The 2024 Milly Awards

In this episode of the My First Million podcast, hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri host their annual “Milly Awards,” where they recap the year by discussing their best and worst investments, personal growth, and life lessons. They share candid stories about their financial strategies, the importance of continuous learning, and the value of experiences over material wealth.

Topics: Investing, Personal Finance, Entrepreneurship, Life Lessons, Business Strategy, Self-Improvement

The Milly Awards Intro [00:00]

Sam Parr: Ladies and gentlemen, here we are. Four years in a row, the end-of-year Milly Awards, where we get together and we recap the year. We make up a bunch of categories, we make up a bunch of answers, and we reflect on how the year has gone with our award ceremony. So, Sam, are you ready?

Shaan Puri: I’m ready.

Best Investment of the Year [00:29]

Shaan Puri: I like your jacket. Are you going to start wearing this stuff more often? It feels like a little suit of armor.

Sam Parr: Yeah, I already got a compliment this morning inside the house, so I think maybe I should start dressing well. Maybe that’s going to be my change of the year. We’ll see.

Shaan Puri: It’s December 26th. You got a compliment this year. Probably the only compliment you got all year.

Sam Parr: Yeah, the only looks compliment for sure.

Shaan Puri: Men don’t get compliments, so you should wear jackets more. Um, all right, where do we want to start?

Sam Parr: All right, we’re going to start category. We have 11, 11 awards to give out. We’re going to start with number one, best investment of the year. And these are personal, by the way. These are our personal best investments, worst investments, that sort of thing. So, Sam, what was your best investment of the year?

Shaan Puri: Dude, what do you think I’m going to say?

Sam Parr: The S&P 500.

Shaan Puri: The S&P 500. Up 28%. But that one’s boring. I don’t want to just say that. The best investment I we had this year, I do you remember Jason Cohen, um, we had on the pod? Jason Cohen started, what’s it called? WP Engine. WP Engine. Love that guy. No, I just can’t remember the the company. Anyway, he made a comment, I think after the pod, where he talked about tipping. And I was like, “I like to tip,” you know? I was like, “I just hand out fives,” and he goes, “Fives? You should be handing out 20s.” Like, he goes, “I tip like crazy.” And I started doing that after the pod, and so I carry around about $1,000 of 20s, and and I give it point, and I am just dishing that shit out like crazy. And do you want to know something? It’s made me so happy. And so that’s been a great investment. My but and I wanted to bring that up because my investment strategies are pretty boring. But man, I tell you what, I’ll go to a restaurant and it’ll be like $60 because we don’t drink, and like it’s like a cheap we’re cheap dates. I’ll I’ll easily leave $100.

Sam Parr: And then you stick around to wait for the uh for the reaction, too? You’re like, “Did you did you see that?” Just want to make sure you get that right under there.

Shaan Puri: Listen, I thought it was tacky to do that. But I say screw them. I’m doing something nice. I want to I want like a compliment. Like it makes me feel good, too. I’m doing this for selfish reasons. It makes me feel good. So, I don’t mind it. As long as I’m not filming it, it’s okay. That’s what I think.

Sam Parr: Do you guys share these or is that all yours right there?

Shaan Puri: No, but but seriously, tipping has made me happier. But investment, what is it’s it’s hard for me to say best investment because I am so boring. Although I do have one angel investment in Figure that’s going to pay a lot of money so far on paper.

Worst Investment of the Year [02:47]

Sam Parr: Okay, so Sam’s favorite ice cream is vanilla. All right, here we go. What do you want me to say? Am I supposed to make something up?

Shaan Puri: All right, I will make up for your boring answer with my boring answer. All right, I will make up for your boring answer with my boring answer with I have two answers. I’ll give you the first one. Okay, so Sam, best investment, when I think of the perfect investment, right? What’s my type? My type would be, you know, some people like blondes, some people like brunettes. Here’s my type. My type is a passive investment that is tax-advantaged, that beats market returns, that is uncorrelated to my the rest of my portfolio, tech, crypto, has low downside, and I’m betting on a beast of an operator who has an unfair advantage. It sounds like you’re trying to sell me a timeshare.

Sam Parr: Close, it’s real estate. You got it. And so, I for the first time made some serious investment. I invested a few million dollars into real estate this year, and it was great. I for a long time, I had thought, “I should probably be doing real estate. I should probably take this magic internet money, put it in real estate, um, so that I have kind of both. I have real-world tangible assets that pay cash flow, and then I have this like kind of crazy upside tech stuff.” And I never could figure out the way to do it. I was like, “Do I buy my own and manage it? That seems like a pain. Do I use one of these kind of like funds or whatever, but they are all just fee monsters.” And uh, the answer was sitting in my in my own wheelhouse. My brother-in-law is an amazing real estate operator. The guy’s built like a billion-dollar real estate portfolio for himself. And so, I just started giving him money, and um, it’s been amazing. I don’t lift a finger, and I’m getting like, you know, 30-40% returns uh with all the tax advantages. So, that was my best investment, and I’ll be doubling down there.

Sam Parr: But I have a bonus answer for you.

Sam Parr: The bonus answer is I made a couple of stock trades. I know you don’t approve, not supposed to buy individual stocks, but I did. But I did it in a very specific way that I think you might dig, which was I just have been trading against the All-In Podcast for like two years now. Are you kidding me? And it has been phenomenal. Give me an example. And also, like, is this like casino gambling money or is this like like in my opinion, anything above $100,000 is like legitimate. No, okay, so real bets then. Okay, so you’re doing real These are these are big bets, but I just view them as as safe. Like they’re not like they’re not like obscure penny stocks. Like Amazon or something. So, what will happen is All-In Podcast, uh, love listening to it, very entertaining guys, very smart guys. I just don’t think they’re right a lot. And they’re not right in one specific they have one specific leak, which is that they have like an agenda, which is often, you know, either talking their own their own book, or it’s anti-woke, anti-left, anti big big tech. They make money. I make money. They like to make money, but No, anti getting good gains. So like, you know, Jason Calacanis goes out and he says, “The most likely case is Bitcoin zero.” And he tweets this out, and then on the All-In Podcast, they’re talking about crypto and all the problems with it. Well, guess what? I decided to buy Bitcoin that day. And then the and then Google releases its new AI model, and it has this problem where you say, “Show me a picture of George Washington,” and it shows you a black guy. Yeah. And they’re like, “Google’s so woke. It’s going down the drain.” Well, your your year-to-date on Google is 41%. Uh, yeah, exactly. So, easiest trade easiest money to make was just to trade against the All-In Podcast. So, uh, here’s an example. Chamath tweets out the growing short case against Facebook, and he says, “The regulation is a problem, tax is a problem, antitrust is a problem, all this stuff.” I bet on Facebook. I’m up 5X. So, I made 500% on that trade. And so, basically, they went anti-Bitcoin for a period of time, and then they they swung back. They went anti-Meta, and they made this case why Zuck was being an idiot. He was investing way too much CAPEX into AR and VR, more money than had ever been invested in the development of the iPhone. It all sounds very, very smart. But my little simpleton brain went back to like, “Nah, I think I think Zuck’s the man.” I I know I spend a shit like I have an e-commerce business. Every dollar I can spend on the Facebook ad engine, I spend. Yeah, you’re like, “They’re begging you to take more money.” Yeah, oh, iOS 14 is was a problem? No, no, I I still spend more than I spent before that. Uh, and there’s no better place to spend a dollar in advertising than on Facebook. The close second was Google, right? So, when they went anti-Google for being woke, I bought Google when they went anti-Facebook, I went I bought Facebook, anti-Bitcoin, I bought Bitcoin, and it’s just been very, very profitable for me to do this.

Shaan Puri: That’s amazing. That’s really funny. I think It’s sort of like the inverse Cramer or inverse Galloway uh indexes where they just they just literally whatever this popular popular figurehead says, they just bet the opposite. I’ve basically been doing that for about two and a half years against the All-In Podcast. And only now was I willing to say it.

Sam Parr: Dude, by the way, I uh you we had this guy on the pod, he became a great friend of mine, named Val. Him and I, he was the main guy. I was a very small investor. We bought a building in Brooklyn. I killed it on that. I think I had a 28% annual like return, not including the tax stuff. But my worst investment this year, do you remember how I said I was remember how I bought a ranch? Right. I sold it this year. So stupid. Maybe I lost I lost money because I could have used that money to invest in something that made a lot more, but I basically uh like kind of broke even. So it wasn’t that huge of a loss. But it was so stressful. And my learning is that I had this issue where I sold a company, I made money, and I thought I was on top of the world, and I thought I could buy I so I I fully bought three different pieces of real estate intending to like turn into projects. Not one of them was great. Uh, two were bad, one was break-even, and I that’s been my biggest failure is like thinking like hubris and thinking that I’m amazing. And and and also buying real estate that you have to operate. It’s just like starting a a small business that you have to work 10 hours a week on. It sucks. It’s hard.

