I Threw A Party With San Diego's Most Interesting Millionaires (#405)

Shaan Puri

So, I had a **crazy amazing** weekend, and I want to tell you about it.

Sam Parr

go for it I wanna hear about it

Shaan Puri

Alright, so we've done these before, but I'll explain kind of how they work for people who are listening. About once a year, maybe twice a year, we do these kind of friend/founder weekend hangout type of things. And by the way, sorry, you should have been there. I don't know why the invite got lost in the mail. Don't worry about that.

Sam Parr

Oh, I'm worried about it. You're lucky I couldn't have made it, but I'm worried about it.

Shaan Puri

I was going to text you while we were doing it, and I was like, "Wait, why isn't Sam here?" Then I asked Ben, "Did Sam say no, or did we not tell Sam?" He was like, "I don't know." This whole thing got screwed up because we bumped it back twice, and then this happened. Anyway, once or twice a year, we go somewhere, rent an Airbnb with 4 to 5 founder friends, and hang out. But this one was different.

Sam Parr

This one was an intimate birthday thing, as opposed to last time when we did it, which was like a 20-person event.

Shaan Puri

Maybe, yeah, I don't even remember. It's got bumped back twice, so at this point, who knows? But basically, it was like, "Alright, start the new year. Let's all get together, hang out, and do whatever." So we go to San Diego and rent an Airbnb from Mark Jenny, who you've talked about on the pod before. Just to explain what he's doing, he founded a company called RVshare, which is like Airbnb for renting RVs. He grew that and sold it for, I think, $100 million.

Sam Parr

part of it I think he's sold it

Shaan Puri

yeah he sold private equity

Sam Parr

to kkr I believe

Shaan Puri

I think he's actually sold twice. He sold one chunk the first time and the second chunk recently. I think he still owns a piece of it. But anyway, Army Share is a really successful business. He's got a crazy story where I think he was homeless at one time and made the whole thing happen. We'll have him on shortly.

Sam Parr

but very inspirational person

Shaan Puri

He now has an Airbnb, a luxury Airbnb portfolio worth about **$50,000,000**. He has, I don't know, **20-something** properties, and he goes for the over-the-top kind of destination experience, you know, maybe like party-type houses. So this house, like...

Sam Parr

like family parties

Shaan Puri

Family or like buddies going for a golf trip, you know, type of thing where it's like... it's one of his most successful properties that is in Scottsdale, Arizona. We're like, "Scottsdale? Why?" He's like, "Oh, guys go there for golf trips." So, you know, eight buddies get together and they rent my place. It's great, and they all have money, so the price isn't as big of an issue or whatever. This one is in San Diego, and the backyard... I think this guy must have put somewhere between **$1,200,000** into the backyard. So, when you go outside, there's a basketball court, a pickleball court, and a wiffleball field with a fence—like a full baseball diamond, basically. There is a golf course, a pool, a sauna... everything you could think of. It is like a boy's paradise, basically. So, it was perfect for us, right? That's all we were doing. You go inside the house, and there's like a full poker table with the poker set and the perfect chairs. There's a pool table, and there's all kinds of good stuff. Anyways, so we get there, and a couple of really cool things happened. One, Mark came over for dinner. He hosted dinner for us there, and he was telling us his story, which is kind of crazy, but I kind of want to save that bit for the podcast.

Sam Parr

I've asked him to come on tons of times. By the way, he turns me down. I'm good friends with Mark, and he turns me down too. He's like, "Oh no, I'm with my family all summer."

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah he just had a he just had a baby so I think now I

Sam Parr

appreciate that I appreciate it

Shaan Puri

I think he'll do it. He definitely listens to the pod, so instead of listening one day for that hour, just come on and talk. It's no extra time for you, Mark. So then the next day, we kind of hang out. The first day is just straight sports—male bonding, sweaty male bonding, let's call it. We're just playing every sport that's there, and in between, we sort of talk business or whatever. On the second day, I tweeted out, "Who's in San Diego?" A bunch of people replied. Ben goes through, curates, and is just like, "Alright, these 15 people seem cool. I'm going to invite them over to the house." So they come over to the house, and I just want to set the scene of this kind of party. First of all, this whole segment should be called "Sean Leaves the House" because I'm explaining how cool this was. This is probably a monthly occurrence for you, but for me, I was like, "Dude, I left the house! I met all these cool people. It was amazing!" Because I never leave my house, and this time, I was out of my house and met a bunch of cool people.

Sam Parr

you didn't but you still didn't leave the state

Shaan Puri

I didn't leave the state. No, I barely got on a flight. So, here's the scene in the room: there are two guys who own NFT projects that have probably done over $200 million in sales. Wow! They're both under the age of 23, maybe mid-24. So that's kind of crazy. One of them didn't even have a public identity until, you know, a month ago. People know Frank from DGods. DGods is the number one project on Solana; it's like the Bored Apes of Solana. He basically just said, "Hey, here's my real identity," so he could now show up to parties and say what he does, whereas before he couldn't do that. Okay, second thing: that was one group. Then there was the D2C crew. These are people who have built products. One guy created this thing called gel blasters. Think of it like a Nerf gun or a BB gun, but just with gel pellets.

Sam Parr

I love that

Shaan Puri

It went from like 0 to... I don't know if I'm allowed to say the number, but tens of millions in revenue in a year. Then there's a crazy story. I'm going to get him on the podcast too to come tell the story. It's a crazy story of sort of getting screwed over by one of the big toy companies. They pretended to buy his company for like $100 million. Then he does the due diligence with them, shows them all the design files, the CAD files, everything—the specs of the product. They fall out, and then three months later, they launch an identical product to compete with him and steal his influencer marketing plan. It's a kind of crazy story. There are other people in the room. Remember the mini katana guy we talked about?

