Everything I Learned From 48 Hours With MrBeast (The +$1B Mindset) (#539)

Shaan Puri 0:00 Amongst this group of very successful people, it was very clear that Jimmy is an outlier. He's an outlier because of his mindset, because of his ambition, because of his level obs- of obsession, because of his work ethic, because of his absolute disregard for social norms. [laughs] So let me just tell you some things that stood out. [upbeat music] What's up, Sam? Uh, I'm back. I'm back from Camp MFM. You know, Camp- Is it even called Camp M- MFM if only one of us went? I don't know. We, we have to debate that, but I'm back. I have so much good stuff to share. I have... This is, this... It's a crazy event. Honestly, it's kind of a batshit crazy event. I'll give it batshit crazy. It is so interesting what happened here. I have so many notes I'm gonna share with you. But first, I saw something completely unrelated that I gotta tell you about. [laughs] So-

Sam Parr 0:55 By the way, before we even get to all of that, we have to explain that you hosted this big event. Now you're gonna tell me some amazing thing that you just saw. We do all of this for free, and all we are ax- asking for our dear viewer here, if you're on YouTube, hit that subscribe button for us. That's all we ask for. And people say that all the time, but you wanna know what, Shaan, what I wanna m- make sure that our listeners, our viewers know? It takes them literally a second, but it means so much to us and actually changes our lives if everyone does it. So hopefully, people will see the dedication that we have in this content and pay us back by just giving us a subscribe. So that's all I wanna say.

Shaan Puri 1:32 Change a life. Just change a life today with one simple tap. Um, all right. So [laughs] before I tell you all about Camp MFM, I gotta tell you about this amazing evil genius affiliate marketing play that I saw, uh, somebody share on Twitter. So I don't know if you saw this. It involves 23andMe. So, okay. So basically, this guy points this out. He goes, "Check this out. This is the most evil genius thing I've ever seen." And he points out this tweet that, um, a user, her name is Stella, posted. And she says, "Hey, my friend Elizabeth is looking for an unvaxxed sperm donor." Sam, you're halfway there. Um, she said, "I'm looking for somebody who's blue-eyed, white, 5'11"-

Sam Parr 2:11 Which... Wait, which... Wait, [laughs] which half? [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:16 [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:16 Like, I'm, I'm vaccinated, but I, now you need to convince me to give my sperm, or I'm like-

Shaan Puri 2:21 Yeah, exactly. [laughs]

Sam Parr 2:22 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:22 You're half eligible. Uh, all right. So blue-eyed, white, 5'11" or taller, blah, blah, blah. So it has this re- set of requirements.

Sam Parr 2:29 Big go.

Shaan Puri 2:29 And... But yeah, big go. But then, uh, a- and there's, so there's some things in here that are, like, a little bit interesting, makes you raise one eyebrow. So the first one, she says, "Follows a healthy, meat-focused diet." Specific, but okay. Second, "No Jewish or African ancestry." Slightly racist, but okay.

Sam Parr 2:47 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 2:48 Then it says, "Must be natural insemination. She will not do IVF. DM me." Okay. So she doesn't want to do the normal sperm donation process, wants natural insemination, which means, you know, you gotta-

Sam Parr 2:59 So a 5'10" white guy who's unvaxxed. So basically, anyone who lives in Missouri she wants to have sex with.

Shaan Puri 3:05 [laughs] Yeah.

Sam Parr 3:06 Got it.

Shaan Puri 3:07 So-

Sam Parr 3:08 Okay

Shaan Puri 3:08 ... you see that first thing. Then she tweets again, says, "Hey, s- that last tweet got so many, so much inbound, I just wanna add some detail." Um, so she retweets it again, reiterates the criteria, but then she adds some photos of the girl, too. She says, "As you can see, she is beautiful, pure-blooded European."

Sam Parr 3:27 Ugh.

Shaan Puri 3:27 Okay. Code word.

Sam Parr 3:28 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 3:28 Uh, "Intelligent, has, has a child-bearing body [laughs] which I've always dreamed of having myself."

Sam Parr 3:35 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 3:36 And, uh, "Your offspring will be raised extremely well." And they post a bunch of pictures of her, and it's, like, this kind of hot model-looking girl. So this guy points out. He's like, "This tweet got, like, almost 3 million views. And if you do it, if you DM the person, then they send you a link, and they're like, 'Hey, cool. You're interested. Awesome.' Um, you know, 'She would love to have, you know, naturally conceive with you, um, random 5'11" white guy who's unvaxxed. Um, you just gotta make sure you have the, that you satisfy all the criteria. Take this 23andMe and submit your results, and then that'll say that you're eligible.'" But it's, like, an affiliate code-

Sam Parr 4:14 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 4:15 ... for 23andMe. It's [laughs] this girl's... So probably, this... I say this girl. There's probably no girl. What actually it is, is this fat guy in his basement is tricking tons of guys who are like, "Maybe I'll impregnate this, this hot European model. Um, I just gotta take this 23andMe." And basically, even if you get paid, the, the normal 23andMe, like, referral bonus is 20 bucks per person who does it. So if you just do the math on this funnel, 3 million people see this tweet. Let's say that one-tenth of 1% [laughs] are gonna actually go do this. That's 3,000 people that went and did this. At minimum, that's 60K in revenue off this tweet [laughs] of affiliate revenue. Isn't this crazy?

Sam Parr 5:03 That next week, 23andMe's sitting down. They're, like, at their marketing, uh-

Shaan Puri 5:07 [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:07 They're in their marketing meeting, and they're like, "All right. We have to... Like, let's do some... Let's look at the data and see who our target demographic is. Wow, like, I... Apparently, this marketing company just told us they did some research. Our new users love jorts. Should we, like-

Shaan Puri 5:21 [laughs]

Sam Parr 5:21 ... Should we have a bunch of white guys named Todd who wear, like, jean shorts in our commercials? Like, well, like, that's... Is that our new target demographic?" They're just, like, everything's skewed now, where they're just, like-

Shaan Puri 5:30 [laughs] Yeah

Sam Parr 5:30 ... all this one type of person.

Shaan Puri 5:32 Totally. Totally. They're like, "Oh, I guess Twitter's our best channel."

Sam Parr 5:36 Yes. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 5:36 "And, uh, Stella appears to be our best retailer. Who is Stella?" Um-

Sam Parr 5:39 Should we be advertising on Twitch?

Shaan Puri 5:40 [laughs] Is this evil, or is it evil genius? 'Cause it's a fine line between evil and evil genius. I, I think it's evil genius. So let's go on to the next part. Camp MFM. All right. So let's start with the following. Was it good? Was it great? Was it life-changing? I'm gonna go with life-changing. I'm gonna go with life-changing. That's how it was.

Sam Parr 6:02 Everyone I spoke with who went It ranged between the worst was great, the highest was life-changing. So you had a good... That, that's a good high end, yes.

Shaan Puri 6:11 [laughs] So let me just explain what we did. So we basically took 20 people to, um, to Greenville, North Carolina, which is middle of nowhere. Um, we basically stayed at MrBeast's house, uh, there. So w- last year we s- we did this thing once, and we realized, "Oh, this is really cool. If we bring a bunch of interesting people that we know in the business world, and then a few entertainers and some people that MrBeast knows in his world, this can become a very interesting event." We did it again this year. We had 20 people, and I got some highlights, I got some lowlights, but where do you wanna start? How should I, how should I do this?

Sam Parr 6:49 [upbeat music] I can't find this client info.

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Sam Parr 7:06 What, what I actually wanted to ask you about was, uh, the evolution of Jimmy, AKA MrBeast, because my perception of him last year... So I went and hung out. I w- I went to the one last year. I couldn't go this year. But last year... How old is he? Uh, was he 24 last year when we went?

Shaan Puri 7:22 Yeah, he's 25 now.

