Decoding The Extreme Personalities of The Top 1% (Savage Mindset)

Shaan Puri

Egan is great. He has a very aggressive bedside manner. An aggressive bedside manner is like the nicest way possible of just calling the guy a jerk. This guy's definitely an asshole. You know, they're like, "Oh, you know, it's just that he's very direct. He's very honest. He's a straight shooter." Those are all just ways of saying this guy will trample you. What's up, Sam? I don't know if you're ready, but I'm going to ratchet up the intensity a little bit here. I'm going to start high intensity on the podcast. I'm going to talk about some high intensity individuals. Would you like to hear about some high intensity individuals?

Sam Parr

I wore my high school letterman jacket. If you haven't noticed, I'm shocked you haven't made fun of me. So, I'm ready for high intensity. If you can't tell, I look like the big man on campus.

Shaan Puri

A little bit like Al Bundy right now, just dreaming about the good old days. So, I don't know if you're ready for this.

Sam Parr

I want to be... I wish I could've taken state. That's the vibe I'm in, and so I'm ready for some intense stuff.

Shaan Puri

I'm going to tell you about some people that I think you know. A couple of them, I think you know a lot about, but they're all tied together. They are all what I will call "all in" individuals.

Sam Parr

They're all insane.

Shaan Puri

They're all kind of insane, and they're insane in the same way, which is that they are all the way in on what they're doing. I was reading their stories, and I was kind of inspired. They're all very different stories, but then I realized, no, no, no, it's actually the same story. It's all about being all in. Okay, so who are these people? First, I want to start with a guy named Egan Durbin. I think you know who Egan Durbin is, but I don't know—do you know his full story?

Sam Parr

I don't know his full story. He’s kind of shrouded in mystery a little bit. I know that he's been on top of the game since he was probably 30 or 35, and he kind of controls, it seems like, almost LA a little bit.

Shaan Puri

A little bit, yeah. So, he is the Managing Director of Silver Lake. Silver Lake is a giant private equity investor that invests in technology. They have $72 billion in assets under management, which I'm pretty sure is bigger than every venture fund combined.

Sam Parr

Did you say 72?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, 72. So if you take out the Vision Fund, I'm pretty sure this is bigger than almost all VCs combined. Okay, so who is this guy? You know, he's got a crazy track record I want to talk through. But first, I just want to give you a few quotes again about these all-in individuals. I give you these quotes because even though I don't do anything like this guy—I'm not a fund manager, I'm not a managing director of a private equity fund, and I have no desire to be—I do see some of these descriptions of him, and I'm like, "It'd be nice to be called that. It'd be nice to have that be a true thing somebody could say about me." Sometimes, you just gotta hear it. You just gotta hear that level 12 exists for you to even unlock that part of your brain. Okay, so let me tell you some things. He goes to school, goes to Georgetown, and then he goes to Morgan Stanley. He is known immediately in the banking world. They interviewed some people, and they go, "He came in as an entry-level junior guy," right? Early twenties. They say, "Egan was immediately comfortable at the grown-ups' table." He just carried himself very differently. It's not that he had the experience; it's not even that he was smarter than anybody, but he carried himself like, "I belong in that conversation, and I'm gonna show up that way." He didn't just label himself as a junior here, saying, "I'm just here to learn. I'm just happy to be here." He never had that energy. The next thing that I heard: Egan is great. He has a very aggressive bedside manner. An aggressive bedside manner is like the nicest way possible of calling a guy a jerk. This guy's definitely an asshole. You know, they're like, "Oh, you know, he's just very direct. He's very honest. He's a straight shooter." Those are all just ways of saying, "This guy will trample you." So, in 1999, he leaves the banking world to join Silver Lake. He's like, "I think technology and the internet—this is 1999, the dot-com boom is happening. I think this is the next big thing. I'm gonna go here." He does a very smart career move. If you see this career move, you know this person's a winner, which is they join a thing that's working. But instead of staying at the mothership, they're like, "Hey, what's the next frontier?" They're like, "Oh, we need to expand into Europe." He's like, "Cool, you got plans or a person in charge of that?" They're like, "Not yet. We want to do that next year. We're gonna do a search to find somebody." He's like, "Cool, I'll move there now and I'll do it." So he moves to Europe and builds out the whole European business for investing in European tech companies. Exactly. One of the big tech companies that he invested in Europe is Skype. Skype was a European company. Skype had already had its run-up, but then it had kind of faltered. So he partners with a16z at one...

Shaan Puri

And he buys Skype out for **$11,900,000,000**. People were like, "This is hard to turn a technology company around. It's kind of on the decline; it's riddled with lawsuits right now. This is a messy buy." He goes in and he basically says, "Alright, we're going to do two things. We're going to hire a great CEO, we're going to settle all these lawsuits, and we're going to actually invest in making our product better because the product's just been atrophying for whatever reason for so long." So he immediately settles the lawsuits, hires a great CEO, and starts investing in the product. In **18 months**, he sells the thing all cash to Microsoft for **$8.5 billion**. So from **$1.9 billion** to **$8.5 billion**, he basically triples their money but on a **$1 billion** base principal amount. He immediately makes a name for himself after doing the Europe thing with that, and he's doing this at a time when there's a bit of a power struggle at Silver Lake.

Sam Parr

And by the way, he's only like 35 at this.

Shaan Puri

I don't know how old he is exactly. Yeah, he's probably... let's see... he's probably 30, or in his early thirties, is my guess. So, in 2008, during the financial crisis, the founder of Silver Lake, this guy Glenn Hutchins, one of the founders, he's like this crazy guy. If you go watch interviews of him, he's got a mustache and he comes into the office barefoot. He never wears shoes. He's kind of like one of those "one with nature" founder type guys, but he's in private equity, which is usually filled with suits and, you know, cutthroat types of guys.

Sam Parr

Alright everyone, a quick break to tell you about HubSpot. This one's really easy for me to talk about because I'm going to show you a real-life example. I've got this company called Hampton, [joinhampton.com](http://joinhampton.com). It's a community for founders doing between $2,000,000 all the way up to $250,000,000 a year in revenue. One of the ways that we've grown is by creating these cool surveys. We have a lot of founders with high net worths, and we'll ask them all types of questions that people typically are embarrassed to ask but that provide a lot of value. So, things like how much the founders pay themselves each month, how much money they're spending each month, what their payroll looks like, and if they're optimistic about the next year in their business. All these questions that people are afraid to ask, but we ask them anyway, and they tell us in this anonymous survey. What we do is create a landing page using HubSpot's landing page tool. It basically has a landing page that says, "Here are all the questions we asked. Give us your email if you want to access it." I shared this page on Twitter, and we were able to get thousands of people who gave us their email and told us they wanted this survey. I could see if they came from social media. I can see if they came from Twitter, from LinkedIn, basically everywhere else that they could possibly come from. I'm able to track all of that, and then I'm able to see over the next handful of weeks how many of those people actually signed up and became members of Hampton. In other words, I can see how much revenue came from this survey and how much revenue came from each traffic source, things like that. But the best part is I can see how much revenue came from it. A lot of times, it takes a ton of work to make that happen, but HubSpot made that super, super easy. If you're interested in doing this, you could check it out at HubSpot.com. The link's in the description, and I'll also put the link to the survey that I did so you can actually see the landing page and how it works and everything like that. I'm just going to do that call to action then, and it's free! Check it out in the description. Alright, now back to MFM. By the way, I think the other guy, I think all three of the founders are like hippies. The other one, Roger McNamee, I think his name is. Do you know who he is?

