I Tried Outsmarting Nancy Pelosi's Investment Strategy

Sam Parr 0:00 All right. You ready to do this?

Shaan Puri 0:02 Yeah, hold on. I'm just, uh, I'm just executing a stock trade right now. I'm, I am the Wolf of Wall Street right now, Sam. I-

Sam Parr 0:10 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 0:10 We are live on this podcast, but I'm not here. I'm not here talking to you. I'm in Wall Street right now. I'm on the stock market floor shaking my money, saying, "Take my money," because I'm buying a stock.

Sam Parr 0:21 I don't think the Wolf of Wall Street used Robinhood, but that's okay.

Shaan Puri 0:23 If you want... Here's, here's what we're gonna do. If you wanna find out how to lose money like I do, you should stick around. [laughs]

Sam Parr 0:30 [laughs] [upbeat music] All right. So what is it? You're a bit on a stock kick. You- you're really on a stock kick.

Shaan Puri 0:44 [laughs] Which is just bad news for me. I, any time I get on a stock kick, bad things happen. Um, I just don't realize it till three years later. So let me just show you these two charts. So take a look at this chart. The fir- It's about this stock called Palo Alto Networks. I don't think you're

Shaan Puri 1:00 following too much of Palo Alto Networks. Am I right in assuming that?

Sam Parr 1:03 I'm not following right now, but I know, like, it's one of the Silicon Valley OGs. It's been around for a long time and yeah.

Shaan Puri 1:10 Yeah. Okay. Good. That's pretty good. All right. So look at the stock. First-

Sam Parr 1:13 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 1:14 [laughs] I know a bullshitter when I hear one, and you don't know shit about this stock. [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:19 I r- I know, I know whatever you can learn reading the Wikipedia. I've read the Wikipedia.

Shaan Puri 1:23 All right. S- Tell me this. What do they sell? What's the product? No, no, no. Why you looking at your screen? Look at me. Look me in the eyes and tell me what they sell.

Sam Parr 1:29 Networking and data solutions, I believe.

Shaan Puri 1:31 [laughs]

Sam Parr 1:31 So some type... Something like they used to be, like, one of the OGs that had servers, didn't they?

Shaan Puri 1:36 Dude, here's the reality. I don't know what they sell either. It doesn't matter what they sell. Look at this chart for a second. So this chart shows last five days, damn, down 14%. 15%, basically. That's pretty bad. Uh, and actually it would be worse than that except for there's this little uptick. So look at this second chart. This is today, up 10%. You might ask yourself, did they just have, like, an earnings call? Did they announce a new product? Did they announce a, a big AI breakthrough? What is causing the stock in the first two hours of trading today to be up 10%? The answer is our girl, friend of the pod, Nancy Pelosi, just made a trade. [laughs] She just bought a million dollars of Palo Alto Networks, uh, stock, and immediately people start following her action and start buying this thing blind. 'Cause they don't know what she knows, but they know that she knows something. And isn't that so funny that that's what's happening nowadays? Like, I follow this account, I don't know if you follow, the Pelosi Tracker, and they're like [laughs] it says, "Breaking: The Queen is back at it again. [laughs] She just bought a $1.25 million of Palo Alto Network calls." [laughs] And then it says, and then, like, there's a sub-headline: "Palo Alto Networks is one of the leading cybersecurity companies in the nation." [laughs] Like, in case you need to know, but here's the reality. You don't need to know. You just need to know that Nancy Pelosi, who has one of the greatest stock trading track records of our time, just bought this and she, she followed-

Sam Parr 2:56 Are you actually buying this?

Shaan Puri 2:58 [laughs] No, I'm not buying the Palo Alto Networks-

Sam Parr 3:00 I was gonna say, we just did this amazing whole thing on Buffett a couple episodes ago. Two months ago when, uh, Munger died, we did a whole episode on that, and I was gonna say you did a great job of remembering what he said, which is, like, invest blindly in things you don't understand, right?

Shaan Puri 3:15 Yeah. Invest blindly off random Twitter anonymous accounts',

Sam Parr 3:18 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 3:18 uh, you know, claims about, you know, 90-year-old women's trades. So [laughs] so that's what I'm doing. Uh, no, I didn't buy this one, but I did find it... I was kinda curious. I was like, I saw this tweet and I was like, I've seen her track record or, like, the data analysis of her track record. It's, like, really, really impressive. I don't have it offhand here, but it's, like, better than most hedge funds. It's better than most, like, famous investors that you know of. And so I was wondering, are people just fast following her trades? That's why I looked at what's happened today, and the s- you know, the share price is up 27 bucks this morning because the, the sort of the, the, she had to disclose what she bought, and so, uh, people were tracking that. So I just find that... I, I was curious, do, does the stock actually move when Pelosi, um, uh, makes a trade? And our girl moves weight, all right? She makes m- she makes waves in the market.