Sam Parr 7:23 Okay, so he's super young. And, and, and so here's my perception of him when I met him last year. He had, he

Sam Parr 7:30 clearly had this factor of like, I hadn't met anyone like him, but when we talk about, like, a Steve Jobs or, or, uh, an Elon Musk, these conquerors, like, he had that it factor. It was very clear that this guy was crazy focused and he was insane in mostly all the right ways. But he still had some aspects of a normal 24-year-old. Um, he felt a little impatient about certain things. He felt like, uh, he was still trying to, like... He had n- he had great conversations, but then there's other times where it's like, oh, you're just a normal 24-year-old, where you, uh, maybe, uh, are, are... You said something rude or something like that. And then this year I heard from someone who went from the year before, they go, "Dude, Jimmy has evolved so much."

Shaan Puri 8:13 [laughs]

Sam Parr 8:13 He's s- he's still only 25, but... Which is insane. He's only 25, but he now has, like... Is m- morphing into this proper visionary, where i-i- I believe that he's gonna take over the world. Was that true?

Shaan Puri 8:27 A, a lot of that is true. Uh, uh, y- you could definitely see the evolution, which is kinda crazy. So he, um... So for people who don't know, Jimmy is basically one of the most famous people on Planet Earth. It's kind of, like, bizarre when you look at the numbers. Like, he is the biggest creator on the biggest app in the world. He's, he's the number-one most followed creator on YouTube. He's almost the number-one channel on YouTube. There's only, like, one channel that's bigger, which is, like, this Indian music channel. Um, he's the fastest-growing. He's the biggest. He's the biggest on YouTube. He's the biggest on TikTok. So the two biggest entertainment apps in the world, YouTube and TikTok, he's the nu- basically the number-one creator on both.

Sam Parr 9:09 Weren't the stats, like, one out of five... What was it? Was it, uh, maybe, like, one out of 10 people on Earth see his videos once a month, or something like some stupid stat like that?

Shaan Puri 9:20 It... Dude, you can look at this 100 ways and it's insane. It's like more people watch his content than watch the Super Bowl every month. It's like, "Okay, well, what are we doing here? What, what is this? How, what does this even mean?" Um-

Sam Parr 9:30 I think, like, his average video gets 80 million views, unique views.

Shaan Puri 9:33 So it's, it's hard to even, like, fathom that. And then you go outside with him and, you know, wherever you are, it's like a Michael Jackson level of fame, right? So, so basically-

Sam Parr 9:42 Was it really? I mean, we didn't go anywhere last year, but you guys, like, went out in public.

Shaan Puri 9:45 We basically didn't go anywhere this year, but you could still see it. It still happens. Um, so c- so kind of insane. So that's the first thing is just it's hard to even wrap your head around that level of s- of fame and success at this age. He's running a billion-dollar company, so he's... His company is worth well over a billion dollars, which is the combination of his channel-

Sam Parr 10:03 Is he the running it?

Shaan Puri 10:04 Yeah, it's him. It's his... It's all... The whole ship is him, right? Like-

Sam Parr 10:07 But does he have a CEO, or is he also the CEO?

Shaan Puri 10:09 He has, he has, like, a CEO, but, like, the CEO reports to him. He's the owner.

Sam Parr 10:12 Wow. Okay.

Shaan Puri 10:13 Right? So, like, the owner is num- number one. Um, okay, so he's got basically... What, what changed from last year? Let's, let's start with that. Uh, first the guy lost 30 pounds. [laughs] So after last year's camp, uh, he watched the video of himself playing basketball and was like, "Oh, my God, I'm so slow and out of shape. F this." And you could see that, like, you know, the type of person who can become the number-one creator on YouTube, you know, by obsessing and focusing for 10 years, guess what? That guy can transform his body in a year too, right? [laughs] So he's, like, on an extreme, like, bodybuilder workout, uh, program. He's got, like, his bodybuilder meals. He's got his trainer who follows him around. And he- they built a gym right outside of his studio that we went and hung out in, it's like, this is where he works out every... He's b- he's like, "I only have three goals this year: grow the channel, get big, and sell chocolate." [laughs] Those are the three things he's doing. And, like, that's another interesting thing. Last year when we talked to him, I don't know... You didn't go to his studio last year, but we did, and, um, he had, like, 10 things he was doing, and was like, "Oh, I wanna, you know, do this mobile gaming thing, and then I'm doing this over here."

Sam Parr 11:21 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 11:21 "I'm doing this, this." And, uh, because why not? He could do any of those things, right? Like, you and me find it hard to say no to opportunities.

Sam Parr 11:30 He has-

Shaan Puri 11:30 I had texted Ben this-

Sam Parr 11:31 ... 100 times more.

Shaan Puri 11:32 Ben was... So every night me and Ben... Ben, Ben, so Ben Levy, he is my business partner. He helped organize the whole event. But during the event we're basically not talking, 'cause we're just working different parts of the room, and, you know, me and Ben talk 24/7 anyway, so we don't need to talk at this event. But at the end of the night he would text me like, "Yo," like, "All right, brain dump." Like, we would just text random words. We don't even explain them to each other. It's like, we'll talk about this later. Here's some takeaways. Here's some insights. Here's some learnings. Here's some ways that we could help somebody in this room, like, whatever. And one of the things I text him, I go, "It's embarrassing, man. Jimmy has one... literally at least 1,000 times more opportunities than us." Like, this podcast creates a lot of opportunities and, you know, where we are in the tech world, it creates some opportunities, but he literally has at least 1000x more opportunities. And he does less... He says yes to less stuff than we do, we have. Like, we're doing four things, he's doing two. And, like, that's insane. Like, that's, that just shows, like, how poorly we are, are, are, are s- staying focused and committed to what actually matters and b- and being smart about saying yes and no to things. I said, "If this guy could say no to literally 1,000 or maybe 10,000 better opportunities than what we're saying no to, like, we... That's something to learn from." So, okay, what changed? Uh, he lost a bunch of weight. His channel has basically, like, doubled in the last year [laughs] that we've, we've talked to him. He's, like, added, like, I don't know, 100 million more subscribers. Uh, his chocolate business has taken off. So I really underestimated this chocolate business, Feastables. When... I had a chance to invest in this thing, like, at the earlier rounds, and I was like, "Chocolate company? Like, that's... I don't know. Why, why chocolate?" Like, uh, I get it, your audience is young, but, like, chocolate's kinda, like, low-priced. It's like, uh, you know... Yeah, I mean, how often do people, eh, how often do people rebuy this thing? Like, shouldn't he be building, like, you know, a mobile game or something like that? That's kinda what I was thinking.

Sam Parr 13:23 And last year when we were with him, I think the results were like, it's okay, or it's, it, it might, it might be okay. Like, last year-

Shaan Puri 13:29 It was kinda like number three. He was like, "Oh, I got Beast Burger" It's his burger chain, virtual restaurant. That's doing... I think it was doing, like, 100 million gross or something at the time. They've since shut that down. Um, and then... Or, or he, like, doesn't work on that anymore. They had, like, a couple of things in the pipe. They had this, like, translation service thing for, like, YouTubers, whatever. They had all this stuff. Chocolate was, like, number three maybe last year. And now it's like, every day I wake up and think, "How do I sell more chocolate?" Right? Like, it is, like, that level of, like, hyper-obsession, and, you know, gonna do hundreds of millions in chocolate sales this year with a clear path to how this could become... Like, he's like, basically he's like, "There's five chocolate companies that matter. They're valued in the billions, up to, you know, $30 billion. Uh, we are eating share like crazy. Um, you know, these guys can't touch us when it comes to marketing." And so, you know, we are just blowing through the, like, retail doors, basically. It's like, yeah, like, get into Walmart, Walmart is the main thing, and guess what? I can drive more people to Walmart than these guys can. And so he has just, like, really blown that business up, which is pretty impressive. T- you know, now it's pretty obvious that that's gonna be a, a billion dollar plus business. I would bet that he's gonna sell that chocolate brand for $6 billion. That's my guess. I think that's what's gonna... Uh, I think if you fast-forward the news three years from now, uh, you know, MrBeast sells the majority stake or... in, in the chocolate business for, at a $6 billion valuation.

