DEBATE: Are Olympic Athletes Wasting Their Lives?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we have the big spectacle. We have the screens, we have the thing when we hit our donation goal. There's gonna be the big, like, fireworks or whatever for doing the... that's the moment. So the difference between us and everybody else is that we also care about the moments *between* the moments.

Sam Parr

Alright, Sean, do me a favor. Go to our document and look at the video that I posted to the Instagram link. I found this this weekend while I was sitting in the bath.

Shaan Puri

just chilling watched this right before the pond I watched this yeah

Sam Parr

Does that... okay, so I was sitting in the bath, just chilling, watching Instagram. Have you ever sat in the bath? You know, like bath Sundays, and just kind of sit for a few minutes?

Shaan Puri

I have kids dude my bath is very different than yours now

Sam Parr

Well, that's true. So, I was just chilling on Sunday, going through Instagram, and I came across this video of a woman from Germany. I think she's German, and there's a guy running with her in a 200-meter race at the Paralympics. She's blind, and he's the guide runner. They win the race, and they start hugging. She's all crying. Is that the coolest video you've seen today or what?

Shaan Puri

This, I didn't actually understand what was happening. It just looks like they're racing against each other. I wouldn't have even known what this was if you hadn't said anything.

Sam Parr

So, she's blind, and she must not be fully blind. What they do in the Paralympics is... she's not gonna...

Shaan Puri

have a blindfold on

Sam Parr

Yeah, they put a blindfold on everyone because some people might be legally blind and they could still kind of see a little bit. So, what they do is put this blindfold on everyone, and then these women are really fast. A woman can't be their guide because there are just faster men who can keep up. So, they're all teamed up with a guy who helps them get their foot into the blocks and puts their hand in the right place. He then has to run alongside them, stride for stride. They'll say things like, "Alright, you're in 2nd now," or "You're in 1st." They'll also say, "Alright, we're on the straightaway." It's pretty cool stuff, and it seems really rewarding. I'm going to do this, so I've contacted a track coach.

Shaan Puri

Saw this video, you got emotional. You know, the bath bomb started hitting and the eyes started getting misty. And you just decided, "This is what I'm born to do. I'm gonna be a guide runner." Or... you want somebody to guide you? Which one are you trying to do?

Sam Parr

So, here's the deal: I am now... I'm still fast enough that I am as fast as some of these blind women. I'm not as fast as the blind men, but I can keep up with the women a little bit. I probably have 5 more years where I can keep up with them. I can't... I'm not good enough to go to the Olympics. I never was, and particularly now as I get older, I'm not good enough. This is my shot. This is my way to get into the Olympics - to be a guide runner for a blind lady.

Shaan Puri

This somebody called you out on Twitter for this. They go, "He did it," the perfect Sam backhanded compliment because you were...

Sam Parr

like backhand complimenting myself

Shaan Puri

Yeah, kind of yourself. I don't know the whole sport because you were like, "I'm not as fast as I used to be," and "I'm still fast enough... just to keep up with the elite blind woman."

Sam Parr

No, that wasn't my... I'm just saying, like, it's just a fact. There’s this lady, she ran 23 seconds. I can run 23 right now. I'm not... there's no, like... like.

Shaan Puri

even stretching

Sam Parr

No, and this isn't even like the... but this is like awesome. I think it's awesome. I think it'd be way more fun. I'm not making fun of these people.

Shaan Puri

You have to be a good person to do this at the Paralympics. You're not a good enough person, dude. We... you were too rough around the edges. Me? Yeah, you're gonna get canceled before the race. You're gonna say something.

Sam Parr

tip like 50% when I go out to eat I'm a great guy

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's what you gotta ask yourself: where's that coming from? What are you trying to cover up with these 50% tips?

Sam Parr

I'm a good dude man

Shaan Puri

I I I could

Sam Parr

do this

Shaan Puri

I'm glad you brought up the Olympics. You probably don't even know this, but the Winter Olympics are going on right now. Half the...

Sam Parr

people listened learned that like yesterday

Shaan Puri

They're going on right now. The ratings are like the lowest it's ever been. Alright, and then I forgot to tell you this, but this is the most important thing. I can't believe we didn't talk about this earlier, to be honest with you. Because if you're listening to this and you like what you're hearing right now, and you haven't gone and subscribed to the "My First Million" podcast wherever you get your podcasts, then that's the thing you've got to do. There's nothing more important than doing that right now. And don't do it because I said to do it. Do it because you want to do it. Do it because that's who you are. The Winter Olympics, in general, are like, you know, less popular than the normal Olympics. Some people are super into it. My buddy Trevor, he's my roommate, he loves the Olympics. When the Olympics come around, he's like, "Clear the schedule 24/7, I'm just watching whatever's on." And like, I kind of got into it with him.

Sam Parr

I I do that too by the way but only for the summer no no no summer of the winter is real

Shaan Puri

Exactly, exactly! So you should say that when you're in the Winter Olympics, "Can't wait to do this for a real sport." So, I was watching the Super Bowl, and then, like, immediately after the Super Bowl, it auto-cut to the Winter Olympics. I was watching somebody do the toboggan, and I just thought of a very controversial take. This take was too spicy for Twitter. I didn't even dare put it on Twitter because I was like, "I'm gonna get so much heat for this."

Sam Parr

the toboggan is the person who lays on the sled I thought that was a luge

Shaan Puri

okay maybe I maybe it was a bobsled maybe it was a luge maybe it's a toboggan

Sam Parr

was it like one person

Shaan Puri

it was one person they were

Sam Parr

The difference is that one goes face first and the other goes on their back, legs first.

Shaan Puri

So, completely irrelevant to what I'm saying... Yes, one of those was happening, and then I thought... Our buddy Nick tweeted this out during the Super Bowl because Nick likes to just stir the pot on Twitter. That's like his character on Twitter. He was like: > "Watching sports is a complete waste of time. You know what I'm doing right now? I'm working on my business. That's how you get ahead. When everybody's zigging, you zag." And he's doing something like that, and then every...

Sam Parr

earlier that day he was texting us photos of him partying so

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, he parties all the time. This guy is not like Nick; he lives the most charmed life. He's like, "Oh, you know, I'm tired of playing golf, so I'm gonna relax." Right? This guy's got, I guess, self-storage is a pretty hands-off business, so he has a lot of time on his hands. But he likes to tweet stuff that sort of pops, and so people started, you know, fighting about it. Here's my take—that's kind of like something I just didn't want to get into on Twitter. The Olympics are an example of how to waste your life. So here's the spicy take. I understand that's harsh, but here's the take: I once listened to an interview with this guy, Max Levchin. Max Levchin created PayPal, which is a pretty important internet invention—the ability to send money to each other on the internet. So he creates PayPal, and it becomes a huge success. For his next act, do you remember the company that he started next?

Sam Parr

it was called slide I think

Shaan Puri

slide and describe what slide did for the people

Sam Parr

it was advertising technology or games I forget but it didn't go back well

Shaan Puri

many many little mini apps on top of myspace and facebook so it'd be like that's right

Sam Parr

it it

Shaan Puri

would be

Sam Parr

a shame

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like you want to put up a slideshow of photos with some music on it? Slide. You want to throw sheep at your friend? Slide. Slide makes all these apps that are like, you know, "poke your friend." Oh, we created an app called **Double Poke**. It's better than a poke!

Sam Parr

Money through ads, I think it was. So, it was ultimately almost like it was just a way to get lots of impressions and then add.