Sam Parr 4:06 All right, everyone. A quick break to tell you about HubSpot, and this one's easy because I'm gonna show you an example of how I'm doing this at my company. When I say I, I mean not my team. I mean I'm the one who actually made this. So I've got this company called Hampton. You can check it out, joinhampton.com. It's a community for founders, and one of the ways that we've grown is we've created these surveys where we'll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people, a lot of times people are afraid to ask. So things like what their net worth is, how their assets are allocated, all these, like, interesting questions. And then we'll put it in a survey, and I went and made a landing page. So you can check it out at joinhampton.com/wealth. You can actually see the landing page that I made, and the hard part with this is with Hampton, we are appealing to a sort of a, a higher end customer, sort of like, like a Louis Vuitton or a Ferrari. So I needed the landing page to look a very particular way. HubSpot has templates. That's what we used. We just changed the colors a little bit to match our brand. Very easy. They have this drag and drop version of their landing page builder, and it's super simple. I'm not technical, and I'm the one who actually made it. And once it's made, I then shared it on social media, and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information. And I can then see over the next handful of weeks, this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did. This is where the revenue came from. So it came from Twitter. It came from LinkedIn. Whatever it came from, I can actually go and look at it, and I can say, "Oh, well, that worked. That didn't work. Do more of that. Do less of that." And if you're interested in making landing pages like this, I highly suggest it. Look, I'm actually doing it, but you can check it out. Go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started. All right. Now back to MFM. I'm an idiot, and I don't know anything about politics, but [laughs] but what I would say is if I'm, like, in charge, what I would say to all these folks who are, uh, you know, high up in the government is I would pay them a huge sum, like $2 or $3 million a year, right? 'Cause there's only, like, 500... How many, how many people are... I don't even know. This is how, uh, uh, how, how ignorant I am, how many people are in the Senate and Congress. I would pay them a ton of money and say- There, now you can't speak, you can't consult, and also all of your money has to be in this pol- political ETF or whatever it's called, so we know every trade you're doing and you can't actually buy individual stocks. It's kinda ridiculous that she's able to do this, right? It's actually her husband. Her husband's able to do it, and it's their money, but it is kind of crazy.

Shaan Puri 6:19 Well, I think... Well, she can- she's allowed to do it, too. It's not, it's not only his, his-

Sam Parr 6:22 Well, her, her husband's a, a PE guy. I mean, he's like, this is his job, I would imagine.

Shaan Puri 6:27 All right, so let me just tell you this. The last big trade that I saw from her was in, I believe, 2022. So July 2022, Nancy Pelosi, um, and her husband Paul, who's a VC, decided to buy 25,000 shares of Nvidia.

Sam Parr 6:43 Hmm.

Shaan Puri 6:44 Hey, Sam, what's the best stock in the world right now, [laughs] since 2022?

Sam Parr 6:49 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 6:50 What is almost the most valuable company in the world right now? Nvidia. Oh, that's right. So they bought it at 165 bucks. It's currently trading at $800. Oh, that's pretty good. Uh, a little 4.8x for our girl Nancy. That's, that's pretty impressive. Good trade.

Sam Parr 7:06 I, when I first... Yeah, great trade. [laughs] When I first moved to San Francisco, I, I told you the story how I lived in this warehouse. It was like a dirt cheap warehouse. It was horrible. It was an awful place to live. I lived with four other guys. One of the guys worked there at Nvidia when I lived in this warehouse. He worked at Nvidia, I believe, from 2009 to 2014. And I was doing the math. If he had $150,000 of equity given to him over four years, which seems reasonable, um, that's 30,000, 40,000 a year. If he didn't sell, it, it, his net worth would be something like $35 million. Is that insane or what?

Shaan Puri 7:41 [laughs]

Sam Parr 7:42 And he wasn't a, he wasn't an early employee. He would've been employee, I don't know how big they were at the time, but it was thousands of people back then. Isn't that insane that someone could do that? Nvidia has been insane.

Shaan Puri 7:52 Uh, so what was the S&P 500 gain last year? Last year, last year the S&P 500 was up 24% in 2023.

Sam Parr 8:00 Okay.

Shaan Puri 8:00 Nancy Pelosi was up 65%. [laughs] She just tripled the stock, the S&P 500 performance with her trades, you know, as her side hustle, [laughs] while she's the whatever, the Speaker of the House or whatever the hell she is. Um, pretty crazy. You know what else has grown a mere, you know, 25% in the last year?

Sam Parr 8:20 What?

Shaan Puri 8:21 Our YouTube subscriber base. We are putting Pelosi to shame out here, but we need your help. We need your help. We need you to go to YouTube, we need you to type in My First Million, and we need you to subscribe, because we put in so much work every week, and people think it's free. It's a common misconception. They think it's free. Sam, tell, tell them what it is.

Sam Parr 8:38 Look, this podcast isn't free. Everything on YouTube's free except for this channel. All we need in payment is just you to click subscribe. It takes you literally 10 seconds, but it means the world to us. We pour our hearts in this. It's all we're asking in exchange. It's called the gentleman's agreement. We're not there to actually see that you do it, but we hope you do. That's why it's the gentleman's agreement. Um, what do you got? What's the trade that you just did that you actually are

Sam Parr 9:00 excited about? 'Cause you said, when we started-

Shaan Puri 9:02 Well-

Sam Parr 9:02 ... you said we got, you got some, a trade that you're doing as we speak. What is it?

Shaan Puri 9:06 Disclaimer, not financial advice. Disclaimer, I'm very bad at stock trading, but I s- I persist, 'cause I'm the little engine that could. I'll never give up. And so [laughs] I noticed, um, I don't know if you noticed, but over the weekend there was, like, a lot of negative sentiment around Google. And-

Sam Parr 9:24 Which is why? Because their AI product is, uh, like woke?

Shaan Puri 9:28 Super woke, yeah. So basically they released Gemini, which is their, uh, answer to ChatGPT, formerly known as Bard. Which, by the way, there's a hilarious tweet that goes around every time Google releases a new product or renames something, and people are like, "Cool, should I, um... I would love to check this out on, um, on Meet," formerly known as Google Meet, formerly known as Google Hangouts, formerly known as Google Hangouts Plus, formerly known as Google Duo. [laughs] And they're like, they'd show how many times Google renames its products. So it renamed Bard, which was a awful name, to Gemini. Better name. Um, and it came out-

Sam Parr 10:01 Bard?

Shaan Puri 10:02 ... and basically... It was Bard.

Sam Parr 10:04 Bard.

Shaan Puri 10:04 Bard was their, Bard was their, their, you know, the next great act of their company.

