Speakers: Sam Parr (host, co-founder of The Hustle), Shaan Puri (host, founder of Milk Road), Ben (producer)
Intro: The 10 Questions That Will Change Your Life [00:00:00]
Shaan: So I haven’t seen any of these questions.
Sam: It started from a tweet. Someone said, “Here’s 10 questions to get to know people.” Is that right?
Shaan: Yeah. A listener of the pod — I think your friend Blake Burge, I think that’s his name — he had tweeted out this thing like, “There are many questions, but few will change your life. Here are ten questions that will change your life.” And the thread goes viral.
Sam: By the way, normally it’s kind of like an eye roll — but it’s good. There’s this thing, Ben, you’ll have to look it up again — no research here — but there’s this thing I remember years ago. It was called like the New York Times 21 Questions, and it was like, “Here, ask these 21 questions on a first date.” And it was like, here’s how you get intimate with people. And as a single 21-year-old I read that and I was like, oh, so I can hook up with girls. And I remember those questions, and they’re very similar to what Blake’s questions are, but it was like, “When did your father make you cry?” Pretty deep questions like that. So I’m down with these questions.
Shaan: So I actually read these questions and I was like, these are actually good questions. But the way he presented it — no offense — is how most people do Twitter. It’s like, “Here’s some general advice or some general questions.” What’s interesting to me is not the question itself but seeing somebody struggle with their answer. So for example, I’ll give you the first question, which is going to come out here in a second. Ben, read question number one. I’ll explain how Blake tweeted it and how I think we should answer it instead.
Ben: “In what areas of my life am I settling?”
Shaan: Okay, so “In what areas of my life am I settling?” That’s a powerful, thought-provoking question. And his response in the tweet was like, “Just okay is not good enough. Identify the areas where you’re settling.” And to me that’s the part where I was like — no, no, Blake. I want to hear your answer. You tell me. If you’re going to put out one of these threads that’s generic generic generic to try to get likes, I think the next level of this is people are going to get a little more vulnerable and put their actual answers in the thread rather than general advice.
Sam: Who invented this theme I’m seeing? Like Upworthy was “here are ten things you’re not gonna believe, number seven.” This new one I’m seeing on Twitter is like, “There are 8 billion humans on this earth, not all of them are worth following. Here are my eleven friends that are worth following.” Who created that?
Shaan: Ben, what’s the first one? I just tried it.
Ben: “In what areas of my life are you settling?” You go first.
Question 1: Where Are You Settling? [00:05:00]
Shaan: Okay. So what areas of my life am I settling — and by the way, this is called the boys go to therapy, because we got to open up a little bit. Two things come to mind. The first is fitness. I think I got kind of comfortable with my workout routine and diet and I was like, okay, I’m not as fat as I was, I’m on my way to getting fit, and I just kind of settled for like, wow, you’re much better than before. But I’ve been riding that for twelve months now, and the “before” is the same as the “current” because it’s been about six months of the same. I just realized this recently and was like, why did I settle here? This isn’t the destination. I was basically on a road trip and I stopped at a gas station and then unpacked my bags instead of being like, no, this is not the destination, this is the pit stop.
Sam: You made a lot of progress in a relatively short amount of time. You just gotta keep going.
Shaan: Yeah. So I’m settling there. The other one — me and my wife. We have two little kids, and there’s this feeling of like, you know what, I’m putting a lot into work, I’m putting a lot into my fitness, I’m putting a lot into my kids, and it’s like whatever’s left over at the end of the day for each other — we take the scraps. Just kind of the energy and effort we both put into our relationship. I think we’ve both settled on that, which is like, it’s fine, they’re not leaving, they’re not going anywhere, we can always do this later when the kids grow up.
Sam: Is she going to listen to this?
Shaan: No. That’s the beauty of it. You should never listen to this.
Sam: I think that’s good that you said that. Maybe it’ll make her like you more.
Shaan: Especially because I didn’t say that she is doing all this. I said we are doing it. Which is, you know, the key.
Sam: All right. What about you? What areas of your life do you think you’re settling?
Sam: My consistent diet needs to improve. I looked at my goals over the last ten years — I created a goal-tracking thing when I was about 21 — and I hit all of them except for wanting to weigh 190 pounds. I’ve always struggled to lose ten pounds and I’ve just never done it. So I’m sucking at that.
The second thing — career-wise, I’ve settled a bit. I purposely set up a period where I was like, one year after the sale plus one more year, I’m going to chill, I’m just going to read and learn. And I still am not ready to go all in on something. I’m not there yet. So I’m being a little bit lazy, and I feel some guilt around that.
And then a relationship one — dude, I’m super dependent on Sarah. Like if someone wants me to come speak somewhere, I’ll be like, “Sarah, can you just handle this?” Or, “Do you want me to go? Let me know.” And oftentimes because I don’t like to fly, I’ll be like, “By the way, I’m only going if you’re available.” I think I should learn to do a few things by myself a little bit more. I just rely on her so much.
Shaan: Give me one that’s a settle you’re not cool with. Because I feel like all those settles we said are settles we’re kind of okay with.
