Sam Parr and Shaan Puri discuss the importance of intensity in both personal health and business, sharing anecdotes about their own fitness journeys and the habits of highly successful individuals like Michael Rubin. They explore the concept of “lab-grown” success, drawing parallels between the diamond industry’s marketing strategies and the dedication required to build a business.
Topics: Intensity, fitness, business strategy, Michael Rubin, lab-grown diamonds, entrepreneurship, marketing, mindset, discipline.
The Power of Intensity [00:00]
Sam Parr: People, uh, people DM us a lot of interesting ideas. My reply to all of them, they go, “What do you think about this?” I always reply with two things. I always say it’s an amazing idea, and then I say, “When are you launching?”
Shaan Puri: All right, let’s, uh, let’s start the episode here.
Sam Parr: Um, all right. What, um, I’ve got actually two interesting things to tell you. The first, this company reached out. It’s a famous publication that you know of, and I don’t want to say it out loud yet, but they want us to go to Baja, Mexico to ride motorcycles and film a series on like a weekend adventures. Are you interested in that?
Shaan Puri: Uh, what for? Like, the, yeah, what’s, what’s the catch? You want me to come out here and surf and ride motorcycles? What’s in it for you?
Sam Parr: They just have, uh, I guess I could talk about it. I haven’t asked if I could talk about it. It’s just like it’s a, without giving too much weight, they have a, uh, just a web series that goes in like on TV. It gets for web and TV. They have a TV channel, and they have this whole series where they, it’s all about like 9-to-5 workers, like normal yuppie jobs, and you have adventures Friday to Sunday. So like, what all can you do on a weekend?
Shaan Puri: Oh, okay. All right. Uh, that seems super up your alley and kind of up my alley too, but you know, um, that’s, that’s their suggestion. Do you have a better idea on like a weekend adventure? It’s an adventure publication.
Sam Parr: Yeah, I don’t do motorcycles. That’s my only thing. I don’t do motorcycles, and after Kobe, I also don’t do helicopters. But, uh, I love surfing. Surfing is a cool thing. I suck at it, but it’s fun, so I would do that.
Shaan Puri: Well, if you come up with a better idea, then, then pitch it. Um, but they like, it’s all paid for and everything.
Sam Parr: Oh, okay, great. Yeah, let’s do that. Why not? Uh, look at your fitness influencer life is already coming in handy.
The Fitness Mindset [01:49]
Sam Parr: So, you, the, what I wanted to talk about was you’re getting really fit, too. Do you, and I think it’s pretty inspiring. Are you enjoying it?
Shaan Puri: Coming from a fitness influencer, coming from an influencer like you in the fitness world, that means a lot to me.
Sam Parr: Hardly. But do you, so do you think it’s, do you, have you, has your body, or I know your body has changed, has your brain changed, do you think, and your attitude?
Shaan Puri: Of course. That changes first, right? Yeah. The attitude changes first, the brain changes first, the body changes, you know, slowly over time. But yeah, for sure. I, um, like, okay, if people, if I took off my shirt, you know, nobody’s going to be super impressed with me just yet, but I’m pretty impressed with me, and that’s kind of my own opinion. I hold in higher regard than anyone else’s. So, yeah, I basically, I went from like, kind of like, I don’t know, I, was I, would you be like, “He’s fat?” Would fat, was I fat? I might have been fat. I didn’t think of myself like a fat guy until I’d see a photo, and I’d be like, “What the hell? I look fat here.” Then I’m like, every photo I look fat. Maybe I’m just fat. That’s kind of what what I reached the conclusion of at that time.
Sam Parr: You were getting overweight. I think that like, I think that, you know, there’s like a, like a, like a definition of obese, like, you know, it’s a body fat percentage, and, and I guess if we use obese and fat, yeah, I would say you were overweight, but I don’t think you’re overweight now.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, so, and then, and so now I’ve been training hard for like a year. I started off doing two days a week, three days a week, and I just cranked it up to five days a week now with the trainer. Um, it was always supposed to be five days a week, but the, the days I was supposed to be doing on my own, I was, you know, really half-assing it or no-assing it. So, so I would say on average, I was doing like three or four days a week before, and now I’m doing five or six days a week. Pretty intense. And I got to say, um, I don’t know why you’re bringing it up, so I don’t know where you’re going with this, but it’s amazing, and I could talk about it all day because it’s like the best thing I’ve done all year. So, you know, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re listening to this, and you, whatever investment you’re making right now in your health, I guarantee you that if you up that investment, you would only thank yourself. And, uh, that’s kind of where I’m coming from here is like, yeah, I’m, I’m super happy with making this shift, and it’s totally great.
The Value of a Coach [03:54]
Sam Parr: I have this, the reason I was bringing this up is I have this friend who is incredibly wealthy, like, I would have to imagine like $30 million wealthy. And, um, he, he was like, “I want to get in shape. Uh, what routine are you using?” And I’m like, “That’s a bad question. Who cares about the routine?” If I was you, I would just hire a coach. It’ll be like $400 a month. And he was like, “Wow, that’s expensive.” And I’m like, “Dude, you’ve got one body and one life. Like, I, for me, my fear is when I see someone who’s my age or 40, 50, 60, and their body hurts and they can’t walk and they can’t and they like struggle to sit down on the floor or something like that. I’m like, that’s hell, right? Like, you’re just, you’re in this, you’re in this shitty home that’s falling apart and you can’t get out.” And I was like, “Why, you know, you just bought this fancy house, why not also buy a fancy body?” And not to like look good naked, but all but like feel good. And so I was just thinking about it, and I, and I think we talk about investing, and I’m like, I, I think that’s that’s got to be the best investment.
