I Spent 7 Days With The Richest Men In Texas
Billionaire secrets, networking superpowers, and party tricks. - April 12, 2024 (12 months ago) • 40:20
Transcript:
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Shaan Puri | He was showing us around his house. He's like, "That's my nap room." And I was like, "You're a nap guy? I'm a nap guy!" And he's like...
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Sam Parr | Oh yeah.
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Shaan Puri | I take a nap every day for the last few days. | |
Sam Parr | Years, do you want a nap together? Alright, you're back from Austin. You were there for 7 days. How was it?
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Shaan Puri | It was great, dude! I had one conversation I gotta ask you about. I got put on the spot.
So, I was talking to... I did an episode with Tim Ferriss, and he said something in the middle of the interview. He goes, "I wanted to ask you this. What do you think is the brand of your podcast?"
He goes, "What I mean is, if you're not in the room and someone was just telling their friend about it, how would they describe it ideally to you? How would they describe it?"
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Sam Parr | You actually did this before, and I thought it was great. You said, "Hey, look, we're doing these meetups, and if you are the type of person who goes to a restaurant and wonders how they could make this a little bit more efficient, or how much money do they make per meal, or how much profit do they make, and how can they expand this," then you also like to joke around, you're perfect for MFM.
That's sort of the person who I would describe as being into it. I would say that we're this weird combination of making silly, dumb jokes and deconstructing interesting companies while pointing out different trends.
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Shaan Puri | Okay, that's pretty good. Yeah, I like the restaurant analogy. It's like if you went to a restaurant with four friends, three of them would be looking at the menu trying to figure out what to order. Meanwhile, you'd be looking around, counting the tabletops, and trying to figure out how much money this place makes. That's us. We are that friend.
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Sam Parr | Why? What did you say on the air?
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Shaan Puri | Well, luckily he let me off the hook because he asked, "I want to ask you this. You don't have to answer, but you could do that." He just kind of kept going, and in my head, I was like, "Okay, the master of podcasting is asking me what my podcast is about."
It's sort of like, you know, if Leonardo DiCaprio comes up to you and asks you what your name is, and you're like, "I have one, I just don't know what it is right now." You know, the panic ensues.
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Sam Parr | I had to go out of town, so it was a weird time. Yeah, I wasn't able to make it. But you interviewed 3 or 4 people, and you hung out with a ton of people. How was Tim, for one? You also interviewed Joe Lonsdale. How were these guys?
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Shaan Puri | So, I took notes. I always take notes when I go. I take a little journal with me.
Basically, I'm not taking notes on what happened; I'm only taking notes on what the new epiphanies are. What are the new golden nuggets? What's the one phrase somebody said that I'm going to remember?
I'm looking for a high rate of revelation. I think that's also, by the way, a good move for the podcast. What is the rate of revelation per minute? How many interesting things are coming out to you?
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Sam Parr | RPM, baby! RPM.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, exactly. There's a very high RPM trip for me. I wrote down a bunch of names on our document, and for each one, I had one big revelation. So, you can prompt me and go for whichever one looks interesting to you, not in order.
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Sam Parr | Manish, from what I know, is a... what's his book called? The "Dando Investor." Basically, what I know about him is that he started investing in companies in the eighties. I think he made some money through his own business.
He's sort of like an Indian Warren Buffett. He has this huge following and seems like a really fascinating type of guy.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, so exactly. I wanted to talk to him because my mentors consider him a mentor. Right? Like if you like this podcast and you like either Andrew Wilkinson or Syed Balkhi, both of them look up to and learn from Monash.
When I was going out there, I texted Andrew. I was like, "Hey, I wish I asked him. You know him, right?" And he's like, "Dude, he was my first value investing man crush."
You know, somebody whose brain you get really attracted to because he has very interesting philosophies and thoughts. If you Google his net worth, it says like, you know, almost $2 billion. I don't know, you know, Googling net worth is not an exact science, but he's up there, more like a B than them.
He's an interesting guy. His story is basically that he was working at a company, and his dad was like, "Son, it's time to quit." His dad was an entrepreneur, and he was like, "Dad, I don't want to do what you did, man. Your life was crazy. It was ups and downs. Don't you remember as a kid we were being brought into the living room when we were 12 or 13 years old trying to figure out how to let the business survive one more day? I'm traumatized from that. I just want to work here, save money in my 401(k) every year, and in 35 years, I'll be set."
His dad was like, "Okay, you're not wrong, but you took the wrong lesson away from what you learned. You actually got a crash course in how to do business and how to not do business. Maybe you should just take that and actually learn from it and do it right, do it better than I could do it."
He told him, "You know what? This company has 2,000 people here. You're just a cog in the machine. You could die tomorrow, and no one would even know."
