This episode of the My First Million podcast features a conversation between Sam Parr and Shaan Puri about the traits that separate successful entrepreneurs from the rest, specifically focusing on the concept of “applying one’s will” to business challenges. They share anecdotes about various entrepreneurs, including Ari Emanuel and Dan Porter, to illustrate how a relentless, hands-on approach to problem-solving and growth can lead to massive success.
Topics: Entrepreneurship, Business Strategy, Growth Hacking, Leadership, Marketing, Social Media, Sports Media
The “Hot Shot” Agent Mentality [00:06]
Sam Parr: Ari Emanuel is the guy who runs WME, which is what the show Entourage based the character Ari Gold off of. He’s this hot shot agent, or whatever.
Shaan Puri: I’ve heard Ari Emanuel in a couple of articles, they say that’s what he does. He’ll call someone every single day until he gets what he wants.
Sam Parr: And I think that’s a, I’ve been picking this up as a thing. Like, when, I’ll give you an example of you. You actually do this. When we were like, “All right, we’re going to make like our own podcast studio.” It was like, “Yeah, cool idea,” and everybody kind of nods and, “Okay, what’s one level better than that?” Somebody’s like, “Oh, you know, I’ll take charge of it, I’ll come up with the plan.” And then that person usually goes around asking what the budget should be, and they kind of push the ball forward, nudge it forward with their toe. And then somebody else is like, “Okay, I’m going to get this done, and I’m going to get this done in two weeks,” which seems like aggressive, right? You go from no studio to a fully functioning podcast studio.
Shaan Puri: No, I’m like, “Let’s go.”
Sam Parr: You were like, “Okay, what are you doing right now?” And I was like, “I’m on the phone with you.” And you’re like, “Cool, what are you going to do like right after this? You ready to go? I’ll pick you up.” And I was like, “What? I guess I could find a babysitter for my child and like, I guess I could…” And so, we, and then all of a sudden, an hour later, I’m in the car with you, we’re driving to fucking IKEA, and you walk in and you’re like, “Hey, um, IKEA guy, we need like an awesome studio couch.” And he’s like, “Okay.” And you were like, “Um, here’s $500 in cash. Where do I spend this like to get the couch?” And they were like, “What the fuck is going on?” It’s a different level of intensity. And sure enough, by like the next day, we had those two red couches that were like, you’re like, “I need a couch.” You had a vision. You’re like, “I need a couch that’s going to pop in the thumbnail of a YouTube video.” And so like, I want it to look like this. And then we had it, and then you were like, “Cool, you know, our accounting person is going to paint the room today,” and then like, you know, this next person is going to do this. And like all of a sudden, like the world just bent to your will.
Investing and Business Strategy [01:55]
Sam Parr: And I’ll have another, I’ll give you another example. Me and my buddy, Suli, we invested in this company, and I put 50k in, he put, Suli put like 100k in. And so we were like, “All right, great.” Now, a couple months go by and we’re like, “Dude, these guys like, are they, what are they doing?” And so we like check in with them, like nine months later, and we’re like, “Hey, what’s the latest?” And they were kind of like, you know, doing their thing, but they, they weren’t, they didn’t have like a clear plan, and they wanted to raise money. So they were like asking us for intros, and we were like, “Cool, send us your deck.” And they sent us the deck, and it sucked. And we were like, “Hey guys, this deck kind of sucks. Like, I don’t want to make intros. Like, let’s work on your deck.” And they’re like, “Oh, thank you, we’d love some help.” So we get on a call, and we get on a call, before we get on the call, okay, that was like, they’re like, “Let’s do a call. You, what times are free for you next week?” Suli goes, “I’m free in like 45 minutes. Can you get to, can you get to a computer by then?” And they’re like, “Uh, yeah.” In the 45 minutes between then, he sent three emails with like, “Slide one, this sucks. Slide three, what is this picture? This is stupid. Slide five, present it this way. Slide nine,” and he just had it, before, like before the meeting, he’d done the meeting. Then we get into the meeting, and he’s like, “All right guys, I sent you guys a bunch of stuff. Uh, like, let’s open up PowerPoint right now and just fix it.” And they were fixing it, and he’s like, “Okay, cool. Um, there’s like these three things that are missing.” Um, like, “All right, let’s do a call like in four hours with the deck fixed with those three things that were missing, and um, let’s do this call every morning and every afternoon. We’re going to do two calls a day for the next five days or until this deck is amazing.” And these guys were just like, “What?” And I was also like, “Who are they? What, what? What’s the result, what’s the result of that?”
