Parr

he's he's a total man he doesn't care about drama

Shaan Puri

Like, I think he's a renaissance man. He's a little different. I think two things: 1. I think he's mostly just... he has gotten a lot of CEO coaching to where he doesn't let his first reaction be his response. So, when something comes up, instead of reacting, he responds. He usually responds with a question. He'll just ask them tons of questions, and he's in the spirit of literally understanding what you're saying and trying to figure this out. He'll say, "Tell me, what does that word mean?" And they'll be like, "It just... I mean, it means..." Well, "inclusive" means what? And he'll say, "No, like can you please use an example? Can you explain that from, you know, base principles? What are you talking about? Where are the boundary lines? Let's make sure we're all talking about the same thing." He does look kind of like the Socratic method, where he would end up just fatiguing anyone who wanted to bring something up. He would get his understanding of it and then decide if it's important or not. But I think most people are sort of intimidated by him. In the process of trying to debate him on something, very few people in the company could really hold up to any debate or scrutiny from him in a conversation. I saw this many, many times. He was trying to dial that down because he knows that he's already in a position of authority, and he's a world-class debater with a wide breadth of knowledge to pull from. He already knows that if he does that, he's just going to shut people down. So, he tries not to do that, but I saw that most people didn't want to bring it up to him.

Sam Parr

Dude, I just avoid all of this... this stuff. I can't stand it. I just don't care, is really what it is. I just don't care.

Shaan Puri

The job for Zuckerberg, or Ahmed, or anybody who runs these networks... it's like the 1% of trust and safety, or like angry people that are constantly angry about something. That's got to be the worst part of the job. That's not why they created these networks. It's to be like a public policymaker in their own kingdom.

Sam Parr

But it is amazing how they get around it. Because I could tell Zuck doesn't care about that stuff, but he still plays the game. Yeah, and Zuck's a man. He's never had a controversy; he's never done anything. Not a lot of these guys have. They've done pretty good with navigating some of these topics. I'm amazed that they don't react by saying, "Oh, you guys want to form this union or you want to protest over this? You're all fired!" Like, this is a machine, you know? We don't need this. This is a machine that they put out.

Shaan Puri

Right, like, didn't he say something in an email which was like, "You know, let's not do it this way," and then he got fired from his own company?

Sam Parr

what happened I don't I don't know what happened

Shaan Puri

He wrote an email to the staff about a trend he noticed in the workforce: new hires had to introduce themselves using their preferred pronouns. He says this is completely unnecessary for a woman who is clearly a woman to tell us that her pronouns are "she" and "her," and for a man who is clearly a man to tell us that his pronouns are "he" and "him." He understands that the practice is rooted in kindness, but he says in the long run, this approach does more harm than good because you're forcing people to behave a certain way, and that's the opposite of inclusion. Then he says, "First, there's a tiny number of people..." Well, he says "peeps," so you know, maybe that's a fireable offense. It's a tiny, tiny number of peeps at Mailchimp who would consider themselves transgender. Forcing either with orders or guilt the other 1,390 peeps to adopt a new communication style that humanity has never had to use in our 300,000-year existence and our 150,000 years of spoken language in order to make things slightly more comfortable for an extremely small group of peeps is completely illogical. So then, he got fired.

Sam Parr

It was probably for the peeps' sake, to be honest. Like, whoever bought the company was like, "Look, Ben, we need to talk."

Shaan Puri

yeah he's like but I

Sam Parr

didn't mean to hurt the the trans people he goes what

Sam Parr

no look we need to talk about those people

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he stepped down as CEO shortly after, voluntarily. Then, also, somebody came out and said, "By the way, there's no policy that says they have to do that." He's like, "Shit."

Hubspot

this data is wrong every freaking time

Hubspot

Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated.

Hubspot

Woah! I can see the client's whole history: calls, support tickets, emails, and here's a task from three days ago that I totally missed.

Sam Parr

HubSpot, grow better. One time at The Hustle, we wrote an article on Sasha Gray. Sasha Gray used to be this famous porn star, and we wrote about how she was trying to change her image to not be that. Every single night, at like midnight our time, I would get all this traffic from Japan because I guess that was morning time in Japan. It was all people searching for Sasha Gray, and they were finding our article. Yeah, and I found out that she had hired this company called Reputation.com to boost that article so it showed up first. So, we were getting all these people searching "Sasha Gray XXX," and they didn't get what they wanted, but whatever.

