The oldest trick in the book to make your first million

Shaan Puri 0:00 When I googled this family, the words came up were silent dominance, middlemen at planetary scale.

Sam Parr 0:08 [laughing]

Shaan Puri 0:09 [upbeat music] All right, Sam, I have a, uh, I have a Billy of the Week for you, an MFM classic. This is not just any Billy of the Week, this is one of the biggest Billys in America, one that I wasn't really that aware of. I think you will know more than me about this, but I would say most people don't.

Sam Parr 0:31 Okay. Wait, can I guess?

Shaan Puri 0:32 Let me read you... Let me tell you three things about it, then you can take a guess.

Sam Parr 0:35 Okay.

Shaan Puri 0:35 Okay? All right. It is the largest private company in America for the last forty years.

Sam Parr 0:42 Mm-hmm.

Shaan Puri 0:43 It is owned eighty-eight percent by the family and has produced more fam- more billionaires in one family than any other company ever. They do more revenue than Goldman Sachs, Nike, and Starbucks combined.

Sam Parr 0:57 Ooh, is it Mars or Coke?

Shaan Puri 1:00 You're in the right neighborhood.

Sam Parr 1:01 Estee Lauder?

Shaan Puri 1:02 [laughing] Okay, you left the neighborhood briefly.

Sam Parr 1:05 Okay.

Shaan Puri 1:05 Come back to the other neighborhood of, like-

Sam Parr 1:07 [laughing]

Shaan Puri 1:07 ... sort of rich redneck families of America. It is Cargill.

Sam Parr 1:15 Oh, yes.

Shaan Puri 1:16 So the Cargill family. So I didn't really know anything about this family. Can I just tell you a little bit about their story and, and what they do? Because this is a dominant business story of all time.

Sam Parr 1:26 Wait, first, tell me, why did this interest you? Why did this catch your attention?

Shaan Puri 1:29 Remember when you... when I was at your house, and you were like, "There's this closet here, by the way, that we found. There's this extra storage room-

Sam Parr 1:36 This-

Shaan Puri 1:36 ... that we didn't even know till we lived here for two months"? That's how I felt finding out that one of the, the most wealthy of r- families in America, and I don't know their story. That's how I felt.

Sam Parr 1:45 Okay.

Shaan Puri 1:45 As the, as the host of My First Million, I just felt like I needed to right a wrong.

Sam Parr 1:49 Okay, I understand.

Shaan Puri 1:50 And, and, and the re-- by the way, how did I find it? There was a Reddit thread that was, "Tell me about billion-dollar industries that I probably don't know about." And it was like the first one was sand, and the second one was this, and the third one is this. Reinsurance. It's like, well, there's insurance companies, and then they buy insurance. That's called reinsurance. And then the reinsurance, guess what? They have reinsurance companies behind them. It's just insurance all the way down, baby. And so I was reading through this thread, and then one was Cargill, and I was like, "Oh, Cargill." So what they did, so the story is, um, back in the day, as America was, was sort of getting its feet and railroads had been, had been, uh, starting to get built, farmers needed to offload their crops, their grain, um, and they needed to sell them. So they could either sell it individually, so the farm could try to sell individually to a buyer and figure out how to transport it there, or they could work with a middleman. And so Cargill became the biggest middleman on the planet for basically just initially storing grain. So they would go right next to where the railroad is. They would build what's called a grain elevator, which is basically a giant storage facility for grain so that it wouldn't spoil very quickly, and the farmers could come drop it off. They would get, like, coat check. They'd get an IOU that says, "I will pay you when your grain sells," or they would just buy it at a flat rate, like wholesale, and be able to flip it. So you could choose as the farmer which one you wanted to do.

Sam Parr 3:05 This is what my father da-- my father does for a living, by the way.

Shaan Puri 3:07 Oh, so maybe you should have known. [laughing]

Sam Parr 3:10 He does it with onions. Onions. But yes, my, my father's a, a broker. That's what he does.

Shaan Puri 3:16 Does he store, or he just calls one side and say, "Hey, I got seventy-five bushels of-

Sam Parr 3:20 This-

Shaan Puri 3:21 ... kilograms"?

Sam Parr 3:21 Well, it's fresh produce, so the storage is, like, a day. But yes-

Shaan Puri 3:24 Okay

Sam Parr 3:25 ... there's a, yeah, there is a place where they sit for, like, twenty-four hours before a truck-

Shaan Puri 3:29 Right

Sam Parr 3:29 ... comes and gets it. Yeah. But yes.

Shaan Puri 3:31 And what's interesting about th- this for me from a, from a business perspective, because you always hear this idea of, like, you don't want to be the middleman. Oh, you can always cut out the middleman. And, and in this case, the middleman became worth more than everybody else. And actually, if you look at many businesses, you know, um, there, there, there's many businesses where the middleman becomes a quite a valuable business. And so there's an interesting s- question of why. And in this case, it's because the middleman was a physical, was physically in the middle. They had literally built the grain elevators that would store the shit right next to the railroad, and so you needed to transport it. You needed to get to the railroad. Who else had it? Like, nobody else was gonna build that. So anyways, they started doing that. They, they then go, you know, further and further and further. So, you know, at one point, they're like, "Hey, these shipping barges are so inefficient where we're shipping the grain, um-

Sam Parr 4:15 Oh

Shaan Puri 4:15 ... when it's not traveling by rail. So we'll build our own shipyard, our own ships." They end up producing ships for the n- US Navy. They bought the biggest, like, meat, uh, like, poultry company, and now they control, like, a huge percentage of the meat industry, of the grain industry. And so they built this, like, empire, and nobody really knows them. And the f- and the basically, it's just a family that's, that owns this thing, eighty-eight percent owned by the family. There's, like, twenty or something billionaires in the family now. They have this rule called the eighty-twenty rule. So eighty percent of all profits will get reinvested back in the business. Twenty goes out as dividends to the family, and they hire, uh, for the last, you know, twenty years or so, the, they've had professional CEOs running the company. It's not, like, family-run anymore.

Sam Parr 4:53 And the profit per year, according to Wikipedia, I think it's, like, five or six billion dollars.

Shaan Puri 4:58 Yeah, that was, like, during, like, the kinda peak COVID stuff when, uh, you know, when Ukraine was getting attacked and, and, you know, Ukraine produces a lot of grain, and so their prices spiked. I think it's, like, three billion in a, in a normal year right now.

Sam Parr 5:10 Okay.

Shaan Puri 5:11 So okay. So, so you're close to a billion dollars a year of profit that goes just straight to the family, and it's been doing that for, like, whatever, fifty-plus years. [laughing] And so I, I wanna tell you a little bit of... it's something interesting. So first I was like, I was like, what do they actually do? 'Cause now, you know when these corporations get so big, so large, they just have their hand in everything. And you would see these comments like, you know, they're just everything on your plate. Anything you eat in a, in a package, Cargill had a hand in it. They're, they're controlling the food supply. The people think of, like, Monsanto-style, like, evil companies.