Sam: The weight thing. Yeah, the weight thing — I’m not cool with that. I get up, I’m pissed off. I’m like, why can’t I just be consistent? If I was just consistent for like five months with my calories, I’d be good. But it is so tempting and I just give in to it. That pisses me off.
What else… I do think — tell me if this is a settling thing — I’ve created a couple of little small products in my free time and I get so excited about making 500, 100, 1,000 dollars a day. I get so much joy from that. And I’m like, dude, I could crush this if I want to. I can build things that are huge. Why don’t I have the motivation to do this? I feel soft. I feel like I’m settling in that aspect.
Shaan: I think that was good. And I agree with you on that one.
I’m thinking more and more that the easiest way for me to pinpoint where I’m settling is when I see the contrast — when I see somebody who’s not settled in this area and I’m like, wow, they’re really pushing it beyond where I am right now. It doesn’t mean I’m always going to chase what others do, but it takes me seeing that to be like, oh, this isn’t the spot to just settle down and dig my heels in.
That’s happened to me with money. I’ve seen people’s lifestyles, heard people talk about stuff. Somebody will be like, “Yeah, we picked up this real estate deal and we should make one and a half million on that.” And I’m just sort of like, oh. Their normal, where they’ve settled for their normal, is what would have been an outstanding outcome for me. But to them, that’s the normal course of business.
Then I check myself and say, do I care? And usually I do care. Usually I’m jealous of them, or I find myself trying to come up with a reason why that’s not good. I gotta pull myself back — like, maybe instead of tearing their thing down to make myself feel okay, I should just admit that it’s probably good and something I actually want for myself and I’ve settled here but I could go further.
The iMovie Vision vs. the Excel Sheet [00:18:00]
Sam: Do you have a history of journaling or goal-setting? Just writing down thoughts or targets?
Shaan: It’s not based on age milestones. I’ve done stuff like this but not like, “By 30 I want to accomplish this.”
Sam: When I was 21, I said, “By 30 I want to have a million dollars in the bank.” I had a couple of goofy ones too — I want to have gone on Survivor, I want to… I don’t remember what they were at this point. And then as I got older I was like, oh, that number needs to be bigger, and the Survivor thing isn’t really a factor, and I don’t care about Forbes 30 Under 30 — that’s all nonsense. So I kind of adjusted my goals once I wasn’t 21 anymore.
Shaan: I think it’s good to look at those things because you look at all your old journaling and writing and you’re like, what energy was I putting into there? What was I bummed about? What was I excited about? And then I do one of two things: I either try to impress my past self, or I try to make my future self pumped. Like, what will I be really excited that I did now, in ten years?
So there’s this thing — do you know it? Chris Sacca, one of the best investors of all time, one of the biggest investors in Twitter and Instagram — he had this thing where he read out a note he had written to himself when he was 20 years old. I actually just found the transcript while we were talking.
Sam: Do you know what did he say? Yeah, I remember this episode.
Shaan: He goes — and I’m paraphrasing — so he’s 20 years old, living in Cork, Ireland, starting the day drinking at 11:30. He goes, “I never heard of an investment banker. I had never heard of a venture capitalist. And so I just wrote: I don’t know what the job is called, but I know it’s going to involve a lot of talking on the phone, a lot of negotiating, a lot of yelling at people. High risk, high reward, unbelievably high stakes. And I’m going to do it part-time from the mountains, part-time from the beach. Whatever it is, I’m going to be done with it before I’m 40.”
And then he’s like — fast forward — he’s now 40, 41, basically a billionaire, accomplished exactly that. He didn’t know what a VC was, but he became a VC. He has a house in Truckee and another one on the beach. Mountains and beach. He retired from the game.
Sam: That’s so cool.
Shaan: And I always thought that was cool because it wasn’t some lame goal list. It was a description, a painting, a movie scene of his life. And I’ve noticed the people who do this — who kind of call their shot and manifest it — they don’t do it with something that feels like Excel. It feels like iMovie. It’s not a bullet point analytical thing. It’s a vision for how their life is going to be and what life is going to feel like. They don’t even know the words to describe it or the route to get there, but that’s it — that thing at the end, that’s how it’s going to feel.
Sam: I’m doing this tonight. iMovie not Excel. That’s a good one.
Shaan: If you were going to do an off-the-cuff version right now, what comes to mind as your version of that?
Sam: I like physical places. I really want to own some type of physical land or buildings throughout the country where I can entertain all my friends all at one time.
Shaan: Can I propose something? Can we do a two-minute thing where we just jot down on our notes what we think it is, and then we’ll read them?
Sam: No, because I’m not prepared. What’s yours?
Shaan: That’s what I’m saying, we gotta write it down.
Sam: I have to figure this out. This is such a hard thing to do.
Shaan: Look at that reaction. When the boys go to therapy, that’s what we call resistance. We’ve identified some resistance.
Sam: Next question, Ben.