Shaan Puri: For sure. We have a, we have a mutual friend. I can’t say the name on here because what they said is funny, but I’ll share what they said. Uh, so they’re wealthy. They’re probably like, I think they have like in all $100 million, you know, in the bank. And, um, and they said this thing, they were, uh, they’re like always doing kind of like fitness-y stuff. They’re not like, you wouldn’t look at them and say, “Oh yeah, this person’s clearly like, you know, ripped out of their mind or they’re not just like super jacked.” That’s that’s not that, but they live a very healthy lifestyle, and whatever wherever they go, like in their day, their workout is like a key part of their day, and they don’t sacrifice it. They don’t get, they don’t get too busy for it. And so I asked them about that, and I said, “You know, um, man, it seems like you’re really taking this seriously.” He goes, “Uh, yeah, you know, the way I look at it is, if you’re rich and you’re fat, that’s on you, bro.” And, uh, and that’s how I feel now. It’s like, when he said it, I was like, “You know, that’s actually so true,” which is if you had all the resources, but you didn’t make the investment that matters, uh, that’s sort of silly, right? And so, uh, that kind of trick, that that kind of was one little seed that got planted in my head. I’ll tell you something else that’s been funny. My trainer recently, um, so you’re, you’re absolutely right in what you said, which is it’s not the workout routine. It’s not the, it’s not what you do. It’s not the workout program, right? It’s not like somebody has some secret formula.
Intensity Over Diet [06:29]
Sam Parr: For most people, it really doesn’t matter. Like for most people, even if you just walked 15,000 steps a day and you ate, uh, only maybe 2,300 calories, you’re going to like look pretty good, and you’re going to feel probably pretty good.
Shaan Puri: If you’re currently, if you’re not working out five days a week, that’s your problem. It has nothing to do with the routine. It doesn’t matter what you did in the routine. Like, just start with doing any workout and then make it better over time. And like, yeah, when you’re, when you’re Sam status, then the actual routine does matter because you know, you’re, you’re already at the kind of 99th percentile, you’re just trying to optimize at the end, and you’re trying to get certain details to to pop. So yeah, then your routine matters. But for most people, it doesn’t matter. But I’ll tell you something my trainer told me that was counterintuitive. He goes, um, we were talking about like, “My body is really changed, my arms have changed, my chest has changed, but my stomach still looks like the stomach of a guy who’s not super in shape.” Like, I’m not, I don’t have like a six-pack. It’s not even super flat.
Sam Parr: That’s made in the kitchen, bro.
Shaan Puri: And so, so that’s what I said. I was telling him, I was like, “Ah, yeah, but that’s all diet, right?” And he goes, he goes, “You know, everyone says that.” He goes, um, they say you cannot out-train your diet, all all the stuff. He goes, “And I get what they mean.” He goes, “But I’ll tell you what, intensity over diet all day.” And I go, “What?” He goes, “Intensity over diet. Watch.” He goes, “Don’t even touch your diet right now. Don’t worry about your diet. Uh, don’t be feel guilty when you eat something, don’t like count every calorie, don’t go weigh out your chicken breast. Like, don’t do any of that shit. All I want you to do is commit to cranking up the intensity when we’re here in this this part of the gym.” So he’s like, “If you’re like, let’s say 0 to 10, what’s the intensity of your workout today, like on average?” I say, “Oh, you know, it’s like an eight.” He’s like, “Great. All we’re going to do is we’re going to take that to a nine. We’re just going to make every workout at least a nine on the intensity level. And some days we’re going to be hitting nine and a half, and some days we’re going to even hit a 10. But right now, I just want you to focus on a nine.” And he goes, “Watch what happens.” And he’s been so right, which is that it was really hard to just change my diet, but it was much easier to just crank up the intensity in working out. And it’s not that the intensity will all of a sudden shed my fat. It’s that when I put the intensity in here, diet becomes a much easier decision because I really like laid it all out during the workout part. And so the desire to like throw it all away for, you know, this like pleasure, these chips or this whatever, like, it’s just not there. And now I, at first, I thought he’s full of shit. I did not believe him, but now that now that I’m actually trying it, I just said, “Hey, let me let me follow what you say. You’re my coach.” Uh, I understand what he’s saying. And this is now applied to many other things in my life. So now, even in business, we, I was talking to to Ben about one of our business plans, and it was like, “Oh, should we do this or this or this?” It was all about the plan, the how, the, you know, what is the strategy? And I basically said, “Fuck the strategy. Let’s just take our intensity up.” He’s like, “What?” I said, “Whatever strategy we’re doing, let’s just agree that like right now we’re probably executing any of our strategies at a at a seven or eight. Let’s just execute any of these bullshit strategies at a nine and a half. Let’s just see what happens.” And this is just working in all areas of my life now, because now when you put a nine nine or a nine and a half intensity, you kind of like want to figure out the right plan, right? It’s like, if I’m going to put in this intensity, it better be on the right thing, and your brain will solve the the which path should I choose problem in a different way because of the intensity. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s a little mind hack.
