Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates | My First Million #218

Shaan Puri

What's the most annoying thing in the world? An unhappy billionaire. I think he said something like that, and I was like, "Wow, that's so true." Actually, if he came to me about being glum and whatever, it would be hard for me in my initial reaction to be like, "Dude, you have it all."

Sam Parr

Alright, let's get into it. You ready? Yeah. Alright, what's going on?

Shaan Puri

not too much

Sam Parr

can I tell you a a quick story that I just read

Shaan Puri

I love when we start with a story. The last story got rave reviews and a big reaction for the second story.

Sam Parr

Oh, did it? Yeah, great! Alright, let me tell you a quick one. This isn't about me, though. I'm actually reading the book called *Storyworthy* because you told me it was a good book. I haven't read it enough that I'm going to implement what I've learned, so don't have your expectations too high. But I'm reading the biography of the Wright brothers. Do you know who they are?

Shaan Puri

of course mints the airplane

Sam Parr

well you didn't know who dolly parton was

Shaan Puri

first people to to to have a flying plane yeah that's good

Sam Parr

yeah the the wright brothers they they created like insulin right so wilbur wright was like the smart was like the smart brother or he was like the lead brother and when he was in high school he was very smart he was gonna go to yale he was like the he was gonna be a big deal and he was an athlete and he was out 1 night playing hockey in the neighborhood he lived in ohio dayton ohio where it was really cold in the winter and you could you could play ice hockey on the lakes and he was playing and this kid comes from behind him and smacks him in the face with a stick and he knocks out most of his teeth he breaks his jaw and he has digestive problems for years and he's basically like not in a coma but he's like he doesn't he doesn't leave his house for 4 years the guy who hit him his name is like howard how howard hoth or something like that and he this guy this kid who hit him the one of the reasons why it's hypothesized why he hit him is this kid had been suffering from a cold or some some type of flu for a really long time and at the time they gave him this medicine that was cocaine based and so basically he was like a drug addict at a young age and he was a bully he was known to be a bully and he smacked wilbur right in the face really bad no one knows if it was on accident if it was on purpose turns out years later this guy who hit him turns out to be one of the first serial killers based out of ohio and he's put to death because he kills like 20 people so he was like a bad guy for for from since the beginning and he hits wilbur wright in the face and so wilbur wright was gonna go to yale that year and he ends up not going to yale he kinda he was like a good student but he wasn't like a homebody like he had since now become and he was like that for 4 or 7 years and so he basically locked himself in his room because he was having digestive problems he was embarrassed because his teeth was all fucked up and he just felt horrible for years years it's not like there was like they didn't like do surgery on this and they didn't have like amazing pain pills for you so he just had to suffer and in that time he started reading a lot and he actually like read a book on bicycles and he got really interested in interested in bicycles at the time someone bought him like a toy plane that was kinda like a kite but it was like a plane and he started getting really fascinated with mechanics and fascinated with planes and once he once he healed he decided I'm gonna this is gonna be my life this is what I'm gonna do instead of going to yale like I was gonna do and become a doctor his his I believe his father was the doctor he goes I'm going to study mechanics and I'm going to create a bicycle shop and then from a bicycle shop he says I wanna create a glider and then eventually I'm gonna create a plane and it all started with getting hit in the face and it like like with a debilitating hit in the face and he thought that his life was over and I love stories where you think it's all over you have so much adversity in front of you and that totally shifts the outcome I had that one time when I got fired from a job when I moved out here I had nothing I was like I don't know what's gonna happen so I ended up starting my first company but I love that story and I wanted to bring that up because I love when when bad things happen and and I've gone through it enough times that I'm like don't worry this bad thing will likely lead to

Shaan Puri

something right

Sam Parr

It might lead to something really amazing. Have you ever had something like that, where it led to something and you thought, "My life's over"?

Shaan Puri

Well, okay. You know, not the Wilbur Wright level. So first, I have a few questions about Wilbur Wright. What's the other brother's story? If Wilbur is the smart brother who overcame, you know, this debilitating smack in the mouth, what's the other brother's story?

Sam Parr

Well, I'm only halfway through the book, but they get along quite well. The younger brother is a little bit more gregarious and outgoing, while Wilbur is the calculating one. Orville is the one who says, "Hey, alright, that's a great idea! Let's go do it!" So they find out that there's this place, and here's another amazing part of the story. They just talk to friends and officials, asking, "Where is there a place that has a lot of open land that's windy?" For some reason, I don't know why at the time, but the postmaster knew of a good place. That postmaster connected them to another postmaster in Kitty Hawk. They didn't get to Kitty Hawk; I don't know the exact distance, but without a car, it's a massive trek. The Wright brothers are like, "You know, screw it, let's do it!" So they go out there, knock on doors, and find someone to house them and let them camp on their land for four weeks at a time while they test their stuff. This is why I love America. The postmaster of Kitty Hawk was like, "Yeah, you know, this whole flight thing, I don't think it's gonna work, but I give you my thumbs up. Go out and do it! No one will bother you. We got you. If anyone bothers you, holler at us." There was so little bureaucracy; I loved it. But Orville was a little bit more outgoing and pushed Wilbur, who was the more calculating brother.

Shaan Puri

And you said from the beginning, because I knew they had a bicycle shop, but you're saying from the beginning you said, "I'm gonna do bicycles, then eventually I'm gonna make a plane." Or did that just happen? It's like, you know, Toby from Shopify creates a snowboard shop online for his snowboard company and then creates Shopify. But he didn't think to himself first, "I'm gonna do this, then I'm gonna build a platform that will have millions of stores on it." It just sort of happened that way. So, which one was it? Was it a master plan or was it, you know, progressive ambition?

Sam Parr

It was progressive ambition. Basically, he saw this plane, his toy glider that he had, and he always thought that was interesting. But he just kind of let it sit in the back of his brain. Then he got into bicycles. First, he started a printing press where he made his own newspaper. He thought, "This is kind of cool," but then he learned about bicycles and realized that this new cycle technology was amazing. He thought, "We gotta get into that." As he started getting into bicycles, he realized that the key to riding a bike is how you balance. He began staring at birds and looking at this old glider he had. He thought, "Man, that balance is the same thing! That's so important. I bet we can translate that to this dream I've always had of flying. I bet it's actually quite similar." So they just kind of carried it over.

Shaan Puri

And I think there were a bunch of other teams that were way better funded working on this at the same time. I think they just beat the other teams to manned flight by like 4 months or something - a very thin margin. They go down in history, and nobody remembers the second crew that made it. Is that right?

Sam Parr

Well, I'm not that far along, but throughout the book, they have guys saying, "Hey, I'm friends with Andrew Carnegie. I can get you guys some money. Do you want some funding? We can get you about $200,000 a year," which is probably like $2 or $3 million now. And they go, "No, no, no. Our cycle shop is making enough profits. We can afford it." Which, they really could afford it, like, as in barely. But they would go to Kitty Hawk and they would find places to crash. So, it wasn't like they were rich.

Shaan Puri

By the way, if you like stories like this, we may have something coming down the pipe... *evil laugh* We'll announce it later. Yeah, okay, so.

Sam Parr

I'm excited about that

Shaan Puri

So, okay, have I had stories like this? You know, I probably have, and I probably need to go dig it up. That's one thing I've learned, especially from *Storyworthy*. One of the things in *Storyworthy* is that he’s not just telling you how to tell a great story; he does that, right? There are mechanics about what makes a great story. He talks about what the beginning is supposed to look like, what the end is supposed to look like, and how to raise stakes in a story, that sort of thing. But the other thing, the main point I think the guy is trying to get across in *Storyworthy*, is that we all think our day-to-day life doesn't have stories. But once you start looking, you'll find stories everywhere. He gives you these exercises to do to find stories from your past. There's an exercise called "First, Last, Best, Worst," and I do this in my course, but I don't teach the course anymore. In my *Power Writing* course, I help people come up with ideas of what to write about, and I use this exercise. It's killer! You could take anything. So, let's just play the game real quick. We're going to do it with jobs, okay? The topic is jobs or career. Right, so give me the first job you ever had.

Sam Parr

I worked in a bakery sweeping floors

Shaan Puri

Okay, great. Give me the last meaningful, most recent job you ever had. And that's probably, you know, the hustle or maybe this podcast.

Sam Parr

I was the ceo and owner of a media company called the hustle

Shaan Puri

Right then, it's "give me worst." So, let's go. What was the worst job you ever had?

Sam Parr

The worst job I ever had was cold calling people in college to sell SEO services out of the Yellow Pages.

Shaan Puri

there you go alright and then you have best what was the best job you ever had

Sam Parr

the best job I ever had was co hosting this podcast

Shaan Puri

Alright, there we go. It's... and then there's another one called "Weirdest" that I added in. That's not story-worthy, but I added "Weirdest" because I found that this gives a lot of good stories out of it. So, what's the weirdest job you ever had? That might be the hot dog stand.