Sam Parr 5:41 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 5:42 Um, and so just, just I wanna read you this paragraph. So imagine you eat a hamburger. Cargill probably sold the farmer the seed and the fertilizer to grow the grain. They bought the grain from the farmer and stored it at their grain elevator. They shipped it on their barge that they built in their ships that they built to a processing plant, where it's processed into animal feed, and then they s- they feed that to cattle. Who they then slaughter. They, they then store the meat at their meatpacking plants, sell the beef to the restaurant. By the way, the restaurant has to buy their salt. They sell, like, all of the salt to all of the fast food chains in the country. And then the corn syrup that they processed out of the corn gets put into the ketchup. The soybean oil that's used for the fries, the starch that's used in the milkshake, that's all Cargill. And isn't it crazy how, like- That's nuts ... one company can have a hand in so much of your day-to-day life? And, and when you're, when you think you're eating at some farm-to-table restaurant, you, you're really not escaping them because they control the underlying ingredients that are used. The fertilizer, the seeds, the grains, like, all of it that gets fed to the cows. Like, h- it all come, it all goes back to the source, and, uh, i- isn't that kind of incredible? Uh, and the family is so big and so profitable, they also own a thing called Garda Capital Partners, which is a $10 billion-plus size hedge fund. Correct, 'cause they have to hedge co- commodities, uh, you know, on behalf of the farmers and for themselves as well at this point. So they own, like, a little bit of everything, including mines because they need to get their own chemicals and minerals to make all of these things. This is incredible. No famous founder. You know, their office was famously this, like, chateau-looking thing on a lake in the middle of nowhere. Um, and, like, that was their... It was called the Lake Office, if you Google it, and it's just quiet. You know, like, w- how they say, like, money talks but wealth whispers? [laughs] This is, this is wealth whispers shit, you know what I mean? Like, who's the founder? What does he look like? Who's the CEO? What do they talk about? How come they're not on CNBC? Do they do podcasts? No, they don't do podcasts [laughs] , you know what I mean? Like, it is, it is true, like, quiet dominance, and actually, it was part of their strategy for, for a long time, was to be quiet about it just to not attract competition and to build this monopoly position in the logistics, uh, industry. Dude, this is cool. I've known... I've seen their logo, and whenever I look at, like, the largest privately owned companies in America, it's always been there. I never understood what entirely did, they did because it's one of those things where you say what they do, and it sort of makes sense, but it's, like, a B2B thing, so, like, you don't entirely understand exactly what it does. And they say- Right ... like they sell chemicals, and I'm like, "I don't know what that means," you know? That's so, that's so vague. But when you look at the numbers, they do $150 billion a year in revenue. That's just so massive. And I bet you that they, like, uh, own so many more things that you wouldn't even realize. Like, for example, like, the Walmart family owns, like... Have you heard of Rapha? It's, like, a cool bike D2C company. They own that? [laughs] They, they own... Like, they just like, they're just rich pe- they're just, like, deal men. They just own shit. They, they just go to the website to buy one, and then they just keep pushing plus on quantity until they own all of them. [laughs] Yeah. Like, "We now have the shop." Like, that seems like something that this family would do, is, like, you don't realize it. And then if you wanted to get, like, conspiratorial, which I have not done any research on it, I'm sure that there's, like, 10 or 20 really interesting conspiracies about how that either they're this, they're pulling the strings behind... You know, it's like the, uh, there's something going on with this family, which I'm just making it up. I have no idea. A journalist once described the family as secretive, inbred, and suspicious. [laughs] I'm in. [laughs] Hey, I wanna tell you about something pretty cool. We have a database of all of the business ideas that have been discussed on this podcast. So hundreds of episodes, the team at HubSpot went through. They pulled out all the simple, relatable, interesting, profitable, uh, ideas that we have brainstormed, and they're all available for download for free. Just click the link in the description below. Thank you to our friends at HubSpot for sponsoring this podcast and putting together this free resource for you guys. Back to the show. In 1980, they did a survey, and by then it was already a dominant company, and they did a survey. 94% of farmers had heard of Cargill, but only half of them knew what the company actually did. And then amongst politicians, lawyers, and journalists, who they call opinion leaders, 50% have heard of them, but only 10% understood what the business was. Because they have this sort of sprawling empire like you described, people don't really fully understand what they even do. You just sort of know that they're important. Um, I had a friend who, uh, I think it was Cargill that she went and worked at because they obviously make so much profit that they were trying to invest in, like, new seed-related, agriculture-related D2C. Like, I think they invested... Like, we had talked about that one D2C milk company. Like, they would look at things like that, like anything, like, interesting. And she said it was awesome working for them. She said it was a, it was a great company. Well, definitely. There's a section called the dark side in my notes here, so let me just tell you some things from the dark side, just to be, be fair here. When you have, like, global crop production, you're gonna have this, which is, like, accusations of child labor, uh, like in Brazil or in, you know, Ivory Coast and things like that. They ha- they, they're said to have better intelligence than the CIA, so they ha- basically they have a spy network of [laughs] around crops. Uh, so, like, they know more about the state of crops in real time than the US government does around the world, um, because it's, like, life or death for their business. You know, they've had, like, different, like, E. coli break, breakouts and stuff like that. Again, if you're touching most of the s- food supply, then, like, anything bad that can happen in food is gonna happen to you. People just generally feel like they're monopolistic, so, you know, they... Do they care about worker safety, number one? Probably not. Probably not in the top three, top three things that they care about. But they're Midwesterners. They even, they, they're probably really sweet. [laughs] But it's crazy to go from, like, a single grain shed to now controlling 25% of the entire US export market for grains, and it, it's, like, cr- pretty crazy. So they're, they... It started 160 years ago. You and I did a talk recently, and you were like, we were explaining, like, some of our preferences. You were like, "I like projects. I like starting something and then potentially selling it, but, like, I love the starting phase. I love handing it off to someone, and then I love it potentially ending and starting something new." And I was saying how I love things that could potentially go for 50 to 100 years. Not that I've actually done that. I've actually done the same thing as you, projects, starting and selling.

Sam Parr 12:09 And I'm so fascinated by companies that can last this long, and this one in particular is one that seems like they've kept it together pretty amazingly for a hundred and sixty years. That's crazy. So they started before the Civil War, and it's still around. Isn't that incredible? And I just think-- I, I just find that so fascinating, and, like, part of me is like, "Well, when I die," like, "why do I care about legacy?" Like, we talk about legacy a lot, and I, I was reading something the other day and, like, why the-- So, or someone said that, like, "Why do you care about your legacy?" Like, "Who, who gives a shit? You're dead." And I was like, "Okay, yeah. I, I understand that perspective." Like, we can have the dichotomy of caring about that and then also, like, how cool would it be that the thing that you can create can employ a hundred and sixty thousand people a hundred and fifty years after you're gone? Like, I don't know. I think that's awesome. I think it's kind of romantic and exciting.