Sam Parr 10:09 They, like-

Shaan Puri 10:09 So-

Sam Parr 10:09 The thing about Google is it sound, the word Google sounds like a noise, which is fine. I'm okay with that. It sounds more like a noise than a name, and they just took that a little bit too far. [laughs] Bard.

Shaan Puri 10:20 [laughs] Yeah, they were like, "What are we gonna call it?" And somebody burped on the call, and they're like, "Okay."

Sam Parr 10:24 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:25 "We can go with that." [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:26 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:27 And the guy didn't know what to do, so he just didn't say anything. [laughs]

Sam Parr 10:30 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 10:31 So, um, yeah, basically, uh, if you went to Bard and you were like, "Hey, um, can you..." It, it started off with people who were like, "Hey, you know, can you, um, generate an image of spaghetti?" And it generated a great image of spaghetti. And they're like, "Cool, can you generate an image of a viking?" And then it generated an image of a Black viking, and people were like, "Huh, that's weird. Why is the viking Black? Hey, can you generate an image of a white viking?" And it was like, gave you, like, a Mexican viking. [laughs] You're like, "Oh, hold on. Can you give me a image of a white person?" And it was like, "Nah, I can't do that." [laughs]

Sam Parr 11:04 Really?

Shaan Puri 11:05 It was basically either saying no or it was showing a picture of a Black person. It's like, what ethnicity was George Washington? And they're like, "Well, it's highly debated. He might be, might be Black." And it was like, you know, they would just do... Or it'd be like, uh, who did more damage to society, Elon Musk or Hitler? And it's like, "It's hard to say who did more damage to society, Elon Musk or Hitler."

Sam Parr 11:24 Oof.

Shaan Puri 11:25 "Elon Musk tweeted these things about the stock price and Hitler committed genocide. It is really a tough call." And it's like, and so people were taking this stuff and running with it. It's like the perfect... It's the, uh, the way I think about it is there's two tribes, and if you can, if you can get one tribe riled up, you're gonna get s- that, that storyline is gonna get some legs. But if you can get two tribes riled up, then you got, like, a real story. And so this was basically the anti-big company, um, anti-big tech tribe. It's like, "Yo, babe, wake up. Big, big tech made a mistake." And then there was the anti-, um, anti-woke and the anti-anti-AI tribes. All three tribes got together and basically had a fiesta around this. And so people were sharing this like crazy, and then people were like, "The CEO of Google needs to be fired." Um, they were like, you know, "Google is too bloated, it's too bureaucratic, it's too woke. It's like it's got the woke virus. It'll never recover," blah, blah, blah. Uh, you know, Suhail, the k- the, you know, the guy who created Mixpanel, awesome guy. He's like, "Google has lost its way." Then I read my next tweet, Elon Musk says, "The bureaucratic..." You know, "A Google exec called me and promised to change it, but I told him I don't think the bureauc- the bureaucratic blob inside Google will even let him make these changes." It's hopeless, basically, is what, what these guys are saying. You go on the All-In podcast, and they're like, "I can't believe this." You know, basically, like, our rights, freedom of speech is at, at risk here. It needs to tell the truth. Look at this crazy woke bias. And everybody's anti-Google. So I woke up today and I was like, "Pretty sure Google still owns Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, Chrome, Android, Waymo." Okay, I think I'll just go ahead and buy Google stock today [laughs] because Google's on this dip right now on the negative PR, and I think it's just that old quote of, like, the short term, you know, the stock market's a popularity contest, and in the long term it's a weighing machine. And I just think that they have tremendous assets, right? Like, uh, you know, YouTube does... YouTube alone, which is not even Google's, like, main product, um, does 32 billion a year in revenue, which is more than Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, TikTok all combined, and that's just YouTube, right? [laughs] And then you take, like, Google Cloud, which is, like, does, you know, 36 billion in revenue. Th- that's just, like, their cloud service, not, not Google Search, right? Not Android, not the Play Store, not, uh, not any of this stuff. And so I just think they have too many assets. And so I have no... I don't really do much analysis aside from I was like, I don't know, seems like everybody's overreacting to this 'cause it's a really good

Shaan Puri 14:00 social media storyline to be like, "Google's lost its way, uh, it's woke, it, it's gonna lose in AI," blah, blah, blah. Maybe it's true. I don't know. To me, seemed like a bit of an overreaction.

Sam Parr 14:13 I don't think you're wrong. Um, I think that you're right in this particular instance. But I subscribe to this subreddit called Money, r/Money, and it's basically com- people... It's a big subreddit, and it's people complaining mostly. There's a lot of it not complaining, but a lot of it is, like, I see all these posts of people in college who are like, "I'm now 20 grand in the hole because I was buying options on Robinhood and doing all this stuff on, on these apps where they trade." And in general, I am so against individual trading, even though I think you're right with Google. It ain't going anywhere. I, we... I buy ads on Google. It freaking works so good. Uh, but it's just, I just w- I refuse to go down this path. It's such a slippery slope that I don't wanna get addicted to it, and I feel like I would. And you've won a few times. I know you've won a few times recently.

Shaan Puri 15:02 Oh, I'll tell you-

Sam Parr 15:03 Have you lost-

Shaan Puri 15:03 ... every time I win. Don't worry. [laughs]

Sam Parr 15:05 But, uh, but, uh, but have you lost a bunch?