Jungle Scout and Business Scaling [09:42]
Sam Parr: This this weekend I went to F1, Formula One racing in Austin. It was like the hot thing to do, and I went with this guy, have you heard of, um, what’s it called? Jungle Scout. You know Jungle Scout?
Shaan Puri: Yeah, yeah, we’ve talked about it. It’s the tool that basically, if you go on Amazon and you want to see what products are selling, how much, how much of this Instapot gets sold every week, Jungle Scout’s this little extension you can click on. It’ll tell you what how much sales the products on Amazon have. It’s kind of expensive, but it’s a cool product.
Sam Parr: So it’s a big business. Like, um, you know, if you just Google it, like I you’d you’d have to, if you could put the pieces together that they’re not far from 100 million in recurring revenue. Um, big business. And started as a Google Chrome plugin, which is interesting. This guy, Greg, he’s Neville’s good buddy, my buddy’s Neville, so that’s how I got brought into this thing. I went with him and he’s very nice, very kind, easy to talk to, but incredibly intense. And here’s just a tiny example of what when I see this and I’m like, I I like I always see like whenever I’m around certain people, I always notice this, uh, when when when intense people do things like this. So for example, the race had just ended, uh, some people, I don’t know how they got onto it, but they got onto the track. I guess they just went on and took photos, and he’s like, “Let’s go.” And he just starts walking over, and I’m like, “Well, there’s no like gate and like every and and and imagine like huge stands, and then you walk down the stands and there’s like a fence that’s quite tall.” And he goes, he’s like, “Well, let’s go.” I’m like, “There’s no there’s no gate.” And he goes, “No, no, no, we’re just going to jump the fence.” Everyone was staring at us. He just walks up without hesitation, puts his hands up there, climbs up on this fence and just hops. He goes, “Come on, let’s go.” And I, when I’m I’m I’m I don’t like confrontation that much. I don’t like doing a lot of things that like people stare at me. And I was like, “What? You just did it like you you didn’t even think twice.” And I’ve been with people who are like really successful entrepreneurs and they’ll be like a line. And of course, this is like jackass, this is like a jackass move, and they’re like, “No, no, no, we’re not waiting in line. We’re we’re just going to we’re going to walk in and we’re just going to we’re going to do this.” And uh, that’s like an example of that intensity. Have you ever noticed like we probably have friends that do like Dude, you you’re like this. You’re an intense dude. I’ve noticed this from you. And the line example is perfect. When we were going to do our live show, remember in Miami, and the airport was just packed. I don’t know why. It was like 6:00 in the morning. The airport was so packed. We got there early, and we were still going to miss our flight. Like the security line was like two miles long. And we waited, we waited, we waited, and then you were like, you just like some switch flipped inside you that was just like, “Okay, we have all the reasons to like do do like just to miss this flight.” Basically, it’s like, “All right, we got here early, look, it’s just a long line, there’s nothing we can do. Um, you know, the airport is packed, COVID, just it’s all that circumstance.” And then I literally, we didn’t even, you didn’t even say anything. You were just like, “Okay, I’m going to go.” And then you you just left the line, so you gave up your spot, which was like a risk, because we had waited for like an hour and a half. You gave up your spot. Yeah, we snuck into the the pre the TSA pre-check. You go to TSA pre-check. You’re not TSA pre-check. And you just hand the guy your ticket, and he’s like, “Bro, there’s no pre-check on this.” And you were like, “Oh yeah, my uh my wife pre-check.” It was she we it didn’t print. Or you were like, you’re like, “I’m pre-check.” He’s like looking at it. He’s like, “There’s no pre-check.” You’re like, “I’m pre-check.” It just didn’t print right. And then he’s like, your will just dominated his and then you just got through the line. And I’m still standing there. And I’m still standing there. I’m like, “Shit, if I go and say the exact same thing, that may work.” And so I I was like, “I need to crank my intensity up.” So I went and I bought Clear at that moment. I just went and spent 200 bucks buying Clear, and then I like the Clear will they’ll escort you to the front of the line and like take you through TSA. And then it was like, you called me and you’re like, “Dude, you got to sprint,” because you were at the gate. You were like, “You got to sprint.” So I didn’t even have my shoes on because the security line or whatever. So I’m holding my shoes, didn’t even have time to put them back on. I’m in my socks, and I sprinted to the gate like I’ve never sprinted before. And I hate running. So I’ve hate I hate running my way all the way there. But it was your contagious intensity. Another example. We wanted to build our podcast studio, and it