Favorite Finds: McDonald's Employee Goes Viral, Pelosi's Finances & How To Close A Deal (#498)

Shaan Puri

He said this line that he left. He goes, "That sounds silly. I understand that my whole day is just about posting on Twitter, but everybody's just got a thing. That's my thing, okay?" And he's like, "We've all got one thing. That's my thing. I love it."

Sam Parr

Alright, we have a special episode. We're going to talk about cool content that we've consumed. This might be short, around 20 to 25 minutes. Do you want to kick things off?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, well, I want to say why I think this is a good type of episode to do. One of the best ways to change your life is to change your... if you want to change your body, you'll go change your diet or your habits, your workout habits, or your eating habits. If you want to change your mind, you need to change your info diet. So, one of the questions I like asking—and I know you do too—which is like... it's like the dorkiest question ever. We probably should find a better way to phrase it.

Sam Parr

no it's a great question

Shaan Puri

"But it's the answer is so good that we don't even care how lame the question sounds." But I've heard you say this before, like, "So what media are you consuming?" So what are you reading nowadays, or like, what content do you like to consume?

Sam Parr

I do that in job interviews and people will be like, "Oh, I read like The New York Times." I'm like, "No, come on. What subreddits are you consuming? Do you use Reddit? What about on Twitter or Instagram? Who do you follow? Where are you getting [your information]? Who's influencing you?" That's what I want to know.

Shaan Puri

The former luckiest... We were like, "What subreddits do you go on?" Because his brain was firing off all these awesome things in all these different areas. It's like that doesn't just happen by accident; that happens because he's got a set of interesting inputs that leads to a set of interesting outputs. We, as MFM, want to be one of those interesting inputs for you so that you become a more interesting, smart person based off of listening to this. But we're just one thing. So what we want to share is what are the best of the inputs that we read, listened to, or watched this week that maybe you should go check out. So that's the premise of this. I wish more people did this. Of people that I find interesting, I wish they would curate for me like, "Yo, here's the 1 or 2 best things I read, watched, or listened to this week," just to get my mind going and show me cool things I should go do. Anyways, that's the spiel.

Sam Parr

I want you to kick it off. I want you to do the top two. All three are good, so why don't you kick it off with the top one?

Shaan Puri

So, one of the best things I watched this week is Bill Gurley's talk at All In. Have you heard his talk that he did at the All In conference?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so he did a talk. I believe it was about Uber and regulation, and like some of the surprising things they found.

Shaan Puri

so bill gurley was the like lead investor in uber and he goes to all in and I expected him to talk about I don't know venture capital business investing but he's now retired he's a retired vc so he's like kind of in the no flux given mode which is great like you know when you get a really smart person who now feels like they have nothing to lose they can go off and I feel like that's the best way to describe this it wasn't a talk bill gurley went off and so what he does is the talk is titled I think it's like 2,851 or something like that some number and he he's basically the talk is like that's the number of miles between silicon valley and washington dc and what he does is he talks about regulation and how screwed up it makes business and so he goes through example after example and if it to me it felt almost like a john oliver you know know when john oliver does those last week tonight things where he just has a monologue he's like exposing something that screwed up or like coffeezilla does this on youtube where he'll go in and be like logan paul scam people and let me just expose the whole the grift he exposed the grift of regulation and he's like dude look at this like covid happens so they pass these laws about covid testing and look at this the same test in the uk or germany costs like you know 7 times less as it did in the us why because in the us it was mandated that only these 2 companies tests were gonna be allowed and in in germany it was a free market so the test the cost went way down or he would give an example of he's like you know here's the guy who passed this law and he says that these are the only 3 vendors that the government can use and so they charge this crazy amount and then guess what here's his linkedin oh what do you know 5 years later he's on the board as the chief whatever at that same company that he handed this prize to and it's like the grift is real and the thing I loved about this because you're like damn that was a great talk he's like I've been working on this for like 15 years he's like basically for the last 15 years every time I saw something that was just complete grift I was screw so just a effed up part of the system I wrote it down I made a note and so he's like this talk is basically 15 years in the making of me kind of observing what screwed up a web about the way that washington works at the end his mic drop is basically like he's like I called this talk in a 2,850 1 that's the number of miles between san francisco and dc and when I talk to people in dc and they ask you know how does silicon valley you know do so much innovation it's because we're so fucking far away from washington dc like we're just away from the poison of the way that that place works and we're the farthest possible place away on the map in the united states from from dc so I love that talk

Sam Parr

Was there any promising parts of it where like, "This is gonna change," or was it like, "This is..."?