Sam Parr: Yeah, my rule is if it’s active, it has to generate more than 50%. The bar is way different. If it’s passive, it could be 7%, it’s fine. But um, if it’s active, it’s got to be more than 50%. If it’s an active investment. And so, that’s why I gave you the trades. I said passive, tax advantage, beats the market, right? Like I had this list. If I could ever find an investment that does that, and finally, I found one.

Best and Worst Product [05:35]

Shaan Puri: I thought it would be cool to like, you know, that’s like every, you know, like that’s like one of the five things that men love is like they always say they want to own a lot of land. And I did it, and I hated it. Like, dude, listen to this. Like I would drive up to I would I had a Tesla at the time. I would be in the country, and I would have these like workers come to like decide uh to put in a bid to pave the driveway. I would get a $70,000 quote and a $3,000 quote. Like that’s the that was the delta, and it was all because of the way I looked, and they were like, “This guy doesn’t know shit,” you know? Like it was crazy. I got taken advantage of so many times. It sucked. So, I I I don’t think I’ll be doing that anytime soon.

Sam Parr: And for that reason, I’m out. All right, what about worst investment? That was my worst investment was was any fully owned real estate. Any real estate that I was a investor in, I loved it. Anything that I fully owned and wanted to like make it my thing because of pride, I I failed miserably.

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Best and Worst Moments of the Year [07:15]

Sam Parr: All right, my worst investment, um, this was a little bit hard. I did well this year, but I would say if I so I I had to stretch back a couple of years and say, “What was the first worst over the last couple of years?” And I would say I made a general rookie mistake, which was I would buy on the upswing and I would sell during the panic times, meaning I would I would try to hedge bets, try to time markets. So when COVID happened, I thought, “Oh my god, the whole economy is going to shut down.” And I was right for a month, and then right after that, stocks exploded, and I was sitting on the sidelines where the stocks that I already owned started soaring, and I had to buy back in at higher prices. Crypto crashed with FTX and other things, and when morale was at its lowest, my conviction was at its lowest. I I behaved I behaved like a pleb. I’m not I’m not I’m not proud to say it. I’m ashamed to say it. I behaved like a pleb. When when things were bad, my conviction went low. When things were good, my conviction went high. This is the opposite way to make money. I kind of knew this, but in the moment, it was a lot harder than I expected to actually master my own psychology as an investor.

Shaan Puri: What is the word pleb? Are you thinking it means plebe?

Sam Parr: I say pleb. You say plebe. Oh, really? Which one of us is wrong? I don’t know which one, though. I don’t have enough conviction, but you might have taken another L there. Exactly. Such a pleb. I don’t even know how to say it. Yeah, it’s it’s sucks to be doing things that you know you you would advise people not to do.

Shaan Puri: In the moment. In the moment, by the way. This is why information is not power. Knowledge is not power.

Sam Parr: So, when COVID happened, uh, I think it was February in San Francisco, and you know, we were all in our apartments thinking the world was literally going to end. And I remember I it’s the only time I’ve ever done this, the market dropped, I think 30%. Literally the day it was its lowest, I sold 100% of everything I owned. Yeah, exactly. I thought bodies are going to pile up in New York. I thought the world’s ending, and I had friends who did the opposite of me, and our returns were drastically different. And that was the lesson and that like that moment had to teach me, “Do not do this.” You know, when Warren Buffett, he says all these smart phrases, and they sound cool, and you’re like, “Yeah, I’m in. I’m in.” When the tide goes low, I can see everyone swimming naked. “I’m in, that’s all you got to do. I’ll be a billionaire.” But then when it actually happens, it’s hard. It’s scary. It’s emotional, and I fell victim to that, and it sounds like you did too, uh, at least once.

Sam Parr: 100%. Also, during that time, I was picking I remember between two stocks. I was like, “Okay, I think the future is some version of AI, but also potentially VR and AR.” And I plowed a bunch of money into Unity instead of Nvidia. I was looking at the two, and I was like, “Is it Unity or Nvidia?” And I should have just bet on both, but instead I picked Unity, and Unity has has done nothing, and Nvidia became the most valuable company in the world. So, you know, sometimes you do that, too. That’s also a a way to lose.

Shaan Puri: What did what did Unity become?

Sam Parr: I’ve lost like 60% of my investment on Unity. Unity’s gone nowhere.

Shaan Puri: Is there like a threshold of like for your what’s your lowest trade dollar amount? Is it like $1,000 or always above 100,000?

Sam Parr: More like 100,000.

Shaan Puri: Got it. So I don’t have like an actual minimum, but I wouldn’t I’d be going to put in $1,000. It’s it’s not really like that exciting or it’s kind of a waste of time, right?

Sam Parr: It depends how you look at it. Like, for example, I think stock picking is stupid, but I think that you’re like, “Well, I spend like um five grand uh over the couple months just going to the casino.” Like this could be an exciting thing. Like I remember for the when the AMC shit was going crazy, I thought it’d be fun if I was like I was like, “All right, I’ll do the thing and I’ll put like only a grand in just as like just to play the game and then maybe I’ll talk about it on here.” And it it was dumb. It was stupid. It wasn’t even fun. Yeah, yeah, I’ve done that with like Dogecoin and stuff like that. But but yeah, that that’s that’s the true gambling budget. All right, let’s do the next one. Biggest L you took personally this year.

Shaan Puri: Dude, so my daughter was born uh 15 months ago, and I gave myself four months to like just be kind of lazy and not be on top of like my time management. And that like, you know how like on Thanksgiving, you’re like, “Yes, the night before, like the cookies are being made.” I could just it’s kind of the same day as Thanksgiving. It’s okay if I splurge. But then like Friday happens and you’re like, “Well, they’re leftovers. I got to eat them.” And then by Sunday, you’re still kind of picking out a little bit. I basically did that for like six months where I was like pretty horrible with my time, and I wasted so much time this year. Um, and it really bothered me. And so this year I’ve made some changes that I’ll I’ll talk about when we get to that category of like changes we’re making next year. But I wasted so much time when my daughter was born. And it wasn’t and this isn’t like people listening being like, “Well, you should have downtime to hang out with her.” It’s like, “Yeah, I did I did that. I was totally present.” But six months on the line when she’s at the nanny and I’m still kind of like moving slow and like, you know what I mean? It was kind of So what what do you mean by wasting time? What are we talking about here? I’ll give you an example. So, I would shift my schedule, like my workout schedule, so I could be with her in the morning. But and and that actually meant that she actually wouldn’t get out of bed until 7:00, the nanny would come at 9:00, and so between 7:00 and 9:00, I would hang out at home and then work out from, you know, 9:00 to 10:30, which is like a pretty lazy morning for me versus working out what I used to do at 7:30. And so the nanny now comes at 8:00, and I like, “Dude, I should have just switched to like I can now start my day a little bit earlier,” but I didn’t. So I was still going to the gym later and just lounging around the house for hours. Things like that. But like there was five things where it’s like accumulated where it’s like, “Dude, four hours, five hours a day was just wasted.”

Sam Parr: It sounds like you’re being hard on yourself. But okay, I’ll I’ll I’ll accept your L. Each man’s L is his own to to carry. It’s a it’s a burden he carries. You didn’t have that where you wasted time when you had your kid? Like, it’s okay, I think, to like be lazy for a while. I think what you just described as your unproductive day was sort of my productive day, so I don’t know. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m like, “Oh, wait, so you you took care of your kid and worked out in the morning? That sounds great. It sounds like a great morning. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Shaan Puri: It was just like I just I I didn’t get after it at all, and I found myself to be like you and also when you have a kid, I experienced this where I’m like, “Oh, nothing else matters.” But you should still kind of pretend it does so you could like kind of be productive, and I kind of like acted like nothing else mattered.

Sam Parr: All right. I um the biggest L I took, there were so many to choose from to be honest. From uh forgetting our anniversary and then uh trying to recover and guessing the date wrong, that was not great. Um, and by the way, she didn’t even care, which was like, “Oh damn, I’ve lowered expectations to that to that level.” Okay, got you. So that was a quick L I took. Um, the whole, I don’t know if you guys you Wait, can you solve Can you solve this for me? For are should anniversaries be the first time you dated or when you got married?

Shaan Puri: Once you get married, it switches to the marriage anniversary. It’s my official stance.

Sam Parr: I have been trying to say that it should be dating the whole time. Because you know what I mean? Like, sometimes you’ll date for five years. But then you you could do nothing for the marriage?

Shaan Puri: Fuck that. It should be when you start when you it should be your first date. That’s what an anniversary should be in my opinion.