was like, we had kind of been talking about it, and it got to that dangerous point that happens where you have an idea, a thing you want to do, and then you’ve talked about it, but you’re not closing. You’re just somewhere in the middle. And this is where dreams go to die. And I think most people, it would just sort of like it would either fade and you just don’t do it, or you kind of half-ass it. And I remember like in a 24-hour period, you just blew up my phone. You were like DMing me like pictures of every other podcaster. You’re like, “How about this? This, this. Just tell me, of these three, which one do you want?” I like number two. Number two? And I’m like, “Yeah, sure, number two.” You’re like, “Great, number two. Okay, I found the chair on Amazon. Actually, let’s drive to these three places and like let’s go pick it up today. What time are you free? Are you free in 10 minutes? I’ll be at your house.” And you came, you picked me up, and we drove to IKEA, then we drove to another furniture spot, then we drove to this bootleg spot in Oakland. And then while we’re at the bootleg spot in Oakland, it was like not really happening, and then and we went to another spot, and then literally the sales lady recognized your intensity. She came up to us, it was a big furniture store. She comes up, she goes, “You guys look like you’re you guys look like you’re ready to buy.” I don’t know what she said. She said something like, “You guys look like you know what you want.” And you were like, “Yes, I’m looking for this red chair because I have a show and I want it to pop in the thumbnail, and it’s got to look like this.” And she like ran into the back and tried to find us one, and then you like got the whole thing done, and somebody, meanwhile, somebody was painting the whole wall. You were like, “We need to paint the wall.” So you like hired some guy to go paint the wall over the weekend. And by Monday, that was a Friday. By Monday, the studio was done. And I share this because that’s a level of intensity that you that I know you have, that I’ve observed in all of my successful friends. They have this this trait, or not all, I shouldn’t say, some people have different style, but very common that people who are successful have this level of intensity when they do something, massive action. And um, it is contagious. It’s contagious to the people around you. And like the lady in the store, um, there’s a there’s this principle that’s kind of like this. So I’m reading this book. Sorry to go on a tangent here, but I’m reading this book. What’s the book? You everybody’s heard of it. You’ve heard of it. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. Have you read that? Have you actually read the book? Years ago, but it’s one of those books that you should reread every five years, probably. I should probably reread it. It’s pretty amazing. So I’ve I’ve had the book for like 10 years. I never even opened it because I was kind of like, “Ah, I think I get the idea.” Um, and so I actually started reading it two nights ago, and he tells a story of this guy who wanted to work with Thomas Edison. He’s like, “This guy had a clear idea. He’s like, ‘I want to work with Thomas Edison.’” And he goes, “Notice two things. He said, he knew exactly what he wanted, not just like, ‘I want a job in a lab.’ It’s like, ‘No, I want to work with Thomas Edison. This guy is an amazing inventor.’” He goes, “The second thing is, I don’t want to work for him. I want to work with him as a business partner.” And so he’s like, “You know, problem is, I have no qualifications, and I’m literally not even in the same city, and I’ve never met the guy. I have no access to him. I don’t know anyone who knows him.” But he didn’t let any of those limitations, those limitations were sort of irrelevant to the guy. So, um, sure enough, he buys a train ticket, he goes to where Thomas Edison is, he barges through the door and he says, “You know, Mr. Edison, uh, I’m here to work with you. Like, I I think you’re great, and I think, uh, you know, we’ll we’ll do great work together. I’m here to work with you.” And Edison’s like, “What the fuck? Like, you know, we’re not even hiring, but uh, like,” and he said something, Edison has a quote in the book, which is like, “Even though this man had no qualifications and I had never seen this person, he’s a complete stranger, there was something about the intensity of his presence that told me this person has their mind set on something and they’re going to make it happen.” And that sort of reminded me of this like common thing that’s I’ve I’ve seen in a lot of people and in myself in situations, which is once you get to that level of absolute certainty and you carry yourself, people will literally just start to respond to you differently because they just see this person is like on a mission. They are a man on a mission and like, I either I either need to get out of the way or I need to get behind them and help them do this. Um, and that has like served me. I have one crazy story that’s served me well, but is that ever happened to you or have you ever seen that in yourself or others?
