This Man Got Richer Than Jeff Bezos With A Boring Business (#361)

Shaan Puri

Do you know about a certain man named Gautam Adani? Have you ever heard this name before?

Sam Parr

I don't remember what what's his shtick what's his what's his

Shaan Puri

name before this guy just became the 3rd richest man in the world

Sam Parr

And so, you have the Indian guy from... he's kind of like a... and he owns a huge mansion down in downtown Mumbai, where it's like a skyscraper.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so he... Elon Musk is number 1, Jeff Bezos is number 2, and now Adani is number 3. People watch this list and they're like, "Who's Adani?"

Sam Parr

alright in this episode we're talking about the 3rd richest man in

Shaan Puri

the world somebody who you've never heard of

Sam Parr

We talked about Team Zuck. So basically, Zuckerberg has this new video of him doing MMA. We did a little recap on how we feel about it, but we also looked at how he makes his decisions and what our perspective is on him. I actually think it's quite interesting.

Shaan Puri

We broke down one of Mr. Beast's businesses to me. It's the most interesting business that Mr. Beast has, and nobody else is really talking about it. I think it's low-key a star business.

Sam Parr

so that's the episode give it a listen let us know what you think

Shaan Puri

And write in the comments. Go on YouTube and write in the comments. I'll be replying to every single comment that's in here with something that's either smart or funny. I guarantee it! Go to the comments and leave one, and I'll reply.

Sam Parr

Alright, I have a fun one. This will get us in the mood. So, Kanye West... pop culture. Why do you follow Kanye?

Shaan Puri

of course

Sam Parr

I don't really pay attention to Kanye West; it's not really on my radar. But he did something kind of funny, and we talked about him yesterday. It's business-related, but basically, you know he's having this like tizzy with Adidas. Do you know about that?

Shaan Puri

no and nice use of tizzy

Sam Parr

You like that? Well, frankly, I don't entirely know about it, so I'm just gonna kinda summarize. Basically, you know Kanye worked with Adidas to launch Yeezy's line of shoes. In 2020, Yeezy sales were **$1,170,000,000** in revenue. He made around **$200,000,000** from that, so he made a lot of money. Now, he's having a fight with them. I don't actually know what the fight is about, but the backstory is that he's accused them of stealing his designs and leaving him out of meetings for their Yeezy shoe collaborations. Sean Combs, you know, Diddy, said he's going to boycott because of this. Kanye has said, "I'm gonna make things unbearable for you guys until you comply." I don't exactly know what "comply" means, but it's kind of sad because it looks like he's going through some stuff. It is funny, and he's kind of trying to be funny, and it's working. He basically said, "I've got no chill. It's gonna cost you guys **$1,000,000,000** to keep me. It's gonna cost you **$1,000,000,000** to let me go. Adidas, you stole my design among other things, and I'll give you till Tuesday—not until the seven months that I told you originally. Today's the day." He's going crazy on Twitter, which he's got like, I don't know how many followers—seven, tens of millions, I would imagine. He's posting each person's picture who's on the board of directors, as well as a couple of other boards like they have a board of advisors of Adidas' people. He posted this one woman who's also on the board of Adidas. She's also a chairman and investment banker at JPMorgan. He said, "I went to JPMorgan in order to raise money for my buyout, and they wouldn't do it." He's going kinda bananas, and I thought that was wild. Then I saw another thing that he's having another tizzy with his wife, Kim, or ex-wife, about a school. I went and looked at their school. Have you heard about this?

Shaan Puri

so he has his own school right like he has his own academy or something like that

Sam Parr

Yeah, so he's trying to start this thing called **Donda**. If you go to **donda.org**, it actually looks weird but interesting and kind of fun. It looks cool! If you go to the "About" section on how we learn, you'll see they describe the curriculum. It kind of makes sense, but then you see weird things. For example, if you look at the daily schedule, it says "after school parkour."

Shaan Puri

First of all, I went to the site **donda.org**. It's just like, "Who we are," "How we learn," "Admissions," and "Choir." Those are the top four links. Just choir? Yeah, which of these does not belong? I don't know why choir is up here. Secondly, there's just like a white... I don't even know what it looks like. A white pigeon, to be honest with you, just flapping its wings in slow motion. Okay, it's like a fat dove though. It's not like a sleek, graceful dove; it's like a chunky dove.

Sam Parr

like a guinea pig yeah yeah it's a guinea pig

Shaan Puri

With wings, that's just flying up in slow motion. And that's the website I'm going to click: "How We Learn" because I can't not. Okay, they have less than 12 students per class. Rule number 1: students should be confident in forming ideas. If not, their writing will suffer. Okay, so their daily schedule includes full school worship. That's a good way to start the day, similar to how we start the pod. They have core classes, lunch, and recess, as well as enrichment classes including film, choir, and, you're right, parkour.

Sam Parr

A bunch of singing ninjas are out here, just singing and flipping around. I thought this was interesting because, you know, even though I don't like laughing at a guy if he's going kind of insane, he's trying to be funny with this Instagram thing, and it kind of is hilarious. He posted a picture of a guy, I think the CEO of SAP, or is it SAP? Yeah, the HR software that nobody actually understands what they do. He tweeted out or Instagrammed this guy's face and said, "You are a sap." That's what he said. It just... you should... alright.

Shaan Puri

that's it

Sam Parr

And he's just doing the most childish, immature thing, and it's so funny. It is working; it's awesome. Then this school thing I saw, because of his other little fight with Kim, and he's like, "Anyway, I don't know how this is related to business, but I thought that you would have known about this because you're more of a pop culture guy than I am."

Shaan Puri

No, but let me tell you. Okay, so here's a theme for this episode. I'm going to call it "People with Giant Egos." Actually, no, I'm going to call it "Creative Titans." That's better. So the first one is going to be my "Billy of the Week."

Sam Parr

A $1,000,000 isn't cool. You know what's cool? A $1,000,000,000. Do you?

Shaan Puri

Have you ever heard of a certain man named Gautam Adani?

Sam Parr

I don't remember what what's his shtick so adani just

Shaan Puri

became this guy just became the 3rd richest man in the world and so you have

Sam Parr

The Indian guy from... he's kind of like a... and he owns a huge mansion down in downtown Mumbai. It's like a skyscraper.