Shaan Puri 15:07 Of course, of course. Uh, yeah, you can't trade without having bad trades, right? [laughs] Like, what, what is the w- number one rule for having a few good trades, is have many trades. [laughs]

Sam Parr 15:20 That's insane that you're doing this, but, uh, you're not wrong with this one. I-

Shaan Puri 15:24 Well, I'm, I'm not doing it with a lot, a lot of money, and also, um, it's an excuse to learn for me too. So I, uh, I don't know. I think that, I think a lot of learning just comes from trial and error, and trying things when you build businesses is a really expensive, slow way to... It's like, it's the har- it's the highest priced way to learn, right? Because it takes a long time, takes a lot of effort, takes a lot of focus. But there are things where you're like, all right, well, like, you know, very simple, uh, I wanted to learn about AI, and so I pay this guy $500 an hour once a week to, to just teach me about AI, yeah. And I wanted to, I wanted to be, uh, I wanted to be up to speed with what's going on. What are the new tools? What are the limitations? What are some of the bottlenecks? And so, you know, I, uh, in general I have a very, uh, A, I wanna have some fun in my life. B, I wanna learn. And for me, the only way to learn is, like, uh, Andrew Wilkinson said this once. He's like, "I like to walk around with a fork finding sockets to put, put my fork in," basically. It's like, um, you know, the, the only way he learns is by getting electrocuted and I kinda feel I'm the same way. Uh, you know, I hear things and I hear wisdom, but it never actually sinks in until I go and do something. And maybe the real learning here, by the way, maybe the real learning is just don't pick... Don't trade individual stocks. You might actually be at the correct final answer. Um, and so, you know, I'm not saying that you're wrong about that. Uh, philosophically I, I agree with what you're saying, but I just carve out a small fun budget that I use to do this.

Sam Parr 16:49 I, uh, my partner Joe, he trades individual stocks, and this week or last week he was like, "I'm, screwed, I'm going back to indexing." 'Cause he, like, looked at all the money that he... I, like, did a calculator. I go, "Show me what you had 15 years ago. Show me what you have today. Now let's, I'm gonna put it in this calculator. I'm gonna show you what you would've had if you would, would've done this, and let's see and compare." And the index fund- funding, uh, index investing was so much higher. And he's like, "Yeah, I'm gonna switch." And so he, like, makes the switch this week. And I'm like-

Shaan Puri 17:13 By the way, I did the same calculation, and it was 100% true for me too, that if I had just bought the index and do- or just added a consistent amount to the index over time, that would've been perfect. But the funny thing is, it's not, uh, the f- the thing in my analysis, I was like, okay. I went through every single trade. Uh, again, how do you learn? You go back and reflect. So I went through every, every single trade and I said, "What is, what story does this tell me?" And I had thought the story would be... Uh, my prediction going in was, um, you would've made a little more money if you had done the index, but, you know, whatever. Actually, I would've made a lot more money just doing the index. That was learning one. Number two learn- learning was interesting, which was I thought I would find you're not as smart as you think, buddy. Like, you know, you buy this thing 'cause you have all these reasons, but you're wrong. And in actuality, I think I only lost money buying in a very small number of, of, of stocks. I think it was, like, less than five stocks that I, what I bought it for versus what it currently is, um, is less or even less than it would've been if I had just been in the m- in the mar- uh, in the, in the index. Like, it's, it's pretty comparable returns. Um, the two situations where I got it wrong were, um, number one, when I, during COVID I, um- Bought some momentums. Like, I just, like, bought Zoom or something at some momen- I had bought Zoom, like, early and it was working so well. Then I just bought more. That was stupid, I shouldn't have done that. But the second one was, uh, you know, random tips from our friends. You know, friend says, "Oh, man. I'm doing this."

Sam Parr 18:44 Oh.

Shaan Puri 18:44 They s- and they're a smart friend

Sam Parr 18:45 They're like, "Look at Zillow."

Shaan Puri 18:46 Well, yeah, they're a smart friend and so I bought. So those are the only times that I bought and lost. All of my actual losses of where I c- where I made less than I would've in the market was just selling early. 'Cause I sold a bunch of things, and I sold a bunch of things

Shaan Puri 19:00 some, some I sold early when they had a lot more room to run, some I sold when I was, uh, you know, the market sentiment was down or I was feeling fearful and I just wanted to move to cash, and I would just sell. And so I actually lost... The, all of my losses were in the sell, not the buy, which was surprising to me.

Sam Parr 19:16 I've been making fun of Joe 'cause he's going all, on, all in on indexing, and I'm like, great, you, you picked a really good month. All-time highs, record highs.

Shaan Puri 19:23 [laughs]

Sam Parr 19:24 Doing the, this is the best month ever. Decided to do it [laughs] and now he's like second guessing it. Uh, let me show you a company that launched, uh, I think this week or last week, and I wanna know what your opinion of it is. So it's called Harbor, so harbor.co. And I wanna tell you what this company is and why it's interesting to me, but I'm not sure if it's gonna work or not, but I wanna hear your opinion of it. Do you remember Deep Sentinel? We had, uh, Celie, uh, s- uh, on the pod. So Deep Sentinel I thought was gonna be huge. TBD, verdict still out. And it was basically, I like these businesses where people are monitoring things. So ig- let me give you an example. So th- th- Deep Sentinel, their tagline is, or I don't know if it's a tagline, but the guy said it on the pod. He goes, "Ring is a great way to watch your shit get stolen."

Shaan Puri 20:06 [laughs]

Sam Parr 20:07 Uh, which is how it typically works at Ring. Like, something like I've had a bike get stolen before and I'm like, "Oh, let me look at the Ring. Yep, there's the guy who did it."

Shaan Puri 20:13 [laughs]

Sam Parr 20:13 "It is in fact stolen." [laughs] Uh, and so Deep Sentinel is different because it's these ca- it's cameras similar to Ring, but there's someone on the other end watching the cameras-

Shaan Puri 20:23 Right

Sam Parr 20:23 ... and they'll call the police. And I've had, like, a drunk Airbnber think that my house was their Airbnb, and he's, like, knocking on the door at 2:00 AM, and they called the police on him and, like, you know, took care of it, whatever. Uh, there's this other thing called Harbor, so harbor.co. It's basically that but for baby monitors. And I shared the deck with you. Let me know what you think. But basically, have you ever heard of, like, sleep training? So basically when you, when your kid gets to be, like, three or four months old and they start crying, sometimes you gotta let them cry it out a little bit in order to, like, you know, figure out what's real and what's not real, and it m- eventually they quit whining, they go back to sleep. They did this, but for baby monitors. So there's someone monitoring the baby monitor, and I think they'll call you or, like, ping your, the monitor that they give you to let you know, all right, now you actually should get up. The baby's been crying for, like, nine or 10 minutes. It's time to get up, you know?