Sam Parr: The first time we kissed with tongue. That’s it. All right, so um So then another L I took was uh I was a I was collateral damage to this whole, I don’t know if you know about the elf on the shelf fucking insanity. Like I lost my wife. Dude, it’s so creepy. this month, and I you know, I went to like a window thing and they were like, “What?” And I was like, “No, no, I just lost her to elf on the shelf.” Like this has been crazy. She’s up every night for four hours preparing this elaborate, you know, elf, um, you know, setup. And then she sleeps then she has to sleep during the day, and I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know what who tricked women in America into doing this, but it is um it’s like doing 75 hard except for you wake up at 2:00 in the morning to do it, and you do it for 30 days instead. What is it? So it’s like a doll that stares on the shelves and like is omnipresent and watches your children so you could scare them into not doing bad stuff? So, okay, so I think the original theory was like, you get a elf comes to your house and it sits on a shelf, and in the morning it moves. And you’re like, “Oh my god, it moved. How what’s up with that?” But women on the internet have taken this to a whole new level. It doesn’t just move, it creates schemes and plots and tricks and treats. Like, uh, you know, my kids wake up, they come downstairs, the entire living room has been turned into the floor is lava. There’s fire on the ground everywhere. The tree is covered in. It looks like a volcano now. The elves are hanging from the chandelier doing crazy stuff, or they take all of the underwear that was in all of the drawers of all of the house and they put it all over the roof of the house and you got to go outside and be like, “Oh my god, what did they do?” So, every night they create a whole are we to get our toilet replaced because they turned our toilet into a cereal bowl and then somebody flushed and now we just fruit loops just clogged the toilet. We got to get a new toilet. Wait, you just break your shit? Yeah, you just do crazy stuff. Every every night you come up with like a giant episode of Punk’d by Ashton Kutcher. A huge prank occurs. And that you have to come up with every night and you buy thousands of dollars of materials because the elves have their own sized stuff that you like, you know. Dude, if somebody had a knowing rodent in their home causing havoc, they wouldn’t put it on the shelf and say hi to it. They would kill it. What? Exactly. And so if you don’t know about this, you’re just like, “What what are you talking about? This is weird, strange behavior.” But if you’re in it, there’s guys out there right now that are sort of like PTSD shakes are coming over their body because they’ve also been experiencing this. Um, and I don’t know if I’m in the minority. I don’t know if I’m in the the slight minority or the majority. I don’t know who I don’t know how many people do this. I just know that my wife and her friends, they do this and she’s in these Facebook groups with hundreds of thousands of women and every morning they post the elaborate things that they set up. And then that spurs all of them to go even crazier with it. So, I’m going to say that Elf on the Shelf was one of mine.

Best Business Idea of the Year [20:26]

Shaan Puri: Uh, so, uh, this year I had to go to LA for uh a Hampton thing where I had an interview Rob Dyrdek in front of a a bunch of people. Very randomly, someone was like, “Hey, uh, I’m going to back home to LA. I’m in Austin right now. I’m going tonight.” Someone mentioned that in the morning, you’re going to LA. I’m with my wealthy famous friend, who I’m not going to say. Uh, they actually have a jet, and they’re going to LA tonight. And I got this text, and I had committed to uh putting my baby to sleep. This was like in the first handful of months, and I was like, “I’m going to be here every night.” And I was like, “Dude, I don’t want to sound like a douche, and I want, you know, that was this is I’m so grateful you offered me, but I can’t go because you want to leave at 6:00, and I said I’m going to be here till 8:30.” And he was like, “Oh, we’ll we’ll go at 8:30.” And I was like, “Awesome.” And I was like, “Shit, again, I don’t want to be a dick, but my friend Neville is coming with me uh tomorrow morning,” which he was, and I was like, “I I could never bail on him.” And he was like, “Great, we have room for him.” And and and they totally accommodated me. And so my best friend Neville and I flew to LA on this very wealthy famous person’s private jet, and I got to spend like three hours like learning from this guy. It was so fun and so awesome. And that was like one of my not just because we were flying private, it was just awesome that like I got to do this adventure with my friend. That was that was the best moment I had all year.

Sam Parr: But if you flew Southwest, would it have been the coolest moment of the year?

Shaan Puri: On the way back, because we had to change our flights, we flew Southwest next to the toilet. It was a very Ying and Yang situation, and it was still fantastic.

Sam Parr: Okay. That one didn’t win the award, though. That one didn’t win the award, but it was fun. It’s like, you know, you know uh you know that meme where there’s like a guy in the hoodie, says like, “Uh, nobody here knows, but I invested in Bitcoin in 2012.” That’s like how I felt like in line at Southwest, like, you know, like they should ask me. They should ask me. Hey, you want to know how I got here in the way here? That’s how it felt. I was like, “Somebody ask me.” It was like, “Oh, this is so different.”

Sam Parr: All right. Love that one. Um, okay, I’ll do a quick one. I I kind of struggled with this one. I guess I’ll give you a quick one. So for Thanksgiving this year, we were going to host it. I decided to um do a a a a full family vacation. So kind of like, you know, how do I Okay, we if we’ve done well, we’ve had some success, how do I make sure that that like, you know, makes everybody have a great time and and that that I care about in my little economy. And so I rented out this um this really cool house in Tahoe. I brought my whole family up to Tahoe, hired a personal chef who would cook us the Thanksgiving meal live, and I just remember there was one morning where I woke up and it was just the best morning. Like I took my dog out in the snow. My dog was like mind-blown at what snow is. So I took my dog for a walk early in the morning. It was crisp. I didn’t have my phone. I didn’t even know where my phone was. Came inside, my kids were all playing with their cousins, and that was so cool to see. Um, somebody was, you know, making breakfast in the other room and I could smell it. Me and my brother-in-law, we were playing uh we played a game of like horse on the little Nerf hoop that was in the house, and I just had the best morning, and I just remember being like, “This this was bliss.” Um, like if I could catch it. And it yeah, it ticked all my boxes, right? Like whole family living under one roof, kids are having a blast, I’m playing a silly game on a Nerf hoop. There’s not a worry in the world. We don’t, you know, we’re not busy, we’re not rushing. It was just a wonderful feeling. So I’m going to give my my Tahoe morning my coolest moment of the year.

Shaan Puri: The takeaway, by the way, should I’ve done that for two years now. I I did the first time I think last year. I when I was doing best moments, I was like, “It was either what I just said or this thing.” Taking family and just paying for it, and it sounds like a ridiculous and it’s very expensive and it’s very challenging for a lot of people. But if you can pull it off, it is almost always one of the best moments. It feels if and the second takeaway is the coolest moments that I think we’ve had for a lot of these things, it’s always doing things that benefit other people somehow. Do you know what I mean? Like accommodating other people into our lives is the it’s the best feeling. It’s usually not like some huge like traditional career accomplishment. It’s always like Right. It’s always doing something cool for other people. So I agree. That’s a good one that you have.

Sam Parr: Although yours was somebody flying you private.

Shaan Puri: The best I if no, the best part was uh doing it with my friend. Uh the fact that we got that we had this like shared experience together. That was that was great. Uh, all right, I’ve got a quick one for life hack. Do you want to know my you want to know my my biggest life life hack? Uh that I started doing it and this is so basic to people. But on Thursday, I do this on Thursday, not on Friday, I print out I’ll show I’ll I print out everything that I have to do for the next week, and up top is my Q1 focus and goals, and that’s like, you know, tell my wife how much I appreciate her every day, but also like traditional business goals and also fitness goals. And then I have what I did last week and any reflections on it, and then I have a category that says how my assistant can help me. And my assistant every morning prints this off at my house, and so it’s ready for me on Monday morning, and I carry this piece of paper with me around everywhere like during the workday, and that’s what I use to make sure I’m getting shit done. I don’t use Notion, I don’t use Asana, I don’t use any of that crap. And just having this printed out has been so much more helpful for me than any type of digital complicated shit.

Sam Parr: Totally. I have one over here on the ground. It’s like I I bought these if you go buy like sketch pads that like you know, uh artists or architects have. It’s really high quality paper, large pads with nice pens. Um, such an easy win to go to go analog instead of digital with that stuff. By the way, I think you should level it up and you need like a seal of sort or some sort of coat of arms for your family. I feel like you would like that. And like either stamp, wax seal, I feel like if you just made it more prestigious, honestly, it would be kind of amusing and it would be fun. And I I think you should go there. You like a presidential briefing. I completely agree. Yeah, exactly. Like just give it a little stamp and be like, “Hell yeah, that’s me. That’s how I roll.” And like this is us. This is the official. So I I I want you to do that to That’s a great idea. I actually completely agree. What’s yours?

Sam Parr: Okay, life hack for me, um the Highs and Lows channel. Have I told you about this, my Highs and Lows channel?

Shaan Puri: Is that for work?

