I Tried Outsmarting Nancy Pelosi's Investment Strategy

Sam Parr

Alright, you ready to do this?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, hold on... I'm just executing a stock trade right now. I am **the Wolf of Wall Street** right now, Sam. I'm here live on this podcast, but I'm not here talking to you. I'm on Wall Street right now. I'm on the stock market floor, shaking my money, saying, "Take my money!" because I'm buying a stock.

Sam Parr

I don't think *The Wolf of Wall Street* used Robinhood, but that's okay.

Shaan Puri

If you want, here's what we're gonna do. If you want to find out how to lose money like I do, you should stick around.

Sam Parr

Alright, so what is it? You've been on a stock kick. You're really on a stock kick.

Shaan Puri

Which is just bad news for me. Anytime I get on a stock kick, bad things happen. I just don't realize it until three years later. So let me just show you these two charts. Take a look at this chart. The first one is about the stock called Palo Alto Networks. I don't think you're following too much of Palo Alto Networks, am I right in assuming that?

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Yeah, okay, good. That's pretty good. Alright, so look at the stock first. I know a bullshitter when I hear one, and you don't know what I should about the stock.

Sam Parr

I've read... I know, I know, whatever you can learn reading the Wikipedia, I've read it on Wikipedia.

Shaan Puri

Tell me this: what do they sell? What's the product? No, no, no. Why are you looking at your screen? Look at me. Look me in the eyes and tell me what they sell.

Sam Parr

Networking and data solutions, I believe. They used to be one of the OGs that had servers, didn't they?

Shaan Puri

Dude, here's the reality: I don't know what they sell either. It doesn't matter what they sell. Look at this chart for a second. This chart shows the last 5 days—down 14%, 15%. Basically, that's pretty bad. Actually, it would be worse than that except for this little uptick. Now, look at the second chart. This is today—up 10%. You might ask yourself, "Did they just have an earnings call? Did they announce a new product? Did they announce a big AI breakthrough?" What is causing the stock, in the first two hours of trading today, to be up 10%? The answer is our girlfriend of the pod, Nancy Pelosi, just made a trade. She just bought $1,000,000 of Palo Alto Networks stock, and immediately people start following her action and start buying this thing blindly because they don't know what she knows, but they know that she knows something. Isn't that so funny? That's what's happening nowadays. I follow this account—I don't know if you follow it—the Pelosi Tracker. It says, "Breaking: The Queen is back at it again! She just bought $1,250,000 of Palo Alto Network calls." Then it says, "Palo Alto Networks is one of the leading cybersecurity companies in the nation," like in case you need to know. But here's the reality: you don't need to know. You just need to know that Nancy Pelosi, who has one of the greatest stock trading track records of our time, just bought this.

Sam Parr

She, are you actually buying this?

Shaan Puri

No, I'm not buying the Powell.

Sam Parr

I was gonna say we just did this amazing whole thing on Buffett a couple of episodes ago. Two months ago, when Munger died, we did a whole episode on that. I was gonna say you did a great job of remembering what he said, which is like, "Invest blindly in things you don't understand."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, invest blindly off random Twitter anonymous accounts, you know, claims about 90-year-old women's trades. So, that's what I'm doing. No, I didn't buy this one, but I did find it. I was kind of curious. I saw this tweet and I was like, "I've seen her track record," or like the data analysis of her track record. It was really, really impressive. I don't have it offhand here, but it's better than most hedge funds. It's better than most famous investors that you know of. So, I was wondering, are people just fast-following her trades? That's why I looked at what happened today. The share price stopped at $27 this morning because she had to disclose what she bought, and people were tracking that. I just find that... I was curious. Does the stock actually move when Pelosi makes a trade? Our girl moves weight. Alright, she makes waves in the market.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Well, I think it was... she can't. She's allowed to do it too. It's not only... well.

Sam Parr

Her husband's a PE guy. I mean, this is his job, I would imagine.