Shaan Puri 21:08 Your baby's crying. I fucking know. [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:11 [laughs] Well... [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 21:18 That's the end of the commercial. [laughs]

Sam Parr 21:20 [laughs] Well, we-

Shaan Puri 21:22 This product, this product makes no sense. [laughs] How big is your house-

Sam Parr 21:25 That's what I...

Shaan Puri 21:26 [laughs] You have no idea if your baby-

Sam Parr 21:27 That's why I wanna hear your opinion on this, because we had Jack Smith on the pod. Do you remember when we had him on the pod and he did the same thing where he set up, like, a Ring camera for his baby monitor? And then he hired someone in India to watch the monitor. I think he used Shepherd actually. He hired someone to watch the monitor and to call a dedicated cell phone just to let him know when the baby's been crying for 10 minutes or something like that.

Shaan Puri 21:48 Right.

Sam Parr 21:48 And these guys turned that into a product. Uh, what do you think about this?

Shaan Puri 21:52 Well, uh, I have a couple thoughts. First is I love how Sam, the new dad, is like, "You ever heard about sleep training?" Talking to me-

Sam Parr 22:02 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 22:02 ... father of two. [laughs] It's like if I went and worked out and I was like, "Bro, you ever heard of bicep curls?" It's like-

Sam Parr 22:11 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 22:11 ... and you're like, "Uh, dude, what? [laughs] Welcome to the gym." Uh, so yes, I, I've unders- I'm familiar with the idea that babies cry and, uh, you know, sleep can get a little hard for parents. All right, second thing. This whole class of products is, like, what I call, like, it's supposed to be anxiety reduction, but actually it's somewhat anxiety inducing. So y- you know, the idea would be, hey, you could sleep well knowing that somebody's monitoring your baby at night, and there's a whole bunch of products like this. Like, I dunno if you ever bought, like, the Owlet, which is, like, this, like, ankle monitor, uh, for your baby or, like, there's a sock version of this. There's, like, a, there's, like, another one that's, like, measuring their, like, oxygen, like, at all times or whatever.

Sam Parr 22:51 Hey, I know all about ankle monitors. Been there, done that.

Shaan Puri 22:54 I know. [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:54 No, I can tell you all about ankle monitors.

Shaan Puri 22:55 Sorry, I'm guilty again. Preaching to the choir there. [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:59 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:00 Yeah.

Sam Parr 23:00 I didn't know you could put them on children, but yeah, I, I know a thing or two about ankle monitors. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 23:04 Exactly. [laughs] So, um, so those all exist and actually have done well. I, I think Owlet did, Owlet did pretty well. I know they got in some, some trouble, but they, I think they ended up going public.

Sam Parr 23:14 What is it?

Shaan Puri 23:15 Owlet is a, is, that's what it is. It's the, it's the, that's the ankle monitor for babies, but the, with the key thing being, like, it's measuring I think their oxygen levels so you know if the baby... You know, like, 'cause you know SIDS is obviously, uh, you know-

Sam Parr 23:27 Yeah

Shaan Puri 23:27 ... the biggest, like, you know, nightmare for a parent, um, would be if your baby, you know, suddenly in their sleep, you know, stops breathing. And so the idea was with Owlet you would get notified if the oxygen, um, levels go down. Which is, to me, makes way more sense than the let me know if my baby's crying because I know if my baby's crying typically, um, you know, through a traditional baby monitor or, like, you know, my house is not that big or the baby sleeps in the crib in the same room. Like, you know, that's, I guess, uh, I think this, I think the Owlet stuff makes a lot more sense than Harbor. So yeah, I'm not, like, super into this idea, and that's kind of where I stand. No offense to the people behind Harbor. I'm sure they're great, smart people.

Sam Parr 24:06 The guy who started it started Mizzen and Main, that clothing company. You remember the, the clothing company that, uh, it's, like, golf people wear it?

Shaan Puri 24:13 Yeah. [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:13 It's, like, a popular thing.

Shaan Puri 24:15 Yeah.

Sam Parr 24:15 Not, uh, it's not popular, uh, amongst, in our lives, but it is very popular in other people's lives.

Shaan Puri 24:19 They're pretty successful, right?

Sam Parr 24:20 Yeah, it's huge. It's, like, 100 million plus. It's, like, a big thing. But he came out with this thing, and I didn't- I, I invested a very, very small sum. A, $1,000. He's a friend of mine, and I was like, "All right, I'll just do $1,000 just to play."

Shaan Puri 24:32 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:32 That, that's my version of you buying Google is just doing-

Shaan Puri 24:35 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:36 ... small m- small investments. But I saw this and I was like, "I don't know, this might actually work." We'll see what happens, but I'm into these things that monitor things. Uh, another one, and this is, this is a little bit of a shill. This is actually totally a shill. But do you, you remember My Body Tutor? I told you all about My Body Tutor.

Shaan Puri 24:52 I use My Body Tutor. Happy to plug them for free. I'm not a... We don't get paid for this. Just a happy customer.

Sam Parr 24:59 I get a little bit paid for it. I'm a small stakeholder-

Shaan Puri 25:01 [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:01 ... in this company. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 25:03 [laughs] Oh my God.

