What’s truly going on inside DOGE?

Shaan Puri

Dude, this vault, this giant filing cabinet, is worth more than Snapchat. It's worth more than Pinterest. It's worth more than Twitter as a company. Isn't that crazy?

Sam Parr

Alright, we're going to get into a little current event, which we don't often do, but I love current events. So, I want to talk about a current event. Was it like last night? Elon did this thing where he was in Trump's office with his kid crawling all over him, climbing up on him, which is kind of funny. He told this story about a mine where all the government files were. Did you hear what he said?

Shaan Puri

I didn't hear what he said. I saw a photo of this place, this underground... somebody said, "Oh, it's the bureaucratic Gringotts from Harry Potter." It's like this underground bank vault.

Sam Parr

So, Elon said something that I feel was like an offhanded comment, but it actually led me down this rabbit hole. Basically, they were asking him about how he was getting rid of all these jobs, and he was like, "Yeah, I want to actually retire more people, but I was told that I can only retire 10,000 people a month." I was asking, "Well, why is that?" He said, "Well, because all the retirement paperwork is manual," meaning it's literally on paper and it's written down on a piece of paper. Then it goes down a mine. There's literally a limestone mine where all the paperwork for people who want to retire is stored. In order to actually make this work, the speed at which we can move is limited by the speed at which the line shaft elevator can actually move down. You hear this story and you're like, "What the hell are you talking about, man?" So, I went down a rabbit hole and I had to figure this out. Can I tell you a little story about not just this mine, but this whole company that operates around this? So, basically, in the 1920s, there was this guy who grew mushrooms. In order to grow mushrooms in the part of America where he was growing them, he had to grow them in a cave. He became the mushroom king of America at one point.

Sam Parr

He was the largest creator or grower of mushrooms in America. He was a German immigrant and he was kind of a funny guy. In his advertisements, he called himself the "Mushroom King." He had to rent a cave to grow mushrooms, and eventually, he bought a cave where he grew them. This cave was massive; it was a huge cave. For some reason, starting in the 1950s, post-World War II, those damn Europeans started undercutting him and began selling cheaper mushrooms. He thought, "My mushroom business is going to go under. This is not going to work. I gotta figure out what to do." So, he bought a bank vault door that cost $20,000 in 1950 and installed it in his cave. He took out the mushrooms and installed this bank vault door. Then, he went to a local bank and said, "Hey, you guys have a lot of paperwork and files that you need to store. I have the safest place on earth to store this paperwork. Do you want to make a business deal?" He changed his business and started a thing called Iron Mountain. It was called Iron Mountain because it was literally in a mine that was used to extract iron. He grew this thing like crazy. So basically, this company is called Iron Mountain. Google "Iron Mountain market cap."

Shaan Puri

Iron Mountain Inc. is a $30 billion company. Wow!

Sam Parr

Alright, so I have this notebook here. The reason I have it is that I take notes whenever we have a guest. Not because it's my job as a podcast host, but because a lot of times what the guests are talking about is just so interesting to me as a human. I just want to go and implement it in my business or my life. The person I took the most notes for was Jesse Itzler. If you haven't heard that podcast, it's the best. It legitimately changed my life. So I thought, let's share our notes. With the help of the team at HubSpot, we went and took all of the notes from that episode and turned it into a 10-page document that you can download for free. It changed my life, and I think it might change yours, so check it out. The link is below in the description. Again, notes with Jesse Itzler down below. So, this company I looked up, since February, they have created a billion dollars, at least, or roughly per year in free cash flow. They now own something like, I think it was 80 million square feet of storage. They have everything. It could be like Princess Diana's will in there, but it's like Sony, the music company, Sony, the record label. Sony has all of their master recordings, like literally the tapes stored in Iron Mountain. But their biggest customer is an insurance company in Connecticut that has been in business for a hundred years. For some reason, due to legal reasons, they have to keep their paper files. They have to save them for something like seventy-five years.

Shaan Puri

This is nuts, dude! So, they're just a giant... they're just like a physical vault for documents. It says "Enter Enterprise Information Management Services," founded in 1951. So, it's just a giant vault, and they're like, "We will protect your files. We'll protect your paperwork."

Sam Parr

Exactly, but it's huge. So literally, they have caves, and he would joke that it's an atomic bomb shelter. But that wasn't really a joke; they actually have a whole bunch of decommissioned atomic bomb structures as their vaults. They do this because, for example, WWE is one of their customers. Every single time they've literally filmed a fight, like an event or a match, they store it. They have all these tapes, which sounds like, okay, that's just a small example. But they have other examples where, you know...

Shaan Puri

Year-old me would have broken in there, so excited to just go to the vault of all WWE matches ever.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but they also have like billions of dollars' worth of art. So if you're a museum and you have extra art that you need to store, you're going to go to Iron Mountain because you know it's like really saved.

Shaan Puri

As a one place, or do they have a bunch of these?

Sam Parr

They have dozens and dozens of places, so I think they have **80**.

Shaan Puri

Caves... like, don't caves literally cave in? Like, why not just use a building? What's wrong with a building with guys with guns? Why not?

Sam Parr

Because it has a low moisture content, it's good for paper.

Shaan Puri

I see.

Sam Parr

And a bunch of reasons like that, but it's also like literally safe. So, like, a cave is actually, you know, I don't know how this works, but it's actually safer in terms of, like, there being an earthquake or there being an atomic bomb.

Shaan Puri

When someone just gives me one scientific fact, like just a minor one, if you were to say, "Yeah, though the humidity coefficient is lower," I'd be like, "Alright, I don't need to hear more." I'm just so sad. As long as I know there's any scientific basis for something, I'll just accept the argument in full. It's like there was a Harvard study; that has the same effect on me.

Sam Parr

Exactly. I was reading this article from *The New Yorker*, and it was hard to comprehend how epic this thing was.

Shaan Puri

Is now the thing that stores the government stuff, or is it a separate business?

Sam Parr

Yes, so let's get to the government stuff. He said there's, I think he mentioned, a limestone mine where this is all stored. He kind of dismissed it because it was a mine, but that's actually important. The federal government is a customer of Iron Mountain. Here's how this works: this part is absolutely insane. Starting in the 1950s or the 1960s, the federal government became a customer of Iron Mountain, and to this day, it basically operates the exact same way. Right now, the federal government is retiring around 100,000 people a year. When, let's say, you work for the FBI or some federal agency, like the Postal Service, and you need to retire, because of over a hundred years of laws, there are a lot of complications. When you retire, you're supposed to get a pension—let's round that number to $100,000 a year. However, some people might get $98,000, while others might get $108,000. The reason for this variation is that, for example, if a federal employee was a cafeteria worker for a federal agency, that requires a different set of rules. Let's say this person was a retired veteran or an amputee; there are like a million rules about what you are going to earn after you retire. However, this is all done on paperwork. Every single federal employee—not just the current ones, but the past ones—has a manila envelope in this mine in Pennsylvania that Iron Mountain runs. When you want to retire, you have to file a piece of paperwork. You literally write it up on a piece of paper and give it to your boss at your federal agency. The federal agency has to mail it to the mine in Pennsylvania, and it takes roughly 60 days. One of the 600 employees at this mine needs to physically have the file in hand and walk to your file in the mountain, which is 200 football fields or 200 acres. They have to literally go and get that file by hand. Then they look at your file and say, "Alright, Sean looks like he's 65. It looks like he actually retired at 59 years old, then he came back." So that gets a different consideration. It turns out he served in the Iraq War, so he gets this, this, and this. Then they close the file, put it back, and send the paperwork back to your agency to let them know, "Here's what Sean is going to be paid for his pension fund." That process takes something like 90 days to complete. Since the 1980s, they have spent hundreds of millions—it's approaching billions of dollars—to digitize this, but it has failed every time. The New Yorker, in February 2004, wrote this amazing article stating, "We tried it in 1980, we are trying it now, we tried it in 1995," and it failed.