Sam Parr

oh he came

Shaan Puri

He came, so he's there, and he's showing me how they basically do **8 figures** in revenue without a single dollar on ads. It's not out of pride; he just can't advertise because it's like Facebook's saying, "Yo, this is a weapon. You can't advertise swords on Facebook." So he had to get creative and was just like, "Okay, how do I make organic content that's so good?"

Sam Parr

you wanna buy the sword yeah

Shaan Puri

Tens of millions of dollars worth of this sword, and I thought that was pretty remarkable. Really, a super nice guy came over and he said, "Dude, I was listening to the podcast while driving, and I heard you guys talking about a katana store." I was like, "No, are they talking about me? Who are they talking about?" He said that was a surreal moment. Alright, so he's there, a guy, you know, a former CIA operative who I think you interviewed for the pod. You did a pod with him, and then we couldn't release it. We didn't even need to say more because that already sounds juicy as a motherfucker, right?

Sam Parr

We couldn't release it because he said a bunch of classified stuff. So, this person... I don't even know what I can say now, but basically, this is me speaking. This is me speaking, not him. But it's almost as if they convince people in other countries to become treasonous spies.

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

yeah smize is part of the treasonous

Shaan Puri

if you've watched jack ryan this was like the real life jack ryan

Sam Parr

And we asked him all about that. Then he left the government and created a business. So, there was a good overlap.

Shaan Puri

so I'm gonna tell you one so I'm don't say his name

Sam Parr

though by the way

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm not gonna do it. So I was like, "How do you do it? How do you convince somebody? You're just this, like, you know, American person coming into their country. You know, you go into Afghanistan or wherever, you know, Yemen or someplace. How do you convince them to, like, you know, work for the U.S. government to help us?" And he's like, "Well, by two years of rapport building, and then it's, you know, it's manipulation, right? Like, you're trying to..." I was like, "So how would you do that? I feel like you couldn't do that." And he's like, "Remember earlier when we were grabbing a drink? You said you really want X." I was like, "No, I... it's like in passing, I must have said something." He's like, "For about a year, I will basically talk to this person and I'll find out their every want, their every need, their every problem. And I'm keeping a file. I'm keeping this file for years before I flip them." I was like, "Wow." And this person is really charming anymore.

Sam Parr

Well, he's very charming and he's very likable. When he tells a story, you're captivated. He's got that "it" factor. So when I was with him, I was like, "Oh yeah, I understand why I would commit to this thing in order to, you know, please you."

Shaan Puri

Right, so he told one story. It was amazing! I called four people over and said, "You gotta hear this! You gotta hear this! Come here." He told another one, and I'm like, "Shit, I just..."

Sam Parr

yeah you ruined it you're like hey you're funny tell a joke

Shaan Puri

Then he tells another banger, and I'm like, and everybody's like, "Oh wow!" To the last three people who didn't hear the first one, "Get over here! Get over here! Get over here!" "Hey, you got another one?" And he's like, "Oh, you know, the other thing is, you know, blah blah blah." He's kind of hemming and hawing. I was like, "Look, if the story's shit, no problem. You already won. This is just a bonus lap. If it's terrible, I have no problem with you. I already think you're amazing." I was depressurized for a moment, and I was like, "You know, just try to give us one more." He gives us one more, and I was like, "Wow, this is a..." You know, my friend Jason Hitchcock has this thing he says: "You say one interesting thing, I say interesting. Two interesting things, I say those are interesting. Three interesting things, I say you are interesting." And that's what happened. By the third, I was like, "You are interesting." That's how I felt. So that guy was kind of amazing.

Sam Parr

And by the way, I'll say this kind of sucks to talk about because I can't reveal a lot. But you and I have a friend, and this person is related to a bunch of like SEALs and CIA people. It just so happens that there's this weird community of ex-CIA, NSA, and SEALs—all these abbreviators. They get out, and they start businesses because, like, I think they have a pension, so they have a little bit of money. Their basic needs are covered, and then they go and start businesses. They're in our world, successful, and they're very successful. I love hanging out with these guys, you know? They're like proper heroes. Then they're talking to me about the internet and "kak," and I'm like, "Yeah, but what about ISIS? Tell me a story about that. Tell me that time you eliminated 18 ISIS people." You know what I mean? It's like they're heroes. It's fun talking to these guys.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and then let's see who else. So then our buddy Ramon is there. Ramon's there with his son, and he's telling us amazing stories. Has he ever told you the contractor story?

Sam Parr

the best thing I've ever heard yeah you wanna retell it

Shaan Puri

yeah can I retell it here

Sam Parr

because I

Shaan Puri

don't know when the next time he's gonna be on but he's like he's officially

Sam Parr

he's an american now ramon's an american now by the way

Shaan Puri

The big thing is, he's officially an American. Before he arrives, we go out and get him a cake from Safeway or whatever. We're like, "Hey, can you write a message on here?" The guy says, "No, it's closed for the day." I was like, "Bro, you gotta write a message!" So, he convinces the guy to write a message. It says, "Welcome to America," but it's misspelled. So it just says, "Welcome to America," which sounds like the most non-American thing ever. I was like, "You got your citizenship! That's amazing!" What happened afterwards? His son, Victor, was like, "Oh man, in the car afterwards, everybody who was calling, he would just answer, 'Hello, fellow American!'" That was amazing. So, he's at the dinner party, and we're like, "Tell us a story." We were trying to think of an icebreaker for a group like this. We asked, "What's the weirdest way you tried to make a buck? What's the weirdest way you tried to make money?" Because otherwise, in this type of scenario, if you kinda say, "Oh, so what do you do?" people just go into their script.