Shaan Puri

yeah so he so he elon musk number 1 jeff bezos number 2 and now adani number 3 and so people they watch this list and they're like who's adani and I actually I don't know if I met him but we definitely pitched him I think my dad pitched him a business thing many years ago my dad always kept saying oh we just need to get adani on board adani adani adani and so I'd heard about this guy before and I didn't you know and his net worth has just skyrocketed because his stock is up like 13 x in the last out of pocket reliant industries no so reliance it was the top kind of like company there and the guy who runs it mukesh ambani was the I think he was he was the richest man in india and now adani has passed him up in the last year because his stock went up 13 x so so who is this guy and what does he do okay so what he does you'll you'll appreciate this is he a software guy is he a mark zuckerberg no no he's not is he elon musk is he trying to create the future of you know space travel and you know like brain computer interfaces no this guy operates in a place that sam likes power so he does coal ports plastics you know shit like that so basically this guy's like they do they do like industrial work and so he owns so when he was a kid he was in school he went to go visit this port it was the largest port in the country at the time a port you know where literally like ships come in and out and he's like inspired by it and was like one day I'm gonna own the biggest port ever the biggest port in india and now sure enough he owns the biggest port in india he owns the most ports in india too with with the deal we were trying to do with him we were trying to get adani to come to australia to build a port for our our startup that was based in australia because these guys were the kings of ports but his story is pretty cool he's a he's a college dropout so 18 drops out he becomes a diamond sorter I don't even know what that means but he became a diamond sorter he got an interest in the diamond business and after a couple years of sorting diamonds he then goes in he starts his own diamond brokerage and he's like I will trade I will basically age of 20 as a diamond broker brother calls him up brother says hey brother I have a a small plastic factory here that I I I own now I've I've I've bought or I run and so he helps him go scale up the plastic factory and then as he's doing that he's like oh let's start importing the like the the materials that come up you know upstream of plastics and so he starts doing he creates like an export company and so he just keeps creating these companies so now he has 7 publicly listed companies he's got the adani group which is like the the mega one and then they'll start like adani power adani you know like trading adani real estate or whatever they'll start all these different companies they'll take them all public and what's interesting about it is that

Sam Parr

and he's got a beautiful mustache by the way yeah he looks

Shaan Puri

Like, you know the meme account, Doctor Park Patel? He looks like the meme account's photo, actually. So, I don't know if it's him or if he just looks a lot like him.

Sam Parr

He looks like an Indian Mario. You know, like Mario and Luigi? He looks like an Indian Mario. You know?

Shaan Puri

He looks... you know when Mario does that little squat, right? You want to do that trick where you go behind the thing you're standing on, and you run to get the magic blue? He's like squatting; he's a little squatty version of Indian Mario. So anyway, this guy has now become, you know, whatever the third person. He's got these crazy stories. I don't know if you know, but there was this sort of Indian 911 thing where there was a terrorist attack on a hotel. He was in that hotel; he was part of the hostage group that was there.

Sam Parr

wow

Shaan Puri

He was also kidnapped at one time and taken ransom for $2,000,000. They paid it and got free. This guy has just lived this kind of crazy life, and even now he's doing really well. The group's doing really well; he's the third richest man on Earth. There is a set of people who are very, very skeptical about what these guys are doing because they have so much debt in their companies. He is basically constantly trying to acquire companies. They just bought the largest cement producer in India, but they buy these companies using debt. He's got this intricate set of companies, and so there's a big question of whether this is all a house of cards that's going to fall over. Are we going to see a guy go from the number three richest to, you know, falling off the list completely? Or is he actually going to pull this off? What they'll do is say, "Okay, the parent company has some profits. We'll take a loan on that." Then they take one of the new companies public, like Adani Green Power. They'll take the green company public because it's got the Adani name, the stock price goes up, and then he'll invest in it from the parent company. Then he'll sell those shares, borrow against the stock, and issue a bond. He's got all these different debt instruments. I think they have more debt than any other company in India. Now there's a question of whether this is all going to fall over or if it's all going to work. It's pretty fascinating.

Sam Parr

Dude, when do you ever feel... I feel self-conscious when I hear about these things. Because my thing with business is just the very simple concept of "buy low, sell high." You know, like I purchase a widget for $1 and I put some type of value on it, or I just buy tons of them to get a discount. Then I sell them for like $1.50. That 50 cents is my profit. I use a quarter of that to pay myself and a quarter to go buy more. It's a relatively simple, straightforward process. Then I hear about... you just used the term "debt instruments" and how he does this thing and gets a loan across this thing and that thing. When I hear that stuff, I just think, "So where does the dollar that goes into his bank account actually come from?" You know what I mean? I try to think about it, and I'm like, "I don't understand how this person eventually collects the money and how the people who are owed money got the money from and when they're going to get paid back." Do you know what I mean? It's so complicated for me because I'm such a simpleton... or is it just bullshit?

Shaan Puri

Dude, I was in 7th grade when my parents got me a piano teacher. I wish that instead, I had just learned how to play different instruments. That would have been so much better than learning how to play, you know, tactical music.

Sam Parr

what do you mean a debt oh debt interest yeah no shit

Shaan Puri

Where do people learn this stuff? Where do people learn this sort of financial engineering? I think that a lot of it happens if you're on the inside. So, you work at an investment bank or you work somewhere there.

Sam Parr

but this guy didn't have a bank account yeah yeah so you know

Shaan Puri

I think he hired people who do that. They sort of say, "Hey, look, here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna issue this bond, and we're gonna take this company public. Then we're gonna pledge the shares, get a loan against the shares, and basically somehow $1 of EBITDA has become $8 of cash flow for us." We gotta figure out how to do that without it all collapsing. But people understand financial engineering; they have such an edge, such an absolute edge.

Sam Parr

But when I originally made some money, I remember our banker saying, "Yeah, you could borrow money now at 1%." I was like, "Yeah, I don't want to go into debt." They'd be like, "Well, sometimes it could be wise for you to do that. For example, if you have to pay taxes..." I asked, "Why?" He explained, "Because you'd have to sell this thing, which then you'd take like a 40% discount on that because of taxes." I said, "Wait, I don't understand this. Can you lay this out? Can you write this on a piece of paper?" So, my banker, Griffin, ended up flying to New York to visit me. He said, "Dude, I just need to sit down with you so you understand this." I swear to God, I asked, "Why are you coming here? Oh, you got meetings?" He replied, "No, I'm coming to explain this to you." So, he came and he explained it to me, and I...

Shaan Puri

Yeah, sure. Meetings. I've cleared my day to explain the one concept of borrowing against stock.

Sam Parr

I just didn't understand it. Were you the same way? Were you like, "I just don't get this. This doesn't make sense to me. Who... where's this?"

Shaan Puri

you and others explained it to me right so like yes it's true I didn't understand I didn't know about it at first

Sam Parr

and then when I knew about it I

Shaan Puri

Didn’t understand why it was good. Then somebody said, “Hey, so you notice why this is amazing, right? You could either sell your stock, pay taxes, and no longer own the stock, or you could keep owning the stock, never pay the taxes, and just borrow at a 1% rate against that money. And like, you’re good.” I was like, “Okay, so that’s good, right?” They were like, “Alright, you dipshit, you didn’t understand. Let’s do this again.” Yeah, it’s crazy numbers.