Shaan Puri 12:58 It's kind of like two people can love running, and one person's trying to run the hundred meter dash, and the other person's running, uh, you know, o-one of these, like, ultra-marathon hundred mile races. And it-- They're both like, "Yeah, I love running." [laughs] But... And, and that's what I do, and that's kind of like in the business sense,

Shaan Puri 13:15 there's, there's different ways to approach it. There's the, what I call the projects approach, which is you kind of go in knowing, like, "Hey, I'm gonna have, like, five great at-bats in my career, and I hope each one is a really fun chapter, and I'm gonna seek variety in those."

Sam Parr 13:29 It's sort of like being an author. You're like, "All right. I got five years of research and writing, and then a break, and then I do it again."

Shaan Puri 13:36 Exactly. And then there's other people that are brick by brick laying a foundation for an empire and, you know, I, I respect both, but I, I know which one I want to do, and I think you know which one you want to do too. I think you want the, you want the, like, empire.

Sam Parr 13:49 Yeah, I don't know if I'm gonna have the grit to pull it off, but I for sure love the idea of the result.

Shaan Puri 13:54 Do you think the people who do this, is it a temperament difference? Like, they're wired differently, therefore... You know, fast, fast twitch, slow twitch muscle type shit where it's more of inherently who you are, or do you feel like you might have the base wiring to do it, but you then need to adopt the systems, right? Like, for example, it's not like one guy ran this for a hundred years. No, he passed it to his son. His son kind of screws it up. Then the next son sort of saves it out of, out of bankruptcy, and then by, by now, professional CEOs run it, but they've instilled values and systems and, like, ownership controls. But, you know, one-- Now the, the heirs are marine biologists, and they're doing other things. They're not running this company that, that the... But the company, the entity lasts. So which one-- Where do you think you might fail? Is it the wiring or the systems?

Sam Parr 14:41 I think the wiring. You start off a certain way, but not always. For example, I think there's a lot of them that would have sold if they could have, but the opportunity just didn't present itself, and they just said, "Screw it, I'll just keep going." And then I think what happens a lot of times is, is a few things. Like, if you had to build a business and you never thought about selling, there's a world where you would do some wacky stuff that

Sam Parr 15:00 would make the business incredibly profitable, but incredibly not sellable. Like, you would acquire assets or businesses that don't entirely make sense to one particular buyer, and then you get big enough to the point where you're like, "Ah, this is a hodgepodge of stuff, and it works for us, but no one buyer would ever actually take this." So, like... But then I also think that it comes down a lot to the family, and I think that there's something special around family meetings. We've had Rob Diedrich on here. He talked about that. I actually follow some people on Instagram, and they talk about, like, family meetings.

Shaan Puri 15:28 Explain what you mean. What is... What's a family meeting?

Sam Parr 15:30 So the way that I grew up is probably very similar to the way potentially you grew up, but the way a lot of Americans grew up, which is your parents never talked to you about money. If you asked them, like, "How much do you make?" They would say, like, "That's none of your business." Um, and there was very little transparency, and there was probably very little culture creation in terms of, like, here's explicitly my expectations of you. Here's our family's culture. Here's our values. And what I've been learning about, and frankly what I like, is this idea of a family meeting where you get the children and everyone in the same room monthly, quarterly, annually, something like that. And in the same way you run a board meeting, you run a family meeting where you say, like, "Here's the values that we stand for. Here's how we did last quarter, last month, according to what we said we wanted to achieve. And what about the future? What would you guys like to do? Let's con- Let's talk about this, and here's the money that we have to spend on whatever dreams and ideas that you have, and let's discuss if it fits within our family credo and mission." And there's actually, like, a way to do that, and I aspire to do that with my family. My family, we-

Shaan Puri 16:31 Your two-year-old is, like, taking minutes, taking meeting minutes. [laughs] A board observer. [laughs]

Sam Parr 16:35 I just think there's something special about being explicit about stuff. I think that a lot of times when you're growing up, there's these things that you say, "Well, we never really talked about blank, but my feeling was this."

Shaan Puri 16:46 Right.

Sam Parr 16:46 But what I would like to experience is, like, saying, like, "We are actually gonna speak what we intend to do and how we will do it and what resources we have to get it done, and we'll have a conversation." And I think there's something very special about the families who pull that off.

Shaan Puri 16:59 Yeah, I, um, I totally agree. I, I, I think it's explicit versus implicit, so it's not even like, "Don't talk about that." It's more just it didn't get said, right? And it doesn't get said, not for malicious or secretive reasons. It's just we were busy. I don't know myself what... You know, it's like, uh, I'm not sure I really know the answer to all these things, and it's easier to just not even think about it, right? It's like if you ask somebody, "Well, well, what do you really want?" Watch people just immediately just start to flounder bec- And it's such a simple question. Don't you think you should know what you really want?

Sam Parr 17:31 When I'm ne-meeting new people and I want to make them feel like I care about them, it sounds like I'm being nefarious. But I mean, like, I'm trying to, like, get to know someone. I'm like, "Hey, in the next six months, anything interesting you want to get done in life or career or family-wise?" And they'll be... And half the time, people are like, "I don't know." And it's like the, the conversation is them discovering it, and it's kind of exciting.

Shaan Puri 17:48 Yeah, exactly. So I think, I think being explicit, I'm like you. I'm a, I'm an over-communicator. I'll take the negatives that come with that because I think the positives are so overwhelming. But how do you do it in a family is kind of interesting. I was at a, a friend's house, and he has this, like, crest on the wall. And he's like, "Oh, that's our, like, family crest." And I was like, "Oh, like, my family, we didn't have one. Like, I guess my ancestors dropped the ball." He's like, "No, like, we made this. I painted that, like, you know, five years ago." And we just decided, what are we all about? There's four quadrants on the crest, and we said, "It's this, this, this, and this, and this is our sigil. That's our animal."

Sam Parr 18:24 I love that.

Shaan Puri 18:25 And I was like, "You can just do that? You can just be a university? Like, I could be Hogwarts right now?"

Sam Parr 18:30 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 18:31 What the hell? Like... And I came home, and I was like, "Shit, I'm gonna start doing stuff like this." And so I actually haven't made the crest, but I have done a f- a few other things. Like, I gave for each of my kids, they have, like, a w- a way. Like, I... Like, it'd be like Sam's way. So for example, one of my kids, it's like one of them says, "Try, try and figure it out." Oh, that's the Sam way. And I'll, I'll... I've said that so many times that now the great father moment is when he'll just be like, "Well, I just did it, I just did it the Sam way."

Sam Parr 18:55 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 18:55 And he's using it as shorthand for like, "I didn't give up. I tried, tried until I figured it out." And my daughter has a different one.