Shaan Puri

What... why can't they digitize too much or it gets rejected? What?

Sam Parr

It's a huge task, but this mountain is in rural Pennsylvania. These Pennsylvania folks, they were literally mine workers; that's what they were when the mine was active. So, it's like generations of miners who are now doing this thing. It's not like these 600 employees are exactly computer experts; they're physical laborers. They don't exactly have the labor there to do it. But also, just the bureaucracy... The same thing happened when Obama launched, was it healthcare.com or whatever? It's just really hard within a government, within the four years that a president is in office, to make this massive change. So, this mine...

Shaan Puri

Nobody is going to give you a huge pat on the back for digitizing this process.

Sam Parr

You know.

Shaan Puri

What I mean...

Sam Parr

People who work at the mine were interviewed, and a couple of them said, "It's a pretty miserable place to work in the wintertime." When we arrive at work, we're there when it's dark, and then we come home at night, and it's still dark. You can't have a flame in the mine, so all of the food has to be delivered for us every day. It's like fried food or pizza; those are our two vendors. However, they do let you have unlimited overtime if you want. It's an 8 to 5 or 9 to 5 job, and no one leaves. The retention is 100%. They say, "It's just a good, stable job." Whatever.

Shaan Puri

I need to... I want to be listening to Iron Mountain Pod, where there are just these miners talking about paperwork and eating pizza. It's like an ASMR channel of the limestone mine.

Sam Parr

And The New Yorker did an article where they were talking to these people. They said, "If you guys want to see taxpayer waste, you should see what happens when a federal worker retires, goes back to work, and then retires again." One of the guys that was interviewed mentioned, "I'm working on a case now that's taken me 120 days to figure out how much pension this worker is owed, and it's just a nightmare." So, it's like literally a physical labor job to walk around and file.

Shaan Puri

This file mining company is this vault, this giant filing cabinet, and it's worth more than Snapchat. It's worth more than Pinterest. It's worth more than Twitter as a company. Isn't that crazy? The $30,000,000 company.

Sam Parr

And the retention might be better, and here's why it might be better. So, it is better; I guarantee you. Listen, Workday is a piece of software I've never... I don't think I've used it, but the thing about Workday is it's considered like a dinosaur software company. Right? It's like, or let's say ADP, like these payroll softwares that a lot of huge companies have. They're regarded as a sticky product. But the issue with that is that you, as a worker, as well as management, interact with that product every day. So you're like, "This fucking sucks." Eventually, you might get pissed off and want to change it. With Iron Mountain, a bank, by law, has to keep these files on... and say, "Hey, we're going to give this to you guys," and they'll never talk to them again for the next fifty years.

Shaan Puri

Dude, should we open up a drawer? Like, should we just go halves on a single drawer in Iron Mountain and just start saving like hateful YouTube comments in there? Just have one little station.

Sam Parr

They told a story about this mine. They said there was some rich, anonymous person—this old lady—who had like a hundred million dollars' worth of art. Once a year, she would go down to the mine, bring a blanket, cheese, and wine, and just sit and look at her art. I'd just be like, "This is awesome!" And that was in the article that she did that crazy company, right? This freaking Iron Mountain.

Shaan Puri

Really, really fun find! I'm glad you found that. Also, it's hilarious that you started with "let's start with current events," and then you began talking about this old file storage system from like the 1950s. That's where you went with this information.

Sam Parr

Did you see photos of it?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I saw the one photo. Now I'm looking at more, and it's pretty wild, dude. It's just like... I mean, it makes sense now that you say it. Now that you explain it, it makes sense. It's just, who knew? Who knew that this is how it all works?

Sam Parr

Now, there are digital versions of this. I forget which ones, but some of the guys in the space were like, "Iron Mountain was like, hey, are you guys nervous about digital?" and they dismissed it. They were like, "Dude, you don't know how much crap people need to store. We're gonna be fine; it's going good." If you look at their financials, it's just consistently over a billion dollars of free cash flow every year.

Shaan Puri

Dude, this is how my wife treats my kids' art. She created her own "Iron Mountain" in our house. It's just disgusting. Alright, so you brought up current events, and then you said something that was totally not a current event. But there were other current events that are actually interesting. I'm just curious, give me your one to ten level of interest in these. You may... I have a feeling you might not be interested in these. Elon offering $97 billion to buy OpenAI. Did that tickle you?

Sam Parr

Eight out of ten, the Elon stuff is inherently incredibly interesting at the moment.

Shaan Puri

Right, okay. Eight out of ten. Let's rank this one: Elon crashing the press conference in Donald Trump's Oval Office. That was a 10. And by the way, I bet it's not even for the content, just for the social dynamic of him standing behind Trump and just overtaking the press conference. Is that right? That's my guess.

Sam Parr

Is that what you want to talk about?

Shaan Puri

Well, there's one other I want to get your read on, which...

Sam Parr

Is each other?

Shaan Puri

Doge as a whole.

Sam Parr

Nine, nine or ten. Yeah, let's go in that order.

Shaan Puri

Okay, okay, so start at ten.

Sam Parr

Yeah, so you sent me a text last night. You said, "Rule number one: never outshine the master." Elon Musk, and you're referring to *The 48 Laws of Power*—how to be powerful. You never outshine your master. Elon Musk 100% outshined Donald. That was so emasculating to have Donald just sitting there and Elon standing up sort of behind him, like he was going to come and put his hands on his shoulders. You know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He hijacked the press conference and just started giving his own speech—a wordy speech—while his kid is there rambling also. Trump is just sitting there like a goon at the table. It was just so interesting. I’ve never seen anyone who’s not the president give their own press conference from the Oval Office while the president sits there, forgetting what they were even talking about. Just that was like, "Whoa, hold on! This is like, you know, if you watch The Bachelor, sometimes they do a two-on-one date." It’s like, "Whoa, hold on! It’s not a one-on-one; it’s a two-on-one. Oh, there’s gonna be some drama here!" That’s how it felt. It felt like a Bachelor two-on-one.