Sam Parr

no I was a skateboard instructor at the ymca when I was 15

Shaan Puri

I learned something new every day about you. Alright, so you could do that. That gives you a bunch of stuff that you're like, "Oh, if you show that to somebody else, it'd be like, what? Like what?" You know, like skateboarding. How did that come about? Or how much money does that make? How'd you get the idea? What's the hardest part about doing that? What's a day in the life like? Oh, you scooped ice cream at Cold Stone. Like, dude, what do I need to know about Cold Stone ice cream that you know? Because you were there every day making it. So it's this great way to generate a bunch of stories. He has another exercise where you look for a 5-second moment in your day. You just try to jot down at the end of the night, "What would have been my story of the day if today was the last day of my life?" Or whatever. If today was the only day of my life, what would have been the story of the day? You just look for a 5-second moment.

Sam Parr

everyday stories I think he called it

Shaan Puri

and so yeah

Sam Parr

it's a good book

Shaan Puri

So, I think everybody, myself included, probably has their version of a "Wilbur moment." It might not be that you literally got punched in the face. It might be that, like you said, you got fired. Somebody, you know, slammed you in a meeting and told you, "You're a dumbass, so this will never work," or you got rejected in some way. You've tried and spectacularly failed in some way; you publicly failed in some way. The other thing that came to mind when you were telling me this is my brother-in-law, who's come on the show before.

Sam Parr

he's a crazy man

Shaan Puri

Brother Aaron, he's a crazy man. We gotta have him back on. He basically just goes down rabbit holes and internet conspiracies and things like that. So he has this story that he tells, and I'm going to half tell the story right now. I'll do the fast forward version. He's like, "I was in college, I was just having a great time, kind of like 50 or senior type of stuff." I think maybe he was in grad school actually for this. He doesn't really care about his grades; he's just partying and playing basketball all day. He really doesn't care about his grades. Then he finds out that he's taken out a bunch of loans, and he discovers that his GPA for the first semester sucks. There was something that happened where he had one semester left, and in order to graduate without having to pay a whole bunch of extra money for his loans—because he didn't graduate or whatever—he needed to essentially get a 4.0 GPA. So he needed to go from like a 2.1 to graduate with a 3.0.

Shaan Puri

Something or I don't I don't know what the numbers were but basically his 1st year g gpa was so bad that he needed an absolute perfect gpa in order to graduate and not be like $50,000 in the hole and for somebody who grew up like on food stamps something like $50,000 was like an insurmountable hole at the time he didn't wanna be in that hole he wanted to graduate and he was dating my sister and my sister was like yo you can't just be like a broke joke who's like not graduating in in mountains of debt so he's like I'm gonna lose my girl I'm gonna like owe all this money it's all crashing down and so he's like okay you know what I'm gonna do this and so it's like in the story worthy format it's like you have a a hero who has an it's it's intent and obstacle so he has an intent he has to do this if he doesn't do this what happens loses the girl of his dreams is in a mountain of debt will never recover you know like basically has to drop out and doesn't get finished his degree and if if he does that whatever happens those are the stakes and so then he tells the story and when he's telling the story he's like there's all these like additional obstacles that come it's like he actually like starts to study super hard and he's not like you know he's not like the smartest smartest guy who it just oh if you tried a little bit he'd get an a he needs to get an a + like he has to get a 97 to a 100 if he doesn't get that he he flunks out of the program and he starts studying he he actually gets his 1st test he gets like a 98 and the teacher calls him into the office and is basically like you cheated he's like no I swear he's like dude you were a f student and you're you want me to believe you have an a + here no way you cheated you you you know whatever and so he gets obstacle after obstacle and then they change the rules or something so at first he needed an a which is like a 95 and up then they changed the rules on the on the gpa system he now needed an a + in every single subject where it's like he needed a 98 99 or a 100 and he's like oh my god and every day every time he hit one of these obstacles he just feels like he can't do it and he just the way he tells the story he just keeps repeating he goes but then I dug deeper and he just keeps going he's like he's like I hit rock bottom but then I dug deeper and he just keeps saying this over and over and by the and first time he says it you you know it has some effect 2nd time he says it it's losing its effect 3rd time you're laughing by 17th time because by the way he's telling the story not of him telling the story now it's he went to a job interview with nasa and nasa was like yo you're not an engineer like why would we give you this job

Sam Parr

and he told that

Shaan Puri

He tells the story, he's like, "Because I know my limits. Every other kid you have coming in here is from a good family who's got good grades their whole life. They don't know what they're made of. I tested myself. I know what I'm made of. I dug deeper when I hit rock bottom. When I couldn't do more, I went further." And he just keeps going and he tells us... did he?

Sam Parr

get the job

Shaan Puri

Story: he got the job, and when he tells the story, it just makes everybody laugh. And when I heard that story, not only does it make me laugh, it made me think everybody deserves to have a story like this. If you don't, then when you're in a shitty time, just think to yourself, "This is my 'dig deeper' story." Okay, pile on the obstacles because you know what? I need it for this story to be great in the end.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I've hung out with him a bit. That guy is crazy, and I enjoy that story. Can I tell you about something that's going on on Twitter that I find to be incredibly fascinating? So right now, I've singled out four people, but there's probably twelve of them or maybe twenty-four. There's something very weird going on about Real Estate Twitter. I contacted three of them, and I posted all my notes. Do you see my notes on there?

Shaan Puri

yep I see them I know all these things

Sam Parr

Okay, I'm actually meeting up with one of them tonight—the strip mall guy. So, for the listeners, basically, Twitter is experiencing some crazy stuff right now. Obviously, Sean and I are deep in one particular niche, but I have a feeling that niche is quite large. That niche is like techie startup people tweeting stuff. There's also a big overlap with crypto and NFT stuff, and that's probably even larger. Next to that is Robinhood and stocks, and they call it... what do they call it? FinTwit. That's probably even the biggest. But there's this new subset of people that I'm seeing, and I think it's new, and I think...

Shaan Puri

It's nowhere near the biggest. There's like marketing Twitter, there's like teacher Twitter, there's like every profession has like... oh, I mean, like some culture.

Sam Parr

I mean, like some of the... I meant some of the bigger... I meant the biggest of the ones I had mentioned. That's okay. And yeah, yeah. And keep in mind that, like, if we're looking at a piece of the pie, everything I just mentioned is maybe like... it's like a... it's like a... like a 15% of the pie. So it's not big, but if you're listening to this, you are likely part of that. And so there's a very new and emerging part of that pie. It's these guys who are constantly tweeting about boring real estate stuff. As a whole, the leaders are **fucking crushing it**. It is some of...

Shaan Puri

The most... not boring, as in Sam's judgment, but boring as in that's actually their positioning. It's like, "Oh, you guys are talking about all this fancy stuff. I just do boring stuff and I make a bunch of money." That's actually their brand that they want to bring in. So, I think—at least I think it's intentional. I don't think they're trying to be boring. I think they're trying to say, "Hey, boring businesses print money." There's like this counterculture appeal to it. In the same way that some people are like, "Oh, VC, it's all just a big waste of money," and you know, it's a bunch of... it's a fool's race. I actually bootstrap and I make profits. I bought my profitability, and they use that as their badge of honor.

Sam Parr

but the reason why I wanna bring this up now is because we are in the early stages or maybe in the middle we're right in the thick of it it's not huge huge yet but we're seeing something happen here and I wanna call it out because I think it's very fascinating to watch this and so here's there's actually 4 guys I only talked to 3 of them ahead of time but I'm friends with the 4th one so I could kinda like riff off them a little bit but there's 4 guys that I went and dm'd and the first there's a guy named strip mall guy his handle is strip mall guy or or but his name is trent and people call him strip mall trent and so we're gonna talk about him the second guy we're gonna talk about is a guy named moe moses kagan moses kagan so strip mall guy buys strip malls and it's hilarious his twitter the second guy is moses moses kagan he buys multifamily in la the third is keith wasserman who is one of your 3rd 5th 8th guest on the podcast and he does multifamily and then the 4th guy is this guy who we're both great friends with nick huber who I'm an investor of and he buys storage units and he's made it so popular that he gets mocked regularly because of it it and so I wanna tell you a little bit about each guy I will go really quick so strip mall guy so facts so he has $500,000,000 in assets under management his twitter is anonymous I'm actually about to go meet go for a he's actually staying down the street from me I'm gonna go hang out with him right after this he's 41 years old he uses none of his own money so 99.9% is other people's money and he has bought roughly $500,000,000 worth of strip malls and what he does is he finds strip malls that he thinks are undervalued and he just fixes them up and he either holds them or flips them and his the reason why he thinks this is a huge deal is because the the there's a huge lack of data in this business so the rents people are are paying versus what the market rent is like it's really hard to know if if you're if you're charging your tenants market rate and for some reason that's incredibly challenging and he goes that's where the opportunity is so I just work really hard and I knock on doors to find out what everyone's paying in rent and I come up with and then I find a a strip mall where they're underpaying and I buy it and I increase rents and I fix it up a little bit so anyway that's kind of interesting and so he told me that he pays himself or he personally cash flows $3,000,000 a year from this kind of interesting and he does it with a team of 4 that's pretty fascinating isn't it

Shaan Puri

right yeah of course and so is he a syndicator or it's a fun I think it's a sounds like a syndicator

Sam Parr

I don't know. I actually don't know. I think it's fun, but he has a family office behind him. So I guess if he's a syndicate, that means he just does a deal by deal versus having a fund where he has to deploy. I... yeah, I don't actually know. It's kind of fascinating. The second guy is... and this guy is Shripmall Trent, I believe. He just started... what did he start? Like...