Sam Parr 19:01 That's really beautiful.

Shaan Puri 19:03 And then we have one that's, like, for, uh, like, i- the idea of gifts. So I told them, I was like, I was like, "Yeah, like, everybody has, like, some gifts that you were given." And my son loves, like, Pokémon and things like that, so he kinda understands the idea that, like, super... You have a superpower and, like, every, every character he watches in a show has, like, a special power. I'm like, "Yeah, like, well, you have one too." He's like, "Really? What's mine?" And I'm like, "Well, yours is that you're this," and I just get to declare. I give them a reputation to live up to, you know, one that they're today quite inconsistent in. But there's moments, and all I do is I just highlight those moments. I pretend the inconsistencies don't exist, and I just keep reinforcing that until it's their identity, and I do that for each of them individually. And then one of the downsides is, like, I make one sound so good, I'm like, "Do I... Can I just say that the other one has the same?" 'Cause then it's, it feels less special. I have to give the other one equally those.

Sam Parr 19:49 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 19:49 "But you can also do..." You know, it's a little tricky. It's not perfect, but man, this shit works. Um, it is really powerful. And so there's a, a version of that that's completely non-business related, but in creating this, like, family dynasty idea of how do you instill a culture first in the home before you ever try to go do it, you know, in the office.

Sam Parr 20:09 And I think the likelihood that anyone's children will ever wanna work in their business is very low, and so, like, if that even happens-

Shaan Puri 20:15 Right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 20:15 ... I think, and they get along, that's like a miracle. And so what I've noticed, that is important. Also, um, creating long-term trust. So I talked about this a little bit with the Hearst organization. Hear- uh, Hearst company, which owns, um, like GQ is, like, a famous magazine they own, but they also own, like, 100 businesses that you've never even heard of, and they... including, like, they own half of ESPN or whatever. And one of William Randolph Hearst, one of his great inventions was he created this trust within the family that was pretty ironclad, and it was very long-term thinking.

Shaan Puri 20:46 Trust like a actual legal trust, or you mean trust-

Sam Parr 20:49 Yes

Shaan Puri 20:49 ... like the feeling?

Sam Parr 20:50 Legal trust. So for example, for him, it was like you cannot dispute this trust, and if you do dispute it, you're out of the will. And, like, the trust-

Shaan Puri 20:58 [laughs]

Sam Parr 20:58 ... basically just says that, like, Hearst, I, I forget the exact number, but Hearst hypothetically will have eight board seats. Family members are always two. I think it was like you cannot argue with how much money you receive. Money is given out equally. If you want more profits, you cannot argue about it. If you do argue about it, you're out. Like, things like that, like he'd, like, do these things that were quite good, uh, in terms of, like, making it last for a long time. Same with John Rockefeller. He did that, he did that the same way. One of the great things about reading about John Rockefeller, he was this madman businessman. Think of Jeff Bezos, a polite guy, but, like, a ruthless businessman. His son, John, also, uh, John, he was a great dad. They were both great. He was a great dad and a great son, and they loved each other very much, and they showed a lot of mutual respect. And so what I'm noticing about a lot of this stuff, it's built on mutual respect. It's built about empowering and having these very explicit conversations, and that was a big takeaway from reading about him.

Shaan Puri 21:48 Yeah, it's interesting. You gotta find, like, these blueprints. It's kind of what I went back to when I was asking you about, like, the long-term thing. Like, you, you have to get to know your wiring to know where you're gonna e- you're gonna naturally have things come easier to you, um, that are difficult for others, and other areas that are gonna be difficult for you, and you better figure out how you're gonna work around it, either by patching up those weaknesses or getting people around you who complement those. And then you gotta learn the systems, you know, on top of it. Like, what are the habits? What are the, what are the actual systems on top of that to get the results I want?

Sam Parr 22:19 But then there's, like, a wild card. Like, for example, I have a billionaire friend whose son is a homeless drug addict. Like, they've tried numerous times to get this kid on the right path to the point where they're like, "We either... We j- we just gotta let you figure it out, and unfortunately-"

Shaan Puri 22:33 Right.

Sam Parr 22:33 "... that, that might mean death." But, like, it, there, it's a very challenging, tragic situation.

Shaan Puri 22:37 The family crest didn't help.

Sam Parr 22:39 Yeah. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 22:40 [laughs]

Sam Parr 22:40 Like, it's pretty crazy. You can have, I think, what's the phrase? You're the, uh, happiest of your saddest kid.

Shaan Puri 22:45 Yeah, you're only as happy as your saddest child, yeah.

Sam Parr 22:48 I went on this rant about, um, like, phrases and why they're really important, the phrases we tell ourselves. So for example, like, using

Sam Parr 22:55 the phrase, like, "I might as well," where it's like, "Well, I've already eaten bad today. I might as well eat."

Shaan Puri 23:00 Right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 23:00 It's like, no, you... That's just a convenient phrase. You should not might as well do that.

Shaan Puri 23:04 Right. [laughs]

Sam Parr 23:04 Or, uh-

Shaan Puri 23:05 It is what it is, is my-

Sam Parr 23:07 Yeah

Shaan Puri 23:07 ... is my, my favorite one.

Sam Parr 23:08 It is.

Shaan Puri 23:08 It is what it is, is the, is the, the, the complete surrender of, of, of power, of agency, of anything. It is what it is. Just replace it with, just say, "It is what I make of this." So then you say, "All right, well, what am I gonna make of this?" You know? Like, it is what it is, is crazy.

Sam Parr 23:23 Can I tell you about a phrase that you're unfortunately, uh, need to know about and you're gonna see everywhere online? I also wanna rebrand it. So this thing is called the, uh, Jevons paradox. Have you heard of the Jevons paradox? It's not even a paradox.

Shaan Puri 23:35 [laughs]

Sam Parr 23:35 A paradox means, like... An example of a paradox is, like, can God heat a burrito so hot that even he can't eat it? Uh, like, this isn't... This is more like [laughs] like, uh-

Shaan Puri 23:45 What's that paradox called?

Sam Parr 23:46 [laughs] Yeah.

Shaan Puri 23:46 The burrito paradox? [laughs]

Sam Parr 23:48 That's a paradox. This isn't even a paradox. This is just, like, a, like a, like an economic, like, principle.

Shaan Puri 23:53 Okay, okay. Here, here, let me read it. Let me read the actual definition. An economic principle stating that as technology makes use of a resource more efficiently, the total consumption of that resource actually increases rather than decreases. Okay, so as something becomes more efficient, you would think you're using less of it 'cause you're being more efficient, but in total, you use way more of it because the demand explodes. Okay, go ahead.

Sam Parr 24:13 And I'll give you, I'll give you a ton of examples. I want to rebrand it to Jevons paradox because, uh [laughs]

Shaan Puri 24:18 Give it a little flavor [laughs] .