Sam Parr 14:55 That's insane. And what about his mindset? Um, so you said he focused more. Um, what else changed?

Shaan Puri 15:02 Well, uh, so Joe Rogan has this thing he says about David Goggins where he goes, "He's uncommon amongst uncommon men." So this room was really interesting because, I don't know, the average net wor- or, you know, even take out Joe, who's, like, you know, worth, like, $7 to $10 billion or something. You know, he... When we were doing the intros, I was like, "You know, between me and Joe, we're worth almost $10 billion." [laughs]

Sam Parr 15:27 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 15:27 It's just all Joe. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 15:30 The, so, so basically, even if you take him out of it, you know, this is a room of very, very successful people. Average is probably, like, I don't know, $100 million net worth or something like that. It... Amongst this group of very successful people, it was very clear that Jimmy is an outlier. He's an outlier because of his mindset, because of his ambition, because of his level obs- of obsession, because of his work ethic, because of his absolute disregard for social norms. [laughs] So let me just tell you some things that stood out. So basically, he's, uh, he was very humble. He was like, you know... He's like, "I..." He's like, "I've made every mistake you can make trying to run this business." He's like, "I've hired and fired, like, six CEOs. I thought, 'We hired the Disney guy. Surely he'll know things.' No, he doesn't know shit about YouTube. That's not gonna work. Uh, we hire this person over here, and then they build the whole thing out, and I realize, oh my God, they built this wrong. We gotta get rid of all that." He's like, "So I've made all these mistakes." He's like, "So I wanna learn from you guys because I've, I'm only 25. I've only been doing this for a couple years now. You guys might've been doing this for 20 more years than me," right? Like, there's people in the room who are 50 years old, right? So it's like, it's a different, um, different, like, level of experience. He's like, he's like, "I'm just making things up. I'm sitting here in North Carolina just making things up. I don't even have access to people like you on most days to even ask questions." So he'd be like... [laughs] So I'll tell you some examples. So he's like, uh... We were like, "So what worked for you? How have you scaled this thing up?" He goes, "Oh, I just create clones." And we're like, "What?" He's like, "Yeah, I just wanted to clone myself, 'cause I was like, 'God, I know I could do this, but I don't have the time. So I need to clone somebody.'" [laughs] He's like... We're like, "What do you mean? What do you do?" He's like, "So I literally have somebody essentially move in with me, and I just duct tape 'em, duct tape them to my hip." He's like, "You're gonna follow me everywhere to everything. And for this first six months, all you're gonna do is just shadow me and just learn exactly how I think and what I want and what I do and why I do it. And then in six months, you start getting your... You start doing those things." And he's like, "I basically now cloned myself several times, and now I have... And then they clone themselves." He's like, "That's what we do." And we're like, "So you literally have the guy live with you?" He's like, "Yeah. What? That... It would be better than if he didn't, right?" And we're like, "Yeah," but like, "What about his, like, family and stuff?" He's like, "Yeah, I mean, I just... Do you, you wanna do this or not?" [laughs] And so, like, like, one of the guys, one of the guys who's, like, his right-hand man now, last year when we went, he was a guy just like, uh, you know, he does these challenges like, "Live in this circle for 100 days and you get, like, half a million dollars." This was the guy living in the circle. He was just, like, a random contestant. But he had a background in video production and he had some experience, and so they actually recruited him after that experiment to work with him. Now he's, like, his right-hand man [laughs] that does everything with him. He was with him 24/7. I was like, "Dude, you got, like, kids. This is, like, a Saturday. Are you supposed to be working?" He's like, "Yeah, I work every day." I work all day every day. And w- he's like, "I made a deal with my family. I was like, 'Look, I'm coming out here. It's a once in a lifetime experience. You're not gonna see me for like the next nine months.' Hopefully after nine months I will have like set up a system where I'll be back, you know, home a little bit more, but like this is an, this is an adventure and I wanna go on it. This is like the pinnacle of my career. It's a once in a lifetime opportunity to work with this guy on this type of stuff. So I'm gonna go all in." And this all-in mentality was just so per- pervasive. I'll give you another simple example. The guy who's currently his assistant, we were like, "How'd you get the job as assistant?" And he's like, "Oh, um..." We're like, "Did you interview for this? How did he like pick you?" He's like, "Not in an interview." He's like, "They, uh, really wanted to play this board game, but, you know, Amazon Prime was gonna take two days. And so one of his guys hit me up 'cause he knew I had the game, and he's like, 'Fly here right now, and, uh, we want this game now. We wanna play now. We don't wanna wait two days for Amazon Prime. We want to play this game tonight.'" He's like, "So I just got on a flight and I came and I handed him the board game, and they were like, 'Cool. If you're willing to do that, you can, like you can make it here. Uh, do you want, you want a job? [laughs] You're extreme enough.'" And he's like, he was descri- so I was asking this guy, I was like, "How do you filter for this?" 'Cause they were, they were trying to pick up like how do we keep this culture as we scale of people who are just all in? And he's like, uh, he's like, "Now when I interview people, we do like these psychographic like tests to get, figure out your personality profile." But he's like, "Then I'm gonna talk to you," and he's like, "I'm gonna spend an hour convincing you how hard this is gonna be and how much you're gonna have to sacrifice to be here. And I can just see in that, do they flinch? Do they start asking me about vacation policies or do they get excited about like kind of like going on this mission, like this mission to Mars and our, or their, of their version of the mission to Mars?" I thought that was fascinating that he's basically breeding this insane work culture. The team has leveled up so much. The quality of people he has around him from last year to this year has leveled up so much, and he just breaks all the social norms, like just being like, yeah, uh... He's like one guy, he's like, uh, I talked to his main like one of his like main content guys, he's like editor, thumbnail guy. Like this guy's job title is like Master of Thumbnails basically, he just does thumbnails. And I was like, "How did this work?" He's like, "Well, I had my own channel that was doing well." I was, "How do you convince you to do this?" He's like, "Well, his channel was taking off." He's like, "We were always talking about like strategies and ideas every day in like our little mastermind, and we would just sit in Discord all day and talk about what, like what's working, what's not, studying the platform." And he's like, "I just knew this guy's like hyper-obsessed. He's gonna make it." And he offered me the... He's like, "First I started helping him, and he wasn't paying me or whatever. I was just helping him out whenever I could." He's like, "Then he told me like, 'Hey, I need, uh, you know, I need a thumbnail for this like tonight.'" He's like, "Oh dude, sorry, I'm at a wedding. And like, by the way, I don't work for you, so you know, it's not gonna work." He's like, "So he wired me 10 grand," and he's like, uh, he's like, "Can you make this thumbnail please?" [laughs] He's like, "So I told my girlfriend," he's like, "I left the wedding and I made the thumbnail and I've never looked back since. And since my role has grown and, you know, it's, he's made it all worth my while to be here to shut down my own channel to go all in." And I just thought it was fascinating the level of like, like disregard for like convention. Partly because he doesn't know it, and partly 'cause he's like, "Well, we need this, so what's the best way? Like can't we just... Theoretically, couldn't we just find a guy with the game and tell him to book a flight and he'll be here in a few hours? Cool. We're not limited by Amazon's shipping." Like 99 people out of 100 would not try to bypass Amazon's fastest shipping as like the way to get something [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:47 I remember, um, years ago, 10 plus years ago, my wife worked at Facebook and she was, um, telling her father about working at Facebook. And sh- I think my wife worked there starting when there was 6 or 9,000 people, I forget. And uh, my father-in-law was like, "Why do you need 9,000 people to run a website? Like why do you need 9,000 people for like a webpage? What do you, what do all those people do?" And that's what I, I... someone had said that Jimmy has, uh, MrBeast has, um, uh, hundreds of employees working for him. And at first I was like, "How do you need hundreds of employees?" And then I had to re- I had to rethink it. I'm like, well, no, he's actually, he's a movie studio. It just, instead of theaters-

Shaan Puri 22:30 Yep

Sam Parr 22:30 ... it's on, it's on your phone or on your TV.

Shaan Puri 22:32 Totally.