Shaan Puri

His month account is less than a year old. I DM'd him and I was like, "Oh, by the way..." He told me, actually, I had asked him, and he said it's a deal-by-deal basis. I think he's now going to raise a fund. He's like, "It's insane how many people are DM'ing me about investing in my deals and stuff like that." He's like, "My Twitter account is anonymous. I'm an anonymous cartoon character. I could be anything." He's like, "You know I am the real deal, but they don't know that." That's crazy how much opportunity there is on Twitter for somebody who's vocal in their space. Then he was asking me, "Should I tell my friends about who I am, like my account or whatever?" I told him, "Keep it super, super tight to the vest. It will get out. Even if you tell the people you trust, they trust three people, and by the way, three hops later, the word is out." So I told him, "Don't tell me who you are. Just stay anonymous and keep doing what you're doing. It's going to get really big."

Sam Parr

and I agree and it's one of the reasons why it's interesting there's a there's a guy who has

Shaan Puri

A newsletter with 22,000 followers. Now, I bet you he's at 100 in less than 6 months.

Sam Parr

This guy's gonna be big. There's another guy who runs a newsletter called "Petition," where he talks about companies that are going bankrupt and who can buy them. He runs that all anonymously. One time, he called me and asked for advice. I sent him a Zoom link, and he screwed up by putting his name in the thing. I said, "Bro, I just saw it. Turn it off!" I deleted it from my brain, so I don't actually remember his name. I talk to him on the phone on a regular basis, but I still don't remember your name. Right, okay. So you just said that this guy, Trent, was able to raise money or is being offered. Let's go to the second guy. His name is Moses Kagan. He currently has $200 million under management and has deployed $30 million of that. Sorry, he's had $40 million come from Twitter. This guy started tweeting about his deals and got $40 million from his Twitter followers. He said one guy gave him $20 million, and he found $40 million to invest in his fund through Twitter. Is that nuts?

Shaan Puri

we have a friend who put put a couple $1,000,000 into his thing

Sam Parr

yeah I know and I I talked about him and did he say that he's happy with it

Shaan Puri

I think it's early, so it's probably too early to say, but he recommended it to me. He's like, "I think you should do one of these guys' deals." So that means he kicked the tires and was like, "Yeah, I think it's worth it." You know, like this guy seems to be smart, seems to know what he's doing. So I think that was... trusted enough.

Sam Parr

I flew down and I met up with him. I thought he was great. Then the third one is Keith Wasserman. Keith currently has close to **$2,000,000,000** in assets under management for his real estate deal. He said that he's got **1,000** investors, and Twitter **5x**'d his fund. Wow, that's pretty nuts! The last one is Nick Huber, who is a good friend of both of ours. I became friends with him through Twitter. Basically, I was doing a live video, and he popped in. I just became friends with him, and now I'm going to visit him at his house and hang out with him. I invested...

Shaan Puri

$100,000? Both have that redneck energy to you. You guys both, you know, you just want to be out in the sun all day, get sunburned while you're like hunting, fishing, golfing, and shooting something at the same time. Like if I could just put those four objects, one on each limb, you'd be a happy person. Put a rifle in one hand, a fishing pole on your toes... you know, that's what you guys want. Both of you be like [that].

Sam Parr

I love that

Shaan Puri

He texts us. He's smoking a cigar. It's Tuesday at 1 PM. He's like, "Kids are running around his giant, like, I don't know, farm or wherever he lives." He's got a bunch of acreage, and he's just like, "Yeah, life is good. We're going white-water rafting in, like, you know, my backyard right now."

Sam Parr

He's awesome! I invested in it, and the returns have been pretty good. Anyway, I thought it was crazy fascinating. So, I'm going to give everyone a takeaway. Here's my opinion: there's an easy way this can be made. There's a guy already doing this with vending machines. We talked about him; his name is Quinn Miller. I think he's doing pretty good. But there's another idea that I think could be done. Click the link; you see where it says **carwashadvisory.com**.

Shaan Puri

yes

Sam Parr

Okay, so I found this website. Basically, what they do is if you go to **carwashadvisory.com**, and then you click on **Buying**, you can see car washes for sale. You can look at how much car washes are selling for, and I'm honestly shocked at how expensive these are. You can see what their EBITDA is, what their profit is, and what their revenue is. You can see all types of stuff, and it's pretty fascinating. I think there's a world where someone could get into this business and start tweeting about it constantly, just tweeting publicly.

Shaan Puri

Our YouTube people put the website on the screen right now. This is how you know this is a great website: all the listings that are sold have a huge stamp that says "SOLD," and there are clip art balloons all over the listing thumbnail. That's how I know that this thing is amazing. It's like when you see somebody who's driving a fancy car, and they get out wearing a total dad wardrobe. It's the opposite of the person who's really slick getting out, and you're like, "Did they lease this thing? Is this a rental?" You know they're doing it for the image. But when the image is so bad, yet the money is so high, it's like, "Yeah, that's where there's dumb money." It's great.

Sam Parr

Yes, and I think that you could do this. So, Nick's got a thing on this guy who's doing strip malls. Moses and Keith are doing multifamily. Nick's got storage. There could be... there's this guy, Quinn, who's got vending. There's room for a car wash. I think that that's...

Shaan Puri

The thing is, I think you were going somewhere else. I think, and maybe this is just me, probably you too right now, which is like once you get a little bit of money, it's like you go get your PhD in tax avoidance. I think it's crazy that nobody has just taken the throne here of saying, "I'm gonna talk all day about these little financial hack strategies for high net worth people." You know, just either examples or strategies or loopholes. Or little did you know about, you can go into an opportunity zone and then you can roll that through a 1031 exchange over here. Then you could backdoor the backdoor IRA and then you can do a super Roth. It's like, you know, whatever. I'm just making up terms.

Sam Parr

but there's somebody who should be made sense unfortunately

Shaan Puri

I'm pretty sure it didn't, but there's somebody who should be owning that. Like, there's one guy, his name's Mitchell... something. Mitchell Baldridge? I don't know how you... it's one of those names I've never said out loud. I just see him on Twitter all the time. He kinda does this. It's basically a CPA [Certified Public Accountant].

Sam Parr

wait is he does he look like a really really white dude like a grown up dennis the menace

Shaan Puri

yes exactly mitchell baldwin

Sam Parr

yeah yes

Shaan Puri

I like that. 21,000 followers! I did a call with him because I was thinking about whether I should use him for my stuff. It's like, yeah, he's a Texas CPA focused on helping high-net-worth investors and business owners, specifically those with $30 million to $500 million, preserve and grow their wealth. Now, this is not financial advice, but I just think there is such a lack of information. Last night, I was doing this thing because my daughter's bedtime schedule is all screwed up. It takes forever to put her to bed now, and there's probably some way to shorten that. But my hack is always: how do I just have more fun doing this rather than trying to make it more efficient? So, my hack to make it more fun is to put headphones in while I'm putting her to bed. I learn something, like listening to an audiobook or a really good talk. Right now, my shtick is that this week is crypto week, but besides that, I've been focusing on tax learnings. I'm curious about the different things people do to generate a lot of income and pay minimal tax. It's so hard to find someone who's good at this on YouTube. There's definitely stuff out there, but I don't know how to describe it. It's like dollar store content—it's kind of cheap, kind of tacky, and way too surface level. For example, it might say, "Did you know there's a 401(k)?" Okay, I need more than that! I want it delivered in a way that's simple and understandable, and that walks me through cases. Like, "Yeah, I have a client who made a bunch of money selling a company, and then we started buying real estate. Here's the type of real estate we bought, how we managed it, and what we did with the depreciation to offset these things." I want more! I feel like tax is one of those boring topics that we...

Sam Parr

that's a great one

Shaan Puri

Get super big with... this. Now the incentive is kind of not there in that it's a service-based business, more so than, you know, these real estate guys. Because they just want a bunch of investors to pile in so they can go buy bigger and bigger deals.

Sam Parr

yeah but look like who doesn't want more customers

Shaan Puri

yeah yeah exactly

Sam Parr

Or better and better customers. So, to wrap this up, the moral of the story is that there are some amazing people out here, particularly in this real estate niche. But I think you could apply this to many things. There are loads of services, loads of real estate-esque things. I mean, we're talking about vending machines, car washes, taxes... and these guys are making it. I guess, in order to be good at that, I'm going to disrespect these folks a little bit, but it doesn't seem like you have to be that good to be successful at it. You know what I mean? If you're just pretty good and consistently at least pretty good, and you do it for 30 years, you can be a winner. What they're doing is making it really hard to lose by getting this massive audience and creating incredibly interesting content around typically boring stuff. So, everyone who has money is like, "Oh, can I give you some more? Can I give you some money, please?" So anyway, I think that's interesting, and it's happening right now. That's why I wanted to call this out. This is not something that we're looking back on; I want to say, "Look, this is happening. It's kind of neat."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, basically, the fewer the people, the less common it is for individuals in your industry to be blogging, tweeting, or podcasting. The more of an opportunity there is for you to go do it. There is an insatiable appetite for this stuff. If your industry is sort of backwards, slow, or private—behind closed doors—it's a bigger opportunity for you than it is for guys like us. In our industry, everybody's doing it, so it's less cool. There are fewer opportunities for you to be the 30,000th tech person to tweet their tech views, you know?