Sam Parr 24:20 Yeah, well, because it was created by this guy named James Jevon, who was a British guy, and I think that it'd be cool to have, uh, a wonderful economic principle be created by an American brother, so I want it to be one of ours, not one of theirs.

Shaan Puri 24:31 [laughs]

Sam Parr 24:32 So right around, uh, the mid-1800s, James Watt creates this new thing. It's a new variation of the steam engine, which is basically the, the steam engine that, like, uh, everyone came to love and know. James Jevon was basically this guy in the 1800s. He wrote a book in 1865 called, uh, The Coal Question, and he basically says, "I have a feeling that because of how amazing this new steam engine is, that Britain potentially is gonna get rid of all of our cheap coal, and we're gonna have a problem. We're gonna have a coal shortage." Because everyone else was like, "What are you talking about? The steam engine makes things significantly more efficient. Therefore, like, there's only a set amount of work needs to get done. Like, we're just gonna use less coal." And he goes, "No, brother, that ain't gonna happen. We're gonna use way more coal because everyone's gonna want one of these steam engines." And he was exactly right. And this is where things get really freaky, and this is actually what I want to talk about. It expands in a way that you cannot even comprehend. And so let me give you a really simple example. Eli Whitney, he was this guy from Yale, and he was like, "I want to make it rich. I have this idea." So he goes down to the South of America. At the time, slaves would pick cotton, and they would get cotton, and it would take them hours to separate the seed from the cotton to the point where they could only produce about a pound a day of cotton that was usable, one person. And he comes up with this little handheld device where you can kind of like put cotton in there and kind of cranks it, and it gets the seeds out to the point where a, one slave could produce fifty pounds of cotton. It made it fifty times more efficient. And so some people were kind of happy in a weird way. They thought, "Okay, maybe this might mean slavery won't continue to grow and that, uh, like we won't import more slaves. That's kind of, that's kind of good." The exact opposite happened. Over the next like thirty, forty, fifty years, uh, cotton got so cheap that in the South of America, particularly in Mississippi, where a lot of like p- slavery eventually got really bad, they actually started calling it King Cotton instead of King George. And so America's best export was cotton, and it got so strong that we had to import like eight to ten times more slaves that we, than we currently had at the point, at that point pre-, uh, Eli Whitney, in order to keep up with all this demand for cotton. And one could argue that the reason why slaves, slavery in America lasted as long as it did was because of cotton and the demand, and that's one of the reasons why it was like our economic engine. And so this thing, this idea of this paradox, it's quite strong. And so the reason why it's, uh, relevant right now is because what's one product that AI is making significantly more efficient? Code. Previously, code was very expensive to make. So you have to raise all of this money from venture capital. You have to hire all these engineers. You got to make stuff, and hopefully three, five, ten years that code is actually working and makes a profit. Well, Jevons paradox, it comes into play here because my opinion is this. A lot of people are saying that AI is gonna put people out of work. I think it is the exact opposite. I believe that code will get more cheap, therefore demand will increase a significant amount to the point that we can't even understand. For example, Gutenberg invented the printing press. When he invented the printing press, people were thinking, "You know, maybe people will read like two times, three times, five times more books than they're reading now." And Gutenberg, this guy creates this printing press, I believe in the 1400s, and the offspring of that, like on the extreme end, is this idea of the Kindle. One could even argue that like reading text on a page, like on a computer screen is like-

Shaan Puri 28:01 Right

Sam Parr 28:01 ... a, a, a way further down. But like, it didn't make five times more books. It made like it's infinite. Like it doesn't-

Shaan Puri 28:09 Right

Sam Parr 28:09 ... create like ten times more. It's like it creates a whole newest thing. What I have noticed, I have noticed this with the cotton gin. I've noticed this with the creation of the steam engine, which then on went to create the railroads, which created a massive boom in America. When, when technology makes a pr- a product that already has some demand, uh, more efficient, there is turmoil amongst those who are directly impacted. For example, have you ever heard of, uh, the Luddites?

Shaan Puri 28:34 Yeah, people who don't adopt technology.

Sam Parr 28:36 Yeah. So now it's used as an insult. Back then, it wasn't. So the history of the Luddites is basically right around when, uh, in the Industrial Revolution, there was a machine invented that allowed, uh, people to weave cotton, sorry, uh, wool into yarn much faster. Previously, there was like five or eight hundred thousand people in, in England who did this by hand, and they were considered craftsmen. This n- new machine comes in. They get put out of business to the point they create a fake character

Sam Parr 29:00 called Ned Ludd. And in England, this group of people go around smashing these new machines, and it starts ruining the process of creating this new, like, wool to the point where like-

Shaan Puri 29:10 And they were doing it on behalf of Ned Ludd, right? Like, uh, this, this, the, a person that you couldn't attack 'cause he wasn't real.

Sam Parr 29:16 It was a fake person, and it was, uh, so serious that it was a capital punishment in England. So if you got caught breaking one of these machines, they would put you to death. And so this idea of like, uh, there was like five or eight hundred thousand people who are willing to risk their lives in order to ruin new technology, that's like the history of Luddites. But my point being is when there is a new creation, there is a subset of people that are screwed. For example, when switchboards went away in America, there w- in the 1970s, there was like eight hundred thousand telephone operators, mostly women, that those, they, they, they didn't exist. Those jobs didn't exist. But in general, um, more technology that creates a more efficient process creates new jobs sometimes because of increased demand. Sometimes the other thing is that because there's new industries created that we can't even comprehend.

Shaan Puri 30:02 Right.

Sam Parr 30:02 And so my opinion, AI is actually gonna create a net positive, not a net negative, which I previously thought.

Shaan Puri 30:08 Hmm. I'm-- first of all, excellent monologue. Highly informed, highly entertained. I, I enjoyed that. This, uh... you told me you were reading about the Industrial Revolution 'cause you were trying to figure out, like, history doesn't repeat but it rhymes. What happened in the past? What did we say? What did we think then? Does that sound like what we say and think now? And what actually happened?

Sam Parr 30:30 Yeah, like one that came out like ten or fifteen years ago that's now popular again that I read a while ago is called Americana, um, and it goes through breakthroughs in American capitalism, so, like, different inventions. And you'll notice that people are, have the same fears consistently.

Shaan Puri 30:45 So let me ask a different question. One of the most dangerous things in business is to think, "Well, this time it's different." Those are very dangerous words. This time it's different. However, it's also dangerous to say, "It'll be just like last time." [chuckles] You have to almost consider both possibilities.

Sam Parr 31:01 I'm not saying that, by the way. What I'm saying is that human nature is human nature, and there's something special about the thirty to sixty hour a week work week that has happened for centuries, and also time and time again, there's this idea that I always, uh, come back to. I used to be a beekeeper, and bees are really interesting. With bees, if you get one hive with one set of bees, you just stack that over and over and over again. Bees fill up space. They just fill up space. In the same way, whenever you've gotten a new home, anyone has experienced this. They get to this new home, they previously only had a thousand square foot. They get to a two thousand square foot. They say to themselves, "I'm never gonna fill this place."