Sam Parr 25:05 I get a little bit paid for it-

Shaan Puri 25:07 That's so funny [laughs]

Sam Parr 25:07 ... because, [laughs] because here's what they do. They... You... I use MyFitnessPal, but you could use their app, but I use MyFitnessPal and I upload, like, the calories that I've eaten and all the food that I've eaten, and they basically call me every morning to, like, criticize me and be like, "Why the hell did you eat this? Is this part of your plan?" Or, "What's your plan today?" Or, "What are you gonna do this week? And what type of protein are you gonna eat w- today? What type of carbs are you gonna eat today?" And they actually, like, hold you accountable for what you're eating. I'm actually am getting paid for this. I am a stakeholder in this company. I'm not getting paid directly, but I do have a small stake in this company. And so we did this thing called mybodytutor.com/sam. It's a little bit of a discount for our listeners, because I do love this stuff. Has it worked with you?

Shaan Puri 25:47 Uh, yeah, it's going great. I love the product, genuinely, uh, even though I'm not a, not a, uh, you know, not promoting. There's no /shaun. Um, but I, yeah, happy customer. My coach Haley's awesome and, uh, you know, it's a, it's a good reminder. So, so most things in life I, I always get surprised when the answer to most things, if you, if you trace back, you're like, "All right, how do I make this thing happen?" And you're like, "Well, you gotta take a bunch of action." It's cool. Non-negotiable, right? You gotta take a bunch of action. Whatever the thing you want in life is, you gotta take a bunch of action. Okay. Well, how do you get yourself to take a bunch of action? Well, you gotta have the, you know, maybe a strategy or you maybe have, uh, motivation. Those are some of the elements that go into action. Okay. Where do you get the strategy and the motivation? If you just keep going back down the chain, the number one thing is simply awareness. Like, a lot of things in life that aren't happening, aren't happening because you haven't actually put your focus on it, right? The laser beam that's in your brain is pointed elsewhere, and you haven't actually brought your awareness to, to the situation at hand, and you're not bringing your, your awareness to it regularly enough. As a startup, Sam, I'm sure you used to do the same thing. I used to put, like, every day when I would come into the office, I'd draw a giant zero on the whiteboard. It's like, "That's how many paying customers I have." And, you know, I was like, "I don't need a dashboard. I will write this number here every day of how many paying customers I have." And I would write zero every day 'cause I had to look at that. I had to bring my awareness to the fact that I currently have zero paying customers, 'cause otherwise it was very easy to get distracted by a whole bunch of random tasks. But if I started with, well, my main goal is to hit, you know, this many paying customers, and I currently have zero. If I start my day with that awareness, then I'm likely to take actions that are in line with changing that number to be what I want. In the same way, you get a phone call in the morning that's like, "Hey, what's your plan for eating today?" And you're like, "I don't know. I don't have a plan. I'm just gonna eat whatever fucking comes up in front of me." Right? Like, you know, "Whatever I see, I'll eat." Like, well, that's not right. So then you bring your awareness to, okay, that's right, I do have this goal. I am committed to making this happen. I'm gonna make a plan, and I'm gonna just decide up front. I'm gonna bring my awareness to that early and often. Or when you take pictures or you log your meals, you're bringing your awareness to, what am I eating? Is this in line with what I've said I wanna be eating or not? Right? So I think awareness is actually, like, massively underrated both in diet, but really any goal

Shaan Puri 28:00 you have in life. I think everything is downstream of first bringing a bunch of awareness to the thing.

Sam Parr 28:06 Yeah, dude, it's changed my life and that's why I've invested in some of these companies where they, like, monitor stuff for you, and so you're either forced to focus on it or someone else is focusing on it for you. Um, let me tell you one more thing. Have you heard of Penske Media?

Shaan Puri 28:21 No. What is that?

Sam Parr 28:22 You've never heard of that? Okay. So-

Shaan Puri 28:24 Never

Sam Parr 28:24 ... most people haven't. That's why I wanted to bring this up. I've been... I found this guy a few years ago, and I've been following him, and I spoke to someone who worked at the company, and I didn't realize how big this company is. So let me tell you this story. So there's this guy named Jay Penske. His father is Roger Penske. Roger Penske, do you remember in San Francisco, remember those yellow trucks? They were yellow moving trucks-

Shaan Puri 28:46 Yeah, Penske Trucks

Sam Parr 28:46 ... and they used to say Penske.

Shaan Puri 28:47 Yeah.

Sam Parr 28:48 Yeah. So Roger Penske, he was a race car driver. He was, like, a professional race car driver and then he started a whole bunch of things, including a moving company. He also owns a ch- uh, uh, a chain of auto parts store. And so he's this self-made billionaire. He's probably close to 90 at this point, but he's, like, a big deal. Well, he has this son named Jay, and Google Jay Penske. When I googled Jay Penske, I wanted to hate this guy so much. Tell me what you see when you Google him.

Shaan Puri 29:16 Let me guess: he's too handsome and too rich for you.

Sam Parr 29:19 He's too handsome.

Shaan Puri 29:20 [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:20 He's too rich. I think his wife is a beauty pageant, uh, winner.

Shaan Puri 29:24 It could be one or the other. [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:26 He's, he's, he... Yeah, he's got both of them.

Shaan Puri 29:28 If this guy has any handyman skills, he's out of here for us. [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:32 [laughs] Yeah. Dude, I was like-

Shaan Puri 29:33 If he can build anything with his bare hands, too much. Get out of here

Sam Parr 29:36 ... I immediately googled, like, Jay Penske shirtless in order to, like, be like-

Shaan Puri 29:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 29:40 ... does, does he have that too? Which he does, I think. Uh, I, but I looked this guy up and I wanted to hate him, and I did research on him, and I completely love him. I think he has it all. So check this out. So you've never heard of Penske Media, but let me tell you all the things that they own. So they own, uh, South by Southwest, they own the Golden Globes, Rolling Stone, The Hollywood Reporter. Now they own a large chunk, maybe most of Vox. They own Variety, Hou-

Shaan Puri 30:06 Wait, so he owns South by Southwest and Rolling Stone, this guy?