Sam Parr

so alright I'm gonna let you lead because you actually have a ton of good stuff and I kinda dominated a lot of the time

Shaan Puri

Okay, so I want to talk about this thing I've been doing this week called **Crypto Week**. So, okay, what about it, dude?

Sam Parr

I almost got so mad at you when I saw that tweet because you said, "I told Ben, 'Sean, we only have one meeting this week. It's only 10 minutes. Please, I hope you don't have...'"

Shaan Puri

To leave, I showed up, but I did tell Ben and I said, "Hey, no meetings this week." So I did one with you for our YouTube channel because that's a good week. It was 10 minutes, it was great. Shout out to Esi. And then this podcast. So it's the only two commitments I have on the calendar this week.

Sam Parr

good alright thank you

Shaan Puri

So besides that, I cleared everything off. I didn't just clear the calendar of meetings, I said, "I'm not working on my other shit. E-commerce business? Not doing it this week." And ironically, it's like having its best week ever. But I basically just told our ad guy, "Hey, I'm on vacation now." Am I actually on vacation? No. I'm sitting in my garage 18 hours a day, neck-deep in crypto. And why is this? So basically...

Sam Parr

are you are you just sitting with your phone

Shaan Puri

right now

Sam Parr

No, is that what you're doing? Because like, whenever I do these weeks, which I do as well, I just find myself surrounded by books reading. But are you really just leaned over in your chair with your phone in front of you, and you're just like drinking milk?

Shaan Puri

My laptop... my laptop... drinking milk. Exactly! I'm on that Edison diet right now. I'm just drinking milk and inventing the future. So, what I think is kind of amazing is that I had read that Bill Gates does this once a week out of the year. He calls it his "Think Week" or his "Reading Week" or something like that. Throughout the year, he gets interested in certain topics, but he's so busy that he doesn't get to go as deep on those topics as he would otherwise want to. He has more curiosity than he has time in the moment. So, what he does is carve out this one week a year. Let's say he's all about CRISPR, right? That's what he was really interested in. And by the way, for all the people who are like, "Oh, Bill Gates, he's trying to poison everybody," it's like, okay, yeah, step aside, please. Basically, he takes all his books on CRISPR and goes to a cabin. He doesn't take his wife and he doesn't take his kids. He locks himself in the cabin and just reads. He immerses himself in that topic and comes out the other side with a greater understanding of what he was curious about. So, I wanted to do this for crypto. Now, I'm not a noob at crypto, right? You know we've been talking about it on this podcast. I've been buying and owning assets since, I don't know, 2014 or something like that. So, it's not like this is a completely new subject. But wow, this space is evolving so fast, and there are so many toys that I haven't gotten to play with. I'm going to do this! And I can't tell you how fun this has been. I want to tell you why, but that's just the highlights of the intro. Where do you want me to go with this?

Sam Parr

Well, for... I don't want to talk too much about this concept of doing a crypto or book reading week because it's so... I'm totally on board with it. Everyone should do it, so I don't even want to talk about it.

Shaan Puri

done something like this

Sam Parr

Not lately, not in the past couple of years, but I have before. I've done it with copywriting. I'm like, "I'm gonna learn everything." Yeah, it's very... you can learn so much. Well, you have to shut down Slack, Facebook, Twitter, and just not look at anything.

Shaan Puri

And so, I'm going to give you a few things that I've observed during this. First, about doing one of these weeks: it fits the framework of how I see the world, which is that you should work like a lion, not like a cow. This is a sprint week. It's a sprint week around learning, but it's a sprint week nonetheless. It's like a lion when they find their prey and they want to sprint at it. It's like a mini vacation or a mini retirement in a way. It's like, "What would I do if I really wasn't working actively on anything?" Well, I would just be kind of learning and, you know, I'd be interested in all these things because I had all this free time. Well, I gave myself a mini shot of that for a week. It reduces FOMO like crazy because there was always this itch, this aching feeling like I'm missing out on all this opportunity because I'm busy with my good projects that I like. But I just don't have time to even know what I don't know. So, this reduces FOMO. The last thing is learning by immersion. I'm not just the only one doing it; my team, which is Ben and Andre, I cleared off their whole calendar too. I said, "Don't do any of your normal things you do this week."

Sam Parr

who's andre andre is

Shaan Puri

New guy, he took my power writing course. Dude, Andre's story is nuts! Can I tell you about this? I didn't tell you about this guy. He created this website. Let me actually find... Go to supshawn.com. So that's S-U-P and then my name, Sean.com. Just read this for a second.

Sam Parr

sean I'm andre okay

Shaan Puri

So this guy made this website. He sent it to me and he goes, "It's called SupSean.com." So I'm curious, and he says: > "Hey Sean, I'm Andre. I'm a future student in your Power Writing course. I built the biggest large student startup conference in Canada... Oh, by the way, I just recovered from being wheelchair/bedbound for 2 years. Check out my blog post for stories about why I made this site for you. I'm not looking to grab a coffee or chat."

Sam Parr

I love that

Shaan Puri

Like the hustle of this website, I just have one quick question I want your help with. He stole the design off my website and just put a bunch of fake quotes of people saying things like, "You're a legend! Wow!" or "Sean, when seeing this website..." Then he talked about what he's working on now and had a question. He asked, "If you were me, you've just been strapped to your bed for a couple of years, and you're now starting your career, how would you change your approach to life and work?" Some context: I had this "thingamajig" for 5 years, and I've just gotten over it. I feel like I've been given a second life. By the way, the fact that he didn't go into a sob story and just called it a "thingamajig" told me, "Yo, I'm on your level. I'm not looking for your sympathy, but this is true, and I'm just explaining my situation." I've been so, so mad respect for the way he did that. He said, "I just want to maximize every year," and then he went on. Anyways, he got me to reply, and then he took my course. He was great! After my course, he sent me this video saying, "Yo, here are 3 things you should be doing better in your next cohort. I really loved it. Here are 3 ways I would make this better." I just hired him. I was like, "Come do that!" He came and did that for me, and now I'm like, he's brought such good energy. Literally, every day, he's on one. Dude's never in a bad mood; he's always in a good mood. It's amazing how far enthusiasm and having positive vibes go, at least as far as my books are concerned.

Sam Parr

it's pretty convenient but I brought him on and he's working on your course

Shaan Puri

So, he did my course, but now I... I like the course was like a smash success last month, and I was like, "I'm kinda bored of this. Let's go do some other stuff." So, he's not doing that right now, but he's helping me with other things, like this crypto week thing. Anyways, we're all doing it. A couple of things that I've learned: I'm a big believer in learning by doing. My attitude for this week was to think of it like Disney World. I was like, "Okay, there are all these different areas." If you go to Disney World, it's like you can go to the Magic Kingdom, you can go to Harry Potter land, you can go over here to this other area. So, I started mapping out the different worlds. There's the NFT world, there's the DeFi world, there's kind of like the security world. I need to learn how to... I got kind of a good amount of this stuff. I want to know what the best practices are for securing this that I've been putting off. Okay, you know what's better than what I'm currently doing? So, I just mapped out all these different areas I'm curious about, and then we started diving in one day on each, just going as deep as we can with each one.

Sam Parr

Are you messaging your team throughout the day? Like, "Let's everyone sit for 3 hours and read this, and we'll come back"?

Shaan Puri

And talk basically. So it's like we're just sharing stuff in Slack. Then we do these... Slack has a huddle feature now, which is really dope.

Sam Parr

it's like

Shaan Puri

A quick little Discord chat, basically. So, we'll huddle up and we'll be like, we kind of set out at the beginning, which was, "Dude, what would I want?" What I would want is, when I wanted to spend a week going deep into crypto and get a real understanding, I wish somebody just had a product like this where I could just... It's not a course, it's not like a vlog. The best way I've learned about crypto has been from my smart friend, basically, who knows this stuff inside and out. He just sits me down on a Zoom call and he screen shares. He's like, "Alright, so do you have MetaMask?" I'm like, "Do I? Maybe. I feel like I might have made one once." He's like, "Okay, well here's what that is. It's this wallet, it lives in your browser, it's how you do stuff in the crypto world. So, let's get you set up. And by the way, don't fall for these scams. Here's the smart way to do it." So then I click it, and I'm like, "Hey, this says this." And he's like, "Yeah, that's normal. Go ahead." He just holds my hand and sort of teaches me. He's like, "Okay, have you ever taken out a DeFi loan?" I'm like, "No, why would I do that?" He's like, "Well, you know, let's say you wanted to not sell your crypto, but you want to go buy some stuff in the real world and the banks don't recognize it. So, let's go take out a loan for a super low percentage rate, and let me show you how you do that. You're gonna go to compound.finance, and then you're gonna put your ETH in using that wallet we just made, and now you're gonna take a loan. Let's take that loan and go do something with it." So, he's walked me through step by step, and I'm like, "I want to do that with all the new areas of crypto." Then secondly, when I was talking to the guys yesterday, I was like, "Dude, the way we are learning this by having our hands held, where we have trust and confidence that we're doing the right things, we should just make this the next course." It's not really like a course; it's like a Zoom call you join, and it takes you on a tour through Disneyland. It's like, "Here's all the attractions," and I'm not gonna tell you about them. Like, actually buy your first NFT.