Shaan Puri 31:38 Yeah.

Sam Parr 31:38 And then magically, over the next three years, they go-

Shaan Puri 31:41 Jesus Christ

Sam Parr 31:41 ... "How do I have so much junk?" That is a-- Like, the human need to expand, to grow, to fill space is innate. It does not go away. And so that is what I'm saying is the same every single time, not-

Shaan Puri 31:55 Right

Sam Parr 31:55 ... the how. I don't know how this is gonna happen. That's sort of the point of my monologue, is that I don't know, but I know it will happen.

Shaan Puri 32:01 Yeah, and, and not to be too abstract here, but the w- one thing I don't get, or the one thing I haven't figured out with, with that. I, but I buy everything you said. All this new demand will get created. We'll want, we'll want code in places we didn't have code. So yeah, it'll be more efficient to get code, but net, net, you're gonna have way more code, way more people creating code. In this case, if AI is so good at doing th-- Like, AI is a technology that basically is the technology of doing work, like gen- generic work, human work. It's, like, basically a model of the brain. Like, who's to say that AI won't also fill those jobs? Ma- meaning like, yes, it creates all this demand, which creates new job opportunities, new industries, but who's to say that AI also isn't the one who supplies that demand also? Because, you know, the printing press, these were more rigid technology that could do one thing. AI is weird in that it's this like flexible general thing that can do so many things. So who's to say it doesn't also become the supply?

Sam Parr 32:55 There's a few ways to look at this. The first is like you could say, well, is this gonna be like hot water? So for example, when hot water was invented, this idea that you could like take showers every day like a king, like that was incredible, and so hot water surged and water heaters were put in every home in America. But you know what happened? We sort of figured out how much hot water we need. Like we don't actually need that much hot water today than we did like fifty years ago. So it took off and then it kinda got flat, right? But another example is electricity. When electricity was ign-- invented, it basically became like a base unit of measurement for life.

Shaan Puri 33:31 Yeah.

Sam Parr 33:32 Where if physics dict-- if physics, if it can exist in physics, there's a way that you can uniquely use electricity to make it happen. I think potentially code is going to be like that, where it's going to be a unit of measurement where you can find infinite ways to get done what you need to get done, and I do not think that it's going to be like water, where it's gonna be like, "All right, we figured it out. We don't really need that much more hot water."

Shaan Puri 33:56 Well, why are you saying code instead of like intelligence?

Sam Parr 33:59 I'm just kinda working through this, uh, to be honest. Like I'm, I'm still like-

Shaan Puri 34:02 [laughs]

Sam Parr 34:02 But I was trying to think of like that's like a unit. Intelligence is... I don't understand how to like quantify it. But, uh, now this is actually interesting to you potentially. There is always a point of turmoil with these new technologies, and I've been trying to actually break down, is there like a formula that you can figure out will the economy boom? Well, I th- I think it will. I think that's inevitable. But like how long will it take? So for example, the railroads came about and that's-- and like it, there's like this weird chart that if you look at like how many railroad tracks were laid and how the average person's protein consumption went up. Because like-

Shaan Puri 34:38 Right

Sam Parr 34:38 ... the, what the railroads did was they made America smaller, and it created like towns that didn't exactly have to be where they were anymore, and it created this massive like booming economy. However, it took fifty years because we had to create railroads, which is a very labor-intensive thing, and we had to create steel, which was like entirely new invented. And so there's this equation where it's like the breadth of the technology, meaning how many people does it impact, multiplied by this like the intensity of how it impacts you, multiplied by like the time of co-invention, and that equals like the length of turmoil that someone will go through. With ChatGPT growing as fast as it has, there is a world where the tumultuous period is relatively short compared to past breakthrough technologies.

Shaan Puri 35:25 And if you knew the turmoil, either when, how, or how long, what would you do with it? 'Cause you said there's like an opportunity. What's the opportunity?

Sam Parr 35:33 Uh, like if you knew that like the, the, like it's only gonna take us three to five years to like figure this thing out to where we're humming again, you can make bets on that.

Shaan Puri 35:43 Yeah. Actually, you know, one of the kinda Jevons paradox plays over the last few years has been NVIDIA because what a lot of people thought is, hey, people are buying these GPUs, but each training run, each algorithmic improvement that the labs are making is gonna make you need less and less of these GPUs in order to train these models. And Jensen went on, um, on TV saying was, he was like, "You're right, the training is gonna become more efficient, but the inference is gonna go up by one million Percent or like whatever, one, one million x and people are like one million x? And he's like, "One million x." And it's kind of what you were saying at the beginning, which is that when these things do diffuse, the demand goes up, not by like some kind of easy to understand percentage or multiple-

Sam Parr 36:34 Yes

Shaan Puri 36:34 ... but like in a mind-boggling way. Um, where, you know, when from the time of the printing press to now, like if you were trying to market size how many people will create text and how many people will read text, you couldn't have thought of Twitter, right? Twitter would've b- broken your brain. It didn't make any sense, but that's kind of what happens. And so he's been saying that about inference, which is like when you, when you query AI, when you use AI to do something, you use, uh, inference. And he's like, "Inference is g- is going to..." He's basically, people don't understand like how, how much there, how big the inference need is gonna be for the world. It's like, you know, mind-boggling.

Sam Parr 37:09 I think what's gonna happen over the next six months is, um, and this is partially for the listener because I think you potentially might know this, is I think the popular smart people, which I think we're relatively popular, I don't think I'm that smart, but I think the popular smart people, the narrative is going to change. It's not g- And this is in itself, uh, serving to have this narrative, particularly if you're a president or whatever. But the narrative is going to change, that this is going to be a massive net positive and they're going to cite Jevon's paradox, and they're gonna excite everything that I've just said, which isn't particularly unique, and nothing I'm saying is unique. But-

Shaan Puri 37:44 Well, dude, I see this all the time. It's like, yeah, this is gonna be great for you if you make it great for you. I think people are just sitting back as like the recipient of this, and it's like, is this hand gonna slap me or is it gonna put, you know, uh, grapes in my mouth? And it's like, well, it depends. Like, it depends what you do. Are you learning how to use this shit? Are you paying attention to what's going on? Are you thinking about how you can use this in your field? Are you talking to smart people? Are you moving where the puck is going or not? Like, I feel like people are so passive about like what's gonna happen as if everything is happening to you, and that none of this is happening potentially for you, and that you have no agency to be generative and democratize this technology for yourself.

Sam Parr 38:24 The reason I was studying the Luddites is I think that same movement is already happening right now, and it's gonna continue to happen. You know, you saw, like at this, um, recent college graduation speeches, like Steve s- or Solomon, I forget his first name. Solomon, the CEO of Goldman, was like talking about AI and everyone was booing.