So he's like, "You know, you'll never reach your potential just sitting there." He was like, "Alright, shit, he's right. Go start a company." It was an IT consulting company. This was during the dot-com boom run-up when the internet was really exciting and computers were really exciting. He creates an IT consulting business.
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Sam Parr | Crazy. Mark Cuban also had an IT services business that he sold for $6,000,000. I bet it was around the same time. So, it was enough to be comfortable, but not enough to do nothing. | |
Shaan Puri | Exactly, exactly. So, what he did was take that money and start investing his own money. He compounded his own money. His own money turned, like, whatever. I think at first he had sold $1,000,000 of secondary. He turned $1,000,000 into $13,000,000.
He knew the Indian tech scene pretty well because his consulting company had overseas staff, so he was paying attention to it. He invested in one company, and it was 140x. He thought, "Wow, that's insane! I should get out." He pulled out like $1,000,000 or $2,000,000 from that. That's how he made his first $1,000,000,000. He just reinvested.
Along the way, he was giving his friends stock tips. He'd say, "Yeah, I'm buying this for this reason, I'm buying this for this reason." They were doing really well, but they said, "Manish, we can't just listen to your tips because you're not telling us when to sell. We don't know what you're not telling us. Can we just give you the money?"
So, he took $1,000,000 from his friends. He said, "Okay, if I'm investing in my stuff, I'll just put their money in the same thing." But he thought that was a side thing. He had $13,000,000; that was $1,000,000 he didn't really care about.
He proceeded to basically, over the last 20 or 30 years, run that $1,000,000,000 up. He now has about just under $1,000,000,000 of assets under management from the compounding of that, plus people bringing more assets in along the way.
Okay, that's a long story about Manish, but that's not what was interesting about him. What’s interesting about him is I call him the "relaxed billionaire." I go to this guy's house, and he's just chilling. He's in his basketball shorts, no shoes, just walking around. He's like, "Alright, sup?"
I went the day before to hang out with him. I said, "We're going to do the podcast tomorrow, but I want to get to know you a little bit. Let's hang out. Can I swing by for a little, you know, let's just have some tea?"
So, I go over to have tea at his house. He calls it "chai with Pabrai." He said, "Yeah, I do this from time to time. I make a really good chai, and I'll just have it with random interesting people. One out of every ten proves to be someone really compelling. I want to hang out with more, and you know, nine out of ten? No problem, I just had some chai."
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Sam Parr | And he just moved to Austin, right?
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Shaan Puri | He's been there for a little bit. Yeah, so he relocated from, I think, LA or something. I was like, "So what are you doing today?" because he's hanging out with us for like an hour. I was like, "What's... you know, there's nobody here. Where's your team? Where's your schedule? Where's your assistant coming and tapping you, being like, 'You have a call'?"
And he's like, "I don't have any of those things." He told me a couple of interesting things. He goes, "Investing is not a team sport." He said, "I have a few folks, analyst-type people, and they'll do specific things that I need them to do, but they don't make decisions. They don't make investment decisions; I make the investment decisions."
He goes, "Why? Because to be a great investor, you need to make a contrarian bet. Meaning, you have to believe something's good when other people believe that it's bad. Fundamentally, that's how it works, right? If you think it's good but everybody thinks it's good, you'll never make any money; the price is too high. If it's bad and you think it's good, you'll never make a dime. The only way to make money is if you think it's good and other people think it's bad."
He calls it, "I look for things that are hated and unloved." He's like, "Last year, I made one big bet, or whatever, the last two years, like on coal. Coal, he's like, man, nothing is more hated and unloved than coal." He's like, "And before that, it was this, before that it was this."
So he's like, "I look for the hated and unloved things. If you have a team, everybody just centers around the safe picks that we can all agree on. You'll never find the truly, truly contrary and hated and unloved things if you invest as a team because it's not a team sport."
Number two, he goes, "I like the strongest around his house." He's like, "That's my nap room." And I was like, "You're a nap guy? I'm a nap guy!" And he's like, "Oh yeah, nap. I take a nap every day for the last 30 years."
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Sam Parr | Do you want to nap together?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, he's like, "Every 30 years, I've been napping every day." He's like, "I love it. Just knock out in the afternoon for 20, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is."
But overall, he was like, "You know, I have a clear schedule. I spend my time, I read, I think. Maybe I'll go teach or talk to somebody." He goes, "I teach not because I want to be a teacher, but because if I want to learn something, the best way is to go try to teach it."
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Sam Parr | Where does he teach? At a school or an office?
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Shaan Puri | He'll go give a talk at a university or to some group of aspiring investors or whatever. I was just fascinated by this guy. I thought, "This is the real-life story," and I love this guy's style. I love his MO.
I go to his library, and he's got just thousands of books. He's like, "Yeah, this is my biology and science section. This is my investing book section. This is my business book section." He's just recommending different books to me. I thought it was pretty fascinating to see this guy because it's a high contrast to all the other people I've met on this trip who are like, "Go, go, go."
