Shaan organized a 27-person basketball weekend in North Carolina — Camp MFM — that included MrBeast, Hassan Minhaj, and a group of entrepreneurs ranging from bootstrapped millionaires to billionaires. The episode is a recap: what was MrBeast like in person, why his “kamikaze commitment” model is hard to replicate, how a Duke basketball coach’s leadership story about body language landed for a room of CEOs, and the surprising honesty about insecurity and emptiness that came out late at night. Also: Kobe Bryant’s full presence, envy as a Costco sample, and why the runner outside MrBeast’s house is a rational decision.
Speakers: Shaan Puri (host), Sam Parr (host), Ben (producer/business partner, briefly)
Camp MFM [00:00:00]
Shaan: So I organized a basketball weekend. The criteria for getting an invite: loves basketball, great hang, and they can teach us something because they’re a baller in their own field. The result was 27 people in two Airbnbs in North Carolina near Duke for 48 hours.
Half the people knew the other half. Some knew nobody. We had people who built billion-dollar companies, people who bootstrapped their way to tens of millions, entertainers with hundreds of millions of fans, a former NSA person, and somebody named Commodore who wouldn’t tell anyone his real name.
Sam: I didn’t know what I was getting into. You DM’d me, said venmo you $1,800, and told me the address the day before I flew out. That was the invite. When I got there, there were KD shoes for everyone, a chef in the house, a basketball trainer who’d worked with NBA players, and one of the most interesting collections of people I’ve ever been in a room with.
Shaan: The three things that created the environment:
One — it felt special. When people feel like they’re part of something bigger than themselves, it creates a childlike equality. Everyone forgets to posture.
Two — we invited people who are fundamentally curious. Nobody there was the most interesting person in the room and happy about it. MrBeast calls people at random while he’s on his evening walk just to say “teach me something.” Hassan Minhaj asked me more questions than I asked him during our podcast — I felt bad because nobody watching wanted to hear from me.
Three — immersion. You can fake it for four hours. By hour five you’re tired and you’re your real self.
MrBeast [00:12:00]
Sam: For context: MrBeast is 24, has 100 million-plus subscribers, runs a YouTube operation that does nine figures a year. He started at 15 saying he was going to be the biggest YouTuber in the world.
We were in a car talking about something — Harry Potter, I think — and he had no idea what I was referring to. I said: have you heard of this? He said: I’ve never seen it. When he was 15, he made a goal and stopped paying attention to everything that wasn’t YouTube culture.
Second thing: his schedule is not a work week. He rolls out of bed at 8 or 10am, his team tells him what’s on, he works until he’s tired, goes to sleep, wakes up and does it again. Seven days a week. When he’s burnt out, he takes a few days, then comes back.
Third: he doesn’t care about rules. We finished the podcast at 11pm. Hassan joked about playing basketball. MrBeast said “let’s go right now” and his two people were immediately on the phone calling high school principals trying to get a gym. He said: “If they won’t let us in for insurance reasons, just tell them I’ll give them a million dollars if someone gets hurt. That usually does the trick.”
Shaan: We got to tour his production facility — basically an airplane hangar in rural North Carolina. Four production teams working on four different videos simultaneously, like a Hollywood studio. He’s spending about $1.5 million per video on production.
Here’s what struck me. In a room of 27 entrepreneurs, I asked myself: how many people here could honestly say they have a wildly ambitious goal? Maybe 60%. Of those, how many are truly obsessed — every hour, every dollar, every ounce of soul going toward it, no hedging, not taking anything off the table? Maybe one. Jimmy.
It’s not just about YouTube. I could find you someone who’s done more work in a day, someone smarter about business, someone more talented at content. What’s essentially impossible to replicate is someone willing to reinvest every dollar back in. Imagine competing with a business where the owner takes no profit and puts it all into the product. He’s going to beat you on price, beat you on quality, and compound that gap every year.