Shaan Puri

Alright, so let me just tell you this. The last big trade that I saw from her was in, I believe, July 2022. Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, who's a VC, decided to buy 25,000 shares of Nvidia. They said, "What's the best stock in the world right now?" Since 2022, what is almost the most valuable company in the world right now? Nvidia! Oh, that's right. So they bought it at $165. It's currently trading at $800. Oh, that's pretty good! A little 4.8x for our girl Nancy. That's pretty impressive.

Sam Parr

Good trade! When I first moved to San Francisco, I told you the story about how I lived in this warehouse. It was a dirt cheap warehouse, and it was horrible. It was an awful place to live. I lived with four other guys. One of the guys worked at Nvidia when I lived in this warehouse. He worked at Nvidia, I believe, from 2009 to 2014. I was doing the math. If he had $150,000 of equity given to him over four years, which seems reasonable, that's $30,000 to $40,000 a year. If he didn't sell, his net worth would be something like $35,000,000. Is that insane or what? And he wasn't an early employee; he would have been an employee. I don't know how big they were at the time, but it was thousands of people back then. Ain't that insane that someone could do that? Nvidia has been insane.

Shaan Puri

So, what was the S&P 500 gain last year? Last year, the S&P 500 was up **24%** in 2023. Okay, Nancy Pelosi was up **65%**. She just tripled the S&P 500 performance with her trades, you know, as her side hustle while she's the, whatever, the Speaker of the House or whatever the hell she is. Pretty crazy! You know what else has grown? A mere **25%** in the last year—our YouTube subscriber base. We are putting Pelosi to shame out here, but we need your help. We need you to go to YouTube, type in "My First Million," and subscribe because we put in so much work every week. People think it's free; it's a common misconception. They think it's free. Sam, tell them what it is.

Sam Parr

Look, this podcast isn't free. Everything on YouTube is free except for this channel. All we need in payment is just for you to click subscribe. It takes you literally 10 seconds, but it means the world to us. We pour our hearts into this. It's all we're asking in exchange. It's called the **Gentleman's Agreement**. We're not there to actually say you do it, but we hope you do. That's why it's the **Gentleman's Agreement**. What do you got? What's the trade that you just did that you are actually excited about? Because you said when we started, you mentioned you have a trade that you're doing as we speak. What is it?

Shaan Puri

**Disclaimer:** Not financial advice. **Disclaimer:** I'm very bad at stock trading, but I persist because I'm the little ninja that could. I'll never give up. So, I noticed... I don't know if you noticed, but over the weekend there was like a lot of negative sentiment around Google.

Sam Parr

And which is why, because their AI product is like **woke**.

Shaan Puri

Super woke! Yeah, so basically they released Gemini, which is their answer to ChatGPT, formerly known as Bard. By the way, there's a hilarious tweet that goes around every time Google releases a new product or renames something. People are like, "Cool! Should I? I would love to check this out on Meet, formerly known as Google Meet, formerly known as Google Hangouts, formerly known as Google Hangouts+, formerly known as Google Duo." They show how many times Google has renamed its products. So, it renamed Bard, which was an awful name, to Gemini, a better name. It came out basically... Bard was their next great act as a company.