Sam Parr: Well, they, they’ve gone on to raise, honestly, the result of that was I think by day four, they were just sort of like, “I hate you.” Like, like we disagree or like, you know, this is just too much for us. They kind of like backed off, and we’re just like, because by the end of that, we were like, “Not only does your deck need to change, your business strategy needs to change because like the deck can only just tell a great business story, but you don’t actually have a great business story. So we need to fix that too.” And like, you know, and it was like, we were, our, our kind of like, you know, the delivery wasn’t the softest, so I don’t think they loved the calls. At first, it was like, “Wow, this is really constructive feedback,” and by the end, I think they were just beaten down and like, whatever.
Dan Porter and Overtime [10:09]
Shaan Puri: But was Dan, was Dan Porter a guy who took it to a level 12? Is that what you’re saying, that how he pushed it hard?
Sam Parr: So he told me the stories of Ari doing it. He told me the story of Richard Branson doing it. And then he had stories of him doing it. And he was like, because we were, we were asking about the Milk Road. He reads the Milk Road every morning. And so we were like, “All right, you know, what would you do about this and this and this? How did you do that early days of his latest project?” So I should introduce that. So he, after the WME thing, he’s like, he started this new company called Overtime, which, I don’t know if you’ve, Which is like taking over the world, but I don’t even entirely know what it is, but like their social handles are all over the place.
Sam Parr: They’re, they’re huge on social. So basically, it’s like, if you’re into, it started with basketball, now they have like football and other things. But it started with basketball, and basically what they did was they just create like a media company, but instead of the way like, okay, ESPN is a TV channel. And then like Bleacher Report and others were websites, and then there were some newsletters. And these guys were like, “No, we’re just going to be like an Instagram account.” And we’re just going to become the biggest Instagram account for basketball culture. And, uh, what does that mean? It’s like crazy dunks, like high school prospects. That’s really where they like found their foothold was they were like, “Okay, forget the NBA. Like a, like, hoops culture, they’re really interested in like, who are the next, who’s the next LeBron?” And it turns out there was this kid, Zion Williamson, who was this like tank-looking guy in South Carolina that people had heard of. He’s got a cool name called Zion. The guy’s built like a fucking, you know, crunch bar, and then he can fly. Like he’s like, you know, he’s like a flying bus. And so, got a crunch bar? Yeah, like a double crunch crunch bar.
Shaan Puri: I would have thought, I would have thought like thicker than a Snickers, but all right, we’re going to go with crunch bar.
Sam Parr: That’s perfect, okay. Um, so he, so they started, so they were like, “Okay,” they put up a video of this guy, and it was like, and it immediately went viral. He’s like, “Okay, cool. People want to know about Zion.” ESPN, they’re not sending a reporter down to like Greenville, South Carolina to like cover this guy’s high school game against West Bishop Baptist, like, it’s like, “But we can do that.” And so he, he basically, and he said this thing when he, when I was talking to him, he was a very calm guy, but he had that, that level 12 intensity, I could tell, because he goes, he goes, “I decided I was going to do this, and then I just applied my will against it.” And I was like, “Only somebody who is like, knows they’re a force of nature would even say something like that.” He wasn’t pitching me, he wasn’t selling me. He was just, I was trying to figure out how the fuck did you build this into like a household name in such a short period of time? And I’ve seen so many people try to do this.