Sam Parr

yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

And it's kind of... the whole thing is just kind of pretentious because it's a room full of successful people. Everybody starts kind of one-upping each other in this weird way. So instead, you want to like nag the whole group. This is the "nag the whole group" question: **What's the weirdest way you tried to make a buck?** Ramon's like, you know, he's got like ten of these stories. And we're like, "Dude, this is the thing about Ramon. He's very quiet, but when you start getting him to sell a story, it's like a vending machine... an endless vending machine of stories you've never heard of, even though you've known the guy for ten years." So he's like, "Yeah, back in the day, I was like, okay, I want to start a... what is it? I'm going to start a painting business." He's like, "I need money. I'm 18 years old. I'll paint walls." So he puts up a thing that's like, "I'll paint walls." But, you know, being the hustler that he is, he's like, "You know what? How can I widen the top of this funnel? Let me just say painting handyman. I'll fix anything. Whatever you got, I'm in. Generally, I'm a general contractor. I'll do generally anything." And so he's 18 years old. He puts up his listing on the Dutch Craigslist, like that, and he gets an inquiry the next day that says, "Hey, I need an electrician for some electrical work." And he's like, "Great! Be there tomorrow morning." So he goes to the store, like a Home Depot type store, and he's looking at these vests, thinking, "Which one looks more like an electrician?" It's basically like Halloween; he's trying to find a costume. He goes there the next day, and the guy's like, "Cool, yeah, so we need like, you know, 40 amps here, and we're going to run a line under the circuit over here." And he's like, "Dude, he's saying words... forget about knowing how to do it. I don't even understand the words he's saying."

Sam Parr

and he has a clipboard though but he and he's like writing

Shaan Puri

it down notes he's wearing the vest and

Sam Parr

he's saying uh-huh

Shaan Puri

Uh-huh... uh-huh... uh-huh... yeah, yeah, okay, tell me more. And he's like, the guy just keeps going. It's a very complicated job. He's like, "I hoped it was..." I was like, "Dude, what did you think was gonna happen?" He's like, "I hoped it was like light bulbs... like, electrical, electricity, I don't know, light bulbs." And he's like, "Once I got there, I was like, oh shit." But I'm writing, and I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. So I'm like, "Okay, maybe I could figure it out." You know, I open up the... the thing, and there are just a thousand wires. I'm like, "Okay, there's no way I know what to do here." And so he's like, "Yeah, listen man..."

Sam Parr

I think he tells him this the next day or something

Shaan Puri

yeah the next day he goes home yeah

Sam Parr

Yeah, he goes home and he thinks about it. He reflects and he's like, "I gotta come clean to this guy." Like, I don't know how to do it. I don't know anything. I don't know what to do. And he's reviewing his notes, thinking, "I don't know what any of this means."

Shaan Puri

Yes, he goes back and he's like, "I gotta tell you, man, I've never done electrical work." He's like, "I just needed money. I thought I could figure it out, and I slept on it. Turns out I can't. I have no idea how to do this." The guy was like, "What the fuck?" But he was also like, "You know what, kid? I'm an entrepreneur. I respect the hustle. I appreciate that you are honest." He said, "Everyone was like, you know, when you're honest and you're young, good things happen." The guy gave him a great lesson. He said, "You know what? Instead of telling me, 'Don't ever do this again,' he was like, 'Actually, you know what you should do? You don't need to know how to do electrical work. You got the job; now you need to find somebody who does know electrical work and subcontract it out. Keep a margin. You shouldn't be here anyways; you should be doing that.'" And he's like, "Oh." He started an actual general contracting business doing that from there. The guy helped him out; basically, he gave him a job and helped him out.

Sam Parr

And that eventually, he did that for a couple of years. He actually made maybe for sure $100,000. I think he made close to $1,000,000. I believe his first million was from running that business. Then he immigrated to America and created a Brazilian music festival. I have no idea why, but he lost all of it. After that, he created more internet businesses and made it all again, then lost it all again, and then made it all again. So he's done that a bunch of times. He's a very fascinating guy.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, even his current business. He has a business called Alpha Paw, and he sells great dog products like dog ramps and things like that. Even that... when COVID happened, shipping costs went through the roof. A container for shipping used to cost $3,000, but then it started costing $20,000. So, like a 6...

Sam Parr

ruined everything

Shaan Puri

And when you have a huge product, you need a lot of space. So, you need a lot of containers. His unit cost blew up, and that was really tough. But he's so resilient. He was like, "Alright, what's the pivot?" He pivoted to focus on dogs and cats. He created a kitty litter product called **Genius Litter**. Now, he just got a deal where he's in PetSmart nationwide, which is amazing! Now he's back in the game. So, if you're listening to this, you know the gentleman's agreement: go smash that subscribe button! But also, if you have a cat or even a dog, it doesn't matter. Go to PetSmart and buy this guy's **Genius Litter** so his business thrives because this guy deserves it. He's the best guy I know. There are just amazing stories one after another about people bouncing back. I had a bunch of takeaways from this. **Number 1: Storytelling wins.** There were a lot of people at this event who were equally impressive, but it was the ones who understood how to tell a story that stood out and that everybody loved. They made a bunch of connections, and people started helping them out. They were like, "Oh, you should try X, Y, Z," or "You gotta meet blah, blah, blah." On the other hand, the people who didn't understand how to tell their story only shared facts. It was just sort of like, "I am, you know, whatever. I'm Steve. This is what I do. Blah, blah, blah. Everything's been great. Alright, thanks Steve. See you." You know? Yeah, you need to...

Sam Parr

some of that sizzle

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they didn't have that sizzle. The storytelling sizzle was so important and so obvious. Then there are nuances. Some people were storytellers, but every story was about how awesome they were. You could just see it was repelling people. It was like, "Here's how awesome I am," and then slowly but surely, you'd think, "Okay, great, got one of those stories. I'm gonna go get a drink now. See you." It was the person who could tell a story that was slightly making fun of themselves. Even the CIA guy said, "Oh, I have a rule: I only tell CIA stories where I look like an idiot. I never tell CIA stories where, you know, I beat the bad guys or fought five guys and then everybody clapped." He said, "I'll never tell a story like that." I thought, "That's a great rule in general for people." So, I think that was one big takeaway. The second takeaway is that I should probably leave the house a little more often. This was dope! I used to do this all the time, and then I kind of got a little cocky, thinking, "Yeah, I have a great network. I don't really need to put in the effort." But when I was in my twenties, I used to do this all the time. This was just a reminder of how much value you can get by talking to other people in the game. I think this podcast serves as that for people too, where you hear these stories, get inspired, and discover growth hacks. It's surprising how helpful people are.