Sam Parr

Yeah, I just like... so these financial engineers, you know, where I learned a lot about this stuff is from Ben Wilson and his podcast with Rothschild. I started learning about this a little bit, but then I also learned that I think some people... I don't know what skill set it is, but I do think it's rooted in just being good at math. They understand complicated algebra, to be honest. Just like exponential growth—that's a concept that sounds like I'm joking, but it's actually quite hard to understand. Like, to understand what is 7%, 10%, or 12% growth for 50 periods, what's that actually look like? I remember listening to this podcast and thinking, "Oh, you're just like LeBron; you're just taller and can dunk better." It doesn't matter what I do; there are some people that are just better at this. I don't know what that skill set is, but there is something there. It's like you're just better than me.

Shaan Puri

Well, I think you just get curious about that thing. Most of us who are builders, makers, and entrepreneurs, you know, like the stereotype about corporate structure, bookkeeping, taxes... like, you know, whatever. Raising debt was never the reason I got into business. That's not what I found interesting at the time. I was like you. It's like, "Oh, we could buy this thing for X and sell it for Y." You know, that's the game plan. Or we can make this thing that doesn't exist. Then, wow, look how cool it is! Look how it works. That was always more fun. It's just like a level-up progression in the game to be able to understand how do I, A, keep more money that I make, and B, how do we leverage money so that we can do more interesting things, you know, in a less dilutive way? So, I think these people are amazing. You know, like Xavier, who runs Enduring Ventures, he told me this once. He was just like, "You know, if I died, I'd be reincarnated as a CFO, not a CEO."

Sam Parr

and I was like that's so funny

Shaan Puri

it was like the weirdest brag I'd ever heard

Sam Parr

I was

Shaan Puri

Like, I never heard somebody bragging about wanting to be a CFO. I was like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "I don't know, I just really like learning about how to be efficient and smart on this financial engineering." He had done real engineering before that. He built, basically, like, he built a solar company in Africa—the largest solar company in Africa.

Sam Parr

dude that's so funny that he's interested in that stuff though and battery comes up he's like a hippie

Shaan Puri

He's totally a hippie, right? He did that because he's like, "Dude, there are people suffering in Africa. I want to fix that problem." But then along the way, he's like, "Alright, how do I finance all of these solar panels and battery packs without having to raise venture capital?" So, in order to do that, the necessary evil was that he needed to learn how to access cheap debt. He needed to learn how to issue debt and underwrite for other people. What he did was he realized that these people basically don't have the $21 to buy the solar panel that goes on top of their house, which is going to power their fridge. If they don't have a fridge, their life is really tough, and they need this. But they can't afford the $21, so he thought, "Let's just do it at $4 a month or whatever." He would underwrite a loan against their income, and it's like, "How do you underwrite a loan for somebody who doesn't even have electricity in their house?" He figured these things out. I think it became a necessary evil and something he got fascinated with. Now they're doing this holding company. One thread he did went viral, which was about how to have a holding company like Warren Buffett. Basically, it outlines how to make a massive amount of money, pay as little taxes as possible, and have more and more money to do acquisitions as you go. He outlines Warren Buffett's corporate structure and why that's advantageous. I read it, and I still only understand 25% of it, but I'm just glad that there are people like that I can go to whenever I have a question.

Sam Parr

Question... hilarious, dude! That's great. Well, I like this guy. I got him. I'm gonna... I wanna learn more about him. Do you have more on him, or do you want me to go?

Shaan Puri

I have another person and idea like this. Okay, so now let's switch gears to another creative titan that we talked about: Mr. Beast. We hung out with Mr. Beast. I don't know if you guys are sick of us talking about that yet, but you know, Producer Ben is literally sitting here in a Mr. Beast t-shirt, so you know he's a fan. By the way, that's good, Ben, because when we were sitting in that meeting and they brought in the swag, Jimmy—who is Mr. Beast—he goes, "Oh man, they're not like kids, dude. They don't need this stuff." You know, he was saying, "Oh, they're not gonna be..." because the guy came in and was like, "Guys, I got treats for you," and he had a bunch of swag, and nobody moved. Mr. Julius was like, "Oh no, they don't care about this stuff, man. They're adults." And then all of us were like, "What the fuck are you talking about, dude?" I literally rolled my chair over to him, like, you know, like a kid. I just rolled my rolling chair over to that part of the table because it was like a long boardroom, and I was just like, "I'm going to..."

Sam Parr

get some swag and I went and

Shaan Puri

Got it. The other guy was like, "I got kids, man. They're gonna need... if I don't bring Meg swag, they're gonna be pissed." And so, now Ben is wearing his.

Sam Parr

Damn, I wait... Jimmy drove me. When we were going to the... I took a ride with him and I found that shirt that you're wearing, Ben, in the back of his car. I just go, "I'm fucking taking this." He's got tons of them, so I stole mine from him. I didn't know that we had the opportunity to take it, like, ethically.

Shaan Puri

Never considered that. Yeah, so Jimmy... okay, I wanted to bring something up that he had talked about that we didn't mention on the podcast. To me, it's the most interesting business that this guy has. You might be thinking, "Is it his YouTube channel?" No. "Is it his chocolate company, Feast, named Feastables?" No. "Is it his drop shipping burger company, his cloud kitchen called Mr. Beast Burger?" No. Do you know which one I'm going to talk about? Do either of you guys know? Give me a... Sam, do you know which one I'm going to talk about?

Sam Parr

I think

Shaan Puri

ben do you have any idea which one I I might be referring to

Sam Parr

Well, no, but are you going to talk about his burger? Did you guys see his restaurant just open? Yeah, yeah, yeah, but let's talk about this other thing first. Okay, okay. No, no, I don't know what you're going to... No, I'm like, I wrote down what I think it is, and then you say... I'm...

Shaan Puri

A say it's his kind of translation and internationalization company. Translation, Sam got it.

Sam Parr

there it is yes

Shaan Puri

This idea is amazing! So, when we're sitting there, he's like, "Yeah, I got basically whatever the number one or number two biggest channel in America." He's pulling up his YouTube stats and air playing them onto the TV. Then he goes, "I also have this channel in Portuguese that's growing really fast." He puts up a video that has 20 million views in Brazil, and I was like... it starts talking, and all of a sudden, he's speaking in fluent Portuguese. I was like, "What is this?" He's like, "Oh yeah."