Shaan Puri

I didn't look him up too much, but yeah, I saw him.

Sam Parr

He's a little bit of a hippie. Like, he's in a Grateful Dead cover band. I think more people know him as a musician than for founding this multi...

Shaan Puri

Of view to be... Because if you're in the nineties and you're doing technology, then you're early, right? And you're early because you're a believer in something. You're usually an early adopter. You're not... You usually, it's like the MBAs come later, right? The business school kids come later, and once the opportunity is already defined.

Sam Parr

Which is crazy because Silver Lake now is known as this **buttoned-up** place.

Shaan Puri

Of course, as is Microsoft now, and Facebook now, and all the things that at one time were just like college kids living in a hacker house type of thing. So, the 2008 financial crisis happens. That guy, Glenn, is getting real stressed out. He's like, "I just need to take a step back." Egan Durbin is like, "I'm here. I've been here. I'm ready for this." So, he starts to step forward. He had just done the big Skype deal, so he's kind of riding the wind of that. That's like the big news basically in the industry. They're out to raise a fund, and he's like, "I'll help you raise that fund. You can use this cracker in my name, and I'll be one of the... but I need a seat at the top." So, there's a bit of a power struggle. The other founders don't really want to step back. He wants a seat at the table. There's a power struggle, there's sort of a coup, and Egan and four new guys basically become the new managing directors. The founders all end up stepping back.

Sam Parr

But a private equity (PE) firm, there's not like one owner. PE firms are a little bit like law firms where there isn't ever just one owner. But as you rise, you get an equity stake, and so it almost becomes a partnership. Not...

Shaan Puri

Like, it's a partnership either way. Usually, you raise a new fund, and when you raise a new fund, you define how that pie is going to get split up. As they raise fund after fund, the guys who were the main principals of the first might now have a smaller stake because the new people who are doing all the work are going to have the big stake in the new fund. So, anyways, he gets it, and then he starts doing just crazy aggressive stuff. If you hear this guy's strategy, here's what he says: In 16 years, they've basically grown the thing like crazy since all that happened. They've added like, I don't know, $25 to $30 billion of assets under management during that time. He says, "My goal is to be the best risk-adjusted tech investor in the world. What I'm trying to do is find one or two bets per year. I'm looking for all-in bet opportunities that I can't say no to—one or two bets per year, and that's it. I spend my whole year just trying to find one deal that is worth doing." When he finds it, he just pushes all the chips in. He did this with Alibaba; they put in a whole bunch of money at a $35 billion market cap, and then they 6x'd their money from there because Alibaba became a multi-hundred billion dollar market cap company. He was like, "At the time, we see this as a Google-sized opportunity. This is like the Google of China; we need to be in this." Other people thought $35 billion was pretty overvalued at the time, but he didn't think so. Another example of this is he went to some conference and spoke on stage. He said, "Yeah, I don't usually do this, but you know, whatever. It'll be worth it, I'm sure." So he gets off stage and bumps into Michael Dell backstage. It's the first time he meets the guy. About a year later, he does the biggest tech buyout deal ever, which was taking Dell private. It was a multibillion dollar buyout where they took it private and ended up revamping it. It was the biggest deal, I think, ever at the time. He's also made some pretty crazy bets. Some of the crazier things this guy's done—first, I'll give you some personality crazy things. He sucked at golf but wanted to be good. He thought, "Golf is like, you know, the businessman's sport, and I want to be good." So, do you know what he did to get good at golf? No? Have you heard the story? They had a gym for all the employees or analysts at the company, and he just goes and locks the gym down. He says, "There's no more gym. I'm going to convert this." So, like, over a weekend or whatever, he converts the gym into a golf practice facility, essentially. Then the employees are like, "Hey, what happened to our gym? That was a key perk. Where do we go now?" He's like, "I don't know, go across the street and ask BlackRock if you can use theirs." So for years, the analysts all went across the street to other firms, saying, "Hey, can we use your gym?" He turned it into his own private golf simulator, and they couldn't do it anymore.

Sam Parr

That's kind of an **asshole move**, right?

Shaan Puri

I mean, it's kind of an aggressive move.

Sam Parr

I mean, what is it? I wonder what his employees said. It's like, "Hey, that's kinda lame, right? What about us?"

Shaan Puri

Now, he's an 8 handicap golfer. He's got memberships at golf clubs around the world. That's the ending of that story. Another point is that he gets criticized because he kind of wants power in the Hollywood world. Like you said, I think he's a power player in LA. I don't know if that's true or not, but he became the biggest backer of WME. He also did a bunch of other things. The joke was, you know, he's buying things so he can get access to the Oscars. This guy is just an absolute, you know, sort of like savage individual. Another thing that he said was, "I'm not trying to take the most risk, but I am trying to be very concentrated in my bets." The way he phrased this, I liked. He said, "We get paid to hit singles and doubles, then we steal third and we come into home on a passed ball." It's just a different mindset than "I'm trying to hit home runs." He's like, "No, no, we hit singles and doubles, then through our kind of good operations, we steal third, and then we get to score—we get to home on a passed ball." Basically, the market continues to grow, and we benefit from that is how I read into that. I really liked that he did not like when people said, "You haven't done any investments recently." This was back in 2021, and he was like, "I think everything in tech is overvalued. All the unicorns, I think it's going to be really rough for them." He said, "Every private tech company in the world right now, if you combine them, is $350 billion. If I could buy that whole asset class, I would do it tomorrow because I'm pretty sure that that will 2 or 3x." But picking any individual company is really hard. Companies that are valued at $1 billion might not just go down 30% on a correction; they'll go down to 0. There will be no bid for these companies, which is kind of what exactly played out in the coming year. So, he stayed away from late-stage tech. I just really thought this guy was great.