Sam Parr

who's leading

Shaan Puri

you right now furcon's leading me so I do it myself

Sam Parr

oh so he's leading me

Shaan Puri

And then when I get stuck, I say, "Hey Furcon, can you show us like liquidity pools? I heard you saying you make money in this. I don't really understand what the purpose of this liquidity pool is and how I actually do this. Can you tell me the pros and cons and the risks so I can make a smart decision on whether I want to do this in the future?" But like, let's do my first liquidity pool trade together. Then, I have my dashboard to see how much I'm making off this, right? Or like, "Oh yeah, you have this NFT. Great! I want to display that. How do I do that? How do I secure this? How do I store this safely? Great! How do I mint one?" You know, all the different questions that I have. If I can't figure it out myself by doing, I call him in, and he kind of shows me these screen shares and guides me step by step.

Sam Parr

So, what are the learnings from Crypto Week? What are the top one to five learnings that you have so far?

Shaan Puri

So, one big learning is that this is evolving so fast. It's like, you know when you walk by a club and you kind of hear the music faintly from the outside? You hear this little bass, but it's not that loud. You walk by, go to your café or bus stop, wherever you're going, and then suddenly, I swung open the door and there's a full underground rave going on. Everybody's having this crazy time. Now that I'm in it, I'm like, "Wow, the energy has really picked up." Last time I was here, it was about a year ago, and I was kind of on the outside. Now I'm on the inside, seeing how crazy this energy is. What does that translate to? Well, there are a whole bunch of developer tools. Anytime I see something cool that I'm using, I think, "Can I invest in this company?" During the internet explosion, you had companies like Twilio, PagerDuty, and all these basic infrastructure companies like Stripe. It's like, "Oh yeah, people need to take payments. People need to be able to send notifications, send SMS." Every product on the internet that’s going to build up the internet is eventually going to want to do these things. They’re going to want cloud hosting. So, I'm finding the equivalent of cloud hosting and Twilio and all that stuff—these dev tools that are in what's called Web 3 or the crypto world. I'm like, "Dude, I need to be investing in these." Because if crypto's going to be a thing, then these infrastructure companies, just like they did great in the internet age, are going to do great in the crypto age. So, that's the first one.

Sam Parr

what else what else have you learned

Shaan Puri

So, like, then it's like, okay, how do you actually... you know, NFTs? It's kind of this thing that I thought was interesting. I owned a couple, but it also seemed a little bit nuts. Why are people doing this? Are they all just trying to make a quick buck and doing some crazy stuff? Or is this actually the new art and I'm missing it? Today, I'm laughing at it, and then three years from now, I'm going to be the one pimping it out because now I get it. It's the same way I was with Bitcoin early on, where I was like, "Oh, that's kind of weird. Don't really get it. Move on." And three years later, I'm like, "Oh, this is the... you know, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior." So, what I've learned is that I've been actually using the tools. So, check this out: go to a site called rarity.tools. I've been using this as I've been looking at which NFTs I wanted to collect and buy. I gave myself a quarter-million-dollar budget for this week to go play in the crypto world. Some of that's used on buying NFTs, and I haven't used most of it yet. I've only bought a couple of things, but basically, that's my learning budget. If I want to do something, I can do up to that amount. And look at the similar web traffic on rarity.tools... holy shit! Holy...

Sam Parr

shit that that that it's like a water slide

Shaan Puri

yeah exactly april it's like at 0 essentially you know it's like

Sam Parr

on vert ramp

Shaan Puri

It's like under half a million uniques, and then, you know, July just under a million, August it's now at three and a half million. It's just hockey sticking up. What is this? This is just like what we talk about. This is a picks and shovels business. So anytime there's a gold rush, you can either go try to find the gold—meaning go find the best NFT. Oh, you bought a CryptoPunk and now it's worth $7,000,000. Okay, that's one way; you found a nugget of gold. Or, this is a great picks and shovels business, which is like, "Hey, a bunch of people interested in NFTs? Cool! We will make a site that helps you figure out the rarity of different NFTs. It helps you find underpriced assets that are, you know, the price is good given the rarity." So, I think this is a great example of a picks and shovels website for the crypto world. I found a bunch of these types of tools as well and then met a bunch of the people behind it. One guy who's behind one of these tools is like, "Dude, I'm a big fan of the show. My story is nuts. At 15 or 16, I entered an online Scrabble tournament that was like a $1,000,000 tournament. I just wrote a bot for me back then that nobody else knew how to outlaw, so I won the tournament. I won the $1,000,000 Scrabble tournament using a bot at age 15. Then at age 17, I did this, and at age 21, I did this. Now I have this Discord with 90,000 people in it called Rarity Sniper, and it's all about finding NFTs that are undervalued." I have like 90,000 people in this Discord server, and I'm like, "You're finding all these people." The biggest lesson I've seen is a whole different demographic. These are new rich people—the winners and the builders. The people who are going to be the Mark Zuckerbergs, the Larry Pages, and the Brian Chesky's. It's not the people we all know that are like Twitter famous making it big in the crypto world. It's a whole new set of people, and most of them are like anonymous, just icon accounts. Then I'm talking to them, and I'm like, "Dude, you're fascinating. You're also like a madman, but wow, this is crazy."

Sam Parr

What? Okay, so right now, where do you stand? I would place you, I think, on the correct side of reasonable, but not exactly. So, like, parts of you are reasonable—like, normal person reasonable. Other parts of you, you're our crazy person. I kind of trust your opinion on this, but not always. So, try to keep that in mind.

Shaan Puri

want the reasonable person is that who you wanna talk to reasonable sean or or you wanna talk to irrational sean

Sam Parr

Where do you think... do you think? Okay, so what's your take right now on the NFT world? Are you as bullish as some of our friends? And what's your current stance on it?

Shaan Puri

So, I was in this one-hour conversation with some random NFT anonymous guy on Twitter in DMs. I was talking to him all night.

Sam Parr

This phenomenon of talking to random people in these 90,000-person Discord servers is truly remarkable.

Shaan Puri

right

Sam Parr

the way that all these people

Shaan Puri

Are you looking like this thing got minted? It was called "Rookie NFT," and I bought a couple. It was real cheap; it had just come out about 45 minutes before that. Someone said, "Hey, check this out. You're into sports; you'll probably like this." And I did like it. It was actually a really smart concept, so I bought a bunch of them right away. Again, these are lottery tickets. You buy them, you most likely just scratch them, throw them away, and you got nothing. Sometimes, you hit big. One of mine that I bought has gone up 5x in value already. You know, of one of these NFT bets that I made in the last two days. The others are just flat, like the cost of doing business, basically. So I was talking to them, and I said, "Look, early on, I wrote off Bitcoin because I was like, 'I don't get it. It has no intrinsic value; it's imaginary money made up by an anonymous person.' It's going up, and I thought, 'What happens when the music stops?' Meaning, what happens when people are buying it because they think it's going to keep going up? That seems like a Ponzi scheme; that seems like a pyramid scheme." That was my initial thought back in 2014 or 2015. I didn't really understand it—maybe 2013, actually. Over time, as I got to understand, I realized that was just my lack of understanding. I started to understand that actually, all the things we call money operate the same way. Why is this piece of paper valuable? Why is this lump of gold valuable? Why is this tiny diamond valuable? Because there's a social...

Sam Parr

agreement yeah

Shaan Puri

there's a social agreement and the social agreement happens because we justify it through rarity right gold is somewhat rare diamonds are somewhat rare so scarcity basically is there and then there's like you know some intrinsic pull or whatever but really it's a social agreement and a lot of the meaning we place on it comes later and so I was like I get I didn't get that at the time when it came to cryptocurrencies money I didn't realize that actually it's not just a ponzi scheme that actually the more people who buy in actually is what it what makes it valuable so it's not a bubble that's gonna pop it's that the more believers that you have that's the stronger the social agreement is and therefore the thing actually that actually gives it real value and and this appeals to certain people and so it's going to it's going to grow in this that social agreement is gonna grow and I think there's some crazy charts by the way that show like bitcoin adoption is I think one of the fastest if not the fastest adopted technology ever so I don't wanna say the word ever of all technologies so maybe like I don't know the printing press or like the telephone was a little bit faster from what the from what I heard I haven't gotten verified this before I heard it was fast it's faster than all those but if you just look at the internet for sure it happens so mobile phones and the internet were probably the 2 most recent technologies that took over the world right and if you look at mobile phone adoption and and and internet adoption bitcoin is on a faster pace than both of those and so so the the social agreement is what gives cryptocurrency value and so I was like but this art thing like dude I remember cryptokitties in 2017 right furkan was sitting next to me at the office and he had 2 kitties and he was breeding them and he gave me a kitty he bred and I was like what the fuck is this and he's like it's a nfts he was explaining it to me for the first time back in 2017 I was like oh that's cool but like and there was this hype I remember one day cryptokitties overwhelmed the ethereum network it was like 80% of all activity on ethereum was just cryptokitties and andreessen horowitz put all this money into cryptokitties and then like a year later cryptokitties were dead and it was like the beanie babies fad but even faster and by the way that same team who built cryptokitties they're the ones who built and and and be a top shot as well and so so anyways I I was just like who's to say that today you guys are spending 1,000,000 of dollars on cryptopunks and 1,000,000 of dollars on this bored ape yacht club who's to say 2 years from now this is not cryptokitties all over again and then a bunch of those believers kind of gave me a bunch of reasons and what I realized was it's the same thing it's the same same idea which is that art has value because of a social social agreement a social construct so why is the mona lisa more valuable than the next painting of a check looking sideways well because we as a society have over time decided more and more that the mona lisa is valuable and it's not doesn't matter what type of paint was used what size of canvas doesn't matter what year it was made like art can have value based on the social agreement

Sam Parr

How many CryptoPunks are there? 10,000. Okay, so my argument is like, well, maybe there were a few then. Yeah, could it be valuable in 100 years? Yeah, maybe. But there's like the Mona Lisa.