Shaan Puri

you're like photos at the bottom of this blog post it's photos inside our newsletter if you subscribe

Sam Parr

Dude, I didn't realize... I guess I realized it, but someone posted this infographic on Twitter of the biggest websites. It was like Google was just the largest; it was bigger than everything combined. But then, like, I think four of the top ten were porn sites. It's wild! I mean, imagine working at one of those companies. Can you imagine that? What would that be like, just sitting in the office? It's weird.

Shaan Puri

It many times? No. So, I've been... I can't talk about these, but I've had very interesting conversations with a few people that own OnlyFans-based businesses recently. They're absolutely crushing it to the point where I can't talk about it because I would be... it's like I...

Sam Parr

wait do you mean do you mean the the stars or like the ancillary things

Shaan Puri

Almost... I'm talking about the ancillary things right now, but they're all crushing it. The platform is crushing it, the stars are crushing it, and the cottage businesses that get built around this to help and be a part of that ecosystem are doing so well. If I talked about them, I would be coming between them and like a million dollars because a lot of people would want to compete with the strategies that they're using. But I will say one thing that I've learned that was pretty interesting. I always assumed that OnlyFans was popular because you're sending, like, I don't know, nude pics or videos to guys, and that's the thing. That's what they're paying for. I was always a little curious; I was like, "Porn's free on the internet. Why would you pay for this?" I thought there must be something I don't know, and I just kind of wrote it off as that. Do you know why they make so much money? Do you know what the actual moneymaker is inside of an OnlyFans account when these girls say that they're making like $1,000,000 a month? Do you know what actually drives that?

Sam Parr

I've never subscribed to one. I guess you probably have subscribed to a few now that you're researching it, but I've never subscribed to one.

Shaan Puri

You know, I'm a married man, and I did not do that. But you didn't need to, because I talked to the people who run the accounts or whatever. What a lot of people don't realize is that many of these accounts are just bought. For example, a girl has a public persona; she does an OnlyFans. She kind of gets exhausted running the thing because it's a lot. It's emotionally exhausting dealing with all these guys and whatever. So, somebody approaches her and says, "We'll buy your account for, you know, I'll give you $200,000 right now for your OnlyFans account, and then I'll give you, you know, X% of the profits. I'll run it; you just have to put pictures in a Dropbox folder and give good content, and I will give you money." And that's how it goes. So, I was like, "Why do people pay for these pictures and videos?" Again, porn's free. That's like one of the rules of the internet: porn is free. So, what do people really want? It turns out that they want the **girlfriend experience**. It's not just through the content, but through the chatting. And that chatting has all kinds of weird things like...

Sam Parr

is it one group chat or individuals oh individuals

Shaan Puri

And so, they hire farms of chatters. Basically, what OnlyFans is built off of—like a lot of the money made through it—is giant customer support call centers, essentially in the Philippines. It's basically like dudes in the Philippines talking to dudes in the U.S., pretending to be the girl. They have this army of chatters that will chat with these guys, tease them, flirt with them, and then upsell them. Boom! Cha-ching! They got the sale. They're like salespeople; they get commissions and all this stuff. It's insane. But how does this work? Okay, so one of the highest ticket items—what's the top stuffed animal at the county fair? The number one item is "pretend to be my girlfriend" for like, you know, a month. It's like, "Text me as if you're my girlfriend." That's the top prize. But there are other weird things underneath—so weird that I can't even say some of the weird stuff that they want. It's not what you would think; it's not like super weird.

Sam Parr

is it just like sending sending pictures back and forth

Shaan Puri

Like, I'll give you one example. One example is the guy who's the customer sending pictures to the OnlyFans person, asking for their opinion or rating of them. That's like the service that they pay for. So, there's stuff... and I guess like the two things that stood out. One is, it's like the free market at work, baby! You can really see what humans are all about when you talk to these people. Because it's like, man, people are into all kinds of crazy stuff. These are like their real desires, and these are desires they wouldn't admit. I bet a bunch of these people are, you know, they're doctors, and they're CEOs, and they're other people. Human desires got revealed; they were always there, and they got revealed because OnlyFans gave a better avenue to realize those desires, which is kind of crazy to me. The second thing is, I think it's wild how much money is being made in this space. My reaction to it is not kind of like... like I think you were asking, "What's your reaction to...?"