Sam Parr

He's done a few other deals that are interesting. In April of 2020, just two months into the pandemic, he invested **$1,000,000,000** into Airbnb. I don't remember the exact valuation, but my wife worked there at the time. We were at home thinking, "Oh, well, Airbnb is going out of business. That whole company is dead." When they invested, it was crazy. I think it was an **$18,000,000,000** valuation.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it was something like that. It was somewhere between 10 to 20, and he structured it intelligently. I think there was debt involved; they had like a warrant or something like that. It was a good structure. I don't know, they didn't release all the details. But the one interesting thing was he got criticized because he had never met Brian Chesky, the CEO. He made the investment sort of sight unseen and injected a bunch of capital into the business when it needed it. People were like, "Is that a rash move?" People doubted it, but Airbnb has done fantastic since then. You know, he owns... they own $500,000,000 of Manchester City Soccer Club. They own a lot of different stuff, which is kind of, you know, interesting to me. Let me tell you one other thing about this guy. He said something that I found interesting. They talked about the WME deal, and he goes, "I love Ari Emanuel. I talk to Ari Emanuel every single day," which is just crazy. I don't even talk to my own business partner every single day, let alone some investment I made. People were like, "You talk to Ari every day? About what?" And he's like, "Well, you know, Ari averages a 90-second phone call." He's like, "So we have a 90-second phone call, but we're texting and calling every day, and it's usually 90 seconds." He goes, "Sometimes it's a specific ask, like, 'Hey, we need this introduction' or 'We need this analysis' or whatever." He's like, "But I don't like to do formal board meetings every quarter. It's too slow. I like the pace that Ari moves. These are 90-second phone calls every day." This takes me to the next individual, Ari Emanuel. So, you know Ari Emanuel, and a lot of people know him because the character in *Entourage* is based off of him. But there were some things about him that I didn't fully know that were kind of interesting. Did you know he's one of three brothers, and all three brothers do really interesting stuff?

Sam Parr

So, there's a book that I read years ago. It's called... what's it called? Something America. Oh, "The Brothers Emanuel," I believe it's called. "Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family." In that book, Ari Emanuel—who's probably a billionaire—he's one of the shot callers in LA. His brother is Rah Emanuel, who I think was the mayor of Chicago and on Obama's cabinet or something like that. A political power player. In the book, Ari and Rah... I think Ron is his name... they go...

Shaan Puri

Yeah.

Sam Parr

A lot of people know us, but they don't know that our third brother, Zeke (Ezekiel), is the smartest and the most successful brother. His brother, Ezekiel, I believe—I'm going to screw up the titles—was the head of health for the government under Obama.

Shaan Puri

He basically made the ObamaCare, right? Like, he was the architect of the Affordable Care Act.

Sam Parr

I think he has also done some major things. I don't remember exactly, so don't quote me on this. Don't turn this into a short, but I think he helped pioneer the heart transplant and things like that. He invented things that save lives. He and the two brothers are like, "Zeke's the smart one; we're just more stubborn and bullheaded a little bit."

Shaan Puri

So, that's hilarious. They asked him, "Hey, do you watch *Entourage*? What do you think of Ari Gold? Is that you?" He's like, "Well, they got some things right. You know, I am very aggressive." And then he adds, "I didn't go into an office with a paintball gun and shoot everybody. So, you know, I didn't do that. But they got a lot of things right, unfortunately." Then they're like, "How have you changed over the years? Are you still as aggressive?" He goes, "Look, here's what I have to say. You need to know when you're on the field. When you're on the field, you're there to compete, you're there to win, and you're there to kill. But the one thing I have learned is that I'm not always on the field. Sometimes I'm off the field, and I need to behave a little bit differently." He goes, "That's the only change that's happened to me in like 30 years." I thought that was also funny. As an aggressive person, we know somebody who worked with him, and they told some pretty hilarious stories. So, apparently, this guy's day is like this: Growing up, he was dyslexic, I think, so he had to go to a reading teacher for like three hours a day or something like that. He said, "I hated it. I used to cry all the time. I felt so embarrassed by it." Then he just realized, "Whatever, this is my superpower. I'm gonna win a different way. Okay, I can't read these contracts, I can't read this stuff, so I'm gonna surround myself with people who can do those things for me, and I'm gonna do other things that only I can do well." So, his day is basically him walking on a treadmill with an earpiece in his ear. His assistant is just calling people on a call list. His assistant is getting people on the phone that he wants to talk to for like 30 to 90 seconds at a time, and he just immediately hits someone up, calls them, and in 90 seconds makes the...

Shaan Puri

He hangs up, and then he's on to the next call, which is ready in his ear. He just goes to the next one.

Sam Parr

Totally weird. It starts at like 6 AM. I think I read an article where he's famous for making something like 200 calls a day. It starts at 6 AM, and he's talking to people all day, just making deals.

Shaan Puri

Somebody told me that he was in his office and he just has a bag of almonds. Whenever he wants his assistant's attention, he throws the bag of almonds at her. He just hit her at the end with an almond, and she would turn around. He's like, "Next call! I do the next call."

Sam Parr

What a dish!

Shaan Puri

Exactly. All these guys, all of them, have the same trait. All three of the people I'm going to talk about, okay? So, they also had the classic story. It's like there's something about working in the mailroom. David Geffen, Barry Diller, and Ari Emanuel all have the same story, which is basically that they started off in the Hollywood mailroom and used that as their feeding ground. I was thinking about this: what is it about the mailroom? If you think about it, what is the mailroom? The mailroom is basically the stuff nobody else wants to do. So, it's already a filter. It's going to filter out anybody who doesn't really want it because it's so unglamorous. That's interesting thing number one. Interesting thing number two is the way it works. You're basically making copies of scripts and stuff. Then you have to drive it around town, give it to clients, deliver the paperwork, fetch lunches, and hand off the lunches to somebody who's in a meeting. If you do well at that, then you could become an assistant, then you could become an agent, and whatever. But you learn the town and you work it seven days a week. The guys who ended up making it basically used that as their opportunity to build an incredible network because the job is kind of networking. They used every rep of that instead of just mentally checking out to actually build their power network. That's kind of how all three of those guys rose to power. Can I tell you the last one now? The last all-in individual...

Sam Parr

Yeah, for sure. I'm into this.

Shaan Puri

Okay, so you know this person well, but I don't know if you know the full story. I didn't know the full story until I researched this. But Dana White... I want you to tell me a little bit about what you know, and then I want to fill in some gaps with new things I learned when I was looking at this.