Shaan Puri

"Gonna change?" They're like, "What do we do about this? Can this change?" It's like, well, the first thing is this: we have to expose this, right? You know, you gotta shine light on it. The bacteria sort of grows in the dark. And the second thing was, he was like, "You know, it's hard because the incentive is..." The people who could change the laws, that would say, "Hey, you know, maybe if you write the laws about these companies, you can't trade their stocks," for example. Right? Like we've seen...

Sam Parr

this on the pod

Shaan Puri

Yeah, but the people who need to pass that law are the ones who are profiting from this. So he's like, "It's almost impossible to change that incentive." It's like they would have to... They need so much pressure in order to make those changes because they're not incentivized to do it. In fact, the opposite: their entire incentive is to keep the system the way it is.

Sam Parr

There's this interesting thing that's going on where I don't know anything about the government. I don't remember if it's the Senate or Congress, whatever it is, but it was like one of the few things that a handful of hard-right Republicans and hard-left Democrats were agreeing on. Yeah, where they're like, "Alright, we're going to create a political index fund." If you're a politician, you can have money, but it must be in this particular index fund. You can't own individual stocks. You know how Nancy Pelosi is accused of doing whatever? And then, I think it was the head of... was it the New York Stock Exchange? There was one of the companies that, like, two weeks before the government shutdown with COVID, sold a bunch of stocks. This all looks suspicious. So they're trying to argue that there needs to be a political index fund. It seems like a pretty cool idea, actually.

Shaan Puri

By the way, there's a startup called Autopilot. I don't know if you've ever heard of them. They do... like, it's like automated money management. Basically, it's a way to... what you can do is you put your money in the app, and then you could be like, "Oh, I want to copy the Michael Burry portfolio," and you could just like copy their public portfolio.

Sam Parr

yeah it's cool

Shaan Puri

What they did that was really interesting is that the business was doing okay, and then growth took off. I was like, "Dude, what happened?" It was an incredible chart. He said, "We made this Twitter handle called the Pelosi Tracker." They also have the Bernie Tracker, but the Pelosi Tracker has 339,000 followers. It basically posts every time she makes a trade. They dig through the filings and share information about her gains. Of course, somehow Nancy Pelosi happens to be up 30% year to date. She's outperforming Warren Buffett and your favorite hedge fund guy.

Sam Parr

it's insane

Shaan Puri

Does this government official know about this? It's like, well, maybe they know some things before certain events happen.

Sam Parr

it's insane

Shaan Puri

it's corrupt that was a genius growth hack that they did

Sam Parr

Alright, I'll give you one. This has been going around Twitter, but I went and watched the whole thing. It's pretty amazing. So, Deion Sanders... I'm not a football guy. You're going to know I'm not a sports guy; you're going to know a lot more about this than I do. Deion Sanders, he's now the coach of, what is it, Colorado? Yeah, the Buffaloes. He was on *60 Minutes*, I think like two weeks ago. It was pretty amazing. They did like a 12-minute segment on him, and it was really fascinating because I remember Deion Sanders as being like this cocky, showboat guy. He is still a little bit of that, but he's incredibly insightful. So basically, what university was he at? It was a historical black college, was it Jackson State where he was?

Shaan Puri

yeah I forgot the name of it yeah

Sam Parr

He gets into coaching at some not very popular school. He does a decent job there, then he gets recruited to go to Colorado, which is a big deal. But what he does is... he's doing two interesting things: 1. The first interesting thing that he's doing is one of his sons is filming the whole thing. It's like his Gary V thing. 2. His son is filming behind the scenes and posting it on YouTube, driving interest. It's really fascinating what he's doing. Have you seen that?