Shaan: Let me give you my scene right now. Okay, here’s my scene that I have in my head — and I’m already living in it a little. My house is like this big-ass house where everything inside is white. I have the same kind of chef-like setup I have today, but on a giant area. People are just coming in and out because we’re like the lobby. My whole life and work is so integrated that my trainer’s showing up, they’re having brunch with us, I’m having this meeting with another person but they’re also going to work out with us, and the whole thing is just one big integrated thing. My mom’s over, my sister’s over, because we all live nearby because we all made it.
The second thing is I take a midday nap with zero guilt. Zero guilt midday nap. I already know that implies that the rest of everything worked itself out.
And the last piece is all I get to do is meet interesting people and be super curious about them, and then I record or type or something — kind of like what we’re doing right now. I take the interesting bits, I put it out there, and it’s in a million people’s ears or eyes the next day because they love the content I put out. And I never meet those people. I’m not their consultant, I’m not their motivational speaker. I’m just taking little bits of what I’m curious about and putting it into a million people’s ears every morning.
Sam: I think you’re practically there. You gotta get the fancier house and fancier chef, but dude — the midday nap with kids? That’s indulgent right now.
Shaan: By the way, that million-people’s-ears thing — that was old. I said that before we started this podcast. When I was selling my company, I told Suli on like a ten-mile walk we just kept taking in the middle of the night — he was like, what do you want to do next? And I said, dude, I think I just want to have some way to get my thoughts out there and get it into a million people’s ears. I remember calling it “ear balls.” I said I just think it would be so cool if I could be on people’s ears while they’re on their commute. That was before the podcast. And now the podcast is getting close to that.
Sam: You have that. All right.
Question 2: What Battles Are You Choosing? [00:31:00]
Ben: Let’s go with question ten. “You should choose your battles wisely — what battles do you choose?”
Sam: Dude, I choose so many petty battles. When I’m driving and I see someone behind me driving like an asshole and cutting people off, I go out of my way to slow down and purposely block them so they can’t get by me. And I reply to so many comments I shouldn’t reply to. Someone says something ridiculous and I reply to it — there’s no reason why I should be doing that.
Shaan: Your HOA battle that you had — I would die on that one. I would go hard on that one.
Sam: What’s the question, though? What battles do you pick that you shouldn’t?
Shaan: Basically, “Choose your battles wisely” — what battle do you want to be choosing? Another way of looking at it is what battles are you stupidly choosing right now that you need to stop?
Sam: Dude, I choose so much small stuff. I’m at my ranch and people are setting up the Airbnb, people are already doing the stuff, and I’m like, no, I gotta be here, I’m putting this together. Or like, screw it, I’ll go rent a car and drive to Costco myself. It’s like, no, we’re already doing that. I choose the smallest stuff instead of leveraging my skill set. That is an unwise battle. Instead I need to be thinking about much bigger things, and I simply don’t.
Shaan: I think having kids might change that. I’m praying that having a child is going to somehow show me the way.
Sam: You could tell me if I’m wrong, but I have a friend who’s a couple going through problems right now as a relationship, and she said something like, “I just feel like we need to have a kid and that’s gonna help us.” And I was like, oh my god, no. That is not the answer. That will not make the relationship better. It will do the exact opposite.
Shaan: I think it could be the answer, to be honest. Having a dog is like two percent of having a child — not in the sense of taking care of it, but it’s like I’ve got something I need to protect and take care of, and it makes me a little bit happier. I imagine properly having a human being where you’re like, I have to dedicate my life to this person — it’s beyond me at this point. I have a feeling that can be very inspiring. That’s why I think a lot of 35 and 40-year-olds who are childless and getting messed up on psychedelics and feeling depressed — dude, just have some kids. I bet you won’t be asking yourself how to find yourself. You’re going to say, how do I make this kid happy? When you dedicate yourself to others, I think you’re happier.
Sam: Can I read you something cool that I just — do you disagree with that?
Shaan: No, I think you’re right in two ways. You’re right that having a kid definitely takes the focus off yourself, so that eliminates a huge number of worries. But it replaces them with new worries. If your habit is to worry, guess what — whatever situation I put you in, you’re going to find something to worry about. It’s just better to worry about other people, though.
Sam: It is an improvement.
Shaan: It is an improvement. The other thing is that yeah, some stuff just gets thrown out the window because you don’t have the bandwidth. You don’t have that extra time to think about stuff. But it doesn’t fundamentally change the nature of the problem — the root cause, which would be a focus on minor things. Because guess what, then you’re going to focus on why your kid’s pinky toe is a little bit crooked and why they have this rash on their knee and why they didn’t eat a balanced lunch. There’s a zillion things you could worry about with a kid, and you could even justify it further because you’re like, I’m a martyr, I’m a great parent for doing so. So you’ve got to be careful. I don’t think it goes away, but I do think it changes the problem.
Sam: All right, I’ll answer the question. The battles I want to choose: the first is health. Being in the best health I can be, having a healthy lifestyle for me and the people around me.
Is your wife healthy? Does she eat healthy?
