Watch These 40 Minutes To Unf*ck Your Life

Shaan Puri

So the quote is this: "Most of us have two lives: the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands the resistance, more powerful than a locomotive and harder to kick than a crack cocaine habit." And here's the biggest issue: we don't even know what hit us. Alright, Sam, I gotta ask you about this. I was watching that Lehman Brothers play. I don't know if you remember, but I was telling you I went and saw the Lehman Brothers play. There's a line in there, a part that stuck with me. The play talks about the generations of the Lehman brothers, from the great-grandfather to the grandfather. I don't know if you know this story, but basically, they started out as German immigrants. They came to America and somehow landed in Alabama, where they opened up a small little store selling fabrics. So somehow, they went from being German immigrants who had nothing, selling fabrics in Alabama, to becoming the fourth or fifth biggest investment bank in New York in just a couple of hundred years. So how did that happen? The story is: how did that happen? The transition goes like this: they were selling fabrics for clothing in their store in Alabama, and then they realized they could just buy the raw cotton. So then they started going to plantations, buying the raw cotton, and selling it to the...

Jerry Seinfeld

Guy who makes fabrics out.

Shaan Puri

Of it. So then they become the largest buyer and seller. They become a middleman, and in the play, they said they invented the idea of a middleman. I don't think so, but they really popularized the idea of being a middleman. They weren't making the cotton nor were they making the fabrics; they were just in between, brokering the deals. Somehow, that ladders up, and eventually, they become a bank. It's like generation two or three. What they show is realistic. One of the kids that took over was really smart and had new ideas. He's the one who turned it into a bank. However, there were other kids who were maybe a little bit more of a gambler and a bit reckless. That put them in positions that, you know, maybe they shouldn't have been in. They got a little too greedy, a little too aggressive, which ultimately led to the fall of Lehman Brothers in 2008. It's the biggest bank collapse in the history of the country, and it's because of some decisions that were made along the way—the seeds that were planted by the heirs to the throne. In one of the scenes, it's the older generation and the younger generation. They're both in the boardroom, and at this...

Shaan Puri

The older generation is kind of the figurehead. He sits there in the boardroom, but he's not the guy making decisions. His son is the one making decisions. I forgot who it is, but somebody asked them—some bank or someone else comes and asks them, "What is your secret recipe? What are the ingredients that let you do what you do?" They think long and hard, and I forgot what answer they give, but it's something like, "It's the people" or "It's the trust that we have." That's the special ingredient. Then the son comes up and he goes, "In our... you know, when we're baking, our flour is money. Some people use money to buy things; we use money to make money. Our flour is money." That was one of the big transitions where they became a bank. Before, they were merchants who were buying and selling products, buying and selling commodities. It shows that once they have that realization, they never go back.

Jerry Seinfeld

Maybe they just...

Shaan Puri

Get more financialized... more financialized... more financialized. Where they're trading on computer screens and they're trading these subprime mortgages. They're never issuing the mortgage; they're not living in the house. They're just... it's numbers in a spreadsheet from there on out, basically. We've talked about this idea of, "What is it that you sell?" It kind of comes down to, like, the way I think about this is there are many moments in my life where I'm choosing between two paths. The path that's opportunistic, meaning I see green on the other side; I see money on the other side. Then maybe the path that's more interesting or fulfilling... yeah, art versus money. That's a good way to put it. For others, it might be impact. It might be like making a difference in the world; that might be the fulfilling path for them. As much as I could hear the advice, like, "You know, the answer is go do the fulfilling thing," however, me and many people like me out there are just way too... let me just make a quick pit stop over here. And those pit stops add up. You got one pit stop after another where you choose the opportunistic thing. "After I make this money, then I'll go do the thing," or, "Well, this is too good to pass up," right? I do that many, many times. In fact, I am still doing it today, even as I am ashamed to admit it. I do that all the time. So I wanted to talk a little bit about people who choose one path or the other—yourself, people you know well—and see if I can get a little bit of wisdom on this. Do you have any stories on this? Or I can share maybe something I'm reading right now that really stood out to me. But where do you want to start?

Sam Parr

I want to hear the story because I think you're reading a book that I've always wanted to read, but I've refused to read it so far. I know what it's going to tell me, and I don't like that answer because it's... it's hard. It's a hard thing. So, you're reading... is it "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield?

Shaan Puri

Yeah, the *War of Art*. So it's like the opposite of *The Art of War*.

Sam Parr

Yeah, yeah.

Shaan Puri

I was considering reading the book "The War of Art." Yesterday, I asked Diego, my guy, "Do you read books?" He replied, "Not really, but I'm reading this one book right now. It's pretty good, called 'The War of Art.'" I then asked him, "What's one thing that stood out to you?" In response, he simply screenshotted some passages. I later went and tweeted those out.

Sam Parr

Wait, hold on. So you're not actually reading the book? You're just not inspired by some of the stories, sir?

Shaan Puri

This is the trigger. I'm just giving you the whole story here. So, I got the excerpt first, which is actually a great way to decide to read a book. Then, I read half the book last night, so it's a very fast read. Alright, so the quote is this: > "Most of us have two lives: the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands the resistance. Just like every sun casts a shadow, a genius's shadow is resistance. Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and harder to kick than a crack cocaine habit. And here's the biggest bitch: we don't even know what hit us. I never did. From the ages of 24 to 32, the resistance kicked my ass from the East Coast to the West Coast back 13 times again, and I never even knew it existed. I looked everywhere for the enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face."