Sam Parr 22:33 I was like, this guy is, he has just built like the new, the new Paramount or whatever the studios are, the Warner Brothers, and that's exactly what he's doing. And it's crazy fascinating because, you know, I did this a little bit with newsletters, but not with nearly that intensity. Where it was like, let's just take a small thing or something people think is small and try to blow it up. And at the time it was email. People thought it was, uh, just like a, something you disregard. I'm like, no, we can get like 5 million subscribers and turn it into a business, and of course it was only a fraction of what he did. But that's basically what he has done with YouTube, but at a, with a much better result. Where he's like, what's this one, this one small thing that people are dismissing? And he's built a whole studio around it. It's pretty amazing.

Shaan Puri 23:13 And the other thing he, you know, if you talk to him, he's like, uh, he's like, "It's impossible to do what I'm doing better than me." He's like, "Because I'm gonna spend, you know, 10 times more than anyone. I use every waking hour of my day to think about this. I hire all the best people in the world. I reinvest all of my profits back into this, and I'm gonna do this, I... exac- and I think in decades, not, not years. So how could you beat that?" And if you just abstract this away, like forget about the fact that he's doing that for YouTube channels. Like there's something to be inspired by and learn from that, from that, right? Like if you are willing to work and think in decades, not years. Work every hour, every, every thought in your brain is consumed by, how do I do this better? Um, you reinvest all your money and say, "I will spend as much as I can to make the best product possible to get this into as many people's hands as possible." Like can you lose? Like what is there to fear? What do, how could you possibly lose with that equation? And I think that that is just like a, a very fascinating, uh, mindset to see in practice. A lot of people could say that shit. Very few people can actually do it

Sam Parr 24:19 And I know that he says he invests everything in, in... We had Reid on the pod, and he had kind of insinuated that, like, sometimes what they do is it's a mess, like, because they move so fast, so like we just miss some stuff, but that's okay. Do you think that Jimmy is cash poor then? Like, is he just like everything is tied up into his business?

Shaan Puri 24:35 I, I don't know. I don't wanna speculate too much on that. But, uh, I think, you know, the reality is he ra- he, he's a, he is a venture-backed startup. He raised venture capital, and he is doing what, you know, um, what an Airbnb did or what a Facebook did, which is like, "I'm gonna lose a ton of money now every year building up all of this market share so that then I can make back, you know, I can become a $10 billion or $100 billion company." That's literally what he's doing.

Sam Parr 25:03 And-

Shaan Puri 25:03 He raised like 50 million plus and invest all of that into content to gr- build this enormous following of being the most followed creator on TikTok and YouTube and, you know, hundreds of millions of, of fans. And then he used that to launch a chocolate business that's gonna be worth billions of dollars, plus his back catalog is worth a, a lot of money, plus his sponsorships and, and ad revenue will, will make a lot of money, plus any other business he launches will make a lot of money, right? So he, he just did the... He, he, he is a movie s- movie production studio in terms of his operations, but he's like a venture, he's more like a venture-backed startup than he is like a creator.

Sam Parr 25:38 Can you talk... So when I hear, uh, about the way that he lives, part... I, I'm definitely inspired, but I'm only inspired because I'm not gonna change the way I do things so much like him because that's just not my personality, and I don't think that's what I enjoy, is to be that all-in of like... You know, I'm, I'm more well-balanced, which means I'm gonna be less successful, and I'm okay with that. But there are, um... You had other guys there. So Joe Gebbia, I don't know what his intensity level is like. I've only spent three minutes with him, and I've read about him. That's about it. But then you also had Syed. So Syed's 32. Syed has businesses. He was on our podcast. He's got businesses that no one will talk about because it's not really that popular. But I imagine he's in the realm of being a billionaire. And then you had Joe Gebbia, who is multibillionaire, and his company is one of the biggest and best in the world. How did... Did you learn different perspectives on how to crush it based off of being around, like, those three examples, Jimmy, Syed, and, uh, Joe?

Shaan Puri 26:38 Y- yeah, 100%. I, I'll give you a couple of quick observations. So one observation is, uh... And by the way, there was probably, like, two or three more people that were like, you know, billionaires at this event. So you get to see like a range of like, "Oh, how do people act? How do people think? How do people operate?" And it's like, yeah, Syed's like small team, simple business, unsexy, not gonna be famous, don't wanna be famous, don't want people knowing my name. I wanna be able to walk around. He travels the world with his son, um, you know, for two weeks out of every month. That's what he wants in his lifestyle. You talk to MrBeast about kids, and he's like, "It's a shame people have kids, man. They go soft," right?

Sam Parr 27:16 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 27:17 He's just like, he's just like, he's like, "Damn." He, he literally like... I don't- I won't put words in his mouth, but the, the general feeling is like, it sucks that people start off really ambitious trying to do big, cool, cool, awesome shit and then, like, just get tired or... They, they either get tired or worn out or disillusioned, or they, uh, just shift their focus to family and like... He's just like, "That's not gonna be me." Um, and so you have t- totally different perspectives on these things, and, you know, no judgment. Y- there's many ways to win. Each person should choose the game they wanna play. Um, but I will share a couple of observations. Number one, this is probably, uh, just a good observation for me in general in life. The smartest and most successful people in that room were the quietest. They were the ones doing the most listening, the least bragging, the least kind of like, you know, uh, you know, word vomit of storytelling or trying to interject themselves. "Oh, you did that? I did something similar too. Let me tell you about me, me, me, me." And, uh, it was the people who were the least successful and the least, you know, sharp in terms of, like, had the most, uh, wisdom or, or intelligence on a, on a, on a topic that were talking the most. And I'm guilty of that. I'm in the talk the most camp. So I was like, "Damn, that's a real, like, takeaway for me from this, was watch how those people operate." You wanna be them, you have to watch how they operate. And, you know, they definitely do that, the, the sort of the ratio of two ear, two ears for every one mouth, right? Like double the amount of listening as talking, if not more. And, uh, that was just so obvious to me at this event. They had the le... And it was also the people who were the actually the most successful had the least kind of like... I would say the whole group was pretty good about, like, not trying to brag or one-upmanship, you know, or try to like assert themselves. Um, but the people who were the most successful had that, had that, had that in, in the least quantity, which I thought was very, very interesting. The second thing I thought that was, that was interesting was, um, uh, just back in ter- in ter... There was like always these... The people who were very, very successful in one area, more often than not, if I asked them about some random side quest hobby, they were also like world-class at that thing. Like we were talking about, you know, Joe was super successful at Airbnb. He's also like, you know, extremely fit. Not just like kind of fit. He's extremely fit. Uh, Jimmy or MrBeast, you know, uh, the day after our event, he's like, "Oh, I'm, uh..." I was like, "What are you doing tomorrow?" He's like, "Oh, I flew... I'm flying in all of..." He's like, "I play this one board game that's super niche called Dune." He's like, "And I... There's no tournament for Dune, so I created it, and I'm flying in the, the French champion, the British champion, the German champion, like the best players in the world to come compete with me at this game." He's like, "I did this last year, and I won."

Sam Parr 30:02 Oh my God.

Shaan Puri 30:02 He's like, "I play, you know... These guys play 10,000 hours a year or whatever, 100,000 hours a year or something crazy. Like, I don't have that time, but I, like, you know, when I do play, I binge this thing. And, you know, that's my way of unwinding, is to become world-class at this random niche strategy board game." And like we've heard these stories about how, you know- Peter Thiel is also a grandmaster chess champion. Or how-

Sam Parr 30:24 Or Travis Kalanick was ranked number three in Wii Tennis.