Sam Parr: Yeah, kind of. I mean, it’s for everything, but I have a Slack channel for every company. I have a Slack channel called Highs and Lows. And in it, anytime there’s a high high in the moment of that business or a low low. So, you know, for example, on Christmas Eve, the Mexican government decided to ban all imports into Mexico of textiles, which effectively shut down my entire warehouse on Christmas Eve, and we can no longer like operate because our warehouse is in Mexico. Yeah, like two days ago. And so you’re like, “Ah, here we are. Business cannot not our e-com business has no inventory for the foreseeable future, and I’ve got millions of dollars of inventory sitting in a warehouse there that now is, you know, uh blockaded. Thank you, Mexican government. Thank you, new president of Mexico for this Christmas present.” And so, in the moment where I’m feeling a low, something bad happened, a lawsuit or a big client gets lost or someone key quits or whatever it is, right? I go into that channel and I just type what happened. But the beautiful thing is, instead of addressing the current problem or basking in the glory of the current high, what when I go to the channel, I just see the last one that I had because it’s right there scrolled up. And I just see, “Oh man, I had a huge low then. That feels like nothing now.” Right? Or I had a huge high before that also feels like nothing now. And it is this stoic trick of the brain to basically just write down, “I’m having a high or I’m having a low right now,” but in the place where I’m writing it, I see my last high or low and the one before that and the one before that, and it just like thermoregulates my brain. My brain says, “Oh, okay, it’s not as bad as it seems, nor is it as good as it seems.” It humbles me or it keeps my morale high, whatever I need in that moment. And um, it’s so effective just to have this little simple channel.

Shaan Puri: Have you ever heard of negative visualization?

Sam Parr: Yeah, like sort of imagining what the worst that could happen is, like worst case scenarios. Yeah. It’s a a tool that I I think it was popularized by the sto the the the famous Stoics. But basically, you sit down for about five minutes, and you instead of meditating, you just imagine the worst things on earth are true. Your kid is dying of cancer, your wife has already died, you’re broke, like you’re, you know, hurt, whatever. And then if you actually visualize that for like five or you know, so minutes, it kind of almost feels weird. It’s really strange. And then you wake up and you open your eyes, and you go, “Oh, sick. None of that’s true. How grateful uh I feel right now.” And it’s like a pretty useful tool. Uh and what you’re describing is very similar to that.

Sam Parr: Yeah, except for this is these are real moments that I remember and like I have evidence of versus trying to do this exercise. I mean, this is I’m saving people thousands of dollars in therapy. If you just create a little Highs and Lows channel, you’ll therapy yourself because you’ll go in and it’ll you’ll remember, “I’ve been high before, I’ve been low before, and either way, I walk out. Like it’s it’s that that Richard Kipling poem, “I treat triumph and disaster, I treat those two imposters the same.” And uh this has been the fastest, most effective way to do it.

Shaan Puri: Dude, that reminds you know one of my I think Conor McGregor has taken a fall from grace. I really don’t like him anymore, but he has a lot of like amazing things that he says that I buy into. And he’s got this one thing, do you remember? Have you ever seen what he says uh about having the same attitude in victory or defeat?

Sam Parr: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Shaan Puri: What is it what does he say? Would you know the exact line?

Sam Parr: Um, he’s he basically says, um, I forgot what it was. It was like, you know, humble in victory and something, you know, something in defeat, which is by the way, not what he does at all anymore. But yeah, yeah, that was his original original thesis. I’ll look it up. Uh, yeah, like I think last time he lost, he in the octagon, he was telling the opponent that He just said, “Humble in victory, humble in defeat.” And and actually last time he lost, he was screaming at his wife that he’s like, you know, she was cheating on him. Your your wife is in my DMs. Your wife is in my DMs. So he says, By the way, this is the full quote though. He should layer for some Conor McGregor quotes.

Sam Parr: I really want to create a compilation and just show it to him and be like, “Dude, you’ll you’ll love this guy.” And just see if it see if it reaches. So this is McGregor back when we both loved him. “I am cocky in prediction, I am confident in preparation, but I am always humble in victory or defeat.”

Shaan Puri: It’s the best, right? There you go, right? So, we did life hack. Let’s do now number eight, only four left. Number eight, Billy of the Year. Who is our Billy of the Year? We do this segment called Billy of the Week where we profile just a big baller shot caller, somebody who is either a billionaire or just making big moves. Who do you think was making the biggest of the big moves this year? So my pick is not going to sound sexy, but I’ll make a case. Um, do you know I don’t know if this ever happened to you, but in high school, sophomore year, and everybody has their place in the social hierarchy. You know who the nerds are, you know who the jocks are, you know who the theater kids are, you know who the glue guys that can fit in with everybody. And then you all leave for the summer. But then there’s always that one kid who leaves for the summer and they get that little second puberty bump. They get that extra, you know, four inches of height, they start growing a little facial hair, they they start working out all summer because their cousin came into town and taught them how to work out. You know, they picked up a hobby, they learned the guitar, or they start, you know, doing MMA or something like that. And then and then they start dressing differently, and you hear rumors that they hooked up with like a college girl during the summer and they had like a fling, and then they come back and they’re just a whole new guy. And there’s like a conversation like, “Is is Greg cool now?” Yeah. And undeniably, Greg is cool. Mark Zuckerberg pulled a Greg this year. So here’s the case for Zuck. His stock is up 500 500% in the last 24 months. He’s gained $100 billion of net worth. He is now the third richest man in the world, but more than that, he’s not just one of the rich guys, right? Because that that criteria would apply to Elon, it would apply to Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, there’s other guys who are super rich. He found a hobby that he loves and it got him into tremendous shape. Zuck started doing MMA, Jiu-Jitsu, uh striking, and now Zuck is fit, he’s ripped, he’s got a hobby that he loves that takes his mind off of work. He is playing the world’s most competitive game, which is the AI game, and I don’t know how much you followed this, but Zuck had a a a judo flip basically. He had a differentiated way to win. Uh, you know, Open AI was in front and Google had DeepMind, and Zuck came out and open-sourced all of their their models and created an open-source competitor to basically compete in this market, and he’s doing extremely well there. He went from a robot to a cool guy. He like dresses like a cool guy now and has like a cool guy haircut. So he he did like a personal style upgrade. He, you know, he’s not like, you know, Elon’s on his, you know, third or fourth failed marriage, you know, 11 kids from three different women, everything. Same woman since college. Zuck’s got his college sweetheart, got his daughters, you know, appears to be a really great dad by all accounts. And I just respect that. I just respect that he’s had this all-around game. Agreed. Right? He’s just had this really strong floor game where he’s just covered all the bases of what I consider to be a really good life. He’s doing what he loves on and off the court, and um, you know, as it’s lame to say, Mark Zuckerberg, but I got to say Mark Zuckerberg.

Shaan Puri: He uh have you like you you don’t know about running, but he ran a 5K time uh he ran a 5K recently and he ran it in 19 minutes. That’s really fit. He’s like really fit. Did you see that post where he talked about his Murph his Murph time? Yeah, the Murph. He did an insane Murph. And it doesn’t seem like he’s he’s not he’s not like one of these like you know like Vince McMahon is like 80 years old, like weirdly like old jacked or like you know Joe Rogan has this too where they have this like really weird body because they’re taking like TRT like crazy. It’s like oh these people have these weird Ozempic bodies or TRT bodies. No, he’s he’s He just like worked out a lot and ate good. Yeah, he like eats an apple and chicken. Like he he looks great. You know what I mean? He looks great. Yeah, that’s a great one. And he’s um I really like his wife. She’s turning into like this kind of uh I don’t know, like thought leader, Michelle Obama-esque, like, you know, like she’s kind of hip and cool and I care about her opinion a lot. Like she’s kind of like a a little bit of a taste maker. How do you even know this? Because I what I love about her is that she’s not out there trying to get limelight. She’s not doing anything that’s public, right? She does a lot of stuff privately with their foundation, but I I’ve seen her talk at at at at uh uh conferences and then I also Zuck’s been going to UFC and they’ll show her in the background uh at and then one of the fighters is like, she or she’ll be like, “Hey, that choke was cool.” And he’ll be like, “Do you want to learn it?” And she’ll be like, “Yeah.” And so she like comes to like puts the guy in a choke. Like she just kind of like in it and she just doesn’t seem, you know how like people love Princess Di because she was like, you know, woman of the people. It’s she kind of has that vibe a little bit and I I I appreciate that. I have not seen that. Uh but I have seen like they there was like an interview recently where somebody was like following him around for the day and she was there and she was just so down to earth and cool and was like making fun of him, but in a like, you know, like you know when couples are together and it’s like you can tell that they have fun together, but you can also tell that they don’t hate each other. It’s like you can make fun of somebody without being like really bitter on the inside. I just thought like the vibe I got, who knows, this is just a a little clip, but the vibe I got was uh was great.