Being an Animal [17:39]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [21:39]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
Michael Rubin and the “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [37:39]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team member, something like that. And basically, I’ve hung out with Gary maybe only three or four times, including the time we had him on the podcast. I’ve hung out with him in person, and he has the same energy that I’ve noticed Michael Rubin has, where there’s basically like this thing that I have, and I think every human being, and even these guys, they just don’t have a lot of it, where it’s like a self-limiting belief where it’s like, “Well, you know, I can’t do this because of this, this, and this.” And I’ve noticed with Gary, he’s talk like one time he told me, he’s like, “I want to my next thing, he’s like, ‘I’m going to create all these restaurants, and they’re actually going to be completely free.’” And the way they’re going to make money is AMEX or whoever’s going to sponsor it. Um, like he was just brainstorming. He’s like, “But I’m going to do that.” And in my head, I’m like, “Well, that’s really dumb. I mean, a free restaurant? That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard of.” Um, but I feel like nine out of 10 things he does, I would say, “That’s a really dumb idea,” and they work. And you know, he said he’s going to come out with these, what’s his NFT thing? It’s uh like VFriends. VFriends. Like if he told me, I’m like, “Gary, this is really dumb.” Or uh you know, like this is not going to work. And it’s in been incredibly lucrative and in very successful. And they don’t have this limiting belief where it’s like, “This won’t work for this reason or this reason.” It was just like, “Well, why not? Like it it it logically it makes sense. I think this can work.” Anyway, This is this is very uh timely. So let me tell you why. By the way, I’ve noticed a lot of these coincidences happening in my life where I’m thinking about something or I’m doing something and then somebody who’s like uh like-minded, they’re almost experiencing the same thing just in a different way. We trade these stories. So the same exact thing. All right, so I told you I’m reading Think and Grow Rich. There’s a section in there that I uh remember, uh you know, it’s just like stuck in my head. And he goes, he goes, “To be successful, one needs to be success conscious.” And I was like, “I don’t even know what that means. I don’t think most people know what that means.” But the interesting part is the second line. It’s what he says after that. He goes, he goes, “And people who fail, all fail for the same reason. They take their current limitations as real limitations.” Right? They they take the perceived limitations that are that they’re perceived that they’re feeling now, and they treat them as real. And what you’re saying is exactly that, which is that everybody, you know, “Oh, I need to do this, but I don’t have the time, but I don’t have the money, but I don’t have the experience.” But this person said they were getting back to me, and they haven’t got back to me yet. Uh, but this, but you know, the port is closed right now, and so the shipment’s going to be delayed. It’s like there’s always these limitations that feel very real in the moment. And then what what successful people do really, really well is they sort of just ignore all those limitations. They ignore all the limitations about themselves, and even the thing when somebody says no to them, they’re like, “Okay, cool, but like, what does your boss think about that? How about I talk to them? Let me see what they have to say. How about I go to your competitor? Let me see what they have to say. How about I ask you again, but this time I’m going to ask more playfully and later on at night out over a glass of wine. Now you’re going to have a different answer.” And like, they don’t take no for an answer on any front, uh, you know, on their own limitations, from they don’t take no from themselves, and they also don’t take no from the world. And um, so I noticed that. And so I yesterday, we were finishing up our workout, and uh, and we have a kind of like, you know, like, it’s we train the body, but we train the mind at the same time at the same time. And so we were talking about this. I said, “Man, I read this great thing, and I know I could share it with him because he’s he’s the type too that like to eat this stuff up.” And he goes, “Oh, that’s great.” And I go, “But you know what? I don’t want to just sit here and say that’s great, because what what really means when I say this and we’re like, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah, that that’s true,’ is we kind of do this thing where we’re like, ‘Yeah, that’s true. Uh, other people fuck that up, but, you know, not me.’” Yeah. Um, there’s like this inherent like, “Yeah, other people really need to get this, but they don’t get it. I get it.” So I said, “No, no, no, screw that. Just like we just did reps in the gym on our, you know, shoulders and and lats and whatever else, I said, ‘Let’s get a rep right here.’” I said, “What’s a let’s get a rep right now. What’s something that you want that you just have some random limitation that you it’s not even like you haven’t been able to overcome it. Honestly, you’re just not even aware of it. You’re not even like saying it out loud. Once you say it out loud, you probably find a solution to it, but you don’t really do it.” I said, “I’ll go first.” I said, “Man, I ever since I went and worked out at Sam’s gym, I want my garage gym to feel like that. I already had the weights. I’m already doing the workout, but it doesn’t feel the same. His gym feels amazing to be in. He’s got the floor finished properly, he’s got this, he’s got the fan on the wall, he’s got the music system. It just feels great. I want my gym to feel like that.” And I said, “I want that. And what’s my limitation? Uh, I hired this one contractor, and he’s been really slow getting back to me with a quote.” It’s like, “Well, I could think of 10 ways to solve that problem right now, but like I just kind of hadn’t put my awareness on what was what was a random limitation that was standing in the way of me and something I wanted.” And I I told my trainer, I said, “You got to do one now. What’s what’s a what’s something you want that you have a limitation?” I said, “Let’s get a rep.” And this is a very powerful way of thinking, which is when you get advice, don’t just be like, “Yeah, advice. Let me write that quote down. Let me tweet that quote out.” It’s like, “No, no, no. Apply it in the moment. Get a get a rep doing the thing.” And so, uh, so let me ask you, let’s do it live. What’s a thing you want in your life, and then what’s the thing you want that you’re not kind of like that’s not being realized fully right now? It could be anything. Could be something in your relationship, work-wise, money-wise, fitness-wise, whatever. Something small, something in your house, whatever. Um, what’s the thing you want? And then try to shine that light on what’s the limiting what’s something you’ve just let limit you for no reason that Gary V wouldn’t, that Michael Rubin wouldn’t.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Yeah, I call it being an animal. And like Paul Graham, or he’s the one who who said, he goes, basically, he’s like, “A lot of people talk about who you should hire in your early stage startups.” He goes, “Basically, the one word you want to use to describe them is, are they an animal?” And do they just get shit done? And I remember like, uh, I remember talking to my friend Jake who went and worked at this company called Teespring, which grew very, very quickly. And I was like, “Was it like the work for Walker, the guy who runs it?” And he goes, “He’s an animal.” Like, for example, we wanted to do this partnership, and we had been working for weeks and weeks on getting in touch with these folks, and he just Googled like their customer service number and then just right there in the meeting, he goes, “Guys, watch this.” And he just calls them and goes, “Hey, can I talk to this one person? Uh, hey, this is Walker. I want to make this happen. What do we got to do?” And he like and that’s an that’s a very easy example.