He was getting $5,000 sponsor deals early on. He spent an hour on the phone convincing a brand to pay $10,000 instead of $5,000. Not because he needed the extra money — he said he was going to give all of it away anyway. He just knew that “win $10,000” in a thumbnail gets more clicks than “win $5,000.” The extra $5,000 went to a homeless person. The video got a million views. The brand came back for more. Over time, brands started paying close to a million dollars per video.
Sam: I’ll be honest — my initial reaction to him was slightly uncomfortable. He admires Elon, Jobs, Bezos — he said “I’m wired like them.” And there was something in the way he said it where I felt like I was talking to someone who doesn’t live in the same reality I do. That raw, unadulterated ambition is uncomfortable up close.
I told him: I’m not like them. And I don’t aspire to be. There was a ten-second silence on the phone because it was true. But I explained: I point my ambition at a different outcome. The people he admires changed the world through industry. There are other people who are successful in a different way — someone like Naval is revered for wisdom, not for landing rockets. That’s winning for me.
Shaan: The two certainties from that weekend: I’m glad he exists. And I’m not him.
I thought about this a lot: could I fund someone to become MrBeast? Give them $5 million and have them replicate what he does? I don’t think so. The information is learnable — clickable thumbnails, first-ten-second hooks, retention curves, the metrics that matter. That’s 85% of it. The other 15% is the kamikaze commitment: the person willing to put every dollar back in, who has no other game. You can’t replicate that by hiring for it.
The Runner [00:26:00]
Shaan: He had a runner. Two people, twelve-hour shifts, outside the house 24 hours a day. If he wanted to play Settlers of Catan, one of them ran to the store. When we went to Duke and he needed his shoes from the car, they were there in two minutes.
He told us: “All you wealthy people here — why don’t you do this? It’s a waste of your time to run errands.”
And I was like: honestly, I’d never even thought about it. It never occurred to me that was an option. But once he said it — why wouldn’t you? If you genuinely value your time and genuinely have the means, it’s just rational.
Commodore [00:32:00]
Sam: There was a guy who showed up and introduced himself as Commodore. I said: cool name. He said: no, that’s not my real name. I’m anonymous this weekend.
I said: does anyone here know who you are? He said: no. Not even Ben Levy, who invited him. He tried to start a DAO and buy an NBA team. He’d raised tens of millions of dollars. And he was just Commodore all weekend.
We talked for thirty minutes — his wife, his kids, where he lived. He couldn’t tell me what company he ran before without doxxing himself. At the end I was like: can I just reverse image search you? He said: you can, but you won’t. And he was right. There was something about it that was just like — this person’s real enough to me, I don’t need to know who they are on paper.
By hour 24, when someone was like “hey, where’s Commodore?”, it felt completely normal. That was the person.
The Duke Tour and Coach K [00:40:00]
Shaan: We got a tour of the Duke practice facility. Former player Emile Jefferson led it — and I have to give him credit because he absolutely could have given a generic “it’s been such an honor” answer to everything. Instead, he told real stories.
The best one: Coach K called him into the film room one day when he hadn’t been playing well. On every screen in the room — photos of Emile. Different angles, different games. Always the same pose: arms out, palms up, that exasperated look at the referee or your teammates.
Coach K said: “Look at this. You’re one of the leaders of this team. You look like a beggar. You’re sitting there begging for a call from the referee, begging for your teammates to do something. A leader doesn’t look like this. I never want to see this pose again.”
Emile said: watch me for the rest of the season, you’ll never catch me in that pose.
Sam: That hit the room hard. We’re all CEOs and founder types. The body language of a beggar versus a leader — that’s not just basketball.
The other lesson I took: have a story ready for the most common question in your context. For Emile it’s “what was Coach K like?” Most people in that situation say “it’s been an incredible honor.” He had an actual story with a counterintuitive ending. That’s the difference in any room.
Kobe [00:50:00]
Shaan: The trainer at our event — Alex Basile — used to train with Kobe. He confirmed the 4am workout story. He started texting Kobe at 4am as a test: immediate response, at the gym.