Sam Parr: Um, so mine was uh do you remember meetup.com’s founder Scott is it Heifer man? The Heifer. Let’s call him the Heifer. So so the the the short of it is the story is basically this guy named Scott, he started um a a digital ad company that he sold for like $15 million, enough to get like very wealthy as a 28-year-old. He leaves tech and he goes and he joins McDonald’s, and he works at McDonald’s as a, you know, a cashier or something like that. And people like actually noticed him and someone wrote, I think Fast Company wrote an article and they’re like, “What the hell are you doing?” And he’s like, “Dude, I’ve been around ad executives for the last 10 years or or you know, five years, I’ve been around tech people. I needed to get out of my bubble.” And so I just went and worked at McDonald’s, and I learned it’s really hard work, and I’m so thankful that I am where I am, and I’m going to go back to that. But by the way, he didn’t just do it for like a day. This wasn’t like a field trip. Like he he actually worked there for like months and months. Yeah, and he worked there and then he left and he started meetup.com, which I think eventually was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, sold it, and as of late, if you go to his LinkedIn, he has not made an ordeal out of this. This is all other people like us talking about it and making an ordeal out of of it. But now he’s an Amazon warehouse worker. And he’s working in the Amazon warehouse and he kind of is doing the exact same thing, and I think that’s so baller that he’s doing that and so baller that he is not doing it for PR. It’s like some soul searching thing, and I think it’s fantastic and I think it’s pretty badass. So he was kind of I don’t know, he’s not actually a billionaire, but he’s quite wealthy, I would I would imagine. Yeah, but that’s that Billy that Billy mindset. It’s that Billy he’s got that he’s got B energy. Living life on your own terms, he he is doing that. Um, love it. Okay, that’s a good one. That’s a good pull. All right, uh what’s next?

Frame Breaking Person [07:31]

Sam Parr: Now this one this one is frame breaking person. So we should explain this one. So both you and I love one specific thing that I I don’t even think other people have a word for. We call it frame breaking. It’s somebody who breaks your frame. Scott is a great example of this. It’s somebody who lives their life or acts in a way that sort of defies your expectation, breaks your frame on what’s either normal, what’s acceptable, what’s possible, what’s cool. It’s somebody who just lives differently in a way that just shatters your your your norm, your worldview norm. And I I wanted to make a category for this because this is one of my favorite things when I meet somebody who’s like this. So, frame breaking person, who did you have this year?

Shaan Puri: I’ll uh I’ll say frame breaking is this guy Brian Johnson. So Brian Johnson is the guy who wants to live forever guy. And he’s frame breaking, not because the he wants to live forever uh shit, which is definitely cool, but I hung out with him. And so for those who don’t know, Brian Johnson is the guy who started a company uh that kind of turned into Venmo and a bunch of other things. He sold it for $500 million and now he’s spending a lot of money to try to live forever, and you see him on Instagram all the time. He said something to me, I was like, “Why are you doing this?” Um, you know, and we were just talking about stuff, and he goes, “You know, I read this book on Magellan.” And Magellan was a a sailor and the explorer in the 1500s or 1400s, and he basically sailed around the globe and he proved all this amazing stuff. And I just thought it was so amazing. And I was starting to and I made a list of like the top 10, top 15 people to ever live and what their contributions were, you know, uh the Wright brothers with flight, the person who invented electricity or discovered electricity, like people like that. And he’s like, “None of them were like rich. Like it like money didn’t impact people uh it didn’t impact the world as much. And I just thought that if I could solve like a really hard problem and contribute to the world, I thought that that would be a life worth living.” And I just decided that I’m going to try and do everything in my day to be renowned in the year 2500. He’s like, “In 2500, I hope to create like and contribute to the to society in such a way that in 2500, they talk about me.” And I thought that was absolutely bananas. I don’t know if I want to do that, but I thought it was so cool that he was like, “I don’t care about money because money and I was like, he’s like that. He’s like, “Who was the richest person 500 years ago?” I was like, “I don’t I don’t I don’t know.” He’s like, “Yeah, that’s my point.” But you’ve heard of Magellan. Uh and so I thought it was such a frame breaking moment um for me to to like hear his reasoning as to why he’s trying to do what he’s doing, which is prolonged death or solve for death. And I’m he’s like, “If I solve that, would you say that will I’ll be remembered?” I was like, “Yeah, yeah, you you will.” And he’s like, “That’s how I want to spend my day.” That’s an amazing answer. Um, I love that he did that. Just all the things you just said, making a list of the 15 most influence the most impactful or influential people ever. What a what a list. I think I I want to go do that just to even see what that list. It was like it was like um it was like Orville it was the Wright brothers. It was the the Gutenberg press. It was Magellan. Like there was like 10 of them. He was like, “These changed the world forever.” And he’s like, “Do you know how many of them are like rich people? None. Uh they were just like inventors or something like that. I thought you were going to say Orville Redenbacher and I was like, I’m not going to I’m not going to complain if that’s the if he’s on the list.