Sam Parr

Alright, so Dana White... I think he was a boxing instructor, but not like coaching real boxers. It was more like a jazzercise class in Boston. He was in Boston and moved into this bad neighborhood. Whitey Bulger, who was a big gangster at the time, came to Dana's office at his jazzercise gym or whatever. He said, "Hey man, you're in my hood. You owe me $1,000 a month or something like that." Dana White didn't pay him because he thought, "Oh, I'm a tough guy. I don't need to pay this guy." Eventually, he realized that Whitey was the real deal and he owed him $10,000 or $20,000. Dana was like, "Dude, I have nothing," so he moved to Vegas to flee. He went to high school with these two rich brothers, the Fertitta brothers. They came from a wealthy family and owned penny casinos, which were like low-class places at first. Their parents owned this casino that was almost like a gas station, where people would put in penny slots. From there, they owned a few other casinos, I think the Station Casino or Golden Nugget—I forget what they're called. So they got money and it started working. The two sons, Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, became kind of big shots in Vegas. They started a few companies and bought a few others. One of them was Gordon Biersch, which was a cider and beer company. They were one of our first advertisers at The Hustle. Dana came to them and said, "Hey man, this thing called the UFC—it's kind of a sport. I know you brothers are somewhat into jujitsu. I went to one of these events; they're pretty amazing. The guy selling the brand... in reality, what we're gonna get is a crappy little octagon and just the name UFC. It's $2,000,000. Let's buy it." They got convinced to do it. Dana got 4% of the equity; the other guys got the rest. But they failed for 4 or 5 years, so they were in the hole like $35,000,000. They came up with this brilliant idea to have a TV show called "The Ultimate Fighter" to promote the events. The events were kind of popular, but they weren't really making money. They created this TV show called "The Ultimate Fighter" and convinced Spike TV to air it. At the time, Spike TV was a pretty big deal, but not that big. They did this series and thought, "Dude, we're getting a round of money. We can't afford this series anymore." Then Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar had their famous fight. At the time, it was a huge deal. I was a kid; I remember watching this fight. I got a phone call from a friend saying, "Dude, you gotta turn this fight on. This is so amazing!" At the end of that fight, the winner was supposed to get a $100,000 contract. They called it a six-figure contract back then, and that was a big deal. The fight was so good, even though one guy won, that it was so great they gave both of them six-figure contracts. From there, the UFC kind of took off. That was like the turning moment. Dana and these two brothers were the business brains behind it. They were really low-key behind the scenes, but they ran this business. Eventually, it sold for $4,000,000,000 to Ari Emanuel's company, and now it's like the hottest thing going. Is that... do I do that?

Shaan Puri

Very good, very good! Off the cuff, I like it. I want to fill in a couple of little details here that I thought were interesting—stuff I didn't know. So, you're right. Dana grows up in Boston, but he goes to college twice and drops out twice. In the first semester, he's like, "This shit just ain't for me." He ends up as a bellhop. So, he's a bellhop, he's a bouncer, he's doing asphalt laying... you know, that's what he's doing with his life. He wants to be a boxer, but he sees a guy come in who he knew as a boxer and looked up to. That guy was just totally punch-drunk, and he's like, "Oh shit, I can't do this." So, he's like, "Maybe I should teach boxing classes, like boxercise, instead of actually trying to be a boxer." That's kind of like the opening. Now he's doing all that, and he describes that he wants to maybe get into boxing promotion. He's like, "I'm not sure exactly, maybe I could be a boxing promoter," but he's a bellhop at one of the hotels. He describes the day that he quit. He's like, "I was just sitting there, and actually, we used to get paid pretty well for being a bellhop. I forgot what it was; it's like, you know, $22 an hour or something back then." He's like, "It's not that the money was so bad. I liked the guys that I worked with, but am I just gonna do this shit forever?" He had the realization that every day he did this was another day that he wasn't doing the thing he wanted. He used to feel like he could always someday go do something, and he's like, "You know what? Screw it." He says, "If I had to tell you one thing..." and he's giving a talk later, "it would be to take the risk." He's like, "Because when I quit and I actually went for my thing, guess what I realized? I can always come back and be a bellhop. This life I have is always here because it's the bottom. It's not where I want to be anyways. What do I have to lose? Worst-case scenario, I could just come back and get another job like this." He goes, "But I will never get back this window of time I have right now in my twenties that I can go and take a shot at something." So, that was kind of like his mindset and mentality. He quits, and he's like, "I want to start." So, he starts trying to do the boxing thing; he's trying to become a promoter. Then, you're right, the mob thing happens. Here's what he said about it: "These guys show up and they're like, 'Hey, you owe us $25,100.'" And he's like, "In the movies, it's cool when you see mobsters and mafia, but if it's real life and they want your shit, it's super scary. That is not cool." He's like, "I have no way of paying this, so I'm just gonna..." He goes, "I go home that night, I just go to delta.com and I bought a one-way ticket to Vegas." He goes, "I left all my shit there. It looks like my TV, my dresser... I just left it there. I couldn't do anything." He said, "I just ran away basically from these guys once I realized that they're pretty serious. I bought a one-way ticket to Vegas."

Sam Parr

And the guys who were behind it, it was **Whitey Bulger**, who's like the real deal. He's from the movie *Black Mass*, and he's the character behind *The Departed*.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. When they first came in, they were like, "Hey, you owe us $200." He was like, "I don't owe you that. For what? I don't have it. What do you want me to do?" Then a couple of weeks go by, and they call him again. They're like, "You owe this money by tomorrow at 1 PM or else." He was like, "Oh shit, okay, I gotta get out of here." So he left basically that night. A couple of other things I thought: he was friends with the Fertitas, but they actually didn't know each other. They only knew of each other in high school, but they weren't friends. What he said was that they knew of each other and they liked Dana because Dana was kind of like... basically, he tells the story that they had this class that they all hated. Dana realized that the teacher was really uptight, and it kind of sucked to be in that class. But because the teacher was uptight, one little thing could distract the teacher and throw them off. So Dana would go to the restroom and kick this door really hard, making this huge sound. The teacher would become irate, like, "Who the... what is that? Who's doing that?" He would go try to find the person, and Dana would run away. Basically, half of the class would go by with no teacher because the teacher would be looking for somebody. He used to do that like every week. Then one day, he did it, but his shoe flew off, and he was like, "Oh shit." The teacher found the shoe and realized it was Dana, and Dana got in trouble. But the Fertitas always logged that in their mind. They were like, "Man, he took a bullet for us basically." So years later, they're at a wedding, and they meet up. They're like, "Dude, I haven't talked to you in so long. What do you do?" He learns what the Fertitas do, and one of the things Dana says is, "Yeah, I teach this like boxer-size class. I'm doing jiu-jitsu." I think Lorenzo was like, "You know what? I'm doing good in business, but I'm not really doing anything fitness-wise. I want to train jiu-jitsu." Dana was like, "Alright, sure. I've heard that a million times; nobody actually shows up." Lorenzo, the next morning, is there ready to do jiu-jitsu. That's how they actually got to know each other. That's how the Fertitas started to fall in love with fighting or MMA. So what happens is, while he's doing that, he becomes an agent, the same as Ari Emanuel. He becomes an agent first before he becomes a business owner. He starts...

Sam Parr

Representing Tito Ortiz, I think.