Shaan Puri

Ultimately, the whole thing lost money. They didn't make any profit and ended up selling to Google, mostly because of Max. I think it was Google that bought them. Yep, so whatever, it didn't end up working. But the lesson is that Max did PayPal, then he had Slide, which had explosive growth on top of these really fast-growing social networks, but ultimately kind of fizzled out. You know, like, what have you learned? He said one thing that has stuck with me, which means I must have been guilty of it many times for this to stick with me this hard. He goes, "Well, here's what I learned with Slide: you can spend... be careful because you could spend your whole life optimizing for nothing." And he's like, "You could optimize anything to the infinity degree." He's like, "So we come out with Super Poke or whatever their apps were at the time. You know, Super Poke, it's like better than a poke." And then all of a sudden, I have these brilliant engineers from Stanford and whoever else, and their job every day was to increase the poke per user ratio by this much to get clicks up, to earn an extra 3 cents per click. Ultimately, we spent years just optimizing the viral coefficient of how I can get Super Poke right across MySpace. His message was, "Be careful because it doesn't matter how smart you are; anything can be optimized to infinity. So pick wisely." You know, the same brainpower and energy went into building PayPal as went into building these silly apps on Slide. And I've been like, you know, this has been my thing, my sort of mountain to die on, which is like Project Squash and is everything.

Sam Parr

but you are so wrong when you're

Shaan Puri

not in

Sam Parr

the olympics

Shaan Puri

This is the Olympics. This person who's running and then diving into this toboggan, they basically got tricked by society. Society basically told them, "Hey, you know what? Devote your whole life, give up everything, basically to train every day to become the best in the world at this arbitrary thing that we've made fun of." Are you going to make a lot of money from it? No. Are you going to develop these amazing other aspects of your personality in your life? No. You're going to go super single-minded to turn yourself into a human weapon of doing this one random thing: sliding your body in a tube down this chute for 40 seconds. Your job is to get it from 40 seconds to, you know, 39.98 seconds. That is your life. And then, hey, when it's over, good luck! Just go figure out the rest of life now that you've peaked at age 26. Then, you know, go ahead and figure the rest of life out. So, I think the Olympics are an example of optimizing your life on the dumbest shit. Okay, go.

Sam Parr

Alright, I'm going to make an argument to say why you are entirely incorrect. I've got wonderful examples. These are on top of...

Shaan Puri

oh I thought you were gonna tell me I'm an idiot incorrect you're an

Sam Parr

idiot and here's why sports represents so much more there's only basically 2 things that transcend language religion and culture it's basically art and sports I think those are the only 2 things maybe family but that's about it and so what sports represents is so much more than just optimizing the the seconds not only is it about like the being disciplined and all that and how those are good qualities but it's it's it's about culture so think about this in the 19th I think it was 33 olympics or 32 olympics in berlin it was in it was in berlin and and hitler was in the stands doing a zeke howl and they were still getting they're at that. They just started like you know messing around with the jews and getting rid of them jesse owens wins the long jump in 100 meter - when hitler's saying like well the aryan race is the best race and anything you know outside of that is inferior and jesse owens sticks it to him another example is this woman named catherine switzer you probably don't know who she is but have you ever seen this famous picture of this woman running a marathon and there's a priest pushing her out of the road no so okay so her name's catherine switzer look it up so look up marathon woman push and you'll see this famous picture so for a long time women were not allowed to run marathons so there was no such thing as first of all women weren't even in the olympics and they thought that like oh women are just too weak to run and this woman came along and I don't remember what year it was I think it was the seventies and she starts running this marathon and there's this famous picture of this guy pushing her out of the street and that like signals to all women like no f this you could do it alright you got this and then you got guys like this guy who you can't see all the way his name's steve prefontaine steve prefontaine he ran in the 1960 1972 olympics I believe in munich munich and what happened at that olympics was basically a bunch of terrorists took over and they killed a bunch of israeli athletes have you heard about this they took over this helicopter they kidnapped these israeli athletes these wrestlers they threw them in the helicopter the israeli army tried to like capture them and it blew up and it and and it ruined the whole olympics and you know what they said the next day they go f this we gotta go compete we this is what we have to do we gotta compete we gotta bring this together and steve prefontaine this guy who's on my wall he was at the olympics and he said these amazing quotes like to give anything less than your best is the sacrifice of the gift he eventually inspired this guy phil knight and bill bowerman to go start a company that they called nike and steve prefontaine was their first athlete and this is all because of the olympics and this is all because of sport and the olympics happen just every 4 years and it's one way to like bring a beginning and an end to the last trailing 4 years of training and preparing and discipline and accumulates in this thing this is incredibly essential it represents race relations women's rights fuck go look at the every year at the olympics they do the the the procession where your country comes in they've got this thing called I forget what they call it but it's for people who are going through war and who don't have a country so for example I believe in london I think it was like sudan or or the congo republic I forget one of those countries was not considered a country by like they're going through civil war and so they just said hey we're just gonna create a refugee country you now have your own country or when taiwan or hong kong are going through their issues it's a huge deal that for the olympics that they announced are they gonna have their own country or are they not or recently a kenyan swimmer was in the first ever summer olympic swimming this is beyond sports this is a really big deal that's my plea that's why I think this is actually awesome

Shaan Puri

tell me how you really feel

Sam Parr

that was good right

Shaan Puri

That was good. Just tell me one thing: Who's the greatest luge competitor of all time? Can you just name them?

Sam Parr

Everything that I just said was only for the Summer Olympics. The Winter Olympics are fake. If you need a judge in a sport, it's probably not that real.

Shaan Puri

of a sport

Sam Parr

That's why track and field, swimming, and all those races... that's why they're like *real* sports. Yeah, so everything I said... no, no, no. That... it's only every 4 years.

Shaan Puri

So, I'm mostly just messing around. Also, I like watching the Olympics in general. I think it's cool. Obviously, I think it's cool if people excel in things; that's awesome. My thought is, if my kid had the potential to be the greatest, you know, like the greatest third person in the bobsled in the country, but here's what you have to do: every day, every weekend for the next 20 years of their life is going to go into optimizing their body and mind to be able to do this. This is essentially what goes into becoming an Olympian, right? You're trying to become the best in the world at an arbitrary game that was made up. You have to sacrifice a huge amount of your life, focus, attention, energy, and talents that you decide to invest into this. The thing you get out of it is character building and life lessons. And the other thing you get out is the...

Sam Parr

boy scouts

Shaan Puri

You know, potentially a moment of fame if you won, if you actually did achieve the thing. And you have the knowing inside your heart that this was good. So, like, would I rather be Steve Prefontaine, this good-looking mustached runner guy, or would I rather have been Phil Knight? I'd rather be Phil Knight, I think. Actually, he's the perfect example. What did Prefontaine get out of Nike? Nothing.

Sam Parr

he actually

Shaan Puri

where is he now right

Sam Parr

he he he died 3 years into funding the company from a drinking and driving accident so yeah you're you're right

Shaan Puri

Okay, so it's not so funny now. It didn't work out. Wait, so he was actually a co-founder of Nike, or did he just inspire them?

Sam Parr

He was in their crew and he was their first sponsored athlete and like their fifth or tenth employee or something like that. If you ask Phil Knight, "Who's Nike's mentor or, sorry, who's Nike's mascot?" they'll say it's Prefontaine.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so anyways, my thought is that there are a lot of things that are fun and are best done as hobbies versus trying to become the best in the world at them. I can play, you know, Call of Duty and have a bunch of fun with my friends. I can even play the competitive side of things just because I like to scratch that itch. I play a couple of hours a week. But once I try to become the best in the world at it, the level of sacrifice and over-indexing on that thing becomes significant. And hey, you could do it; you could over-index on anything. You could try to become the fastest typer in the world or the best photographer of brown leaves in the world. So, choose carefully. Choose which one you really want to go into.

Sam Parr

It's like people who dedicate their lives to be an average D3 basketball player. It's like, it *could* work, you could go to the NBA, but... odds are, the writing's on the wall. It's probably not going to happen. So maybe you should actually study a real major instead of basket weaving or communications.

Shaan Puri

Right, and if you enjoy it, fantastic! If you're enjoying every step of the way, fantastic! But a lot of things, in my experience, are most enjoyable when done as hobbies versus when done with the competitive pursuit of becoming the absolute best in the world at it. There was a guy I used to work with at his dojo. He used to tell me, "Oh yeah, I really like this, so I might start a business around it." He goes, "Oh yeah, this is Dave Grossbach. The easiest way to mess up a hobby is to turn it into a job." I remember just hearing that and thinking, "That's interesting. I actually never really thought about that." Yeah, actually, there are some things that are really fun as hobbies that become really unfun as jobs. It's like working at a Cinnabon. Right? It's like, "Oh yeah, I love eating Cinnabon." But working at a Cinnabon? Smelling a Cinnabon? Eating free Cinnabon anytime you want? No, it's not so fun.