Sam Parr: Okay, so my answer for frame breaking person is Nick Gray. And I could see that. This is going to be a answer, but it’s my true answer. This is my truth and I’m going to speak my truth. Uh, it is not it’s not Elon Musk, it’s somebody I met and hung out with. I had a uh a flight, so I went and spoke at this event and they they were like, “Hey, we’ll we’ll fly you private.” And I was like, “Okay, cool.” And Nick was going to the same place as I was. He’s like, “Hey, can I come with you?” And I was like, “Yeah, no problem. That’d be great.” And so I Nick was the the same in that situation. Yeah, exactly. So I was like one-on-one with him for like five hours or something. On a, you know, which is that’s a long time, that’s a long conversation. That’s like more time than I spend talking to most people, right? And I walked away and I’ll just going to read you my um text to my sister after I hung out with Nick. So I hung out with Nick, I tried to play cool, and afterwards I get off the plane and I go, “I just hung out with a guy who has has such a zest for life.” I go, “I’ve hung out with a lot of rich people, but this guy’s rich in a different way. He is rich in social wealth, he’s got tons of friends, he is rich in amusement. I feel like everything he does in a way, everything he does in a day, amuses him and he’s doing it on his terms.” I go, “He is corny and totally himself in the best way possible.” And I was just I sort of tell you a couple of other things that just stood out to me. Like prolific things this guy did this year. So we’ve talked about the Tokyo blind date where he says, “I want to go to Tokyo, but I don’t want to go alone. Fill out this Google form, and I want to take one person on a blind date with me to Tokyo.” And he gets thousands of responses. He picks a girl, he almost falls in love on this date. He does the whole thing publicly and it goes viral. This guy’s having fun. The next thing he does, he goes to India, and he stays in India for like a month. And I’m like, “What are you doing in India?” I’m Indian. I haven’t been to India for a month in like 10 years. And he’s like, “Oh, I just love the culture. I just wanted to go. I know I have a couple of friends that I’ve met in other travels. I just want to go visit their hometown.” And so he goes to these like remote towns in India and he’s learning their way of life and their foods and all this stuff and he’s blogging about it. And he knows that in India, one of the ways that people like they don’t have Hinge or Tinder in the same way. Like the the old school way in India is you run what’s called a matrimonial ad in the newspaper. So this is how my mom met my dad, which was uh my dad runs an ad, it says, you know, um 21 years old, 6 feet tall, you know, have a bachelor’s degree in engineering, um, you know, good head of hair, comes from a good family, that sort of thing. And Nick finds this so amusing. He’s like, “I got to do this.” So he runs a matrimonial ad, and actually, he starts AB testing different matrimonial ads and he’s showing them to me. It’s like, “5’9, full set of teeth.” And then what’s like, you know, you know, like he was He has a blog. And you know, things like that. At one point, he was like, “How do I make sure that she’s like fit and like not like crazy overweight?” And I was like, “We were like uh like could you like but like I have to be able to lift you on my like I want to be able to lift you on my shoulders, like I’m not strong.” Yeah, yeah, exactly. So starts running these ads, but he’s not running it like as a prank. He was genuinely curious and interested to see what would and he just he just over and over again had these little life experiments and just followed he just I the way I text my sister, I go, “I feel like he’s just taking the bounce of the ball of life, and he’s just going with it.” So for example, I’m like, “Dude, you should like start a YouTube channel or something.” He goes, “Oh, I have one.” I go, “What? I’ve never seen it.” And he shows me his YouTube channel. Do you know what his YouTube channel is? I’ve watched the videos, but what do you mean what it what it is? It’s reviews of like cruise ships of which bedrooms he likes on cruise ships because he likes cruises. And guess what? All his followers are old people who are retiring and going on cruises and they’re like, “Thanks, I’m going on this cruise next year. I’m retired. I’m 74. I I was wondering if the bathrooms come with a vanity kit.” And like sure enough, that’s what but he’s so into it that he just I’ve always said the best product is you pushed out. And that to me is Nick Gray. Nick Gray, he just took himself and flipped himself inside out and he’s just pushing himself out in the world and if you love it, if you hate it, he really could care less, it seems like. And I just found it I don’t know, very like eye-opening to see somebody who is their own corny self on on full blast and I really admire that. For example, he’s I’m interested in stocks, he’s interested in stocks, but the way he’s interested in stocks is different. He is a huge fan of one stock. You know the one. Uh CloudFlare. CloudFlare. He hosts his birthday party at CloudFlare. He creates a WhatsApp group of other CloudFlare believers and every earnings call, he texts the group and he says like, “You know, I hope the earnings gods are with us today. I’m feeling lucky. I’m wearing this and I’m just I I I’m ready for all that this Q2 call brings us.” And he’s Dude, listen to what he did. He He you know, I met Nick Gray because we were all bloggers like 10 years ago. And he, you know, there’s like 30 of us friends who are bloggers. He went to each of us and he goes, “I noticed your website is hosted on whatever, GoDaddy, this or that. Would it be okay if my assistant transferred your account from GoDaddy to CloudFlare? We’ll do it completely for free, and in fact, the hosting property or the hosting thing that you have, they’re charging you $100 a month. CloudFlare is going to charge you $40 a month.” I went and got a deal. I was like, “Why are you doing this?” He goes, “Because I’m a shareholder of CloudFlare and I need you guys to start using it because I think you’re going to love it even more.” Dude, I swear to God, he switched my blog to CloudFlare for free, and now I’m I’m saving uh uh $600 a year. He’s like a shareholder of his own life in a way that I am not. He’s like an activist shareholder. Like he he was like, “What are the best gyms that have swimming pools and saunas in New York?” And he found them and they were super busy. But what he realized was that the all the gyms had poor SEO, and when he was Googling for best gym and sauna, like nothing was really coming up. And so what he did was he started writing blogs about other gyms as if they had the best pool and sauna, not the one that was near him that actually did, so that it would go down in the rankings and be less busy, so that he would have it more to himself. And these are just like little life experiments he was doing. And he made millions of dollars doing this too because he loved museums. So he created a business about renegade museum tours where he would take you on his own tour because museums are boring and he’s not boring and he would take you on his own tour, unofficially, not a part of the museum, and ended up selling that for millions of dollars. He like he he we did the thing about his gag at the party where on the way out, he’s like, “Hey Sean, call my phone, I’ve got a gag.” I’m like, “A gag?” He’s like, “Yeah, I have a gag I want to do. A little bit.” I’m like, “A bit? Are you a comedian? What’s going on?” And then I call his phone and he whips out this phone case that’s a looks like a butcher’s knife, like a machete, and he puts it up to his ear and goes, “Hello.” And he just wanted to make us laugh. And I’m like, this guy just goes through life trying to make himself a laugh. I the the the last text I sent my sister, I go, “It’s like he, you know the movie Limitless? It like it’s like he took the Limitless pill, but instead of it getting he didn’t give him any superpowers. He just is using that pill to enjoy his life in a way that’s the rest of us are not. And so he broke my frame. Our friend Sahil, Sahil Bloom, um, he’s got this new stick where he shares like text, like he’s like in these group chats and I guess he’ll say like some inspirational shit and then he’ll like he’ll tweet it out. He’s like, “Here’s what I shared with this chat.” And it’s like Like a realization this morning. First of all, wait, as this I have to say, I love Sahil, so I’m saying this with love, but he’ll say some like, “Yeah, like live laugh love for dudes” type of shit. Yeah. And uh like, you know, like, you know, the thing about wisdom is that you only earn it through like hardship. Like, you know, whatever. And then some guy retweeted and he goes, “Bro, if a dude said this in my group chat, he’s getting kicked out right away.” And your sister’s reply to that is like, like Yeah, exactly. She went to a she went to his blog and was just like, “He looks funny.” And then moved on with life. I was like, “You know, I just typed you like an essay about how this man changed my life.” And she’s like, “Oh, I Google image searched him.” You’re like, “Dude, do you like Oprah? Cuz I’m doing some Oprah level shit right here.” And she just like dismissed you. Uh, that’s pretty funny. Nick Gray is the man. Nick Gray is the man. Are we going to do favorite guest now? Yeah, let’s do uh best guest and then we’ll do best idea, best business idea that we had on the podcast. So let’s do best guest first. Who do you got? This is I worked really hard not to have recency bias, but Amjad uh from Replit. We barely even talked about like the financials of his business, but I’m pretty sure it’s like a billion-dollar company, right? Or like in that Yeah, yeah, last last round was like right under a billion dollars. So like right, you know, he built this huge company. I think he’s only 36 or 37. Crazy smart. Like his blog is so good. He’s not just smart like you talk to him, like you he like is prolific. He writes all this amazing stuff. He he said one little small line that like I could have dismissed as like a fortune cookie thing, but he was like telling how he makes the decisions based off of what will be a better movie. But he gave like eight examples of that, and I totally am bought in, and I thought that he was amazing and one of the reasons was because of that like live life to be a good movie. I thought it was fantastic. Yeah, he said, “Whenever whenever I’m at a fork in the road on a decision of what to do in life, I just ask, ‘Well, we’ll make the better story.’” Yeah. And then I just do that one. It was great. He was so fascinating. Uh that episode I on YouTube, I think it has 200,000 views. It was it was a huge hit. And it was one of those things where we were recording it and he’s like, he’s low energy. And often times high energy people will do better because that’s just like whatever how people are. But and I was like, “I am enthralled by this podcast.” Like a lot of times if you spend an hour and a half on Zoom, you get tired. I was totally excited at the end of that pod, and he was a very low mellow uh low energy mellow guy. And I was like, “I don’t know if this is going to hit or not, but I I love it.” And so it totally hit. So a lot of people thought he was amazing as well. Yeah, there’s there’s almost half a million downloads across YouTube and and audio on that one. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah, it’s at 3:30 on YouTube. All right, so mine, I have two. One is the highest viewed episode of the year and one is the lowest viewed episode of the year. So, I’ll start with the obvious one, the highest viewed episode. This is the episode I did with Manish Parbray. This have 2 million? I think it was It’s at two and a half million on YouTube alone. Wow. Uh so it’s the first first first podcast episode. We’re doing this for four or five years now. First podcast episode that crossed like a million on on YouTube. So that was cool to see. But in the moment, I knew it was a banger. Like it was the I I felt like it was the best best best podcast I’ve ever done. I remember preparing for it for two weeks. I flew out there, we hired a film crew, we went to his house. I went to his house the day before and hung out with him to like kind of warm up and prep him. Like I I gave it my absolute all for that interview and it and it paid off. He told he said two things that stood there’s three things that stood out to me about him. Uh he gave this story on the podcast about I was like, “So what? All right, you’ve told me about Buffett, you’ve told me about yourself, you’ve told me about you, you know, your friendship with Charlie Munger. Like what makes a great investor?” And he basically was he gave me the keys. He was like, “Um, you know, people think the money’s made in the buying buying and the selling, it’s made in the waiting.” And he basically told the story about he goes, “You ever watch Seinfeld? You know that episode where Elaine goes on a uh she gets this new boyfriend and it’s going great, and Elaine loves this guy and he seems so perfect. And then they go on vacation together and on the flight, she’s got like snacks and a movie and like all the stuff to like entertain her. And he just sits there and he just staring at the seat in front of him, just raw dogging it. And she’s like, “Are you sure you don’t want like to watch this or read a book or do you want a snack?” And he’s like, “No, I’m I’m fine.” And she’s like, “By the end of the flight, she’s like, I got to break up with this guy. Like this guy’s a maniac.” Uh for just sitting there staring at the seat back in front of him. By the way, what a brilliant a brilliant episode idea. Does I know, right? How do you come up with that? Just like he’s perfect except he stares at the scene in front of him on a flight. Yeah, she’s just like, “I can’t do it. I can’t do it.” And he’s like, “No, I’m fine.” And he’s like, “That guy would make a great investor. If you can have fun watching the paint dry, you can be a great investor.” And my takeaway was like, “Oh, I’m probably not going to be a great investor. Got it. Got it. It’s not me.” But but at least I I knew what the formula was. The other things were by I I’ve the life hack of going to these people’s houses for the podcast. Hold on, that was a really good comment. I know what the that ain’t for me, but I know what the formula is. That’s actually a pretty cool. Yeah, it’s you know, you know the answer. Same thing with Amjad. Amjad goes, “I’ve realized, you know, my advantage. My advantage is that I persist. I I can push the boulder up the mountain for a long time. Like I’m just willing to endure.” And I was like, “Oh, okay, cool. Not going to compete with you. I can’t do that.” Yeah, you’re like, “I’m happy I know what it takes and I’m happy I know I don’t have it.” Yeah, exactly. The girl, oh, she’s really into a guy who’s, you know, got these traits. All right, it’s not me. Good nice to meet you. See you later. Um, so going to these people’s houses, I think it’s just this life hack where you pick up so much of their energy and their lifestyle and their way of being. Like, I did Manish right before I did Joe Lonsdale. Joe Lonsdale, you go to his house, it’s this it’s this elaborate mansion, beautiful, beautiful mansion, you know, backyard, Olympic size swimming pool with statues that are shooting water out of their mouth and and he’s got like an old gun from the Victorian age and that’s like what he’s into. He’s got a full staff that’s serving us breakfast and just like full staff that just operates in his house. And he’s like a high-performance machine. And right after we left, Elon Musk was coming over for a a lunch with the, you know, the senators of of of of the area. And I was like, “Wow, this is a lifestyle that I just it you know, broke my frame.” Then I go to Manish’s house and we’re like, “Hey, can we come over?” He’s like, “Yeah, sure, stop by.” I’m like, “Is it okay if we come between 4:00 and 4:20?” And he’s like, “Yeah, come whenever you want.” And we go over and he’s hanging out. He’s wearing basketball shorts and his his flip-flops, and he just took a nap, which he does every day, and he shows us his nap room. And he’s like, “Yeah, like my whole job is to make, you know, a couple great decisions a year. So I just read and I think and I just try to have a great calm state of mind and I meet interesting people and that’s all I do. I don’t have to like go go go go go and I don’t have to meet the senators and I don’t have to have And he shows me his library where we record the podcast. He’s got thousands of books. He’s read all of them. And um it was just so interesting to see these different these different ways to win. And then you see them up close in person and that’s just a very different style. It’s shadowing them for a day. Like with Joe Lonsdale, I went in the morning at 8:00 a.m. and I did the morning workout with him and then I had breakfast with him, then we jumped in the cold plunge. All of that before the podcast. Hanging out with these people was the real win. The podcast was just the cherry on top. So that was that was my favorite. And then I’ll also give a shout out to the lowest viewed episode of the year that I thought was amazing, which was the episode I did with Mike Posner. Also went to his house and um they said the lowest views because you know, he’s a rapper, musician, maybe it’s not a fit with our audience. I think this guy was amazing. He was he was uh an incredibly positive guy and he had all these little micro lessons that were amazing. Two of them that stood out to me. One was he has this phrase where he was talking about how he he made this hit song, his first song went like quadruple platinum. And then he was always chasing that high in his 20s to do it again. And the next song went double platinum, but it felt like a failure in comparison. Next song, single platinum. Oh my god, he’s on this downswing. And then the next one didn’t even go platinum. And he’s like, “The mistake I was making was I would go to the studio try to make a hit.” And I I went there to try to make a hit song and my my that wasn’t how I made my first hit song. First hit song, I just did what I thought was dope. And then then I just started trying to play the game too much, trying to make hits and I all I succeeded was making something I hated. And I just thought this is such an applicable thing for business, especially for people out there who have not tasted their first big win and all they want is a big win, or they have a big win and then they need they feel they need to top that with their next one. And they start going to the studio to try to make a hit and he said, “At the end of the day, I figured out I’m just going to make what’s cool to me and sometimes the whole world will agree.” And I just thought that was such a dope philosophy as a creator to to take, which is I’m just going to make what’s dope for me and then once in a while the whole world will agree with me. Which by the way, uh like very meta example here. The the I don’t know how the audio did, but the YouTube on this did 13,000. That’s like one of the lower in the past year. I listened to it and I loved it. I thought it was so good. And then the comments are, um, “This is the best episode ever.” Uh, the second comment, “This is the best episode MFM episode ever.” Like people loved it in the comments and for some reason it didn’t get views. That’s insane. It’s also good not to chase those views, I think, because this is I thought it was fantastic. It’s weird. Why do you think it didn’t hit? To take his approach. Doesn’t matter. I just do what’s cool to me and sometimes the whole world agrees, and sometimes they don’t. Most of the time they don’t, that’s okay. And so the the you know, the two examples I gave, in the Manish one, okay, it gets 3 million plays. In that case, the whole world agreed, but I felt the same way about the Mike Posner one and I’m proud of both of them the same because I thought they were both dope. All right, last two categories. Best product. What do you have? I have a lame answer. I’ll go quick. It’s just Chat GPT. Yeah, it’s pretty dope. It’s the same product I would have picked last year, but it got way better. Like the same product, it’s the same name, but it’s a totally better product. I and and I also have found new ways to use it. It’s almost like you got onto Hogwarts and you’re learning new like, “Oh, you’re learning how to use your wand.” It’s like, “Oh wow, I got I could do that spell with it, I could do this with it.” That’s how AI feels to me, and I just wrote Chat GPT as my my quick way of saying it. Dude, I had a friend over, uh some family friends over yesterday for Christmas, and he’s worked at uh Open AI for four years. Uh I cornered him. I just cornered him. And he’s a lot smarter than me, and I I had my hand on his shoulder. I was like, “Here you go, have a seat. Have a seat. Sit down. Here’s a computer and here’s a list of questions. You want to start from the top? Let’s get let’s get after it.” Yeah, we’ll eat turkey later, but have a seat. It was just peppering him with questions. Uh I think that was a uh Chat GPT is a good one. Um What was yours? Best product? This thing. It says, well, the focus The brick? The focus is off. It’s the brick. This is a $29 thing. It has some type of I don’t know what it’s called, the RFID, whatever. So for the audio audio listeners, Sam’s holding up a little tiny square. It’s like, you know, 1 inch by 1 inch. And this is a thing that just nukes your phone. It’s basically, it’s the size of an AirPod case, and it’s a piece of plastic with some type of chip in there. You download their app. I think this thing is $25. Every morning, when I’m getting ready to go to the gym, I walk by my door and I brick my phone, which means it’s completely unusable other than making phone calls, so my wife can call me for an emergency, Spotify, and uh my workout app. And so I will keep it like that until noon, usually, so I can’t answer texts, I can’t use Slack, can’t use email, no Wikipedia, no Chrome. All I can use is True Coach, which is where I have my workouts, phone call for emergency, and uh Spotify. And it is awesome. It makes my life a just a little bit better every morning. Uh I I’m I’m a big fan of these guys. Uh have you ever used one? I’ve not used it. Um maybe I should. That’s a good case. It’s awesome, man. You can like I have like a workout setting and then you could have like um driving setting so you could just make it like YouTube and like I I listen to podcasts on YouTube. Uh so you can have YouTube and maps available. Like that’s it. And so it’s pretty cool. And I can’t uh unbrick my phone unless I come home and I scan it again. And so it’s a it’s pretty amazing. So that’s been my best product. And is there like an emergency or like an oh for real for real I need Google Maps right now? Like is there a way to override it if you needed to? Yeah, but I think you only get three times to do that. And the third time you do it, this brick that you’ve purchased, it’s uh useless. And so it’s just like, “Oh, but I bought that thing for $30. I want it to work.” Like that type of like uh uh resistance is is just enough. Yeah, I don’t know if I’m built for that level of self-discipline. You know, back in the day, I bought that um wristband called Pavlock, which is basically like Pavlovian training for yourself. So it’s a wristband where you electrocute yourself. Uh you get a a slight you get a you get a small electric shock. Not actually that small, but you get an electric shock in your arm when you do something that you kind of But it kind of hurt. It was like out. But you know, I was using it for my diet and it’s like, “Okay, I’m going to eat this piece of pizza and then I got to like voluntarily push this button to like shock myself.” And I just didn’t. And instead, all I used it for was just a conversation piece. Like I’d be somewhere and be like, “What’s that?” I’d be like, “Oh, try this on. Watch this.” And it became my party trick to be cool instead of having anything to do. Check it out. I’m I’m a freak. I’m unique. Yeah, exactly. Like so you use it? I’m like, “No, no, no.” Does it work? I have no idea. Don’t even try. What’s um The hell if I know. Yeah, you got you should try this. It’s it’s pretty awesome. And then the change that you’re going to make next year. Uh mine’s mine’s fast. Um I’m getting an office. Uh I’m