Shaan Puri

And Chuck Liddell... but the UFC was so small back then. Even though these guys were the big stars, the organization itself was tiny. In doing that, he's negotiating a contract with the owner of the UFC. He's like, "You gotta pay Tito more! Look at how much money this guy's bringing in. He's the face of this. You gotta step up!" The guy's negotiating, negotiating, and finally he just says, "Look, Dana, there's no money. Alright? This whole thing's gonna fall over." Like, you're not wrong, but I have nothing to give. And Dana's like, in that moment, he should have been at a disadvantage, thinking, "Shit, my main business is gonna go down the drain." You know, the owner can't pay him, can't pay my fighters... this is over. But he turned that disadvantage into an advantage. That's when he approached the Fertittas to be like, "Hey, let's buy this thing." One funny thing is that the owner had mismanaged the business so badly that they didn't even own ufc.com. He had sold it just to get a little bit of cash to User Friendly Computers. Dana had to go buy it back from userfriendlycomputers.com and get back the ufc.com domain, which I thought was amazing.

Sam Parr

And I think when they bought it, Dana was like, "What did someone ask Dan? They go, 'What did you get when you bought it?'" He goes, "Well, he had this like octagon, which is basically just like a cage and like mats, which is not very expensive. But it was really just that name. I love that name, UFC, so much. We had to have the name."

Shaan Puri

Exactly. And then he's like, you know, they had put $40,000,000 more into it. He felt so bad; he was losing his friend's money. They were trying to make it work, but it just wasn't working yet. Lorenzo calls and he's like, "Dude, I can't do this anymore. I can't keep bleeding money like this. If you could, can you try to sell this thing?" Dana's like, "Okay, my buddy needs me to sell this." So, he calls everybody and he calls back Lorenzo the next day. He's like, "There's not a lot of appetite for this thing. I think the best we could do is get $6,000,000 or $7,000,000 for this." Lorenzo is like, "Okay, let me call you tomorrow." The next day, he calls him. Who knows what he had for breakfast that morning, but he's like, "Fuck it, let's keep going. You know, let's put in another $10,000,000. One last chance to turn this business around." And then that's what they used to create *The Ultimate Fighter*, that last $10,000,000.

Sam Parr

50. There are 50 in.

Shaan Puri

There were 50 million in.

Sam Parr

Well, it was all funded by the family's casino and previous successes. I think they were really rich, but I don't think they were rich enough that $50 was... I mean, $50 was a significant sum.

Shaan Puri

And when it sold for $4,000,000,000, those guys, the brothers, each owned 40% of the business. Basically, at that time, Dana made $360,000,000 on the sale and had a 10% kicker, along with some other crazy things about Dana. So, it takes a pretty rough dude to build the UFC, and I think this guy is kind of like a no-holds-barred kind of guy.

Sam Parr

Well, have you ever met any of the UFC fighters? I think you and I have been around them because we have a friend that has been around them. They're all insane because if you think about what it takes... So, what does it take to get in your underwear and fight to the death in front of a million people? You have to be an animal.

Shaan Puri

You don't have all your screws after doing that.

Sam Parr

And so, Data has talked about it. He goes, "I don't think you guys understand. Like, someone will say something homophobic or racist," and he's like, "Dude, that's not even close to as bad as it gets." When you're working with these guys, they're insane, and the drama happens every single day. You only hear about a small portion of it.

Shaan Puri

But the UFC would not exist; it would not be what it is if it wasn't for Dana's force of will. Some other ways that he's just all in... Do you know he's like a banned blackjack player from multiple casinos? It's funny because you can't really have an edge playing blackjack. The only edge he has is that he's willing to bet absurd amounts of money, and then he wants to walk away.

Sam Parr

There's, well, there are stories about him, like before, that were hugely, hugely successful. Where he's like, "I made $1,000,000 last night at a casino."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. Of course, as anyone who's ever gambled knows, you never tell the stories about losing the $1,000,000. You only tell the ones where you made the million. His strategy? One thing he'll do is bet $75,000 to $100,000 per hand. If he wins the first two hands, he'll walk away. This infuriates the casino because they need the law of large numbers to catch up. If he makes $200, he'll just immediately bounce, thinking, "I got him." But when he starts to get in the hole, that's when they get him. He's just a kind of impulsive individual. A couple of other things that I thought were interesting: growing up, his dad was an alcoholic. Here's what he said: "My dad was never around, and if he was around, I didn't want him to be around. He was not a good guy. But I wouldn't change anything. If I hadn't grown up like that, I would not be me. The toughness that built in me would not exist if I had just had a nice, safe upbringing." Another thing he mentioned is that he didn't have a car, so he biked everywhere in Boston. He bought a Walkman and would listen to Tony Robbins, specifically "The Giant Within." He said, "Every day, I would just ride around on my bike, kind of working myself into a frenzy listening to that thing, just getting anywhere I needed to go." It was his escape from the shittiness of his life. He even started buying those tapes as gifts for others because they were so impactful to him, which I thought was interesting.

Sam Parr

Dude, isn't that funny though? So, Dana White is a tough guy, right? I think that he's the type of guy who you don't want to mess with, physically or in business. He's a legit tough guy, and even he listens to self-help stuff. I always thought it was funny. I used to be ashamed of listening to a Tony Robbins or something. I was like, "I don't want to talk about it." And then you realize that even the badasses consume a lot of this.

Shaan Puri

Stuff in order to get pumped... Yeah, the people who have improved themselves seem to have done something to improve themselves. It's insane. One other thing he had was the same concept as the mailroom. He said, "I didn't know this part of the story, but for three years, I worked under a guy." He doesn't really talk too much about it, but he said, "I basically did an apprenticeship. I told myself I'm going to spend three years with this guy because I know if I do, I will know everything there is to know about the fight business." He said, "Today, I'm not the guy who can go be the next Don King or become the next big promoter of the fight business. I know that's where I want to go, but I gotta learn. I gotta earn my stripes." So, he did his version of the mailroom. He worked for this guy for three years. He said, "I worked harder. You know, whatever my actual wage was per hour must have been ridiculously low with the number of hours I put in." He mentioned, "I did every job there is. I was a cut man, I was a corner man, I was a referee, I managed the talent, and I would read all the contracts even though he never even asked me to." He put in three years so he could know the ins and outs of the entire business. That prepared him to do what he wanted to do, and he knew that was what he needed.

Sam Parr

You haven't actually explained how they're all the same.

Shaan Puri

They're all just maniacal individuals, right? There are people who... basically, Ari is a good example of this. So, Ari kind of had already made it. WME was the biggest agency, you know, one of the top two agencies in Hollywood, right? And he'd already made it. I talked to somebody who knew him, and I'm like, "Why did he buy the UFC?" To buy the UFC, he raised... he tapped his network and raised every dollar he could. But then he basically had to leverage and mortgage WME. So, he kind of put everything he had worked for at risk to buy a very high-risk asset at a very high price.