Sam Parr

No, my question is not, "Who cares if it exists?" My question is: you getting involved in it, how does it make you feel? And how does it make your wife feel? Are you like, "Well..."

Shaan Puri

I'm not involved in it

Sam Parr

well okay you're you're you're contemplating

Shaan Puri

I'm learning... I'm talking to these people because I find it fascinating. I have contemplated investing in some of these because I was like, "I would not want to operate this, but yo, if you're already down there in the sewer, let me know if you got something." You know, hand it up here. I will provide resources.

Sam Parr

dude you realize how that's so hypocritical

Shaan Puri

Why is it hypocritical? I'm saying I don't... I would not personally enjoy operating this. I also would not like operating a deli or an ice cream shop or whatever, but I'll go eat a scoop. What's the problem with that? If they need resources, they need capital, or they need advice, I'll give them those things. I don't want to operate it, so to me that's fine. My wife, I...

Sam Parr

It's also hypocritical of me, by the way, if I consume porn and then criticize it. I'm not acting like I'm whole; I'm not acting as though I'm holier than thou. But it is a conundrum.

Shaan Puri

I told my wife, by the way, I was like, "Hey, I'm thinking about this," and she just goes, "Okay, don't tell me, but if it makes money, that's fine. I hear you, cool." Yeah, I would also say that it's really funny. I find it amusing the way that the ecosystem works. Where it's like what you think it is, is some woman with an account who's putting up content, and guys want that. Then she's chatting with them. But actually, there's a whole other thing. There are agencies that control the accounts. The agencies are 90% dudes, and the chatters are like, you know, these call centers in India and the Philippines. I find it amusing. I'm like, "That's hilarious that that's how this evolved." I find that...

Sam Parr

Dude, I always get their reels on Instagram at night in bed. So, I try not to keep my phone with me. If I'm scrolling on my phone at like 10 PM, it's normally like videos of guys and dogs during the day. Then, in the evening, it's hot girls that pop up on my reel. You know, like when you're scrolling through your Instagram and I'm like, "Wait, what is this?" Then you click on their profile, and it links to a link tree which goes to...

Shaan Puri

Well, the funny thing is, you see it because one of their main growth tactics is they pay meme accounts. These are accounts that just post funny jokes 99% of the time. The way those accounts make money is through OnlyFans. People will pay a lot of money to get posted one time at night on those accounts, and then they can delete it in the morning. That's how they grow their own social followings through these meme distribution channels. So, that's a funny part of it. But anyway, I didn't even plan to talk about this one, but it's a funny little tangent.

Sam Parr

So, alright, listen. I don't know if this actually is going to interest you, but I'm going to try to make this interest you. Because anything that uses the "H" word - history - you're not into, right? That's not... but the total man should understand history because history... yeah.

Shaan Puri

He actually, but listen, he has been alive through all of history. So, get those selfies back.

Sam Parr

So, I'm reading this book called *Killers of the Flower Moon*. It's basically about the 1920s Osage Indians, who were Native Americans. They were given this plot of land when the government was like, "Hey, we're taking this over. Here's your plot of land." Turns out, it sat on all this oil, and so they all got rich. White people took advantage of them and killed them to steal their money. I was reading this book, and they keep talking about the Pinkertons. Have you heard of the Pinkertons? No? So, they kept talking about them, and I was like, "Why don't they go to the police?" Instead, they were hiring these guys called the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons were basically started by a guy named Alan Pinkerton in 1850. He started this company because he was walking through the woods one day and saw a bunch of counterfeiters. He got curious, so he started watching them and figuring out what they were doing. Then, he called the police on them, and they were like, "Well, we can't really solve this." He said, "Give me a few weeks. I'll keep an eye on them, and I think I could figure out what they're doing and where they're going. I'll be your detective." He did that, and they got arrested. He thought, "I love doing this. This is very fun." So, he kept doing it, and it started as a small, mom-and-pop business. He would go to other people and say, "Hey, do you want me to help you solve this crime? Just pay me a little bit of money, and I'll go do it. We'll report it to the police and give them all the evidence they need." He did this for a handful of years, and eventually, he worked his way up to where the American government was paying him money. It gets to the...