Shaan Puri: And how do they make money? Do you know?
Sam Parr: Uh, they have a couple different ways. So they, I think they have like, you know, probably like sponsors or whatever, but they now have their own basketball league. So he’s like, he basically created his own version of like a, like a, instead of the NCAAs, it’s like you can come play in the Overtime league. So right now he’s like living in Atlanta where they’re doing the season. And like, and I told him, I was like, “Dude, you look like a high school science teacher.”
Shaan Puri: Well, yeah, so if you, if you guys look up Dan Porter, when I hung out with him, he was like dressed cool and he looked like a cool guy, but he looked more, he is more similar to Malcolm Gladwell than he was a basketball fan. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s more of a Gladwell than an X. That’s for sure.
Sam Parr: Yeah, like you would never think this is the guy that’s like steering, you know, street culture and hoops culture at the grassroots level, but he is. He really is. Like maybe he would have launched a poetry league over a basketball league. And I asked him, I was like, I was like, “So you like, it’s just different.” He’s like, “No, actually, I love football.” And I was like, “What?” And he’s like, “Yeah, you know, like,” and so he told me about the approach that he took of like, he’s like, “I was at WME, and um, and he’s like, you know, I, I we heard these stats, which was basically like the, the NFL was really worried because they’re like, kids choose their favorite team and league at like, um, age 10 or 12. Um, and then that’s like who they’re a fan of for life. It’s like, that’s my team, or like, that’s my player.” And then like they’re, they’re a fan of them for like decades. And he’s like, “Then we asked like, how do you decide? Is it because of the city you’re from, or whatever?” And they’re like, “No, Madden. Like whoever’s the most fun to play in Madden, or like whoever’s colors I like.” And he’s like, “Oh shit.” And the NFL was also like, “Oh shit.” And the local sports owners were like, “Oh shit,” because if, if every kid in Philadelphia isn’t growing up an Eagles fan, if they just like Michael Vick because he’s fast in the game of Madden, then like that’s a fan we just didn’t get. They’re not going to buy tickets, jerseys, they’re not going to like come to the games, like, this is not going to work. The model will break at that point. And then also, TV networks were like, “Yeah, kids aren’t watching TV. So, um, like we got to figure something else out. What are they doing? They’re playing video games, they’re on social media, they’re on Instagram, they’re on TikTok.” And so his theory was like, “Oh, okay, so we need to build the sports media brand on those networks, and then we just have to find the thing that clicks.” And what clicked for them was these like young, up-and-coming basketball players. Um, and then he like came up with the craziest, like they would basically, he’s like, “All right, we need, um, the clips, like we need those clips faster than anybody else.” And so they came up with the crazy idea, like crazy ideas, which was like they would find, they would in their social media, they would just be like, “Hey, who lives in like South Carolina?” We need a photographer. So like the number one Zion clip submitter to them, these clips that got millions and millions of views, basically built their brand, which is like a multi-hundred million dollar brand now, was done by a guy who was like, I think like a plumber on like weekdays, and he would go to the games. And like the number two clip submitter was a student at Zion’s school who had broke his leg, and because he was in a wheelchair, they put him like courtside every game, like instead of going up in the bleachers, so he had like the best spot. And so that guy was submitting like these amazing clips on his iPhone, and like that’s what was going viral right away. And then he’s like, ESPN or whatever would hit us up and they’d be like, “Hey, um, like can we license your videos? We’ll pay you for this license.” Like it’ll be like Getty Images. And he was like, “Fuck me, dude. I don’t want to build Getty.” And he’s like, “How about this, ESPN? You can have it for free. You just have to tag us and put our watermark on it.” And they’re like, “What? Idiot. Done.” And so then they ended up promoting the shit out of Overtime. Like Overtime was everywhere because of that. It was like, seen as incredible because he was on ESPN all the time.