Shaan Puri

it's amazing so one of his sons is the quarterback the starting quarterback

Sam Parr

I think another son is on the team too

Shaan Puri

The other son is, you know, the quarterback... or yeah, I think he's a quarterback, which is what Deion used to play. And then the other son, the one that stopped playing football, is basically the Gary V vlog guy. He's just in the locker room, documenting the whole thing and sharing it on social as they go. They're just doing a better job of it than, you know, anybody else who's following that stuff.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's awesome. The second thing was that his leadership skills are really good, and they're kind of shocking because I just thought he was just like a meathead and this really cocky guy. No, man, the guy is really insightful. So basically, they showed a clip from one of his first meetings with the team. He basically goes, "I'm here to encourage most of you to quit." The reason being is you guys are the team that lost so much. I think last year you were like 1 in 11, so you lost almost every game. You barely won a game. The coaching staff, they're all out. We got rid of them. I'm here; I brought a bunch of my guys here who I know are good. And look, here's the deal: the coaching staff is to blame, but you know who else is to blame? The kids. Because the coaching staff probably recruited a bunch of losers, and I'm here to get you losers to quit. The guy on CNN was like, "Hey man, that's a little harsh. These are kids." He goes, "Well, look, if you are willing to quit the team because I said that, you're probably weak, and you're not an asset to this company. If you're going to let words scare you, I need you out of here. I need the tough guys to stay, and I need you to be an asset and not a liability."

Shaan Puri

He revamped the roster. He brought in like 40 new players, which is half of a football team roster.

Sam Parr

And 50 left... and 50 left. They went into the transfer portal. He goes, "Look, truth is good for the kids. This is what I'm here to teach you: football. I'm gonna teach you how to live life and be a good man. What you guys need is truth. I need to tell you the truth, and I need to prepare you for the real world. I want a winning team." He does this other thing where the interviewer asks, "So who do you think is the best football coach right now in the NCAA?" He responds, "Well, do you have a mirror that I could hold up so I could see him? It's me." He goes on to say, "I'm gonna be the best coach," but then he does a good job of being humble. He adds, "Well, I learned a lot from Nick Saban. He's forgotten more about football than I'll ever know." So, I'm looking for little crumbs from him. But it was really inspirational because I think that this type of "pound your chest" leadership, the way that he delivered it, was really good. It was very inspiring in how to lead a business.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, you know, I'm usually not, believe it or not, that big of a believer in the effect of the pregame or halftime speech. That seems to be probably overrated in terms of what a coach can do. What's vastly underrated is the systems, habits, and standards that you enforce and instill. What people are seeing a lot, because it's super viral, is the halftime speech, the pregame speech, or the postgame speech. And Dion, I don't know if you know, between football and this, he became a pastor part-time. He was very religious and was giving sermons. I remember watching him on TV giving sermons in a big white suit. But if you watch one of the other things he does, he sets a bunch of standards. He's like, you know, "Day 1," and almost in the vein of that book *The Score Takes Care of Itself* by Bill Walsh, where it's like, "Okay, yeah, we want to win, but the score will take care of itself if we do these inputs."

Sam Parr

And like the name of stories, he makes the people answer the phone at the front desk appropriately.

Shaan Puri

And John Wooden did the same thing. He said, "We're going to learn how to lace up your shoes." If you can't take the time and attention to figure out how to lace up your shoes, just remember that what we do out there is a result of what we put in. Let's understand that it is a direct result of what we put in, and so we're going to monitor that. One of the things that they show in Dion's stuff, and I saw this when I was at Duke with Coach K, is that it's the little things that they set as the standard. For example, he put up footage from the previous practice and said, "Look at what's happening here. Can anyone tell me what's wrong?" It's like, "I don't know, it's not even a play. What are you talking about? This is just us walking in between the drills." He said, "Exactly! If we're on this field, we run. We do not walk." He basically created a new set of standards. He asked, "If you're in a team meeting, where do you sit? How do you show up? Do you use your phone?" He was instilling new standards. So while the speeches are getting a lot of the shine, I think the more interesting thing is in how we show up—the daily standards of the inputs that go into it. Now, of course, you know they're undefeated right now and they're doing really well, and I think it's more because of that.