Sam Parr

Where his people? This is pre-Secret Service. His people protected Abe Lincoln. We didn't have the Secret Service back then; the Secret Service was invented after Abe Lincoln got shot.

Shaan Puri

Didn’t do a great job. Yeah, she’d... yeah, them all. It turns out... yeah, can’t want.

Sam Parr

They can't want them all. It turns out, yeah, that is actually totally true. He's had a bunch of losses, but he was like, "Failed to protect the president." For some reason, the government still liked him, so they started giving him contracts. So anyway, fast forward to the Pinkertons. They are still around, and they've done a bunch of controversial things. As they grew, companies like Andrew Carnegie, the titans of industry, would hire them. Basically, when there were unions that would go on strike, the Pinkertons would literally sit outside the gate of a factory and protest. They would also fight. At one point, the Pinkertons killed like 24 of these protesters. Wow, it was a huge thing.

Shaan Puri

They're like pretty hardcore. It says at their peak they had more agents than the standing American army. Is that true? That's insane!

Sam Parr

Dude, they had tons of people and their motto was "Pinkertons don't sleep, we don't sleep." Their logo was an open eye. It was just like, "We are there all the time and we will always find out what's going on."

Shaan Puri

You know, I thought that "Mighty Ducks: Ducks Fly Together" was the top, but this "We Don't Sleep" might be better than "Ducks Fly Together."

Sam Parr

Yeah, we don't sleep. But this company was created in 1850, I think. I was reading about, coincidentally, this other thing going on with Amazon. Amazon was having some issues with union stuff. Dude, this company still exists, and Amazon hired these Pinkertons. So basically, what they do now... the company was sold in like 2005 for around $400,000,000. That's not a significant amount of money for how long it lasted, but it kind of peaked in the early 1900s.

Shaan Puri

Dude, look at their website. Have you been to their website, peeperton.com? It just says "Our Story," and there's literally a picture of Abe Lincoln as the hero image.

Sam Parr

do they have a whole talking

Shaan Puri

about owning your owning your failures these guys love it yeah yeah

Sam Parr

it just says whoops

Shaan Puri

chase eddie

Sam Parr

we've learned from our mistakes

Shaan Puri

nobody nobody fails faster than us

Sam Parr

yeah they took fail fast to hire

Shaan Puri

So, risk advisory, investigations, protection, embedded SMEs... I don't even know what that is. That sounds...

Sam Parr

dude so listen to what they do

Sam Parr

So, they basically hire these guys. Pinkerton, like, there are guards now, I guess. I don't know what they wear—like blue jeans and a plaid shirt. They go to places like Starbucks to get a coffee, and they just try to listen in. You'll hear one guy talking to his coworker, like, "Hey, we should unionize," or "You know, forget this guy, let's do this and that." Then they report it back to corporate headquarters. When Amazon was launching a bunch of stuff, they would just walk around the office and be like, "Is anyone talking about things they shouldn't be talking about?" And then they report it. They still exist. Google hires them, Facebook hires them; they still monitor this stuff. It's really fascinating that a company has existed since 1850 or whenever it was, and they're still working. I started thinking about private police and security companies, and there haven't been that many interesting security startups. One of them that I actually invested in is called Deep Sentinel. Do you know what Deep Sentinel is?

Shaan Puri

It's a security thing. It's a security camera that can talk, as if there's a human watching on the other side.

Sam Parr

Deep Sentinel's whole thing is like, they make a joke: "Ring's awesome for watching your stuff get stolen." I have Deep Sentinels at my house, and one time a drunk guy came up to my front door thinking that we were his Airbnb. The camera caught him, and he said, "Hey sir, what are you doing here?" They called the police. So, I walked down at like 3 AM and I see the cops in my house taking away this guy. So anyway, that's kind of cool. Another one is called Bannerman. Have you heard of Bannerman?