Sam Parr

When Elon told the story of Iron Mountain, Trump looked back at him and said, "No shit, really?" It was as if he was learning and being entertained at that moment as well. Do you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

I also love how Trump sometimes just says, "We're gonna send Elon in. Elon's gonna go in, he's gonna do great things. He does great things." And he's just like, "That'll be the plan." But honestly, that's actually not a bad plan. It's like if I was gonna say one thing, it's like, "We're gonna send Michael Jordan on the court and he's gonna shoot. He's a great shooter." It's like that's kind of what he does with things. He's like, "We're gonna send Elon in there, he's gonna take care of things."

Sam Parr

That was actually a really good Trump impression.

Shaan Puri

I mean, I didn't fully commit. I do regret that I didn't fully commit because it kind of started off pretty hot. If I had really gone for it, maybe I would have surprised myself. But I'll never know, and I'll live with that regret till I die.

Sam Parr

I thought it was pretty good. It was a very promising concept. What about the Doge stuff in general? I have a very opinionated take. Do you?

Shaan Puri

I have a big picture take, and then I have just a few small things that I wish would come out more. So, there was my big picture take: I cannot believe we're on this timeline. If you just rewind the clock a couple of years ago, here's what was going on. I was reading this Ray Dalio book. Have you ever read Ray Dalio's book? I forgot what it's called, "The Rise and Fall of Nations" or something like that. It's basically about how empires fall, right? No empire lasts forever.

Sam Parr

The title scared me, and I was like, "I just kind of want to be ignorant." But I read his first one, *Principles*, and I know that he comes off historically as a pessimist, right?

Shaan Puri

No, no, no. He's a realist. I don't know, he's just an observer of how things are. So if you're going to watch one thing, by the way, watch...

Sam Parr

One thing is alarming.

Shaan Puri

He's got this thing called "How the Economic Machine Works." It's a twenty or thirty-minute YouTube video, which sounds long, but it's amazing. It's an animated video where he just explains how the economy works in a way that even a, you know, bozo like me could understand. It's amazing! Go watch that. You should just pause this podcast and go watch that. I think it's called "How the Economic Machine Works."

Sam Parr

The Bridgewater office, by the way, is literally 1.5 miles from my house. If you want to go and just talk to him, I'm sure we can just walk right in.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we absolutely should. He wrote this book about the rise and fall of nations. He basically talks about how he studied all the empires: the Dutch Empire, the Roman Empire, the Chinese Empire. He explores why empires end. Why don't they just keep going? They have all the advantages: they have the power, the best military, the best economy, and a growing population. Where do things go wrong? He observed that over time, things go wrong in a very predictable cyclical fashion. Because he studied history, he could see that even if it's not going to be the same, it's probably going to "rhyme." He suggests looking out for some of these signs. One of the signs he discusses is around the big debt cycle. There’s a short-term debt cycle and a long-term debt cycle, which is like an eighty to one hundred year debt cycle. What happens is that countries or empires end up going into too much debt, which the U.S. is in right now—$35 trillion of debt. That's just an absurd number. Then, the interest payments are really high. Because people lose faith in their ability to pay off that debt, they lose at some point.

Shaan Puri

Their status as their global reserve currency... blah blah blah. Okay, so Ray Dalio makes this argument. It's an interesting book; you should read it now.

Sam Parr

Does he mention "mukbang"? Where on the timeline is that?

Shaan Puri

Do you know what **mukbang** is? It's listening to people eat, right? Watching and listening to people eat.

Sam Parr

Fat people just stuff their faces with ramen.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's like a governmental **mukbang**, is what he described.

Sam Parr

Does he mention when the decline is, when Mukbang gets popular?

Shaan Puri

<FormattedTranscription> There were signs. So, as he's talking about this, it's like, "Alright, okay, shit." You look at the current world and you're like, "Oh shit, we got inflation." But then, you know, to fight inflation, they gotta raise rates. When they raise rates, that slows down the economy, which slows down spending, which creates this other problem. Then you get stagflation. You get like all these... oh man, this could go poorly, right? Oh, they're printing too much money. That could hurt the dollar. You know, they're debasing the currency. That's what he says they do. This is what's gonna happen, and it just seemed inevitable. The problem was, you looked at it and you're like, "But who's gonna go and fix this?" It's not like a company because a company has to face reality. What a company has to do is ultimately... the company needs profits. The shareholders are gonna demand that the company stop this excess spending. But the problem with the government is the government can sort of go infinitely in debt until it can't. It could just print money. Right? Like imagine if you or I just had a little machine in the closet. It's like, "Well, I could solve this problem with hard work, cutting back, tightening the belt... you know, or I could just go in the closet, push this button. I'll just do it this one time, just this one time." Okay? And like that's what just keeps happening. You go and you push the button, you print the money. And so, that's the problem. Okay? And it just seemed like there was no solution to this because anybody who wanted to get elected... right? The leaders were not business people. Right? So, problem number one: the people who run the country were lifelong politicians, typically, and they were not CEOs or executives who had that as their core skill set. The second thing is they didn't have the incentive. Right? Because when you wanna get elected, it's like middle school all over again. You gotta go promise, "We're gonna have free pizza every Friday." It's like, "Where's... who's gonna pay for that?" I don't care, I just gotta say it and promise it. I won't deal with the consequences because that's what gets me elected. So, the presidency is never about, "Hey, I'm gonna cut back all your favorite programs." It was always gonna be, "We're gonna do more for you. We're gonna cut your taxes." Okay, so less revenue for the government. How's that gonna work? We're already in debt. If we're gonna cut your taxes, and you know what? We're gonna spend more on this. We're gonna invest in education. That sounds great. We're gonna give you free health care. We're gonna pay off your student loans. It's like, "Wow, we're just gonna... where's the money coming from?" And the money was coming from that magic money printer in the closet. Okay? So, it just seemed like, "Dude, there's no way. There's no way out." And somehow this insane situation has occurred. And I'm not saying that it's gonna work, and I'm not saying I agree with everything about these people. I don't agree with everything Trump says. I didn't even vote. Okay? Look, you can't even hate me. Okay? I didn't vote for the guy. I didn't vote for anybody. So, you can hate me for other reasons. I don't agree with everything that Elon does, but he's an ultimately impressive entrepreneur. I think he's the greatest entrepreneur of all time. Okay? So, but I also... yeah, don't think he... I agree with... I don't agree with everything he says. Great. My caveats are... either way, I cannot believe we ended up on this timeline where Trump gets elected, Elon Musk, the greatest entrepreneur of all time. And if even if you disagree, okay, he's second, right? Like he's close. </FormattedTranscription>

Sam Parr

When did Trump take office? Was it January 20? Is that right? Wait, when was it? The 20th?

Shaan Puri

His inauguration? Yeah, so less than a month ago. Okay, four weeks ago. He brings Elon Musk in and basically...

Sam Parr

Like he's still doing onboarding.

Shaan Puri

If you just said, "What's the only way America can get out of this?" I'd be like, "Dude, we gotta get someone as smart as Elon Musk in there with a mandate." Somehow, we need to have a free mandate to actually go and cut all the bloat, to get us out of this excess spending, to cut the deficit, to balance the budget, and to even get us into a surplus. That's the only way. We gotta somehow do that. That sounded impossible two to three years ago. There was no path where... something. He's not even an American citizen; he can't be president. He's not gonna run. The president's not gonna just give him free rein. Well, somehow we ended up in this 1% probability timeline where Trump gets elected, Elon becomes his bestie by backing him and giving him a bunch of money, and throwing his weight behind him. Elon's stipulation was like, "I wanna create Doge," and he's like, "I'm gonna cut spending." Trump was like, "Okay, great." Somehow, it became cool to cut spending, which was never cool before that. Now, he just took like this army of his smartest, most ruthless...