You know, hey, real quick, as you know, we're big on ideas here. We love bringing new ideas, business ideas, brainstorming ideas for the podcast. Well, a lot of people ask, "What do you do with all those ideas? Can we go find them? Is there a list somewhere?"
The great people at HubSpot have put together a business ideas database. It's totally free! If you just click the link in the description below, you can go download a collection of over 50 business ideas that are from the archive, listed out for you, curated.
So, what are you waiting for? Go download it! It's free. Check it out; it's in the description below. Alright, back to the show.
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Sam Parr | So, I've heard this so often where people say, for example, Warren Buffett. They're like, "I just read like 500 pages a day." Then I'll talk to our friend Andrew Wilkinson and a few others, and he goes, "I just want to read all day."
In my head, I'm like, okay, reading... because I just read this awesome science fiction book about aliens. Is that counting? What do they read, I wonder, all day? Is it only work-related? Is it like the equivalent of you and I skimming?
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Shaan Puri | Twitter... is it? No, I think it's less about Twitter. But I do think some percentage of that is companies' annual reports.
It's about going in, diving in, and looking at a company or an industry to try to understand it. Some of it is understanding the macro psychology of humans, business, and whatever. He's got business books, psychology books, all that. Some of it's about science, and he's reading about that.
And some of it's just for fun, just to kind of expand the brain. Science fiction is actually quite interesting, as an example, because a lot of the things that are happening today were predicted by science fiction, you know, 20 or 30 years ago. Everything from cryptocurrency to video calls—things that at the time seemed far-fetched.
Predicting video calls when you didn't even have a cell phone, right? It took some thinking there. So, I do think it's a wider breadth. It's not just reading, you know, 10-Qs. Yeah, that's why I...
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Sam Parr | Was worrying. I'm like, "Is he just reading? Is he just reading? Is he just reading those all day?" 10-Ks. I think, by the way, we don't want to look like a total fool.
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Shaan Puri | I'll give you a couple of takeaways from Joe Lonsdale. For those people who don't know, Joe created Palantir. He's a co-founder of Palantir, which is a $50 billion company.
But his actual claim to fame, when I was talking to him, he said something like, "I've created more $1 billion companies than anyone else in America." Bold. That's it, kid. Bold.
And I was like, "Cool, cool, cool. I got a podcast. What's up? I've created more episodes than most podcasters." I thought that was a really amazing achievement, and it's true. He's done at least five $1 billion companies, and those are all in the last, you know, short amount of time.
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Sam Parr | His background is, I think he went to Stanford. He somehow got into Peter Thiel's orbit when Joe was just 21 or 20, or still in college. He kind of like right-hand Peter and was almost like... | |
Shaan Puri | An *protégé*. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, I was his protégé, intern, whatever, at his hedge fund. I think.
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Shaan Puri | By the way, the story is really hilarious because somebody asked him in an interview, when I was doing my research, "What were you like as a kid?"
And everybody, like if I asked you, a successful person gets asked what it was like growing up, what's the typical response?
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Sam Parr | Selling stuff.
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Shaan Puri | It's usually humble origins of some kind, right? Like, I grew up middle class. You know, maybe I had a reading impediment, but that led me to really work on something.
There's usually some rags-to-riches story. The guy asked Jody, "Yeah, I grew up, had great parents, great family. Stuff came pretty easy to me. I was basically really good. I aced all my tests. I was in the 99th percentile for math and 99th percentile for science. I was a programmer."
He's like, "You know, there were smarter kids than me, but school was pretty easy. I focused on it, I did well, and I got into Stanford."
It's like that was his story, which I found to be hilariously candid. Because, of course, that exists, but most of them don't want to say that. They're so busy virtue signaling that they'll try to bend their awesome upbringing to focus on some one bad thing.
Where he's like, "No, my parents loved me, and they really put me in a position to succeed. I was super competitive, and I fucking won." That was his story.
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Sam Parr | And then he, you know, he got in Peter Thiel's orbit. He was probably wildly successful just as an employee at PayPal. But then he spun off and they created Palantir together.
Then, off the success of that, he created like 6 or 8 other companies, right? He like "co-founded" them, which I don't understand what "co-founded" means in his case. He's done it so often that I don't even understand the logistics of how he has time to do that.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, he like seeds them basically. So he's like, "Okay, I have either the idea, I'll bring the team together, I'll have the initial strategy, I'll recruit the initial talent, I'll recruit the initial capital."
Then, you know, over time, either as CEO or not CEO of these different companies. So he's done a part; he did Palantir, he's done Epirus, he's done like a whole bunch of different things in different spaces.
One is financial software for wealth managers. Another one is like software for spies for the government. Another one is, you know, like Andral, they're making a weapon for the government.