Shaan: Yeah, she’s in and out. Once she flips the switch she’ll just never eat bad again, until she flips it off and then she’ll eat Oreos all day. So it’s one or the other. And same thing with working out — she’s hardcore intense about that and doesn’t waver at all. It’s just a matter of what mood she’s in. And the mood is like a year-long mood, not a daily fluctuation.
Sam: I think health is the first one because I’ve seen that once your health goes a little sideways, none of the other battles have any relevance anymore.
The second battle I want to choose is probably something around parenting — not constantly trying to rush through parenting and get the job done. Being patient with my kids.
And then the last one is I do too many projects. I have so many projects at once, and they’re all good projects, but they’re probably collectively a bad number of projects. That’s probably the worst one.
Shaan: I always say it, but how many people criticize you about that?
Sam: My friends who actually care about me — they do. The people who barely know me are like, “Oh, that’s cool, you do so many things.” And my friends are like, “That’s not cool. All these things could be cool, but you got to do them right. And if you’re not going to do them, you gotta figure out how to hire somebody who’s going to do that thing for you.”
Shaan: Dude, if I were you I would only do three things. I would do the podcast because that’s not that hard and it kind of drives the other thing. I would do Milk Road. And I would do investing.
Sam: The problem is I’m too deep into e-commerce. So I gotta either hire my way out, or sell this thing, or I don’t know.
Shaan: You gotta sell it. Everyone talks about hiring someone to run something but you’re still involved somehow. You’re not actually out.
Sam: That’s really hard to do. When I did it with The Hustle I was pretty good about it. But I thought about it all the time. I still felt like I was working there. But yeah, I didn’t do other projects though.
The Two True Tests of Intelligence [00:45:00]
Sam: I want to read something to you real quick. There’s a thing from Duval — I have a Slack channel called Wisdom and this is in there. He says: “The only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life.” And then he goes — there are two parts to this. One is, are you able to hack reality to get what you want? And the more important one was, were you smart enough to figure out what you should want in the first place? That’s the hardest part.
Shaan: Exactly. You read this and you nod, and then it’s like — have I been smart enough to figure this out? What do I even want? And then, do I — both you and I, we’ve developed the skills of hacking reality, but we get a little loose on remembering what we actually want. What doesn’t matter. Which game to actually play.
Sam: Bending reality is, in my opinion, the easy part. Knowing what you want is way, way harder.
Shaan: There’s another part I really liked. He goes, you live in a society which has a bunch of people in it, so that will train you to play the multiplayer game. But only as an individual do you get to stumble on the hidden game — the single player game. And that is the real game. He says a couple of things: if you had no adversity it would be a very boring game, so remember — you got to play the game. It’s your game. You get to design the board, design the challenge, you get to design the victory condition. That is the creativity. That is you deciding the purpose of your own life, and in the same way deciding what game you’re going to play, what the rules are, and what the victory condition is. And if you’re where you’re not consciously playing that game yet, you haven’t actually started.
Sam: Where do you write that? Did he say this intentionally?
Shaan: He said this on a Twitter Spaces or something like that. This guy Zach Pogrob tweeted it out. I liked it.
Sam: That’s good. Ben, let’s do another question.
Question 3: What Are You Letting In? [00:52:00]
Ben: This is an interesting one. “What are you letting in?” In other words — turn off the news, don’t read the comments, interacting with negativity — think of it as mental fitness. What things are you letting in that you shouldn’t?
Sam: What are yours? You had written something on the doc that I think is interesting. It’s about feedback. So let’s zoom in to feedback. I have a few ways I go about doing this — you could do this when building a product or when asking people about your personality. Like, where do I suck, where do I rock? And what you’ll notice is — I tweeted out, “What do you like about the podcast? What do you want more of? What do you want less of?” And for every person who says they want a longer podcast, there’s an equal number who say they want a shorter one. Some say more guests, some say no guests. That makes it really hard to figure out feedback.
So how do you decide which feedback to listen to and which to ignore?
Shaan: So I started off thinking feedback is the key. You need a feedback loop. You need to talk to your customers. And so I became Mr. Feedback. If I had a project idea, I’m taking the designs to a mall and stopping people saying, “Hey, will you give me feedback on this idea?” Every co-worker: “Hey, I’d love some feedback. What do you like about me? What do you hate about me?” And then I started to get what you just described — information whiplash. It’s not just overload, it’s contradictory information. And I got paralyzed.
So then I went to Steve Jobs mode. Forget feedback. People don’t know what they want. Why would I ask them? They don’t even know what they want for breakfast, how can they tell me how to be a better boss? I became Mr. Jobs in the turtleneck.
Then I realized, well, that’s not good either. Now I’ve isolated myself from any signal. So now I’ve come up with a better balance. I seek out feedback from people who I think are going to give me relevant feedback. And the last piece is: the feedback is not the answer, it’s the question. When I hear feedback, I’m not looking for the answer to what to do more of or less of. I’m just looking for it to surface questions. If some people say longer podcast and some say shorter, it just surfaces the question: what do I think is the right length? What podcasts are great when they’re long? What would be a great short version of our podcast? I use the feedback to ask myself a better question, and then it’s my job to come to the answer. It’s their job to give me their opinion, which surfaces the question.