Sam Parr

like a like ai

Shaan Puri

No, so what they did was they were like, "Look, one of the things we already put a million and a half dollars into this video where I built this chocolate factory, and I'm gonna give it away to one of these people. How do we get more juice out of that fruit?" So what they realized was they could go international into markets where YouTube is huge, like Brazil. Brazil's got this massive population; it's huge on YouTube, and they don't have content like MrBeast is doing. He's light years ahead of the game for the U.S., but he's even further ahead for places like Brazil or the Philippines. The challenge, though, is a language barrier. So what they did was they basically hired somebody to create a YouTube channel. They said, "Hey, you're gonna be our YouTube channel manager for this country. You're the country manager for Brazil. You gotta manage our Twitter, our TikTok, our YouTube—all of it, you know, MrBeast Brazil or whatever it's called." Then secondly, when we have a video here, you need to get it translated by a local dubbing service. I want it translated, I want the description translated, I want all of it done. Then you upload it, respond to the comments, manage that community—all of that good stuff. What they did was they didn't just go get some random, crappy person on Fiverr to do it. They got the guy who dubbed Spider-Man in Brazil to do the voice acting for this. They paid him a lot of money—like a couple hundred grand. I was like, "I feel like you didn't need to do that; you could've just got anybody." And he's like, "Check this out. You don't know shit about shit, Sean." So he goes to the comments, and every comment is, "Oh my God, MrBeast is Spider-Man!" They just thought he must be that guy; that's him, that's that voice I recognize. So he got all this extra social juice. It was a little more remarkable. And again, back to our principle from the last podcast, which is just do the doper thing. Just do the dope shit instead of the lame shit.

Sam Parr

yeah yeah yeah

Shaan Puri

What's cooler, the cheaper guy from Fiverr, or alright, you paid $100,000 or whatever, and you got Spider-Man to do it? It's like, yeah, of course! What am I thinking? And so that's what we're doing in all of the countries.

Sam Parr

When I listen to audiobooks, like on Audible, if I see a famous person's name as the author or the narrator, I listen to it. So, like, I'm listening to *Huckleberry Finn*. Not that I really care about *Huckleberry Finn*, but Nick Offerman is the narrator. You know, the guy from *Community*? You know who that is? He's like the...

Shaan Puri

is he the main guy in community

Hubspot

Yeah, Ron Swanson plays like an angry, white country guy. Or, like, it'll be another guy. Whenever I see an author or a narrator, if I recognize they're a famous person, I listen to it. For example, Tom Hanks doing *The Da Vinci Code*. I didn't really even want to do *The Da Vinci Code*, but Tom Hanks... so, like, the whole narrator thing? Yeah, that's pretty sick. I'm on board with that. I can't find this client info. Have you heard of HubSpot? HubSpot is a CRM platform, so it shares its data across every application. Every team can stay aligned—no out-of-sync spreadsheets or dueling databases. HubSpot: grow better.

Shaan Puri

So, basically, what he's done is, he's like, "Cool, now that's okay." He was doing that for himself. He's like, "Oh good, I'm blowing up in Romania, I'm blowing up in the Philippines, I'm blowing up in Brazil, I'm blowing up everywhere." He's like, "I already did 80% of the work. It's that last 20% that is foreign to me. It feels like a lot of work, but I can hire the people to do this." But the smart part was, he's like, "This is not just a way for me to expand my brand." That's already a smart business move. He then created this as a service for other big YouTubers. So now, if you're whoever, you know, you're Iraq or you're, you know, some Yes Theory or something like that...

Sam Parr

right

Shaan Puri

You could basically just use his service. He'll just go to you and be like, "Hey, do you want to be big in Brazil? We'll do all the work for you and keep like 30% of their ad revenue." And they're like...

Sam Parr

that's crazy

Shaan Puri

Okay, yeah. I'm not going to hire a bunch of people and go through the interview process to manage this all myself. That's kind of inefficient. What he can do is have one team in Brazil that manages 15 YouTube channels there. I think this is one of the smartest businesses he has. I believe it's going to be one of the most successful; it's going to be pure profit, essentially. I think he's got the distribution locked down because if he goes to any YouTuber and explains, "Hey, here's what I'm doing, and you get access to my machine," they're all going to say yes. It's a good idea for them; it's a win-win because they're just not going to capture this extra value. So, he's doing this, and it's just another example of turning a cost center into a profit center. I actually want to talk about some examples of those. Basically, things that would normally just be a cost to him to run, having all these people on staff, but once he turns it into a service for other YouTubers, it becomes a profit center.

Sam Parr

A bunch of examples, which I think would make way more money than the chocolate bars. I remember I ate the chocolate that he had, and I was like, "Well, you know, it's good, but it's not like that different from any other chocolate that I've had." And, it kind of sucks that I've got to feel bad about myself if I consume a lot of your product. Also, it's only like $40 for a box. It's hard to build a big business at $40 a pop, you know what I'm saying? Right? At least when you're not... you gotta be in Walmart or something.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, which I'm sure he could do. Also, like Ben's, he opened up a brick-and-mortar location for his burger joint. Normally, you're like, "Ah, you know, opening up a restaurant in a mall? Maybe not the best idea." Then he posts this video. There's literally, I don't know, 50,000 people in the mall lined up. It was like people were lined up up and down each concourse. Just like, you know, the restaurant's on floor 1 or whatever, and people were on floor 4 just lined up in this line. It was insane! So, you know, this guy's got pretty massive pull.

Sam Parr

so what are the other examples of of turning flaw centers in

Shaan Puri

So, the first one that came to mind for me was **AWS**. Today, AWS is basically Amazon's most profitable segment. Most of Amazon's profits come from AWS. AWS originated when Amazon needed a robust set of servers to run their own website. They realized, "Hey, the way we use this kind of server infrastructure is just a big expense for us to maintain this server farm. What if we rented this out to other companies who want Amazon-level servers without having to rack their own servers in some data center?" That idea became AWS, which now generates **$1 billion** in profit, a significant turnaround from what would have been a **$1 billion** loss. That's a huge swing! I have some other examples I want to explain to you. Michael Girdley, who came on the podcast, mentioned his favorite company called **Freight Alley**. They did something similar to what HubSpot did with **The Hustle**. Freight Alley has this thing called **FreightWaves**, which is essentially a media company. Freight Alley is the SaaS (Software as a Service) company. They created a media arm that typically incurs expenses, but they turned it into a profit center. This media company acquires customers for the SaaS business at a negative customer acquisition cost. So, the media company is profitable and brings in customers to their own SaaS at the bottom of the funnel. That's one example, though it's not exactly the full picture.

Sam Parr

But dude, the guy who started that company, his name's Craig. I've hung out with him a bit. He bought a big piece of property in Tennessee, and he's the one who's turning it into an airport. It's like a country club, but instead of a golf course, there's an airport. So, he's selling... he bought a huge plot of land, and now he's sub-selling or selling smaller plots of land. There's going to be an airplane strip and a hangar that everyone has access to. So, if you're a flying enthusiast, you buy a home there, and you can use this. He also bought a magazine. I think it was called airplane.com or something like that. He bought a magazine and said, "I'm going to buy a magazine and do the same thing that I did, but instead of software, we're going to do it with these houses."

Shaan Puri

Wow, that's amazing! Here's another example: any D to C (direct-to-consumer) company that eventually takes their own warehouse and starts fulfilling for other customers. They turn their own warehouse, which is a cost for them for fulfillment, into a profit center because they're doing fulfillment for themselves and others. This is very similar to AWS (Amazon Web Services). Okay, here's another one. This guy, George, on Twitter just sent me this. He goes, "Ford decided to own the timber supply for their vehicles." There was lots of wood in the early cars.