You know, they do different things in totally different spaces, like trucking and logistics. They've done all kinds of stuff.
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Sam Parr | Let me show the viewer. If you're on iTunes or whatever, go to YouTube to see this.
I get this text message from Ben. Alright, so Joe has... I don't know what his home is like, but the room that he's in is elaborate. When you think of like old money and the boys' club of men smoking cigars, you're just surrounded by encyclopedias.
There's a picture of Joe, and he's sitting there. He's got a suit with a high collar. He looks like a hedge fund guy.
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Shaan Puri | Looks like the president and we had an awesome, awesome interview. He was like, "That was the best podcast I think I've ever done."
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Sam Parr | He said that.
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Shaan Puri | He said that his right-hand man, who's like his media guy, said that... I don't know if they're just being nice, but I'll take it either way.
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Sam Parr | What was the one revelation you got from him?
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Shaan Puri | I'll give you five points. I'm sure I'll read them fast.
**Number 1:** Some people actually just want to save the world. I am very, very suspicious when people talk about how they want to help others, improve society, or fix America. All those things... Joe is that guy. He actually is that guy; that is what drives him.
I went back and read his early blog posts and Quora posts—stuff from 10 years ago, 15 years ago, things he wrote when he was in school. He's been saying the same thing the whole time. That's usually the giveaway: it's not someone who's changing their tune once they make it, but someone who's been saying that before they make it.
I think he looks at everything through the lens of: what are the biggest gaps, and how do I fill them? When we were on our way out, it was like, "Oh dude, we've been hanging out all day." We hung out; we went there in the morning, which was my hack. We went and did his workout. Oh, I did a workout with him at 8 AM, and then we...
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Sam Parr | Was he fit?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, of course, he's super fit. So we worked out together, we cold plunged together, we got breakfast together, and we hung out. Then we did the interview. By the time we did the interview, we were totally in high rapport, I guess.
I'm hanging out and I'm like, "Dude, I could hang here all day," but I could tell it was my time to leave after this thing was done. He's got to go do other stuff today.
As we're walking out, freaking Elon Musk is walking in! That's what was going on in that moment. Pretty insane.
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Sam Parr | Alright, what were the other two?
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Shaan Puri | He's still wrestling with the idea of focus. One of the things he said that I thought was really interesting is, he's created more $1,000,000,000 companies than anyone else in America. Let's say I'll take his claim at face value.
He brought up, honestly, that he was like, "You know, but I'm not sure if that was right." He goes, "One of the lessons I learned from Peter Thiel is that you should be really, really careful putting effort into new things. Almost always, it's a better idea to put money into your main compounding thing that's got a lot more room to run. There's more area under the curve to kind of fill of something that's really working than to take that same unit of effort onto something that you're starting from zero."
And he's like, "Honestly, I probably, if I had just done one of those companies, I probably would have built a bigger thing than all five combined or all six combined or whatever it is," which I thought is a pretty interesting thought.
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Sam Parr | And that makes me feel good to know that people I admire, or look up to, or who are ahead of me struggle with the same stuff that everyone else struggles with.
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Shaan Puri | With, I think, he was at peace with it because he was. But at the same time, that would be if I was optimizing just for money and valuation. But that's not what I'm optimizing for.
I thought these companies needed to exist, so I built them. I'm glad I did. It's more fun to do multiple things, and those were problems that needed to be solved.
So, like, let's do the math here for a second. So, it's Palantir now, a $50,000,000,000 company market cap-wise. Even if you take out Par, which I think is a $3,000,000,000 company, or OpenGov, which he just sold for $1,800,000,000, it's like those are... let's say those two together each took, you know, 7 to 8 years, 10 years to kind of build.
Let's say the average company takes 7 years to do. Even if he totally wins and he gets to a $3,000,000,000 outcome or a $2,000,000,000 outcome, if he had just put that same energy into Palantir—like taking Palantir from $50,000,000,000 to $53,000,000,000—is a hell of a lot easier. He probably would have taken it to $70,000,000,000 or $80,000,000,000 if he had put all of his same entrepreneurial energy into that versus starting these new things.
So, I think he's actually kind of right on the map, but I think he's also right in how he decided to do it. He had an interesting rule, which was, "I only do 6 things," and that was like his definition of focus. He said, "I can only do 6 things." They're not all equal; I have my main one or two things, like 8BC and starting, you know, one company.
But he said, "I can only do 6." For his team, like general managers or his partners in his company, the high-level exec people, there's also some number where they're only allowed to have 3 or 6 things on their plate at any given time. I think 3 was the number for them, and 6 was the number for him because he's not operational as the CEO. By the way, his rule was, "If you're the CEO, you have one thing, and it's your company. That's it."
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Sam Parr | This is awesome! I'm so... you know, he's only 41. This guy's a machine. Like, he's so prolific. I'm so excited to listen to that.