Same thing with products. We both like the book The Mom Test, and the central principle is I only get to ask them about their problems — I don’t get to ask them what solution they want. Similarly, when I go ask for feedback, I’m just looking for them to say things that’ll get me to ask a better question, and then it’s my job to come up with the answer.
And when in doubt, there’s one final thing: at the end of the day I gotta trust myself. If I just do the thing I think is right over and over again, I might not attract everyone, but I’ll attract the people who love what I do. My trainer gave me this saying — who are my customers? The people who love what I do. That’s when it became that simple for me.
So it’s like an if-else statement: if their feedback gives me a clear question and an answer I know what to do with, great, I’ll make an adjustment. But if not, I’m just going to do what I do. That will attract the type of person who loves it.
Sam: I think you can Excel-sheet your way to creating a big business. You could just say, where’s the opportunity based on traffic and demand, hire the right people, and create wealth that way. I get it. But what I’ve learned throughout the years is it’s a lot more fun to just do things you think are cool. And that’s more the feedback I’ll listen to — do I think this is cool?
The second thing when I get feedback: I don’t actually care what they’re saying. I care more about why they’re saying it. So for example, when people say “make the podcast shorter” — they’re not saying make it shorter. They’re saying it’s not always that interesting. Because if something’s really long, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s badass. If you made a three-hour movie about Shaan, Shaan’s gonna watch it. So it’s really not about listening to the actual feedback but asking, why do I think they’re saying this? That’s what I listen to.
Question 4: The Five People You Spend Time With [01:03:00]
Ben: This one — “Am I surrounding myself with the right people? Who are the five I want to spend time with?”
Shaan: That is a powerful question. Let’s make it light — just tell me right now, who are the five people you currently just spend the most time with?
Sam: Wife, Sarah. Neville Medora, my best friend, lives next door to me. Ramon Van Meer — a lot of people know Ramon. And Jack Smith. That’s four.
Shaan: You got one more?
Sam: I wouldn’t put anyone else in that category. No, that’s it.
Shaan: Your dog?
Sam: Well, you know, I — you guys kind of like — all right, so who’s someone you wish was in that five that you’re not spending as much time with as you’d like?
Sam: Steph Smith. I would add Steph Smith. Every time I talk to her I’m like, damn, she’s brilliant. She’s a very special person. Maybe her.
Anyone else — I sometimes wish I had some baller baller baller friends. A lot of my friends are pretty great, but, like, imagine hanging out with a Russian oligarch just to see how some of these crazy people think. I like extreme people. Even if I think they’re a bad person, I would like to hang out with some of these extreme people who are on extreme ends of success. Or even an athlete — what’s it like to hang out with the person who holds the world record in the marathon? It would be nice to be around more extreme people.
Shaan: That’s a really good twist on this. A lot of people have heard the idea — you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That’s true. But there are two other groups of people that I think really matter.
One is like the equivalent of a bender. You don’t want to go on a bender every day or every weekend, but twice a year, a bender is a lot of fun. And if you’re not really having one amazing party or one all-nighter or some experience that’s a little out there, you’re kind of leaving a little bit of life on the table. Some people are amazing in that capacity — you’d never want them in your everyday, but they’re amazing twice a year.
The other one is: who have you just not even encountered yet? Like, who is outside your bubble that you don’t even know what you don’t know, because you just don’t hang out with anybody like that?
Sam: Do the five and then the other two categories.
Shaan: My five: Sonia, my wife, and my kids — I’ll put them together. My mom is next — she comes over one week out of every month, she stays with us. Ben, who’s kind of my right-hand man, my business partner across Milk Road, the fund, helps with the podcast — I talk to Ben hours a day. And Andre.
Sam: I don’t think I’ve met Andre.
Shaan: Andre is kind of amazing because he had this illness — he caught some infection that gave him something like chronic fatigue syndrome. He basically couldn’t get out of bed for like two years, he was in a wheelchair, nobody knew what it was. And then he kind of recovered from it. But this guy is the most grateful person you will ever meet because he’s like, dude, I walked today. It doesn’t take much for Andre to be high on life. Because Andre’s around me all the time, I get that secondary high. You can tell he’s just savoring every day, like someone who hasn’t eaten in two weeks having their first meal.
The other one is Suli — our mutual buddy. He moved, so I don’t hang out with him as much, but he’s a partner in one of my businesses so I talk to him. The downside is now that he’s an official business partner, we don’t just shoot the shit anymore. Anytime I’m talking to him it’s like talking to my investor instead of just catching up.
Those are my five. I’d put you next — we hang out two, three hours a week doing this, which is more than most people. And the one I wish I hung out with more was Ramon, because Ramon is the best human on earth. The more Ramon in my life, the better human I would be by default.
Sam: I completely agree. He teaches me a lot. He’s a very thoughtful person.