Sam Parr

I know for Silverlake, to tie it all in, I think Silverlake was the funder or one of the bigger funders.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So, Silver Lake sees what Ari's doing, and they're like, "If Ari Emanuel is going all in on something, he will not lose. He will not let this fail." Ari Emanuel mortgages everything he's worked for to go all in on this bet. Dana has options to sell the business and actually had an option to sell for almost $1,000,000,000 more, he said. But he turned it down because he wanted to work with Ari. He knew Ari is the guy who's all in, and the future upside of this thing is going to be bigger with Ari, even if today's payout is $1,000,000,000 less. So, they all shared that trait of why they wanted to be in business with each other and why they wanted to back each other. The Fertitta brothers are no different. The same reason they wanted to back Dana and do this deal is that they're also wired like this. To me, that was the commonality among all these people.

Sam Parr

And if you watch a big UFC fight, you're going to see Ari Emanuel. You're going to see his girlfriend to his left, and then to his right, you're going to see Egan. A few seats down is going to be Dana. They always sit in the exact same spots for all the big fights. I remember seeing Egan there and thinking, "Who's that guy that's always there?" That's how I learned about him.

Shaan Puri

And Dana said, when he sold the UFC, "It kind of messed with my head." He explained, "I spent two days... I just had a bender in my hotel room because I was like, what do I do? I have $300,000,000 in my bank account. My best friends, who have been doing this with me, are gone. Now I'm doing this on my own. We kind of made it, but I'm used to being the guy who is fighting to make it. What happens when you make it?" He said, "It really screwed with my head for two days." Then I was like, "Alright, well, I guess I'll just go back to doing exactly what I know how to do. I'll just go back to doing exactly... just don't change anything, just keep operating the same way."

Sam Parr

And so, what do you know about the Fertitas?

Shaan Puri

The Fertitas... I didn't look up their history too much, but I wanted to know their personality a little bit. Here are a couple of bullet points I have: - They work out every day together, the brothers, at 7 AM. I like that; I just like that as a brotherly thing to do. - The second thing is they attend all meetings together. They're not like "delegate, divide, and conquer." They're like, "No, bro, we're going to all the meetings together." They both sit there, drink a Diet Dr. Pepper, and attend almost every meeting together. And then they like to ball out. They have yachts, planes, and art. Their cousin, Tillman Fertitta, is also a baller. So, they're just kind of a crazy family that made it in this wild, wild west time of Vegas.

Sam Parr

I was gonna say, do you know who their cousin is? Their cousin is Tillman. Tillman got famous because he, I think, bought into Landry's, which is a steak restaurant in Texas. From there, he bought many other things, including Bubba Gump Shrimp and a ton of those not fast casual, but like Applebee's—like not nice, but kinda nice if you're broke and you want to go out to eat type of situation. Eventually, he bought out the whole company after taking it public. I believe now it's one of the most profitable privately held companies, where he owns 100% of it. There are a lot of privately held companies that are quite huge, but his company is 100% owned by him. I think I read his biography, and I believe it does something like $3,000,000 a year in EBITDA. He also bought the Houston Rockets. So he's known as being a real asshole. The other Fertitta guys, all the interviews I've seen with them, they seem shockingly... they're still sharks, but they seem shockingly well-mannered and calm. They seem like really easygoing, if that is such a word that could be used to describe these types of people.

Shaan Puri

Sharks... yeah, they are incredibly respected. I'll leave you with one last little quote I like from Dana. He said, "You know about the risk-taking thing? You can always go back to your job, but here's what you can't do: you can't go back and get this opportunity again. You can't rewind time. You can't get back your youth to take risks." He realized that he didn't want to be on his deathbed with a bunch of "I should have." He said, "Not everything I've done has worked, and what I've learned is that even if it turns out shitty, it's not just that you learn how to win. Sometimes the most important learning is, I thought I wanted to do this, but it turns out that's not what I want to do." I thought that was a really wise thing that most people don't say.

Sam Parr

What's he referring to? Walking away from the UFC?

Shaan Puri

It might have been anything. It could have been when he thought he wanted to be a boxer. Then he goes in and realizes, "Oh, actually, only through trying this did I learn that that's not the thing I want to do."

Sam Parr

Right, this is Dana.

Shaan Puri

This is Dana talking. I thought that was good because everybody talks about, "Oh, it's okay if you fail; you'll still learn." But rarely do they explain this: one of the most important things in general in life is just figuring out what is the thing you actually want to be doing. Most people go their whole life never finding that. Then they're in their thirties, forties, or fifties, and they feel like it's too late to even try a new thing. They're so far down one path that they don't want to go back to the bottom of the mountain and try a new path. I thought this is so important to know: early on, when you're not that far up the mountain, use that to your advantage. You can go back to the beginning and choose a new path. Sometimes, going down the path is not just about becoming a better hiker; it's about learning, "This isn't a path I like." The only way I could've known that was by trying.

Sam Parr

My biggest takeaway from these stories is **loyalty**. I've heard Dana and the Lorenzo brothers talk about their little trio, their three-person team. They're crazy loyal to one another, and I was always envious that I didn't have a brother about my age who I wanted to partner with or work with. I've read about the Lorenzo brothers a lot, and I'm very envious of the relationship they've had. They seem to have a healthy relationship with their parents, who are business people. When they brought in Dana, they were all crazy loyal to one another, and they never disrespect one another publicly. It all seems like a great partnership. That's been my biggest takeaway from these guys: **loyalty**. Even Dana, I don't like many of the things that he's done, and I'm actually not a Trump supporter, but he said, "Trump was nice to me in 2008" or something like that when...

Shaan Puri

Nobody else was. He's like...

Sam Parr

No one would help us. Trump helped us. I remember that, therefore I'm going to repay him. Now, I don't think Dana is a straight-up guy all the time. Like I said, I think he's done a lot of messed up stuff. But his value, how he looks at loyalty, I appreciate, at least when it comes to those two brothers.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you're kind of like that too, where loyalty is a deep-rooted value. I feel like if someone's loyal to you or disloyal to you, even in a small way, that goes really deep in your core. Is that right?

Sam Parr

I don't forget. So, someone will do something. Do you remember that story I explained about how I asked a reporter if she wanted to freelance for The Hustle? She said, "That's cute." I have always held that grudge, and I wanted to destroy her. I went and reread the email. She didn't say, "That's cute." She said, "That's so sweet. I appreciate you so much, but I'm not interested." For some reason, at the time, I read it differently. I reread it the other day when I was talking to Sarah, and I thought maybe she actually wasn't being rude. But for the last 10 years, I've been waiting for this woman to make a mistake, and I wanted to pounce on it just to get revenge because she dismissed me. I've been wanting to do that so badly, and I'm so thankful that that hasn't happened yet because she actually wasn't rude to me. But the thing is, if someone's disloyal to me, I want to destroy them. The people who are loyal to me? Yes, I go all in on them. Because if you don't... Look, I moved to San Francisco not knowing anyone. The way that you get ahead is you have to have a group of people who you do everything for, and you expect them to do everything in return. Once you find that group of people, it helps you so much—not just in business, but for everything else. It helps so much.

Shaan Puri

And we have a friend who is so incredibly loyal that it sets a standard.