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Shaan Puri | Also, by the way, just next level awesome in terms of lifestyle. Like, baller house, full staff, chef... all the good stuff. All the things you would want.
For me, as somebody who's, you know, playing the money game, it's interesting to see what the final level of the money game looks like for these people. Like, "Oh, that's interesting." It's cool to get to sample it.
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Sam Parr | What do you think was worth it of what he spent on?
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Shaan Puri | He's got a basketball court in his house. I thought that was pretty awesome. He also likes gaming, so he has a gaming room, like a LAN room, where he's got six computers. He said, "Me and my cousins all come here and play," or whatever.
I've always been a big proponent of having a chef. To me, it's the number one luxury of wealth to have a private chef because of the amount of time it saves, the health benefits for you and your family, and the taste. It's a win-win-win. So yeah, I thought that was pretty cool too. | |
Sam Parr | And then you got to hang out with Nick Gray. Nick Gray is one of my favorite people on earth, and you got to see his magic—what he does with his parties. That was pretty cool, right?
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, so when we reach the end here, you know, we do all the interviews and we have all the one-on-one meetings. At the end, it's like, "Dude, there's a list of a hundred people that are interesting and awesome. We would want to hang out with them, but you know, there's just no time."
So we were like, "Let's just do a small house party." We organized a small 15-person house party and we asked Nick to organize it. I got to see Nick Gray, the legend, run one of his famous two-hour cocktail parties. Go buy his book, *Two Hour Cocktail Party*. This guy is such a legend in just his vibe.
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Sam Parr | It's awesome, right? He makes you feel good.
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Shaan Puri | I was going to tell you this hilarious story. So, he does all the normal Nick Gray things. I walk in, and he puts a name tag on my shirt. The name tag is yellow, so that after we all do our kind of intro, he's like, "We're just chatting."
You know, like normally you're just kind of chatting, you're mixing and mingling. Everybody's social prowess is somewhat limited. Some people are really good at it, while some people feel awkward and don't know how to exit conversations. Nick makes that easy because it'd be like, "Great! Harmonic!" He plays the harmonica and says, "We're going to do a structured activity. Look at the color of your name tag, join that group, and I want you to talk to those people now."
So, he stirs the pot basically to mix you up. He's doing his thing, and then at the end, as we're trying to leave, he says, "Hey Sean, can you call my phone? I want to do a gag." I'm like, "What? What do you want to do?" He's like, "I have a gag. Call my phone."
I call his phone, and he reaches into his bag and pulls out this giant handle of a butcher knife, but it's a phone case, and his phone is on the other end of it. He's like, "Hello, this is my gag." I thought this was really funny, and I was like, not only was that funny, but I've never heard someone say, "Hey, hold on, I want to do a gag." That is just... dude.
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Sam Parr | He's great, right? Nick's a special person, and he makes all his parties fun. Did you guys do the introductions? Then he cuts people off if they talk for more than 10 seconds.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, he's awesome. We did a thing at the end where I guess he had been just slinking around the party, listening for interesting things.
So he pulls out his notebook and gets everyone in a circle. He's like, "Alright, Sean, you were saying you discovered this amazing hack for your business, and it was just so effective. What was that?"
He gets you to share the things. Like, you mentioned you were doing an art show. Can you tell us about the art show?
It had 4 or 5 people just like doing a thing. It's definitely like I feel like I'm in 2nd grade and my teacher's like, "Put up your bunny ears, and now everybody quiet. We're going to do a structured activity."
But honestly, it's such a relief because I hate social gatherings. I don't even leave my house most times, and when I do, it's kind of an exhausting thing. But he's really got the shit down to a science. I kind of love it.
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Sam Parr | But your takeaway in Austin... it's a pretty special place, isn't it?
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Shaan Puri | Fishing for a company? Yeah, sure, it's a very special place.
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Sam Parr | It's cool. There are a lot of cool people there. I didn't know this, but you hung out with one other person, Hassan Minhaj.
Dude, I do not like hanging out with him because he is so smart and so funny that I get intimidated being around him. Do you not feel that way?
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Shaan Puri | I had the opposite reaction. I walked away and I was like, "Dude, Ben, that is one of my favorite people on earth to hang out with."
If you said, "Hey," it was perfect. It was like a breakfast before I caught my flight. I basically missed my flight because I was having so much fun at the breakfast. I was like, "Fuck it, it's worth it." He is so great.
I'll give you three reasons why what stood out to me.
**Number 1:** Obviously, humor. It's unfair. He's a ringer. Hanging out with anybody who's funny is great, but hanging out with a professional comedian is sort of like, you know, he brought a gun to a knife fight.
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Sam Parr | It's intimidating when I hang out with him because he just makes little small comments. I'm like, "You're just so much quicker and funnier than me."