Sam Parr

That's how I feel about business sometimes. Like whenever I go to my friend Nick Ray's... He always hosts these meetups, and I'm his friend so I go. He's like, "Say your name and what you do for work," and I'm like, "I don't wanna say what I do." I'm sick of talking about work. That's all I ever talk about is business. Like, I don't wanna talk about that shit ever again, right? So I feel you.

Shaan Puri

Alright, let's do some other stuff. Okay, I don't know where we want to go. We can go with ideas or we can just shoot... that's all.

Sam Parr

we have I think

Shaan Puri

Well, I have a couple of things I didn't actually put on this list yet, but okay, so I'll give you a quick idea. I was in a pitch meeting. This founder was pitching me his company, and he was just screen sharing. He was showing me a product demo, and it was like a data analytics tool. He was like, "Yeah, so check this out. If I go to Excel..." and then he opened up the browser. I've never seen this before. He goes to "sheets.new," hits enter, and then he opened up a Google Sheet—a blank spreadsheet. I go, "Woah, woah, woah, what was that?" He goes, "Oh yeah, I'll show you later," because he was annoyed with me going on tangents about every random thing he was doing. He wanted to show me his product, not the fact that I could type "sheets.new" and save myself a lot of time. I usually Google "Google Drive," then I get to Drive, then I click "New," then I go down the menu, find "Spreadsheet," and then I click "New Spreadsheet." It's like this annoying thing I do six times a day. So, just seeing this was like, "Wow, that's awesome!" It reminded me that there's a whole company out there called GoLinks. Have you ever heard of GoLinks?

Sam Parr

no what is that

Shaan Puri

So, I saw this when I was working at Twitch. The kind of, whoever the... I don't even know his job title, like VP of everything, the number two guy at Twitch, my boss, this guy Dan, he was like, "God, we have so many documents in this company." Now, I just have bookmarks and tabs with all these docs open at all times. He said, "If I ever want to look up the annual plan, it takes me like 5 minutes every time I want to find it." He didn't understand why we don't just use GoLinks. What GoLinks does is it lets you set up a thing that's like go.annualplan or, you know, you could just basically type in a human-readable link and anchor it to any document. So, let's say you've anchored it to the 2021 doc. Oh, now it's 2022? Cool! We just swap the link out. We could still always type go/annualplan or go/plan, and go/plan will now take us to the 2022 doc. When I saw this, I was like, "Wow, this is actually so useful!" It allows you to quickly find and revoke access properly to different documents. I really like this. Most people haven't heard of it, and I think it's a very expensive tool. I believe it's a pretty enterprise-level tool. I see at the top here they raised a $54,000,000 Series A, so they're doing pretty well, obviously. I think somebody could build this as a very simple product. I think someone could create a GoLinks for the startup-level world.

Sam Parr

more like bro

Shaan Puri

indie hackers

Sam Parr

I just invested in 1

Shaan Puri

oh really what is it

Sam Parr

yes so I told you about it too

Shaan Puri

I swear

Sam Parr

I I told you about it it's called nira n

Shaan Puri

I r I'm in this too I'm in this too

Sam Parr

oh I I so that's the same thing right

Shaan Puri

So, Nira, this is slightly different. I don't think they do the shortcuts to the links. Maybe this is a feature they should add. What they're doing, what Nira's doing, is that all companies have all these documents. Then, people get fired or they move teams or whatever, but people still have access. It's like, "Oh yeah, I still got this link." It just opens up the numbers for the company. Or like, "Yeah, this contractor we hired still has access to all of our files." But like, who the heck can go audit and keep up and scrub the access for this? That's like a very big problem. Your company's most sensitive data is all in the cloud, and then the cloud access is shared among so many people. There's no central place to see who sees what. So, Nira's building that. They're building the system to track who has access to what.

Sam Parr

yeah but I think the link thing is a feature

Shaan Puri

Maybe... yeah, maybe it is a feature. I'm saying I think it's a feature that can stand alone because adopting something like Miro is going to go through my, you know, Chief Security Officer type of thing. This is going to go through our CIO or CSO, whereas this go-links thing is something that, like, you know, me and the one person who I work with... we're both just irritated with these super long, ugly Google Docs links that, you know, we can't find anything. It takes forever to find stuff.

Sam Parr

they they they have a free plan

Shaan Puri

nira does

Sam Parr

no go links

Shaan Puri

Oh, go links does... yeah, yeah, yeah. I think... yeah, I don't know what, at what. They do this, but I don't know why this is not more popular. This is like a real problem. And then this also just got me thinking: what else is like this? What are the other problems that are like these? I call them "paper cut companies." You know, death by a thousand paper cuts. So, what's a thing that's irritating but you do it so often that it's just a constant paper cut that annoys you? Screenshots is another one. Sharing screenshots was one that was a big paper cut. I invest in this company called Bubbles that tries to make that better. Loom makes it better.

Sam Parr

I remember bubbles is it working

Shaan Puri

I don't know, I haven't caught up with them in a little while. I know it was working initially; they raised a bunch of money from that. But I feel like it hasn't taken over the Loom market yet. Maybe it's going into a different market, I'm not sure.

Sam Parr

Dude, the screenshot... the screenshot one's a good idea. Also, the copy and paste. I've been thinking for years, how can I optimize a copy?

Shaan Puri

and paste

Sam Parr

Yes, a better clipboard. I've been thinking about that for a long time. It's always been an interesting thing to me—the clipboard. That's really intriguing. But the problem with these types of products is you have to truly be inventive. I don't particularly have that muscle to be that creative. So, people who invent things like this, or even like that guy named Howie, who has the huge company Airtable... Airtable is creating something like Excel, but different and better. Or even creating something like Notion. I feel like these people are kind of geniuses. They can come up with these weird product features, and they just know that if you hover your mouse over this, it needs that. They're so complicated. It's pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they're big on details, and I'll tell you the best thing I heard about details... Like this, I'm not detail-oriented. If this camera showed my desk, you would see... Yeah, I'm obviously not organized or detail-oriented. Everything is sloppy. Even my camera right now is actually slightly crooked, but I just don't care. I just don't care about details in pretty much anything I do.

Sam Parr

so that's why you're talking with like your neck a little

Shaan Puri

Bit... yeah, that's why I often do this. I end every podcast with a crick. But, you know, I'm not a "sweat the details" person. I remember the first time I used Slack. I used Slack really early on; it was like in beta. I should have invested in it. I just wasn't an investor back then, and I didn't think about it that way. But I used it, and I remember the first thing I did was tell our designer, "Hey, yeah, here's the color for our logo or whatever." Or they sent it to me, and they just sent the hex code. So, like, you know, hex... you know, like pound CFF373. It just turned it into a small, tiny color swatch. I remember thinking, "Why the heck did they do that? What level of care went into making sure that the hex code would just auto-format with a little swatch next to it?"

Sam Parr

that's what I mean

Shaan Puri

Nobody would do that unless you were like a real product designer who sweat the details, who used this product all the time, and just dedicated yourself to... anytime you could just scratch your own itch and irritate, you know, like remove one paper cut from your own user experience, you're gonna do it. And so, this is why also working on your own products, working on products that you want to be the user of, helps. Because you'll get so annoyed at the paper cuts, you'll just get rid of them yourself.

Sam Parr

Alright, let me give you an example of another one. I'm only bringing this up because of colors. I've told you about this company called WGSN. They make $90,000,000 a year, and they tell... it's a bolt, it's like an info product all about colors. I don't want to talk about that, but so, Ben, go to... it's called coolers.co (C-O-O-L-E-R-S dot C-O). So basically, whenever I'm creating a new product or a new website, you have to pick a good color scheme. Oh, this is great! This is badass, dude, it's so good. So basically, let's say that for me, mostly I'm just a black and white guy. I want the text to be black, I want the background to be white, but then you still need some gradient of gray. Then you want the links to be some gradient of red.