Sam Parr

**Of loyalty.**

Shaan Puri

You know who it's.

Sam Parr

Almost annoying.

Shaan Puri

I don't need to.

Sam Parr

Because he'll buy the best gifts, and I feel like I've got to go like this.

Shaan Puri

Not even about the gifts. It's like I know that if I was in trouble, this guy would drop everything. He would drop everything more than my dad would to come help. And he would.

Sam Parr

He would say, "Send location."

Shaan Puri

Send me the location exactly, he'd say.

Sam Parr

Send location. I'm there.

Shaan Puri

This guy, his loyalty, his level of loyalty is like next level. I don't even know why. It's not like it's ever even been tested in that way. I've never had to send my location, but why do I feel that way? I have no idea, but I do. You can't convince me otherwise because he has shown it in the budget, like small ways that you know the big way would always be there.

Sam Parr

And, but man, it's paid off wonderfully for him. He was successful on his own, but he's definitely gotten ahead. There have been times when I was with him. One time, he wanted to ride a skateboard. I said, "Ramon, don't ride the skateboard, dude. You're 40 years old, you're about to hit your head. Do not do this." He did it anyway and got a concussion. We had to take him to the hospital and take care of his kid while he was in the hospital for 2 or 3 days. So, he's been repaid a little bit in his loyalty, but it's paid off. I feel like I owe you so much that I will do anything in return to get you back. It's helped him so much. Anyway, I respect that about these guys: how loyal they are.

Shaan Puri

I was thinking about this little philosophical thought experiment for you. You know the phrase "F you money"? Like, "Oh, he's got F you money." I think a lot of people aspire to have that. But an interesting question is: what are the other "F yous"? For example, Sam, you could be like, "I have F you health." If you're in absolute pristine health, with physical fitness, you're extremely athletic, mobile, or whatever, you can have F you health. What else could you have? I think Ramon has F you loyalty. He is fully abundant in the loyalty that he has for others and that others will have for him. Because me, you, and everyone I'm sure that he's friends with, we would all go to bat for him completely. As a thought experiment, it's like: what are the other versions of F you that are actually more valuable than having F you money? Have you ever thought about something like this?

Sam Parr

That's a great question. So, what else? What are the other options besides loyalty?

Shaan Puri

Like my trainer, my personal trainer, he's got like "F you" happiness. It's like the guy's happy no matter what's going on, which is kind of the way that "F you" money works. It's like, dude, he'll do whatever because he just doesn't give a shit. He just doesn't care. My trainer's like that; he just doesn't give a shit. There's traffic? Oh, I'm having a party in my car. This person cut me off? Well, oh, I'm... you know, whatever. He just makes his own version of things. He's always in a good mood no matter what is going on. He's completely unconditional; he's completely invincible.

Sam Parr

I think you have it. I think you have that.

Shaan Puri

I aspire to have that.

Sam Parr

Well, in my opinion, from my perspective, you have that quality. I was thinking the other day, "When does Sean ever get rattled? Does he ever get stressed or unhappy?" There have been stories, and I've seen it firsthand, where someone has said something rude to you or you've had something not break your way. It was a tough break, and you're hard to get down. I mean, I've been with you when you've lost a bunch. I've seen you make a bunch, but I've also seen you lose in a variety of bets that you've taken. You don't get rattled. You tweeted out something the other day; you said your "pucker butthole"—what was it?

Shaan Puri

Was like, everybody's got a "butt clenched number." It's a lot of money where it makes your butthole pucker up a little bit. It's good to know where your "pucker number" is right now and just keep note of that. I was like, because I had just wired a bunch of money, and it's not even that I was worried I was going to lose it. But I was literally like, "Let me just double-check the routing number. Let me just make sure I got that right," which I don't usually do. I don't usually bother to be like, "Okay, palms are a little sweaty, let's go ahead and hit the button." Like, if you were... dude.

Sam Parr

Do that with $1,000. I do that with $1,000.

Shaan Puri

Like animation, when you're going to send an email, you know the one I'm talking about? It's the monkey's finger about to push the send button, and it's sweating and trembling because it's like, "You're about to email your whole list." Let's just say, are you sure you got all the details right? That's like the pucker number for some people with their email list. So, I think everybody's gotta know it.

Sam Parr

Your number was high. I'm like that with a thousand. So when I think about why I'm stressed about certain things, I definitely try to think... you know, there was a... who was it? I think it was JFK. He had a photo of Abe Lincoln on his desk, and he said, "I just always try to ask myself, what would Abe do?" Sometimes when I get stressed, I think, "What would Neville Medora do?" and "What would Sean Curry do?" How would they handle this? Neville Medora is another person who has no stress. There was one time when he was trying to buy a house. He had never owned a house before and had never thought about finances because he had been making a great living for years. He never thought about money; he could buy whatever he wanted. He was thinking about what house he wanted, and he was just going to pay cash for it or something like that. It was a big investment—his first big investment. Then he was talking to my wife and me, and he said, "I couldn't go to bed last night because I was thinking about buying this house, and I can't buy exactly everything I want. I actually have to second guess some of the things." We were just sitting there, and we didn't say a word. He looked at Sarah and said, "Is that stress?" And we were like, "Yeah, dude, that's what stress is." Finally, you experienced it at the age of 38 years old, and you do, doctor.

Shaan Puri

He's kind of a taste-like sensation.

Sam Parr

What is this thing where I stayed up for an hour last night just thinking about this? You and Neville have that same thing where you have a very high tolerance.

Shaan Puri

It's crazy when you see it because people take pride. They're like, "Man, I don't tolerate no disrespect." And it's like, what are you really saying there? What you're really saying is like...

Sam Parr

What do you say? You tolerate it.

Shaan Puri

You can't disrespect me. If you say something, that says something about you, not me. What? Well, you can't bother me. You know, there's a great way Tony Robbins said this. He goes, "How cheap is your happiness?" Meaning, if all it takes is somebody doing something really little to take your happiness away, your happiness is cheap. You got the TJ Maxx of happiness, right? You are the dollar store of your mood. Your mood is in the dollar store, right? Anybody can go get it for so little. Someone could just take the grocery cart in front of you that you wanted, and now you're a little bit miffed, right? So, don't be cheap with your happiness. Be expensive. Be luxury.

Sam Parr

I heard a very funny story about you, and if this violates anything, we'll delete it. So, I was with Ben last night for Ramon's birthday. We did a little birthday thing for Ramon, and Ben told me this funny story about how you were thinking about writing a book. You met with this amazing author, and the author asked you something—maybe he was like, "Why do you need my help?" You were like, "Well, I think I could do it. I think I'm talented enough to do it; I just don't have the time right now, and I would rather you do it." You said something that I guess this guy thought was rude. In the middle of the meeting, he goes, "Well, stop the conversation. I'm out of here. This is not a good fit." Instead of being insulted, your takeaway was, "Wow, I really respect that about you." You did a great job of standing up for yourself.