Shaan Puri 30:27 Wii Tennis globally, right? And it's like-

Sam Parr 30:29 Yeah

Shaan Puri 30:29 ... yeah, Jimmy literally won the competition against the other best champions in the world at this board game, and they- they were so bad, they were like, "We gotta run this back." He's like, "Great, let's run it back. Let's do it again this year." And like, you know, he put up a 20 grand prize, but there's like no prize pool for this thing, uh, 'cause it's like such a niche game. And I thought that's also kinda interesting which is once you develop kinda this laser beam that can come out your eyes and you hone that laser beam on your main thing, if you ever shift your focus to something else, you're like Homelander and you just can just burn a laser through whatever that next thing is because you have practiced the art of, you know, obsession, focus, excellence. You know, breaking something down into its core parts and building it back up again. That was the other thing where I was like, "Dude, how do you describe yourself? Are you... Like, do you des- are you an entertainer? Are you like a chocolate guy now? Are you a business, are you a businessman 'cause you're in a room with business people? Like, how do you... Are you a YouTuber? What do you call yourself?" You know what he said? Take a guess what he said.

Sam Parr 31:25 I don't know. A business builder?

Shaan Puri 31:27 He's like, "I'm a data junkie."

Sam Parr 31:29 No way.

Shaan Puri 31:31 He's like, "Yeah, I basically just studied the algorithm. I studied the platform, and I figured out what's gonna work. And I decided I'm gonna study this more than anyone studies anything." And he's like, "Then I've basically figured out what type of content's gonna work. And then through my experimentation, I figured out what's gonna work." Like, when they, you know, when we put up a thumbnail for our YouTube channel, we put up one thumbnail. And then sometimes we're like, "You know what? I don't know if that's a good one." And then we're like, "Screw it. We'll A/B test."

Sam Parr 31:56 Our YouTube team is gonna hear this and they're gonna be freaking out. I think they put up a lot more than that. [laughs] But-

Shaan Puri 32:01 No, no, they don't.

Sam Parr 32:02 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 32:02 They, they A/B test. [laughs] There's A and B. That's it. You know what he does? He'll put up... [laughs] Like, they will test, like, hundreds of thumbnails, like rap- in rapid succession. During the f- when they first release a video, they will cycle through hundreds of thumbnails programmatically to try to find the winning one during that. And then they're also like, "Well, our loyal fans, our hardcore viewers come first. They're gonna want to see Jimmy's face. But after that, after, you know, basically the 24-hour period, it's gonna be more fans that are from the platform, just people browsing YouTube. They don't know Jimmy. They don't wanna see his face. So let's just put this, uh, you know, this bathtub full of snakes or whatever the, the challenge is."

Sam Parr 32:39 Well, and-

Shaan Puri 32:40 "Let's make that the thumbnail." And then-

Sam Parr 32:41 Jack told me about that, and I go, "Jack, is he doing that because he's so big, or is he so big because he did that?" And he said the second one.

Shaan Puri 32:50 He's so big because he did that.

Sam Parr 32:52 Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri 32:53 Yeah.

Sam Parr 32:53 I'm like he, the, he's successful because of that. He doesn't do that now because he's successful.

Shaan Puri 32:59 Another random nerdy takeaway I had. Um, but and, and actually I'll just leave it as this last one. So the random nerdy takeaway, um, he is making the l- the biggest... He a- he is attacking the biggest TAM on YouTube. So like TAM is this idea of total addressable market. And I could think of a viral idea, maybe an idea that's, that's kinda juicy, but like, his ideas are, uh, like, you know, a eight-year-old in the Philippines or a 25-year-old in the United States or a 40-year-old woman in, in the UK would all be interested in his video. Why? 'Cause his, his video is a like y- it's a video you don't even need words to explain. You could literally just with the thumbnail or a, like a hieroglyphic explain this. It's like, "Man trapped in room 100 days." All right, I'm interested. What is that? [laughs] Right? Or like, you know, um, you know, two people, uh, l- you know, first to leave the circle loses. It's like, okay, I get it, and a million dollars first to leave the circle loses. Or he'll do a video that's like, um, million dollars if this, if this like, you know, FBI agent can catch me, right? It's just like very, very simple premises that appeal to a r- really, really broad amount of people, and I just... That was something I hadn't really appreciated before. I thought he was making kinda like viral clickbaity type of stuff. What I didn't factor in was he will only pick ideas that can literally appeal to like one billion people, and that's just different than what most people do on the platform. Most people don't... Like our channel, for example. The stuff we talk about, it's not meant to do that. It's meant to appeal to a narrow niche of people in a deep way. He plays a different game. Appeal to the entire world in a small way.

Sam Parr 34:46 What did you think of hanging out with like guys like Jack Smith and Val? That was... So that was the first. So we had Val. Or I had... One day you weren't here, so I had Val on the pod. Val's a guy who has like four different companies with like three or two of them in the $100 million a year range. What did you think of hanging out with a guy like Val? He's cool, right?

Shaan Puri 35:02 Everybody had interesting things to share. Can I tell you the lowlights? 'Cause I don't wanna just say all the good things. Can I tell you the bad things?

Sam Parr 35:08 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 35:08 Fir- uh, the big, the worst thing was not getting to invite everyone. So we only invited 20 people this year. We invited less people than last year, 'cause last year was kind of a lot to manage. Like, we had like almost 30 people last year. This year we targeted 15, so we tried to cut it in half. Um, it ended up being 20 at the end, but uh, that was the worst part because, you know, it's really, really

Shaan Puri 35:30 hard to say no to people or like not invite people who you, you're friends with. You just didn't wa- you know, they just... You're trying to create an event where there's new people there and so therefore-

Sam Parr 35:38 Mm-hmm

Shaan Puri 35:38 ... you just can't do it. So that was the, that was shitty. Uh, also another thing, I hate hosting these things. I know it's good, meaning there's so much value in hosting this. People feel so appreciated.

Sam Parr 35:47 It's a lot of work.

Shaan Puri 35:48 It's a lot of work and it's... Honestly, I'm okay with work. It's just socially like I feel drained. You know how sometimes you say this about the podcast and you're like, "Dude, I feel drained after these"? And I'm like, "Dude, I could go all day." At the end of the night every one of these I'm like, "I am so over-socialed out." I am, I'm, I'm, I'm an introvert actually it turns out.

Sam Parr 36:06 You're performing as well.

Shaan Puri 36:07 And I want everybody to have a good time and it's like dude, you can't control if people are having a good time. Yeah, you're working basically. And so it was socially I felt so, uh, exhausted. Socially exhausted is the right word. The last one or so- a couple other ones. Basketball ... kind of mediocre. It was pretty sloppy, [laughs] because the overlap of people who are w- you know, super successful and interesting that also are good pickup basketball players, surprisingly low. [laughs] Also-

Sam Parr 36:35 Dude

Shaan Puri 36:36 ... people lie. We're like-

Sam Parr 36:37 [clears throat]

Shaan Puri 36:37 ... "Yo, do you play?" They're like, "Yeah, love to." They show up, I'm like, "You, you don't play." [laughs] What the fuck?

Sam Parr 36:43 Do you, you... Well, next year do fighting. Do fight camp.

Shaan Puri 36:46 That... So we agreed to do a fight camp.

Sam Parr 36:48 I talked to Michael Bisping before. Michael Bisping, a UFC guy and YouTuber. He would be interesting because if he would... Everyone would wanna meet Jimmy or Joe Gebbia.

Shaan Puri 36:56 He's awesome. Yeah.

Sam Parr 36:57 Michael Bisping would be cool. I bet... I mean, uh, you know, some UFC guys have listened to us and DM'd us. That would be fun.

Shaan Puri 37:03 I wanna... This is what I wanna do. I wanna take any of, like, the, kind of the hobbies, uh, and then mix, basically like integrate them. So right, rather than like work/life balance where it's like there's the things I like to do, and then there's work, and then they're separate, they're always trading off time against each other. No, no, integrate them. And so take something I love to do, which would be like, you know, like boxing or, or sparring in some way, or basketball, and integrate it with like, you know, a networking event basically, which is what we did here.

Sam Parr 37:27 And, and you lost 10... You lost... So last year, last year was crazy because this is when I saw that Jimmy was insane. We were all just hanging out in this bask- basketball court and he, like, didn't even make a ordeal of it. He just goes, "Hey Shaan, if you can make this half court shot, I'll give you $10,000." And he didn't even say like, "If you don't make it, I get this," or, "You only have three shots to make it." Like, there was no s- I was like, "What the fuck, Jimmy? Why would you make this bet?" And he was just insane, and he did it, and you did it in, like, number five or three or something and he gave you 10 grand. And I heard this year you lost 10 grand doing the same thing with someone.