Shaan Puri

I have heard of this it's just like bodyguards right

Sam Parr

Dude, we used to do it all the time. It was a company that went through Y Combinator, and we hosted conferences. Well, I don't know if the site's still up, but basically, when you host a conference, by law as well as practicality, you need to hire security. You need security guards. We would use Bannermen, and we would hire them. They have a menu: armed guard for $200 an hour, non-armed guard for $150, and just a huge, scary-looking guy for $100 an hour. You could hire them by the hour, and it was so easy. It was like Uber for security. It was awesome! But there haven't been that many new startups in this space.

Shaan Puri

Here’s the pricing: - Unarmed guard: **$59** an hour - Armed guard: **$98** an hour - Off-duty police: **$145** an hour (and they're armed) That's it. That's it.

Sam Parr

so you just get a big scary guy to walk with me for $50 or $80 an hour whatever it was

Shaan Puri

I'll do it for free

Sam Parr

He's the rock type; it's scary. So anyway, I'm just interested in this space, and I thought, like, the Pinkerton thing was wild that this stuff still exists.

Shaan Puri

do you know how much they sold for is that or do you know anything about their revenues or anything like this is a crazy no

Sam Parr

And I've looked everywhere. The founder, he says on his LinkedIn, "I don't use LinkedIn anymore." That's what it said on his profile, so I...

Shaan Puri

founders alive

Sam Parr

yeah his name's johnny chin

Shaan Puri

how is he alive 1850 oh

Sam Parr

oh I thought you're talking about fucking banner man

Shaan Puri

that's that's a little piglet no that dude's

Sam Parr

for sure dead how much does it cost I don't

Shaan Puri

how much well you said they sold to somebody right

Sam Parr

What's the $400,000,000 in 1999? $400,000,000 in 1999. But it's pretty fascinating that it lasted that long. It got sold. So basically, I was doing even further research on this. The security industry appears to have a handful of big players and then tons of mom-and-pop businesses. Among the handful of big players, there are about three of them, and they each do around $10,000,000,000 a year in revenue. What they do is acquire tons of mom-and-pop businesses. Now, the biggest ones, you'll probably recognize a lot of their T-shirts because you'll see them at concerts and stuff like that. But then there are a bunch of private ones. Have you heard of Blackwater?

Shaan Puri

no that sounds good though so dude

Sam Parr

This guy, his name's Eric Prince. He's a very controversial figure. I haven't read his book, but I want to. He became controversial because he started a private security company that operated overseas. They would protect princes and Saudi Arabian interests, among other things. When Iraq and other conflicts arose, they took on government contracts. Eventually, they ended up doing military work, like protecting convoys, and unfortunately, they were involved in killing a lot of people. Eric Prince became a billionaire through this venture and eventually sold the company to private equity for $1 billion. The company is called Blackwater, which is a very ominous name—I love that name. There are a bunch of interesting players in this space, but not many tech startups. I think it's a really fascinating industry.

Shaan Puri

I'll give a quick shout out to this genius restaurant. So, this guy, Joshua Goodfield, tweeted this out. There's a restaurant that basically named all of its items after office supplies, like "the number 1," "the number 2," "the number 3." So, it'll be like a mini dry erase board or a pack of pencils. It's hilarious! You can expense all meals from this restaurant. It's called a...

Sam Parr

usb wired mouse $5 french fries

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly! I thought that was a genius little marketing hack, so shout out to that. And then, dude, are you watching the NBA Finals? I got a little human interest story for you.

Sam Parr

no but but tell me about it

Shaan Puri

Pretty crazy! So the two teams that are in it are the Miami Heat and the Denver Nuggets. The best player on both teams has just a crazy backstory. One, there's a guy on the Heat, Jimmy Butler. Have you ever seen the movie "The Blind Side"?

Sam Parr

I love that movie that's my favorite movie

Shaan Puri

It's his life, so babe, the guy got kicked out of his house at like 13 and was crashing on friends' couches. Then this white woman just took him in. She joined their family, and he's like, "Yeah, she didn't have to do that. She just did it." He calls her mom, and her real kids are his brothers and sisters. That's just the way it was. He was not unlike the story in "The Blind Side." With "The Blind Side," it was pretty clear this guy had NFL talent; he was just a freak athlete and huge. Any coach would kind of tell you that. Not to say that's why she did it, but it was kind of possible. But Jimmy Butler was different. He wasn't like that. He went to a junior college, then he transferred to Marquette, and he barely got into the NBA. Now he's a star, but it was not obvious.