Shaan Puri

yeah but the you know you say oh how many you know monets are there how many how many how many paintings did this artist do it's like in their lifetime they maybe made a few hundred or whatever it was and so you know you can go find any picasso painting and it's valuable and that's the idea is that these are like these are the picassos right it's like the og it's the I think it's the first nft project ever was was cryptopunks and that's what has its kinda like story value and now the people who believe it it's like bitcoin so there's this great quote that came out that was like again I don't know if this is true or this folklore but recently some of the big finance guys started buying a bunch of bitcoin and I think it was stanley druckenmiller who was on podcast with trunk he can't he said you know the thing that turned me around on it was I thought oh this thing gets pumped up then it crashes down it's too volatile he's like and then paul tudor jones who's this billionaire hedge fund billionaire hedge fund trader one of the most famous guys from wall street he called junkabiller he goes hey did you know this that when bitcoin crashed from its all time high which is like 17 18,000 down to 3,000 that 86% of the people who held it never sold a single coin and he's like wow that's amazing the people who own this thing they're like religious zealots about it and he said well if people are that religious about it meaning if the social agreement the social contract is that strong the belief is that strong that it can withstand at 80% crash and they don't liquidate this thing is gonna go up and this thing is gonna be like have have long term value and that's the thing that I see right so that's the probably the only area I've changed my mind is that I wasn't gonna buy cryptopunks for 48 but I thought it was just another cryptokitty that's probably gonna go away and now I'm starting to realize is that the people who own punks like if you go to opensea right now you go try to buy cryptopunks you can't there's none for sale it's like these people don't wanna sell them they're like the bitcoin people who are like bitcoin's gonna be worth $1,000,000 a coin someday the the crypto fund holders they have infected each other with this story that says this is the original nft this is like the the most valuable art that will ever be created in crypto world this these are gonna be worth you know 10,000,000 each and they've convinced themselves that that's true and that because of that there's like no supply on the market and then you know supply demand will sort of tell you

Sam Parr

How to do that? You're okay, so NFTs... got it. You're now halfway through your week of learning. What is your current stance on crypto as a whole?

Shaan Puri

Oh, I mean, I was super bullish before, and I'm super bullish now. It really wasn't... I'm trying to judge whether this is good or bad. That's not really what this was. It isn't even really about trying to understand it better, although that does come into play. It was just, dude, I haven't had time to actually go use all the different stuff that's been built. Like, I already own the cryptocurrencies; I already own the assets. What I didn't do was... you know, there's a lot of things built around what you can do with your Ethereum. You can stake it, you can trade it, you can lend, you can borrow, you can buy NFTs, you can fractionalize those NFTs. You can create a DAO, which is like this organization—it's like this group, but it's got a wallet. There are all these different things you can do, and I knew of them, but I haven't done them. There's a lot of value in actually going and taking the time to use the apps, right? It's like, go use the products and then form your own opinions on how you feel about them. But for me, it really isn't even about the opinions; it takes time to actually learn how to do all this stuff. If I was 20 today, and my time was worth jack shit, and I had nothing else to do, this is all I'd be doing. This is how I would become valuable. What I noticed was that it's kind of like the people who didn't really figure out the internet because they were successful in real estate or as doctors or whatever. It's like, I don't want my success to inhibit my own ability to go play and learn. So that's what this week was for me.

Sam Parr

This is... I'm like chewing on all this. I gotta think about all this. This is nutty to me. It's like the way that maybe some fitness stuff comes to me. I just grab it easily, and I enjoy it. I am obsessed with it. That's how you are with this. It's so hard for someone who's not predisposed to this type of stuff to understand. When I hear you talking...

Shaan Puri

I'm like, stuff is a great example because you're athletic. So if I say, "There's a track nearby," you go there and you run on this track in circles. I'm like, "Oh man, that sounds like a lot of work. I don't really want to do that." Or if I'm like, "Yeah, there's this knees-over-toes guy," you go buy the program and then you spend the next six weeks trying to do pistol squats on one knee. Then, like, you're like, "Oh, boxing, cool!" Then you go join a boxing gym and you sign up for an amateur fight. I'm doing that in the way that I'm athletic, which is like grand.

Sam Parr

Yeah, like when I go to Discord, it's like I'm a little autistic going into an IKEA. I'm overwhelmed. I don't know what to do. I want to clam up; I'm freaking out.

Shaan Puri

there's too much same way

Sam Parr

alright well you wanna do a you wanna run through a few of these things or are we gonna wrap up

Shaan Puri

I have two interesting things I wanted to show you. Okay, let's do this. This is related. There's this great Twitter thread I thought I wanted to get your opinion on. It's about levels of wealth, something we've talked about here before, but I thought this guy's take was interesting. So, the account is @I6529.

Sam Parr

and I've read it but I I like your I like yours he didn't do a very good job of writing it

Shaan Puri

did he not okay maybe he didn't okay so

Sam Parr

his his writing wasn't as clear as yours

Shaan Puri

okay I thought it was pretty good maybe I'm wrong but anyways I thought the material was good so this is one of those anonymous twitter accounts that's like this guy's clearly wealthy he owns cryptopunks and he's like kinda smart I would say like he's a little for like the crypto world he's like sued us anonymous a little bit of alright so so he has this he has this thread he goes here's how I think about about making it or like wealth basically he goes level 1 crushed by circumstances these are like refugees in syria you're born in a civil war in the congo unfortunately billions of our like com you know comrades in life don't even have the faintest opportunity to make it because they were born in you know for circumstances outside their control they were born into like very very tough situations he goes for me he goes this this feels like this makes me feel funny inside I'm paraphrasing for it but it makes it makes you feel funny inside right like 1,000 of little kids will die today and I'm on the internet buying you know jpegs for for 1,000 of dollars you know because and they don't have access to a 50¢ pill that could like end their agony and like give them like you know some peace and their you know their dreams are being cut short because they don't have access to basic you know water or sanitation and medicine he goes because level 1 is not a it's not a like niceness problem it's a coordination problem he goes literally everybody on earth would skip having a soda today and you know and they would just have a glass of water instead if they knew it would save that kid's life if that $3 could go to that kid's life instead for that coffee or that soda that you would skip but the systems are not placed in order for us to be able to just push that button easily and have that outcome happen he goes for for now society hasn't fixed this this tweet alone I thought was like one of the most insightful and maybe I'm just a fucking sucker for this shit but like when he said this it rang so true to me that yes we all in the like privileged world would happily skip over a cup of coffee or more just I skip that that money goes into this thing it actually saves this person but like we need the coordination we need the certainty we need we need a lot of people to do it for that effect to happen and then we need the money to actually go to the right place and then we need to see the result in order for us to actually like yeah fix these problems at scale so I thought wow if you wanna go work on a startup idea solve that make it so that lots of people can very easily skip this thing and that they can that money actually gets the result done and then everybody sees the result of it and it would bring so much gratification that we would all wanna do it again okay so that that's one tweet then he goes alright if you're at level 1 maybe crushed by circumstances you're not reading these tweets I have no solutions to level 1 I hope humans progress and we can solve level we can reduce level 1 problems every year if you're if you're key?

Shaan Puri

If you're reading this tweet, you already made it past level 1. Keep going! Alright, level 2 is where the struggle is real. This is where day-to-day, you have financial problems. Finances can be a source of stress for you. You might have one or two jobs, but you don't have much in terms of savings. You worry about where you would find the money to pay for an emergency. If your car breaks down, it can cause a cascading set of crises and problems just because you didn't have enough of a financial buffer. If you're in level 2 and you're in good health, do everything possible to get out of level 2. Work overtime, take another job, push harder right now. The life change from getting out of level 2 to level 3 is massive. When money problems are front and center in your life, or that stress lingers in your head all day, it is a tax on your happiness and productivity. Unlike level 1, there are a lot of people in level 2 that I know who have been there in life and have gotten out. If you can't escape, do everything possible to do so. Here's my practical advice: if you're in level 2 and you own something like an NFT that, if sold, would move you into level 3, just absolutely sell it right now and get out of level 2. The life benefits of moving from level 2 to level 3 are huge. Now, level 3 is the middle class in the U.S. Everybody thinks they're middle class, and I think that's so true.

Sam Parr

that's true

Shaan Puri

If you're making $50,000 a year in Ohio, you think you're middle class. If you're making $500,000 in San Francisco, you think you're middle class. So, despite the fact that there is a definable middle class, and for simplicity, let's just call it this: you have a house, you have a car, you have some savings, but you don't have enough where you have "fuck you" money. You can't just buy whatever you want, and you don't really know how you're going to pay for big things down the road, like a bigger house or college, etc. I spent most of my life in the middle class. It's a great, happy place to be. If you're there, don't keep looking up at the people who have more. First, be appreciative that you're not in level 2 or level 1, where you're crushed by circumstances. You have a great life; you're in the top 1% of anybody who has ever lived on Earth. That is very true. Because level 4, I call this "we like nice things." This is anything from the top end of middle class to the uber-rich. It's a state of mind; it's not a specific income level. Your basic life is just sorted, and now you just buy things you enjoy. This might be like a trip, a vacation, a second house, or it might be a private jet. There's an endless playground of things to buy, and however much you earn, you can spend it. There's enough things to go buy. Congratulations, once again, you've made it. You're now in the...