Sam Parr

They like the thing about Google is it sounds... the word "Google" sounds like a noise, which is fine. I'm okay with that. It sounds more like a noise than a name. And they just took that a little bit too far, Bard.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they were like, "What are we gonna call it?" Somebody burped on the call, and they were like, "Oh yeah, we can go with that." The guy didn't know what to do, so he just didn't say anything. So, basically, if you went to Bard and you were like, "Hey, can you..." It started off when people were like, "Hey, can you generate an image of spaghetti?" and it generated a great image of spaghetti. They were like, "Cool, can you generate an image of a Viking?" Then it generated an image of a Black Viking, and people were like, "That's weird. Why is the Viking Black?" Then they asked, "Hey, can you generate an image of a white Viking?" and it gave them a Mexican Viking. They were like, "Hold on, can you give me an image of a white person?" and it was like, "Nah, I can't do that." Really, it was basically either saying no or showing a picture of a Black person. It's like, "What ethnicity was George Washington?" and they were like, "Well, it's highly debated. He might be Black." They were just... Or it'd be like, "Who did more damage to society, Elon Musk or Hitler?" and it's like, "It's hard to say who did more damage to society, Elon Musk or Hitler. Elon Musk tweeted these things about the stock price, and Hitler committed genocide. It is really a tough call." So, people were taking this stuff and running with it. It's like the perfect... The way I think about it is there's two tribes. If you can get one tribe riled up, that storyline is gonna get some legs. But if you can get two tribes riled up, then you've got a real story. This was basically the anti-big company, anti-big tech tribe. It's like, "Yo babe, wake up! Big tech made a mistake." Then there was the anti-anti-woke and the anti-anti-AI tribes. All three tribes got together and basically had a fiesta around this. People were sharing this like crazy, and then people were like, "The CEO of Google needs to be fired." They were like, "You know, Google is too bloated, it's too bureaucratic, it's too woke. It's got the woke virus; it will never recover." Suhail, the guy who created Mixpanel, an awesome guy, said, "Google has lost its way." Then I read my next tweet: Elon Musk says, "A bureaucratic Google exec called me and promised to change it, but I told him I don't think the bureaucratic blob inside Google will even let him make these changes. It's hopeless." Basically, that's what these guys are saying. You go on the All In podcast, and they're like, "I can't believe this. Our rights, freedom of speech, are at risk here. It needs to tell the truth. Look at this crazy woke bias." And everybody's anti-Google. So, I woke up today, and I was like, "Pretty sure Google still owns Gmail, YouTube, Google Search, Chrome, Android, Waymo." Okay, I think I'll just go ahead and buy Google stock today because Google's on this dip right now with the negative PR. I think it's just that old quote: "In the short term, the stock market's a popularity contest, and in the long term, it's a weighing machine." I just think that they have tremendous assets. You know, YouTube alone, which is not even Google's main product, does $32 billion a year in revenue, which is more than Snapchat, Pinterest, Twitter, and TikTok all combined. And that's just YouTube, right? Then you take Google Cloud, which does $36 billion in revenue. That's just their cloud service, not Google Search, not Android, not the Play Store, not any of this stuff. So, I just think they have too many assets. I don't really do much analysis aside from thinking, "I don't know, seems like everybody's overreacting to this." Because it's a really good social media storyline to be like, "Google's lost its way, it's woke, it's gonna lose in AI," blah blah blah. Maybe it's true; I don't know. To me, it seemed like a bit of an overreaction.

Sam Parr

I don't think you're wrong. I think that you're right in this particular instance. But I subscribe to the subreddit called **r/money**, and it's basically a big subreddit where people complain. Mostly, there's a lot of it—not complaining, but a lot of posts from people in college who are like, "I'm now $20 in the hole because I was buying options on Robinhood and doing all this stuff on these apps where they trade." In general, I am so against individual trading, even though I think you're right about Google. It ain't going anywhere. I buy ads on Google; it freaking works so well. But I just refuse to go down this path. It's such a slippery slope that I don't want to get addicted to it, and I feel like I would. And you've won a few times; I know you've won a few times recently.

Shaan Puri

Oh, I'll tell you every time I win. Don't worry.

Sam Parr

But have you lost a bunch?

Shaan Puri

Of course, of course. Yeah, you can't trade without having bad trades, right? Like, well, what is the number one rule for having a few good trades? It's to have many trades.

Sam Parr

That's insane that you're doing this, but you're not wrong with this one.

Shaan Puri

I'm not doing it with a lot of money, and also it's an excuse for me to learn too. So... I don't know. I think that a lot of learning just comes from trial and error and trying things. When you build businesses, it's a really expensive, slow way to learn. It's like... it's the highest-price way to learn, right? Because it: - Takes a long time - Takes a lot of effort - Takes a lot of focus But there are things where you're like, "Alright, well..."

Sam Parr

Like, you know, very simple.