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Shaan Puri | He's so much quicker. He's so fast.
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Sam Parr | He's so fast. It's like a JV athlete hanging out with a pro, where it's like, "I don't even want to play with you. This isn't fun." That's how fast he is. | |
Shaan Puri | I love seeing it! It was amazing. He's so quick.
Then, number two: he is so present when you hang out. It's great! He's not looking at his phone, not thinking about what to do next, and not eyeing the room. He is fully locked in and fully present, which I thought was really great.
The other thing is, he asked a ton of questions. We had a different hangout where we did a breakfast thing with another billionaire-type guy. Nice guy, had a great time.
But I shit you not, dude, this guy literally asked one question in a two-and-a-half-hour hangout. It was not difficult because I had tons of questions for him, so it was no problem.
But it was difficult to sit there and think, "Is this person just really not giving a fuck about being here? Do they not want to be here?" Because they could leave. I don't need to do this if they just don't want to be here.
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Sam Parr | Here's what I think it is. When you and I host MFM meetups, I go there thinking, "I'm just going to get peppered with questions." I'm going to ask other people questions to be cordial and everything, but I feel like there's a status game here. They're here to see me, so I'm going to be answering the questions.
Then, you go hang out with someone who's above you in status. In that situation, I'm the one who's the mentee. I'm going to be asking you all the questions. I think when you're as successful as the person you went and hung out with, you're just used to being the... I don't know, not particularly wise one, but you're the one that's supposed to have a lot more answers. You have what others are seeking, so you're used to just being the one who's, "I'm going to be an open book. I'm going to answer, what do you got?"
You know what I mean? That shift, it's like an alpha shift. It is kind of... it is really uncomfortable, but I understand. | |
Shaan Puri | Totally understandable. But I also think, you know, I kind of wish I had said it. I wish people were aware of what that makes the other person feel like. It's a good reminder to self: never make other people feel that way.
I think Hassan was the opposite. He asked so many questions; his cup is not full, right? He's here and he's like, "Pour some water into me. Give me something to think about, something to learn, something to whatever." He's asking tons of questions, and I think that's such an attractive trait in people.
It was just a good reminder of that. On this trip, I got to be in both positions—some places where the status game was sort of shifted one way and others where it was totally shifted the other way. It was a great reminder of what it feels like and how easy it is to just make somebody feel amazing. I think Hudson does that really, really well.
I have a couple of others. Can I give you two others real quick?
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Sam Parr | Yeah. | |
Shaan Puri | Do you know this guy, the Peachy Babies guy? No? You haven't met him?
Okay, so he's awesome. I thought you might have met him. His name's Tyler. There's this company called Peachy Babies, and they sell slime on the internet. Not just a little slime, but a lot of slime. Tens of millions of dollars worth of slime gets sold by these guys. If you go to their TikTok, they have 10 million followers. The reason why is because they create awesome content. The content drives sales; it's just a great engine.
So, anyway, I was pretty fascinated. I was talking to this guy, and he was at the house party. I asked him, "What's the story?" He told me a pretty fascinating story. He said, "Well, before doing this, I was a pro poker player. I was looking to transition out." He also mentioned, "Before I was a pro poker player, I was the best Yu-Gi-Oh player in the country."
So, he goes from being the top Yu-Gi-Oh player to one of the top poker players.
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Sam Parr | What's Yu-Gi-Oh? Is Yu-Gi-Oh like Pokémon?
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Shaan Puri | It's like a Pokémon-type thing. Then he meets this girl, and she's telling him about this slime business she used to have, but she shut it down. As he asked some questions, he thought, "That actually sounds kind of promising. What if we revive that?"
I thought it was pretty impressive to take a business that somebody else shut down and say, "I don't know, seems like there might be legs there. Let's try it." They tried it, and they ended up crushing it.
The only takeaway I have from this guy is that he totally pattern matches to what I've been saying so many times on this podcast. People who have a background as a competitive gamer or in some competitive niche—spelling bee, Yu-Gi-Oh, poker—those people who learn how to win that game, learn how to win at League of Legends, or they're the number one sneaker flipper in California, as soon as they pick a better game, they're going to win that too.
That really gets me to something I really want to do, and it's a call to action I have for anybody in the audience. I really want to organize some kind of event that pulls together young people doing those types of things: the mathletes, the best Pokémon players, the best League of Legends players, you know, the best Fortnite players.
It's just a matter of time until they get the spark to shift their game. I want to do two things. I want to invite other people who have that background. For example, Joe Lonsdale was a competitive mathlete. That's what he was doing, right? Super dork at that age. But those types of people are always going to make it.
You know, the founder of this company called Traba, he's the spelling bee kid, right? We talked about that on the podcast episode. As soon as they decide to play a better game, they have a great ability to do excellent things.