Sam Parr

That makes you sad, right?

Shaan Puri

Well, that's one reaction to it. I felt the other way. I felt like an inspired rage. I was like, "No, I'm not gonna have the unlived life within!" So I pick up this book and I start reading, and there are a ton of just... like, banger passages. They're just so good that I wanted to, you know, talk a little bit about with you.

Sam Parr

Keep reading a few more. What are the other good ones?

Shaan Puri

Alright, so the premise of the book, if you didn't get it from that, is basically this: we have the thing that's our calling, that we kind of know we should do, or the direction we know we should go. Then there's us not doing it, which may be choosing what to work on. But then there's just the day-to-day. So, he'll outline, like, you know, "Hey, you got that diet that you haven't stuck to. You got that book that you haven't written. You got that startup you want to go start." Of course, you'll start it after you save up a little more money. And he goes, you know, fast forward the clock. You're 40, 50, 60 years old, and you're that great author that never wrote a book.

Sam Parr

And he gives tips as well. He was like, "If you're going to be a writer, you must write every day. You don't *not* write because you don't feel good." Just like you don't do this other thing because... if you are feeling bummed, you still gotta go to work.

Shaan Puri

He calls it the difference between an amateur and a pro. He goes, "An amateur does it because they love it." That's what people think. They're like, "Oh, they love it so much that they only do it once every month." They love it so much that they never stick with it. He goes, "You know who loves it? The pro." The pro wakes up and shows up to work like it's a job. They treat it like it's a job. You don't not show up to your job. You do it every single day, whether you feel like it or not. You don't just wake up and decide, "Am I gonna do the thing or not today?" So he talks about being a pro and how the pro sits down and, quote unquote, "does the work." The work is, "I don't care what it takes." You basically sit down, and it doesn't matter how long you sit there. It doesn't matter if you wrote three lines. It doesn't matter if those three lines suck. You did the work today. And as soon enough, if you just do the work often enough, those three lines turn into 30 lines, which turn into 30 pages. And those 30 pages can turn into, you know, terrible, just mindless drivel to your best work. The only way it gets there is by actually sitting down day by day and doing the work.

Sam Parr

Alright, look. The question that Sean and I get asked constantly is, "What skill set did we develop early on in our careers that kind of changed our business career?" And that's an easy answer: it's **copywriting**. We've talked about copywriting and how it's changed our lives constantly on this podcast. We give a ton of tips, a ton of techniques, and a ton of frameworks throughout all the episodes. Well, we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document. You can read all of it, see how we've learned copywriting, and check out the resources that we turn to on a daily basis. You can see the frameworks and techniques we use. It's in a simple document, and you can check it out in the link below. Alright, now back to the show. Do you follow Jerry Seinfeld at all? He talks about this topic all the time. He's one of the few comedians and actors—whatever you would describe him as—that actually gets into the tactical stuff of what it takes day to day. He says, "I have a big pen and a yellow notebook, and I write jokes like all day." Not all day, he said. "I'll do like an hour a day, but I try to get it done just a little bit every day." He goes, "Most of the time it's garbage." Then he talks about when he was writing *Seinfeld*. He would go into the office, sit down, and actually write things out. He had a process. A lot of times, he didn't want to do that, but he just did it anyway because that's his job. He wants to be great. So anyway, he's a really good guy to follow because he gets really specific about the tactics behind this stuff, which people rarely discuss.

Shaan Puri

Have you ever seen this clip of him at a comedy club talking to a struggling comedian? The comedian just caught Jerry backstage and asked him for some advice about how to make it. Yeah, what does he say?

Jerry Seinfeld

It's just like you get to a point where you're like, "How much longer can I take it? What is time running out? Are you out of time?" You're getting older. Please, mhmm, you're getting older. It's not a... It's not you. Listen, I'm 29. I feel like I've sacrificed so much of my life. Life's three years old. You got something else you would rather have been doing? Not other appointments or other places you gotta be? Not necessarily. I see all my friends who are making a lot of money... a lot of money on Wall Street. I see, like, you know, my friends are moving up, and I don't. I'm worried about that. Are you feeling blind? No, I know that in my mind. This has nothing to do with your friends. I'm upset now. No, no, you're such a special thing. This has nothing to do with making it. Did you ever stop and compare it to life and go, "Okay, I'm 29. My friends are all married, all having kids. They all have houses. They have some sort of sense of normality." I don't. How do you... what do you tell your parents? How do you deal with that? They're social parents? Yes. Oh, I did. Is this your... you too? Your parents? Let me tell you a story about this. This is my favorite story about showbiz. Glenn Miller's orchestra was doing some gigs somewhere. They can't land where they're supposed to land because it's a snowy night. So they have to land in this field and walk to the gig. They're dressed in their suits, ready to play, carrying their instruments. So they're walking through the snow, and it's wet and slushy. In the distance, they see this little house, and there's a light on the inside. There's a plume of smoke coming out of the chimney. They go up to the house, and they look in the window, and in the window, they see this family.

Shaan Puri

There's a...

Jerry Seinfeld

There's a guy and his wife—she's beautiful—and there are two kids. They're all sitting around the table, smiling, laughing, and eating. There's a fire in the fireplace. These guys [presumably musicians] are standing there in their suits, wet and shivering, folding their instruments. They're watching this incredible Norman Rockwell scene. One guy turns to the other and says, "How do people live like that?" That's what it's about.