Shaan Puri 38:40 Yeah. People walked out, right? [laughs]

Sam Parr 38:43 The reason I'm bringing this up is if you go back and study the Gilded Age, which I, that's, uh, one of my favorite eras, as well as the Industrial Revolution, it's all just repeats itself. Everything's repeating itself. It's, it's like the, it, it, it's very, very, very similar over and over and over and over again. This is all quite predictable. Now, the time and the how is who knows, but like the general trend, it's all been there, done that.

Shaan Puri 39:06 Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy to me that it's become like a high status thing to do to be anti-data centers and AI and things like that. It's like really, really bizarre.

Sam Parr 39:16 But that's not fair. I don't think that's fair. I, I,

Sam Parr 39:19 I don't think we should dismiss it. I think they're stupid.

Shaan Puri 39:21 [laughs]

Sam Parr 39:21 I understand their sentiment. Can you imagine being 18 or 21 years old? Uh, w- first of all, if you're 21 years old, you fucking graduated high school during COVID, that sucks, okay? The world changed dramatically over the last four years, to the point where you, uh, you were expecting to get a job at Deloitte and, or as a l- law clerk or whatever, like, you know, and they're like, "Nah, we don't need you, dog."

Shaan Puri 39:45 Mm.

Sam Parr 39:45 Like, there is anger, which I understand, but I think that the way that they act is dumb.

Shaan Puri 39:50 You're asking me to put my mind in the mind of a loser, and I just can't do it.

Sam Parr 39:54 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 39:54 It's just not possible to do this. The loser think is just not acceptable in my mind, and I, uh, I'm sorry, I just, I just don't have the ability. Maybe you can. Maybe you can ha- go in the mind of a loser, but I just, I simply can't.

Sam Parr 40:04 I, I think they're wrong, but I have empathy for it. I, I understand that feeling, and I think they're stupid. [laughs] Dude, there was one point, um, where like ATMs had just gotten invented and these people who were like the bank tellers-

Shaan Puri 40:22 Bank tellers

Sam Parr 40:22 ... it was like a hu- There, it was like a big deal. That was like a big job. And they, they revolted. They were like, "F this. You're gonna put us out of business," this or that. And do you know what happened? Way more banks went up. Made way more banks were created, or branches, like physical locations.

Shaan Puri 40:37 Right.

Sam Parr 40:37 Way more. And so I just think if I'm telling these young people, I would say it might suck for a minute.

Shaan Puri 40:44 Dude, if, if, if you're young, you have no excuse. Okay, I can get it if you're like 65, if you're 75 years old or whatever and you're like, "Oh my God, there's a lot of change. It's gonna be really hard. I've been running my business. It's, it's pretty difficult for me to reinvent right now." Like, I have a lot more understanding for that. If you're 18, 19, you didn't know anything anyways. Uh, you know, g- hop on this train. This train is exciting. This train has like so much room to run. You know, you, you sort of have to look at the counterfactuals, right? So you might say, well, it's gonna be harder than ever to get a job or this or that. It's also true that more people than ever are gonna create new things. More people than ever are gonna become successful. More people than ever are gonna become millionaires out of this. And so it's entirely possible to, to have that result if you, if you choose, if you do the actions that will, that will get you to that result. So I guess I just have very little empathy for like the younger folks. This should be easier, come more naturally for them. They have less invested and less sunk costs and less, uh, rigidity of the past to even like be tied down to. So, uh, and I don't really understand that. And the other side is like, is this serving you? Like, is that attitude serving you in any way? Uh, it's not like forget arguing who's right and who's wrong. Like, at some point, you just have to ask, does this belief serve me or not? And I don't believe that that belief serves you. I also don't believe that you can control it. Just like Ned Ludd and the Luddites found out, it didn't matter how many windows you smashed, this shit's happening. It's like getting mad at the weather. It's like, uh, it's gonna rain whether you shake your fist to the sky or not. Like, you have zero chance of slowing down AI. The AI freight train has left the station. It is happening. And so all you should really worry about is what you can control, which is your reaction and response. To the new playing field. Trying to argue that the new playing field is bad is sorta stupid to me. Um, it's like, again, like yelling at the weather. Uh, you don't get to, you don't get to have a say in, in that side of things. The New York, who is it, the governor, the mayor, who- whoever it was that was like s- proudly like, "We have banned data centers in New York State." Um, they were like so happy about it. You know, policy's already very performative, but like, man, uh, taking so much smug pride in like banishing the technology that's gonna [laughs] create all the o- where all the growth is coming from in the economy is sort of a, you know, silly.

Sam Parr 43:02 And one that's being popularized now is data centers use electricity and use water, and I actually have no idea if that's true or not true, but whenever I see these things, I'm like, we should actually learn if that's the reality because, uh, I, I have a feeling that like the Super Bowl is significantly more inefficient than a data center, and yet we celebrate that. Like-

Shaan Puri 43:24 Anybody who's, has this feeling and you're like, "Man, Sean's really not empathizing with my... This guy's being a jerk about this. He doesn't understand how hard it is right now and for, for me," just watch this clip. You just need to watch this clip of this guy with no legs completing the Last Man Standing race, which is like this insane 26-hour fitness event, and he's crawling. He, he's using his... He's pulling his wheelchair through the mud using his arms, finishing this race. And, uh, anybody who's got an it is what it is attitude, um, go watch this on loop. This should be your commencement speech instead of, uh, you know, just sitting there smug and walking out of it because some guy said two letters you didn't like.

Sam Parr 44:06 I usually think of Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark. That's mine.

Shaan Puri 44:10 In moments like this? [laughs]

Sam Parr 44:11 I think, look, they walked across an unknown territory for two years with a three-month-old baby.

Shaan Puri 44:18 Right.

Sam Parr 44:18 They could do that, and that baby still lived. I can do this. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 44:21 That's what I need. Actually, that should be a service when you're in Disneyland as a dad, and it's like hour seven, and it's, it's so hot. The kids are crying, cranky after you spent $1,000 taking them to the happiest place on Earth, and you're pushing the stroller, and you've got the turkey leg dripping down your, your, your, your arm, y- the juice of that thing, and you just hate your life. You need, you need the Sacagawea example.

Sam Parr 44:45 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 44:45 You need... That's what you need.

Sam Parr 44:45 You're like, "Look, kids. The story of Moby-Dick is real. These guys floated across America on a raft for 90 days before they were discovered, okay? If they could do that, we can get to McDonald's without crying."

Shaan Puri 44:57 [laughs] Can I tell you a very inspiring, uh, entrepreneurial story just to leave-

Sam Parr 45:01 Yeah

Shaan Puri 45:01 ... on a high note? Have you ever heard about the Ice King, Frederic Tudor? You know this guy?

Sam Parr 45:07 Not personally.