Shaan Puri

O, one or 0.001% of people who have ever lived on planet Earth. Then he starts talking about how, you know, level 4 is tricky. You think it brings you a lot more happiness, but it doesn't really. In fact, sometimes it brings more stress or anxiety. You got it all, and you're still not happy. He goes on to say that actually, level 3 only had upsides compared to level 2, but level 4 has some traps. If you made it to level 4, congrats! Here’s my take: you really want to get to level 5. He says, "First, do all the things. Go to Paris, rent a boat, upgrade your flight to business class. Then check out how level 4 lives." He goes on to ask, "Are you happier? Does this bring you joy? Which of those things brought you joy? Was it the stuff? Was it the experiences? What felt great? What doesn't?" He emphasizes that level 5 is when you're post-consumption. You no longer care about the things you can buy; you just care about how you choose to spend your time. You want to spend your time in ways that bring you peace and happiness. For some people, that’s a small house and a truck on a farm in Wyoming. For others, it’s living large in New York and being a power player on CNBC every week. Don’t make any judgments; it is what it is. Just figure out how you want to spend your time. Are you playing golf, or are you working on something with a higher purpose? The happiest people seem to be those who are satisfied through level 5 by working on things that intrinsically motivate them—intrinsic happiness, not external goods. Blah, blah, blah, and that’s that.

Sam Parr

the sweetest part so I

Shaan Puri

was just curious what's your what's your take on this

Sam Parr

that's awesome that's awesome

Shaan Puri

Is there any part of this... By the way, he goes, "Question I get: What level is @username6529?" (which is his username). He goes, "I balance between level 4-5 based on how much I enjoy, how much I worry about the world, and nice things I see on Instagram any given day. I spent most of my life in level 3 (middle class), loved it. My family had brief moments in level 1-2, but I was too young to notice. I feel blessed."

Sam Parr

That's good. That's a good thread. This could be a book. He did a good job. I guess you're right; his writing was pretty good. If you read it exactly... I was skimming it and I was like, "It's confusing," but that's amazing.

Shaan Puri

I think that hook sucked. It was way too much jargon, but the actual content was solid. The one thing I told him—I DM'd him—I said, "This is a great thread; it resonates." I go, "The one thing you're missing is that there's a moment somewhere at the top of Level 3, right before Level 4. Maybe this is just Level 4, which is that you decouple time and money. Before in your life, you were always trading your time to earn money, and now you start trading your money to get more time back." I said, "Actually, I think that's what Level 4 really is. It's not just being able to buy all the stuff you want; it's the freedom of time. Recognize that and get to that as fast as you can."

Sam Parr

I think this is an interesting conversation for us because both of us have probably very recently gone from 3 to 4. And, yeah, very likely, we are not entirely far from 4 to 5. We kind of experienced all those jumps in an incredibly short amount of time.

Shaan Puri

can can I do my wanna be involved thing for a second

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

So, we were right. We were at level 3 when we first met, you know, the last 7 or 8 years of our lives. Then, probably in the last 2 years, when I sold my company and you sold yours, is when we jumped into level 4. The Naval thing is basically that we got financial freedom, which meant we don't have to worry about money anymore. But then we need freedom from finance, which is level 5. This is when you stop making decisions based on money. I think that's what truly wealthy people do; they choose how to spend their time not because of the financial outcome at all.

Sam Parr

but look bro listen listen though

Shaan Puri

let's let's be real pulls at them

Sam Parr

Let's be real here, though. First of all, we're getting paid stupid money to just sit here and shoot the shit. Second of all, we just shot the shit about you taking the week off to learn. So, like, we're not... our... like, maybe that is 5 or is that 4?

Shaan Puri

I forget if it’s 5, but at the same time, why am I doing this e-commerce business? Is it because it lights my soul on fire every day? No, it’s because it was an opportunity, and I’m trying to capitalize on it. It’s working, and now I don’t want to give it up because I think it’s going to be super successful. I like feeling like I’m successful. I like winning. I like when a project works, and I like the money that comes with it. There are still... I like the way he said he bounces between them. It’s not like when you’re at a level within 100% of your decisions and 100% of your life, you’re acting that way. You fluctuate between these things. Personally, I have not been able to let go of money as part of my core decision-making criteria for why to do something or not do something. It’s still there, which means I’m not actually free from it. It’s still part of the contract, part of the thing I’m optimizing for. Whereas I know some people who don’t do that, like Michael Birch. He’s my main investor. I got to work with him and sit next to him every day. He invests and does things that will make money. He gets excited when an investment or a business starts to work and makes money. But when we were deciding what to do in any given case, I feel like money was like the 12th thing on the list of things he would think about.

Sam Parr

is he a billionaire you think or he probably it it he may not be but it doesn't

Shaan Puri

matter he he goes most people that you think are billionaires are not not quite there

Sam Parr

But it doesn't matter. It's probably not that... you know, what's the difference between $500 and $1,000,000,000, right? So, do you think he... the weird thing that I've noticed is when money is no longer part of the equation, it's kind of depressing. Because you're like, "Fuck, this has been the goal the whole time," and now my decision-making process has totally changed. It's kind of a weird spot. So, is he depressed, do you think, because of that? Because like, the same motivating factor isn't there anymore, and he's like, "Oh man, now I'm changed."

Shaan Puri

No, he's happy. He's really happy. But he did tell me... actually, he didn't even tell me this. The reason the billionaire conversation came up is because the BBC did a documentary called "How to Be a Billionaire."

Sam Parr

yeah by

Shaan Puri

the way your your boy has a a cam a a cameo in it for a minute or 2 I don't know where this thing plays it's like on airplanes so sometimes I'll get a picture somebody sends me of a their headrest as they're watching this documentary and then I popped into it and so like you know because they're talk it's about michael it's not about me but like there's they follow 4 people that are billionaires I think he he told me 3 of the 4 he goes I don't think are actually billionaires himself included and he goes he he he says something in there he goes yeah when we sold bebo and we had like you know all of a sudden all this wealth he goes it's obviously great and like you know but kind of anti climatic like I had more fun building it than I did selling it and he goes you know the weird thing was that anytime I felt like not so good like if I felt sad or whatever like nobody wants to hear it right like what's the most annoying thing in the world an unhappy billionaire and I think he said something like that and I was like wow that's so true actually like if he came to me about being glum and whatever it would be hard for me in my initial reaction to be like dude you have it all and it's like that's what a person in the 3rd world would say to me and that's what a crippled person would say to that person in the 3rd world like this was a never ending chain of looking at somebody and saying you're unhappy you have it all and so he did say there was time supposed to be where they were kinda like woah what do we do now and that that was a little bit weird and you can be unhappy for other parts of your life that money doesn't solve those problems and whether it's like relationships or other stuff that can happen too but since I've known him which was a few years after he sold it he is extremely happy and at peace he doesn't have like fomo or this itchiness to like go prove himself and all this stuff I didn't see it at least and then he worked on projects that gave him joy so like he loves building like buying real estate buying buildings and like designing a space than having people use that space so that's why our office was so pimped out because he just loved the idea of building a dream office and coming to work in it every day and having you know this is the perfect playground to go work in he did that with the battery he bought a 60,000 square foot old candy factory retrofitted it and then put you know turned into willy wonka's factory he made all the rooms unique and fun to be in and that project was never gonna make money in fact everybody told him dude you're burning so much money doing this it's such a bad financial move he's like well that's okay it's not a financial move

Sam Parr

like how did that end you know like he

Shaan Puri

He built a dope space. It had like the who's who of members throughout it. He's made all these different connections. You know, when Justin Bieber comes down and Beyoncé, they stay there. And you know, Elon Musk hangs out there.

Sam Parr

I'm pretty sure I was there one time and I saw a monk and Snoop Dogg sitting at a booth together.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, dude, it's crazy. You could bump into a lot of people there. You know, I saw Leonardo DiCaprio walk in and I was like, "Oh shit, Leo!" But you know, it's not just about the fame. Obviously, I think that side still pulls to him. I think the social side, he does a lot of things to maximize his social game, but it's not financial. He told me once, "Yeah, this thing cost a lot of money to build and we blew our budget on trying to make it a dope space." He said, "My rule was, okay, once it's operational, I don't mind if I never get my capex back as long as the opex doesn't continually bleed more and more money every year." That's why it got to where the opex, basically the membership and the fees, the membership dues plus the restaurant bar and all that, cover the cost of running it. So while he may never get a positive return—almost certainly will never get a positive return—on the, I don't know, maybe $100 million he put into the building and the build-out, I wouldn't be shocked if it was $50 to $100 million. I don't think he'll ever get that back, but it doesn't bleed money now, and so he's happy with that. So yeah, anyway, long story short, he's super happy. He goes on trips to Africa all the time where he doesn't just give money to charity: water; he goes there, visits the villages, stays there in a tent, and experiences it. He brings his whole family with him, and that's like their favorite time of the year—when they get to go to rural Africa, sleep in a tent, and live in this village, and then help bring better living conditions to the people there.