Shaan Puri

Right, and he just leaves the guy with this parable, and the guy is just... stunned, basically. But the point is like this: the guy says that he's doing the thing that he loves, but he's jealous of the comfortable people who are not living that life. Basically, the true artists, the people who are going to make great shit, the people who are going to live their most fulfilled life - they're the ones marching through the snow in discomfort. But they're doing exactly the thing that they want to be doing. They *chose* this discomfort. And I love that story.

Sam Parr

I'm going to remind you of something that we did. In February, I think it was the Lego episode. If you Google "My First Million Lego," at the very end, you had said something... I forget exactly what you said, but I remember the energy being, "I own this company, but I'm not sure if it gives me purpose, and it's not really related to my main thing." I said, "Well, you know, the product that you're selling doesn't necessarily have to be something you're passionate about. You could be passionate about creating great jobs, or you could be passionate about creating a wonderful place to work, making it so your employees can afford a car, whatever. It doesn't always have to save the world." I think that kind of helped you a little bit. I was reflecting on it because I talked to Brett Adcock the other day when you weren't here. It's going to go live after this episode, I think. So, Brett Adcock started Figure, a humanoid robot company that is one of those companies that you would peg as "it's going to change the world." He did two things that were interesting. The first thing is, I tried to nag him a little bit to get some good content out of him. I said, "Brett, you know you're doing this world-changing thing now, but before this, you had a company called Vettery, which basically is just like a glorified job board." He laughed, and he knew I was just giving him a hard time. It was a $100 million company; it was a great exit. He explained how Figure is changing the world and how he was thinking about doing artificial meat—meat that you grow in a lab. He said, "I was worried about these really big problems." I replied, "Well, Vettery was not a big problem." He kind of laughed, but then he got serious and said, "Well, the way that I thought about it was that you spend 40 to 50 hours a week away from your family with a company. You should be spending it on something that you really truly love and enjoy, and that you get value out of." I was like, "You did it again, man! You just wove this story around something that makes it really inspirational and world-changing."

Shaan Puri

Is he saying that the job board is helping people find jobs? That's what he was saying, or he was saying he got that out of it?

Sam Parr

He got that out of it, and he was like... it's not really a job board. It's significantly more complex than that. I wanted to give him a hard time to get him to come out of his shell, but he was saying: > "Well, no, it's not just a job board. We weren't just helping people get jobs. We were helping them find value in their lives and helping them find passion." He did such a good job of telling himself a story that I also believe it. I believe his story to be true. And anyway, it inspired me to start telling myself a story too.

Shaan Puri

That Lunchables aren't just crackers with cheese. If you think about what makes a sandwich, you must ask yourself: Do I need all of it? Could I reduce it in size? Could I do more with less? What is enough? And that's what the Lunchables stands for. It's a reminder of what is enough.

Sam Parr

That's exactly what he did, and I thought it was great. But then he's got this new thing. So, his new thing is called Cover. If you go to cover.ai...

Shaan Puri

It says Cover is an AI security company developing concealed weapon detection systems. Cover's technology scans students' backpacks, I think, for concealed weapons in K-12 schools. Our goal is to prevent school shootings by identifying concealed weapons inside bags and underneath clothing. Apply to work here.

Sam Parr

Listen to this. He had just sold one of his companies, or no, sorry, one of his companies went public. It was called Archer; it was basically an electric helicopter. Big deal! It's a big deal. He was thinking, "What am I gonna work on?" He had three ideas. **Idea number one** was meats grown in a lab, which we've talked about. It's pretty insane that you have to have all these cows in order to get ground beef. Is there a way that you can make real beef in a lab? He was really fascinated by that and he read a bunch of research. He thought, "That's on my short list, but that's not the one I'm gonna do." **The second idea** he had was robots. He was like, "We just can't get enough warehouse workers to fill these jobs. I wonder if a robot can fulfill this demand." That's what he ended up doing. **The third idea** that he didn't pursue, but was very close to doing, involved a study he read. I think it was a research paper done in 2014 or 2012 or something like that. Basically, it was about NASA trading this technology that could use not exactly X-rays, but almost like cellular phone rays. From 50 meters away, about 150 feet, this thing that looks like a video camera can detect if a human being has a bomb on them, a weapon, or anything underneath their clothes or in their backpacks. He thought, "That's amazing! I wonder what we could use that for." He saw a graph about school shootings, where there’s something like a school shooting a day. I'm not talking necessarily about school shootings that are predetermined, where someone is going to be overly violent to 30 children. I'm talking about kids who just have a gun in their backpack at school. If someone says something rude to them, they freak out, and someone gets hurt and shot. He was like, "That's what we need to solve. We need to solve that problem." So, he didn't end up taking and running with that idea. He did Figr, however. Figr's kind of working a little bit, and he has a little bit of extra money. He went and cold-called the NASA guy who created this research report that explained the technology. He convinced the guy to let Brett come and check the technology out. He has now since licensed it and funded Cover Dot AI with $10,000,000 of his own money. He’s hired a team of NASA engineers to build technology to develop this stuff. Eventually, they're going to start with going to stadiums, so you could see if someone’s coming into a stadium with a weapon. Then they want to give away that technology to schools to prevent school shootings because schools don’t exactly have the money to afford the software. He was telling me this story, and I thought, "Who wouldn’t want to prevent school shootings? That’s like the greatest thing ever!" That’s a really hard thing to compete against when I’m recruiting an employee to come and join a newsletter business versus, "You’re gonna literally save lives." It got me thinking about what I was saying to you about how a company doesn’t have to be X, Y, and Z. I felt that was a cope. When I heard what Brett was doing, I felt that solving big problems and going after your passion, not exactly caring about how big of an opportunity it is in some regards, is better than doing it the way that you and I tend to do it.