Shaan Puri

I wanted to learn about AI, so I pay this guy $500 an hour once a week to teach me about it. I wanted to be up to speed with what's going on—what are the new tools, what are the limitations, and what are some of the bottlenecks. In general, I have two goals: a) I want to have some fun in my life, and b) I want to learn. For me, the only way to learn is like Andrew Wilkins has said once: "I like to walk around with a fork, finding sockets to put my fork in." Basically, the only way he learns is by getting electrocuted, and I kind of feel the same way. I hear things and I hear wisdom, but it never actually sinks in until I go and do something. Maybe the real learning here, by the way, is just: don't pick and don't trade individual stocks. You might actually be at the correct final answer. I'm not saying that you're wrong about that. Philosophically, I agree with what you're saying, but I just carve out a small fun budget that I use to do this.

Sam Parr

I, my partner Joe, he trades individual stocks. This week, or last week, he was like, "I'm screwed. I'm going back to indexing." He looked at all the money that he had. I said, "Show me what you had 15 years ago. Show me what you have today." I then put it in this calculator and said, "I'm going to show you what you would have had if you had done this. Let's compare." The index fund investing was so much higher, and he said, "Yeah, I'm going to switch." So he made the switch this week.

Shaan Puri

The way I did the same calculation, and it was 100% true for me too, is that if I had just bought the index or added a consistent amount to the index over time, that would have been perfect. But the funny thing is, it's not the thing in my analysis. I was like, "Okay, I went through every single trade again. How do you learn? You go back and reflect." So, I went through every single trade and I asked myself, "What story does this tell me?" I had thought the story would be that my prediction going in was you would have made a little more money if you had done the index. But, you know, whatever. Actually, I would have made a lot more money just doing the index. I was learning. Number one, learning was interesting. I thought I would find, "You're not as smart as you think, buddy." You know, you buy this thing because you have all these reasons, but you're wrong. In actuality, I think I only lost money buying a very small number of stocks. I think it was less than five stocks that I bought. What I bought it for versus what it currently is, is less, or even less than it would have been if I had just been in the index. It's pretty comparable returns in the two situations. The two where I got it wrong were, number one, during COVID, I bought some momentum stocks. I just bought Zoom or something at some moment. I bought Zoom early, and it was working so well that I just bought more. That was stupid; I shouldn't have done that. The second one was via random tips from friends. You know, a friend says, "Oh man, I'm doing this..."

Sam Parr

A smart friend.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, they're a smart friend. So, I bought... those are the only times that I bought and lost. All of my actual losses, where I made less than I would have in the market, were just selling early. I sold a bunch of things. Some I sold early when they had a lot more room to run. Some I sold when the market sentiment was down or I was feeling fearful, and I just wanted to move to cash. I would just sell. So, I actually lost... all of my losses were in the sell, not the buy, which was surprising to me.

Sam Parr

I've been making fun of Joe because he's going all in on indexing. I'm like, "Great! You picked a really good month— all-time highs, record highs. This is the best month ever to decide to do it." And now he's second-guessing it. Let me show you a company that launched, I think, this week or last week, and I want to know what your opinion of it is. It's called Harbor, so harbor.co. I want to tell you what this company is and why it's interesting to me, but I'm not sure if it's going to work or not. I want to hear your opinion on it. Do you remember Deep Sentinel? We had Sally on the pod. So, Deep Sentinel, I thought it was going to be huge. The verdict's still out. It was basically... I like these businesses where people are monitoring things. Let me give you an example. Deep Sentinel's tagline is, or I don't know if it's their tagline, but the guy said it on the pod: "Ring is a great way to watch your stuff get stolen." That's how it typically works with Ring. Like, I've had a bike get stolen before, and I'm like, "Oh, let me look at the Ring." Yep, there's the guy who did it. It is, in fact, stolen. Deep Sentinel is different because it's these cameras, similar to Ring, but there's someone on the other end watching the cameras. They'll call the police. I've had a drunk Airbnb guest think that my house was their Airbnb, and they were knocking on the door at 2 AM. They called the police on them and took care of it. Now, there's this other thing called Harbor, so harbor.co. It's basically that but for baby monitors. I shared the deck with you; let me know what you think. Have you ever heard of sleep training? Basically, when your kid gets to be like 3 or 4 months old and they start crying, sometimes you gotta let them cry it out a little bit in order to figure out what's real and what's not. Eventually, they quit whining and go back to sleep. They did this but for baby monitors. There's someone monitoring the baby monitor, and I think they'll call you or ping the monitor that they give you to let you know, "Alright, now you actually should get up. The baby's been crying for like 9 or 10 minutes; it's time to get up."