Sam Parr

People, army. It's 40 or 50 folks who are 24, even one powerful 19.

Shaan Puri

Just go get a bunch of 10x type of people. He's literally like raiding buildings and taking over payment systems. He's saying, "Okay, I can't change the laws, but I can stop the flow of the money. I can audit everything from this payment record system." He's bringing in young hackers and some of his smartest people. He's doing this now. Will this be successful? I have no idea; I can't tell you. Is this fascinating? Absolutely. Is this one of our only shots to get out of the death spiral of excess spending? I believe so. And I cannot believe it happened. End of rant.

Sam Parr

Alright, let me give you a counterpoint, and I'm going to get flamed for this.

Shaan Puri

You're going "devil's avocado" on me.

Sam Parr

I'm going hardcore devil's advocate on you. No, not exactly, because I'm on board with a lot of the stuff he's doing. But listen to this: Let's just say that you're 45 years old, you have two kids in high school, you have a mortgage, and you're thinking, "You know, life's pretty good." Then all of a sudden, you get a message that says, "Look, we appreciate you, Diane, for working for the government for so long, but you're done. You gotta get out." And you're thinking, "How the hell am I gonna pay my mortgage? How am I gonna provide for my kids who want to go to college?" Then you look online to learn about your situation and you're like, "Wait, the guy who just decided to fire me changed his Twitter handle to 'Harry Balls' and he put in his description that he's offering circumcision for 69 cents. Did he just call a guy a retard on Twitter?"

Shaan Puri

Dude, someone yesterday sent me an advanced search. You know, the Twitter advanced search? It was just a single link I could click that was just Elon Musk saying the word "retard." Bro, you could scroll for days. It was unbelievable. It was an unbelievable link.

Sam Parr

It's sort of like, as a really successful entrepreneur and CEO, doing layoffs because money is short from his beautiful chalet in Aspen, with a stunning view behind him on Zoom. For Elon, I'm like, "Well, do what you gotta do, but can you not be so smug about it?" I wish he would have some grace when he's doing these things. Even if those decisions are good and I agree with them, I just wish that the maturity level would go up. At the end of the day, it's cool for these tech guys to say, "Cut them, cut them, let's make the government smaller," but it is, at the end of the day, real people's lives. Half of these people are not hungry power players; they're just regular guys who are working nine to five and want to play softball on the weekends. You know what I mean? That really bumps me out. I wish he would show a little grace when he's slashing, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

I think you bring up great points. I've been told many times, "You're not wrong, but your delivery sucks." What do they say?

Sam Parr

In *The Big Lebowski*, you're not wrong, man. You're just an asshole.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, that's like...

Sam Parr

That's like, "What's going on here?"

Shaan Puri

So, I think you're absolutely right on that. I will say they did offer **eight months' severance**. I will also say this wasn't like an optional or flimsy offer; it's not like somebody's just messing around. Basically, that's what it seems.

Sam Parr

Like when you've changed it to "Harry Balls."

Shaan Puri

He made it seem like that. You're absolutely right.

Sam Parr

It certainly seems like he's messing around.

Shaan Puri

The style is bad, but I think the substance is good. The reality is that the way the government works is actually like a financial terror attack on all American citizens. As much as I don't like that Diane is possibly going to lose her job, the reality is she probably shouldn't have had that job in the first place. Or maybe not her specifically, but the overall system is spending so much that it is going to tank the entire economy. You look at all these crazy stats about how much of job growth is just federal jobs and how much of spending is just going to federal employees. It's like a wormy game of snake when you start to eat your own tail; it doesn't even make any sense. I'll give you an example. I have a friend who, last year or two years ago, had an unlucky break. They wanted this promotion or job, but they didn't get it. They didn't really know what to do and it didn't look like they had a great upside. I thought they deserved a little bit better, so I decided to see if I could help this person out. Around this time, I had met some people who were some fat cats doing well with government contracts. I'm talking about one company, for example, that is a web development shop. They made websites... now they're...

Sam Parr

A fat cat. We gotta break that back. Great usage.

Shaan Puri

Fat cat, yeah, exactly. What I mean by that is they were making websites. You can go on Fiverr and get a website for $5. You can go on Upwork and get somebody to do it for a couple hundred bucks. You can go on Squarespace and do it yourself. There are a whole bunch of things you could do. They're getting $19,200,000 contracts to build simple websites. It was unbelievable. And they're multi-year contracts to do things that literally I have interns that could do in three or four days. These aren't like high traffic, not complex apps, and not super sensitive data.

Sam Parr

Just like a Squarespace account, informational websites are very good news online.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, I started noticing this. I go to my friend and I say, "Let's get you a government contract." I can't say too much specific stuff, but we got this friend a government contract to do something that probably takes four hours. Not even high-skilled time, you know? Not just anybody could do it. My sister could do it, my cousin could do it—anybody could have gotten this contract. It's been going for two years, and now it's a hilarious game of hide and seek because I'm like, "Yo, Doge is gonna find this contract." When Doge finds this contract, they're gonna publish this thing and be like, "We paid for this." I'm glad that my friend got, you know, a great...

Sam Parr

You're glad he got it. Lifestyle.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, however, it's the... what is that thing called? The free rider problem in society. It's like, I forgot, there's some social term for this where it's like you could abuse public parks and public transport because nobody's kind of like on the hook for it. It's like, "Well, I'll get mine, I'll get mine." And when everybody tries to get theirs, we all get screwed.

Sam Parr

Where did your head go when your friend doesn't get the promotion? Then the default response is, "Let's get you a government contract, baby! Let's just go to the government contract store, pick it off the shelf, and go check out."

Shaan Puri

Dude, there are these side quests that, you know, I've been through this, but this podcast is great, right? You do this podcast, and you meet people and hear stories. We were talking about a segment on government contracts for businesses. I think we had done a business thing because somebody I know had pivoted. The episode I remember specifically was about someone who used to be in the business of making vodka bottles with LED lights. So, if it was like Sam's bachelor party, it would be like "Sam's last day of freedom," rotating around a vodka bottle—that was their business. Then COVID hit, and they pivoted their entire business to selling masks and got an $80 or $90 million contract. Yeah, and this is somebody who lives...

Sam Parr

Who did that less than a mile away from me?