Shaan Puri

what goes good with that what goes good with this color of blue

Sam Parr

And so what you could do is look at the very bottom where it says "When you see the lock button." When you see... So basically, it shows you 5 colors. You can randomly select one, or you could tell it which one you want. Let's say you like the blue, you click lock on that, and then it shows you 4 more that fit that. Then you click lock on the next one, and it shows you 3 more that fit that. Is this golden? Is this website amazing or what?

Shaan Puri

dude that's amazing that is so good and I love that when I

Sam Parr

I've been doing this for years... years... years. At first, it started out just like this tiny little project. Now, it gets **5,000,000** monthly uniques according to SimilarWeb. It's got a pro version and all these amazing features. So yeah, it gets **5,000,000** monthly uniques. It's got a Figma plug-in, a Chrome extension, and all this amazing stuff. They have a pro version that I actually don't know what you get with it, but how neat is this? This is a paper cut problem that actually, I bet, has turned into a business that makes many, many, many millions of dollars a year. This is the type of company that you could own for like **30 years**, and it probably would make pretty consistent **7-figure** profit every single year.

Shaan Puri

yeah how does this one make money does it charge for any

Sam Parr

So, they do a couple of things. If you look on the top, you'll notice that they have a Squarespace ad. So, it has ads, and then they have a pro version. It's only billed at $36 a year, which is stupid. You get lots of different features, but I would charge way more because you already know that this company has a... Basically, what you would do is, if I owned this, I would log on, look at all the email addresses I've ever collected, and do a control find for companies that have bought it, like Uber or Adobe. Then, I would go and upsell them on some crazy high thing.

Shaan Puri

Right, can I tell you the philosophy again? I'm not detail-oriented, but here's a philosophy I heard that I was like, "Oh, this explains why some things—when I experience some products, some hotels—I go into them and I'm like, 'This just feels good.' What's going on here? I can't even put my finger on what feels good about it." I was talking to Scott Harrison, he's the founder of Charity: Water, and Charity: Water puts on dope events. Everything they do is dope. I think when he was starting it, he heard some quote that was like, "Isn't it sad that charity is marketed with less design and style than, you know, the 73rd brand of toothpaste?" It's like, yeah, that's true. You know, like Crest or whatever, Aquafresh. They put more design, marketing, and energy into how that looks and feels—the colors, the typeface—than a charity that's saving children would put into their brand. So he decided early on, "Alright, I'm going to build an epic charity brand because I think it's going to matter. I think people are going to donate more if we come across better marketing. We can't just say that that's only for rich companies and we're this poor nonprofit that always has to look crappy." So he does. He is a photographer, so he takes epic photos. They put on epic events. If you ever go to one of their events, it just flows. It's just nice. Everything just keeps...

Sam Parr

promoter right

Shaan Puri

He was a former club promoter, so he gets it. I asked him, "Dude, what is it about your events?" I said, "Because you have the big spectacle." Like, at any event, every time he does MMA, he tries to up the ante from the year before. There's always this spectacle where there are 10,000 screens, and on every screen is one person from one village that we are going to fund tonight. That's the spectacle, and that's always cool. But I said, "Dude, it's the other stuff that... I don't know why, it just feels different. What is it?" He replied, "My wife, Victoria, she's the brains behind this. She has a phrase for this: 'All the magic is in the moments between the moments.'" I asked, "What does that mean?" He explained, "Yeah, we have the big spectacle, we have the screens, we have the thing. When we hit our donation goal, there's going to be the big fireworks or whatever for doing the moment. That's the moment. The difference between us and everybody else is that we also care about the moments between the moments. What's it going to be like in between those moments? Everybody else only puts their energy into those. We focus on the moments between the moments." I started to think, "I still don't really understand how to use this," but it became this kind of mantra. So anytime I really want to pull something off—like today is Valentine's Day, and I'm trying to pull something off—it's like, "What are the moments between the moments that I could just level up here?" Because that's where, to the other person, they're like, "Oh, you didn't have to do that." This took extra care to think about, you know, the walkway between the two rooms and not just what's in the two rooms.

Sam Parr

Now that I'm a hotelier, I'm reading the biography of the guy who started the Four Seasons. He talks about how he started in the sixties. Before then, people didn't necessarily have the fanciest mattresses, so we went and just got the best mattresses that money could buy. Or, like, you couldn't get your shoes cleaned at a hotel, so we just hired a guy to clean shoes. The showers weren't necessarily good either, so our showers were just almost as good as every other shower, but we just got the best shower heads. He was like, "Oh, we just focused on all these really tiny things," and it added up and made it amazing.

Shaan Puri

Right, do you have... have you read this? The main guy for hospitality, there's like the Shake Shack guy. I think he's written one.

Sam Parr

danny meyer his book's called setting the table yeah I read it it's awesome

Shaan Puri

and then there's that guy chip you know this guy chip have you heard of this guy

Sam Parr

Chip Conley, yeah, he had a hotel business. Is it called Hotel Zephyr? I think so.

Shaan Puri

It's like a boutique... It's like, what do I think? That's one of his hotels that's like the specific hotel. His group is called something else. He has a couple... like a bunch of boutique hotels. That's... I guess he's Chipanli? Yeah, and he was like...

Sam Parr

the former owner for a long time

Shaan Puri

Right, that's right. I think he was like the key adviser, special adviser to the founders of Airbnb. So, in "Masters of Scale," did you ever listen to the episode about Airbnb? The one about the 5-star experience thing?

Sam Parr

oh yeah go ahead tell

Shaan Puri

it so so you should do this for your airbnb so I I do this for I do this for all my startups I'll do this at one? In time for everybody it's a it's amazing framework so founder of airbnb brian chesky goes on and they're talking about like okay what makes air what made airbnb special he goes okay we do this exercise I think he calls it the 12 star experience so he goes alright he'd sat down with the team he goes okay a guest is gonna stay at an airbnb right that's our product our product is actually not the website where you book the thing it's the experience you have when you go to the place we all agree on that everyone's like yeah we all agree on that okay cool so what's a one star experience with airbnb it's like oh I I booked the place and my card gets charged twice for no reason now I gotta go contact support and then I never get a message from the guy so I'm uncertain when I get there about how I'm gonna get in and then I get there and it looks nothing like the photos and there's cockroaches everywhere and the bed is you know the sheets are dirty whatever that's a one star experience okay cool what's a 3 star experience so they they they define a 3 star experience it's like all those little moments but they're a little bit better and he's like alright what's a 5 star experience and this is where the team the first time they do this exercise the team's like alright 5 star experience is like you know super easy to book on the website you get there and the keys are in the lockbox and it just opens up and you know it looks just like the photos and you're feeling good and the the host leaves you kinda like a bottle of wine on the table or like you know some some mint a chocolate on your pillow let's put it that way he's like okay great that's a 5 star experience I was like yeah that's 5 star experience they're ready to like leave the meeting great we we need to find it because cool what's a 6 star experience and they're like oh fuck ryan what what do you want us to say they're like okay instead of mint you know chocolate on on your pillow there's a bottle of wine I said alright what's a 7 star experience and they're like alright seven star experience you know they pick me up from the airport there's a they're standing there with a name on my name on the sign and they I don't have to go figure out the uber in the city they drive me home and then they you know on the way out they hand me you know a little cheat sheet of cool stuff in the neighborhood that I can go check out and he like keeps pushing the envelope he's like what's a 12 star experience and he forces them to think through what the most magical experience could be using their product and he's like okay cool now we know what's possible now we know in the extreme scenario like we took the ceiling from here we blew the roof off and now we can go here right we took the knob we turned it to 10 and then we said no we want the volume to go higher and now we could take the volume up to 15 and sure we're not gonna be able to deliver that every time but if we hadn't even thought about it like we couldn't ever dream of translating any element of that into our into our experience

Sam Parr

And at the company, there was a time pre-COVID when they didn't have... you know what? When COVID happened, things changed. We had to survive, just like most businesses. But prior to that, for a long time, Brian had been tinkering with building an airline. The reason being is the **12 Star Experience** is basically, "What if we flew you there?" The moment you booked, we would pick you up and you'd be on our flight. A perfect 12 Star experience would be like having your own plane, this and that. They were even tinkering with either opening an airline or offering flights. That example didn't come to fruition because of a bunch of stuff, but that's an example of how that could have actually been a reality from that exercise.