Sam Parr

Yeah, it's awesome. He did a good job where he was like... When the guy was like... When he did the whole thing like, "Let me hold up the mirror," and he was like, "Well, look, here's the deal: I tell my kids, I go, 'I expect you to be the best, so I'm gonna be the best too.'" And he's like, "You're... I think you can win the Heisman Trophy, and I think I'm gonna be the best coach." So he does a really good job of balancing this like cocky "we're gonna take over the world" attitude and also high expectations. I thought that was really inspiring. What do you got?

Shaan Puri

Alright, I'll do another one. This is in the nerdy realm. There's a guy who has a Twitter account I really like called **CFO Secrets**.

Sam Parr

I love this guy

Shaan Puri

He has a newsletter that I didn't subscribe to, but I just saw one of his posts that was really great. It was called "Uncovering the Mystery of Working Capital and M&A." I was like, okay, well that sounds... you know, boring. [It] has a market size of like 3 people right now, so it's like...

Sam Parr

Dude, when I sold to HubSpot, it took me a week for them to explain what working capital was, and I still don't understand it.

Shaan Puri

Read this post; it's really good. One of the things that I look for is, you know, you can tell when somebody actually knows their stuff. Honestly, sometimes when I go on Twitter or I go on YouTube, I just want to delete my account because it's so annoying that the most vocal people just don't know what the hell they're talking about. What happens is some people know what they're talking about; they produce content, and everybody loves it. But then some people, instead of taking that content and going and executing on it, say, "I too will create content about how to be successful," although I am not successful yet. Then they do it, and there's like a ladder below that. They say, "I will tell people how to do sales," even though I've never done sales, even though I don't know anything about sales, even though I've only sold $10,000 in my life. It just ladders down in that way, and those people have the most time on their hands, so they're the most active publishing stuff. It's crazy. So, seeing this guy's newsletter, I was like, "Oh, finally, somebody who knows what they're talking about." He has this thing about M&A, and if you've ever sold a company, so much of what he says rings true. He starts the post like this: "I'm just going to read you some of the best parts of it." He goes, "It always starts the same. We're tired, they're tired. Everyone's been sprinting to get this over the line, and we're sprinting because time kills deals." He's like, "If you've done deals, you know this momentum is what oils the deal wheels." And he's like, "There's always a..."

Shaan Puri

Where the deal is mostly agreed, we've agreed on the headline valuation number, and that took a lot of negotiating. It's tired us out, and now there are only 2 or 3 points left to agree on in the deal. He's like, "Most of these are boring stuff, like reps and warranties and legal documents, and we want to leave that to Larry." There's maybe one commercial point left. So the other side picks up the phone and they say, "Hey, we just need to iron out this one detail about the working capital peg." He goes, "I'll say something like, 'Oh, thanks for the reminder. We've been so busy on the documents, I haven't had much time to give that thought. I'll get back to you tonight.' But I've thought about it. I've been thinking about the working capital this whole time. I'm just setting up my position that way, that, 'Oh, I haven't really brought it up, you know, haven't put much thought into it.' And then I'm going to bring them a very well thought-through proposal that I think is going to make sense." He goes, "There's one last trade left in the negotiation. In my experience, this is 1 to 3% of your total enterprise value, just this last thing. It's a pure win-lose negotiation between both sides. You're tired, they're tired. Who's going to feel like, 'Screw it, let's just get the deal done?'" And I'm like, "You know, we just went through a negotiation, so you know this."

Sam Parr

Is true, by the way. That's what I learned from you about negotiating. You had a line that actually changed me, which was: "The person who can be comfortable with the most amount of uncomfortableness will win."

Shaan Puri

Exactly. Yeah, this is the short version of that. I say in every negotiation that the more stubborn party wins. Always. People think that the person who wins a negotiation is the one who has the stronger logical case. Hell no! It's the person who is more stubborn who wins, always. And how do you be stubborn? You need to be comfortable in the discomfort. I would say, honestly, when we did this negotiation—which maybe we should do a breakdown on the whole thing—one of the things I think we did not do a good job of was this last bit. The last... which is that last, you know, 1 to 5% of value. We were just so tired; we just wanted to get the deal done. I don't think we did a good job.