Shaan Puri: Dude, I I have almost the same story. When I was in college, I had, uh, I’ve talked a little bit about this before, my very first business idea was was to create the Chipotle for sushi. So the same kind of fast casual model, but for sushi. You’ve done it for sandwiches, for burritos, for Chinese food, but nobody had ever done it for sushi. So that was the idea. Problem was, I know nothing about sushi. I know nothing about the food industry. I in fact, only tried sushi for the first time like a week before that, and that’s why I even had this idea. I was like, “Oh, sushi’s fucking amazing. How do I do more sushi in my life?” And um, and so one day I skipped class, and me and my buddy Trevor, we were sitting around at our apartment, and I was like, “You know, and Trevor loves to watch food shows, like Chopped, Iron Chef. He just loved watching this food shit. I never understood it, because again, I’m not a foodie. I was like, “Why do you want to watch other people eat food? That seems like crazy to me.” Um, but, you know, I got hooked because the shows are great, obviously. And we’re watching a throwdown Bobby Flay, and there’s this sushi chef that comes on, and he’s like, he know obviously he knows his shit about sushi, otherwise he wouldn’t be on the Food Network. He says, uh, his qualifications were like, “You know, I’m in LA, I got my restaurant, but I also run the largest sushi academy for training chefs.” So we were like, “Oh, this guy runs the largest chef training thing for sushi chefs.” And he had like this swag to him. But we had interviewed three chefs locally, and they were all like, you know, think about like a traditional Japanese sushi chef, like zero kind of outward personality, very traditional, conservative, and they just looked at us like, “You are like kind of like besmirching the name of sushi. Like, how dare you even suggest this? Fast sushi? No, no thank you.” And so we I saw this guy and he had he had a big personality, which is why he’s on TV. And I said, “We need a guy like this.” I go, and he’s like, and Trevor’s like, “Yeah, where are we going to find him?” I go, “He’s right in front of us.” We need this guy. And he’s like, “Okay, um,” and so he’s quiet for a second, and Trevor just Googles his number. He’s like, turns his laptop and he goes, “Here’s his number.” And that’s like, you know, challenge accepted. Like if your friend shows you that, it’s like, or you know, it’s like, “Hey, that girl over there, you got to go now. Now you got to go approach that girl.” So I pick up the phone and I call, and I don’t know why I said this. I didn’t I didn’t have this planned, but it’s exactly what you just said, the guy Walker said. Uh, he picks somebody picks up the phone, and I’m so used to getting the runaround that I didn’t expect it to be him. So I go, “I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?” And then he he goes, and so I didn’t say, “May I please speak to the to the owner?” Which by the way, that’s the right way to ask, which is, “How do I make this happen?” It just because there’s always an answer. It just came out. And it came out because I had already worked myself into a state of intensity, and I was kind of nervous, and so like I was just in this heightened state, and so that’s just what came out. And he goes, “Is Philip talk to me?” And I hadn’t planned what the fuck I would say after that. And I was like, “Oh, um, I said, ‘Philip, um, you’ve never met me, but uh, I’d like to start a business with you. And I know that sounds crazy, but if you give me 10 minutes, um, to hear me out, hear out my plans, I think you’ll find it really interesting. It might be something that will will extend what you’re doing in LA. It seems like you have a great thing going. I think this will really uh take that and and really blow it up.” And he goes, he goes, “What’s the plan?” How old am I at this time? Yeah, I was a senior in college, so 20 21. Wow. And he goes, “So what’s the plan?” Now, I didn’t have a plan, so I go, I go, “You know what? It’s going to be easier for me to email this to you. What’s your email address?” And I bought myself two days to like create a plan and send it to him. And later on, you know, so he a bunch of stuff happens. He flies out to meet us, uh, and we’re going to school in North Carolina. He flies to our college dorm basically and meets us. We fly to his, I live on his couch in LA. He’s get he like vets us. He basically puts us through the grinder to see, are we the type of people he wants to work with? Which which I have I don’t know how the story is going to end, but at that point, to me, that’s a success. Already, it’s a success. Already, we turned this joke of an idea into like, well, it might be a funny idea to you when I say I’m starting a sushi restaurant, but uh, you know, this Food Network chef’s on board, or he’s like kind of on board. He’s talking to me at least. Uh, he’s flying out here next week, so we got to prepare for that. I’m not going to class right now. I got to prepare for my chef. And so later, months later, when we we finally struck a deal with him, we closed the deal, and he’s like, “Dude, you don’t know how many people,” he’s like, “Cuz celebrities eat at my restaurant.” He’s like, “You don’t know how many rich celebrities come to me. They say, ‘Oh, this restaurant’s so small. You don’t even have a liquor license. You need you need to expand. I’ll put up the money. You need to expand.’” He goes, “And I never did business with any of them.” And here I am with three dipshits in college, and I decided to go into business with you, and everyone thinks I’m crazy. But you know why? And I go, “Why?” He goes, “You remember what you first said to me?” And I was like, “No.” And he goes, he goes, “You called and you said, ‘I need to talk to Philip Yi. How do I make that happen?’” And he goes, “That, he’s like, “There was something in the way you said it that just told me this guy is going to do something. This guy is going to make something happen.” And he goes, he goes, “If you literally had not said that phrase, I don’t think I would have even ever heard you out because this is just another one of these people who say, ‘Oh, I want to start a restaurant with you. I’d love to partner with you, blah, blah, blah.’” And I was like, “Wow, I didn’t realize these things make that big of a difference.” And I don’t think it’s the words. I think it’s the intensity that will bring you to do the right thing and say the right thing at the right time.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: That’s great. I like that. How how did it end?