Shaan Puri

but but other things did so for example the airbnb what what's it called experiences or

Sam Parr

whatever experiences

Shaan Puri

Where, okay, you get to the city. Now what? Well, my stay is not just about the house I'm in; it's also about what I do outside of the house. Well, cool! Wouldn't it be awesome if we could take you on a wine tasting? That could just be part of what was already booked. It just turned out to be amazing. It's like a local person guiding you through this experience, not just a corporate tour bus, but someone who really works at the winery and does this in their spare time. Wouldn't that be an amazing experience? That actually became a part of the product. And you know what? If the photos weren't so crummy, right? So, like, all these things, they put effort into doing them. To me, that's how you translate the "moments between the moments" into real life. So whenever I do this with our companies, it's like, cool! What would be a great experience? Oh, you get the product and it works. Okay, what's a 6-star experience? Well, the packaging actually... our packaging kind of is weird. It's hard to open. It'd be awesome if this was just easy to open and I didn't have to go get scissors and fumble with it. Oh yeah, okay, what else? Well, it'd be cool if you included a little note inside every package. That would also be an awesome touch, right? And then, like, what if the founder followed up with, you know, "Hey, how was it?" two days later, and they actually cared what I thought? Okay, what else? This exercise of taking your team through a 1-star, 3-star, 5-star, 7-star, 9-star, and 12-star experience is like... it works in any business, not just hospitality.

Sam Parr

Damn, yeah. I remember hearing this story years ago. I think he did this in like 2014 or 2015, and it's always stuck with me.

Shaan Puri

yeah it's good

Sam Parr

Let me tell you about a company that I think... I think I could start one of these and I think I could knock it out of the park. So there's this company that I've always talked about... Well, actually no, I'm going to tell you about that in a second. I want to tell you about one other thing. There's this guy named Sam Ovens. Do you know Sam Ovens?

Shaan Puri

Sam Ovens, is this the very slicked-back hair guy? Yeah, what's his thing? Consulting.com.

Sam Parr

So, he... alright, there's this guy named Sam Ovens. He rubbed me the wrong way for a long time, and looking back, I think I was actually wrong. He seemed like an alright guy. He had this website called Consulting.com, which, if I had to put it at its worst, was basically a course that cost between $2,000 and $10,000. It taught you how to start a business. At best, it's like an accelerator. The reality is, it’s just a way to create a community and a course on starting a company. He scaled it to about $30 million in revenue, and it was just him. He hired all these people and built an office in New York. He was posting on social media that they were doing $50 or $60 million in revenue, and then he vanished. He had a YouTube video come out today that says, "I'm back." He mentioned that for the past two years, he hated life because they scaled too quickly. They were spending like $50,000 a day on Facebook ads and weren't even making that much profit. So, he decided to change everything. Over the last two years, he said they've crushed it. For example, in January, he mentioned that they got rid of like three courses and now only sell two or one. Last month, in January, they made $800,000 in revenue, and their expenses, which included payroll and paid ads, were $60,000. So, basically, this guy launched a new company called "School," which is like a Facebook Groups alternative. When he was launching courses, he was like, "You stink." That's a different story, and it's actually cool. But this course business... this guy has now basically scaled it to about $8 million in revenue with $600,000 in expenses. Is that nutty or what? Is that crazy?

Shaan Puri

yeah but it depends is that sustainable and also is that gonna grow so for example

Sam Parr

I can I don't think it's gonna grow but I think it's gonna be sustainable

Shaan Puri

When I did the all-access pass, it was like I was making **$50,000 a month** off of the paid newsletter. My expenses were around **$300 a month** for ConvertKit and a **VA for $500 a month**. It looked nutty, but that's because I had an audience, so I could just sell into that. If I wanted to grow it, my expenses would have had to go way up. So it depends. Maybe his ad spend is really low now. Is that because his ads are ultra-efficient, or is it because he had a big list that he sent in to?

Sam Parr

They said that they don't spend on ads anymore, but previously they had spent $1,000,000 and tens of millions of dollars on ads. So, the website definitely already has...

Shaan Puri

yeah traffic

Sam Parr

traffic yeah so yes it's not

Shaan Puri

I talked to somebody who worked there pretty early on. I was like, "Is this guy legit?" They said, "He's legit. He's good." They mentioned that he lived in New Zealand or something like that. He's a digital marketer and he has Consulting.com, which is basically a platform that offers a course called the Consulting Accelerator. They're teaching people how to start their own consulting businesses. At the time, they told me there was about $10,000,000 of free cash flow a year and around $30,000,000 in revenue. They said that about half of that—like $15,000,000 or $16,000,000—was coming from one product, which was a $2,000 or $3,000 course on how to start your own consulting business. From there, they upsell you into a $5,000 course about how to create a course. Once you reach $500,000 in consulting revenue, you can join a mastermind that will help you get to over $1,000,000, and that will cost you $25,000 or $50,000 or something like that. So that was their model. Half of it was coming from that kind of entry-level $2,000 to $3,000 course, where they sell you and close you on the phone to get you to buy the course.

Sam Parr

I went through the funnel. So, I got him to sell me online or to do the phone call. I was like, "I want to figure this out."

Shaan Puri

oh it's

Sam Parr

Great, it's pretty good, man. I gave the guy a hard time because he's just kind of weird. He comes off... serial killer-ish. He's kind of Patrick Bateman-like. He's like the *American Psycho* version of our friend Jack Smith. He's just... a little off. But that's actually really incorrect of me to say because I don't... I think he is just an oddball, which is totally fine.

Shaan Puri

acceptable guy

Sam Parr

well yeah and I don't know him and I think that my judgment is just totally wrong I think he's an alright guy

Shaan Puri

yeah I think it's wrong because it's all based on his haircut

Sam Parr

No, I watched a lot of this guy's videos and I was like, "Something is off here." He was... he was aggressively sell[ing]. He's the type of guy where he's selling like a private jet... like a video on a private jet, right? So that's not wrong, but it's... it's... it's, you know, your cousins with the wrong. And so I think that it was just kind of odd, but I thought that was interesting. I thought you'd get a kick out of that. Alright, but the second thing: Go to Boardroom. Google "Boardroom Insiders."

Shaan Puri

k

Sam Parr

So, this company was just bought the other day for **$25,000,000**. It was acquired by a company called **Euromoney**. Basically, what it does is provide executives with help on various aspects, including sales, marketing, and recruiting teams. If your audience is a C-suite executive, it's essentially a database that lists all the executives you can think of. For a number of big, powerful executives, it has in-depth profiles on them. It helps you map out who they know, and you can follow an executive to see updates, like, "Oh, this person recently changed jobs." They claim that none of their information comes from scraping. I don't buy that, but it could be true. Now, let's just assume that's not true. If we assume that's the case, it means they get all of their data from editors who are monitoring the web and manually creating this database of tens of thousands of executives, which they then sell for tens of thousands of dollars. I think that's pretty amazing. There's also a company called **PitchBook** that did something similar. PitchBook is owned by a publicly traded company and they generate about **$200,000,000** in revenue, which means they're probably worth well over **$1,000,000,000** at this point.