Sam Parr

Have you heard about the real parents in "The Blind Side"? You know it's based on real people, right? The father owned a *lot* of fast food franchises - KFCs and Long John Silver's and such. I googled him, and it turns out he sold all of his franchises for $400 million.

Shaan Puri

good things happening to good people

Sam Parr

good things happening to people and so jimmy butler was

Shaan Puri

So, this woman, a single mom with seven kids, took him in. She basically put a roof over his head, and he ended up grinding his way to the NBA. He also was doing something really, really funny. So, back when COVID hit, the NBA had to create a bubble to keep the season going. Many sports had to do this. They created a bubble, which was like a...

Sam Parr

didn't they do like at disneyland

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they did it at Disney World. I think so. They did it in Disney World in Orlando. It was like you live on campus; nobody comes in or out. If food gets delivered, it gets delivered in a sealed box 30 feet away, and it gets, you know, like given to you. They just tested everybody daily, and if anybody ever had anything, they got kicked out. So during that process, Jimmy Butler realizes, you know, supply and demand is out of whack. He starts making coffees. He brought a fancy coffee machine and starts making coffees. People are like, "Yo, can I get some coffee? The coffee here sucks. I want the good coffee." He's like, "Yeah, cool man, it's $100."

Sam Parr

that's tough

Shaan Puri

they're like what are they like $100 he's like what's the price he's like somewhere

Sam Parr

else to go he's like

Shaan Puri

These are enemy players who cannot leave this bubble. And so, they're like, "Alright man, fuck it." Then he started charging $100 for this coffee. He created this brand; I think it's called Big Face Coffee. Now, during the bubble, people wanted to know what it was like in there, so a lot of the guys were vlogging. This was one of the storylines: "Yo, Jimmy opened up a coffee shop. He's just, you know, killing us on this coffee." He's like, "Yo, I make the best coffee. It's the best coffee in the world. $100!" Now, he's creating a spin-off brand of that coffee brand, which I think is kind of cool.

Sam Parr

and who's the other guy that that big white guy

Shaan Puri

the giant white guy so jokic dude he looks

Sam Parr

mean that guy looks mean I saw him got into it with

Shaan Puri

small town in serbia sambor serbia

Sam Parr

he got into it with some dude on the on the sidelines too I saw

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's funny. That was the owner of another team. He basically bullied an owner of another team. So, this guy's awesome. His story is even crazier, I think. This guy was born in the middle of nowhere, Serbia. He's got two older brothers, and even though they're really tall, he only likes one sport: horseback riding. He falls in love with horses and is always at the horse track. However, because he's so tall, when he wasn't out with the horses, he starts playing basketball. What's interesting is that nobody would have ever known of this guy except for the fact that there was one team with a business model. Their business model was basically to find prospects that might have NBA potential. They didn't care if they won now; they just wanted to find big guys with a lot of potential who might get bought out by bigger clubs. They were kind of like house flippers. They would say, "Let's buy this guy, see if we can polish up the asset, and then flip him to a bigger team in Europe." Or, they would hold their rights and maybe the NBA team would have to buy them out. They've done this with a couple of guys. So, one day, the guy is reading the newspaper and sees that at some youth basketball game—let's say an 8th-grade game—some kid had 25 points and 25 rebounds. He thinks, "Wow!" So, he goes and finds this guy and says, "Hey, have you ever thought about playing pro basketball?" The kid replies, "No." The guy says, "Come with me." At around age 13, he leaves his hometown and joins this team. So, you think the story is because he's the best player in the NBA now, it must mean he was awesome.

Sam Parr

he's the best now he's the best player in the world right now and so it's like but how tall is he

Shaan Puri

He's like 7 foot 1, something like that. You would think, "Oh, he must have been dominating in Serbia." But then, you know, he went to the... he's like in a tier 4 league. You know, he must be awesome, right? No, he didn't even play. The coach was like, "This kid is so fat. He is just so out of shape. I will not play this guy." So, he was only allowed to go to practice. They said, "Until you can run, like until you're in shape, well that's not gonna work." He was like, "What do I do?" They asked, "Well, what's your diet?" The guy was drinking like 2 gallons of Coke a day. He was just addicted to Coke; he just loved drinking it. So, they were like, "You gotta stop that, first of all." And he did. He stopped drinking Coke and lost like 30 to 40 pounds in the course of a few months just by changing that one habit and going and running every day in practice. Since they wouldn't give him the ball, he just had to run on the side while everybody else practiced. Finally, he started playing and became like the top player on his team. As soon as he was able to get in shape, he was the top player on his team. He got drafted in the 2nd round, basically one of the last picks in the NBA draft. If you go watch the video of when he got drafted, you see the difference. You've seen when LeBron gets drafted; he gets on stage, shakes the commissioner's hand, smiles, and the light bulbs are flashing. People know this is the start of a star being born.