Sam Parr

Well, that's badass. Do we want to end there, or what do you want to do?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, we can end there because somehow we went pretty long. They told us to keep these under 45 minutes for YouTube, but I have a feeling it's going to be hard for us to do that.

Sam Parr

that's alright this one was maybe extra order I oh I was

Shaan Puri

I was longing... Yep, alright. This is an idea. You said something about... Let's do one more. Panic attacks. You said you've had panic attacks, and you started... You asked Twitter for panic attack help. This gave me an idea, but first, tell me your panic attack thing and I'll tell you my idea.

Sam Parr

So, I've had panic attacks since the 7th grade. I remember the exact day; it was the 3rd day of school at 8:55 PM. I had this weird thought where I wondered, "What's outside of the world?" Like, if you go into space, do you just keep going and find nothing out there? It made me feel like we’re just meaningless. I remember I flipped out and got panicky. I went to the doctor, then to the nurse, and I was like, "My heart! I'm having a heart attack! I can't breathe!" Ever since then, I've been very panicky. I get panic attacks, and I have very distinct triggers. I take daily medication and keep Xanax with me just in case. Anything that involves tight spaces that I can't get out of, or being really deep in the wilderness where I can't escape, makes me flip out. I hate it. I get crazy panic attacks because of it. So, when we fly, I'm very medicated. I just can't stand it; I'm very claustrophobic. I don't go in elevators, or I try not to. I don't like rooms without windows, and I don't take the subway.

Shaan Puri

okay and when you get a panic attack what do you do

Sam Parr

I keep medication on me at all times. I'll take one pill, and if I didn't take that pill, it feels like I'm dying. I feel like I want to kill myself. My heart is going so hard; I feel like I'm dying. I literally think the world's going to end, and I'm flipping out.

Shaan Puri

Okay, that's crazy. I've never experienced something like that. My buddy had one in college while we were... He was sitting next to us, we're playing Halo, and then like he was doing something else and then he had a panic attack. We called an ambulance and it was the first time I'd ever heard of this. At the time, I was like, "Bro, just relax," like...

Sam Parr

yeah it's hard it's like

Shaan Puri

hitting hard right that was my life

Sam Parr

it's like telling a it's like telling a drug addict like dude just don't do heroin right I know I know

Shaan Puri

That sounds like I didn't understand it, and it was my first time experiencing it. Yeah, it sounded like a heart attack. All his symptoms were like heart attack symptoms. One thing I wanted to share with you: somebody had tweeted this, and I saw that Emmett, who was my manager at the time—he's the CEO of Twitch—had tweeted this back. Somebody said...

Sam Parr

hey I'm not tweeted to me

Shaan Puri

No, no. Somebody had tweeted this out. They go, "Any advice on how to help someone experiencing anxiety, potentially panic attacks, relax and ground themselves? They don't have experience with this..." and so on. And then Emmett randomly replied.

Sam Parr

to this person sorry sorry I I wanna get context they retweeted my tweet

Shaan Puri

no no no this was a tweet I saw 2 years ago that your tweet reminded me of

Sam Parr

okay tell me

Shaan Puri

I saw him reply to this, and he goes: > "This may sound weird, but the mammalian diving reflex is triggered by submerging your face in cold water and cuts the panic attack loop. Can be very, very effective, but obviously hard to do in public." Have you ever heard of this?

Sam Parr

no but I would I would be into interested in it

Shaan Puri

so then he linked it and I you know so I went to it so like here you can I'll I'll give you the link

Sam Parr

So, Emmett had panic attacks. I think a lot of high-functioning people get them because, like, I think in order to be high...

Shaan Puri

functioning assume so or why would

Sam Parr

It may be because, in order to be high functioning and successful, oftentimes you're motivated. You're... you're neurotic, right? You're motivated by some anxiety-driven thing. I imagine there's a huge correlation between the two, so I'm looking at it now.

Shaan Puri

So basically, my understanding is... I remember reading this two years ago when you tweeted it. It reminded me of it, so I looked into it. Basically, you just need to change state. There's a state that triggers the panic attack. If you want to stop the panic attack, you need to change state. That's hard to do when you're in the middle of a panic attack. So, when you feel it coming on, this is the thing to do: you go into very cold ice water. You have to get your face into really cold water and plunge it for 10 to 20 seconds. What that does is it automatically triggers your heart rate to slow down, and your blood gets sort of centered around your core. That will short-circuit the panic attack loop. This is for you or anybody else who has this issue.

Sam Parr

that's good

Shaan Puri

I don't know how you would try this but but try it

Sam Parr

Well, it's not that bad. It looks like there's an example of a guy in his kitchen with just a bowl of ice water. I get it. In the middle of the night, sometimes I'll wake up and I'm like, "What's going on? Where am I?" Then I start flipping out.

Shaan Puri

He shows his heartbeat, right? Going from 103 beats per minute to 47 beats per minute after just 20 seconds with his face in the thing.

Sam Parr

So this guy... okay, so by the way, a heart rate of **103 beats per minute** just from a panic attack? That's pretty wild! That's a high heart rate. It's hard... like, I can't make my heart rate go that high just sitting still.

Shaan Puri

right do you know what

Sam Parr

I mean

Shaan Puri

isn't like resting heart rate like 70 to 90 or something like that

Sam Parr

it it should be less than 70 yeah

Shaan Puri

Okay, so that was the first thing that came to mind. The second thing was "Patients Like Me." So, the thing you did where you were like, "I have this thing," and people have kind of an aversion to going to the doctor in general, right? Some people don't go because of cost. Some people don't go because of convenience. Some people don't go because they don't like the doctor. Some people don't go because they just want to feel... they are worried they're going to get diagnosed with something, and they'd rather be in blissful ignorance. "Patients Like Me" has always been this thing that fascinated me. Are you familiar with "Patients Like Me"?

Sam Parr

no I'm looking it up

Shaan Puri

It's this community where you find other people who have the same medical condition that you do. So, let's say you have some rare form of leukemia. You will find a group of other people who have the same form of leukemia. Then you could go there, and maybe in your real life, you can't find anybody who can empathize with you or share ideas, or share suffering. There are a bunch of other people going through the same thing as you, which is one of the most bonding experiences there is—going through a unique suffering that other people have experienced. I think these groups are probably incredibly valuable to the person and also sticky as a product. Now, they've raised $150 million, which tells me that this is a real business opportunity. "Patients Like Me" has been around for a long time, and I bet there's an opportunity to reboot the sort of "Patients Like Me" idea and just do it simpler, more mobile-friendly. I think you'd be doing a lot of good in the world and building a very valuable app around community. Maybe you could start this with Facebook groups. There are lots of Facebook groups for people who have certain conditions, and I think there's probably a way to bootstrap this. I believe this is a really valuable company to build, both in terms of the value to society and how...

Sam Parr

does this make money

Shaan Puri

And value as a business, I don't know how patients like me make money. I don't know if they have, like, pharmaceutical company sponsors for certain things, or I don't know what they do as far as that goes. Maybe it's a paid membership; I don't know. I'm assuming people would pay once they find some value in the community for, like, maybe premium education or a member's lounge or something like that. I'm not sure how they make money, but I do think that these are probably very, very valuable. The thing you did where you just kind of go ask if you want other people who have had similar experiences...

Sam Parr

the the the response was crazy right I've gotten a 100 in dms

Shaan Puri

Exactly! Because if you've experienced something like the way I felt, the urge to share with you this solution is strong. Like, this is what happens. Whether it's, "Hey, my pet won't eat," or, "I have a Maltipoo and she's a picky eater. I tried everything. Any help?" People will come to the rescue on Facebook and be like, "Here is a 10-part guide I just created for you because I went through that too and I found something that actually works." So, there's this very strong psychology around that. I think there's an opportunity to reboot "Patients Like Me." I would use Google AdWords because I think people go to Google when they have a problem.

Sam Parr

this is interesting

Shaan Puri

How to stop panic attacks? I would just use AdWords to grow this thing and try to get each niche to have tens of thousands of members inside.

Sam Parr

What calls it? Like the **Crazy Crew** [crazycrew.co]. This is awesome! I've never seen this. I gotta research this. Maybe that's a...

Shaan Puri

Good idea. I mean, I got so many disease things, right? Dude, when you had your Lyme disease problem, who saved you? You put it out there in public. I'm like, "I got this fucking thing," and then somebody was like, "Yo..."

Sam Parr

I got you

Shaan Puri

She's... yeah, I got you. And then she gave you like the miracle cure, and then you're like fine now, right? Like, you literally kind of got your life saved through doing something similar. Yeah.

Sam Parr

Yeah, the lady... I told the story about the lady who, I don't even know, bought me a $25,000 treatment. She didn't even know who I was. It was wild! I'm going to have to research this compelled... yeah, alright, well, good suggestion. I'm going to research this. I'd never heard of this. I've never heard of so many of these things: mental agility and patients like me. What a crazy business! I have to research it. Alright, I think that's the episode. We'll see if this is going to be good. This is our longest episode ever, I think.

Shaan Puri

yeah this one went a while alright we're out of here