Shaan Puri 45:08 [laughs] All right. So Frederic Tudor, so this guy's known as The Ice King. This guy basically, he lives in the nor- uh, north, northeast of, uh, of the US. So he lives near like Boston or something, where it gets cold. And, uh, you know, Boston gets cold in the winter. There's tons of ice. And he realizes, he learns that in South America, they never have snow, and they never had ice. And so he has this brilliant entrepreneurial idea. He's like, "I'm gonna sell ice to the South Americans." And this is pre-refrigeration, pre the freezer being invented, right? Because so he's basically ta- goes out wherever there's like a frozen lake, and he would get blocks of ice, and he would figure out how to transport it on boats to South America and go try to sell this stuff. And he was like, "I will sell... I'm not selling ice. I'm selling winter." And people were like, "How are you gonna even trans- melting?" And he's like, so he starts getting in the lab, and he, he uses wool to wrap the... He realizes, like, "Oh, I can cover it with sawdust, and sawdust will preserve this ice for like a little longer." And he would start the thing with like 200 pounds of ice, and by the end, he would have like, you know, 70 pounds left. But he would still sell that 70 pounds. And then when he got there, people didn't understand what to do with the ice. He would sell the ice, and then people would come back complaining, being like, "It melted, dude." He's like, "What are you talking about? That's what it does. It's, it's ice. It's hot outside." Like, they didn't get it. And he's like, "Okay. I just got on this boat for like a month and brought them ice, and they didn't want it. I have to get them to want it. I have to build the desire in their mind." And so he goes, and he figures out, "What's the key product? What's my hero, hero product here?" He's like, "I need to sell cold drinks on a hot day." So he goes to the bartenders, and he says, "Look, I'm gonna chip you off a little ice here. This is free for you, but you need to start serving rum cold in a chilled, chilled drink." And so they, he gets the bartenders free ice. They start giving people ice out of the, you know, cold drinks. And guess what? Once you've had cold dr- cold rum, you never wanna go back to that warm piss again. And so-

Sam Parr 47:04 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 47:04 ... the demand starts to get built. People start to want ice. And this guy builds this amazing trade. He, um, pioneers new methods of refrigeration and freezing in order to transport the ice and ultimately puts himself out of business because people realized, "Oh, wait. We can just freeze water and make ice ourselves?" And then the ice trade kind of collapsed. But Frederic Tudor, for a day, was the man. [laughs]

Sam Parr 47:25 I'm always, I'm also always interested how you got interested in this 'cause sometimes those stories are equally as good.

Shaan Puri 47:31 Uh, so me and Diego, who's right over here, five feet away from me, one of the things we do is we, we try to read as many books as we can. And so he's been reading this book called The Medici Effect. So this was one of his stories, and I was like, "Wow, that's an incredible story."

Sam Parr 47:43 I'm happy you're reading books now.

Shaan Puri 47:45 That's condescending, but I like it. I, I appreciate it.

Sam Parr 47:49 I did not say that. I mean, I said what I just said, but you previously said that you normally don't make it past the table of contents.

Shaan Puri 47:55 [laughs] I don't normally open the book.

Sam Parr 48:00 I think you said that.

Shaan Puri 48:00 I buy the book with great enthusiasm, and I really don't even open them. They, I've, I've actually... You'll appreciate this. I'm creating a bookshelf, so you'll see my office is gonna change soon. So I'm creating a bookshelf that is, uh, like a Trello board. So it's basically a progress bar bookshelf. So I have all the books I bought. That's my icebox, my pipeline, and then a book moves into like the reading phase, and then it moves physically into the completed phase, and then there's the hall of fame of like great books, which will be like the few, the rare, the ones I would actually recommend to anybody else.

Sam Parr 48:30 It's sort of like one time Steph Smith told me she invented a water bottle that reminds her to drink more water, and I was like, "Just chug the water. Just, just sit down and read the book." [laughs] Like-

Shaan Puri 48:43 Are you sure my bookshelf not being a progress bar has not been the thing holding me back?

Sam Parr 48:47 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:48 That's what I've been telling myself. So my old boss, Emmett, from, from Twitch, he would tell me this 'cause I have a tendency to do this, where I will, uh, over-architect a solution to something.

Sam Parr 48:57 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 48:58 And I will convince myself

Shaan Puri 49:00 that, like, th- this elaborate way will be the solution instead of the ob- the obvious. And so he would just listen to me talk, and I would tell him for 15 minutes what I'm... this great idea I have. And then I'd be like, "It's great, right?" And then he would say, simply he'd go, "Have you tried solving the problem?" [laughs]

Sam Parr 49:18 [laughs] What a dick.

Shaan Puri 49:20 He's like-

Sam Parr 49:20 What a dick.

Shaan Puri 49:21 And then he, uh, no, he was, "Have you tried actually just solving the problem?" And then he would say things like, "The only way out is through, Shaan." And I was like, "Oh, wow." I was like, "Yeah, I'm kind of an idiot." And he goes, "No, actually," he goes, "I'm a partner at YC, and this is the most common advice I give to YC startups. They'll say exactly what they're planning to do, and then I'll ask them, 'Have you tried solving the problem?'" [laughs] Then they'll be like, "What?" And it's his, like, shock value way of reminding you that, like, in many situations, the only way out is through, and you're trying to find a way around. And there is no around. There's only through.

Sam Parr 49:54 I waste so much time, like, charging my AirPods, looking for the holster to hold my iPhone, making sure that, uh, like, this... And I'm like, "Dude, just, you're just going for, like, a 30-minute run."

Shaan Puri 50:03 I will buy, I will door... I door... I did this the other day. I was going for a run. I DoorDashed, you know the little arm plastic, like-

Sam Parr 50:09 Yeah [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:09 ... blood pressure monitor where you put your phone?

Sam Parr 50:12 Yeah.

Shaan Puri 50:12 And I was like, "Well, I certainly couldn't run without my phone. So I guess I'll just wait 45 minutes-

Sam Parr 50:17 Yeah

Shaan Puri 50:17 ... for this thing to arrive- [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:19 For your-

Shaan Puri 50:19 ... before I go for my-

Sam Parr 50:20 ... 15-minute run

Shaan Puri 50:21 ... four-hour, uh, four-minute run. I was gonna run half a mile. [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:25 [laughs] I do the same shit all the time.

Shaan Puri 50:27 It's one song. [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:29 [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:29 I could have just hummed it. [laughs]

Sam Parr 50:35 [laughs] Uh, what was it? Like, "Come my lady. Come, come, my lady. You're my butterfly." [laughs] Shaan's like running, like, "Is this guy singing 'Hoobastank' to himself?" [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:48 [laughs] Why do people listen to us? Why do they listen to us? We're idiots.

Sam Parr 50:52 That's the, that's the pod. [laughs]

Shaan Puri 50:55 [laughs] [upbeat music]