Sam Parr

like 4 months

Shaan Puri

Yeah, and I think that the real way to do that is when you need to dig in the most. It's that last deal that you can get, and you'll thank yourself later for it. Even though in the moment you're feeling tired, it's like any workout. It's like, "Do I push here or do I just say I'm tired and stop?" Anyone who knows about workouts will say, "No, push through! Yes, you're tired, but you'll feel so satisfied, and all the gains will come on those last two reps of pushing it." So, anyway, he talks about this, and then he gets into the nerdy part where he's like, "Alright, here's a spreadsheet." You know, you have your enterprise value, and then you have your equity. You evaluate your actual valuation. What's the difference between the two? Well, your enterprise value includes the debt and the capital that's in the business. Then your valuation, you know, the actual equity value, is what's left after that. I think it's just a very useful document, a very useful newsletter for people who are going through that. It might be overkill to read this early, but if you're going to do M&A, it really pays to have somebody who's good at M&A on your side. When we were doing our negotiation, I was basically trying to convince you, "Hey, let's have our buddy who's done more M&A than both of us help us think this through at the beginning."

Sam Parr

you did you did good you led that one and you did really good

Shaan Puri

And I would say I'm still at an intermediate level, maybe at the early stage of intermediate. There are people who are way more advanced. So anyways, this is a newsletter. It's a very nerdy find for M and A.

Sam Parr

I'm gonna read this... I went through this. I went through a deal that involved networking capital. I still don't entirely know what it means. This was very challenging, and the guy's writing is really good. He actually sets it up perfectly where networking capital was thrown in at the last minute, and I'm like, "Oh, I don't even know what that is. I'm dead." I wanna get this done. It's supposed to close in 8 days.

Hubspot

"I just wanna get this done." "Yeah, our software is the worst." "Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous." "I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best!" **HubSpot: Grow Better**

Sam Parr

Hey guys, really quick. You may know this, but my beginning in business was as a copywriter. I'm a self-taught copywriter, and what that means is I figured out what motivated people. Then, I figured out how to use the written word to get them to do what I want them to do. That could mean selling them a product, writing a speech, or even giving a speech and getting someone to buy into a particular movement. It could be recruiting... hell, you could do it for dating. It just basically means figuring out what motivates someone and how to use the written word to get them to take action or to think a certain way. The way that I learned how to copywrite was through a technique called copywork. Copywork is a famous technique that's not really popular anymore, but it used to be really popular. You basically take writing that is great—writing that you love—and you write it out by hand. You copy it, and you make notes of what particular things that writer is doing that makes it special. This is the exact same way that you learn how to play the piano. When you want to learn how to play the piano, you learn how to play "Happy Birthday," then "Jingle Bells," and maybe a rock and roll song, and then a hip hop song. Eventually, you can combine that all together after a few years, and you learn how to make music that's your own. The same thing applies to writing. That's how I learned how to write. I locked myself in a room for six months, and I just did this for many hours a day. I created a program to make it easy, called Copy That. You can check it out at copythat.com. It's a 10-day exercise to make it really easy to learn how to write. If you want, you can just do this on your own. You could find great writing and literally copy it by hand. I know it sounds crazy, but it works really effectively. I made something that makes it a little bit easier, so check it out at copythat.com. We will talk soon, and back to the pod. You want to go to the last one?

Shaan Puri

oh yeah okay so do you know this account cultural tutor on twitter

Sam Parr

awesome follow awesome follow

Shaan Puri

It's so... the story is kind of crazy. I didn't really know about it, but he went on David Perell's podcast, which I think you were going on to or something.

Sam Parr

I just I just recorded an episode with him last week

Shaan Puri

So, David Perell, a cool guy who lives in, I think, Austin, teaches people about writing online. He has a new podcast, and the set itself is beautiful. It looks like they're in, you know, the Royal Library in the UK or something. He has this guy on that I've never heard of, and then I was like, "Oh, I did see one of his threads go super viral." He did a thread about why all architecture designs look the same now.