Shaan Puri

"The baby's crying!" "I fucking know!" "Well... yeah, that's the end of the commercial." This product... well, we... this product makes no sense. How big is the house? I have no idea if you're...

Sam Parr

That's why I want to hear your opinion on this. Because we had Jack Smith on the pod. Do you remember when we had him on the pod? He did the same thing where he set up a ring camera for his baby monitor. Then he hired someone in India to watch the monitor. I think he used Shepherd, actually. He hired someone to watch the monitor and to call a dedicated cell phone just to let him know when the baby had been crying for 10 minutes or something like that. And these guys turned that into a product. What do you think about this?

Shaan Puri

Well, I have a couple of thoughts. First, I love how Sam, the new dad, is like, "You ever heard about sleep training?" talking to me, a father of two. It's like if I went and worked out and I was like, "Bro, you ever heard of bicep curls?" and you're like, "Dude, welcome to the gym." So yes, I'm familiar with the idea that babies cry and, you know, sleep can get a little hard for parents. Alright, the second thing is this whole class of products is like what I call "anxiety reduction," but actually, it's somewhat anxiety-inducing. So, you know, the idea would be, "Hey, you could sleep well knowing that somebody's monitoring your baby at night." There are a whole bunch of products like this. I don't know if you ever bought the Owlet, which is like this ankle monitor for your baby, or like there's a sock version of this. There's another one that's measuring their oxygen at all times or whatever.

Sam Parr

Hey, I know all about ankle monitors. I've been there. I can tell you all about ankle monitors.

Shaan Puri

Guilty again, preaching to the choir there. Yeah, I didn't know.

Sam Parr

You could put them on children, but yeah, I know a thing or two about ankle monitors.

Shaan Puri

Exactly. So those all exist and they have actually done well. I think Owlet did... Owlet did pretty well. I know they got into some trouble, but I think they ended up going public.

Sam Parr

What is it?

Shaan Puri

Owlette is... that's what it is. It's the ankle monitor for babies, but the key thing being like it's measuring, I think, their oxygen levels. So, you know, if the baby... you know, like because SIDS is obviously the biggest nightmare for a parent. It would be for the baby to suddenly, in their sleep, stop breathing. The idea with Owlette is that you would get notified if the oxygen levels go down, which to me makes way more sense than, "Let me know if my baby is crying." Because I know if my baby is crying, typically, you know, through a traditional baby monitor. Or like, you know, my house is not that big, or the baby sleeps in the crib in the same room. So, I guess I think the Owlette stuff makes a lot more sense than Harbor. I'm not like super into this idea, and that's kind of where I stand. No offense to the people behind Harbor; I'm sure they're great, smart people.

Sam Parr

The guy who started it, started Mizzen and Main, that clothing company. Remember the clothing company? It's like golf people wear it. It's a popular thing. Not popular among our lives, but it is very popular.

Shaan Puri

Other people, right?

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's huge. It's like $100,000,000+. It's a big thing. But he came out with this thing, and I didn't... I invested a very, very small sum—$1,000. He's a friend of mine, and I was like, "Alright, I'll just do $1,000 just to play." That's my version of you buying Google—just doing small, small investments. But I saw this, and I was like, "I don't know, this might actually work. We'll see what happens." But I'm into these things that monitor things. Another one—and this is a little bit of a shill; this is actually totally a shill—but do you remember My Body Tutor? I told you all about My Body Tutor.