Shaan Puri: We partnered with him. We go live on his couch, we train in his restaurant in LA, and uh, so, you know, first first day I go there, he shows me um the process for making sushi. So, I don’t know if have you ever seen how a sushi chef rolls a roll of sushi?
Sam Parr: Just like the yeah, I guess so. Like they use that like uh piece of wood.
Shaan Puri: Yeah, a little bamboo, there’s a bamboo roller basically. But before you do any of that, right? So the seaweed lays down, and you got to put the rice on it. Now, the rice is sticky rice. Uh, if you’ve ever had Asian food, you know kind of sticky rice. So how do you use your hands? How do you grab the sticky rice? How do you so there’s a little problem. I I didn’t even realize there’s a problem, right? I’m sitting there watching him for an hour. So I first he says, “Just shadow me. Sit here, watch me.” I said, “Okay, I’m watching him.” And he’s just making sushi, and I’m kind of getting it, but I don’t even know what I’m looking for, right? Like any amateur, when you look at something, you don’t even know what you’re looking for. You don’t know what the details are that matter until you try something. And this is why he was a genius teacher. One hour in, he goes, the the next customer walked in, and I’ll tell you who it was in a second. He go he goes, “All right, Sean, you’re up.” And he moves out of the way, and I get to go stand in that spot wearing my stupid chef coat, and I don’t know anything about anything. I’ve just been watching this guy. I thought it would be a long time because traditionally in sushi, if you’ve ever watched like, what’s that Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s like Jiro, yeah, he’s like a five decades of just rolling rice. The tradition is like you spend five years just mopping the floor. You then you get to touch the veggies. Then you get to touch the fish. And the last thing you ever touch is the rice because actually sushi means vinegared rice. It’s sushi is really about the rice, not about the fish. So, um, so I didn’t expect to be doing it. And so one hour in, he throws me in the fire. And not only does he throw me in the fire, he throws me in the fire with this guy who sits down, and I look up, and it’s Daryl from The Office. If you’ve ever watched The Office, it’s Daryl. And Daryl’s a regular there. So he kind of knew like I could fuck up this guy. Wait, wait, wait. Daryl Daryl from The Office is He’s the warehouse guy. He’s the black warehouse guy. Oh, oh, black dude. Uh, Ben Robinson, I think his name is. Uh, I don’t know if that’s his name. Maybe that’s his name. It’s something like that. But Daryl, I know Daryl, of course. So, so it’s Daryl. So I’m like, “Oh, fuck, I got to make sushi.” And I’m making it for Daryl, and sushi, it’s like the guy’s staring at you. You’re two feet away from each other, right? Like, there’s no hiding in the back of the kitchen to make it. I’m making it in this guy’s face. And uh, and so he Daryl Philbin. Sorry, not Ben Robinson. Daryl Philbin. And so I, so I first I just freeze. I’m just standing there and I’m looking down at the fucking bamboo, I have seaweed, bamboo, and rice. And I’m like, “Okay, how did he do this?” And then I’m freezing, and then he walks away, and I’m like, “Shit, okay, I got to figure this out before he comes back.” He comes back up to me, he hands me a shot of uh of sake, and he goes, “Drink the fucking shot and roll the fucking roll, Sean.” And I so I take a shot, and then I’m like, “Okay, um, I grab the rice because I’m like, I got to spread the rice on the on the seaweed.” I grab the rice, and immediately I know I’ve done something wrong because the rice is so fucking sticky in my hand that as I try to rub it onto the seaweed to place it on the seaweed, it’s like not going to leave my hand. I just rip the seaweed, and my hand is like a rice glove. And he goes, and he’s laughing, and he he he goes, “You know, every time before I roll the roll, I dip my hand in this water, and I clap.” He goes, “That clap is not for show. That clap is you wet your hand, then you clap, and that removes all the moisture that like kind of like splashes the moisture off your hand, so you just just enough so that when you touch the rice, it’s not going to stick to your hand.” And so I was like, “Oh, shit.” And then he kind of showed me how to do the first one or whatever. And so that was kind of like my first experience was feeding him. And like that same day, if you ever watched Lost, the guy Hugo from Lost, uh, came in and he ordered food or whatever. It was crazy. Anyway, so that’s that’s part of how that story ended.
The “Animal” Trait [26:58]
Sam Parr: Have you heard of, um, I want to talk about intensity and and Billy of the Week, because I came across this guy that is incredibly fascinating and one of the most intense people I’ve ever read about. Have you ever heard of Michael Rubin?