Sam Parr

yeah charcoal baby

Shaan Puri

They ended up with so much leftover wood that they started selling charcoal. And that's the Kingsford Charcoal Company.

Sam Parr

that's my favorite man that's my favorite story

Shaan Puri

that's a that's kind of amazing I didn't know that is there more to know about that or did did we kinda nail it there

Sam Parr

No, you nailed it. So basically, Ford was making car frames, and they had to burn a whole lot of wood in order to bend the steel or do whatever they had to do. They had all this leftover charred wood and were like, "What do we do with this?" I think it was Henry Ford's idea—I forget exactly whose idea it was—but he said, "Hey, let's start selling this. Let's make something out of this." And that's where it kind of came from. There are a bunch of entrepreneurs that have done things like this. Standard Oil did something similar where they thought, "This gets more complicated and is less interesting," but they discovered that this off-put of kerosene is like this weird, greasy fluid. They wondered, "Is there anything we could do with that?" And then you have products like WD-40, right? There are stories like that with Standard Oil as well.

Shaan Puri

And so, here are a couple of other examples. **Foursquare** had an API for businesses because they needed all this data about businesses, where they're located, and all that stuff. They needed that to power their own Foursquare app. Foursquare kind of went up in this hype cycle, then down, becoming somewhat forgotten and written off. However, a new CEO joined and oriented the company around this idea: the more valuable thing is not people using the Foursquare app and playing the game, but all the data we've collected about businesses and their precise locations. So, they decided to make that API available to everybody. They productized the API and, I think, they make more money off the API than they do off the core app at this point. Another great example is **Amazon**. Amazon started as a book seller, and their main cost of goods sold was their books. Then they created the Kindle and the self-publishing business. Now, Kindle itself has become a profit center. What used to be a cost—selling books—has now turned into profit through selling eBooks that they own. The same thing happened with payments. Amazon had to pay a merchant fee every time they processed a payment, so they created their own payment software called **Amazon Payments**. For our e-commerce store, I thought, "I think we take Amazon Payments. Where does that money go?" I found an account we have with Amazon Payments that had about $400 sitting in it because we use that service to process payments for customers who want to pay with Amazon. They turned it into a profit center along the way.

Sam Parr

That's crazy! Another one is Slack. So, Slack started out as a game. When they were working on their game, it wasn't actually doing that well. However, they created a way to communicate effectively with their coworkers. They said, "Ah, forget this game! This thing is actually way cooler. Let's turn this internal tool into a proper tool." We thought about doing that. But here's the problem with this: this all sounds great. A lot of people say, "Yeah, let's do this!" So, a lot of publishers are doing this. They are like, "Let's sell our CMS." BuzzFeed, Vox, Washington Post—I forget who else—built these custom website builders and said, "Let's sell this." I think oftentimes it's a distraction. They always say, "Well, Amazon did it." I looked into this. Amazon did launch AWS pretty early on, but do you know how many employees they had when they did it?

Shaan Puri

how many total employees are on aws

Sam Parr

Yeah, total employees, there's about 5,000. So they were already a multibillion-dollar company. The way the story is told is like, "Oh, they were just this little guy." No, they had about 5,000 people when they launched AWS. It was a thing; it wasn't just like a scrappy startup. A lot of times, people will say, "Well, let's also sell this." It's like, "Dude, we've got 8 people working here. Who's gonna do this?" So that's always been my conflict with this strategy.

Shaan Puri

yeah that's that's true you guys considered it you would have done it for what is it your

Sam Parr

Our email sending platform... So, we built our own for a little while, and then we made it really easy. Basically, hypothetically—though there aren't that many people doing this—if you had a daily email, it was really easy for you to talk to your advertiser, make the ad, and insert it into the system. They could approve it, and it was simple and easy to use. But the problem is, there are not that many people doing it, you know what I mean?

Shaan Puri

Then, Beehive basically does that now, and they're actually growing pretty well.

Sam Parr

Well, maybe I could have been wrong, but I don't think I'm going to end up being wrong. I think that I'm not convinced that what they're doing, at least ads for a daily email, that business I don't think will ever be that particularly big. And Beehive, it's kind of like Substack. So, it's these services that you get subscribers, and they take a small amount of revenue based off of how much you're making from subscriptions, or you just pay them a fee based on how many subscribers you have. Do you think that some of those businesses actually can become huge, venture-backed sized companies?

Shaan Puri

So, I just invested in Beyhive. Actually, initially, I didn't invest because I was like, "I don't know how big this gets." Then, two things sort of changed my mind. The first is, every time I needed something for Beyhive, the founder was an absolute animal on my request. This is because we use it for Milk Road.

Sam Parr

so yeah he's great his name's tyler he's awesome

Shaan Puri

Tyler was so... he's like, "It's already on a roadmap." The question I have is A or B. There's nuance about it that shows he's been thinking about this, noodling on it. Then he'd be like, "When do you need this by?" Because normally, it's scheduled to be out in 3 weeks, but if you need it in 3 days, you know, the weekend exists. I might be able to do, you know, like whatever. So he was able to rip off feature after feature that we needed. Everything that was like, "Hey, we have this question," it's like him and his team would dig in. So I saw that he kind of had that grit that you like in an entrepreneur.

Sam Parr

so I

Shaan Puri

got to basically test drive the entrepreneur

Sam Parr

he's pretty special

Shaan Puri

Which I normally don't get to do with most investments. You know, with most investments, you meet them, you do a call with them, they say all the right things, they send you the deck, you look at it, you look at the product, and you have to make an educated guess at that. You don't get to spend months working with the actual entrepreneur as a customer and see how quick they are with features, how fast they're responding, the quality of the product, all that good stuff. So, that was the first reason. The second reason is I've come to realize that the best investments I've made have been ones where what looks like a small market, what looks niche, turns out to not be niche. We got acquired by Twitch in our last company. Twitch was kind of the quintessential example of this, right? Like, "Yeah, but how many people are going to watch other people play video games on the internet? How many people are going to stream themselves playing a video game? And how many people want to watch that?" It looked niche and turned out to be a massive behavior. This is also true with, you know, now Shopify seems really obvious. I remember talking to the VC who led Shopify's early rounds, you know, maybe 6 or 7 years ago, and Shopify at that...

Shaan Puri

Was still like legit, but it's not what it is today. It's not seen as it is today as one of the blue-chip startups. It was the same thing. It was like, "Oh, okay." You know, like Etsy. How big do these actually get? These kind of indie maker-seller type things. Is it that Amazon and big brands are just going to dominate this? How many mom-and-pop shops are there going to be on the internet that can actually do this well? And how much, dude?

Sam Parr

I remember that Tim Ferriss invested in Shopify, and he was talking about it. I thought, "Shopify? That's so silly!" You know, this thing exists, this exists, this exists. Why don't you just use this thing? I remember, like, I forget what those were... like BigCommerce. Do you remember BigCommerce? Is that...?