Sam Parr 30:09 Yes. Yes.

Shaan Puri 30:10 [laughs]

Sam Parr 30:11 He owns The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Women's Wear Daily, New York Magazine, Eater, uh, The Verge, um, Art News, Art Forum, Art in America, The Robb Report. Have you been to The Robb Report?

Shaan Puri 30:23 Yeah.

Sam Parr 30:23 It's like-

Shaan Puri 30:24 This, this article says he is the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment

Sam Parr 30:28 Yes, exactly. He's really under the radar. Not a lot of people talk about this guy, but Penske Media, I think it's called, uh, uh, PMC, Penske Media Corporation. They're pretty under the radar. They own enough publications [laughs] that something like one in two Americans go to their websites every month. It's massive. They get hundreds of millions of, of monthly uniques. And they're one of the few media companies that's large that is consistently profitable. They've been killing it for years and years and years. He's originally-

Shaan Puri 30:57 How, how did they get started? How did he build this empire?

Sam Parr 31:00 Yeah, so he originally started, uh, his first, like, getting into the digital business was when he was in his 20s. He bought mail.com, and he was like, "I'm gonna create a new email service." It didn't work out, and so he eventually sold the domain, mail.com, to someone else, and he made a little bit of money doing that. And then he was like, "All right, but I still wanna get into digital. I still wanna get into media." And so he started, I believe, it's actually hard to find the, the origins of the story, but he started something like an ad network. And he starts an ad network in the 2000s, and, uh, it's going okay. And then they eventually start buying publications to put ads on. And then slowly, slowly, slowly, it starts, they start gaining momentum. And over the last 20 years, I think it's, the company's, like, 20 years old at this point, they buy more and more publications. And this guy's like, he's got a chip on his shoulder because he's the son of a billionaire, and allegedly, that's what he says. He says, "I've taken no money from my parents. I started this with a very small sum, my own money, and I've just slowly rolled this into another thing and another thing and another thing." And now it's this massive business. And I think two or three years ago they raised $200 million in order to further fund acquisitions. But people aren't talking about this guy at all. And I asked this guy who sold his company, uh, to Penske, and I'm like, "What is he so special at?" And he says, uh, here's a few quotes that people have said about him. They go, "I think he has a chip on his shoulder and wants to prove himself. He was hustling, uh, back then not to be known as P- Penske, to prove himself not to the world, but to his family." And another guy said, uh, that he, when he hires people, at this point they have something like 1,000-plus people, he interviews every single person who they hire. And when he buys a company, he wants to interview every single person who works there. And they say he's a steward of the brand, and he truly cares. There's this one story about, I think it was, uh, oh, what was it? It was, um, a real estate publication owned by this woman that was notoriously rude to everyone. She was, like, hard to, uh, work with. She was kind of a diva, and she was just rude constantly. She was one of these Hollywood real estate reporters, and she kinda thought she was on top of the world. And Jay, Jay Penske comes in, and he's, like, this good-looking, privileged guy, so immediately she thinks she's gonna hate him, and he totally toned her down and won her over with kindness and, like, being polite and, like, having her back constantly. And that's been a trend I've noticed with this guy, is all these people say that he's just really kind, he's really nice. He's a s- really, really savvy operator, and he's super low-key and under the radar. But it, this guy Jay, he's one of the biggest names in media, and very few people are talking about him.

Shaan Puri 33:26 I love how he's like, "I wanna make a name for myself." [laughs] And he's like, "Penske Media Group." He uses the same name. [laughs] Also hilarious. Uh, this is fascinating. So he didn't take money from his dad. That's interesting. He took money from the Saudis, and he took money from that guy Daniel Loeb, who's, like, the, like, the legendary, uh, trader.

Sam Parr 33:44 Yeah, but, but I think that was, like, 15 years into the business. I, I think that they actually bootstrapped it for a long time. I think they raised $200 million at a billion-dollar valuation.

Shaan Puri 33:54 How would he bootstrap it? Like, what was the first pro- what was the cash cow?

Sam Parr 33:57 Well, the first cash cow was their ad network that they had made. So if you, I used Web Archive, and I went and looked at what their website used to look like, and it was basically it, it reminded me of an ad network. Now, this was, like, 15 years old, I believe. Uh, and so, like, a lot of the terminology was even different, and, like, the type of stuff that they were doing isn't really relevant anymore. But it was from, like, owning mail.com that he bought for cheap, and he sold that for a profit. And then it was, like, an ad network is what it was. But they've, they've run profitable for a really, really long time.

Shaan Puri 34:26 So I think this, uh, super cool find. I'd never heard of this guy. Um, and I did not know that, you know, the same family owns Penske, the truck thing. They own the Indy 500. They own, like, the IndyCar Raceway and all that. And then he bought all these brands like South by Southwest and, and whatnot. That's super interesting. Would you wanna do this? 'Cause this sounds really hard to do. Uh-

Sam Parr 34:48 No

Shaan Puri 34:48 ... in fact, there's a quote here from someone who's like, "He's the hardest working guy I know. He's always on planes. He is always on calls. He never ha- he never stops, and it's been that way for 15 years." This seems like, like, rolling up kind of, like, old-school media properties seems like both one of the more dangerous things you could do because media is, like, I mean, we just saw Vice shut down the other day. Media is, like, not the most stable, um, industry. It's not the most profitable industry either. And owning f- a portfolio of 15 things in general and operating them is, is pr- you know, like, just a hard way to go, a hard way to live.