Sam Parr

And what they did was they hired these huge teams of people in the Philippines, and they would basically call VCs and ask them if they invested in this particular company. Then they would create a list like: "Alright, here's what we triangulated: - This company raised this much money at this valuation from these 5 people - These 5 people also invested in these things, these things, these things - These 18 companies are growing at this rate based off their headcount growth on LinkedIn" These fascinating databases... is this interesting?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I always kind of admire a product like this. I put this into the "beautiful businesses" category. Why? Because what's the product? The product is data. You sell it digitally. You collect it through either automated scraping or outsourced phone sales scripts. Every bit of data you add in makes your whole dataset more valuable. You could sell this thing for a very high price because the people who need it, right? Like boards of insiders, for example. Who needs access to the profiles of executives at companies? It's executive recruiters. They are willing to pay because they make a ton of money when they place a CMO at a company, whether it's in executive sales or executive marketing. So, it's people who have big budgets and spend a lot of money. They don't have the time to figure this out themselves. They'd rather click a button and get the list. So, yeah, while I don't think these are the most fun and exciting businesses to build, or that they are particularly good for the world, I don't admire them for that.

Sam Parr

Those reasons can be... if you cared about it, I think... I think there's a... and there's not like... I am fairly passionate about the PitchBook version. Crunchbase is also a cool version that I'm like, "Oh, that's actually pretty sick." I think there's a world where it could be cooler.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, maybe it does look like they have a lot of stuff on the person. So it's like, you know, I'm on one [profile]. This is Doug Yume, he's the head of retail business at Amazon. They have like sample profiles on their site. His personal interests are: - Golf - Greek letter organizations - Bratz (I don't know what that's about) And then it's like, here's the summary: - He did this before that - He was working on this before that - He was working on that It's like a resume.

Sam Parr

doug likes golf and boofig let's go hire him

Shaan Puri

And then it was like, "Hey, he was born in South Korea, grew up in Kentucky." It's like, yeah, if you want to build rapport real quick, it's like: "Here's his wife's name. Hey, how's the wife? How's Young-nim?" You know, like, "How's..." Here's what he's focused on. He's bullish on retail business because on the Q3 earnings call they said, "We're bullish on retail business." It's like, okay, yeah, some of this is kind of like... you know, who's typing this in here? But some of this could be useful. I could see why this [information might be valuable].

Sam Parr

Have you seen on *The Office*? Michael takes notes on all of his clients and he's trying to teach Dwight.

Shaan Puri

how to do it

Sam Parr

Yeah, and Dwight gets to know it. He goes, "Hello, Mr. Smith. How is Greg, your 14-year-old homosexual son?"

Shaan Puri

How is your gay son? Yeah, he's like... it was written in. He's like, it was on green. He's like, "Green means go." I said, "Do not go there."

Sam Parr

that's what this reminds me of oh my god that's great

Shaan Puri

yes alright so this is this is a cool little website

Sam Parr

well that's it

Shaan Puri

Can I tell you something interesting I saw? Also, the 0.1% rule. Nathan Barry came on the pod and he was cool. He's the founder of ConvertKit. He came on and was telling us about some blog posts that either he's written or that others have written that he liked. So I went back and I read one of them, and I saw this thing called the 0.1% rule. Have you seen this?

Sam Parr

no okay

Shaan Puri

so I'll I'll but

Sam Parr

he's pretty amazing

Shaan Puri

I'm gonna pull up this... where's the blog? The O1% rule of wealth. Let me see if I can pull it up here. Okay, okay, I'm not gonna be able to find it real quick, but I'll put the link in. Ben, if you could find it or search "Nathan Barry Wealth Ladder O1%." So basically, the way the guy's thinking is... he's like, you know, he talks about price sensitivity. And he's sort of like, you know, as you get richer, the way you think about money should change. This is like when I came to your house and you had CVS receipts in the glove compartment, right? Now, because you're saving them for like the $3 thing, you're like, "Hell yeah!" And I was like, "Dude, you just sold your company for like many, many millions of dollars. What are you doing with these CVS receipts?" You're like, "I just like to do it. It's a habit." So this guy talks about how the richer you get, you should sort of... he's like, this works for when you sell something to somebody or yourself. As you get to that level, basically below...

Shaan Puri

0.1% of your net worth. So that's... you take your net worth and you multiply it by 0.001, whatever you know. One... so it's like 0.1% of your net worth. So let's say you're worth...

Sam Parr

let's do a 100,000,000 so a 100,000,000 what is it times what

Shaan Puri

Use $5,000,000, right? Use a little bit more of an approachable number here. So, that would be $500. If you have $5,000,000 in net worth, $500 is the threshold below which you don't really feel it. You don't really care or feel it. You're going to become a little bit price insensitive below that. So, that might be like, you know, opting for the nicer hotel or like you just really don't give a shit. You can just ball out at a restaurant; you really don't care. He draws this little curve and he's like, at the first level of wealth, it's like he calls it level 0 or level 1 of wealth, where it's like, you know, your level 1 is like $100 or less than $100.

Sam Parr

that. Well a $1,000,000 yeah a $1,000,000 would be a $100

Shaan Puri

yeah so he's like you know at that. Like you know if you're at the grocery store and something costs an extra dollar like you care you don't wanna buy the eggs that cost a dollar 99 more you care he's like then the next the next jump up is you're like well I don't care at like you know it's he the the way he draws the charts like what are restaurant prices then the next one is like what are vacation prices it's like you don't even really care about how much your vacations cost the next one is like you you know you could fly 1st class and then the the final one is like you know or the next one is like you can buy a crazy house you you know you don't really get you're not really feeling house prices as much and then the final one is like you know what are prices anyways like you know this is when you're worth over $100,000,000 like at that. Most things don't cost anything to you and you're pretty insensitive to the cost of it so I'm just sort of summarizing the idea the the exact you know you can quibble about what you should or shouldn't care about but I thought it was kinda an interesting number and the reason I bring it up is very few people that I know are like properly price sensitive so there's a lot of people I know like my dad who no matter how wealthy they've got like these sort of like the trauma of not having money is so deeply ingrained in his body that like you know starbucks he's just like he's like pissed off when they charge even if he buys the coffee and like he's angry at the price he's like oh my god 4.99 like I could make this for so much less and they're like sir you're welcome to do that he's like like what's going on and you know he's anchored to prices from like the eighties when like you know that's why like he thought movie tickets should cost x and also you know it just like hurts him to spend more than some amount regardless of what's in his bank account and so he's kind of on one side of the spectrum too cheap and then there's the other side of spectrum which is where more where I am where it's like dude you should really kinda like pay attention to this you're you're kinda spending like pretty crazy and you know completely price insensitive is on the other side and then there's like whatever the sweet spot is and then school they don't really teach you how to how to like gauge that or what what those kind of like what even should be a good number for this what should I spend on things

Sam Parr

So, you don't get nervous? Like, I freak out a little because as an entrepreneur, some years I just knock it out of the park and make so much money. Other years, I make nothing. I mean, hopefully, I don't think nothing will ever happen again, but there are times you don't get nervous about running out.

Shaan Puri

No, actually, like 2 months ago, I was like, "Oh my god, I have like no cash left!" No cash on hand left. I was just... I was investing in everything I saw. I was putting money into startups, into crypto, into stuff. I was then... I was spending a bunch. Like, my payroll expanded, and I was like, "Oh my god, I have so little cash in my [bank account]."

Sam Parr

I thought that way too

Shaan Puri

it was under

Sam Parr

I had $60 in cash and I was like I feel low

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I think it was like $38,000 in my Wells Fargo checking account. I was like, "Where did all the money go?" This was like... and I was like, "Oh yeah, I guess." I looked at the outgoing transactions, and it was not that my spending had gone up; I was really just investing a lot of money. But I was like, "Wow, I need to manage cash." For most of the time for me, it's like, "Oh, I need to send my invoices for things." You know, like I was like, "Alright, I'm going to teach a course, and I'm going to invoice for the podcast, and I'm going to do the things that bring in cash today." Versus most of the things I invest my money into are long-term, illiquid things or my own businesses. Right? Like maybe I should take a withdrawal out of my business and put money in my bank account. So, you know, it was just a reminder of that. But no, I don't really get too worried about that. And maybe, you know, again, I think I'm too far on the dial of being willing to spend on whatever.