I'm sure some percentage never shift games; they kind of stick in that world too long, or they just become a coach in that world. They never really start to apply it to the world of business, but if they did, they would do phenomenal. So, I want to organize some event.
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Sam Parr | What's that channel or the show you like? Something "Physical 100"? Exactly! You got it! What about the "Unphysical 100"?
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Shaan Puri | The laptop costs $100.
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Sam Parr | Yeah, so what are you going to do? You're going to host like a... like so?
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Shaan Puri | I need a name and a frame, right? Like, I need a name and a frame for the thing. Then, I want somebody to organize it. I'll put up $100 to pay for all the event stuff.
I just really want them for those people. I want to give them exposure to, "Hey, here are 20 people who have the same background as you, who then shifted their game and now do amazing things in the world."
So, I want to have them meet, and then I want to scout that talent and be like, "Hey, whenever you're ready to go do something new, I'll be your first investor."
That's what I want to create.
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Sam Parr | You can get it like a cargo short company as a sponsor or like a risk guard company as a sponsor. Be... yeah, yeah, you make fun.
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Shaan Puri | Of these nerds, watch them. You'll be groveling to them years from now.
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Sam Parr | I acknowledge that they're all going to be the big shots, but I'm still going to tease them. What was the last person?
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Shaan Puri | Alright, I'll give you a quick one and then I have a little bit longer one.
So, the quick one is a little lesson. I was talking to a guy who is also doing, you know, tens of millions this year on TikTok Shops. They’re crushing it on TikTok. It's not a game I play, but it's a very lucrative game for those who have cracked it.
I said something in passing, like, "Oh yeah, I saw this TikTok that had this hook." The hook being, you know, the first three seconds of the video. I thought that was a great hook. I had been talking to this guy for three hours, and I thought I had said 50 interesting things by then. Even Mako didn’t flinch at any of the 49, but on this 50th one, he immediately goes, "Wait, wait, what was that again?"
He takes out his notebook and writes it down. He says, "Did you tell your friend that they should do this? You should definitely tell your friend that they should do this." I was like, "No, I just thought it was a silly TikTok."
He goes, "No, no, no, that's not a silly TikTok. One hook like that can make your whole company."
It was a great lesson that I actually saw five times during the trip. When you meet a really interesting or successful person, pay attention to what they pay attention to. He leaned into that, and maybe Monash would not have leaned into that, but he would have leaned into something else that I said.
If you start to pay attention to what people lean into, it teaches you a lot about what matters in their game and in their world, and how their brain works. Maybe something to you just looks like rubbish, but to them, it's gold.
So, it was just a good reminder to pay attention to what other people pay attention to. If somebody was talking to you, what would they see you whip out your phone to write down or notes that you would want to take?
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Sam Parr | That's a good question. Well, something related to my current business. But yeah, like, you know, if someone says something about retention or how to create a breakthrough amongst a group of people who don't know each other... | |
Shaan Puri | Right, right. Or before, for you, it might have been something in writing. Oh, I love the way he phrased that. It's good. | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, or like a really good ad for acquiring newsletter subscribers.
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Shaan Puri | You had a note or a document that was like a swipe file of awesome ways that people phrase things—beautiful writing, little phrases. Most people don't pay attention to those things; they don't collect them.
Well, it makes sense that you ended up being a guy who's known for writing and wrote a newsletter that millions of people read, right? It kind of makes sense once you connect the two. I just thought that was really indicative.
The last one I got to watch was Ben Cook. Ben Levy, my business partner, is the secret to anything that I'm able to do. Ben's superpower is connecting with people, and I wanted to share with you one little thing that he does.
Every time we would go to a meeting—imagine our schedule is basically like we meet with somebody for, let's say, two hours. There's a 10-minute Uber ride before we're going to meet somebody else, and we were just doing that nonstop for four days. I got to feel like the president because it would be like, "Who are we meeting now? I don't even know the schedule." He'd be like, "We're meeting this guy," and then he would always have his one thing.
I'd be like, "Oh, what are we going to talk about? Maybe we tell him about what we're doing with this." But Ben's focus was always, "What's the one thing we could connect with them on?" He was just really good at this.
I don't know if we would go meet with somebody, but Ben would have his one thing that he would bring up, and the person would immediately crack open, like you know, a pistachio shell. All of a sudden, they're excited, they're talking, and it would open it up. Ben probably wouldn't even say anything else for the rest of the meeting. It's like Ben talks less than 10% of the time when we go to these things, but it's the one thing he says that cracks the person open.
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Sam Parr | So, what's an example of one thing?
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Shaan Puri | So, we will meet with somebody who's known for something, let's say they're a YouTuber with 10 million subscribers. But what Ben knows is that they started this side channel that's just beginning. It's not that popular yet, but it's about one thing, you know, like their hobby or interest in this specific area.