Sam Parr 35:22 No, I would not wanna do this. Uh, I think that this is the worst way to, [laughs] one of the worst ways-

Shaan Puri 35:27 He has over 2,000 employees.

Sam Parr 35:28 Yeah, and not only do they have 2,000 employees, but it's 2,000, like, LA based, uh, you know, so they own or they operate. So, like, do you know, uh, Dick Clark Studios? Have you ever h- seen, like, the Golden Globes or-

Shaan Puri 35:40 Yeah, yeah

Sam Parr 35:40 ... uh, remember, like, when the ball drops on, uh, on, like, NBC, I forget even what network it's on, and it says, like, "This is brought to you by Dick Clark Studios" or whatever? They own that. And so having to host all those things, no, I would never in a million years wanna do that. But someone is doing it, and they're actually doing it successfully. So if you look at Vox or how about BuzzFeed? BuzzFeed has a horrible market cap, and they, they just sold Complex Media for less than I think they paid for it. Or, um, I mean, what, what, what other media company did you just mention? Um-

Shaan Puri 36:10 Vice

Sam Parr 36:10 ... Vice. Vice.com. They just shut down. No, I think this is an awful way to do it. However, it can be done, and this is the only guy who's proving that it can be done at that size. And so the way that he's doing it is through just being a really good operator. And so he balances letting people do their thing, but also he, he ... is, like, pretty strict about operations, so he expects a certain amount of profit, things like that. And he still owns 60% of the company. And so would I wanna do this? Absolutely not. But do I still think it's cool? Yes. He... [laughs] And if you, by the way, if you Google his name, I was trying to figure out, I'm like, "Where's chinks in this guy's armor? Like, where's he screwing up?" Uh, the only thing that I could find was he got arrested for pissing outside when he was drunk on, like, Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard.

Shaan Puri 36:55 [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:56 Uh, and so that, like, that, [laughs] I've-

Shaan Puri 36:57 [laughs]

Sam Parr 36:58 That was, like, the only time that I've noticed that, that people really have disliked him. In general, he's-

Shaan Puri 37:02 Gotcha.

Sam Parr 37:03 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 37:04 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:05 See, you're not perfect. By the way, I said that his, uh, wife was a, like, a Miss America winner. She's actually a Victoria's Secret model. So-

Shaan Puri 37:15 Hm

Sam Parr 37:15 ... he's doing great in many different aspects of his life.

Shaan Puri 37:17 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:17 But I, I thought that this guy-

Shaan Puri 37:18 It's actually better to just pause after, just be like, "So..."

Sam Parr 37:21 [laughs] He's, he's doing all right.

Shaan Puri 37:24 Let it all be, just let the, let the air answer the question there of how you feel about that.

Sam Parr 37:27 He's doing all right. But-

Shaan Puri 37:29 [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:30 ... he, you know what, have you ever heard of Cy Newhouse? Do you know who Cy Newhouse is?

Shaan Puri 37:34 No, but I have an idea for you real quick.

Sam Parr 37:36 What?

Shaan Puri 37:36 Um, I've noticed, and many of the listeners have noticed, that you love a good-looking man. I think-

Sam Parr 37:44 I know

Shaan Puri 37:44 ... you should create the Forbes 30, I think you should create the Parr-

Sam Parr 37:48 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 37:49 ... 30 Studs Under 30. And it's just great looking businessmen, just dreamy hunks. Hun- [laughs]

Sam Parr 37:57 Dude, so many times in the-

Shaan Puri 37:58 Just dreamy hunks [laughs] that happen to have jobs

Sam Parr 37:59 ... so

Sam Parr 38:00 many times people in the comments, they think I'm gay, or they'll comment on how I comment on people's calves.

Shaan Puri 38:06 I wonder why, dude.

Sam Parr 38:07 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:07 You're like, "I Googled this guy shirtless." [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:10 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:11 That was my research. That's the first thing. [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:13 For the record, I'm not gay, but I can appreciate when someone's really handsome.

Shaan Puri 38:19 [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:20 So sue me. So sue me. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 38:23 I love art, long walks on the beach, and a nice body. [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:26 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 38:27 Parr just oozing, oozing on.

Sam Parr 38:29 Dude, it's pretty, uh, yeah, a lot of people do think I'm gay, 'cause I remember we, we were talking about this one track athlete and I was like, "Look at his calves. You see those calves?" I'm sorry.

Shaan Puri 38:36 Yeah.

Sam Parr 38:36 I, I could admire, you know? I could admire.

Shaan Puri 38:38 [laughs] Well, your hand was, like, making a cupping motion while you were saying it, so that was just too much. [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:43 [laughs] That's all right. I'm fine with people thinking I'm gay. That's okay. Uh, I'll ta- uh, whatever. Um, anyway, interesting guy who's under the radar that's doing stuff that you use, but you probably never knew who was behind it. That's what I wanted to bring it up.

Shaan Puri 38:57 Okay. I like it. All right, um, Sam, you brought some fire today. The Penske thing was awesome. Uh, Pelosi, we're keeping an eye on her.

Sam Parr 39:06 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 39:06 I got my stock pick. [laughs] I got my stock pick in. We're gonna check on that one in five years and see how I did. Um, good episode. That's all for the pod. Actually, we're trying something new. So we have a, a new format for the next episode that we're calling The Quickie, and The Quickie episode is just quick hitters, little, basically, throughout the week, me and Sam see a bunch of things that are really interesting, but they're, they're kinda s- short. They're not like... They're just like, "Hey, did you see this? Check this out. This is something really interesting I saw." And it's stuff that we normally just share in our group chat 'cause everybody likes it, but we didn't know how to make it into a pod, so we're actually gonna just take the best ones from the week and put them together as a little Friday quickie of quick hitters. And w- so check that out.

Sam Parr 39:44 All right, that's the pod. [outro music]