But the thing that got me was the attention story. When Kobe got in a room with you, you were the only person in the room. Phone down, eye contact locked, remembering your name, remembering details you’d mentioned weeks earlier.
Alex had mentioned to Kobe in passing that his mom’s birthday was coming up. On that day, Kobe texted Alex for her phone number and FaceTimed her. “I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday.”
Alex said he didn’t FaceTime his own mom until she wished him happy birthday.
Kobe said his reason for learning everyone’s name: “Most people I meet will never meet me again. If I remember their name, they’ll tell that story to a thousand people for the rest of their lives. I’m not just making an impression on them — I’m making an impression on everyone they’ll ever tell.”
Same principle as MrBeast. Both of them understood that the unit isn’t the transaction — it’s the ripple.
What People Talk About at 2am [00:60:00]
Sam: Nick Huber — Sweaty Startups on Twitter — wrote a blog post about the weekend. He texted his wife after:
“I’m very inspired. A few things I’m ready to change right away: I want a therapist. I want to bring energy to the kids. I need to disconnect from my phone to do that. I want to drink less alcohol. I’m ready to bring a positive mindset to being a family man. I want to honor you like the queen you are.”
He wrote in his recap: we’re all dorks. He expected a room full of giants with charisma. Most people were just normal people who’d overcome odds and were really obsessed with their thing.
He also wrote: “We all suffer with insecurity, fear of failure, and a general emptiness at times. Several guys who’d been worth $20 million for five or more years talked about business as an unhealthy addiction — how it leaves them searching for more, an empty feeling after an exit.”
And: “A lot of guys spent time talking about their kids. They’re trying to help their kids embrace the struggle rather than protect them from it.”
Shaan: Most people were really transparent. If you asked a money question, they’d just answer it. I don’t have enough to fly private. I do, but I didn’t start until I hit this number. My wife and I argue about X.
The big question that was underneath everything: what am I going to do with my life? Someone said: I walk around my house and my office sometimes just acting like I’m doing things. Then I go outside, walk around, cut wood.
Envy as a Costco Sample [01:08:00]
Sam: I felt envy pretty hard that weekend. I went there and in most rooms I go to, I’m the big shot. At this one, we were below average by most traditional measures. And I felt inadequate.
I felt guilty about feeling it. I’d made the number I told myself I needed to make, and I thought once I hit that I wouldn’t want more. I was wanting more. I was falling into the exact trap I’d told myself I’d avoid.
Shaan: The hunger pang — you can’t prevent yourself from feeling hungry. But you can choose how to satisfy it.
What worked for me: reframe it immediately. Instead of envy — this is a Costco sample. This person lives in Puerto Rico and doesn’t pay taxes. Let me learn about that. This person works one week a month. Is that what I want? What does that actually look like? You can’t get envious of something you’re actively tasting. You’re just gathering information about whether this is a life you want.
Sam: I did that better as the weekend went on. At first it was harder. By the end I was just curious.
The Game [01:16:00]
Shaan: Before I forget, what people actually want to know: yes, there was real basketball. Yes, our producer Ben was clearly the best player there. He dunked on MrBeast. Nick Huber was second or third.
I hit four threes in the championship game. I was fresh because I’d had to drop someone off at the airport and came in late for the playoffs while everyone else was already tired.
Sam’s award — which Ben and I created — was for the person who played basketball most like it was football. Sam: no dribbling ability, but extremely physical, great at boxing out, used his size to great effect. Total menace in the paint.
We played inside Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke. That happened. It was as good as it sounds.
Shaan: I want to do more of these. The formula: important things perfectly executed, unimportant things ignored. We had a chef — important. We had a great trainer — important. Was there food at the actual gym? No, just Clif bars. Did it matter? Not at all.
The thing I didn’t fully anticipate: how much I’d want to be around curious people. Not successful people — curious people who happen to also be successful. That’s the rarer find.