Shaan Puri

Where I would have... what happened? Here's the story of what happened. We meet with this guy. He's a book development guy. So basically, there's somebody in between an editor, a publisher, and a writer. A book development guy is just the person who's going to help you think through the concept and then flesh it out. Right? So I'm like, "Who's the best in the world at this?" That's a question I will always ask. "Who's the best in the world at doing this? I want to talk to them." So I meet this guy who's the best in the world at doing this. What he asked me was not, "Why do you want to write this?" I didn't say, "I don't have time." What he said was, "What do you want to write about?" And I go, "Oh, I think I could write about anything. I could write a book about storytelling. I could write a book about marketing." I was like, "I feel like this is actually the problem. Maybe I'll write multiple books. I don't know, but I want... I have so many ideas. I want you to help me think through which of those ideas." And he goes, "That's a nightmare." He goes, "That's probably the worst answer you could give to somebody like me. I want somebody who spent 10 years, 20 years of their life only thinking about one thing, and that's the thing that they need to pour into a book. The guy who was like, 'Oh, I could write about anything and everything'... oh god, that's going to be miserable for me to figure out."

Sam Parr

And he ended the meeting like, "Don't..."

Shaan Puri

End the meeting? No, he didn't. But he goes, "That would not... I don't want to do that. That's not a fit for me." So, he didn't end the meeting, but he was just like, "I'm going to be honest with you." I was like, "All you did was make me want you more." I said, "That's exactly what I want out of my development guide." Yeah, pushback. Because the speech I had given about what I could write about and why it was a good speech... it was an A+ speech. It was only 60 seconds long, but I made a strong point there. Whenever somebody can say the truth in the face of my persuasion, I have an extreme amount of respect for them. It's not about generic pushback; it's about truth. The guy said the true thing, which was, "That's not what you want when you're writing a book. What you want is... my whole life has been building up to this one book, this one moment, and this one thing that I can't wait to pour out of me because I've refined it in my head for 10 years." I was like, "That's actually right, and I want to work with you even more now." But I also agree with you, and you're completely right. Thank you! I thanked him profusely for that. The same thing happened the other day on a tax call.

Sam Parr

Well, by the way, my being is... I think that's a really healthy way that you approached it.

Shaan Puri

Let me tell you about a more offensive thing that happened, which was also not offensive to me. I have been looking for a tax person, so I created this whole tax data room and sent it to a couple of people. I said, "Hey, I heard you're good. Take a look at my situation and tell me what you think." Most of them responded, "Hey, I took a look at everything." So, I did three calls. **First call:** The first guy goes, "Hey, I took a look at everything. It looks really good. I have two suggestions. Maybe if you did this instead, you could save some money." I said, "Okay, thank you for your suggestion." **Second call:** The second person says, "Hey, this looks great. Congratulations on all your success! I definitely think we can handle this for you. We have other clients that are similar, and I feel really confident about it." I said, "Okay, thank you for that. Cool, not quite what I'm looking for, but okay, thank you." **Third call:** I get on the call with the third guy, and he goes, "Alright, I took a look at everything, and I'll be honest with you, you have way too much complexity for how much money you make." I was like, "Thank you, I feel the same way." But a part of me, my ego, was like, "Did you look at the numbers? They're going up! That's actually 2022. 2023 is better, and 2024 is gonna be great!" My ego wanted to say, "Are you saying I'm a broke little bitch?" Because that's what I heard. When I heard that lady, that writer say, "That's cute," she didn't actually say that, but in my head, what I heard was, "You're too poor for me. Thank you." I didn't really want to do this, and I felt that for about 15 seconds. But then, more than that, I let myself have the feeling for 15 seconds of my ego being deflated, like a pin pricking my balloon. I thought, "What do I actually want? Let me remember what I actually want." So, I hired the third guy. Of course, I was like, "I totally agree. Can you help me fix this up?" As we were talking, he said, "Actually, now that you've told me more, a lot of this does make sense because of the trajectory. But, you know, I still think we need to simplify. You really gotta ask yourself, do I really want to optimize all this for taxes, or would I rather just spend my time actually growing the business and making more money?" I thought, "You, sir, are exactly what I've been looking for." Even though that first punch hit me right in the gut and I wanted to get defensive, I have learned that that gets me absolutely nowhere. I just let that feeling go in 15 seconds. And that's actually the tip, by the way. Everybody has the same feelings; it's just that some people hold onto them for like 10 years, some people get mad for three days. The goal is, can you just have the feeling for 30 seconds and move on?

Sam Parr

I don't think that should be the goal, dude. Rage is an amazing motivator. I have achieved a whole lot by remembering being dumped by a high school girlfriend.

Shaan Puri

You've had great accomplishments, but you should probably remember that you want all those accomplishments because you think they're going to make you feel better. However, feeling rage is not the better you seek. So, use rage to deal with that.

Sam Parr

We could deal with that.

Shaan Puri

It's not.

Sam Parr

The way, right?

Shaan Puri

Just remember, you don't want the thing; you want the feeling you think the thing is going to give you. Using rage to get there is not the way.

Sam Parr

Abs aren't built in the kitchen; they're built by an 8th grade girlfriend telling you that you're not good enough. Just remember that.

Shaan Puri

Hands are built by a crumbled-up Valentine card. Yeah, bro, can I tell you a funny story? I was in 6th or 7th grade, and I really liked this girl, Rachel. I wrote this poem for Valentine's Day. I folded it up, cut it out, and wrote this thing. I showed it to her, and I don't know what I did, but I basically gave it to her. I think I was so nervous that I didn't even say anything; I just handed her the note. I'm standing there, and she opens it up and reads it. She's like, "Oh my God, Sean, this is so sweet!" I'm like, "It worked!" And then she says, "This is amazing! Who's this for?" And I was like, "God..."

Sam Parr

And I'm

Shaan Puri

Like, in my head, I was thinking I could just be courageous and say, "This is for you. I love you." Actually, it turns out that I was in 7th grade, so I just said, "It's for Chelsea." I made up a name, and she asked, "Who's Chelsea?" I replied, "She doesn't go here." Then she asked, "Who?" I said, "She's just... like, what?" And I explained, "Yeah, you know that improv con she was at? I met her there. She goes to another school."

Sam Parr

Did she just make the most elaborate lie?

Shaan Puri

For three months, I kept up this charade that there was some girl I met who likes me and that I like her. That note I showed you? Well, that was for her. That's where I was. I don't know how I don't have abs by now. That was pretty devastating, dude. Beat down. Somehow, that didn't even work for me.

Sam Parr

So, you gotta use that rage to get those abs. Although that's...

Shaan Puri

Just a great idea. I hope she listens to this. Rachel, I hope you're listening to this. There was no Chelsea. You were Chelsea. Now she knows.

Sam Parr

That's awesome! That's it. That's the episode. That's the pod.