Shaan Puri

And I was like, "Oh my God, can you believe that we talked about it on the podcast?" I just had some people email me, which is the flywheel of this podcast. They were like, "Yeah dude, have you ever checked this out? You can go see what's up for bid right now. Hey, have you heard about this company? Have you heard about this company?" So I started getting curious. Now, I was never going to do it, right? Because I'm at a phase of my life where I am intentionally trying to not make any decisions for money. So even when I saw something that I was like, "Oh wow, you could go make money doing that," I no longer want to be that guy. I was that guy for like fifteen years. I don't want to be that guy anymore. If I make a decision, it can't be for money as the number one reason. But I did take note, and I was like, "Somebody could do that." Maybe somebody whose top priority right now is money. So this little side quest was, "Let's go help a friend." I don't want to do this for me; it wouldn't be worth it for me. But it would totally be worth it for the story and to see if I can help my friend out. And it's still going. It's still going! But dude, every month, and now that Doge is out, it's literally like a game of hide and seek. I can hear the footsteps coming. I know it's coming, and it's going to be hilarious when it hits.

Sam Parr

That's insane! That is pretty funny. What about the third thing? The whole reasoning behind it—he has a reason for doing this, which is that he's trying to...

Shaan Puri

Has explained what it is they're saying, so people don't know.

Sam Parr

So, Elon... from my understanding, OpenAI is a nonprofit. They're trying to convert to a for-profit. In order to do that, Sam Altman, as well as some of the shareholders, have to "buy" the company. What Elon has done is put a competing offer to buy the nonprofit OpenAI in order to make Sam Altman and the other shareholders have to pay more. Is that the summary, sort of?

Shaan Puri

He's not trying to buy the nonprofit; he's trying to buy the assets. So basically, OpenAI today is a nonprofit. That's how it started, and that's who has a lot of the intellectual property (IP). Then they created a for-profit entity where the nonprofit owns, I think, 25% of the for-profit, or they're trying to own 25% of the for-profit. That'll be like the deal. The for-profit has been raising billions and billions of dollars. They were just trying to raise from Masa and SoftBank at a valuation of $250 billion.

Sam Parr

Dollar.

Shaan Puri

$240,000,000,000 valuation. This implied that when they do this conversion or they sell, they convert the assets out of the nonprofit into the for-profit. The IP, the intel, all the code, all that stuff—the assets were valued at $40,000,000,000 in that transition. It was going to be like stock, basically. It's like, "Oh, you're going to have 25% ownership in the for-profit." What Elon did was throw a wrench in that a little bit because he's like, "Actually, I'll buy the assets for $97,000,000,000." So, a couple of possibilities here. Number one, he might actually get it. It's possible that he could do it, and in that case, he would own the assets of OpenAI, merge it with XAI, and he would go from fourth place to first place overnight.

Sam Parr

See, I’m uneducated on the topic, but I know a little bit about stories. That just seems too... that won’t.

Shaan Puri

I watched *Game of Thrones*. They're not... they're gonna die before they do that.

Sam Parr

Yeah, that story won't happen.

Shaan Puri

So, it's possible, right? Do you agree? Not probable, yes. It's possible, not probable, only because of the egos and personalities involved. Sam Altman would fight to the death to not have that happen. That would be him losing and getting checkmated by Elon. Elon is doing it because he wants to checkmate Sam. He feels like he got wronged and betrayed because he funded the first forty-something million dollars into OpenAI when it was a nonprofit, and he owns nothing of the for-profit today.

Sam Parr

Would you put money on either of them?

Shaan Puri

When was it due?

Sam Parr

Think they're... or just like in terms of the battle of wits, like a chess match? Or do you think that it's too hard to...?

Shaan Puri

You know, when we watch those UFC pay-per-views, sometimes you get the ones where it's just like, "Oh, I just want to see Khabib do his thing." He's going to win, but I just want to watch how. Then there are other times where you're like, "I have no idea who's going to win this fight." I have no idea! You have the unstoppable wrestler versus the guy who's amazing at jiu-jitsu and striking. I could totally see it going either way. I gotta pay $90 for the pay-per-view; I gotta watch this. That's how this one is because...

Sam Parr

I agree.

Shaan Puri

For as many people who say, "You never bet against Elon," there's an equal number of smart people who say, "You never bet against Sam Altman." So, you don't know which way it's gonna fall now. There's also the fact that it's the highest stakes thing; AI is the highest stakes game, and this is the crown jewel asset: OpenAI. It's going to be a fight to the death. Okay, so the second possibility is that he just wants to make it more expensive for OpenAI. Because, like I said, the implied valuation they were talking about was about $40 billion for the assets—non-cash contribution—or maybe it was a cash contribution; I'm not sure. This would up the price. So, if nothing else, you go to your enemy, and they have to pay double for their car.

Sam Parr

But do you think, like, maybe...?

Shaan Puri

That's satisfying enough. Maybe that's the way.

Sam Parr

In the board meeting, can you just imagine all these suits that are like, "Well, do we look at this offer?" And then everyone just says, "No, it's just Elon. He's just being a dickhead." Okay, like, do they just collectively agree that he's being an asshole? Or are they like, "Guys, we gotta look into this?"

Shaan Puri

They're collectively... because, I mean, that would be a very low price for the assets of OpenAI, right? Like, literally on the open market, they're raising at a $240 billion valuation. So to sell the assets at a $97 billion valuation wouldn't really make a whole lot of sense, right? So at the very least, he's upping the price or just slowing it down, making life more complicated for his competitors. So if we're competing in a race, but I know I can distract 15% of your mind share, right? It's like a honeypot. You know, like people used to do this: send in a pretty-looking girl, and it's like, "This is just a nice little distraction for my competitor." I can send in something like that. They will do that. So there's multiple levels this might be playing at.

Sam Parr

I don't know which one it is. It's just like the nerdy Kendrick Lamar versus Drake thing. Because now they're going after their personalities. They haven't gone after family yet, but I honestly would not be surprised if that happens next.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, I'm not paying a whole lot of attention to it, but I mean, it is interesting to watch like a sort of real-life, you know, rap beef or a Game of Thrones battle going on.

Sam Parr

Does it not wear you out? Because I feel a little bit excited at the moment, but I wonder when... We're only a month in, and I'm like, how much longer can I last with all these amazing stories?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I know what you mean. There's definitely a part of it where it just feels like I've watched too many episodes of *Jersey Shore* and I'm like, "I wasted my whole day." You know, there's, "Oh, he said this, and he did this, and they're gonna do this," and let me look up the Delaware law. It's like, for what? Are you getting anything out of this, or are you just gossiping? Say, "Oh, I'm gossiping." Okay, cool. Well, there's only so much of my energy I really want to put towards gossiping.

Sam Parr

I also just constantly think, and I think a lot of other people wonder: how does one man have so much energy? It's pretty amazing. It's hard for me to imagine writing a serious email that would require me to make a decision with long-term impacts because I just can't turn my brain on right now to get into that. Imagine never feeling that way. I think Jimmy (Mr. Beast) said something—an offhanded comment. I think he was like, "Oh no, I'm focused like every waking hour." He made it sound like he doesn't get distracted; he doesn't browse. He said something like that. But when he does get in that mood, which is seldom, he goes all in for like twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Then he just needs a two-day recharge, and then he's back in. He doesn't get distracted. Now, imagine being like Elon and having to... do you have a "zone out" mode like most people do after 7:00 at night? You know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

I read this story about Bill Gates. It was a story about how Bill Gates was building Microsoft. People don't know this because Bill Gates is now a philanthropist, you know?