Shaan Puri

I use My Body Tutor. Happy to plug them for free! I'm not a... we don't get paid for this, just a happy customer.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's going great! I genuinely love the product, even though I'm not promoting it. There's no Sean, but I am a happy customer. My coach, Hailey, is awesome, and you know, it's a good reminder. Most things in life surprise me when I trace back the answer. You're like, "Alright, how do I make this thing happen?" Well, you gotta take a bunch of action. It's a non-negotiable, right? Whatever the thing you want in life is, you gotta take a bunch of action. Okay, well, how do you get yourself to take a bunch of action? You gotta have a strategy or maybe some motivation. Those are some of the elements that go into action. Where do you get the strategy and the motivation? If you keep going back down the chain, the number one thing is simply awareness. A lot of things in life that aren't happening aren't happening because you haven't actually put your focus on them. The laser beam that's in your brain is pointed elsewhere, and you haven't brought your awareness to the situation at hand regularly enough. As a startup, Sam, I'm sure you used to do the same thing. I used to put, like, every day when I would come into the office, I'd draw a giant "0" on the whiteboard. That's how many paying customers I had. I was like, "I don't need a dashboard; I will write this number here every day." I would write "0" every day because I had to look at that. I had to bring my awareness to the fact that I currently had 0 paying customers. Otherwise, it was very easy to get distracted by a whole bunch of random tasks. If I started with, "Well, my main goal is to hit this many paying customers, and I currently have 0," then if I start my day with that awareness, I'm likely to take actions that are in line with changing that number to be what I want. In the same way, if you get a phone call in the morning asking, "Hey, what's your plan for eating today?" and you're like, "I don't have a plan; I'm just gonna eat whatever comes up in front of me," that's not right. So then you bring your awareness to, "Okay, that's right, I do have this goal. I am committed to making this happen. I'm gonna make a plan, and I'm gonna decide up front to bring my awareness to that early and often." Or when you take pictures or log your meals, you're bringing your awareness to what you're eating. Is this in line with what I've said I want to be eating or not? So, I think awareness is actually massively underrated, both in diet and really any goal you have in life. I think everything is downstream of first bringing a bunch of awareness to the thing.

Sam Parr

Yeah, dude, it's changed my life. That's why I've invested in some of these companies where they monitor stuff for you. You're either forced to focus on it or someone else is focusing on it for you. Let me tell you one more thing. Have you heard of Penske Media?

Shaan Puri

No, what is that? You've never heard of that? Okay, so...

Sam Parr

Never. Most people have it. That's why I wanted to bring this up. I've been following this guy for a few years now, and I spoke to someone who worked at the company. I didn't realize how big this company is. So let me tell you this story. There's this guy named Jay Penske. His father is Roger Penske. Do you remember in San Francisco those yellow trucks? They were yellow moving trucks, and they used...

Shaan Puri

To say.

Sam Parr

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

Shaan Puri

Let me guess, he's too handsome and too rich for you.

Sam Parr

He's too handsome. He's too rich. I think his wife is a beauty pageant winner.

Shaan Puri

It could be one or the other.

Sam Parr

He’s got both of them.

Shaan Puri

If this guy has any handyman skills, he's out of here for us. Yeah, dude, I was like, "Build anything with his bare hands? Too much! Get out of here."

Sam Parr

I immediately googled "Jay Penske shirtless" in order to see if he has that too, which he does, I think. But I looked this guy up, and I wanted to hate him. I did research on him, and I completely love him. I think he has it all. So check this out: you've never heard of Penske Media, but let me tell you all the things that they own. They own South by Southwest, the Golden Globes, Rolling Stone, the Hollywood Reporter, and now they own a large chunk, maybe most of Vox. They also own Variety.

Shaan Puri

South by Southwest and Rolling Stone, this guy.

Sam Parr

Yes, he owns *The Hollywood Reporter*, *Billboard*, *Women's Wear Daily*, *New York Magazine*, *Eater*, *The Verge*, *Art News*, *Artforum*, *Art in America*, and *The Robb Report*. Have you been in *The Robb Report*?

Shaan Puri

Yeah.

Sam Parr

It's like...

Shaan Puri

This article says he is the Rupert Murdoch of entertainment.