Shaan Puri 38:00 [laughs] Yeah. Another low light. I lost the half court shot this year. I lost 10 grand to Joe. And it's one thing to lose $10,000. It's another thing to lose $10,000 to a multi-billionaire. [laughs] Because I was like, "Oh, damn." This is, uh, this is, uh, it has a little extra kick to it. It's so like-

Sam Parr 38:17 Yeah, you paid for-

Shaan Puri 38:18 ... it, it was all in good fun

Sam Parr 38:18 ... 15 minutes, 15 minutes fly time on his jet.

Shaan Puri 38:21 [laughs] Yeah, exactly. Uh, exactly. Um, and actually we-

Sam Parr 38:27 I wanna know-

Shaan Puri 38:27 Because we lost the game, we had to go and do the, like, ice plunge in the, like, freezing cold lake thing. Um, so that was also, you know, part of the penalty of, of losing the final championship game, so that kinda sucked. Um, yeah, so those are some of the, the, some of the lowlights.

Sam Parr 38:42 Someone who went, mentioned to me, I, they didn't say that you guys discussed this, but I assumed because he kept bringing it up, about Prime. Um-

Shaan Puri 38:51 Yes

Sam Parr 38:51 ... and apparent- so this is pretty mind-bog- so the MrBeast stuff is mind-boggling that he has a chocolate company that makes hundreds of millions of dollars. I looked

Sam Parr 39:00 up Prime. So Prime was started by Logan Paul and KSI. Publicly they said that the business in the second year of business did $1.2 billion in revenue, and I imagine that Prime must have come up in your conversations. And I, someone said that the two guys who founded it n- alongside Logan and KSI, were like young kids. Almost like they implied like they were nobodies, like they had no business in getting into this industry, and it has just crushed it. And I guess my mind is like a billion dollars in sales, that's worth, if you're Prime, that's worth, like, a really high multiple because of how fast it's growing. That's worth billions of dollars. So you basically have created billions and billions of dollars in value off of a creator. It's mind-boggling. Did you learn anything interesting about Prime?

Shaan Puri 39:44 Yeah. So I w- I think some of that's accurate and some of it's not. So they did do over a billion dollars, probably 1.3, 1.5 billion, in what's kind of like its first full year. You know? It, it launched in 2022, so the 2023 numbers are the first full year of, of, you know, full calendar year of business. So that's, that's bonkers, right? Obviously that's bonkers. No... What, what business does over a billion dollars in revenue in its first year? That's pretty crazy. Um, they're not kids, so I think they're in their 20s, but they're not kids. They are also not like never done this before. Remember we talked about those, like, status signals of, like, uh, the, the green flags of when you're young, right? Video game player, um, hacker of, of popular thing. Another one, you know, running your own Minecraft servers. That's another one. Um, one other one is sneaker flipper. So these guys were sneaker flippers. That's how they kind of like... That was their road into business, was selling, you know, sneakers. Then they created this, uh, kind of like... They did a couple things, but then they, they ended up creating something called Alani Nu, which I don't know if you heard about this, but it's like kind of this, like, posh drink that like, um, it was started with this Instagram creator. She's not anywhere near the level of like a Logan Paul or whatever. Uh, but they started this thing. They've done partnerships with Kim Kardashian and others. Like, they made Kim Aid, like the Kim Kardashian flavor thing. Alani Nu they did before Prime.

Sam Parr 41:03 It's like an energy drink and a pre-workout supplement, right?

Shaan Puri 41:07 Yeah. But it's like for women, and it's like high-end. It's like the, you know, Equinox or whatever.

Sam Parr 41:10 Got it.

Shaan Puri 41:11 And it's, uh, Alani Nu does over $100 million of profit per year. So it's a, it, that itself is a almost billion dollar revenue, revenue generating thing. So that's, that is, that itself is probably a multi-billion dollar company that they built before Prime. So these guys did that. They have this b- this hold co called Congo Brands. They don't want people to know about them. You go to LinkedIn, gray picture. You go to Congo Brands, not much story. If anybody asks who owns Prime, they say Logan Paul and KSI. In reality, these guys own 60% of that company. Right? Logan and KSI own, you know, the sort of like 30% to 40% of that company. And so, um, that brand, Prime, is gonna be... My guess is that that, that ends up being like a $20 billion brand. It's crazy.

Sam Parr 41:57 That's insane. That is insane.

Shaan Puri 41:59 Um, and, you know, that is gonna make Logan Paul a multi-billionaire off of, off of, uh, Prime. So, you know, Celsius, you know that energy drink?

Sam Parr 42:07 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 42:07 Uh, Celsius just sold 8% to Pepsi for 550 million. So Celsius is valued at 6 billion. Prime is bigger than Celsius. It's gonna be bigger than Celsius, or it already is bigger than Celsius. And so what an insane story. And that guy Trey Uh, you know, MrBeast, Jimmy, he was like, "I call him," like, [laughs] he's like, "I call that guy every day." He's like, "That guy is so helpful to me with Feastables." He's like, "I'm calling that guy all the time. He is so smart." He's like, "He is so f- smart, so much smarter than everybody else in this space, it's insane." And he's like, "I j- I am just getting so much learning from that guy." And he's like, "That's why I like to meet people that I can learn from, 'cause I've seen how, how much fa-," you know. He's like, "Same thing for me." He's like, "If I wanted to s- if you took my channel away, I could rebuild right back to where I am in three years." He's like, "That's how Trey is with CPG." And he's like, "I'm just trying to find who that person is for all the different fields." [laughs] He's like, "I wanna meet them."

Sam Parr 43:02 Yeah. What's crazy is if you Google Trey, like his name, like you barely get anything. Uh-

Shaan Puri 43:07 There's no interviews. Y- I, I try, I've tried hard to find, you know, some- him on YouTube or an interview with him. Nothing.

Sam Parr 43:14 That's insane. Um, last question. All right, so you did this thing.

Shaan Puri 43:17 You know what we call that? Lasagna. [laughs]

Sam Parr 43:20 I know it.

Shaan Puri 43:21 Tell them why, tell them why we call this a lasagna, Sam.

Sam Parr 43:24 [laughs] It, what is it? You move in silence, like the G-

Shaan Puri 43:26 Real Gs move in silence, like lasagna

Sam Parr 43:28 ... Um, all right, so you did this thing. At worst, it was fun. At best, it was life-changing. If it is life-changing, how are you going to change?

Shaan Puri 43:39 Laser focus, my friend. Uh, in fact, during the thing, uh-

Sam Parr 43:44 You should've just listened to me four years ago

Shaan Puri 43:46 ... Should've listened to you then, but the thing is, you don't really have the same level of inspiration and motivation that MrBeast has-

Sam Parr 43:52 This is true

Shaan Puri 43:52 ... Sam, right?

Sam Parr 43:52 And I'm not nearly as successful as them.

Shaan Puri 43:54 [laughs]

Sam Parr 43:54 If I had a few, if I had a few zeros behind, uh, my bank account or, uh, my, my Instagram account, maybe you would've listened. But it just, it just sucks you couldn't have listened then.

Shaan Puri 44:05 And it's laser focused on content specifically, 'cause, uh, you know, one realization, you gotta know who you are and you gotta know what you're into. Uh, for me, I think I'm probably like a B+ entrepreneur, but I think I could be A+ in the content game. I think I, i- it would be impossible really for me to be A+ as an entrepreneur. I don't think I'm... It's not where I'm naturally as talented. Um, plus I don't enjoy it enough to go that hard, as hard as you would want to, to be at that top tier. But I do feel that way about making content. And so that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna try to build the largest content brand or audience around entrepreneurship, so around people who, who are into the same shit we're into, right? MFM has been awesome, and it's like the, it's kinda shown that that can be true. But, uh, it's never been something I'm laser focused on, and I also don't think podcast is the right vehicle to do that. So I'm gonna do it off of podcasting, because podcasting is not viral, which is like, what you, what you want is to be able to spread your gospel to as many people as possible. The problem with podcasting is podcasting is like bottom of funnel. It's like, it's like where people, you know, form a deep relationship. It's not where they meet you.