sick of like working from home all the time. No more working from home. Yeah, like I I I it’s it’s cool a few days a week, uh I guess, and it’s cool when you have to do it. Uh but yeah, I I we’re getting an office. I’m getting an office. Uh I need to be around people. It’s just like, you know, even when business is going well, you’re like, “Yeah, let’s get on a Zoom.” And uh But your company is remote, so you’re going to get an office and then there’s local people or what are you going to do? We have 20 employees and like 11 of them are in New York City. So, we have enough. Uh and so we’re getting But you’re not in New York, so what are you going to do? I live an hour away, so I’ll just go three days a week. Oh my god, what a horrible decision. Do I have to talk my friend out of signing up for a voluntary two hours of commuting a day? Do I need to show him the statistics that show how much you hate your life the longer you commute? Dude, but what’s the uh like the alternative is that I’m just like in my kitchen and it’s like I celebrate with an emoji. You know, it’s just lame. Look, dude, I let you break your phone. I let you care about dressing up. I let you do all these things that you know, they’re they’re self-harm, but I let you do it because there’s some greater good. Commuting two hours a day is a horrible idea. You go to your office. How often do you What was the last time you saw a coworker? I guess you work with your wife. That doesn’t count. Here’s what I did, which was way more genius. Diego, who’s on this call right now, who helps me with all my content, he lived in Baltimore as of a month ago. And then I called Diego and I said, “Hey Diego, how’d you like to live within 10 minutes of me?” And he’s like, “Oh, I’d be down.” And I go, “Cool. How do we do that in the next two weeks?” He’s like, “I guess I’d have to figure out a way to transport my dog.” And then he quit his job, or he didn’t quit his job, his wife quit her job, he got broke his lease, he rented an RV and drove across the country in seven days, and now he lives within 10 minutes of me, and we see each other every day. We transformed my garage into an office for ourselves, and um it’s great, and that’s the way to do it. Wait, so is is the expectation that he’s going to live in an RV for an extended period of time or is he going to rent a house? No, he got an apartment nearby and uh lives in a cool place, and I told him, I said, “Hey, you’re moving to California, so here’s a pay raise to cover the cost of your move and the and the higher cost of living out here, and come live in California. Who wants to be in Baltimore, bro? And uh come come hang out with me. It’s going to be way more fun.” And we agreed to do it. Was it weird after not doing that for three years or whatever? Well, the weird part is like I realized how how distracted my schedule is because like he’ll come over and we’re supposed to work, and then it’ll be like, “Oh, but I got to like go drop off my kid at school, then I got to come back.” Then my trainer comes over, and then I work again, and then like my kid wants to play like Jenga for a second, so like be right back. And I realized like, “Oh, you know, when somebody else is there, you’re acutely aware that like, wait, hold on, I’m taking a break here.” And how many of those mini breaks I had. So I had to kind of rejigger that to be a little more focused time. But honestly, it was like, well, it’s just better. It’s like all all the times we would be doing calls, us being in person during those, even if it’s not perfect. So, so, you know, for example, sometimes he just comes and works out of the office even before I’m there. I’m dropping my kids off, but he’s just there. He just treats it like an office. And then we just happen to be there together a bunch of times. But the the key for me is I don’t have 20 people, right? So I can do this with because I have two people on my team and that’s all I need. Yeah. Yeah. I I might do it in Westport where I live, but I uh you know where I work out most days is the library. Dude, I’m in the library and it’s just like me and then like 16-year-old girls. You work out there? Like exercise? No, like type like type on my computer. Like it’s like I I I freaking love the library. I work out of the library all the time and I’m like Libraries have a great vibe. Dude, it’s so much better than like a coffee shop or a we work. Uh libraries are great. Um Yeah. There’s a there’s you and I were in Entrepreneur Magazine last year and they have a copy of it, like they have like a magazine section and uh you know, I definitely move that magazine to the front and everyone’s like, “Oh, I’ll read it.” I’m like But we’re not on the cover, right? Are we on the inside? Do you have to open it up? I got to open it up. And when people walk by, I got to be like, “Who’s that guy in the magazine? Is is he right there?” Oh, what? It’s him for page 16. Yeah. Oh, did you ask did you just ask me if that Yeah, it is. Uh no, I like the library. What’s what’s yours? Okay, the library is a great one. Um What category are we even on? Uh change you’re making. Oh, change I’m making. Uh this is going to sound stupid, but um it’s not for me. I’m all in on music this year. I decided that um I want to be I I want to do more music stuff. And so I picked up piano again. Playing and I hired so I basically hired somebody to come teach me piano because I did it like in seventh grade and I can play like fur Elise and that’s it. How many lessons are you in? I’m I’m starting next week. And the second one is I I hired a guy because I’ve always like you can now make like most music is now made on a computer. And I’m like, “Okay, I know computers, but I don’t know how to make music on a computer.” And I kind of want to see what’s like the latest and greatest of that. So I hired somebody who’s like, you know, those people that know how to like make songs on a computer. Are you talking about like Like like beats or like you’re going to like record a cover? Whole songs. Whole songs. You want to write or you want to cover? Original. Start with covers. Yeah, start with covers always. And then and then learn to make an original song. And I think that that’ll be really fun. And so I and the reason why is um well, the reason why is because it’s fun. Uh but two, I uh two things are happening. One, AI is making it easier and easier to make art and software and things that I things that were previously off limits or took would take a lot of skill to be able to do something cool. Now, a little bit of coding skill lets you do a lot. And a little bit of music skill can do a lot using using these new tools. Um but also I’ve just like I have a a gym I go to for my physical body. I want a creative gym. And I got this idea from Tim Ferriss. He was talking about how one of the ways he he keeps his mind right and stays in a like an awesome state of mind and is able to produce great content and be really creative, he works out his creativity. He’s like, and it doesn’t have to be in the thing I’m doing. So if I’m writing a book, it doesn’t have to be that I have to just practice writing. He’s like, “I might paint or do drawing or calligraphy or archery or anything that is sort of like a a creative gym session.” Yeah. And I do that in the morning and he’s like, “It’s like when you go to the gym and then suddenly you have more energy and you’re performing better at at work, why is that? Same thing with a creative gym session. So I I like that idea and I thought, “Oh yeah, this is something I could see more people doing in the future. It makes sense to me. I’m going to start doing this just the way I I I go to the gym in the morning. I’m going to go to the creative gym, you know, two or three times a week and start doing something that’s highly creative. Dude, that’s so good. I think that’s fantastic. You know, um you know, Sarah takes, my wife, she takes piano and singing class classes, like lessons. And so She’s on top of it. You guys can can vibe out. But what I’m trying to encourage her to do is sign up for some type of open mic night or just like something where it’s like a you can have like a recital. Well, dude, I got inspired by my cousin. He did this so I was like, “Oh, I’m going to do this.” And then it’s so funny when you put it out there, people start just giving you clues on how to win. So, my sister was like, “Oh yeah, do you know our cousin Neil? He does that. He’s hired a piano coach, he’s doing it all the time. And then he went to an old folks home and he performs there once a week as his recital. And it gives them so much joy and I’m like, “Wow, what a great win. A low stakes way to have a performance that brings other people joy and it’s just like so wholesome. I was like, “Wow, what a great idea. Because you need like a when you’re in my opinion, when you’re doing these new things, you need like um a capstone. You need like an essay, you need some type of uh beginning, middle and end of like, “All right, I have now achieved level one.” It’s like that’s kind of why karate is kind of cool because there’s belts. Like you need some type of like You break the wood board at the end. Well, there’s like a there’s like a belt like where it’s like, “All right, I am working towards this. Nice. I crossed the threshold. Next.” Like a that framework is I think a very helpful, you know, with writing, it’s like I want to publish a book. It is published. Like, you know, there’s some type of like uh uh destination. I think that that would be cool. That would be cool for you. And I think it’s by the way, great. Like you you give you and other people tease me for I I like clothing. It’s it’s the same shit. It’s just like some type of creative like there’s no money, there’s like it’s about the journey, that type of like vibe and it is exciting to like, you know, beauty and art, like that shit feels good on the soul. I think it’s great that you’re doing this. I think that it would be really fun if you had some type of capstone project thing. Yeah, the other thing I’m doing is I’m taking the Jesse Itzler 2025, like how to plan your year, and I’m actually doing it. So like yesterday I was doing his get light part where I’m cleaning out I’m just getting rid of stuff. I’m getting light before the end of the year and closing out the year properly. I did my thanks stuff and I started writing my thank you notes. Like I’m I’m buying in and I’m actually doing it. So if if you want to hear it, go listen to the Jesse Itzler episode. I was pretty inspired by that. Also, this is We have the calendar. We have the calendar. Uh I we use the calendar. So like I I sit in our little area where we have the calendar. I I totally use it. I think it’s fantastic. Cuz isn’t it crazy how some of these things, maybe 26 and 27-year-old Sam and Sean would have made fun of these things as whack. 100%. And now it’s sort of like even like you’d be like, “What what is this? This is stupid.” It’s awesome. Isn’t it funny how we’re like I’m like going to bed early is so awesome. I like I used to tell myself all kinds of stories about why I was a night owl, how that was more fun, how it, you know, it’d be lame to go to bed at if a friend was going to bed at 9:30, I’d be like lame. Now I’m like jealous if I hear about my friend that goes to bed at 9:30. I’m like, “Oh, fuck, how does he do that? I need I need to learn.” This was a great pod. What do you think? I think it’s great. It’s one of my favorite traditions. Thank you everybody for listening. Another great year in the books. The greatest podcast ever created. We did something um we had to do this like ad for Spotify and when we did it, Sean was like, “You know, Spotify told us to thank you guys. But in actuality, you should be thanking us because we’re the one who just did all the work to like make this content for you.” But uh I am pretty thankful uh uh um of everyone who works on the pod. I’m also thankful for the people who actually listen to this shit. Like it it like it shocks me sometimes when people come up to me still and they’re like, “Yeah, you said this thing and this thing and like it made a difference to me.” And I feel so much gratitude when like people do those things and I’m so happy that we’re able to do this. All right, and on that note, that’s the pod.