Shaan Puri

Well, I think that what Brett's doing is pretty awesome here. He did it as a, you know, we talk about one-chart businesses.

Sam Parr

That's exactly what I told him on the podcast. I said, "Sean's gonna love this."

Shaan Puri

Yeah, it's a one-chart business because we've talked about this before. Some businesses, the best businesses, are so simple that you could just put up a single chart on a screen and say, "That's why we're doing this." The example we gave before was the rise of cremation. Cremated funerals have grown from less than 10% of the market to over 50% of the market now. The majority of funerals, I guess, in the U.S. are cremations, which is still surprising to me. If you're creating a business around that—like we met these guys, I think after... what was the name of them? They had a whole deck, and I told them, "You didn't need to send the deck. This slide 3 was enough. All you had to show me was that and say, 'We enable this. We make it easier to do cremation.' Look at this rise; that's what we're doing." So, the best businesses are one-chart businesses. I know a lot of people that did D2C brands, and if you ask them about their D2C brand, they'll tell you this and that about the market they're in and about the business model, about the direct relationship with the consumer. All they needed to show was time spent on Facebook. That's all these markets were based on: time spent on Facebook and the CPM on Facebook. A single chart would have told you that, "Hey, there's a new way to reach customers, and it's called Facebook ads. We're going to just work backwards from Facebook ads and start selling products via Facebook ads." That's really what happened in D2C over the last 15 years. Anyway, when I asked Brett about this idea, I was like, "Oh, so give me the pitch. What's the thesis around this? What are you excited about?" He goes, "Oh, it's this Google image." He just searched "school shootings per year," pulled up the chart, and he goes, "It's just a... it's like an up-and-to-the-right exponential. It's what you want a startup growth curve to look like. You know, it starts really small and then starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger, except at school shootings." So, do you want it to go in the opposite direction? I was like, "Dude, how do you have the time? Don't you just want to go take a nap? Like, you want to be with the kids, but even if you're not with the kids, fuck it, take a nap, dude! Why do you... you're already working, doing one insane thing, competing with Elon Musk. How dare you go start another hard thing?" And he's like, "Well, I have to. I feel compelled to."

Sam Parr

Yeah, and when I think about, like, you know, this isn't actually realistic, but I want to think about a company trying to compete with Brett. When you're recruiting someone, it makes it really hard. I asked him, "Why do you do these big things?" He goes, "Well, I think big things in many ways are easier. It's easier when I have this crazy awesome mission to get employees, investors, customers. It just... it just actually easier." And it kind of messed my mind a little bit.

Shaan Puri

So, my takeaway from that, by the way, is not that you have to go solve a really gnarly problem in the world to be doing something. I think that is definitely one path. The way I think about it instead is: instead of saying, "What should I do?" a better question is, "What would I do if I wasn't afraid?" If I wasn't afraid, what would I go work on? Usually, you're afraid of failure. You're afraid of it not working out. You're afraid that it might be too hard. For some people, it might be starting a humanoid robot company. That might be the answer. But they're not doing it because they're too afraid that it's too hard. They think, "I don't really know how to do that. It'll take too much money. What if I can't raise it? What if I do this? What if I do that? I'm competing with Google and Elon and all these people." So, they wouldn't do it. For other people, like for me, it's a creative endeavor. It's to say, "Well, what? I don't know. I think the thing I really want to do is go write this killer book or go make a TV show or go do something really, really interesting." The reason I don't do it is because it might fail. I might spend a couple of years writing a book, and it comes out, and people are like, "Yeah, cool book, man," and that's it. That would be disappointing, and that would be the failure. I think one of the good things about this book that I was reading, *The War of Art*, and some other stuff I've been consuming, is you really separate the choice of what you do and the result of what you do as two different things. You know, you control the controllables. The thing you can control is: did you spend the time doing the thing you really wanted? Did you give it your all? You cannot control the outcome. If you go listen to Rick Rubin talk, he says the exact same thing. He goes...

Jerry Seinfeld

Your job is not to.

Shaan Puri

"Make it popular." Popular is not something you do. You don't *make* popular. You make stuff, and you make a lot of stuff. You put your best stuff out there and you do your best job doing the best stuff you can. Popular... I mean, that's not even something you think about. That just happens or it doesn't happen, and it's irrelevant at that. Whether it happens or doesn't happen because you're just gonna keep making stuff, and eventually, popular starts to pay attention to [your work].

Jerry Seinfeld

The guy who's making a...