Shaan: And then the category I was saying — people I have zero exposure to — is basically anyone in high school or college. Which is actually pretty important as an investor and person of the world to know what it’s like. Like, oh, I used to think about these things and they were the most important things in my life. Or, wow, they didn’t have phones so they couldn’t do what kids are doing now. I have zero exposure.
When I went down to Mexico I was like, oh wow, I kind of forgot how simple and different life is for most people on earth. I used to live in Indonesia and China and stuff, so I was in it every day. But now I’m just sitting in the suburbs in California. Easy to forget. I think I should pop that bubble intentionally once in a while.
Question 5: In What Ways Are You In Your Own Way? [01:20:00]
Ben: Do you want to do one more question?
Shaan: We’re doing five. Five seems like a nice round number.
Sam: You can remix it — some of these are sort of the same. Ask a different one if you want.
Shaan: I’ve been thinking about one. Let’s go with this one: “In what ways am I in my own way?”
Sam: I can answer that one easy. I lose my temper. I get very emotional where I’m like, no, this is wrong, we have to do it this way. And I have lost a lot of money doing that. Let’s just say, for an employee who I think has underperformed — even though they talk like they’re hot stuff — I would just fire them as opposed to thinking, well, we could salvage this, there are lots of ways to make things better. But more often than not I’m like, no, I’m out, I don’t want to deal with the headache. And that is a very emotional decision.
I make so many emotional decisions. Oftentimes it’s ego, oftentimes it’s temper. But mostly — if it’s like, oh, I think this person is trying to get one over on me — I want to crush them. I make tons of emotional decisions instead of practical ones.
Shaan: Is that true? Have you seen that with me?
Sam: Yeah, for sure. You’ve been mad at me sometimes and you’re like — because you think I’m trying to get one over on you. And I’m like, dude, I’m really not. And then once you realize I’m not, your whole perspective changed right away.
Shaan: Because it’s so different from the way I think, I just couldn’t understand it.
Sam: It’s not like we can give a real example, but — I got mad at you for being late, and in my head I’m like, he doesn’t care, he thinks he’s better than this. And the reality was you were like, dude, my baby was sick. And that’s a legitimately good excuse. Even a bad excuse — like, I literally just lost track of time, I’m not a diva, I feel horrible every time I do that — even that was fine with you. As long as I knew you weren’t actively trying to do it, it didn’t bother you.
Shaan: You know what I also do all the time — and I think everyone should learn from me — is replying really quickly to text-based messages. Whether that’s email, anything. Dude, it’s okay if you sit on this for an hour or even a day or even five days. Sometimes I’ll get a text or email and I’m like, oh no, urgent! And I quickly reply and I’m like, I should have just sat on that for three hours.
Sam: That’s actually a great answer for me too. I’m massively disorganized, which affects everything. There are so many emails and texts where people are either offering me something or trying to help me, and I’m just not replying. People take it very personally. Or I miss a deal that’s just a clear win for me because I don’t reply, I don’t see it.
Shaan: I would say forget them. I actually don’t think you should feel bad about that. I’ve been struggling with that too, and lately I’m just like — I’m just not going to feel bad about not replying. Here’s the most douchey thing I could say, but subtract it by a lot and that’s the reality: imagine you’re Justin Timberlake and people are always presenting you with stuff. Of course we are not that big a deal. But a much much smaller version — there are lots of opportunities and I’m just going to ignore most of them. I don’t expect JT to reply to a DM.
Sam: Yeah, that’s true. But I’m talking about people I’m doing business with, or my friends, or I’ve asked them for something and they give it to me and I forget to do something with it.
Shaan: Let me show you something. I don’t want to share the check on screen but this is a $13,000 check that’s been sitting here for like six months, then it expired. So now I got a new check — and this is the new check after the other one expired — and I still haven’t deposited this one. Another month has gone by. That’s how bad I am. Just disoriented for no reason.
Same thing with my company’s books. I’ve never hired a bookkeeper. I’m like, oh yeah, aren’t the transactions just on the credit card? No, they gotta be sorted out. At year end I’ll just cram for my taxes. Now I’m learning, oh, people hire bookkeepers? Oh, gotcha. There are just things that are messy in my world. It costs me a lot of money to have messy books or not reply to certain emails. That’s me getting in my own way.
The other one was just staying up late. I’m almost embarrassed to even say it on the podcast because who cares. On average I was staying up until two or three in the morning and waking up at nine. I just started last week going to sleep early and it solved like five of my biggest problems. My diet cleaned up because I no longer late-night snack. If I had dinner at seven and now it’s one AM and I’m hungry, guess what I’m eating.
Sam: Exactly.
Shaan: My sleep was better, my work was better. I was editing Milk Road at night. Now I sleep at like 10:30 or 11, wake up at 6:30 or 7, write the Milk Road, and it’s done. By the time the kids wake up I’ve almost finished my work day. But yeah, so cliche to say “sleep early” that I should just bleep this whole thing and make it mysterious.
Sam: Do you remember how regimented Rob Dyrdek was about tracking his time and waking up at 5AM or whatever?
Shaan: I respect it. If that’s what makes him happy, do it. And part of me thinks that would be kind of cool to try for two or three weeks just to see what happens. What happens if you get up at 6AM and you have a very strict schedule?