Shaan Puri

What you have is BigCommerce, there's WooCommerce, there's Magento... there were all these options. So that was actually the bigger problem. If you looked at the existing ones that had been around for like 10 years, they were kind of like... those are pretty cheap. They're harder to use, but they're more flexible. They were kind of from a different era, so they kind of peaked at a certain point. You look at those and you're like, "That's back then." You think, "How big does this get?" Look, that's how big it gets—not very big.

Sam Parr

right

Shaan Puri

And the same thing happened with Airbnb. I remember when Airbnb was coming out; it was like, "Oh, well, it's couch surfing but better." I don't know if people remember Couchsurfing.com, which was one of the early platforms. It was like, "Oh, that's a cool idea," but it never made a bunch of money and never got huge. Because again, how many people really want to go live or sleep on someone’s couch or in an extra bedroom in some city? Okay, yeah, it's this kind of vagabond, hippie traveling stuff, but that's not mainstream. So if you looked at Couchsurfing to see how big Airbnb could get, you would have thought, "Well, it's a very similar idea, been around for longer, seems to have plateaued around this size—not that big." And you would have been wrong. So I guess I've kind of learned that the absolute biggest wins in venture come when you find something non-obvious. The non-obvious to me typically involves fundamentally different product categories or markets that people aren't going after, or markets that others think are small but actually turn out to be very big.

Sam Parr

There's this really great story with Sam Altman, who at the time was the president of Y Combinator, and Brian Chesky. Brian Chesky was getting ready to pitch. You know, at Y Combinator, you go through this 8 or 12-week incubator, and at the end, you pitch to a bunch of venture capitalists. Y Combinator helps you in a bunch of ways, including getting your pitch right. Brian Chesky is with Sam, going over his pitch. He says, "This company one day is gonna make $100,000,000 a year." Sam was like, "Brian, can you just do me a favor? Anywhere in this presentation where you have a number, can you do me a favor and add a zero behind it at the end of it?"

Shaan Puri

I know he goes and so he is change all the m's to b's investors like b's

Sam Parr

Yeah, he goes, "Anything that you have an M, I want to see a B." Change it all. I don't remember exactly how the story goes, but it was paraphrased in such words like Brian goes, "But that's lying! There's no way that we're gonna do that. It's just impossible. No one has done this before." He goes, "Yeah, but you know, it seems like a big market. Here's my reasoning: logically, it makes sense. There are so many people who stay at hotels. Of course, you can do this. I mean, someone can do it, I bet. So just do me a favor and change all those M's to B's." Even Brian Chesky didn't believe it. And there's another story, by the way, where I remember what Amazon's first VC was. Was it Madonna? Is that what it's called? Madonna? It looks like the word Madonna. They're based up in Seattle, and he's pitching. I listened to a podcast with the guy he pitched, and the guy he pitched tells a story of Bezos saying, "Look, if we get our act together and we make this work, I think we're gonna make like $100 million a year in the next 5 or 10 years." That was his pitch: "That's how big I think we're gonna get." The guy was like, "It needs to get a lot bigger than that, but whatever. You seem really competent." So it's just proof that even the people starting things sometimes are like, "I don't know how big this can get. I don't know if this is gonna work out."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, like there's that clip of Mark Zuckerberg talking at a college. He's doing a campus interview and he's like, "Hey, we're here with the campus reporter and we have Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook.com, which is blowing up around campus. People really like your website, Mark." You know, he's basically wearing basketball shorts and he's got a red Solo cup he's drinking out of. Yes, and he's just sitting there. They're like, "So you've expanded to like, whatever, seven colleges. Where are you gonna go from here? You could end up going into high schools or, you know, how big can this get?" And he's like, "Oh, I don't know. Right now, Facebook is cool. It's cool for colleges, really, really useful. Sometimes if you try to make something too big, it loses what makes it cool. Like, maybe it doesn't have to be bigger." He says that, and then, you know, sure enough, fast forward 10 years, he's like, "We need to launch a satellite to India to give these rural villagers internet."

Sam Parr

they can

Shaan Puri

Get more users for Facebook. Yeah, we need more. And so, you know, he turns into an absolute animal. By the way, this MMA clip of Zuck is awesome. Have you seen this?

Sam Parr

Awesome! Killed it, he killed it, he killed it! So for the background on this, Zuck went on Rogan and talked about a bunch of stuff. It was actually a pretty good interview. I think Zuck actually kind of redeemed himself a bit. In part of the interview, Zuck said, "I've been training MMA," and people were like, "Yeah right, okay nerd." He posts this video of him training, and he looks really good—way faster than I thought he was going to be. Like, he was fighting just...

Shaan Puri

Dude, even if he wasn't good, the fact that he does this... it's just like, basically, this was my tipping point. I already liked Zuck, but now I'm team Zuck, which there's not a lot of us here.

Sam Parr

right we can't even play

Shaan Puri

A game of pickup basketball. There are four of us on Team Zuck, and we're still looking for a fifth. Somebody tweeted this out: "Jack Dorsey, you know, he hasn't worked in 10 years. He's constantly meditating, dating different models, has no family, tries to run multiple companies at once, fails at Twitter, never makes anybody happy... blah blah blah. Zuck, on the other hand, begrudgingly runs a $1 trillion empire, is faithfully monogamous, a great dad, and trains in MMA." It just highlights, like, why does everybody hate this guy again? What has this guy done? Some people say, "He ruined democracy." It's like, no dude, he built basically the modern telephone. You're pissed that some people make phone calls that you don't like. That's basically what happens on Facebook. He built the app that everybody uses to communicate everything, whether it's stupid or amazing. Sure enough, some percentage of that is not content you like and is not controllable. And the guy literally built it—was it a $1 trillion company?

Shaan Puri

In time, he's built a **$1,000,000,000,000** company. He just keeps running it, trying to make it better. He keeps pushing the envelope and striving to create better products and services. Do you think he really cares about influencing the election? I mean, do you think he sits there thinking, "I want to influence the election"? No, that's just a pain in the ass he's trying to deal with. It's not like that's his agenda. People make him out to be this evil guy, and it's like...

Sam Parr

dude

Shaan Puri

people people don't like him because he's awkward like alright yeah you're you're a bully

Sam Parr

if you

Shaan Puri

Don't like him because he's a nerd? You know, think about who you are. If you don't like Mark Zuckerberg, you're a bully. You just think he's awkward, and that's how you judge him. Like, screw you, man. The guy's awkward.

Sam Parr

We should do an entire episode about this because there was one beautiful line that he said. So, Rogan was like, "Look, you had these Russians doing this and influencing the election, and then the Hunter Biden story came out. You guys took it down and told them it wasn't allowed." And then Rogan was criticizing him, or at least voicing all the criticisms that Facebook had. Mark goes, "Yeah, look, how would you handle that situation? I'd love to see you do it."