Sam Parr 45:13 Do you get env- So like when I thought about... I, I've thought about that as well. Um, I'm not into content creation as much as you are, so that's not gonna be the path for me. But I have used it as, um, you know, like a miniature Logan Paul Prime thing. Very, very mu- very mini- miniature compared to them. Um, do you think that... So for entrepreneurship, that sorta means that you're gonna be a B2B, like, uh, you know, Shaan to s- you're gonna sell something that businesses might buy, or something that, like we'll call it, like the prosumer. So like not like a drink, but maybe someone who buys something for their job. Um, do you think that there's as many opportunities in that space as there is creating a drink or a makeup kit or, uh, whatever other-

Shaan Puri 45:57 Of course, yeah

Sam Parr 45:57 ... consumer goods?

Shaan Puri 45:58 Yeah, of course. And, and also, I'm not even worried about that. Like, uh, that will exist and, uh, it'll be what it'll be. Doesn't really matter. Uh, but yeah, it does. Like, you know, I don't think Tim Ferriss when he started, you know, Four Hour Workweek or even his podcast would've been like, "Yeah, and then what I'm gonna do is invest in Uber and make $100 million." [laughs] Like, that's what happened, but it's not what you would've predicted. But of course, how does he get into that deal? Because he's Tim Ferriss, because that's what, who people wanna rope into things. And so, you know, getting into Shopify and, and Uber early on is how he made all the money. Um, you couldn't really connect those dots at the beginning, right? It's only something that later, after the fact, you could see how that all connected together.

Sam Parr 46:42 And are you prepared to be a 38-year-old YouTuber hanging out with a bunch of 22-year-olds all the time-

Shaan Puri 46:46 [laughs]

Sam Parr 46:47 ... while you're wearing-

Shaan Puri 46:48 I didn't say I was gonna do YouTube

Sam Parr 46:49 ... uh, hoodies? [laughs]

Shaan Puri 46:49 I didn't say I was gonna Y-

Sam Parr 46:50 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 46:51 I didn't say I was gonna do YouTube.

Sam Parr 46:52 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 46:53 First of all.

Sam Parr 46:53 Dude, Noah, my good friend Noah Kagan, he, uh, you know, he runs a really successful business that's worth hundreds of millions of dollars, so he's successful. But he, um, he has like a YouTube channel, and I always make fun of him, like, "Dude, you're a 42-year-old YouTuber, you fucking dork." [laughs] Like, "You're hanging out with all the 22-year-olds who like yo-yo still. Like what are you, like grow up, Peter Pan." Uh, [laughs] and so that's what I'll be making fun of you about. Uh, so you're gonna go and like, uh, do all those... Dude, w- we had to, you and I had to do a, a photo shoot recently because MFM, they wanted to upload the title or the, the picture. And in that photo shoot, we had to stand there and do like 10 emotions. They're like, "All right, act like-"

Shaan Puri 47:31 Thumbnail faces.

Sam Parr 47:32 Yeah, thumbnail faces. "Act like you're, someone just said something stupid and you think they're full of it." And like inevitably every picture is just this. Like you're, you're shocked.

Shaan Puri 47:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 47:42 And like we had to do these things. First of all, I hated that. I hated that. It was horrible. Dude, there was one where you had your hand like this, like you were gonna smack someone. Um-

Shaan Puri 47:51 Yeah. They, they were like, "You're angry." And then I did a bitch slap, uh-

Sam Parr 47:54 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 47:55 ... hand thing, and I was like, "Was that good?"

Sam Parr 47:56 I was like, "What are you doing?"

Shaan Puri 47:57 And he was like, "No."

Sam Parr 47:58 Yeah. A- and, and then they had a like, I just had to hold up five, four, three, so they could like use my hands for different numbers. I hated that. I hated doing that. Um, so we're gonna be seeing that, but I can't, like that's just not my DNA. But that, um, that's gonna be you now. Congratulations.

Shaan Puri 48:15 It's hard for me to be a little bitch, but-

Sam Parr 48:17 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:18 ... I hope you enjoy it. [laughs]

Sam Parr 48:20 Yeah. No, it was just like, you know, like, you know, a lot of the YouTubers, um, and this is a good thing, they're, they're actors, they're, they're performers, they're entertainers. We sorta started this just like hanging out.

Shaan Puri 48:30 Well, the cool thing is that when we go to places and people are like, "Oh my gosh, Shaan, I need your autograph. Oh, can I take a picture?" I'll be like, "And this is Sam."

Sam Parr 48:38 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:38 And then I'll introduce you too, okay?

Sam Parr 48:39 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:39 So don't worry.

Sam Parr 48:40 [laughs] Well, it was, it's just cra-

Shaan Puri 48:43 I'm not kidding

Sam Parr 48:43 Well, you have a little bit more of that acting DNA, but they, they, like, you like performing a, a little bit. But they, um, these guys are, like, hard... They're, they're YouTu- I mean, YouTubers are actors, and so it's, it's call-

Shaan Puri 48:54 Yeah, but you keep saying YouTube. I didn't say I'm gonna do YouTube necessarily. I, I said not content.

Sam Parr 48:56 I know you didn't say that, but I'm, I'm still gonna make fun of you for doing that. Don't let reality get in the way of what I'm gonna mock you for. Uh... [laughs]

Shaan Puri 49:03 [laughs] Can I tell you... Okay, so one of the things we did at this camp, by the way, is, I'm not gonna tell you what was in it, but I'll tell you what we did. So last year I was too afraid to, like, structure it. Meaning, last year I was like, "Yeah, we're just gonna hang. It's gonna be cool. It's gonna be casual. It's gonna be great. It's gonna be awesome. Just hanging, no problem. Just super cool." 'Cause I was like, I don't wanna be the second grade teacher, and be like, "All right, everybody, sit down," you know, "Give me your sh- like, your bunny ears, and, like, let's-"

Sam Parr 49:27 Dude, in reality-

Shaan Puri 49:28 "... let's quiet down"

Sam Parr 49:29 ... you need that. You need that.

Shaan Puri 49:30 And we needed that. And we needed that. And, and one of the best things last year was when somebody finally impromptu was like, "Hey, so do you guys wanna do, like, some intros or, like, an icebreaker? Like, who, who are you guys and what, what do you do? Can we learn something from each other?" So this year I arranged it where I was like, "All right. We're gonna do these things called Tiny Talks," that I was like, "Ev- at night, we're gonna have people do kinda like a flash, you know, five to 10-minute talk on their thing, 'cause everybody in this room is world-class at something, otherwise you wouldn't be in this room. So tell us what you're world-class at and how you do it, so that we can kinda learn from it." So it was like, you know, MrBeast does his YouTube masterclass. He's like, "Here, here's my channel. Here's the analytics." He's like, you know, just logs in. He's screen sharing. He's like, "So here's how we think about this. Here's what I did. Here's what worked. Here's what didn't work. Here's this trick we do on our thumbnails that makes this work better." I mean, like, you couldn't pay for this, right? So he did that. Joe Gebbia did one on his first startup before Airbnb, and kinda like the lessons he learned there.

Sam Parr 50:23 Read, read the title and only give a one-sentence summary of, uh, the takeaway that you had.

Shaan Puri 50:28 Uh, how I went from zero to 1.3 billion in real estate in 10 years. Um, the one-sentence summary is this guy has an unfair advantage that lets him play the game differently, and I should just give him my money to invest. [laughs] And that's what I'm doing.

Sam Parr 50:41 Okay.