Sam Parr

He's got grandpa energy.

Shaan Puri

He's got **grandpa energy**. Exactly! He's wearing his sweater and he's like, "Well, you know, I read books and blah blah blah." And I, you know, I've got these nets to catch mosquitoes. Like, you know, he just sounds sort of **harmless**.

Sam Parr

He was ruthless around putting around Bill.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's puttering around in the mornings. He was ruthless when he was building Microsoft and had insane energy. If you don't believe me, play the clip of him jumping over the chair. On top of that, someone was riding in a car with him to do an interview or something like that. They asked, "Bill, what happened?" They looked in his car and saw that the tape deck was missing; it was almost stolen. They asked, "Did it get stolen?" He said, "No, I took it out." They replied, "Why'd you take it out? You don't like to listen to music?" He responded, "If I'm listening to the radio, I'm not thinking about Microsoft. So I just took it out. I don't want to listen to the radio; I want to think about Microsoft."

Sam Parr

It's wild, right? That's just a little tiny story, but there are probably some epic, epic stories out there. These are small things, like for example, let's say you get an email saying, "You know, this partnership that we thought about doing, or the sale that we're thinking about doing from you, it's not for us. Thank you." There are people—and this is kind of small, but it's just an example of this behavior—who will just get on a plane and fly to that person's office the next morning and make it work. You think about doing that with your young kids. You have a few kids; I have one kid, and I'm like, there's not a chance that I'm getting on that plane unless it's something pretty amazing. But just to do these daily items that show how intense you are, it's really challenging to imagine living that life. I think very few people can actually sustain it, and I'm not one of them.

Shaan Puri

Right, so back to your question of how does he do it. This is a legitimate question: how does he do it? One of the reasons my interest in Doge is top of mind right now is that I just had my most viral tweet ever. You did? Yeah, and all I said was, "I would pay stupid amounts of money for someone to follow around the Doge team for the next six months, Hard Knocks style." Have you ever seen Hard Knocks, the show on HBO where they follow an NFL team through training camp? I would, and it's true, I would pay a ridiculous amount of money for that.

Sam Parr

What was the reach on that?

Shaan Puri

I mean, the tweet got like **50,000 likes** or something crazy.

Sam Parr

Oh, that's so funny! I didn't see that.

Shaan Puri

It has just gone really viral for some reason. A lot of people felt the same way; there's a fascination around this. Part of it is I would really want to see it. I want to know what it's like. I'll give you two things. So, one, I want to know what Elon is like, but not because I'm like, "Oh, Elon, he's the best." I just want to see. I literally want to understand. So, this guy's running $6,000,000,000 companies logistically.

Sam Parr

Yeah.

Shaan Puri

And then there's stuff like where he's tweeting ten times more than me. So it's not even like, "Oh, but he just doesn't waste time on social media like you." It's like, "No, I actually waste more time on social media." It's like, "Yeah, but he doesn't just waste time playing video games like you, you assholes." Like, dude, he's bragging about being a top hundred ranked Diablo player. And it's like, something's capped. The Diablo thing, I'm certain, is capped. Like, I am certain that dude, he's paying people.

Sam Parr

You are allowed to say that.

Shaan Puri

I thought it was pretty fluid. Was that not?

Sam Parr

It was actually so fluid that I was like, "Wait, what did you just say?"

Shaan Puri

I said it in the mirror the other day, and I'm like, "I think it works. I think I can add that to my..."

Sam Parr

I can't believe you're downplaying it. Having the audacity to do Trump, to have the audacity to say "cap" so fluidly like that was really... oh, you're going to say that?

Shaan Puri

On the internet for way too long.

Sam Parr

I thought you meant "cap" like a cap to his energy, not "cap" like "no cap." That was really good.

Shaan Puri

Dude, I'm gonna start saying "cap" as in "our limit." That's cap. That's the cap.

Sam Parr

That's the maximum cap. What did...

Shaan Puri

I've reached my threshold, is what I'm saying. What are you saying? I didn't say a lot.

Sam Parr

What did I say on MFM earlier this year? You're like...

Shaan Puri

Let him bake.

Sam Parr

Let them bake! You were like ripping, and I was like, "Let them bake." I try to be cool. They're like, "Wait, is it bake, or cook, or microwave? What is the phrase?" Have you met anyone who's worked with them? I haven't. Yeah, I have actually. I talked to that one guy who, that one time, said recently, "I had a meeting with Elon, and his assistant gave me the heads up in advance. Just so you know, Elon's companies are making something like $20,000,000 per hour or something like that, or $20,000,000 per half hour. So if you are going to have a conversation with him, it better be a $20,000,000 conversation." And that $20,000,000 number, by the way, it's more now. It's more now if you think of Doge. Can you imagine that? Actually, that's like kind of an exhausting way to live. Because do you ever hear when people say, "Well, that's just not worth my time"? When I would think about that for a long time, I'm like, does that mean I should always be doing something that is of more value? And I'm like, well, how much am I valuing just laying on this couch? Or how much am I valuing just mowing my grass because I want to actually mow my grass? I thought that was kind of an exhausting way to look at life.

Shaan Puri

It totally is. By the way, there's a simple, simple solution to that, which is you only price things that you don't want to do. If you want to do it, you don't put a price on it. If it's therapeutic to you or... what's it called? Like, whatever.

Sam Parr

It feels good just doing nothing.

Shaan Puri

If it feels good to do the dishes or to trim the bushes in your garden or whatever, like, go do it! You have at it. You don't need to be like, "Oh, this is an inefficient use of my time." You only price the things you don't want to do to say, "You know what? Am I wasting my time on stuff I don't even enjoy?"

Sam Parr

Well, when we had Rob Dyrdek on the pod, he said that he places that number at **$1,000,000** per hour.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, I watched a Cody Sanchez clip, and like, I don't mean to knock on Cody. She's always been nice to me. But she was on a panel, and they go... she goes, "I was talking to my mentor, Bill Perkins, and he always tells me, 'You are as low as the lowest tasks you do.'" She was like, "I was dropping some... I had to... I was pumping." Oh, he goes, "Do you still pump your own gas?" And she goes, "At first, I thought, how pretentious! Of course, I still want to be a person who pumps my own gas." Then he did the math for me about how much money I'm wasting pumping my own gas. He said, "Are you still buying this? You should not be buying that. You should not be going to the store to do that." I just thought, like... this video had tens of thousands of likes, and I think that's a totally valid way to think. She might be right; that might be the right answer for her, but it's not the right answer for me.

Sam Parr

For me, Whole Foods last night at 9 PM was just to walk around.

Shaan Puri

Totally, totally, totally! I think there, underneath a lot of that, like, "Oh, I gotta be so efficient with every second of my day," is just some underlying feeling of lack. What do you think you lack in your life that you have to optimize every minute of every hour of every day? And that you are, like, above doing certain things? By the way, also, when you stop doing things, you lose touch with reality, so there's a price to that too. My takeaway was not even about Cody or her idea. If it works for you, more power to you! I just thought to myself, you know what? You know how much bad advice is out there? Whether this was bad advice or not, one of the great skills in life is just playing hopscotch and not stepping on the landmines of terrible advice that exist on the internet. Our podcast included, by the way. We say some dumb stuff, and we say some things that don't make sense. They don't make sense for you; maybe they make sense for us, or maybe they just don't make sense at all. But there is a skill to how you block out the 98% of awful advice that sounds smart.