Sam: What time do you sleep and wake up?
Shaan: Last night I couldn’t go to sleep. I went to bed at one or two and got out of bed at seven. I normally always get out of bed at seven.
Sam: My baby wakes up at six in the morning usually, so that’s when I’m up. I try to go to bed around 10 or 10:30. And then once or twice a month I’ll go to bed at like 3AM because I need to get something done.
Shaan: That’s why you go to bed at 3AM? You’re not like going out?
Sam: Wait, do you drink? Do you do drugs?
Shaan: No. Well — it’s usually like… when I do “How to Take Over the World” episodes I do a bunch of them in one sitting, from like 9PM to 3 or 4AM. I do that twice a month. I drink if the occasion calls for it, but not with any regularity.
Sam: Do you get drunk?
Shaan: I used to, but no. Last five years I have not been getting drunk.
Sam: Did you do any drugs?
Shaan: No.
Sam: That’s crazy. What a bunch of fruits. Dude, I just drink green smoothies. I don’t even drink coffee.
Shaan: We are so lame.
Quick Recap of the Five Questions [01:38:00]
Shaan: All right, I’m going to recap the five questions. Number one: In what areas of my life am I settling right now? Number two: Choose your battles wisely — what battles am I choosing right now, and what do I want to choose? Number three: What am I letting in that I need to shut out — noise, information, opinions from the outside world. Number four: Who are the five people I want to spend the most time with? And number five: In what ways am I in my own way?
Those are the five. Ben, which one of those questions, when we said them, did you go off on a tangent thinking about your own answer?
Ben: The first question shook me. “In what areas am I settling?” Okay, you guys are looking at me. One area in which I settle a lot is — I get super concerned about environmental pollutants. Especially plastics and microplastics. And I always feel like a psychopath when I talk about it because everyone’s like, “What? Plastics?” And I feel crazy. Because I’m like, no, this isn’t a conspiracy theory. The research is out there that microplastics are crashing testosterone levels and disrupting endocrine systems. I’m not crazy. But the fact that everyone else is like “yeah, whatever” makes me feel even crazier. So a lot of times I just settle. I compromise. I see my baby putting a plastic toy in her mouth and a part of me dies and I just go, ugh, whatever.
Shaan: Just do it, dude. That is not at all where I thought you were going with that answer. You were weighing it so heavy on your heart.
Ben: It matters a lot to me, Shaan.
Sam: Is a pacifier rubber? Like, what they call a binky?
Ben: Most of the time they won’t do plastic in pacifiers. They’ll either do silicone — which is better — or rubber, which is also better.
Shaan: Silicone I have my doubts about, but it doesn’t have the same proven track record of disrupting endocrine systems the way plastics do. Do you use water bottles?
Ben: No. In fact I try not to use disposable water bottles because they leach.
Sam: What do I go watch or read that’s going to scare the crap out of me?
Ben: There’s a Joe Rogan episode I’ll link up in the show notes where he talks with a Harvard researcher who does a bunch of this stuff. She’s really good and it will scare you.
Sam: Dude, plastic is pretty bad. I microwave everything and everything’s in plastic in my house. I’ve heard this but I’ve never gotten shook enough to take action. What’s gonna trigger me to make a dramatic change?
Ben: The short of it is basically that our testosterone levels are decreasing at one percent per year. Fertility levels are just crashing — not just people who want to have children fewer, but people who are trying to have children are able to at much lower rates than in the past. And our plastic use is increasing so much that they’re like, in 50 years we’re not sure anyone is going to be able to have unassisted children anymore.
Shaan: But how do they know plastics cause that versus just correlation?
Ben: They do studies with rats and they’re able to demonstrate it.
Sam: Good answer. That was a very good answer. What’s an example of something you swap out that’s like a big culprit — where if you do this one thing, you solve like 20% of the problem?
Ben: The biggest thing the researcher said was never heat plastic. That is like, if you can do one thing, it’s never heat up plastic. If you have a water bottle with water in it, yes, it’ll leach some plastic into your system, but if you leave it in the sun and it heats up to 100 degrees, you’re going to get like ten times as much. So it’s not eating things hot from plastic.
Sam: But how do you reconcile that with the fact that you smoke? You told me you smoke a pack of cigarettes a day.
Ben: Noted. Chainsmoker Ben Wilson — that’s what people know me for.
Sam: How do you tell me not to microwave plastic?
Ben: It’s just one of those mysteries, Sam. I don’t know how to explain it.
Sam: Can you test to see how much —
Ben: I don’t know that you can. I would love to do it if you could.
Shaan: I got a new business we’re going to talk about on Monday. I was all prepared for it today. It’s called Fount — fount.bio. It’s basically a five-thousand-dollar-a-month concierge service where they test your blood and tell you all about your body.
Sam: Five thousand dollars a month? That’s an absurd number.
Shaan: I think it’s close to beta. But for five thousand dollars a month, I would sign up for three months for sure. I think you could do it in increments.