Shaan Puri 50:42 So, [laughs] so like, uh, yeah. Unfair advantages do exist. And when you have them, just par, you know, press. Push your b- push your chips into the table. Uh, all right, next one. Why I bought 23 gas stations, and was it a good idea? Uh, so last year at the camp somebody shared about why, how they owned a c- you know, 10 gas stations or something. So one of the guys went and bought 23 gas stations after that. [laughs] And, um, funny story, and actually it pr- it probably was a good idea for him, 'cause, uh, you know, he had sold his business and he needed something that would give him a lot of depreciation in year one, a lot of bonus depreciation, and gas stations do do that. So in that sense, it was a smart move. But now he holds all these assets that, like, he's gonna have to figure out if they were the right thing on, in the long term. I think there's differing. Another guy did a presentation on why venture capital mostly sucks, and why people play the game totally wrong, and he is a VC. Um, so I thought that was a great talk. At the end of it, he did this thing called the Mount Rushmore of Death that I thought was interesting. He's like... We were like, "Dude, how did you even think of investing in this one company that, that took off? It sold for, like, $3 billion." And he goes, "Well," he's like, "I s- first was taking, like, 1,000 meetings a year, like most VCs do. And they're just, like, i- so inundated with data that they actually, like, f- lose the way to think." He's like, "So then I stepped back and I was like, okay, I'm not gonna do just, like, constant inbound meetings, just m- worried about missing the next big thing. Instead, I'm gonna figure out where would the next big thing live, and I'm gonna go find it." So he did this thing called the Mount Rushmore of Death, which is like, these four things cause death more than anything else combined, right? Like, these make up 80% of all the reasons for death. Uh, Peter Attia calls these The Four Horsemen, but he did, this guy did Mount Rushmore, and it's like heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and, um-

Sam Parr 52:26 Dementia

Shaan Puri 52:27 ... and, uh, yeah, like dementia and Alzheimer's, so, like, neuro- neuro, uh, cognitive, um, degeneration. And he's like, "So then I just went and looked for what's the best company, uh, in biotech that attacks one of those four in a way that I think is plausible to, to work," and then he ended up finding a big winner in that space. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Um, another guy, he goes, "My talk's about the three Ds of bus- of buying businesses. Death, divorce, and distressed." [laughs] He's like, you know, the, the best opportunities come if you can buy a business from somebody who died and the kids don't wanna inherit the business, from somebody who's going through a divorce and they have to, you know, sell their business, or distressed. You know, somebody took on too much risk, and you can basically go buy it for less than the intrinsic value of the business. And so one guy there, he had bought a business. He was looking at buying this business. He would've had to pay, like, you know, $15, $20 million for it, um, on top of the inventory that they had. And instead, he ended up own- now he owns the business for the cost of the inventory that they own. Like, he's like, "Literally, like, I just paid for the inventory and I now own the whole business." And he's like, you know, "And that was one of my suppliers, so it cut my cogs in half." So it's just like these great... You know, what are the, what does a great deal look like? And you really start to learn what does a great deal look like. So those talks I thought were badass.

Sam Parr 53:43 All right, let's wrap up, and let me make one suggestion. Don't turn this into a business. This is perfect as it is. Don't fuck this up.

Shaan Puri 53:51 Turn what into a business?

Sam Parr 53:52 Camp MFM. This is awesome.

Shaan Puri 53:54 Oh, yeah, of course not.

Sam Parr 53:55 This is perfect. Don't fuck this up. Number two, do it again. And number three, keep it at whatever size, 20. I, I would be bad at picking, because I would want everyone to come. That is so stressful. But hopefully you don't ruin this, 'cause this is definitely a gem. Um, I'm so-

Shaan Puri 54:11 When we made the list of people we would want to come, the list was 142.

Sam Parr 54:16 Oh, man.

Shaan Puri 54:16 So you had to go from 142 to inviting 15.

Sam Parr 54:19 It, um-

Shaan Puri 54:19 And so that was terrible

Sam Parr 54:20 ... I was, I had... I'm, I don't regret my decision. I, you know, I, I had to put family time in, but I had immense-

Shaan Puri 54:28 Bro

Sam Parr 54:29 ... amount of FOMO.

Shaan Puri 54:29 After all of that, you didn't regret your decision?

Sam Parr 54:31 No, I don't regret it. And I don't regret it.

Shaan Puri 54:33 Oh, my God.

Sam Parr 54:34 But, but I, I, I, I have massive FOMO. I wish I was in a position that it would've been that I could've made it, but, uh- I, I'm, I had huge amount of FOMO's, 'cause Ramon and Jack were giving me updates, and Val, and Ben, and, uh, Nick, and I would just text people like, "How's it going? Is it fun?" And they would send me pictures, so I sorta got, like, 1% of, you know, uh, ongoing updates. It sounded awesome.

Shaan Puri 54:59 Everybody at the thing was just... They were just calling it Shaan's bachelor party. They're like, "I'm so happy to be at Shaan's bachelor party" [laughs] . Which is hilarious, 'cause I didn't have a bachelor party, but if I did, this is exactly what I would have wanted to do. [laughs] It's basically a group of guys who are all a lot of fun, uh, tons of jokes, play basketball, play poker, talk business. That's, like, the ideal bachelor party. So I think maybe we should just rebrand it to that, my annual bachelor party.

Sam Parr 55:21 Well, no, keep it Camp MFM so I, by default, always get an invite.

Shaan Puri 55:24 [laughs] No, dude, you blew us off this year.

Sam Parr 55:27 Hey.

Shaan Puri 55:28 You were out.

Sam Parr 55:28 You know how it is. I... You would've done the same thing. Um, and if it's in Austin-

Shaan Puri 55:32 Pe- people were like, "Where's Sam?" And I was like, "Oh, you know, he just had a baby." They're like, "Wasn't that, like, three months ago?" And I was like, "Yeah." And they're like-

Sam Parr 55:39 It was-

Shaan Puri 55:39 ... "So then?"

Sam Parr 55:40 It was two and a half months ago

Shaan Puri 55:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 55:42 It was two and a half months ago, and I made the commitment that the first three, I'm, I'm at home. Um-

Shaan Puri 55:48 Fair enough

Sam Parr 55:48 ... I gotta do what I gotta do. Um-

Shaan Puri 55:49 Laser focused on that baby. I like it. I appreciate that.

Sam Parr 55:52 We... You know, I was, I actually got a... I was getting, um... I was laying with her, and I was, like, shirtless, and she was just in her diaper, and I was changing her diaper, and she shit all over me somehow-

Shaan Puri 56:01 [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:02 ... as I was getting a text from, uh, like, Ramon, being like, "Yeah, dude, now we're lifting weights and doing all this stuff." And I was like, "Oh, cool." Like, uh, "Let me wipe this poop off of me real quick, 'cause she just-"

Shaan Puri 56:12 Yeah

Sam Parr 56:12 ... "the poop just ran down my belly." Uh-

Shaan Puri 56:15 [laughs] Any tips to-

Sam Parr 56:16 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 56:17 ... how to get diarrhea out of a comfort room?

Sam Parr 56:18 I want to give you... Yeah. [laughs] Dude, this week-

Shaan Puri 56:20 Is there a Tiny Talk about that? [laughs]

Sam Parr 56:21 She literally puked on my face this week, 'cause I was, like, holding her up at my shoulder, and she threw up, and I got puke all over my face. And I was, like, reading these texts, and, like, seeing Nick Huber do, like, a DEXA scan, and s- Joe Gebbia jump in a lake, and I'm like, "Oh, that's cool."

Shaan Puri 56:35 Oh, yeah, we had a... He has a DEXA in his gym, and we put Nick on it, and then we played a game where everybody had to guess his body fat percentage. And then I was like, "Yeah, this would get everybody canceled nowadays." [laughs] This is like, you know, fat shaming. I pr- pretty sure this is the definition of fat shaming. [laughs] But, uh, but he loved it. [laughs] It was great.

Sam Parr 56:53 Yeah, that's, that's baller. I, I definitely, uh, wish I could've been there. Um, all right, that was a good episode. That was a good r- recap.

Shaan Puri 56:59 All right. It's the pod. [upbeat music]