Shaan Puri

I love to see you try

Sam Parr

To chill... and Rogan goes, "I don't know." And Zuck's like, "Yeah, we didn't die there." So our reasoning was like, we took down the hundred... I don't even remember how he explained it. He's like, "Well, our reasoning was this, this, and this."

Shaan Puri

Well, he was like, "The FBI came to us and told us there's about to be a story that could be massive misinformation and go viral." We just basically... they just got their wrist slapped because they previously let other information spread too fast. They said, "You should have known that was fake news; you should have stopped it." So now the FBI comes to you and says there's about to be a dump of fake news that's going to go viral. So what do they do? They're like, "Okay, we shouldn't just... I guess we shouldn't block the news, but maybe we should suppress it in the news feed so that it doesn't go super viral." Because, you know, isn't that what we just got in trouble for? And like, he didn't say all this, but it's obvious. This is obviously what... what would you do if the FBI comes to you and says...

Sam Parr

it's about

Shaan Puri

To be a misinformation leak, and then it comes out, and sure enough, it starts going viral. You have to decide: do we just let this take over the platform and like, "Oops, we did it again," or should we play it safe and not let this spread like wildfire until we can fact-check this and see if this is real or not? By the time it does, one side, the left or the right, is going to be mad at you. If you just think about this, it's like the person who in 2016 was saying the election was rigged, that the Russians manipulated the election. Then, fast forward to 2020, Biden wins, and now the right is saying the election was rigged, that Biden was counting votes that didn't count. You know, it's like they're both...

Sam Parr

just they just switched

Shaan Puri

You're the same. You're the same dude on either side of the aisle. Don't you realize? It's like the Spider-Man meme; they're pointing at each other.

Sam Parr

yeah

Shaan Puri

And it's the same thing over and over again. It's like, you know, she's got the bad thing on her server. It's like he's got the documents at Mar-a-Lago. They just keep doing this, you know, left and right. So how is a communication platform supposed to win? Because literally, no matter what you do, one side is going to think you're being completely unfair to the other. There's no...

Sam Parr

Zuck did such a good job. That is such a good answer, and he humanized himself so much there. He goes, "Our reasoning was..." and he said exactly what he said about the FBI doing this. He explained, "This is what we thought seemed right at the time." Then he asked Joe, "How would you have handled that?" Joe replied, "Well, that's a good question. I guess I would call someone who I think knows the answer and just talk and listen to him." Zuck responded, "Yeah, that's what we did. We called these people, we talked to them, and this is the best that we could do. Could it have been wrong? Maybe. But, you know, we don't really know the right answer." I realized, oh wow, this guy is Zuck. He's 38 years old or 36 years old; he's in his mid-thirties and has been doing this since he was 21. He's just making it up and trying to make some good decisions along the way. Is he maybe a little evil? Maybe. But we all have a little bit of that in us. He's mostly doing a good job. That question of, "Well, how would you have handled it?" was such a beautiful way to frame it because it was like, "Oh, you're fallible. You're just like me." You know, we're not that different.

Shaan Puri

Is he a ruthless competitor in the sport of business? Sure. I wouldn't expect somebody who's number one in their game to not be a ruthless competitor. I wouldn't expect them to be a softy who doesn't care, or you know what I mean? It's insane to me that people hold this crazy standard. Other reasons I'm team suck... so you know about his once-a-year missions that he does?

Sam Parr

yeah like 1 year it was like travel the country in an rv

Shaan Puri

Yeah, so he did. That was like when it was election time. He said, "I need to meet middle America. I'm going to visit places with Walmart." So, you know, that's like his mission for that year. Dude, by the...

Sam Parr

I respect when people do that so much. I was watching this music video with Mike Posner. You know Mike Posner? You probably love him. He went to do... you know how he walked across the country? Yeah, it...

Shaan Puri

was like

Sam Parr

I followed it

Shaan Puri

yeah it was yeah

Sam Parr

it was awesome he spent like he got bit

Shaan Puri

by a rattlesnake

Sam Parr

Yeah, and he got bit by a rattlesnake. He had to go home for two weeks and learn to walk again. Then he shipped right back out to where he was. He's like this guy who you imagine as being this California cool kid or New York cool kid. He ends up walking the country. He's like, "I walked around places with Confederate flags. I went to rural Kansas. I went everywhere, and I saw America." I realized that I don't know much about America. These people are a lot different than I thought, and it was really nice to get to know other types of people. I love when people do that, so I'm team Zuck a little bit because he did that.

Shaan Puri

So, he did that, but the first ones he did, I feel like, were things that he was actually just self-interested in. I remember one of his first ones was that he was going to only eat meat if he had personally hunted it. He said, "I've never hunted." I think he had never hunted before, and he was like, "I don't really know where my food comes from or what goes into this showing up on my plate." He wanted to actually experience this entire process with his own hands. So, he had to hunt it, prep it, kill it, clean it, and then cook it before eating it. And that's what he did for one year. Then, he was like, "I want to learn Mandarin." I think Facebook really wanted to go into China, so he showed up in China to give a talk and did the whole thing in Mandarin. He surprised the crowd; they were like, "What’s going on?" It was like the scene in *8 Mile* where he's going off in the rap battle. He was just speaking fluent Mandarin with the proper tone. Dude, what a machine! In his spare time, he just picks up these hobbies and then does them. Now, he's doing MMA. Balaji, who’s a friend of ours, tweeted this out. He said, "It has begun." I forgot who he mentioned, but he goes, "First..."

Sam Parr

Great line! It has begun. We could say that for so many things. Those are beautiful first words.

Shaan Puri

He called it. He goes, "First Bezos, now Zuck." I'm seeing it across the board. Tech people are starting to seriously lift and train. Testosterone replacement therapy, quantified self, optimal diet... Eventually, this will be productized for all. But transhumanism starts with personal chattification. It's like he calls it personal chattification—turning yourself into an absolute Chad. I know you would... I don't know if you saw this tweet or not, but every word of this... You were just doing the... You're at the black church saying, you know, you're the gospel. The choir of Donda Academy is singing, and you're like, "Amen" to this, right? Because you've been doing this. You've been doing your own business for about...

Sam Parr

For 5 years now, I've been becoming Chad, and you want to know something? **It is awesome**. It is *so* awesome. I've influenced you a little bit too; you've slowly gotten into it. It's the way to live, man.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I'm not like a Chad. I'm like a... like a Charles right now. I didn't even become a Chad. I'm just slowly working. I'm like a Brett trying to get to Chad right now.

Sam Parr

Dude, just like lifting... I don't care how it sounds; it is what it is. Lifting heavy weight and then just eating meat and vegetables, I just feel happy. I feel good about my life. I look at old pictures of us when we were recording the podcast at my office, and my face was so much more round. I'm disgusted. I'm like, "You are such a filthy animal. You are filthy; you are a horrible human being." Looking at myself now has made me so much happier, and I'm pumped that the nerds are finding out about it.