Sam Parr

Ramit Sethi, that's pretty much what his entire image and content is about. He has this podcast where couples argue. For example, one couple might say, "We are worth $3,000,000," and then they get into a fight because one of them spent $80 on something silly. Ramit's all about that. He often says, "I'm more like your father than I am like you." I think it's rooted in trauma and fear. I have the same thing where it bothers me so much. For example, Cometeer coffee sent me some for free, and it's so good, but it's $1.50 per cup. When I compare that to my regular bean coffee, I'm like, "$1.50? Sometimes I don't even drink the whole thing." I've been really struggling with whether that is worth it. Then there's the backsplash on my sink in the kitchen that needs to be replaced, and it's $800. I've been fretting over it for over a year now. I'm like, "$800 to replace that? You can't!" Even though it will add value to the home and also make me happier, I understand why your dad thinks that way. It's real. I think it's challenging when you've felt one way for years, and now suddenly things are different.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, maybe we actually need money therapy. Money therapy specifically, I think that's actually a good idea here. So therapy is this broad thing that has a bunch of associations with it, and mostly it's like stigmas and blah blah blah. I think somebody needs to spin off and... Ramit sounds like he's kinda doing this, which is sweet.

Sam Parr

therapy is a great idea

Shaan Puri

Financial therapy... and it's like, "Yeah, I have a money coach." You know, switching from "therapy" to "coach" is the hack. It's like, "Oh, I'm focusing on performance and not fixing a broken part of me." But so, I...

Sam Parr

In reality, it's that I tried finding people like this. When I met them, I was like, "Look, we just got a..."

Shaan Puri

new I'm not a financial adviser different things

Sam Parr

No, I know. I've gone to therapy a lot, and whenever I was trying out a new therapist, I'd be like, "So, I'm not trying to sound like a douche or big-headed, but I'm a high achiever. I want to conquer the world and do cool shit." I'd explain, "This is the place that I'm coming from. I'm high octane, baby. Can we make those things happen? Do you have the tools necessary? Or do you just specialize in traditional [therapy approaches]?"

Shaan Puri

So wait, what were you really trying to tell her? Were you trying to tell her that: 1. "My problems are not... I'm not broken. I'm trying to achieve a higher level of success." Or were you trying to say: 2. "I'm an A player and you're a B player therapist." Is that what you were trying to ask her? What were you trying to ask her?

Sam Parr

no the blunt way to explain it is I've got rich I'm I'm complaining about some rich people problems

Shaan Puri

okay gotcha

Sam Parr

I'm just mostly insecure about certain things, and I want to use that to conquer the world, right?

Shaan Puri

I'm not very much on twitter yeah

Sam Parr

And like, I'm gonna complain about stuff that sounds super weak because, like, on the outside, everything's going great. But I need you to empathize that I'm trying to go places, and I don't need you to tell me that, "Well, you made a million dollars last year, isn't that good enough?" Like, no, dawg, that's not... I need you to understand what's at stake here, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

and sam what is at stake here

Sam Parr

that's a you're a better I'm gonna be I'm gonna be your I'm

Shaan Puri

gonna be your money therapist

Sam Parr

But you know what I mean, like totally. So, I would meet people and I'm like, "Oh, you've only worked with a certain type of person." I don't think you understand. I don't think you'll be able to help me.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I know what you mean. It's the reason Tony Robbins gets paid $1,000,000+ per client because his clients are Serena Williams and Ray Dalio, and you know, whoever.

Sam Parr

he's like trades you rich

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and he himself is successful, and his other clients are, you know, objectively very successful. But everybody... everybody, you know, can improve the little voice in their head. Dude, while we're on random topics, did you watch "The Tinder Swindler"?

Sam Parr

no but I saw your picture with it so what's the what's the like the the okay so you guys

Shaan Puri

don't okay so here's here's what happened it's it's kind of an amazing thing there's a guy so the document it's a documentary about this guy who goes on tinder and his tinder profile looks like you know he's kinda like a normal ish looking guy but he's like clearly living a cool lifestyle like lots of travel in different climates kind of wearing very nice clothes that's his profile alright so girls swipe right on him and they start chatting with him and he he basically what he ended up doing was he ended up conning women out of money and it was like a ponzi scheme so what he would do is he would meet a woman on tinder take her out on a date kind of wine and dine her make it look like he's this baller of a guy and he you know is just like like a prince out of a fairy tale he just loves her the average looking girl who has average job just from an average city and then all of a sudden he's like come on my private jet and come do this with me and they go together and there she's like oh my god it's all happening I am that princess that he picked and he cares for and so he he starts talking to him and his backstory is that he his dad owns a diamond company and he's the son of a billionaire and if you Google you see that this guy is a son of a billionaire so he kind of like had created this profile around that and and then you know sure enough a month in he's like hey you know like he he's he's like oh you know he sends a picture of his body he's always with a bodyguard he's like my bodyguard got attacked oh my god and then she's like oh my god is he okay he's like yeah but you know they're telling me I can't use my credit cards anymore because they're tracking my location you know like these are our enemies for our company the diamond business is a ruthless business and he's like can I borrow your credit card for the time being while I you know because I can't use mine yet and she's like oh okay and he's like cool just make sure you get your limits raised because like I have business meetings and all this stuff so these women end up going like a 150 $200,000 in debt as he uh-huh racks up credit card debt then he's like hey go get a quick loan and send me the money I need it because you know my enemies are after me and he's like my enemies are after me and so you the documentaries the first half of the documentaries is women talking about how they fell in love and the second half is like the how they got conned basically and he's like a ponzi scheme so he's he'd fall in love with 1 woman or he he'd get them to fall in love with him get them to start giving him money and credit cards he'd be using that to wine and dine the next woman and then he would be doing this with multiple women at once telling them all the same things and then he was living this like extravagant lifestyle on all these women's dime and and then you know so that's that okay that's the core of the movie quick reaction to that then I'm gonna tell you some other stuff

Sam Parr

well what happened to him so how does this end

Shaan Puri

It ends with him getting exposed. So the women are like, "Oh my God!" They go to the credit card company and say, "Look, I have to be honest. My kind of boyfriend, you know, or I don't know what's going on. This is the guy. He's tricking me." They ask, "Can we see a picture of the guy?" She shows a picture on her phone, and the two agents from, like, Amex or whatever just look at each other and say, "It's him!" Then she's like, "What?" They respond, "We've been after this guy for years. He does this with tons of women." They're like, "There are other women he's doing this to." So it's like they feel cheated on and conned. And so he... but technically what happens is...

Sam Parr

is he breaking the law

Shaan Puri

He's not breaking the law. They are giving him money; they're sending him money willingly. They are giving him their credit card and calling the credit card company, saying, "No, no, it's me. Can you please raise my limits? Yes, I'm traveling. I'm in Ibiza right now." So they're like, you know, you're in kind of a sticky spot. You can't really say he stole it; you clearly gave it to him. In fact, you kind of committed fraud, but like, well, whatever, we'll leave that aside. But yeah, you do owe this money. This is not, you know, a stolen credit card. So anyways, how much did...

Sam Parr

he get

Shaan Puri

He ends up getting a 15-month sentence, not even for this. It's for something else that he did associated with this. He serves 5 months, he gets off free. He's out there living, he's got a new model girlfriend, he lives somewhere else. The girls kind of exposed him in the press because they were like, "Okay, look, law enforcement is not doing anything, or it's gonna take too long. He's gonna keep doing this in the meantime." What's the thing?

Sam Parr

them up

Shaan Puri

They go to the Norwegian press, where they're from, and they kind of expose it. Netflix turns it into a documentary. The guy is still out there. One of the things in the movie is that he goes to a plastic surgeon and says, "I want my eyes, cheekbones, chin, and mouth all restructured." The surgeon responds, "I'm not going to do this. Only a criminal would want this surgery." So, he's trying to change his face to keep it going, but he can't change his face. Now, he's kind of like public enemy number one. A lot of people who watch this are saying, "Dude, these girls are stupid. You were just with him for the money, and then he conned you for the money. You got what you deserved." So, the girls are getting a ton of flack for it.