Sam Parr

they're all minimalist

Shaan Puri

and that thing got like a 100,000,000 likes or some shit like that

Sam Parr

it was really good

Shaan Puri

It was insanely viral, and it's not even about something you would think goes viral, but it hit a nerve. So this guy does his interview, and honestly, I've only listened to the first 10 minutes of it. Like many books I recommend, I got a lot of value out of those first 10 minutes and was sort of satisfied. He said something at the beginning. This guy was basically working at McDonald's; literally, he was flipping burgers and doing French fries. They had a mutual friend, this guy Harry, who was cool. Then David, I think, basically sponsored him; he became like his patron. He said, "What if I just paid you to write?" So he quits his job at McDonald's and decides, "Okay, I'm going to write every day." David funds him for whatever reason—I don't know exactly how that worked, but I'm sure they explained it in the other 50 minutes of the podcast. The important part is not that. The important part is this guy then decides, "Okay, I'm going to write one amazing Twitter thread a day." He says this line that's great: "And then David's like, 'What's your schedule?'" He's like, "Yeah, I wake up at like 4 PM, and then I just start thinking about my thread. I smoke cigarettes, I go for walks, I write, I go for another walk, smoke some more cigarettes, and then I'll eat some food somewhere in the middle there. Then I just write, publish, and then I pass out. I do it again the next day." David's like, "That's crazy." He's like, "Yeah, I'm not the guy who's going to tell you my morning routine; don't follow me, but this is what I do." He says, "My whole day is about publishing one amazing Twitter thread." Then he said this line that I love: "That sounds silly; I understand that my whole day is just about posting on Twitter, but everybody's just got a thing. That's my thing, okay?" He's like, "We've all got one thing; that's my thing." I love it.

Sam Parr

what are the results have been so far

Shaan Puri

He’s got 1,300,000 Twitter followers. He’s built an insane Twitter following in just a year.

Sam Parr

is it making money I don't know I don't think

Shaan Puri

He doesn't make any money off of it yet, but he can, right? Like, you know, it's not that hard to turn attention into money once you have attention. You know, it's harder to turn money into attention than it is attention into money, to be honest.

Sam Parr

he has 1.5 and he has a 100,000 person email list

Shaan Puri

Yeah, he's doing fantastic. That's incredible, right? He's doing very, very well for himself. You know, I just love the intensity this guy was going to bring to something. I've actually noticed this as a common trait, which is: **If you bring a level of seriousness to something that everybody else considers not serious, you can actually win much bigger than most people realize.**

Sam Parr

This is how we felt about newsletters. I was like, "Well, I'm doing the math, I think this could be a legit thing." We sold early, but we definitely... the business could make $100,000,000 a year. You know, Morning Brew is close to that. I always say one of the reasons why is people thought this was silly, but if you did the math, I'm like, "I don't know, I think the math is out there. I think this is gonna be a real thing." And I think that's the same thing with my latest business as well, which is we're just taking something seriously that most use as a hobby.

Shaan Puri

I don't know if that's true. Is that true? Aren't there like, you know, does YPO not take this seriously? Do those guys not take it seriously?

Sam Parr

They do, but there are a few that do. Many, many others in the space think that it's just a small thing that you charge $100 a year for or something like that. There are a lot of hobbyists.

Shaan Puri

The better frame, I think, for what you're doing, to be honest, is just that we joke about it, but it is beautifully done.

Sam Parr

like I am trying to do that

Shaan Puri

Your stuff is just more stylish, more cool, and more desirable for a variety of intangible factors ranging from: - Design - People feeling FOMO [Fear of Missing Out] - Content - The first 100 members that you added to your thing I remember getting sales calls to join whatever... Vistage or whatever the hell it was called.

Sam Parr

They missed the mark. They missed the mark. Well, what I love about guys like Cultural Tutor is that for a lot of my brands, I follow people like him. I look at what was cool in the sixties and seventies that I can just reuse today. For example, our color for Hampton is the color of this really cool Jaguar car that was popular in the seventies. When I made the branding, I found old Rolex ads because I thought, "What was cool then that could still be cool now?" There's another example: have you seen the sunscreen company that's doing that? Vacation. It looks like an eighties or early nineties...