Shaan Puri

yeah I think biology lifts I think he power lifts as well so so yeah there's

Sam Parr

Just like there's so much research that shows, dude, being stronger... it just makes sense. You know, a strong body, a strong mind. When getting stronger, there are so many benefits to living a longer life. What's his name? What's the guy we like? The hunk scientist?

Shaan Puri

huberman huberman

Sam Parr

yeah huberman don't act like you don't know for the record we never have referred

Shaan Puri

To him like that in private, which is why I was confused. You acted like we always call him "the hunk scientist" in text messages.

Sam Parr

Dude, I have a friend who went and got in a cold punch with him. He goes, "He's ripped, like he's jacked." And I'm like, "Yeah, of course, this guy cut it all."

Shaan Puri

Like, made for one. How close together were they? Those are like an occupancy of one.

Sam Parr

That's a new protocol. You gotta sit on top of one another. It extends... that's what he's telling people. He's like, "Hey, you know, if you sit right here on my lap, you're gonna live like an extra hour." But my dude, my friend did a thing with him. He goes, he's just jacked. I don't even remember how we started up on this, but he did a podcast the other day and he talked about living longer. He's like, "Yeah, lift weights and go for runs and you'll live longer." So I'm happy to...

Shaan Puri

I go for runs. My trainer has me doing this stuff called myofascial release or something like that. Do you do this?

Sam Parr

like a like a massage

Shaan Puri

it's basically foam rolling but on steroids I go

Sam Parr

to a doctor 2 days a week and get it done to my calves

Shaan Puri

Yeah, I knew you would do this. As a full Chad, you are, of course, all the way in on this. It's basically that he has these trigger balls and different torture devices, I'll call them. He's like, "Alright, so I've done foam rolling before. It's okay; it's kind of boring and a little bit painful. It's not the most fun thing in the world." You know, it was always recommended to me, like, "Hey, you should foam roll tomorrow morning or tonight. That'll help you with your soreness." I was like, "Yeah, you know, sure. Right after I eat my broccoli and asparagus, and say my prayers, and get to bed by 9 PM. Of course, yeah, I'll also foam roll. Why not add it?"

Sam Parr

to the other list of shit I'm not

Shaan Puri

I'm going to do that I shouldn't do. And so with this, we do... we now, he, the way.

Sam Parr

he got me to do

Shaan Puri

It is like the first 25 minutes of every workout. We're doing this, so he'll be like, "Alright, find this spot in your hip flexor and take this rock-hard ball. You're just gonna put all your body weight on that thing, and wherever it feels most painful, that's the spot." I'm like, "Oh my god!" He's like, he'll hear me basically wincing and groaning in pain, and he's like, "Alright, cool, just you found it. Now stay there for 3 and a half minutes." And I'm like, "3 and a half minutes?" So this has turned out to be... I bring this up because, A, I find it interesting. I think there's a lot of fitness movements that have a business-like angle to them. I feel like you've been ahead of the curve on a lot of this. Like, you were on ATG or the kind of knees-over-toes stuff before most people. In general, what do you call it? Movement therapy or something like that? Movement therapy.

Sam Parr

yeah mobility

Shaan Puri

Mobility training, this myofascial release... I think this is also an area where the puck is going, and more people are going to be interested.

Sam Parr

well it's like a

Shaan Puri

And you feel amazing as soon as it's done, right? Like, you feel absolutely amazing when it's done. But the part of it that I find interesting is that, for me, working out is not about wanting to get as jacked and shredded as possible. It's basically about having a part of my day where I'm not at my computer, sitting down. I'm not on my phone, and I'm not even thinking about work. I know that could be other things; it could be meditation or whatever. But a way more achievable form of meditation for me is exercise. Exercise where I’m only focused on the thing that's right in front of me, like being absolutely present. Because there's like a giant weight that's about to fall on my face or hurt my shoulder, or I'll injure myself. Or I'm in extreme pain doing this trigger massage or whatever. I can't go anywhere else. I can't think about the past. I can't fantasize about the future. I can't worry about what notification just buzzed on my phone. I'm just like out of it for at least one hour a day. For me, that became the real benefits of this, more than like, "Oh, you know, I'm getting more fit" or "I have more energy." It's like it forces me to do that—the real version of meditation. So that's what I like about it the most.

Sam Parr

dude I told you what Scott galloway said right he is like I don't

Shaan Puri

know what to say

Sam Parr

The whole... He said this in an interview, and I thought it was amazing. I've been trying to say that, but you just said it so much better. He said in the interview with Ryan Holiday, "Basically, I think the whole... if you are not fit enough that you can kill and eat most people in the room or outrun them, then you have a problem. You should work... you should." He's like, "I pretty much just exercise just so I can kill and eat most people in a room or just be able to outrun them." When he said that, I was like, "Oh yeah, that's actually... that's the way to go. That's the way to live."

Shaan Puri

That is so stupid. That's the part where I'm like, "Okay, I don't even want to be a part of this movement anymore." Like, why is that even relevant? That's like saying, "I want to be fast in case an asteroid is going to hit the Earth and I have to get out of the way." It's like, what are you talking about? What is the scenario where you need to eat, kill, or run away from everybody in the room? Has this ever happened in your entire lifetime? No.

Sam Parr

That's not at all like... it's more like, why does a car need to go 120 miles an hour when the speed limit's 60? It doesn't, because it just doesn't. No, but it's awesome that it does. And because it can, that makes it just a little bit cooler. Are you ever going to drive 160 miles an hour? No, of course not. But I still want that Ferrari just because I want to know I can do it. The act of training to be able to do it is awesome. So do I intend to eat you? TBD, probably not. But it's cool that I could. If I wanted to, I could do X, Y, and Z to you, and just training for that, I think, is awesome.

Shaan Puri

I would taste horrible like if you're gonna eat somebody I'm not your guy you know

Sam Parr

Dude, I heard the best place to eat someone is their thumb right here. I heard that's got some...

Shaan Puri

Good news! It does actually look like a chicken drumstick. Actually, now that you think about it, right? Like that little section.

Sam Parr

yeah I I I heard that's the best part

Shaan Puri

I always thought calf would be the way to go because that looks like the giant turkey leg at Disneyland. I thought calf would be where I would...

Sam Parr

do something

Shaan Puri

like that

Sam Parr

Parts that are muscular aren't good. You know, you want fat. The fatter the part is, the better. Your calves are pretty lean compared to the rest of your body.

Shaan Puri

it's just your butt basically then you're gonna eat

Sam Parr

your butt and your belly yeah you ever had pork belly man that shit's good

Shaan Puri

It is amazing, actually. Salmon belly is fantastic, and pretty much any belly.

Sam Parr

yeah you want the fat I'm

Shaan Puri

a belly guy alright I think we've gone off the rails

Sam Parr

And we started with Kanye and we ended with eating each other.

Shaan Puri

What part of each other would we want to eat? We had fun. Alright, see you.