Shaan Puri: Michael Rubin. Is that the Fanatics guy?
Sam Parr: Yes. So, he’s interesting because he’s a young guy. He’s probably not yet 50, but if he is 50, he’s early 50s. And his name’s Michael Rubin. He’s been a baller for years and years and years. And so this guy is incredibly fascinating, but not a lot of people know who he is. I think he’s worth like $10 billion. Like, you know, he’s worth a a ton of money, you know, like Jack Dorsey money, and yet he’s like pretty undertalked about. And so this guy, listen to his story. So I was reading reading about him. So basically, he’s in the news now, but I’m going to explain his background. So at the age of 12, he started uh a ski tuning bit shop in his in his parents’ basement. And then two years later, at 14, he got uh $2,500 in Bar Mitzvah gifts, and he leased a uh an office or a shop near his parents’ house. And by age 16, he was already in $120,000 in debt and had to settle with creditors, and his dad had to uh pay him uh give him bail him out for $37,000, and he was basically said like, “I’ll bail you out, but you have to go to college, and you got to stop this nonsense.” So he goes to college, but then after a couple of semesters, he drops out, and he already has five new ski shops. And it kind of kicks ass, and he eventually sells it. And then at the age of 21, he starts this business called KPR Sports. It’s an equip uh an equipment closeout company. By age 21, it has a million dollars in sales. Two years later, age 23, $50 million in sales. So at the age of 20 uh at 23, uh in 1995, he purchased it purchased 40% of the uh women’s shoe company Ryka. Have you heard of Ryka? No. It was around in like the the 90s and early 2000s. And then eventually he started this company called GSI Commerce. He kind of pivoted into this thing where it was called GSA GSI Commerce, and they would buy brands and they would kind of be the logistics and back end that make these brands amazing. And he sold that at uh age uh like 28 for $2.4 billion, netting him $150 million personally. Then a few years later, he bought the business back, and he formed three different companies. The first was ShopRunner. Have you heard of ShopRunner? No. ShopRunner basically was kind of like Amazon Prime, but for all non-Amazon stores. So you could spend $100 and get free shipping on loads of different stores. He started Rue La La, which you probably wouldn’t have heard of, but I bet your wife has. And then he has and then he started Fanatics. He sold ShopRunner recently for $228 million. Fanatics ends up becoming this massive business. And so basically, if you buy like a Rams jersey, um, it’s made by Fanatics, and they basically work with the NFL. They have all the they’re like the official merchandiser basically of like all major sports. But here’s where the shit gets really brutally wild. So Fanatics turns it now, at this point, I believe it’s three different large businesses. So there’s the main Fanatics business, which is they basically have licenses with the NFL, NBA, MLB. They make shirts and stuff like that and and just normal merchandise. I think, I believe, if it’s not publicly traded, it’s nearly publicly traded and worth $18 billion. The second thing that he did was he spun out this trading card division. Have you seen that? They’re just no news because No, I haven’t seen this. What is what is it called? So he raised, it’s called Fanatics Trading Cards. And so basically, he raised $350 million at a 10.4 billion billion dollar valuation. And so basically, there’s companies like Topps. Everyone knows Topps. They make cards. I think they also make a bunch of other stuff like gum and random things. But Topps plus the other three big dogs in the space. I forget what they are, but I’m if you’re listening into baseball cards, you totally know. Panini’s huge. So collectively, those make like $2 billion a year in EBITDA. Like so it’s a fairly big business and so you’re like, $10 billion trading card company. It is pretty frothy, but like it it could you know, can it be a billion dollar a year in profit business? Totally. And so he raised money for that. And then he has this second thing called Candy Digital, which is making NFTs for sports. And they just raised $100 million at $1.5 billion valuation. And so he spun all of these off, and now he’s also the owner of the 76ers and the New Jersey Devils, the sports team. Pretty freaking wild. And if you follow him on Instagram, which I just started following him, he’s homies with Meek Mill, uh, and he like helped get him out of prison, and he’s uh spends a lot of his time, Michael Rubin spends a lot of his time with prison reform. Incredibly incredibly prolific, very, very, very confident, very fast moving, very intense. Incredibly interesting guy. Seems like a good guy. Um, and Dude, the door the door is open for for him to come on the pod. This guy this guy’s cool. I’ve seen a lot of his interviews and uh and I like him a lot. And I think what he did with Fanatics is like, I always view doing things in sports. It’s like if you want to do sports and music, it’s like actually so hard to win because it’s like, “Oh, yeah, I’m passionate about sports.” Great. It’s you and, you know, 2.2 billion other people. And so it’s really, really hard to do what I’ll call obvious ideas in sports. Like, yeah, selling the merch, selling jerseys, selling shirts. So for him to build such a large business in what would be such a competitive space is really impressive to me.
The “Diamond” Marketing Strategy [32:00]
Sam Parr: It’s very impressive. And what I when I was watching interviews with him, so Gary V is a partner on this, um, on a couple of these things. Like, I don’t know if he’s an investor or if he gets a small stake. I don’t know what how the how the thing is, but he’s he’s mentioned in a lot of the articles as like either a co-founder or a founding team