Shaan Puri

A lot of stuff we talked about Rocky in the last episode, the story of Sylvester Stallone. After the episode, I went and did a deep dive on it. I watched Rocky last night and I also watched all of his old interviews from the 1970s. I really got into it. There were so many good parts, but the one thing that stood out was when he was being interviewed by this guy after the movie had come out and it had been a success. He mentioned how they offered him a lot of money for the script, and we talked about how he had to sell his dog because he had a big mastiff that was eating too much. He said, "Either I'm not going to be able to feed the dog and not feed myself, or I sell this dog and then I can feed myself. Hopefully, the new owner will be able to feed my dog." As much as it killed him to do it, he felt he had no choice. He was really down in the dumps. The way he described it was, "I had $106 in my bank account, I had a $300 a month rent, and I had a pregnant wife." He said, "The wolf was at the door." I love that phrase. When they asked him how he wrote the script in three and a half days, he said, "The wolf was at the door. I had no choice." Then they asked him about the money they offered him. He said, "Yeah, they offered me about $100,000 at first, and I said no." They came back with $150,000, and they asked him why he said no. He explained, "Well, they said, 'We'll take the script, but you go away. We will go get Burt Reynolds to be Rocky. We don't need you to be Rocky. We like the script.'" He refused, saying, "No, I only want to give you this script if I'm going to be Rocky." They went to Burt Reynolds and to three or four other big names at the time. Eventually, they came back with an offer of $150,000, but he still said no. The final offer was $265,000, but they still insisted he wouldn't be Rocky, and he said no again. They asked him, "How did you say no to $265,000?"

Sam Parr

Had a $100.6. That's like $800 now.

Shaan Puri

Yeah, exactly. It's like $1,000,000, basically. They were like, "How did you say no when you had $106 in the bank?" He said a couple of lines. He goes, "It's not that hard to say no to money when you never had money. You don't even know what money is." He continued, "If you've never ridden in a Rolls Royce, you don't mind bumping around in a Volkswagen. It's all you know." He's like, "I didn't have a frame of reference for that. I did want to get out of some misery. My landlady was a big, just beast of a woman. She would show up at my door every month, and she was so large that she cast almost like a shadow at the door. I just remember being afraid of that shadow all the time." He's like, "But my goal was rent. My goal wasn't $265,000. I didn't need all that." Then they asked him, "Did you ever have any doubts?" He replied, "Yeah. Before, when I was telling them no, I was saying, 'Are you kidding me? Burt Reynolds? That guy? I can outact all these people! I will kill this role! I will be so good in this role. You guys have never seen anybody act like I act!'" As soon as they finally relented and said, "Cool, you can do the movie," the deal they ended up doing was a $1,000,000 production budget, which was very little at the time. The big movie at the time, King Kong, was like $25,000,000.

Sam Parr

Rocky 1 only had.

Shaan Puri

A $1,000,000 budget... he produced the whole thing for $960,000. He cast his brothers and his uncles, and they did one take on everything. If they couldn't get something... like there's a scene where they're supposed to be ice skating on a date, but Rocky [presumably Sylvester Stallone] didn't know how to ice skate. You don't have time to learn, so they just changed the scene. He's walking and she's ice skating, and they made... they just changed the script to explain why that would make sense.

Sam Parr

And they just brought cameras to an ice rink and stuff like that, probably.

Shaan Puri

Like to get his dog back, he cast that guy in the movie and gave him money. It was like, "Are you gonna be in the movie?" So the guy's in the movie for like one line. So anyway, he's making this movie for less than $1,000,000. They go, "Well, now you've made a lot of money, right?" He laughs and says, "I'm about $400 more than I had before this." They go, "$400?" He replies, "Yeah, I mean, I had a lot of bills before this. You know, that landlady cast in that shadow showed up for the rent, and then taxes, and then all this." He goes on to say, "But you know what? I basically paid myself the Stage Actors Guild minimum, the SAG minimum." So he made $600 a week doing the movie. I think he owned some percentage, but it was gonna be on the back end, so he didn't have the money yet. He continues, "But you know what? The money never mattered. I would have done this whole thing for a doughnut and a tuna fish sandwich. The money meant nothing. It was always about the opportunity I had to prove to myself that I wasn't a liar, that I wasn't living a life of disillusionment. Because that's very difficult. I thought of myself as a creative person, and I told myself that I was a great actor, but I had never had an opportunity to figure out if I was any good or not." And so when you asked me, "Should I take the money or should I take the opportunity to find out if I'm living the life of a liar or not?" I had to get that answer. Because if not, it would have eaten at me for the rest of my life. He goes, "I think of myself as a creative person. I didn't want to wake up and be 50 years old and realize that I'm this creative person who's never done anything creative. That would be terrible. I'd be living a lie. It would kill me."

Sam Parr

Dude, is he our new kind of crush?

Shaan Puri

Move over to Brett Adcock.

Sam Parr

Sylvester Stallone is my guy now.

Shaan Puri

He looks great still.

Sam Parr

He's still young.

Shaan Puri

Amazing, dude! These interviews are so good. I'm gonna make a separate YouTube video just as like a homage to Sly because he's got so much swag, which I didn't realize. He's very funny. And by the way, this is another thing I love about the guy: he not only did all this stuff, but he kind of overcame the adversity, right? So the reason he wasn't getting cast is because he talks funny. Well, why does he talk funny? Do you know the story?

Sam Parr

Didn’t he, when he was born, hit his face? Or was he born with no nerves on one side of his face?

Shaan Puri

When he was born, they used forceps to get him out. Yeah, forceps can damage the nerve, and it's the nerve in your mouth that they numb when you go for a dental procedure.

Jerry Seinfeld

And you.