Sam Parr

which is really crazy that's that's that's dumb

Shaan Puri

but I was just thinking what waste of talent by this guy yeah

Sam Parr

like that's pretty amazing

Shaan Puri

all this like it's like a

Sam Parr

It's funny, you know? Leonardo DiCaprio played the same character in "Catch Me If You Can," and it was awesome.

Shaan Puri

yeah he's became like a hero

Sam Parr

when I see this guy I wanna punch him in the face

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. That was the problem. It was a documentary instead of a movie about the con man himself, where you started to fall in love with the smooth guy.

Sam Parr

If a different, lovable character, like if Matt Damon played him, I would be all about it.

Shaan Puri

yeah but you gotta watch the thing

Sam Parr

it's super punchable face this guy

Shaan Puri

yeah and the memes are just amazing around

Sam Parr

well I saw the meme with you with your face on it

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yes. I had somebody, I was like, "Hey, Photoshop my head onto this photo where it looks like I'm with the guy." I just tweeted out, "Oh, I'm with my sister's new boyfriend."

Sam Parr

is he american

Shaan Puri

no this guy's israeli

Sam Parr

Dude, screw this guy, man. I'm happy they made a documentary about him. How did he get all the... so he's in a private jet in a bunch of these pictures. How did he get that?

Shaan Puri

because he's using the previous woman's money to fund his his lifestyle

Sam Parr

so he would fly private

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so he's actually flying private. I don't know if it's all the time, but at least some of the time. It was just really wild. In fact, a lot of the numbers don't make sense. He must have been running this on like tons of women at once to fund this lifestyle. The jets and the stuff that he was doing... okay, he would call this woman out of $80, but $80 only funds like one month of this lifestyle, you know? That's not very long. So he must have had a lot of people at the same time, or the documentary is a little inaccurate. I don't know. But how much money did he get? They said that he had conned women out of **$1,000,000** over time. They didn't say exactly how much; they don't know how much of it was there. But I just feel like he did this all wrong. If you're going to put in all this effort, you gotta be more intelligent, right? Okay, what could he have done? He could've just married rich. He could've just seemed rich, married rich, divorced, and taken half, right? That would've worked way better. You know, put more wood behind fewer arrows here. He could've just gone after one very wealthy person if he really wanted to do this. That's my first critique of him. My second critique is, bro, all this money just to party? Partying is exhausting! What, he just wanted to fly private and go to these clubs and do table service? You know, you couldn't pay me to do that. I don't want to.

Sam Parr

anyone to travel you gotta diversify your assets dawg

Shaan Puri

yeah you should be

Sam Parr

you should be

Shaan Puri

Own some crypto, like buy something. Buy a home. Do you see something with this money? You just blew all the money on overpriced, you know, like bottle service at the club. Like, wow. Alright, that's critique number 2. Number 3: Go B2B, bro. Corporate swindling would have worked way better. So, you know, he could have been like, "You heard about the guy who just started sending invoices to Microsoft and Apple and stuff? He just got paid like a million dollars just sending bogus invoices." He was just sending an invoice to accounts payable or whatever, and then they would just pay some of the invoices he was sending.

Sam Parr

dude would he just do it like like [email protected] yeah

Shaan Puri

He was like, "Hey, you know this is for the blah blah blah," and then they went back and they're like, "What the hell is this? Who is this vendor that we paid $1,100,000 to this year?" Like, nobody knows who this is.

Sam Parr

that'll I don't think that's illegal either

Shaan Puri

I think it's because he was like, "You know, well, whatever." They were going back after him. You know, these companies have a lot of money, so that's the downside of going B2B. But I feel like there could have been a B2B way of doing this. He should have actually just started a diamond company. Could have made a lot more money. If you're this good at getting women's emotions tied up in your lifestyle, just actually sell the diamonds. It would have worked. Use their money to fund a diamond company... that actually could have worked. This guy needs to be in the Facebook Ad Manager instead of Tinder. Yeah, that was...

Sam Parr

my and I'm that's

Shaan Puri

my critique on this guy

Sam Parr

I'm looking at him now. All those women he scammed... they, like, a lot of them look like models. He was killing it. Also, you forgot the other option, which is like, just marry one of these ladies. If they're rich enough to... if there are these beautiful women who could wire them $200K, I don't know, man. Bro, maybe you gotta keep her.

Shaan Puri

Well, in this case, he was telling him to take a kind of collateralized loan or a payday loan, which had super high interest. He said, "Don't worry, I'm going to wire your money back in four days." Then he would not wire them back. They would ask, "Hey, did you wire the money?" and he would respond, "Oh, sorry, the bank was closed." Then he would show them a statement, saying, "Oh, I sent it. It should arrive in a couple of days." When they followed up, saying, "Hey, it hasn't arrived yet. What's going on?" he would reply, "Oh my god, let me call the bank." Another two days would go by, and he would say, "I called the bank. They said this thing got frozen. I gotta deal with this. I'm so sorry. Here, I'm going to send you one of my watches in the meantime. You can just sell it. This watch is worth $100,000." He would send a fake watch and buy time doing that. It's like these women didn't have the money, but I think he could have totally gone for a richer woman and said, "You know what, baby? I love you. I'm not going to make you sign a prenup. You know me, I'm a billionaire. I come from this lineage, but my dad says to sign a prenup. I'm not going to do it." Then she would feel a little bit of pressure and think, "Okay, I guess I can't really ask him for a prenup anyway. This guy's richer than me. Alright, I guess I also won't." That would have been a more effective con.

Sam Parr

if this guy were in jail do you think he'd be popular or hated

Shaan Puri

I think popular sadly

Sam Parr

you think popular

Shaan Puri

I think I think popular

Sam Parr

I could see this going either way man I could see this I could see this going either way I think like

Shaan Puri

dude the swindler in prison

Sam Parr

Alright, so Bernie Madoff... I heard in prison he was like a god, which I get. You know, like he could teach people how to corner the market on chocolate chips or hot chocolate in prison. Or he could dominate the commissary and teach you about markets. I get that. Also, it wasn't a violent crime, so no children or women were hurt. This guy... I would see this guy being unpopular. I don't know, that's a good question.

Shaan Puri

Kind of like a **douchebag aura** to him. So that's the problem. That's where he's going to get in trouble. But, well, the swindler... the swindler would do well in prison.

Sam Parr

it's a good practice I guess I'll watch it how many episodes was it

Shaan Puri

well he's not in prison he's out and about he's he's living a nice life right now

Sam Parr

oh screw this guy man and he sold a couple $1,000,000

Shaan Puri

yeah

Sam Parr

I think... I think about this documentary. It's good punishment, though. That's fair. I'm okay with you not serving time, and you have this documentary too.

Shaan Puri

Our buddy Jack Butcher pointed something out that made me think, "Oh wait a minute, that's true." He said: > "Yo, Netflix is gonna make a lot of money off this documentary. Pay off these women's debts!" They have like a GoFundMe going. It's like, "Yo Netflix, you need to pay off this woman's $200,000 debt."

Sam Parr

that's true

Shaan Puri

You did well on this documentary. So that's the real call out here: Netflix, cancel Netflix if they don't pay off these women's debts.

Sam Parr

that's a no brainer you don't think they're going to

Shaan Puri

Well, nobody said anything. These women are doing interviews everywhere. There's a GoFundMe out there. I feel like they could've said something, or they're just, you know...

Sam Parr

swindling people in it

Shaan Puri

"You know, we didn't make a lot of money off this, but Netflix actually generously did agree to pay off the debt... blah blah blah." I feel like that story should have come out if they did it. If they didn't, then Netflix has two choices: 1. Fire your PR person 2. Pay off these debts

Sam Parr

that's actually a great? How many likes did that tweak it that jack's had

Shaan Puri

probably not that many because now everyone's just looking at jack for like nft oh

Sam Parr

my god alright that's a good episode