Sam: For fifteen thousand dollars? I would try that. Dude — I had a concierge doctor one time for like a year when I was really sick. It was twenty-five grand for a year and it was mostly amazing. And I understand why rich people can get access to so many drugs. Because like, if I wanted to, I could just text the doctor and be like, “Hey, can you refill this?” And you’re paying them so much money that they seem willing to do it.
Shaan: It is kind of crazy. This took a turn.
Bonus Question: Your Floor, Your Ceiling, and the Luck Factor [01:52:00]
Sam: Hey, do we have time for one more question? It’ll be five minutes or less.
I thought of this as we were asking the five questions. If you were to simulate your life a thousand times — what do you think the ceiling is and what do you think the floor is? Are there a few little things that, if they broke in the wrong way, Sam Parr is working at a McDonald’s in Missouri right now? And are there a few breaks where, if things had broken just differently, you’d be worth a hundred billion dollars? What do you think your floor is? What do you think your ceiling is? And do you think you ended up about what your average is?
The ground rules: same genetics, same family — not born in a different country — just a few random variables changed.
Shaan: I think I’ll tell you mine. In my case, I was not far from being a homeless alcoholic drug addict. I think that was actually potentially in the cards. Or just in jail, because I would con people and steal.
Sam: I think a lot of people could honestly say that though. If you do certain drugs — like, oh man, I could actually see myself living on the streets.
Shaan: As for the ceiling — I think a really attainable thing is I could have not sold my company and it could have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I could have been worth many hundreds of millions by the time I was 50. I think I could have pulled that off if I was willing to put in the work.
Sam: You’ll probably end up there anyway. You’re 30 now. That’s 20 more years.
Shaan: Given where I’m at now, it’s pretty likely I end up over 100 million dollars.
Sam: It’s almost certain. So what — you got one of the good rolls of the dice?
Shaan: I don’t think the realistic floor for me was homeless drug addict, though. I think the realistic floor was probably working at Twitch forever. Or working as a lab assistant at Greenville University’s biology department — some job that was on a time-based system, not a merit-based system. You get rewarded for how long you’ve been in the game, not how much impact you’ve made. It might have been in a completely non-business field. I was actually about to go to med school. So I was very likely going to be in a different thing entirely. Even if I hadn’t done the med school path, being an engineer somewhere or a project manager somewhere was extremely likely for me if I’d made one or two different decisions at some point.
The more interesting question is how far off the peak am I. And I think I’m pretty far off the peak, to be honest.
Ben, you were there when we had David Friedberg on the podcast. I was trying to butter him up. I was like, dude, you’ve created not one, not two, but pretty much three billion-dollar companies. Climate, MetroMile, the Production Board — each a billion-dollar company. And I said, if I went back to you at age 18, 19, 20, you were in college, and I told you, “Hey, this is how it all shakes out — you’re going to create three separate billion-dollar companies” — what would you have said? Would that have been unbelievable to you? Could you have believed it?
And he goes, “I probably would have been disappointed.”
Sam: And I was like, what? Why?
Shaan: Because I think two things. One is money wasn’t really the driving force for him. And the second piece is he doesn’t feel like he’s had a big impact on the world yet. Okay, MetroMile exists and Climate exists. But what he’s trying to do now — like, the way we produce food is going to change, or pharmaceuticals is going to change. He’s trying to fundamentally change the means of production. He’s like, the world used to produce things in factories and farming, and now we do it in a laboratory. That’s the type of swing he’s going for now.
I was blown away by that answer. And that’s the type of thing I was saying — you hang out with that x-factor person who stuns you into a different frame. When do I realize I’m settling? When a guy who’s created three billion-dollar companies says he probably would have been disappointed if he knew that was the outcome. It makes me think — wait, what is this guy’s scoreboard? And then what does that make me think about my scoreboard? How could I update it?
Sam: Not to match his, but to question it. Keep questioning it.
Shaan: Is he a billionaire now?
Sam: Personally — probably like $500 million. I think he said on the podcast he hasn’t hit a billion yet.
Shaan: Isn’t that funny? You can achieve what most every single person on earth would consider the absolute top — and you’re like, “Ehh.”
Sam: Once I Googled my mentor’s net worth — my investor — and I triangulated it at like $700, 800 million. And then I Googled a whole bunch of celebrities. I googled Britney Spears — like $25 or 50 million. And I was like, wait. He’s more than ten times richer than Britney Spears.
Then I looked up Alex Rodriguez — the biggest MLB contract ever, ten years, $225 million. My mentor already has three times A-Rod’s contract. And I just Googled every celebrity I could think of.
Shaan: Like, you’re richer than Ryan Sheckler.
Sam: I literally said that. I was like, you’re 15,000 Germaine Duprís. Dude, he’s probably richer than Denzel Washington.
Shaan: Easily. What’s Denzel’s net worth?
Sam: Ben, I bet Denzel’s gotta be worth like at least a hundred. Been in the game for a while.
Ben: $280 million.
Shaan: He’s a double Denzel. Come on, man. That’s awesome.
Sam: All right, I’m out.