Sam asks Shaan how he balances side hustles while performing at his day job at Twitch. Shaan breaks down his approach: more hours, strategic time pockets, building teams with aligned incentives, and being transparent with his employer. The conversation ends with Shaan reflecting on paternity leave and learning not to delay important things.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Balancing Side Hustles at a Day Job [00:00:00]
Shaan: So I’m in the same boat. The question is directed toward me — how do you balance side hustles while performing at Twitch? My answer: I don’t balance. I don’t do anything on the side. And frankly, I have no idea how you do it. Our good friend Ramon is able to do it really well. I get that some people can. I personally can’t and I don’t even try, and I’m not ashamed of that.
Sam: Yeah, there are different ways to organize your time. You see this from Elon Musk or Jack Dorsey — running two multi-billion-dollar public companies at once as CEO, which seemed impossible before. I do it two ways.
One is I throw more hours at it. I don’t take weekends off. I work seven days a week — I don’t work all day every day, but my weekend is just like my weekday. Same construction. All of a sudden I’ve got an extra 16 hours on the weekend. Same thing at night — I stopped watching NBA games, I cut out TV, and that’s two hours a night I can create content.
When we started this podcast, everybody at Twitch would go to the cafeteria for lunch. I’d walk 50 steps to the Hustle office and we’d record from 12 to 1. Everybody else ate lunch — I recorded a podcast. Cool, I’ll eat lunch at my desk later. There are little pockets of time you can unlock.
Hiring and Building Teams [00:05:00]
Sam: The second thing is hiring. When I say I’m doing something, it’s rarely just me. It’s like Ben, Zack, Romine, Chris — I have a bunch of people. I say, hey, I’m doing this interesting project, who wants to do it with me? I find great people who want to do interesting things. What’s in it for you? Do you want money, learning, rep, network? I’ll make sure you get it. And they let me be in two places at once.
Shaan: What’s your burn on all that?
Sam: My burn is expensive. But the things now bring in money, so it offsets. The angel investing doesn’t bring in money directly — it’s only carry. I took some of my 20% carry and let them have more, so they get upside and I get a portfolio and track record. My people cost is probably $200-300K a year. My goal is for it to break even, but money is to be invested in things that will grow.
Transparency with Employers [00:09:00]
Sam: The last thing is transparency. I was pretty open with people at Twitch — I operate not on a strict 9-to-5. Here’s the trade: I’m going to get this job done. You don’t ask me how, when, where, all the time. I’m very open about having a podcast and a newsletter. The CEO of Twitch subscribes to the newsletter and DMs me about it sometimes. I’m not hiding any of these things. They know I do them. They take some time, but they’re okay with that trade because I deliver the goods.
My trainer said it well. I told him I was feeling a little guilty, like I might be shortchanging my team. He goes: do you deliver the goods? I said yeah, like I perform. He goes: okay, well, you’re that dude. They don’t pay you to sit in your chair for certain hours. They pay you to deliver results. And if you’re delivering results in less time, that’s because you’re that dude.
Shaan: And you’re on paternity leave now, right?
Sam: Yeah. And that helps. Big companies understand — if you have a kid, there’s leave for that.
Lessons from Paternity Leave [00:13:00]
Sam: My first kid, I only took 10 days off. I really regret that. I should have taken the whole leave. This time I decided I’m going to take some off, because my family actually really needs me there. The first time I was like, I don’t know what I’m going to do — my wife kind of has it under control, let me go back to work.
This time I realized: the idea that this project is so important, and if I take time off I’ll do it later — later never came. That was a big lesson. Don’t put important things off until later. Do them now.