Sam Parr

what was he just like walking by and they're like here take this hat here just take that one

Shaan Puri

Even better, they just cut to a Taco Bell commercial. At the bottom ticker, it just said, "Pick number 41: Nikola Jokic." And just like that, it goes across the screen, it goes away, and it's a Cheesy Gordita Crunch ad. It's like he didn't even have that starting moment because nobody thought this guy would turn into anything. And then he's basically become... you know.

Sam Parr

know the best player in the world since how old is he

Shaan Puri

Somewhere around 27 or 28, something like that. He's pretty young still. He actually wouldn't have even made it to the NBA. This team in Barcelona was going to buy him; that was going to be the flip. It was like he goes from the Serbian team to the Barcelona team. The day before he was supposed to sign the contract—like, the lawyer just had to finish one thing—he played in a game and was so terrible that the team backed out. So, he had no choice but to join the NBA team that had bought his rights or drafted his rights. He thought, "I guess I'll go to the NBA then." You know, he didn't really know if anything was going to come of it, but whatever. So, he goes, and he's this very stoic guy. In all his interviews, the media has all these narratives. They're like, "How has becoming a new dad helped you become a better basketball player?" He just looks at them and says, "What? It doesn't. That's not how that works." He's just very matter-of-fact, like the kind of Dagestani guys in the UFC. He's kind of like that but for basketball. He's a fascinating character. It reminds me of this quote that I heard from this VC. I was like, "You know, what's he had this Twitter bio?" This guy Nico... Nico, I don't know how he says that... Bon Santos? Bonosatos? I don't know exactly how he said it.

Sam Parr

from general catalyst

Shaan Puri

Yeah, from GC. Exactly. The guy who invested in Snapchat super early on. I was like, "Nico, why is your bio what it is?" His quote was, "Talent is everywhere; opportunity is not." So, talent is evenly distributed, but opportunity is not. I was like, "Why is that? What does that mean?" He goes, "Because it's true. Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not evenly distributed. If I do my job right, we're going to distribute opportunities to more people who have the talent." I think about both these guys, the two guys that are starring in the NBA. They're kind of like one little bounce of the Plinko chip away from it being a zero. Instead, they get to be world-famous basketball players. It's like, if this guy didn't get discovered while playing in a youth farm league in Serbia, or if Jimmy Butler didn't get adopted by this woman, who knows if they would have even gotten their shot? That's how fragile success and failure can be.

Sam Parr

Dude, last night I went and hung out at this... Have you heard of FloTrack? No? Or FlowSports, sorry. FlowSports, yes. So FlowSports started as... It was basically this guy who would go... They started out of UT [University of Texas]. This guy would go and film track meets and wrestling meets.

Shaan Puri

stuff that wasn't gonna be broadcasted otherwise

Sam Parr

Stuff that wasn't going to be broadcast... He was a track and field athlete, and I think they had friends that were wrestlers. He said, "But you know, I'm a fan of running, and people love that stuff, but just not on TV." So, he starts filming this and puts it online. He forms a company, and people start buying it, paying like $100 a year to watch this stuff. It's been around for 13 years now, and they do over $100 million in revenue. I asked, "What's the fastest growing segment?" He said, "Motorsports." I was like, "Oh, like NASCAR and stuff?" He replied, "No, it's like the pre-NASCAR. It's with 18-year-old kids. They do this thing called dirt track. It looks like a buggy, kind of." He described it as grassroots, but he didn't say it, so it's like redneck stuff. He said, "That's our fastest growing segment." They have like 18 sports, including wrestling, grappling, running, cross country, track and field, and whatever else. I went and hung out at their office because they had a little party. I was with three different guys who had won gold medals in the Olympics—one guy in the decathlon, one guy in the mile, and some others. First of all, here's what was interesting: a bunch of the Olympians were around 40 now. I asked, "Hey, do you still run?" They said, "Not a chance! It was my job, and I don't want to do that at all anymore. I'll exercise, go for walks, and lift weights, but I don't want to run like I used to. I'm done with that." The second interesting thing was that these guys are all freaks. One guy, his name's Trey Hardy—you can look him up—his body is crazy. They are freaks of nature, but it's cool being around people like that who are the best in the world at something. They are literally the best if they won a gold medal at that.