Sam Parr

Yes, exactly. He's really under the radar. Not a lot of people talk about this guy, but Penske Media, I think it's called the PMC (Penske Media Corporation), they're pretty under the radar. They own enough publications that something like 1 in 2 Americans go to their websites every month. It's massive. They get hundreds of millions of monthly uniques, and they're one of the few media companies that is large and consistently profitable. They've been killing it for years... years... years. He's originally...

Shaan Puri

How did they get started? How did he build this empire?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so he originally started his first venture into the digital business when he was in his twenties. He bought Mail.com and thought, "I'm going to create a new email service." It didn't work out, and so he eventually sold the domain Mail.com to someone else, making a little bit of money in the process. Then he thought, "Alright, but I still want to get into digital. I still want to get into media." So he started, I believe, something like an ad network in the 2000s. It was going okay, and then they eventually started buying publications to put ads on. Slowly, slowly, slowly, they began to gain momentum. Over the last 20 years, I think the company is about 20 years old at this point. They buy more and more publications. This guy has a chip on his shoulder because he's the son of a billionaire. Allegedly, that's what he says. He claims, "I've taken no money from my parents. I started this with a very small sum of my own money, and I've just slowly rolled this into another thing, and another thing, and another thing." Now, it's this massive business. I think 2 or 3 years ago, they raised $200 million to further fund acquisitions, but people aren't talking about this guy at all. I asked a guy who sold his company to Penske, "What is he so special at?" He said, "Here are a few quotes that people have said about him: I think he has a chip on his shoulder and wants to prove himself. He was hustling back then not to be known as Penske, but to prove himself—not to the world, but to his family." Another guy said that when he hires people at this...

Sam Parr

They have something like **1,000+** people. He interviews every single person they hire. When he buys a company, he wants to interview every single person who works there. They say he's a steward of the brand and he truly cares. There's this one story about, I think it was, a real estate publication owned by this woman who was notoriously rude to everyone. She was hard to work with; she was kind of a diva and just rude constantly. She was one of these Hollywood real estate reporters and she kind of thought she was on top of the world. Then, Jay Penske comes in. He's this good-looking, privileged guy, so immediately she thinks she's going to hate him. But he totally toned her down and won her over with kindness, being polite, and having her back constantly. That's been a trend I've noticed with this guy. All these people say that he's just really kind, really nice, a savvy operator, and super low-key and under the radar. But this guy, Jay, he's one of the biggest names in media and very few people are talking about him.

Shaan Puri

I love how he's like, "I wanna make a name for myself." He's like, "Penske Media Group used the same name." Also hilarious. This is fascinating. So he didn't take money from his dad. That's interesting. He took money from the Saudis and he took money from that guy Daniel Loeb, who's like the legendary trader.

Sam Parr

Yeah, but I think that was like 15 years into the business. I think they actually bootstrapped it for a long time. I believe they raised $200,000,000 at a $1,000,000,000 valuation.

Shaan Puri

How would he bootstrap it? Like, what was the first... what was the cash cow?

Sam Parr

Well, the first cash cow was their ad network that they created. I used the web archive and looked at what their website used to look like. It basically reminded me of an ad network. Now, this was like 15 years ago, I believe. A lot of the terminology was even different, and the type of stuff they were doing isn't really relevant anymore. But it was from owning Mail.com, which he bought for cheap and then sold for a profit. So, it was like an ad network. They've run profitably for a really, really long time.

Shaan Puri

So, I think this is a super cool find. I'd never heard of this guy, and I did not know that the same family owns Penske, the truck company. They own the Indy 500, they own the IndyCar raceway, and all that. Then he bought all these brands like South by Southwest and whatnot. That's super interesting. Would you want to do this? Because this sounds really hard to do. In fact, there's a quote here from someone who says, "He's the hardest working guy I know. He's always on planes, he is always on calls, he never stops. It's been that way for 15 years." This seems like a rolling up kind of old school media properties. It seems like both one of the more dangerous things you could do because media is, like, I mean, we just saw Vice shut down the other day. Media is not the most stable industry; it's not the most profitable industry either. Owning a portfolio of 15 things in general and operating them is, you know, just a hard way to go, a hard way to live.

Sam Parr

No, I would not want to do this. I think that this is the worst way.