Sam Parr

So, you know what? I describe that as when you're around certain people, you realize that the world is malleable. You see all types of people who are bending the world to the reality that they want. Then you feel like, "Oh yeah, that's cool! I could do that too." So it doesn't matter. I don't care if you're selling, if you're in the CIA, or if you're selling genius litter. It doesn't matter. It's just cool to see people who are kicking their dent into the universe.

Shaan Puri

Right, yeah, exactly, exactly. And the second thing I would say is there was a huge difference in life phase attitude. Alright, what does that mean? So, we were at this event and we had Ramon's son and his friend. Shout out to Jude, he came!

Sam Parr

a fun kid too

Shaan Puri

Super fun kid, super chatty—Chatty Kathy! By the way, the next day he was holding up the gel blaster gun thing. He said, "So they said they make this for whatever... I'll make up numbers. They make this for $3 and they sell it for $9." I was like, "Dude, he's already picking it up!" This guy's like 10 or 11, and he said, "That's a really big margin." I was like, "Wow, you know margin? That's really impressive!" So, anyways, we had people who were 10 or 11, we had the guys who were kind of like 20 to 25—the NFT boys—and some of the D2C guys. We had guys like us who were in our thirties, and we were like, "Alright, yeah." I'll tell you the differences and how each one was approaching it in a second. We also had guys in their forties, so that was like, you know, that sort of thing. Then I went and met up with a guy in his seventies and a husband and wife in their seventies. I saw all those life phases. I want you to guess: what do you think were the notable differences in those ages in terms of what they cared about, what they thought about? What were the differences?

Sam Parr

Have you ever heard the story of the old bull and the young bull? They see a bunch of cows, and the young bull says, "Let's hurry up and get down there and have sex with all those cows." The old bull replies, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. We could walk down there. We could take our time." That's kind of the difference I imagine. The 22-year-olds are like, "Let's do everything!" The 30-year-olds are a little bit wiser. The 40-year-olds are like, "Hey, let's just pick and choose our battles a little bit more wisely and enjoy the process." The 70-year-olds are more so like, "None of it matters."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly! That's exactly right. So, the teens or preteens were basically just like, "You wanna play? What are we gonna play?" "Hey, you guys wanna play this while we play this?" It's like we were on the pickleball court, and then in between points, they're running and kicking the soccer ball. Right afterwards, it's like, "You wanna play Monopoly? You wanna do this?" Until the last minute of the last second of the day, it was like, "You wanna play?" I thought that was just an awesome energy to be around. The other part of it was that they were also doing Khan Academy a bunch, and I was like, "Wow, they really want to learn this stuff." That's kind of cool, you know? That's amazing! That just kind of blew me away. So, they were all about play. Then you had your guys in their twenties who were the "I got it all figured out" guys. I remember being that guy. They actually do have a lot of life figured out; they're way ahead of the curve. But the problem is, they think they're at the end of the curve. They think they got it all figured out. So, you listen to their stories, and they're saying things that you're like, "You know what? Four out of the ten things you just said were totally wrong." But you know what? It doesn't matter. The fact that you believe all ten is gonna work... I just love that you think all ten are right.

Sam Parr

love that that's a good way to summarize it yeah

Shaan Puri

But they were a lot of fun. Their thing was just sort of like, "We're going huge! Of course, this is gonna work. This is gonna be massive. We got it figured out." Not in a cocky way, just like they had only known winning.

Sam Parr

mhmm

Shaan Puri

And I thought that was awesome because as you get older, you start to take losses. You take health losses, you see friends take losses, and you make big, expensive mistakes. You take those losses, and that sort of humbles you a little bit. So, this was pretty humbling, and I loved it. I loved that energy because, you know, even at first I was like, "Man, these guys are delusional." Then I was like, "How do I... hey, pass the delusion, please! I'd like to sip on some of that." That's a lot of fun, actually. I forgot how useful that can be. Alright, guys in their thirties, like us, are in this weird middle state. It's like I have a lot of self-belief, but I now know how expensive it is to go down the wrong path. Whereas the guys in their twenties don't know how expensive it is to go down the wrong path.

Sam Parr

waste time

Shaan Puri

Think about the path. They're like, "Yeah, I'm just pathing. I'm just pathing, bro. I'm just on the path." I don't even think about the fact that I could be doing five other things. I'm doing this, and this makes complete sense to me. Whereas in their thirties, it was like, "You could do this or you could do that," and there was almost paralysis by analysis.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

They've accomplished too much—too much to just do something stupid, like the guys in their twenties who created this NFT project. They were able to just do something stupid, and it paid off. They created this gel blaster nerf gun because it was just stupid, and they thought it was cool. That was enough justification to do it. "Oh, that looks fun, do it." Whereas the guys in their thirties think, "That looks fun, but let's spreadsheet this out real quick and just see." Well, you know, let's back the envelope.

Sam Parr

yeah like when when you have something to lose it changes a little bit

Shaan Puri

Right, and so they back the envelope themselves to death. But, you know, at least they're still thinking of the difference. When you compare it to the forties, the forties were like, "We know what we're doing." When I hear about what all these other guys are doing, I'm half amused and half exhausted. I want to go take a nap. You're just confusing me with all these things that, honestly, I don't feel like I need to know any of this stuff. I'm perfectly happy not being in NFTs and not knowing how to do TikTok videos to sell mini swords. That's cool, but man, I just want to go relax right now. The second thing was, one of them just found out he has high blood pressure, so he had a blood pressure monitor with him. He was like, "Just take my blood pressure." I was like, "Dude, I never take my blood pressure. Just put me in." So we took our blood pressure like four times a day just for fun. But, you know, they were like, like you said, they wanted to enjoy the journey. They were like, "Yeah, yeah, we could talk business, but let's go play some pickleball. That'd be fun."