Sam Parr

They are the best in the world at what they do, and it's so fascinating to hear the stories they tell. Like, they would say, "Dude, that guy, we used to go to the hotel and he'd be wearing flip flops. He'd be like, 'Hey, I bet you could touch the ceiling,' and the ceiling was 15 feet high." Then he would just jump and touch the ceiling. We would see little things like that this guy would do all the time. Or he'd say, "Watch this, I bet I can backflip," and he would backflip, jumping so high in the air. We would just see these freakish things all the time. So I was thinking, would you give up any of the success that you've had so far in order to be broke but an Olympic medal winner, or like the best athlete in the world? Because I was thinking about that, and I think I would.

Shaan Puri

no chance on the the gold medal well best athlete in the world yes I would do that

Sam Parr

That's... but there's a lot of sports where you could be the best, like NCAA wrestling or regular wrestling.

Shaan Puri

I'm just an overall athlete. No, no, if it's... I'm the fastest miler or NCAA, you know, national champion or whatever, no chance. I've said this before: the Olympics are for suckers.

Sam Parr

oh you are so crazy because I'm hanging out with these guys and I'm like

Shaan Puri

Congrats! You're the best bobsledder the world has ever seen. You've dedicated your entire life to this absolutely arbitrary thing that got you... that got you nobody. That got you, you know, no skills beyond this. I'm just joking.

Sam Parr

I am so... I so disagree because they were asking me for advice on business stuff. I'm like, "Hey, just so you know, I'm like the 100,000th most successful person in America, maybe."

Shaan Puri

That's what I want to do. I want to play a game where the 100,000th person wins and has an awesome life. Not where I have to be the best person in the world. Even then, I have to start over at age 27 and create a new career because I'm done with that thing and my joints don't work anymore.

Sam Parr

These guys had shaved arms and shaved legs. I was just staring at those calf muscles and I was like, "Dude, I could see every vein of your forearm. That's so awesome!" I would kill to have that. I want some of that vascularity... like, look at that vein pop! I just love that.

Shaan Puri

Cool. His business advice was great, but then he said he wants to put butter on my chest. I didn't understand that.

Sam Parr

Too much! They kept saying I had a really nice ball cast at the top of my leg. Like, dude, their calf muscles are just so solid. A little tennis ball was stuck in there. I just saw that and I'm like...

Shaan Puri

so I remember I was thinking

Sam Parr

Of this one guy, I told Sarah afterwards, "Dude, I bet that guy's wife is so hot." She just... she's...

Shaan Puri

like you said to your wife I'm sorry I'm sorry dude

Sam Parr

They're so lucky. Well, then she's like, "Well, he worked hard." And I was like, "No, the wife! That wife is so lucky. Can you believe that she gets to see that bod?" I was just thinking about that... man, and I just love these Olympians. Man, I'm giving it all up just to be a gold medalist in the high jump. So, I don't know where we go from here. This is the Total Man episode.

Shaan Puri

that's a flint sam loving men

Sam Parr

Dude, I do. Like, I can't. You see a guy with, like, you know, some sick calf muscles? You gotta admire it, you know?

Shaan Puri

yeah I guess you I guess you do

Sam Parr

you don't do that

Shaan Puri

Yeah, definitely not the way you do. Like, there's been several people that come on this podcast and I'm like, "I'm pretty sure Sam's just imagining them without their shirt on." Right back.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

I feel like sam does that like pretty freaking sick yeah you

Sam Parr

"Have some sick pecs, bro! How'd you get some of those things?" Yeah, if I see a guy with big pecs, I just wanna ask him a bunch of questions. I don't know where we go from here... Yeah, that's the plan. This is something.