Sam Parr

You wanna hear something funny? So, I met this guy who's a billionaire—a multibillionaire. He's probably 65, and I talked to him for like an hour online for something. At the end of the call, for some reason, he started talking about his family and his kids. He has, I forget, five kids, and they're each married with children. He's like, "Oh, I'm always around the grandkids. I just love this." He was explaining his life philosophy. At the end of the call, I said, "Hey, you know, we don't know each other. We only know each other for this hour, but do you think my wife and I could come over and stay with you and your family? I can just watch how you interact with your family because you seem really happy, man, and you're successful. You've won." He goes, "I would love that." So, tomorrow at 7 AM, I am flying to Park City to go to this guy's house for three days. He was like, "My whole family's gonna be there for this weekend." I was like, "Great! Can I come and just hang out with you guys and be part of the family for a weekend? Just to see how you're interacting with everyone because you are awesome." He was like, "Yeah, I would love that." So, I'm going to his house tomorrow until Sunday, just to learn how to be. When I met him, I was like, "You are just such a warm person. You're rich and successful, which is like one amazing attribute. You seem happy, you seem fit, you have a lovely family, and they seem like they love you. I gotta download what you're doing because you are amazing." It's always letting me come over.

Shaan Puri

Dude, that's great! I've always enjoyed doing that. I have a word for it. Can I throw it out there?

Sam Parr

Some jargon at you... Stalking, is that it?

Shaan Puri

The word for it is **in situ**.

Sam Parr

So, like, what's that? Wait, is this a made-up word?

Shaan Puri

I'm a biology major, so at one point, I did a biotech company. One of the things you learn at any biotech company is there's a huge difference between the lab environment, which is a sterile, controlled environment, and the real world. In the lab, you see data come out that says, "Wow, this thing really works!" We produced this many milliliters of this or this many grams of that substance, or whatever it is. It had this much energy, this many kilowatts generated... whatever the thing you're doing in the lab. Then you're like, "Oh my god, this is amazing! We're about to change the world!" I was trying to high-five everyone, but nobody else was excited. I was like, "Why aren't you guys excited?" They said, "Well, it's the lab." I asked, "Oh, does the lab mess up?" They replied, "No, the lab's great." So I asked, "What's the problem with the lab? It's a test, it's a scientific test. How much more proof do you want?" They said, "Oh, everything changes in situ." In situ basically means you take the thing—in our case, we were working on these microbes. We had this company where microbes would eat coal and basically fart out natural gas. So you could get natural gas without burning coal. Kind of amazing, right? These are real microbes that just exist on the planet. They were working amazingly in the lab; they were producing so much natural gas. It was incredible! We were about to change the energy industry.

Sam Parr

What's that word? "In situ" is like "in a situation," yeah?

Shaan Puri

Situational... I don't know exactly what it is. I don't know the technical definition, but it's kind of like in the situation or in ground. So what we did was take the bugs, then we had to actually go to the field where the coal is buried 200 meters underground or whatever. You're going to pump the microbes in, and you have to pump them in with some water and see what happens. There are cracks in the ground; it's not perfect. The weather... everything is different. The temperature is different, and the other microbes that are there interfere, right? Et cetera. And always, the in situ was not only worse but just dramatically different. It was like, "Why are we even doing these lab tests?" They were like, "Well, look, if it fails in the lab, it's for sure gonna fail in situ."

Sam Parr

Right.

Shaan Puri

But just because it succeeds in the lab doesn't mean it works in situ. So, there's a really long-winded way of saying I have this little word I tell myself, which is like "go in situ." For example, you might have a theory, but go test it. You might have an idea, go test it. You might think your Donald Trump impression is good; you gotta say that on the mic and see what happens. Another version of it is this: this person might look like they've got it all together. They're happy, they're successful, and they're saying all the right things on this podcast. Go in situ. Go to their house, and you'll know within like fifteen minutes—well, you said three days, but that's massive overkill. You'll know within like ninety minutes for sure everything you need to know about this guy. You'll pick up all these nuances about the family dynamics, the house, their schedule, and their overall level of busyness. Are they rushing through their day, or do they seem at peace? You know, their baseline mood might be really high, or how their kids relate to them shows that they have a great underlying bond, versus what they say. You pick up so much, and this is why people are like, "Oh, what happened to you and Sam? Why aren't you doing this interview together?" It's like, yeah, because I actually wanted to go to that dude's house. He lives near me, or he lived where I was traveling, and Sam was traveling somewhere else at the time. But I pick up so much more not from the interview, but from the hours we spend before the interview just hanging out at their house. I gain so much more insight in terms of lifestyle, and I've talked about this before.

Sam Parr

We don't... Austin, the person who you hung... Sorry, well, go ahead.

Shaan Puri

I'll give you the example. So, we go to Austin and we had four interviews scheduled. It was Joe Lonsdale, a billionaire who started more billion-dollar companies than anyone else in America, I think.

Sam Parr

That's like a hard-hitting, get-after-alpha type of dude.

Shaan Puri

Exactly! I go to... and so there was him, there was Monish Pabrai, an investor. He was a value investor from the school of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger. Then there's Tim Ferriss, a guy I've admired for many years—author, experimenter, investor, etc. The fourth one was somebody else I'm forgetting; this was like a year ago. So we go and we do the four. Now, for each of the four, I hung out with them. With Tim, less so, but the others, like Joe Lonzola, I went to his house at eight in the morning. I did a morning workout with him, we had breakfast together, we did a cold plunge together, we talked, and then we did the podcast. I saw his family, met his wife, you know, etc. I toured his house, saw where he works, where he plays. He's got this LAN center—like literally a gaming LAN center for him and his cousins to just come play video games. There are like six computers.

Sam Parr

Lan O L A N. Okay.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's got like a basketball court and an old artillery gun at the top of his place. Right when we were leaving, 10 senators were coming over for lunch, and Elon Musk showed up while we were leaving the house. It's like, "Whoa, okay, that's what your day looks like. Got it." He was just so hospitable, by the way. He was so nice and generous with his time. Did he have Monish Puri come over to his house? He's like, "Yeah, come over whenever my day's clear." I go to his house, and he doesn't have a staff that answers the door. He opens the door barefoot, wearing basketball shorts, and he's like, "Yeah, what do you want? Let's just sit and have some tea." So we have tea. He's got no clock, no assistant telling him he has to move to the next thing. He shows me his nap room and says, "Oh, I nap every day. It's great. Napping is great. My whole job is thinking, you know? I have to make great decisions, and napping keeps me fresh. It's like having a second day." I was like, "Whoa." Then he's got all these books in his library, but he's also kind of alone. I asked, "You don't have a team?" He's like, "No, the best investors make their decisions not as a committee. Investors make their decisions as independent thinkers." So now, I don't have a huge team. I've got like a researcher or two, but they don't come over every day.