Sam Parr

Yeah, and I think as you get older, you respect all the different ways that you can get there. But you know your lane, you know?

Shaan Puri

they knew their lane

Sam Parr

That's exactly right. My lane, and I know if I just do this all the time, I know what compounding looks like.

Shaan Puri

And everybody else looks very scatterbrained in comparison. But to know their lanes... I don't mean that in a discouraging way. They were definitely learning and they've made adjustments. However, they weren't seeking the next hit. They were just like, "I found a hit, and I enjoy this hit." They also wanted to think about life, marriage, kids, and health. That was a way bigger part of their life. Their own mortality was more on their mind than proving themselves, like in their twenties and thirties.

Sam Parr

And the older I get, and the more experienced I become, I understand compounding better. That was a really hard concept for me to grasp in my early twenties and late twenties. Once I started seeing it work a little bit, I began to understand it. I thought, "Oh wow, if I just do this all the time for 10 years, look at the progress I'll make." I'll be in a better place than if I start a bunch of different things. So, you understand compounding a little bit better. You know, if I just stay in my lane, I can respect what everyone else is doing. That's neat, and I think that's cool. I can learn from it. But if I just focus on this, mostly the same, I'm going to get to where I want to go.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so that was the forties. Then the seventies were basically some combination of "I want to contribute." They were pitching me a project that was like a philanthropic thing, and I was like, "Philanthropy? Oh, okay." That's a different conversation than all the other conversations I've been having all weekend. The second thing was they were just happy we came over to their house. It's like when we were leaving, I was like, "Man, it's going to be really quiet once we leave here." Like, is this who the person kind of...?

Sam Parr

who was the person can you say

Shaan Puri

I don't want to say their name just because I'm going to, like, you know, tell maybe... I don't know what I'm going to say about them. So, I don't want to say their name. But, like, kind of like a successful entrepreneurial couple in San Diego. Got it? So, I was like, you know, I went to their house and I was like, "Dude, they were really nice, really cool. They hosted us."

Sam Parr

the fat house

Shaan Puri

and also what's that

Sam Parr

fat house

Shaan Puri

Semi-fat house... yeah, like nice. Yeah, nice house. But also, when you see a house at night, by the way, it's like you don't actually see the house because you can't see anything around it. You can only see like a part of it. It's just very different when you see a house at night versus during the day. But I just felt like the things that matter to them were their grandkids, their kids marrying the right person, figuring out how to contribute, and also just like their house not being so quiet. Just any liveliness in the house was like a win. It didn't even really matter what we talked about or what came out of it. I feel like us being there was a cool, fun change of pace. I was like, "Yeah, I guess when I'm in my seventies, I'm also gonna want that a lot." Because I'll probably be kind of at home, kind of bored a bunch, you know? So that was like also kind of a wake-up call for me. It was like, "Oh wow, yeah, you know, this life thing does go pretty fast here."

Sam Parr

dude so it sounds like a sick weekend

Shaan Puri

yeah it was a lot of fun

Sam Parr

That's badass! Yeah, I have to talk to Ramon. I want to learn all about it from his perspective. But it sounds like a sick weekend. Yeah, that should happen every 6 months.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think we should do that again. Also, it was cool that the house we were in was kind of like a business. It was this luxury Airbnb; the Airbnb itself is a business. It just kind of breaks your frame a little bit. I think that's a pretty important thing. How often can you break your frame? An experience like this, twice a year, I think you'll end up breaking your frame. You'll just meet a bunch of other people who do life and think about life in a different way than you.

Sam Parr

I actually want to ask you about a frame-breaking experience. Before I get into that, I have to remind people that they owe us. They're in debt to us. If you just heard Sean's story, he went and spent the weekend creating these things to tell you about. He did all this work to do it, and we do that every week, 2 to 3 times a week. So, you're in debt to us. This is the gentleman's agreement part where you have to go to YouTube. Even if you're on iTunes, or you're on podcasts, or you're on Spotify, go to iTunes right now. Search for "My First Million" and click subscribe. That's our gentleman's agreement. Once you subscribe, we'll be even, and actually, we'll be more than even because we're going to keep doing this. We're working for you. Once you subscribe, that's all it takes. It's the most fair trade because once you subscribe, we get in the algorithm, yada yada yada. But this is the gentleman's agreement part. We can't check that you're doing this. That's why it's called the gentleman's agreement. We just hope that you are, so please do that.

Shaan Puri

I can't argue with that

Sam Parr

You can't argue with that. They spend literally one second to click "subscribe," and we spend 30 hours a week coming up with this content. It's a very fair trade.

Hubspot

I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned—no out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot: grow better.

Sam Parr

I want to ask you about a frame-breaking thing. Now that you're... how long has it been since the Milk Road acquisition?

Shaan Puri

2 months maybe a month and a half something like that

Sam Parr

So, you're still early into it. February 1st is technically my last day at House Dot; that's 2 years. Now, I'm 2 years into it, and I wanted to ask you. I have a list here, but I wanted to ask you because I know that the guys running The Milk Road now, or the owners, are recruiting interesting people. People message me and say, "Hey, this person's recruiting me. Should I join The Milk Road?" So, I'm getting all these asks, like, as your reference check. What have you learned so far about what it's like to be the founder of a company that's now owned by someone else? Is there anything interesting that you've learned? I have a list of a few things that are interesting to me, but is there anything you've learned?