Shaan Puri

Know, you're like, your tongue doesn't move right. You can't talk right. Imagine that for your whole life. That was his whole life. Because he was really jacked and because he talked with kind of a slur, and like a sort of mouth part of his face, part of his mouth is paralyzed, people assumed he was dumb. This guy was incredibly intelligent. He was very well-read. He wrote the script for this. He is a very creative, eloquent person. He's a great writer. People just thought of him as this action hero, like an action figure basically. "Oh, you got abs and muscles, and that's why you're doing these roles." But that's not it at all. This guy was a very deep and interesting person, but he was sort of masked by this.

Sam Parr

Maybe my doctor used forceps and stuff because I slur everything, and I have abs as well.

Jerry Seinfeld

And I'm kind of smart. Yo, Adrian! Yo, Adrian, tell us!

Sam Parr

What he did... I think my doctor also must use that same tool. Was I born in New Jersey as well? I want to tell you a story about an interesting person I hung out with, but before I get to that, this is kind of the inspiration episode, it seems. We've talked... you feel inspired, you know? But it's sometimes hard to feel inspired when it's 105 degrees and I'm sitting in Austin, Texas, sweating my ass off. What would you do, Sean, if you wanted to feel inspired? Maybe write a book? Maybe get away from it all? What would you do?

Shaan Puri

I don't know. Writing a book seems like I'd get away, but where would I go?

Sam Parr

I think I would... Wander. Today's sponsor is Wander.com. We like Wander. So go to Wander. Am I even saying that funny, by the way? Do I... am I saying that weird with a weird accent?

Shaan Puri

You didn't stallone it. You're good.

Sam Parr

So, Wander.com is a really cool website where they operate luxurious, high-end properties. They're awesome! If you go to their website, you'll see every photo they take is inspiring. Like all these beautiful beaches, a cabin in the mountains... it's just high-end stuff. And they've got gyms and work... [spaces] sometimes I...

Shaan Puri

Don't even take the trip. I just go to Wander.com and look at places. I get like 10% of what it would feel like to go on vacation right now. It's like, okay, well that just took me 10 minutes. That was great.

Sam Parr

Yeah, my wife wanted to go to Greece, and I was like, "Hey, let's just look at Google Earth and look at the park." You know, like, pretty dope, right?

Jerry Seinfeld

Did that do it for you?

Sam Parr

Yeah, that's what I do with Wander.com, so check it out. They're today's sponsor; they're an awesome company. Okay, I want to tell you a quick story about what I did the other day. I get this text from a guy named Michael who just joined Hampton. I've become friendly with him, and he's like, "Hey, are you free on Tuesday at 6 o'clock?" I was like, "Yeah, sure, what's up?" He goes, "Do you want to go fishing?" I was like, "Yeah, okay, whatever." I'm currently right outside of New York City, so I'm thinking, "Where do we fish? Is it going to be like sewage water? What do you fish?" I don't know. So I go to this guy's house, and it looks like I'm at a high school or an art museum. He's got this massive, beautiful home built on a peninsula, and the boat to get into the Long Island Sound, which is like a body of water around here, is right on his front porch. We're basically 30 minutes outside of New York City. It was one of the most spectacular things that I've ever heard of. So we go out fishing, and I get to know him a little bit. I have to tell you about this guy; he's really fascinating because he's one of those people whose products you would know, but you may not have ever heard of him. Have you ever heard of Fog Creek Software? They launched in 2000 as sort of an agency when the internet was just getting started. These guys were like the early nerds among the nerds. If you wanted some development work, they were the guys. Their mission early on was, "We want to work with programmers; we want to create a great place to work for programmers." They started this little agency or consultancy, but like a lot of consultants, they were just doing service work, which kind of sucks. So they decided to create some products. The first one was FogBugz, which was a bug tracking software. After 10 years, it did alright; it was in the 8-figure range, so $10,000,000+ in revenue. It was doing pretty good, but it kind of stagnated a little bit. They thought, "Let's spin off some more stuff that we've been working on." I believe I don't remember which order it was, but let's just say the first one was Trello. They spun off Trello and funded it with a little bit of money. Trello is an Asana competitor; it's a task management software. They grew this business, raised only $10,000,000 to get started, and then they grew it a little bit more. Eventually, they sold it to Atlassian Software for $450,000,000, I believe. If you look at Atlassian Software's stock, I think when they sold, the stock was $17, and when it eventually peaked, like last year or two years ago when everyone went crazy, it was like 20 times that. So they got a combination of stock and cash for this deal—a huge hit this guy just made. Well, it turns out they spun off another company as well, and that other company was called Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow was basically, and still exists, kind of like a message board originally for developers. Eventually, you could make one of these message boards for a variety of topics. It's huge! Did you know that company sold? This wasn't in the news too often, but did you know that company sold for $1,800,000,000?

Shaan Puri

Who bought it?

Sam Parr

A European publishing company... I don't know. Are you... you have it up?

Shaan Puri

No, I don't have it here, but that's okay.

Sam Parr

Just some huge.

Shaan Puri

Traffic, by the way, they get almost like **200 million** monthly visitors.

Sam Parr

A huge site. I was talking to this guy, and he was like, "Yeah, and then we also sold Fog Creek Software, and I made a little money there." So he's like, "I've had a hat trick." This guy has done all these amazing things. Just learning about his story, how he's pretty low-key in the sense that he doesn't have Twitter and doesn't really use social media. He's giving me all this interesting intel on growing their companies and making them huge. It's called Prosus, according to Ari. He said, "Yeah, I sold that one for $1.8 million. We sold this one for, you know, $400 and something." But the stock appreciated a ton, so who knows what the actual price was? I asked him, "What are you doing now?" and he said, "Just fishing, just thinking." He goes fishing on this boat like every day during work hours. He was showing me a tour of his home, and he said, "Yeah, this is where my office was, but I don't really open up a laptop anymore."

Shaan Puri

Did you know this guy, or why is he inviting you fishing?

Sam Parr

I met him in Hampton, and we just started talking. He was like, "Do you wanna come over?" I guess this is... look, when you're in...

Shaan Puri

He looks like a guy who likes to fish, like spotted.

Sam Parr

I thought, "Here's why this guy was cool to me." He's like an outdoorsman in basically New York City, and he's living a very unique life. But he's very zen-like; he's super zen. He was telling me stories about how he overcame certain things at the company. The whole time he's telling these stories, he sounds very zen, calm, and low-key. I thought that this guy was one of those people who deserves a little bit of love because he's super under the radar. As successful as anyone we've talked about on this podcast, he does not have a big mouth. So, I'm kind of blowing up his spot a little bit. I asked him if it was alright that I said all this. He's a super interesting guy that you should look into. Michael Prior is his name; he's awesome.

Shaan Puri

What was anything cool from your conversation? Anything you learned, or an insight or observation you had that made you think?

Sam Parr

Yeah, so he was... I just liked how low-key he was about everything. He was basically the CFO of Stack Overflow. I don't know what their revenue was, but they sold for **$2,000,000,000**. I was like, "Did you... are you like an accountant? Were you a CFO?" He's like, "No, I barely knew how to do any of this stuff, but the company needed a CFO when we started." He's like, "I was a programmer. I haven't programmed in forever, but I just kind of learned how to pay taxes. I just had to learn how to do payroll." He just rolled with the punches. I think I asked him, "Were you intense?" He's like, "No, I'm not intense at all." And we hear stories about how people are doing... what does Elon Musk say? "Hardcore, hardcore mode," or...

Shaan Puri

Yeah.

Sam Parr

Hardcore. This guy was like, "I'm not... I wasn't really hardcore." He said, "We are smart and we worked pretty hard, but I would not describe what we did as intense." We just kind of rolled with the punches. It was really cool to hear something that differs from the loudest people who are incredibly successful, who say, "You gotta grind, you gotta do this." That wasn't the vibe I got from Michael in the early founding of these companies, and I thought it was really inspiring. I thought it was awesome. I also think, and this is for anyone who wants to build a company, you have to look up his partner. His partner is the louder one; his name is Joel. He has this amazing blog that I've read for years. It's basically like Paul Graham but a little bit more hot-headed. Well, it is very tactical, but he also writes in a way that is a little bit more jokey and a little bit more brash, which I appreciate. It's called "Joel on Software." I think it's one of the best entrepreneur blogs out there. I don't even think he updates it anymore, but he has probably a thousand articles. So, it was awesome just hearing little bits of intel from these guys, and I wanted to shine a light on this guy. It was really fascinating.

Shaan Puri

That's amazing! That's cool. How's your fishing game?

Sam Parr

Dude, it was like on easy mode. The poles were attached to the boat, and it was like once you hear a bell ring, you just go and grab... you grab the thing and just barely crank it in.

Shaan Puri

It's like the DoorDash of fishing.

Sam Parr

Yeah, like his boat told me where the fish was. It gives you a little alert, so I was like, "Fish here!" and you just sit there. I'm just sitting, drinking water, and it's like, "Oh, we got a fish, I guess." Oh, did you see the picture of it? It was 3 feet long. That's this *fucking* fish we caught in...

Shaan Puri

I saw that thing and...

Jerry Seinfeld

I was like, "How the hell did..."

Shaan Puri

You catch this, but it did go on. That was like a record catch. That was like a record-setting fish.

Sam Parr

It was just like the fishing rod was in one of the holes on the boat. You just barely touched the reel, and it came up. I mean, there was really no glory in it.

Shaan Puri

It's like AI for fishing. It's like, wait a minute.

Sam Parr

Yeah, like the boat... These, I don't know anything about boats. A lot of people look at me and they think that I'm like an outdoorsman. I don't know shit about this stuff. And like, it has these sensors that tell you where the fucking fish are. Like, there was no work involved. So like, this fishing shit's easy. I don't know why people are impressed by this.

Jerry Seinfeld

Let me ask you one more question.

Shaan Puri

I'm always interested in what other people, what other interesting people are interested in. What was this guy interested in when he was talking to you? What kind of questions did he ask you?

Sam Parr

We talked about being popular. So basically, a lot of people who are...

Shaan Puri

Why did he ask you?

Sam Parr

Good question. I think I was like the tallest midget here. I was just the only one that he could talk to, whoever has even a slight popularity. So, I found it odd that, and I don't think he actually envied me at all, nor does he want this type of thing. But a lot of rich and successful people who are low-key are curious about what it's like to have an audience. What I tell them all the time, and I don't know if you feel this way, is: "Hey, I will trade you my audience for your net worth any day of the week. I'll gladly make that trade." Of course, none of them would ever actually want to do that, but I think it's funny. I'm not talking about him, but people in general are into what it's like to have an audience and be internet popular or something like that. I always remind them, "It's really just me in my bedroom or on my toilet just typing out stupid tweets." There's not that much joy in it. I would much rather have a $2,000,000,000 company. So, don't actually envy this or think that it's awesome. A lot of these people are curious about what it's like to be a popular internet person.

Shaan Puri

Let me ask you a question. Hypothetical: How much would somebody have to pay you to never create content again? Delete everything on this podcast, delete your blog, and you never get to publish again. No Twitter, no social media, nothing. How much would you have to get paid?

Sam Parr

$30,000,000. What about you?

Shaan Puri

A really specific number. Very quick and specific number.

Sam Parr

Well, I had to think about it. I had to think about what it’s...

Shaan Puri

Worth for half a second.

Sam Parr

Well, I had to think about what, you know, what it's worth. What would your number be?

Shaan Puri

I think 100.

Jerry Seinfeld

More than 100, I think it would have to.

Shaan Puri

Be like, "Yeah, I think it would have to."

Jerry Seinfeld

Be more.

Sam Parr

More than 100.

Shaan Puri

Dude, you are not.

Sam Parr

Sylvester Stallone? You are not Sylvester Stallone. You... you... you don't have the... The landlord's not here. Like, you've tasted the nice life, you want more of it. You would do it for much less.

Shaan Puri

No, no, I really wouldn't.

Sam Parr

So your official number is **250**. That's insane to me! I do not... dude, that's like... you'd be no.

Jerry Seinfeld

No, no, no, no, no.

Sam Parr

I think you're... I think you are full of shit. I think you're absolutely full.

Shaan Puri

Of shit, power of attorney, and change my decision for me.

Sam Parr

I just don't.

Shaan Puri

Sorry, my friend's an idiot. I'm going to change that number. Why? Because I think I'm going to end up at $100 to $200 anyway, doing what I'm doing, and I like doing it. So, it's basically if I think I'm going to make that anyway, doing this, and I like doing it, then you have to pay me a premium on top of that to make me stop doing something I enjoy. Then there's the additional time value of money; I want it all up front, guaranteed. So, you know, I'm just kind of factoring that in. I would just rather err on the side of what's a number I would not regret. Like, what's a number you could pay me that I'd say, "Okay, I'll go figure out some other hobbies"?

Sam Parr

Well, would you still be allowed to do anything anonymously, like under a pen name?

Shaan Puri

No, not really. Your hands are taped. You can't type or do any of that stuff.

Jerry Seinfeld

Yeah, maybe it would be higher then, like...

Sam Parr

If I...

Jerry Seinfeld

Could if.

Sam Parr

I could do something anonymously. I would do that. I think the anonymous thing is actually pretty cool.

Shaan Puri

It might be better anyways.

Sam Parr

I think it's better anyway. I think the anonymous thing is cool. I'm really fascinated by these authors who use pen names. So we had Jack Carr on the podcast. That's a pen name, right? But it's like you...

Shaan Puri

Is it still a pen name because it's a stage name, or is it a pen name because he wants to be anonymous in real life?

Sam Parr

I imagine the second one. Of course, he's not anonymous because we see his face.

Shaan Puri

But yeah, I think it's just a stage name, which is different.

Sam Parr

I don't know what you call it. I just know that's not his.

Shaan Puri

Not just sounds cooler, you know? I remember I was in a movie once, dude.

Sam Parr

My name rhymes with that. Why does his name sound so much cooler? It's the "C."

Shaan Puri

It's the "K" sound, right? K is the coolest letter, everybody knows that. I was in a movie once and the main actor was Kal Penn. I was like, "Oh man, Kal Penn! What a guy!" **Kal Penn**... what a name. Sounds like a hero, sounds like a Hollywood star. Kal Penn.

Sam Parr

Dude, that guy's not doing well.

Jerry Seinfeld

You know.

Shaan Puri

What his real name is?

Sam Parr

He is... his name.

Shaan Puri

Is like Kulpin Suresh Modi, that's his real name. He couldn't get auditions, and so they changed his first name from Kulpin to Cal Penn. All of a sudden, he started getting auditions. He was telling me this, like he was embarrassed... not embarrassed by it, but he was like, "It's effed up, but this is what we had to do." He's like, "I didn't want to change my name; I just wanted to act." The price of having to act was to change my name. This is super common. Like Mindy Kaling, her name is not actually Mindy Kaling. A bunch of Asian actors, same thing; they all changed their names to sound cooler and more... you know, whatever. In fact, Leonardo DiCaprio, they tried to get him to change his last name. They wanted him to be like "Lenny Williams," was what they wanted him to say. He refused. So we were almost robbed of Leonardo DiCaprio. He was about to be fucking Lenny Williams if he had listened to the suits.

Sam Parr

Lenny Williams would have been so much worse for him because Lenny Williams sounds like a 50-year-old who dates a 19-year-old. Leonardo DiCaprio, at least.

Shaan Puri

A 50-year-old who dates.

Sam Parr

A 19-year-old, at least there's some suave or whatever, you know? Like, for some reason.

Shaan Puri

Wait, is that illegal? No, he's kind of Italian, I think.

Sam Parr

So, it's okay. Yeah, yeah, so that's.

Shaan Puri

Normal, different... so I guess.

Sam Parr

It's normal and disrespectful.

Shaan Puri

If you question it.

Sam Parr

Lenny Williams sounds like a 50-year-old guy who watches softball.

Jerry Seinfeld

On TV, you know what I mean? Like, yeah.

Sam Parr

He did the right thing. Leonardo DiCaprio, he pulled it off. Good job for him! Do we end here on this rambling, wandering podcast?

Shaan Puri

I think so. I think that's it.

Sam Parr

Alright, that's the pod.