Sam Parr

So, he has how many billions in his fund?

Shaan Puri

Two, I think something like that.

Sam Parr

And it was really just him and a researcher. He was...

Shaan Puri

The only guy there... he didn't have like a...

Sam Parr

But, like, it's a five-person staff... generously.

Shaan Puri

Generously, yeah, I could be wrong, right? Like, yeah, don't quote me on these, but I'm 90% sure it's Tim Ferriss. I was like, you know, he shows up and I was like, "So, what have you been up to?" He was like, "Oh, I just came back from Europe." I was like, "Oh, cool! Vacation? Skiing? What are you doing?" He goes, "No, I spent three days with the guy who's the best in the world at making board games, and I wanted to understand. I wanted to learn about board games." So, you pick up lifestyle flexibility, the ability to indulge in your hobbies. How lonely are you? You know, do you have a team? Are you doing...? Somebody tweeted us out the other day. They said, "The thing that socialists, or Karl Marx, got wrong was how much fun it is to make money with your boys." I was like, "I feel that, dude!" Like, me, Ben, Diego—it's so much fun to just do what we do. It would be way less fun if it was just me doing it. Even if I owned 100% and had more equity and all that, I would never take that train.

Sam Parr

Dude, I completely agree. By the way, that's why I have co-founders.

Shaan Puri

And I moved Diego out here. I was like, "Dude, I'll pay you more. Just move out here, move within ten minutes of me." Now we hang out every day, and I'm like, my life just got better, right? Like, little things. My kids interrupt me in the middle of the day. I have a piano right next to my desk because in between working, I'll just play piano. It's for fun, right? If somebody was here in situ with me, they would say that I don't have a perfect life, but I've built a life that I love. They would know for themselves if that's kind of what they want. So I think this is massively underrated. It's a very long-winded way of saying I think more people should do this. I think you pick up way more when you go to somebody's house and see their, you know, just kind of hang with them for a day or even a couple of hours.

Sam Parr

I think we need like a tobacco pipe or something. Today is like, you know, philosopher hour on our rocking chairs, just riffing on what makes a good life and what doesn't. You know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we started at Limestones.

Sam Parr

We should go, by the way, check them out. It sounds sick.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. I would love to go see it. I think it would be pretty boring, but it would be mind-blowing at the same time. You know what I mean?

Sam Parr

I think it would be.

Shaan Puri

Nothing... nothing would be thrilling, but the whole thing would be mind-blowing. That's what it is. So, that's what it exists.

Sam Parr

I need to do like MFM field trips because the timing was horrible when you were doing the Monisha Pabrai one. I was moving that day, and we couldn't make it work because I had a six-month-old. It was a huge whatever. But I am so envious! I'm like, "Fuck, I just wanted to see. I just wanted to get a feel." I wanted to do a field trip of just sitting in his living room and watching him interact. Totally! That's like, I get so much joy doing that exact same thing.

Shaan Puri

You know what I would want to do? So there's your boy Brett who's doing robotics. I want to go see that. I want to go see it.

Sam Parr

It's awesome.

Shaan Puri

Humanoid robots in the factory... just be inspired by that. There's another one that I think would be really cool. Have you ever been to Sysco Foods?

Sam Parr

Like Sysco is the company that makes the food that goes to all the restaurants. They make sauces and stuff. Yeah, what? No, I've not been. What is that?

Shaan Puri

It's... I went once because we had a restaurant, and it's the most wild, huge-scale operation. You don't realize it. You're like, "Oh, I guess, yeah, the company that supplies all of the materials to all of the restaurants and grocery stores, I guess they gotta be pretty big," right? Bigger than anything you've ever seen. It was like a tour of that facility, and then you see the automation. There are these little hockey puck-like scooters, you know, those little butt scooters where you just sit down on this thing, like an old PE thing, where you sit down on this little four-wheel flat thing and it rolls around. That's like little robots that fly around this warehouse, picking up pallets and moving them places. So, it's this incredibly sophisticated operation to move like cans of tuna.

Sam Parr

Is this... yeah, I'm looking at their factors. It looks so large that you could see the Earth's curve, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

It's like, it's huge. Another one would be, like, probably not allowed, but like Anduril or like one of these companies just making lasers and, you know, war machines. Also, just like the crypto house and just go see all these degenerate 19-year-olds.

Sam Parr

That's actually a good idea.

Shaan Puri

It's like you don't know it until you see it, until you feel it, right? It just leaves an imprint on you in a different way.

Sam Parr

Going to hacker houses in San Francisco was amazing. Seeing their kitchen, I was like, "Who cooks what? How do you guys know?"

Shaan Puri

It's like, you've seen the Barstool "One Bite" pizza reviews? We just do the one sniff hacker house reviews. The odor just...

Sam Parr

And dude, they're all in San Francisco. They're all in these warehouses, so they all got Walmart feet. Everyone's walking around barefoot with dirty, dirty bottoms of their feet. It's disgusting, but I had so much fun doing it. I remember I felt that same way walking around Facebook. Have you ever walked around Facebook's campus?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, Facebook's one of those.

Sam Parr

I remember walking around and thinking, "Why does a web page need so many employees?"

Shaan Puri

What are...

Sam Parr

All these people... There are so many people walking around, and you're like, "I can't." I would make fun of Facebook constantly because I thought it was a soulless job. But you walk around and you're like, "Oh my God, this is like a beehive," you know?

Shaan Puri

What we should do... Do you remember TechCrunch Cribs? Did you ever see this show?

Sam Parr

Yeah, it was awesome.

Shaan Puri

It was awesome, and they discontinued it just like they discontinued cribs. But I think that needs to come back. Okay, realistically, we're like, "We should do this," and then both of us are going to look at our kids and then just not travel.

Sam Parr

I'm going to a Cisco factory.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I really want to go see the... I'm going to go learn how to hop.

Sam Parr

Rides are made. Yeah, exactly.

Shaan Puri

So, realistically, let's be honest: I'm absolutely not going to do this idea. But we need a field correspondent. Every great show has a field correspondent, right? So, I'm going to throw down the gauntlet right now: **$100,000 a year** to be the MFM field trip correspondent. We're going to send you to different awesome places. You have to film it like the old TechCrunch Cribs or MTV Cribs episodes. You just have to go to funny, epic places, you know, interesting companies where they have a crazy office life, crazy factories, and stuff like that. That could be your job: travel around, film content, and we'll put them up on MFM as episodes.

Sam Parr

I want to see these... like, there's... dude, these AI companies that have like 20 employees and about a hundred million in revenue. I just want to see what they're doing all day.

Shaan Puri

You know what I mean? Absolutely. To audition, email me at [email protected] and just send an audition tape. So, do an episode of any business near you. Go to your coffee shop and just film it, just so that we can get a sense of how you are on camera.

Sam Parr

That's the best! Nice pod. I actually enjoy these where I... I sent.

Shaan Puri

That, to me, was very nice. Thank you.

Sam Parr

I enjoy these because I just enjoy hanging out. Those are my favorite podcasts. Alright, that's it. Great pod, wonderful pod. See you out there!