Shaan Puri

To one of the worst ways: 2,000 employees.

Sam Parr

Yeah, and not only do they have 2,000 employees, but it's 2,000 LA-based, you know? They own or operate... So, like, do you know Dick Clark Studios? Have you ever seen, like, the Golden Globes? Yeah, yeah. Remember, like, when the ball drops on NBC? I forget even what network it's on, and it says, "This is brought to you by Dick Clark Studios" or whatever. They own that. So, having to host all those things? No, I would never in a million years want to do that. But someone is doing it, and they're actually doing it successfully. So if you look at Vox, or how about BuzzFeed? BuzzFeed has a horrible market cap, and they just sold Complex Media for less than I think they paid for it. Or, I mean, what other media company did you just mention? Vice. Vice.com just shut down. No, I think this is an awful way to do it. However, it can be done, and this is the only guy who's proving that it can be done at that size. The way that he's doing it is they're just being really good operators. He balances letting people do their thing, but also he is pretty strict about operations. He expects a certain amount of profit, things like that. He still owns 60% of the company. So would I want to do this? Absolutely not. But do I still think it's cool? Yes. And if you, by the way, Google his name, I was trying to figure out, I'm like, "Where are the chinks in this guy's armor? Where is he screwing up?" The only thing that I could find was he got arrested for pissing outside when he was drunk on Nantucket or Martha's Vineyard. So that was, like, the only time that I've noticed that people really have disliked him in general.

Shaan Puri

He's got you. Yeah, so you're not perfect.

Sam Parr

By the way, I said that his wife was like a Miss America winner. She's actually a Victoria's Secret model, so he's doing great in many different aspects of his life. But I thought that that's...

Shaan Puri

Better to just pause after... just be like, "So."

Sam Parr

He's doing alright.

Shaan Puri

Let it all be... just let the air answer the question. There, how do you?

Sam Parr

Doing alright, but have you ever heard of Cy Newhouse? Do you know who Cy Newhouse is?

Shaan Puri

No, but I have an idea for you real quick. I have noticed, and many of the listeners have noticed, that you love a good-looking man. I think you should create the Forbes 30... I think you should create the "Par 30 Studs Under 30," and it's just great-looking businessmen. Just dreamy hunks.

Sam Parr

Dude, so many times.

Shaan Puri

**Dreamy hunks**

Sam Parr

That's so many times. People in the comments think I'm gay or they'll comment on how I comment.

Shaan Puri

On the podcast, dude, they're like, "I googled this guy shirtless. What's my shirt?"

Sam Parr

For the record, I'm not gay, but I can appreciate when someone's really handsome. So, sue me. So, sue me.

Shaan Puri

I love art, long walks to the beach, and a nice body. Who's it on?

Sam Parr

Dude, it's pretty... yeah, a lot of people do think I'm gay. Because I remember we were talking about this one track athlete, and I was like, "Look at his calves! You see those calves?" I'm sorry, yeah, I can admire... you know, I can admire.

Shaan Puri

Well, your hand was making a cupping motion while you were saying it, so that was just...

Sam Parr

That's alright. I'm fine with people thinking I'm gay; that's okay. I'll... whatever. Anyway, there's an interesting guy who's under the radar. He's doing stuff that you use, but you probably never knew who was behind it. That's what I wanted to bring up.

Shaan Puri

Okay, I like it. Alright, Sam, you brought some fire today! The Penske thing was awesome. Pelosi? We're keeping an eye on her. I got my stock pick in. We're going to check on that one in 5 years and see how I did. Good episode! That's all for the pod. Actually, we're trying something new. We have a new format for the next episode that we're calling "The Quickie." The Quickie episode is just quick hitters. Basically, throughout the week, Sam and I see a bunch of things that are really interesting, but they're kind of short. They're not like... they're just like, "Hey, did you see this? Check this out! This is something really interesting I saw." It's stuff that we normally just share in our group chat because everybody likes it, but we didn't know how to make it into a pod. So, we're actually going to just take the best ones from the week and put them together as a little Friday Quickie of quick hitters. So, check that out!

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod.