Sam and Shaan open with a riff on extreme personalities, wartime CEOs, and the benevolent dictatorship model for startups before pivoting to Brett Adcock — the under-the-radar founder who went from Veterie to building flying cars with Archer Aviation, betting everything on each venture. They then dive into the main topic: general-purpose robotic arms and the four robot businesses (powder coating, Cafe X coffee, pizza, and pick-and-pack) that Sam believes will transform fast food. The episode closes with a meditation on showmanship and “dopeness” as a decision-making standard, plus Sam’s experiment giving a stranger his TikTok password and watching 1.5 million views roll in.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Cold Open: Robotic Arms as the New iPhone [00:00:00]
Shaan: The world has changed. There’s now this robotic arm that’s a general-purpose robotic arm. Think of it like an iPhone, right? It’s a piece of hardware that you could buy and program to do anything.
When Steve Jobs came out with the iPhone, they were like, “This is iPhone — it can access the internet, it has a GPS inside, and it can make phone calls.” That’s what it could do, and from there you guys figure out the rest. Initially they didn’t have the App Store, but when they did, all of a sudden you get the flashlight app, the app that uses the camera like a ruler to measure something, you get Strava using the GPS to do its thing. It’s basically a programmable, general-purpose tool. That’s what’s happening with these robotic arms.
Cheat Day Regrets [00:00:12]
Sam: All right, we’re live. What’s up? Listen — I’m going to tell you something. I’d been really healthy this summer. Didn’t eat a lot of sugar — no sugar other than fruits and vegetables, no added sugar. Today I decided was my planned cheat day after three months of this, and I ate some ice cream. I feel miserable.
Shaan: Yeah, the cheat day is always underwhelming. It’s always like, I’m looking forward to it, I’m planning for it, then I start doing it and I don’t even feel good while I’m eating it.
Sam: It’s like when you drink and then the next day you’re hungover and you’re like, why did I do that? But then you immediately do it again a few days later. I feel like that, except instead of three days it’s like ten minutes. I eat something and ten minutes later I’m feeling horrible. I’m like, oh, there’s still some left though, I should probably finish it.
Shaan: You have such an extreme personality. You always go to these extremes.
Sam: This is also why people hate fit people, right? They have these types of problems and normal people are just like, what are you talking about? Why are you doing this to yourself, waking up in the middle of the night thinking about ice cream?
It’s like the way some people get annoyed about crossfitters, or people who love to talk about intermittent fasting. I think there are people who feel that way about us with business and money — just like, dude, not everything’s a business, it’s okay. And I’d say that if we succeed, we need to create fans that are as annoying as crossfitters. That’s my new goal. You need freaks.
Emotional Instability as a Leadership Advantage [00:02:30]
Shaan: You’re at a huge disadvantage, you know why? It’s because you are what I like to call emotionally stable. You have too much good emotional health to be extreme.
I’m reading this great book about leaders. The author looks at a lot of interesting leaders we admire — Abe Lincoln, the most written-about American figure ever, Winston Churchill, a bunch of people like that — and his whole theory is that during okay times a mentally stable leader could be adequate, but during bad times mentally unstable leaders are typically the best at leading. They understand the ups and downs, they’re crazy enough. Kind of like when an entrepreneur invents something versus the type of person who just runs it on an even keel. You need some extremes for extreme times.
Sam: People underestimate this. In theory you want — say you join a startup or a small company — you want it to be like, how do we make decisions? We talk about it as a group, we get perspectives, we chime in with what we think, go with the majority. A democracy. And actually that doesn’t work in startups. The norm is what they call the benevolent dictator.
Basically, we agree that for better or worse, that person’s the captain. We’re going on their ship — either we’re going down or we’re going to the promised land. That’s how the best startups work. They pick a captain and go ride-or-die. You make decisions fast — one person’s always faster than a committee. You need to be extremely decisive, no constant warring between group A and group B. And we need to be a little bit extreme because we’re trying to do an extreme thing here.
In companies you actually want a dictatorship. People don’t like that because it’s not what you want in your country or your city, but it is what you want in a company, and on any creative project. You want a crazy genius who’s the creative force driving the thing, and everybody else: get on board or get off.
That’s how you ran The Hustle, that’s how I run my companies. Definitely the way when it comes to creating new stuff from scratch.
Shaan: And it actually makes sense when you think about the CEO. It doesn’t really matter if there’s a 30% approval rating — just look at the numbers. For a publicly traded company, it didn’t matter if you were an asshole. Did the numbers go up? Did you achieve what you said?
It doesn’t matter if your employees — I mean it matters if it becomes a retention problem — but if you have a 10% approval rating and your numbers are great, that’s great. If you have a 10% approval rating and you’re president, well, you’re out of a job. So in companies we can separate those two things. Because of that, we get conditioned to this idea of democracy, like I don’t want to be led.
Sam: I remember when I started my company I was like, yeah, I’m going to run it like a meritocracy, we all work together. And it is that, but it is definitely more like: hey, I’m the boss, I’ll take input from everyone, I’m making the decision, this is the way we’re going, and it’s my job to make sure you feel inspired to be here. I felt really self-conscious about that for a while.
And then there’d be times where I wasn’t the leader — like when I joined HubSpot, or when you and I work on this podcast. I actually felt a lot of security and comfort when I said, “Hey, who’s the boss of this project?” and someone said a name. I was like, great. Hey boss, make your decision please. I actually felt good about being a follower.
Shaan: One neck to choke. There needs to be one neck to choke on any situation. If I don’t know who’s in charge, who actually makes the call, you lose one really powerful thing: accountability.
I don’t mind whether I’m the person in charge or not. I just like that there is a person in charge. I want a benevolent dictatorship because that’s what I’ve personally seen work best.
I remember at Twitch, the first executive off-site — like the 15 top leaders in the company go to some fancy place, they’ve got the spread of tea and crumpets—
Sam: Daly City. Fridays. Happy hour.
Shaan: Exactly. Potato skins and the nuclear margarita. You gotta feel like your customers.
So the CEO gets up there and says, “We read the results from last quarter’s off-site and the big thing you guys wanted was you felt like decision-making was too top-down. You didn’t have a say. So this time we’re doing it different.”
And they spent the whole day doing it: what are your ideas, children? Everybody writes down ideas. Color voting system. Everybody vote for your top three. And you can see the executives — they’re somewhat interested but they’re also biting their tongue, like, look, it’s obvious we’re doing options one, two, and three, what are we talking about here?
But they let everybody go through it. We leave the off-site. Fast forward six months — we’re at the next off-site and the feedback is: “We just don’t know how decisions are being made. We kind of wish the leadership would just step in and give us clear direction on what we’re going to do. We just need some clarity from you.”
Sam: The long con, man.
Shaan: And I was like, am I the only one in the room that remembers what last quarter’s feedback was? Which was the exact opposite — it’s too top-down. Now it’s: are the leaders going to be leaders or not? We need clarity.
That was the affirmation of something I always believed.
Wartime CEO vs. Peacetime CEO [00:10:15]
Shaan: The second thing is wartime and peacetime. This matters a lot. You want the dictatorship during wartime. For a company there’s usually two wartimes: the beginning, when you’re nobody — no customers, no product, no market share, no nothing — and then if you succeed you hopefully enter peacetime, where the thing is working, you don’t have to wake up every day worried about dying.
During peacetime you work on maintenance, you fix bugs, you talk to customers properly, you work on security and server robustness. The same thing, but more and better, a little bit every time. You don’t need to go conquer new lands. You’re fixing up your existing land that you ignored during the wartime rush.
But then you enter wartime again — the competitive landscape changes, a new platform gets released, the economy shifts. Being able to shift between those two gears is pretty tough. Very few leaders can be the best wartime CEO and the best peacetime CEO. Usually you’re one or the other, and you stay too long when the season shifts.
People will say this person is good or bad, and it’s like — maybe they’re just amazing at one season, and now a different type of person would be best.
Sam: I always hated saying this because there were so many people who suffered, but I remember thinking: COVID was awesome. I loved being in the trenches. It was exciting. I know that now because I know how the story ends and things end well, but at the time I was scared. Looking back, I was like, I feel alive. This is what it is.
Shaan: I kind of hate the war metaphor because people are actually in war, and our war is fought at a keyboard with clicks firing left and right. There’s a part of me that feels very lame. I felt so alive when I was logging into Google Analytics every morning.
Sam: Do you acknowledge that you’re kind of a soft dude? As long as I acknowledge that, it’s okay to continue this metaphor, right?
Shaan: Yeah, as long as we acknowledge it is a metaphor and not real in any way. But I know what you mean — when these big shake-ups happen, most people’s reaction is “this is bad for me” and they just go with the herd. But other people recognize: hey, this is happening whether I like it or not. Given that it’s happening, the questions I need to ask are: what opportunities does this open up for me? Where am I going to get strong where I was otherwise weak? What have I been neglecting that now deserves my focus?
Ask better questions and you get better answers. I’m going to take market share in this area. I’m going to pounce on this thing I’ve been neglecting. Now that everyone’s comfortable with remote work — what does that open up?
Brett Adcock: The All-In Machine [00:15:00]
Sam: Dude, speaking of madmen — have you ever heard of a guy named Brett Adcock?
Shaan: No.
Sam: Have you heard of a company called Veterie?
Shaan: Not really.
Sam: Okay. So this guy Brett Adcock — I just met him recently, he joined our community and I’ve been getting to know him. Listen to his background. He’s 36 years old, from central Illinois. Around 2012 to 2015 he started a company called Veterie. Nothing particularly sexy — basically a job site, a little like Hired.com, a job board with more technology.
Hired.com raised north of $100 million and tried to bully Veterie. Fast-forward five or six years: Veterie ended up buying Hired.com when Hired.com went bankrupt. So Veterie was a job website to help people recruit engineers, raised $10 million, eventually acquired for around $120 to $150 million.
Brett was in his 20s when it was acquired, so he made — he didn’t tell me exactly — I’d guess in the $20 million range. But here’s what he did tell me. He put 100% of his money — minus a little bit for a down payment on a house — into a business bank account. He told me: “I didn’t own any outside equities, I owned nothing. I had my down payment, my house, and 100% of the earnings I made — low tens of millions — put into the business bank account.”
Then he started a company called Archer. They make what some people call flying cars — basically helicopters with a car body, vertical takeoff and landing. And I was like, how did you learn about this? He said, “I learned it all on my own. I read 50 engineering books and built three generations of electric aircraft. In 2018, at the University of Florida, I was doing engineering courses as an undergrad. I had to build a lab there to have facilities big enough.”
Shaan: Wait — hold on. He went back to school before going to school? He went back to school to learn how to do this?
Sam: He became an undergrad. Yes. He went to university as an undergrad to learn this stuff after already selling a company. He told me: “Whenever I do something I go all in. There was a time when I started Veterie where I took a personal loan one month because I didn’t have any money in my personal account to pay rent. This is just what I do.”
So he wanted to learn about electric aircraft and he went to the University of Florida to learn it.
Archer eventually goes public — I believe they did a SPAC — selling something like a billion dollars worth of aircraft to United Airlines, taking it public for three to four billion dollars. His net worth skyrockets to a billion. Now it’s in the $300 to $400 million range.
And he makes all this money from Archer and now he starts a new company — he told me, he just can’t tell me what it is yet — but he took basically $200 million and put all of it into this new company. To this day: the only stocks he owns are Archer and his house. And now the new business.
I said, “Is your wife and family okay with this?” He goes, “I’ve been going all in for 20 years. They’re used to it by now.” And I said, “What do you say to people who say you’re kind of nuts, why don’t you square away some money?” He goes, “I don’t care what people think. I just want to build the future.”
And this guy — he’s not like an Elon Musk type where he’s so smart he can’t articulate things. He’s fairly normal. Easy to talk to, personable, charismatic. You’re like, you seem reasonable. And then he says he does this stuff and you’re like — you are insane. You’re a madman.
Totally under the radar. From central Illinois. Only 36 years old. I got along with him because I’m from Missouri.
Shaan: He’s talking about Polestar on Twitter — is that his new thing?
Sam: Polestar is like a subsidiary or partner with Volvo. They make really cool cars. That’s what the tweet is about.
Shaan: Wow. So is it actually a plane? Is it a VTOL — vertical takeoff and landing?
Sam: Yeah, kind of like a helicopter-ish. It looks like four helicopter blades attached to a Honda Civic.
Shaan: Why do you need this? What does this do differently than a helicopter?
Sam: I have no idea.
Shaan: Here’s Sam’s question — it’s usually name, where you’re from, and then instead of “what do you do” it’s “what other equities do you own and how much of your personal net worth are you reloading into your next company.”
Sam: I don’t want to know why you made this. I don’t know what an actual helicopter does. That’s what a website’s for. To take cool pictures. I don’t know. I’m looking at the website — oh, it’s cool pictures of aircraft.
Shaan: I don’t care what the widget makes — it’s just a beautiful woman getting into this helicopter in a dress. What’s she doing? What’s the purpose? She’s on a sand dune in Dubai. Did she just fly to the desert?
Fer Khan: AppLovin Origin Story [00:22:00]
Shaan: Hold on — there’s a plot hole. He sold his company around 2016 but you said he went back to school as an undergrad in 2018. So he went back to school after he sold?
Sam: He went back as an undergrad. He went back to university to learn how to build electric aircraft. Yes. And he said: whenever I do something, I go all in. This is just what he does.
Speaking of people who go all in — my buddy Fer Khan. He’s been on the podcast. We should bring him back on. He was my co-founder at my last startup before we sold it to Twitch. It was called Bebo.
Sam: But before that — he’s got a crazy story. Before Bebo he was a co-founder of a company called AppLovin, which went public at something like a $15 to $20 billion valuation. A mobile ad network and mobile gaming company. One of the fastest-growing companies ever.
They only ever raised four million dollars external capital. They took that four million from founders and strategic investors and turned it into basically $20 billion of equity value. Insane capital efficiency — three billion a year in revenue.
They were a mobile ad network, and when they were going public their comps were not great because most mobile ad networks weren’t doing well — even though their actual business was good, they kept getting compared to low-multiple peers.
So they basically executed a pivot mid-flight: on their ad network, the number one advertisers were mobile games — that’s who paid the most. So they said, why don’t we just build mobile games and buy mobile gaming studios? They built up this gaming arm, I think does over a billion a year in revenue. They started buying and partnering with studios, building in-house, and just using their existing ad network reach to grow their own games. Insane. Got valued much higher with a different story than just “we’re a mobile ad network.”
Shaan: So after Bebo sells and AppLovin goes public — the guy never needs to work again — you’re like, so what are you going to do?
Sam: He basically created his heaven on earth. He rented this space over in the Presidio — Fort Mason. I don’t know, maybe 10,000 to 25,000 square feet. It’s crazy.
He basically said I want to have a big space where engineers can come and hack on expensive hardware for free. So you walk in and there’s a room full of robotic equipment — 3D printers, drones, all this stuff that’s expensive — and engineers don’t have to go buy a $15,000 machine to work on something. They just come use it.
Shaan: And you said there were 40 people working in there?
Sam: I went to visit and there’s like 40 people. Bunch of young dudes. I invested in one of them. I actually wanted to invest in the index — all of the ideas individually are a little bit crazy, but one of these is going to work. I just don’t trust myself to pick the right one.
Orangewood Robotics: The General-Purpose Arm Business [00:28:00]
Sam: So one of the guys I met in there — they were doing something called Orangewood Robotics. I walk in, there’s people at computers, and then there’s this big thing they’re working on. I go in and ask what they’re doing and they go, “We have a robot that can paint stuff.” I was like, okay, why?
They said, well, you know the process called powder coating? And I was like, is that for donuts? What is that?
Shaan: Six out of ten. Eight out of ten on any joke from you.
Sam: Thank you. The powder coating for donuts.
So they’re like, it takes a specialist, labor is really hard nowadays, it’s a chemically intensive process. Powder coating — like, I do it with motorcycles. Your motorcycle frame is just metal, and they powder coat it, which kind of looks like paint. You do it in a sealed room, with gloves on. It looks like a powder going on, and it’s a sealant/paint/protective thing.
So they trained this robotic arm to do it. And here’s the trick — the world has changed where there’s now this general-purpose robotic arm. Think of it like an iPhone. It’s a piece of hardware you could buy and program to do anything.
These guys wrote software to teach that arm how to powder coat. Then they taught it how to paint floors. Then they taught it how to weld things. Then they taught it how to pick and pack — take things out of one place and put them in another based on what they look like. You put a camera on top and teach it to recognize stuff.
My cousin was actually doing something like this — teaching a robotic arm to go into a hole. His whole thing was: in the future, electric cars need to get charged, but when they’re self-driving there’s no driver to get out and plug it in. So the charging station needs to automatically attach to the car. Otherwise you’ll always need a gas attendant at every station, even for self-driving electric vehicles.
They were training the arm with a camera to find the port and get in without scratching the car.
So there’s this whole industry of people figuring out how to program general-purpose robotic arms, making very interesting businesses off them. These Orangewood guys are doing it with painting. You rent it for $500 a day, it’ll paint all your stuff. Cheaper than hiring a person, and more reliable — it does it perfectly even every single time, no human error.
Cafe X and the Robot Coffee Business [00:34:00]
Shaan: Yeah, and Cafe X is the same principle — you’ve probably seen those in malls.
Sam: I saw that and immediately thought: this is one of the smartest ideas I’ve ever seen.
So if you haven’t seen Cafe X — imagine Starbucks, but shrink it down to the size of a jumbo vending machine, see-through. Inside is just a robotic arm. You place your order — cappuccino, double shot, oat milk, two sugars — and the arm starts to move around inside, makes your coffee, hands it to you.
The reason this is dope: it takes up about one-tenth of the real estate of a Starbucks. Very low labor costs — just the person who comes and cleans the robot and refills the ingredients. The robot never gets tired, never calls in sick, runs all day, makes the exact same coffee every time, with maybe 100 drinks in its repertoire.
Now, Cafe X hasn’t quite taken off. I think they did some stupid things — I heard at one point the founder only owned four percent of the company, they messed up their cap table or something. I don’t think that particular startup is going to work. But I’ll be damned if this isn’t going to be a thing. It just makes too much economic sense.
And most businesses have extreme market risk — we don’t even know if customers want it. This doesn’t have that. Does the customer want a fast, delicious coffee? Yes. That’s not a hard question. Instead of making Starbucks a place to sit, this is optimizing for people who want to get in and get out — subway stations, people on the go.
The only question is can you make the robot arm work well enough. And that’s actually a problem engineers are good at solving over a ten-year period.
Fast Food Robots and Labor Displacement [00:38:30]
Sam: There’s another one doing it for pizza — I think it’s called Zume? Softbank put like $500 million into it.
I only did this research while we were talking so it could be way off, but I’m looking at a government website — do you know what percentage of working Americans work in fast food?
Shaan: I’ll give you the homie move and say seven percent.
Sam: About 3.5 million Americans work in fast food jobs. That’s significant. And 10% of those work at McDonald’s — so McDonald’s employs like 250,000 to 300,000 people. Kind of astonishing.
Shaan: I’m a fairly libertarian person, but when I think about this I’m like — what are these people going to do for work? We’re only talking about fast food. Talk about all these other sectors too, and potentially five or ten percent of workers — they may not have a lot of other skills. When these things happen I’m like, I don’t know what’s going to happen with these people. It’s almost more scary than interesting.
Sam: People always say that. But I just feel like there are really two questions. A: is this new? No. For forever, technology has been making things easier and getting rid of jobs. You know, we were doing stuff by hand in the fields, then we got the tractor, which maybe reduced the number of people needed by 10x.
And by the way, the farming industry has massive government involvement. My parents work in agriculture — some farms are so big and so efficient that the government will pay you money not to grow a crop because they say you’re going to screw up the whole market if you overflow us with corn.
Shaan: There’s a couple bills in America where they will literally pay you not to do something because you’ll disrupt the market too much. That’s insane to me. There are people that need food and prices are higher than ever.
Sam: I mean, corn — America does a few things really well. One is we produce great entertainment. The second is corn. Our ability to create corn is phenomenal. Corn syrup, ethanol fuel — everything’s made of corn. We’re really good at that one.
Shaan: I don’t know enough about this to really speak to it. But I guess my point is: over time technology has gotten more and more pervasive. What happened to all the horse carriage drivers? What happened to all the people in factories? Reality is they shift. Some people become robot attendants, managing and cleaning the robots. Some people shift into new types of labor — entertainers on social media, new jobs that get created from every change.
And the other question is: what’s the alternative? Do you pump the brakes on making things better, faster, cheaper? That doesn’t seem possible or real. I’m not going to let my feelings get in the way of progress. That doesn’t mean it isn’t frightening.
Sam: Yeah. There’s a little bit of carnage whenever any change happens, good or bad. There’s always collateral damage. And that also creates opportunities — if you created a business that reskills people, not only are there going to be a lot of people who need reskilling, but maybe the government pays you to help reskill workers.
The free market can come up with solutions to absorb and reskill this labor. I don’t really worry about it too much, but I do think it’s very interesting that these general-purpose robotic pieces can now be programmed to do a variety of things that are today done by human labor.
The Bear and Why Restaurants Are a Terrible Business [00:46:00]
Shaan: Have you seen this TV show called The Bear?
Sam: I’ve seen a few episodes, haven’t finished it.
Shaan: The background isn’t necessarily the important topic, but: it’s a restaurant in Chicago. The owner kills himself and the brother inherits the restaurant — it’s a mess. The brother is a trained chef from French Laundry, which is like the best restaurant in the world, and he comes to this rough restaurant and has to turn it around. That’s the whole premise.
I’m watching this show and it reminded me how miserable restaurants are. This goes on the list, right below music festivals, of businesses you should never start and should run from.
Sam: Wait — why music festivals?
Shaan: Any business where you spend 18 months working on it, and if it rains that day you’re completely screwed — that’s the worst. You could do everything right and a one-in-365 chance ruins your whole year’s work. Music festivals are just horrible. And the bigger and more successful they get, the worse the attendee experience gets. I always disliked conferences too — the better I make this for me, the worse it is for the attendee, and thus harder to get them to come back.
With a restaurant — you see inside the kitchen in The Bear, in this thing called Chicago Beef — you see behind the scenes, and it is impossible. Playing business on the hardest mode possible. People are angry, people are vulgar, I remember working at a restaurant and there was a huge contingency of drug addicts. You get off work at 2 AM, what are you going to do? Go immediately to the bar, come back to work at 11 AM. Lots of people calling in sick, lots of hostility.
Sam: Our sushi restaurant was a little different because we only ran it for three months, and we were the labor for most of it. But the way I experienced the restaurant world was working in other restaurants to shadow and learn. My buddy Dan worked inside of a noodles company to see how a fast-casual operation works. He was just like: dude, don’t order the tomato bisque.
I was like, the bisque? The soup is the good thing. He goes, don’t order the tomato bisque. I was like, what’s wrong? He’s just like, bro, you’ve never seen salt like the salt in the bisque.
Shaan: The people in the back don’t give a damn. They’re going to put whatever they want in it. And the things they’re supposed to put in are already so bad for you.
Sam: The worst was when we were working out of a commissary kitchen. There was a guy who sold hot dogs at a stand. He would come in with 350 hot dogs, pour them all into the sink — the sink where everybody does their dishes — turn up the water, just start washing them, and then chuck them to the side after they’d been rinsed for a second. I was like, first of all, why are you washing the hot dog? It came out of a package. And you washed it in the grossest sink possible. I will never eat a hot dog.
Shaan: By the way, you saying “no offense” is going to be my new neg. I’m going to start using it constantly — “this guy smelled so bad, no offense” — nothing wrong with smelling bad, but I’m going to start saying no offense all the time.
Sam: That’s amazing.
Anyway, the show — what’s interesting about it, and I see a lot of similarities with what you and I do and what a lot of listeners do, is: they are so passionate about this thing. At first I was like, why are they so passionate? And then I was like, oh — this is just their thing. My outlet is different, but it’s the same type of obsessed. They love it.
Shaan: The hours are brutal. Business on hard mode. But the camaraderie was amazing and there’s something very soulful about feeding people.
The same thing with poker — I used to play poker, I loved the game, but I hated sitting in a casino playing it because I was surrounded by so many degenerates. Sitting in artificial air next to a guy who’s been there for 42 hours straight — this is not a high quality of living. I need to get out of this situation.
Showmanship and the Dopeness Standard [00:54:00]
Shaan: Let me tell you about something that is the opposite of that. I saw two TikToks I want to tell you about.
One went viral — did you see the clip of the Mets closer coming out to pitch? He was coming out to do his thing, and normally on TV they cut to commercial during the lineup change. But this time they stuck with it. They showed from behind the guy walking out from the bullpen, emerging into the stadium — they used that UFC lens that blurs out the background. Really beautiful shot.
Normally the guy comes out to this song — Timmy Trumpet. But the Mets had actually brought Timmy Trumpet there live. He was hiding and then comes out with his trumpet and a microphone on the end of it, and he starts playing the song live as the guy’s running out into the roaring crowd. It was so dope.
Sam: Business is cool, but God — sports and music just have this special thing. Special moments, special feelings. Nobody is that passionate about our podcast. Nobody is that passionate about a piece of software. But when this moment hits, the guy runs out, he’s the hero, the trumpet guy’s there playing, the crowd’s going nuts — it was just a special moment. A lot of showmanship.
I watched that and then I swiped up on TikTok. The next video was this teacher. It said “Revealing the Musical, Part 1” and I’m like, I’ll hang around for an extra second. He goes, “All right, and this year the musical is gonna be—” and he reveals the whiteboard. There’s nothing there except a small envelope. Everyone’s waiting. He opens the envelope and it says: turn on the computer.
The students are like, what’s going on? And clearly this teacher had set up a whole bit to make it more fun. He clicks his computer and there’s a video — it’s him, but from “the future,” and he’s doing this silly bit with himself. Then it freezes and says: wait, everybody look under your desk. One kid has this special thing. It was like an elaborate escape room leading up to the reveal of the musical, and by the end the students are going nuts. Midway through they realized, okay this is cheesy, but I’m into it. He built up tension for them.
Shaan: My trainer uses this word all the time — “showmanship” — and nobody else in my life talks about it. He’ll go to Starbucks before our session and he’ll always tell me these stories. He’s like, “I decided to add a little showmanship, so I told them my name was Bond — James Bond — and they wrote it on the cup. Then I told them to add the comma — Bond, James Bond — and they laughed a little more and I made their day slightly more entertaining than it had to be.” Versus just saying your name is John and being another John.
He always talks about adding showmanship — walking through life, identifying little moments where you could do something slightly different than the norm.
I do this with my daughter all the time now. She used to have such a hard time eating. My mother-in-law came over — and you know, classic mother-in-law, always telling us we’re doing it wrong — but one day I was like, how did you get her to drink the milk? She goes, “Oh, she loves to drink out of this little measuring cup instead of the normal cup. Change of presentation.”
And so now me and my wife will always joke about that. She was annoying but she did pull the rabbit out of the hat. We’ll change the presentation and all of a sudden our daughter is locked in.
I do this when I feed her now. I couldn’t get her to eat vegetables so I created my own version of Chopped. I’m like, okay, close your eyes, I’m going to put one thing in front of you and in front of your brother. Take the bite. Tell me: one thumbs up, two thumbs up, or thumbs down? And then I do a huge reaction based on the score they give me. She’s like, I want to play the closed-eyes game! I can get her to eat a whole meal if I’m willing to create a television show out of it.
This idea of showmanship keeps weaving its way into my life. So for someone out there — your word of the day: find a way to weave in a little more showmanship into what you’re doing. A little change of presentation.
Sam: Do you think about this?
Shaan: I do. Have you heard of this guy named Tren Griffin? He’s like 60-something, white dude, his Twitter bio just says “I used to work with Bill Gates at Microsoft.” He has a blog called 25iq and I was reading it the other day. He had an article called “A Dozen Beliefs About Business, Money, and Life That Kanye West Shares With Other Great Entrepreneurs and Investors.” The very first line has always stuck with me. It’s from Kanye and it says: “For me, first of all, dopeness is what I like the most. Dopeness — people who want to make things as dope as possible and by default make money from it.”
I always think about that quote because I get caught up in — well, this does this, and this does this, and this makes money — and then I’m like, oh yeah, but this is super lame. This sucks my soul. What am I doing? This isn’t awesome.
The other day I bought some Air Force Ones and I was trying to get the cheap ones. I was like, bro, I can get the $250 Air Force Ones and I don’t have to justify it. If they’re cool, they’re cool. They’re dope. Do it. I always have to justify certain decisions to myself — but sometimes it’s like, this is just cool. Do it because it’s cool. I only have one life.
Sam: Yeah. Do it because it’s cool.
Shaan: For most people who listen to this podcast — probably high-achiever types, rational, analytical about decisions — you actually need to add more of that other ingredient. For sure: do it because it’s cool, eff it, don’t measure it.
And honestly, the same thing can either be done boring or dope. It’s not the thing that’s dope — it’s how you do the thing. The broccoli itself wasn’t dope. When I turned it into a game, I made it more dope for her, so she has a different experience. And if I consistently do that, there are just more experiences throughout my day that are dope. What’s a dope life? It’s a bunch of dope days. It’s a bunch of dope experiences throughout the day.
You can break it down into its atomic unit and realize that the boringness or routine of your life is in your own hands. If you add a little showmanship to yourself and the people around you, you can change how the experience feels.
Boosted Skateboards and the “It’s Effing Awesome” Standard [01:06:00]
Shaan: Do you remember Boosted Skateboards? These were all over San Francisco — people skateboarding up hills because of how hilly it is, looking like magic. Electric scooters are normal now, like Bird, but about eight years ago Boosted Skateboards came out with a longboard that could go 25 miles an hour.
I bought one. It was crazy. I met the founder and I asked about his background. He’s like, “I worked at NASA, was doing some other things, thought about working in the government, sending people to Mars — that seemed interesting. But I decided to launch this skateboard company.” I was like, well, were you into skateboards? He goes, “No.” Were you into the space thing? “Not really.” So why’d you go to skateboards?
He goes: “Because it’s effing awesome.”
And I remember him saying that and something shifted for me. Oh yeah. Yeah, that’s a good addition. I gotta add that to my checklist of things to do: it makes money, it makes my mom proud, it’s effing awesome.
Sam: Tony Robbins has a thing he says: you will meet your standards, not your desires. A standard is more of a must. I’m not going to eat at a restaurant if I saw flies everywhere — that’s below my standard. So an important thing is to figure out what your standards are for the things you do in life.
It sounds like for this guy, one of his standards for what to work on is: is this awesome or not? Whereas for a lot of people that’s completely optional.
Shaan: And the best thing you can do is get around people who have that as a standard. Why do people say you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with? It’s not because they’ll teach you things or give you good advice — it’s because you will fundamentally adopt the standards of the people you’re around.
I have a couple of friends who are very fit. Whenever it’s time to grab food, I know Cheesecake Factory isn’t on the list. I automatically start only suggesting places that meet their standard.
Sam: For the record, I mess with Cheesecake Factory hardcore. Chicken piccata all day. I’m not above it.
Shaan: Yeah, we’ve got a couple friends like that too. It’s like, what’d you order? The gordita? What’s good here?
The TikTok Experiment: 1.5 Million Views [01:12:00]
Sam: Can I talk about something I can’t decide if it’s actually awesome and dope or not? I want to give people a behind-the-scenes on something.
You and I get DM’d and cold-emailed all the time. A very common thing is: “Hey, can I give you content to share? I’ll do it for free.” And the bad thing about free is you kind of get what you pay for — when it’s free, you’re like, there’s too much work, I don’t want to share your stuff on Twitter, it’s not good.
For some reason I gave one of these kids a chance. I say no to everyone, but I gave this kid a chance. He DM’d me and I was like: I’m going to give you my password to my TikTok, I want you to impress me. I go, send me a picture of your Social Security card, a picture of your boss, and your driver’s license. And he did.
I said, if you screw me over I’m going to get you back. I have your information. Here’s my password to my TikTok.
Shaan: That’s great. Like — if you do something bad to me, I’m going to get you. We’re imbalanced otherwise. You can really screw me by posting on my account. What am I going to do to you? I need to equally be able to screw you.
Sam: Exactly. Give me your mother’s address, because I’ll be mailing her your index finger in an envelope if you screw this up. I gave him the password.
In one week, this kid has taken our videos and posted two a day on TikTok. In about six or seven days he’s gotten 1.5 million views. I went from basically zero — not even having an account — to like eight or nine thousand followers. A handful of videos got big: one got 500,000, one got 700,000, a bunch got 50,000-plus. 150,000 to 200,000 likes. Tens of thousands of comments.
But I don’t exactly believe it’s real. I was like, post a video with a call to action. So we did a video about my favorite book, and it shot up the charts. I said all right, these people are somewhat engaged — they’re actually buying the book on Amazon.
This is actually the second time I did something like this. One time I recommended a book and before recommending it I took a picture of its ranking on Amazon. The next day it was number one in the entrepreneurship category and number one in the business category. It was a book called How to Get Rich, and that tweet reached two million people. This TikTok video I did about the same book — it shot up. Now I think it’s number one in entrepreneurship again, and that video has been viewed 500,000 times.
Shaan: Bro, let’s write our own book. If you’ve got this kind of Oprah influence — why are you helping this dead guy? He doesn’t need your help. Let’s write our own book.
Sam: Look — How to Get Rich is now number 30 in all of Audible and originals. Number one in small business. Look up the categories. It skyrocketed after this video.
I can’t decide if I should just do this whole TikTok game. I don’t know if these views are real or not. If you’re real out there, just type the number one in the comments — I’m going to see who does that.
Shaan: Our favorite words: little fugazi. There’s a fugazi element to these TikTok views. How do you know it’s really 1.5 million people? What does this mean? Did they actually watch it? If so, that’s amazing. But some things can be too good to be true.
Sam: You’ve been showing up on my feed though, for what it’s worth.
Shaan: But I think that’s because we’re both TikTok friends — I have like two TikTok friends and you’re one of them. Some of these videos got 700,000 views, some got 70,000, 50,000, a bunch got 20,000. I can’t decide if this is real.
And if it is real, I don’t want to sound like Gary Vee, but — everyone should do this? This is easy? This kid in Miami is just doing this and it’s working wonderfully. I’m not that charismatic, not that good. Why is this game so easy?
And is it worth it? I’m not convinced.
Shaan: Well, if you can spike a book to number one in the charts — that shows there’s some real value there. Some real influence. That’s not just a number.
Sam: But it’s kind of lame. There’s a lot of amazing stuff on TikTok — these 18-year-old kids are the most creative people I’ve ever seen. But then there are guys like you and me, the “money people and influencers,” and everyone’s doing the same circle-jerk stuff. It’s really lame.
I don’t know how to make it interesting. Right now what I’m doing, I think it’s not interesting, but the results are incredible. But is it effing awesome? To go back to your standard — TBD.
Shaan: You know what’s awesome? When you create content and then someone legitimately famous and cool hollered at you. That’s worth all the lame tweets you and I have done. Like, that’s the awesome part about it.
Sam: You know what’s cool about selling your soul sometimes? Someone pays that price for it.
Shaan: You know what’s cool about being a whatever? The money. We’re out.