Shaan Puri

I feel like you got a more interesting answer than me so you go

Sam Parr

Well, I'll say a few things, and these are a bit frame-breaking. The reason I'm bringing this up is because I think someone once said, or at least this attitude exists a lot in Silicon Valley, where they're like, "What's your exit plan?" Then everyone's like, "Forget exit plans! Don't have an exit plan. You're not building things to sell. Great things get bought; they don't get sold," or something like that. I actually think that's nonsense. I believe if you want, you can build a company where you're like, "I'm gonna exit in like 4 or 6 years, or 2 years, and I'm gonna make like tens of millions or hundreds of millions." You can build a company like that, and I think it could be really successful. So, a couple of frame-breaking things that I had: the first one is that building something from scratch is a very, very rare skill. One or two focused entrepreneurs with close to no money could probably do more in 6 months than a 50-person team with $1,000,000 in 12 months inside of a large organization. That was actually really challenging to me. I remember when HubSpot said they wanted to buy us, and I thought, "Just launch your own thing! I don't know why you would do that." Now, being at HubSpot for 2 years, I see it's really hard. The reason it's really hard is that the creative types who are bold enough to go and build something either aren't working at that company because they're out doing their own thing, or they're just stuck in this political game where they want to impress their boss. It's not because a company is bad; it's just the natural thing. They don't want to embarrass themselves. They don't have a significant amount of upside to see the win. They don't get the dopamine rush of the sale coming into Shopify. It's actually really, really hard to build something from scratch. So, it's worth it to them just to buy something that's already working. Do you agree with that 100%?

Shaan Puri

And you could see it when an acquisition happens. The velocity of progress slows down like molasses. It is kind of remarkable. Now, that doesn't mean it fails, but the velocity definitely slows down. Other things go better, but the velocity, the pace, and the sort of aggression and productivity, I think, go down.

Sam Parr

And that's what I describe as anxiety. It goes way down as an entrepreneur, but your frustration goes way up. That's the trade-off that you're going to make. However, this is another thing where I made this mistake: I would dismiss big companies and call them idiots. That's actually, in my experience, not true. In talking to a lot of people, sometimes they are idiots, but sometimes, operating like a good employee at a big company can be significantly better. A lot of the things that we make fun of, like bureaucracy and meetings, create redundancy. If you do it correctly, redundancy creates predictability, and predictability creates value. That's why your anxiety goes down. So, a lot of that big company stuff, a lot of it's bullshit, but a lot of it's really necessary. The people inside those companies can actually operate things really, really well. Do you agree with that?

Shaan Puri

I agree that that's true. I wouldn't say that that's the main value. The main value that I saw inside of a big company was that when you're big, you usually have two things. One is distribution. You can take something that doesn't have a lot of distribution and give it more distribution. Or you could simply say, "I don't really need to innovate. Let all these other people innovate, and I'll just follow because I have size." When I have size, I don't need speed. It's like a sumo wrestler versus a sprinter or a lightweight wrestler. You basically trade that distribution and size for speed. I think that's the first thing, and it's very hard to have both. When you're at a startup, the mistakes are not expensive. I don't know how many things you do at The Hustle that were like dumb or stupid or whatever. It's like, "Roll it back." At the beginning, especially, I don't have any customers anyway. I don't have much revenue to lose, and I don't have a reputation to be burned. The press is not watching me; Twitter doesn't care what I do. Whereas when you're big, every move matters, and every mistake is quite expensive. You have to be a little more careful. So, careful is not a bug; it's a feature when it's a big company. I started to appreciate that they're not slow because they're stupid. They're slow actually because they're smart. They don't need to go fast because they have size, and mistakes are expensive, so they don't try to make too many mistakes by going too fast.

Sam Parr

And that brings me to my second to last point, which is a lot of cool stuff that you and I like to make. You and I are 0 to 1 people; by definition, we're not the best at 1 to whatever. But a lot of the cool stuff is completely illogical or really stupid, and a lot of the best ideas start that way. This podcast, you called it "My First Million"—pretty horrible name. My thing was called "The Hustle"—pretty bad name too. It was just a newsletter that, when I pitched it to bigger companies, they would say, "This is stupid. This will never be big." The reason it existed anyway was that I was beholden to no one. We just said, "Screw it, we're just gonna do it." When you're launching something within a big company, you have to have logic. You have to have reasoning. You have to justify it for someone to fund it. Whereas when you're just two guys, you can say, "Man, screw it, we're just gonna do this." We're going to have an anti-Black Friday sale where we charge more this Friday as opposed to less, just because we want to. Because this is funny. It's completely illogical, and illogical stuff works—not all the time, but sometimes.

Shaan Puri

When I was hanging out with a 70-year-old person, I was explaining, "Yeah, I'm thinking about what I want to do next. I really want to pick a good project, and I want to choose the right way to spend my time." He responded, "Picking is hard." He continued, "The hard thing about picking is that today she might look like a pimply, chubby person, you know, here. But 12 months from now, as you take that idea and start dating it, you might pivot over here, change one thing, get a new wardrobe, and all of a sudden, she's 120 pounds. She's got her PhD, and she just got word in the mail that she's inheriting $72,000,000." He gave me this analogy and said, "That's the problem with picking. The best things don't always look like the best things up front." This goes back to a Peter Thiel saying: "The best ideas are things that sound like bad ideas but are actually good ideas." Why? Because those things have the least competition. They are the least done and have the highest upside. The most obvious good ideas are super competitive, and things that are actually bad ideas—no matter how hard you work—are still bad ideas. So, the sweet spot is something that sounds like a bad idea but is actually a good idea. This guy put it in a different kind of analogy that I appreciated. I'm glad I didn't say who it was because people get mad about that analogy, but I thought it was hilarious, and I understood what he meant. When you started the hustle, you were like, "Oh great, it's this conference." I thought, "Conference? Okay, immediately, that's a lot of work. Seasonal? Yeah, it doesn't get that big. Who cares?"