Shaan Puri

who did vacation this guy jeremy summers he

Sam Parr

he's amazing

Shaan Puri

Did the branding for us for Milk Road? Oh really? The character... but he helped us develop the whole brand. Then the last bit was, we didn't love the character, and we had a different guy do the drawing, the illustration for it. But he did our branding. Yeah, that for Milk. Jeremy did an amazing job, and that's specifically his aesthetic. It's that kind of, like, I don't know if I... I shouldn't say that. He's really good at that aesthetic, which is the vintage, classy, nostalgic, beautifully done sort of aesthetic.

Sam Parr

By the way, I'll wrap up with a quick story about David Perell. I went to his apartment. So basically, he lives in Austin. He has an apartment in the building, but then he also rented this other apartment. When you walk in, it feels almost like an Airbnb or maybe like you're walking into a Restoration Hardware store. Everything is perfectly set up, and David is really OCD. So, he's got this 2-bedroom—or it was a 3-bedroom apartment. They knocked down one wall, so they went all in on this thing. One room is like the studio where we sit, and then another room is like the guest room. If you're a guest and you want to fly in, you could stay there. But there's a record on the wall, or there's books on the shelf, and I'm like, "David, all these have a meaning?" He goes, "Of course! You know me. Every single thing here has a purpose and has a story." So, he perfectly picked everything in the studio. What is that?

Shaan Puri

Oh, would you like to see this cream-colored book that's on my bookshelf? Does it even have pages in it? Maybe this book says... I don't know if you can see that, so...

Sam Parr

what's it say

Shaan Puri

"Tango lessons?" Tango lessons... Did I read this book? No. Did I go on Etsy because somebody said, "Go buy cream-colored books to put in your background, makes you look classy"? Bet you're awesome.

Sam Parr

Dude, everything at David's place is on purpose, and it all has a story. I sent you a video and I'm like, "We have to step it up." This guy is so particular... it's... he's the Deion Sanders in my world of podcasting right now.

Shaan Puri

he did an outrageous comp

Sam Parr

All of his standards were perfect. I saw his trailer, and oh my god, the guy is sweating the details. David's awesome.

Shaan Puri

He does a great job. He's gotten way further with a topic that I think is incredibly boring. Like, he makes millions of dollars a year doing "rite of passage" ... getting people to become novelists or something. I don't know how he does that. That's not even a thing I think people want to do, you know? Write long essays? Like, to me that is... you know, 10 out of 10 execution on a 4 out of 10 opportunity. You know, like if he was doing something like used car sales, he'd be... he'd be like a trillionaire. Right? Because it's like, dude...

Sam Parr

he's obsessed with it though he loves it

Shaan Puri

of course of course he's doing it for for the right reasons

Sam Parr

He's so obsessed with it. I think he said this publicly. I met him two years ago, and he's Jewish. Ethnically, I don't know about his religious beliefs, but he went to a Bible study class every day or once a week. I was like, "Why are you doing this Bible study class?" He's like, "Well, the Bible's really important because it's just part of culture."

Shaan Puri

the whole time

Sam Parr

Yeah, he's like, "I'm just so fascinated with writing, and I've noticed there's a lot of Bible references." So he started going to this Bible class. Well, I see him again after about a year, and he's like, "I've converted to Christianity. They got me!" He explained, "I just read it so much that I thought, you know, I really want to go one step further and I want to become a Christian and see what this thing is all about." Like, he is an academic in... the coolest way possible, but he's bought into this whole thing hardcore.

Shaan Puri

I was trying to flirt with him. Instead of sending nudes, I just sent him a font, and he was over the moon about it. He loved it.

Sam Parr

he's like oh that is that duran that made me weak at the knees

Shaan Puri

Let's recap them real quick. So, we got the Bill Gurley talk—that's a YouTube video. The David Perell interview with Cultural Tutor; watch the first 10 minutes, it's great. And what was yours?

Sam Parr

yours was the deion sanders on 60 minutes

Shaan Puri

Deion Sanders, 60 Minutes, and then the Secret CFO newsletter about nerdy M&A stuff. There's like a series—it's a 19-part series—and I read 2 of them. They're very good.

Sam Parr

alright that's the pod