He'll be like, "Oh, you're really into that, right?" He won't even phrase it as some profound question, but he'll just ask them. He'll try to connect with them about the one thing where clearly their passion lies. They have some passion around it, but it's not the thing they're famous for. I noticed he would do that over and over again.
For example, we hung out with Joe Gabby, and he's known because he's the creator of Airbnb. Instead of asking about Airbnb, Ben would say, "You're really into microplastics, right? Aren't you really trying to figure out a way to not have... you know, what's that about?"
All of a sudden, Joe, who's told the Airbnb story a million times, and every time I was asking about Airbnb, it was like I was forcing him to play his greatest hits. But all of a sudden, he lights up because he's really into this right now. He's learning things; it's more of an area he's passionate about at the moment.
So, Ben would just find that one thing. Then afterwards, he had his one thing too, which was after the meeting. I'm like, "Okay, where are we going to eat?" That's where my brain goes. Whereas Ben's like, "Oh, we should connect him with this one person," or "We should send him a link to this," or "We should send him that example we have of the thing he said he wanted to do."
Or like, "Oh, you've talked about that; you should send him a note about that thing." It really made me think, "What are you doing?" And he's like, "Oh, I'm just trying to be useful."
Then when we talked to Monish, he mentioned he was really good friends with Charlie Munger. He said when Charlie Munger died, I think on his tombstone it is written, or he wanted to have it written, "Charlie Munger, you know, he tried to be useful."
To me, that's what Ben does. He just tries to be useful for people. Like, "Oh, we can help them with this," or "We can help this person with this one little thing." He just keeps doing that, and that's how he builds these amazing connections with people—just by trying to be useful to them in a way that I am so bad at. Ben has this other quality.
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Sam Parr | To him, he's always mostly happy. I've never seen Ben not in a good mood, you know? He's always like that.
So when he asks me these things, sometimes they'll be pretty private. But because he's always so happy about it, I'm like, "Oh yeah, well, whatever. We can talk." You know, this is a safe space.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, he's a safe space. The last thing that's hilarious that he does is he never turns it off.
Like, we will be playing in a pickup basketball game, and it's like we're going to 11. It's 10-9, it's game point, and he'll be guarding some guy. He'll just be like, "So, what was revenue last month?" Or he'll just be asking him questions like, "Oh, I heard you tweeted about this thing."
The guy's like so thrown off, like, "Dude, what now?" It's just so endearing. He's just so curious; he just can't turn it off. He's always on, even mid-game, which is so funny to me.
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Sam Parr | I was with Ben at a family birthday party. He was in a mood, and I said, "Ben, let's ask this freaking 12-year-old something."
We were with a friend who was dating a new woman, and she brought her daughter around. I told Ben to ask the daughter about school or something. I was like, "I don't know, engage the kid. Don't talk about my revenue in front of this new lady."
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Shaan Puri | This is. | |
Sam Parr | So funny! It was like, "So what's churn? Like, how much money do you have?" I'm like, "Ben."
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Shaan Puri | Well, it's not always personal. Sometimes it's just like, "How was Austin?" But it's like, dude, now is not the time for the "How was Austin?" conversation.
It's not even that it's always personal questions; it's just that the curiosity is there. There is no "off" mode. I've never seen him in "off" mode. I hang out with the guy 24/7. It's amazing.
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Sam Parr | Alright, you had a good trip. I mean, I could actually listen to these stories all day, and I'm going to listen to the podcast. I never listen to our podcast. I don't know if you do or what you do.
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Shaan Puri | When I'm not on it, I'll listen to it. Yeah, I do listen to it.
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Sam Parr | I'll listen to yours as well, but if I'm on it, I will never listen to it. I'm incredibly excited about Joe Lonsdale. I know you talked to Tim Ferriss; I know Tim a little bit, so I'm less excited about that just because I know him already. But I'm excited about Monash.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah. | |
Sam Parr | I'm excited about this, and Joe Lonsdale. I'm happy that you got to hang out with him. It seemed pretty good for you, personally, to be able to experience that.
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Shaan Puri | Yeah, the funny thing is, it's like most things in life. You think the payoff is over here, but actually, it's over here.
I think every time I go into these episodes, I believe the payoff is, "Oh, I'm gonna make a great episode." But by the time I've done the research on these fascinating people, gotten to know them, and hung out with them at their house, that was all the value. The episode itself is gravy for me. I hope they turn out great, and I think that these ones did.
But the reality is, I think there's a principle in most things in life: you have some goal, you have some idea that you think is the reason you should do it. But along the journey, something else is actually the valuable thing. You just couldn't have known that. You just have to go pursue it full force, and then it happens.
So hopefully, this episode was me sharing some of the random nuggets along the way, besides the episodes that you'll get to see when they come out.
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Sam Parr | Alright, that's the pod.
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