Sam Parr

if your product gets rained out it's kinda not good

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, you have $200 tickets to your conference. Like, "Alright, Sam, good luck." You know, and then you kind of fumbled. Then you were like, "Oh, okay, the conference is working." But you know, the conference ain't where it's at. I've been using content to drive ticket sales. Maybe I should just do this content thing through a newsletter. Even that was still sort of pimply and didn't really feel like a newsletter. I mean, dude, people over here are making flying cars and Uber, and you're doing a newsletter? Like, get some ambition, bro! You know that can't be big, possibly, right? Aren't newsletters just like a personal thing people send out to their 50 friends? You kind of figured it out as you go, and then now people are like, "Yeah, how many freaking... I want to build the next hustle, you know, hustle for X." You know how many people pitch you that? Myself included. Milk Road was a hustle copier after I made fun of you for doing a newsletter back in the day. I was like, "You know, I didn't invest in your thing because I was like, I don't think that's gonna get huge." Right? And I was like, but you knew something. You figured something out along the way that was not obvious up front.

Sam Parr

And by the way, **The Hustle** is very close to crossing 3,000,000 subscribers. That brings me to my last point: planning is something that I had never done. When people were talking about OKRs, which is a framework for running your company, they would put it on a quarterly scale. I thought, "Yeah, how about a weekly plan? How about a weekly one?" This way, we could create something new every single day. That's really important when starting out. I don't think you should plan too much. You call it "worry about ABC," right? I actually came to realize that we both separately had the same mindset. I'm focused on step 1 and step 2, and then I think about step 10 for inspiration, but I don't worry about steps 3, 4, and 5. That's important when starting things, but I don't know when that changes. Maybe it's at $10,000,000 or $100,000,000 in revenue. I don't know what it is, but planning is needed. It's necessary and incredibly important. That's what big companies do really well, or at least they try to do it well. As I'm growing my new venture, I'm trying to bake in this concept of planning without worrying about having a quarterly plan. It's okay to even have a 6-month plan. I remember when we sold **The Hustle**; we sold it when we were around 4 years old, and they wanted a 5-year projection. I thought, "What? I can't even comprehend 5 years! I don't even know if I'm going to be interested in this."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, "warm of these nuts." What are you talking about? Like, you want me to write down a lie? Yeah, my lies are verbal; there's no paper trail. Are you trying to get me to write this down?

Sam Parr

Dude, it was ridiculous. Now I understand that it's actually okay to have some of these plans. So anyway, that's my list of things that I've learned, like seeing the buyer's perspective just a little bit. I was just curious if you had any insights. It might be too early yet.

Shaan Puri

Well, let me tell you the different things that they've done. First, they hired a bunch of people. We were running the thing with basically 3 or 4 people and then one freelancer. It was very, very lean. You know, basically one dude wrote the email every day, and then me or Ben edited it. That was how the whole product was created. Now, there's like a second writer, there's an editor, and there's a head of content. It's like, who are all these people? What are they doing? Is the content getting better? I'm not sure. They've hired up people, which, like you said, builds redundancy. Because if the main guy got sick, which happened a couple of times, it was like red alert.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

You know, if we got a fact wrong, it's like, "Oh, I didn't have time to check it." We didn't have those things in place. So, I think they've basically taken a longer-term view. They were like, "Okay, we're going to be doing this for a number of years, so what do we need to get to this two years from now?" Let's start taking those steps today. Whereas I was like, "Alright, next month, what would be sweet?"

Sam Parr

yeah you're like I was like

Shaan Puri

well because you're like a planning exercise

Sam Parr

you're in survival mode

Shaan Puri

I had, even if it wasn't survival mode, because it was like, "Okay, we got the business working." I just wanted every day to be a new adventure. That's not how these people think. When they are long-term oriented, they want each day to not be an adventure. They want each day to be... you know, it's the difference between people who go for these long hikes and a sprinter. I was just more of a sprinter. So literally, our goal planning would say, "What's the minimum thing that would feel like a win?" We called it a "good win." That was good. Then, what's the "F yeah" win, where we would be like, "F yeah, dude! We did A, B, C, right? That happened." That would create our goal, and then we would shoot for the "F yeah." We made sure we didn't miss the good. That's what we did every single month. It was a little bit more, and if we didn't hit it, it was a problem. I immediately was like soul searching, "Everybody stop, and let's figure out who..."

Sam Parr

do I find

Shaan Puri

I'm ready to change anything and everything, which is not always the right approach. Sometimes it is right; like, these things serve you, and then sometimes they hurt you. I would say these guys put more money into growth, they hired more people, and they don't panic. That's the three differences between us. I think their approach has some bad things, and I think it has some great things. We'll see how it all plays out now.

Sam Parr

I think I read somewhere that someone was discussing masculinity and the difference between a man and a boy. A real man doesn't let shallow input change his emotions or alter his plans. I remember when I was running my company, I would always get emotional. I thought, "No, if I gotta be a man, I have to be calm and I can't panic." I used to think it was cool to be like Mark Zuckerberg, going in and saying, "Oh, this isn't right, you're fired." But no, real men don't do that. They don't panic, and they don't freak out. That kind of changed my perspective on that a little bit.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, my trainer has been teaching me this. He's like, "Okay, so, you know, you're doing a set. You're bench pressing or whatever, and let's say you picked a weight that the first, you know, 3 reps or 4 reps are easy. The next 4 reps are getting harder, and then the last 3 or 4 reps—let's say you're going to 12—the last 4 reps you're like, you know, it's kind of shaky and you want a spot. But more than anything, I don't know about you, but for me, it was always like, 'Get to the end.' It's like, I don't want to quit. I want to get there. But I would start rushing, and when you rush, your form changes. When you rush, you don't actually have that time under tension.

Sam Parr

that actually builds muscle wow time under tension

Shaan Puri

yeah we're and so he's

Sam Parr

classic classic muscle building words I like it

Shaan Puri

Don't make me say "glycogen." So, he's like, "Those last four reps, you're trying to get them done, but that's where all the gains are—in that last bit." That's where I want you to show poise. Slow down. Actually, slow it down. Don't just do normal speed; go even slower than your normal pace to maximize what you get out of it. So then that became, "Okay, when you feel that sizzle, when you feel that burn, the reaction is not panic and rush; it's poise." I took that lesson from the gym, but the gym is just a metaphor for life. Now, I'm doing that same thing everywhere. As soon as I feel that sizzle and that burn, and I just want to get out of there, I want to get done with it, I'm like, "No, no, no. Now is the time to be poised and slow it down." That's been working wonders in the business world because just when everybody thinks things are hitting the fan, I'm like, "Alright, this is the time where we go poised. We lock in and calmly address the situation," versus trying to overreact and respond to a stimulus.

Sam Parr

This, my friend, is called growth. Sean, you are experiencing growth. Congratulations! You're doing it right in front of all of our eyes and in our ears. You are showing growth. What topic do you want to do next? We're in a weird middle... got 4 minutes, yeah?

Shaan Puri

let's do do you have anything little let me see if I got something little

Sam Parr

By the way, while you're looking, you have to tell me what to do for my researcher. Now I have 400 applicants. I've narrowed it down to 200, and I'm like, I don't know what to do with these people. You have to tell me how to...

Shaan Puri

You should just tell them to do basically give them the assignment, which is, "I'll tell you what to do." Oh yeah, I'll tell you how to do this. The best way to work together, the best way to know if you want to work with them, is to just do a project rather than interview them. You don't want to interview 400 or even 20 people; that would just take up way too much time. So, you give them all the assignment. The assignment is, "Hey, every week, here are the things that we do. I want you to surface interesting nuggets that I might find interesting in my mind."

Sam Parr

I did that all 400 people did that dude

Shaan Puri

okay so who are the best 25 from that and did you do it for like 2 or 3 like have them do it for like 2 weeks be like you know hey do this for 2 weeks if you do it I'm gonna pay you you know I'll pay you $250 if you get through all the all the things that might be a lot of money I don't know do the math but like do something so they're not working totally for free or cut the bottom like 2 100 people right away and then just be like hey do this because because I think it's easy to do once and it's really hard to do for 3 weeks straight a lot of people could do a great m f m podcast once I don't know how many of them could do this podcast a 100 times a a 100 episodes a year and that's what we do and so you kinda need a researcher who's able to who has some inflow of information that that they can steadily be curating good stuff and then the second thing is give them a couple of research topics so it'd be like the way I do it is some I give them an assignment to bring me interesting nuggets but then I bring nuggets and I say hey take this story and I want you to research here's what I want and I basically gave them a format so my format for them is you want I want you to come up with the frame so the frame is the the framing of the topic how will I just bring this up out of the blue on mfm right so let's say there's some interesting growth hack the frame might be you know here's 3 of my favorite growth hacks that I've seen in the past year right because just talking about this one randomly doesn't work or let's say it's a growth hack but actually let let me give you the example the nugget was I bought a car from an anonymous account on twitter so that's a cool frame that's like a hook for a good story but we changed it to the guy mafia so I bought it from car dealership guy but you know what there are all these guys and actually maybe there's a bigger topic here that's called the guy mafia and people like that that frame right so I I teach them I'm like you gotta hit you hit me with a possible frame then you gotta have the supporting like evidence like what are the 4 or 5 interesting bullet points talking points that I could say about this thing that would make you say oh that's cool that's interesting and then what's the take or the takeaway and the take or the takeaway and let's say for the guy mafia was well at first it was here's why this works but then I was like no no a better take would be here's what I think people should be doing you should be doing this with a girl anonymous account because I think it'll get more followers you should be doing it in all these other categories and then don't monetize with a pay a newsletter or a paid paid community

Sam Parr

sell the thing

Shaan Puri

Monetize by selling the actual thing, like selling me the car. So that was the take. I tease on, like, "Here's a little Excel table." For every story, you gotta fill out the frame, the talking points, and the take. I see if they're very good at that.

Sam Parr

I do do

Shaan Puri

Most people, by the way, are very bad at that. That's okay. Our skill is that we need to be able to do that. But them doing it poorly is still super helpful because you're like, "No, no, that's a shitty frame. The frame's gotta be this." And that's still better than a blank page.

Sam Parr

I need you to send me all this

Shaan Puri

yeah I will

Sam Parr

yeah I need I need help with this it's been very challenging

Shaan Puri

Yeah, these are the tricks of the trade that other people are giving out for free now. I remember once, the TV show with P. Diddy where he's trying to find a rapper.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and he's like, "I need you to go to Brooklyn and get me some milk." He makes him walk across the bridge, you know what I'm talking about? He makes him walk across to get him like a cupcake, like 5 miles.

Shaan Puri

Because that's how he started his career. He was a runner at a record label and he had to go get things. But he had this thing where he was in the studio and he said, "Sing it." Then they sang it. He said, "Sing it again." They were like, "Wow, wasn't that good?" He replied, "No, we need to make a double." They asked, "What's a double?" He explained, "A double is when you say the same exact thing and we layer the two audio tracks. It makes your voice sound more full and powerful, and it just sounds better." He then turned to the camera and said, "I shouldn't be saying all this shit on camera." I remember literally being in 7th grade when that show came out, and I thought, "I just heard a trick of the trade." I've never forgotten that. Even though I'm not a rapper and I've never used it, I was like, "Make space in the brain." He made it sound like he just gave me an insider tactic, and I literally still remember this now that I'm 34 years old. I still remember it.

Sam Parr

that's hilarious that's hilarious I just heard it that's good

Shaan Puri

alright let's get out of here