Sam and Shaan share the best content they consumed that week across video, newsletters, and social — a curated “info diet” episode. Topics span Bill Gurley’s viral regulation takedown at All-In, the Pelosi Tracker growth hack, Deion Sanders’ leadership at Colorado, the CFO Secrets newsletter on M&A working capital, and the Cultural Tutor’s rise from McDonald’s employee to 1.5M Twitter followers.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)
Intro: The Info Diet Episode [00:00:00]
Shaan: Then he said this line that I love. He goes, “That sounds silly — I understand that my whole day is just about posting on Twitter. But everybody’s just got a thing. That’s my thing.” And he’s like, “We’ve all got one thing. That’s my thing.” I love it.
Shaan: All right, we have a special episode. We’re going to talk about cool content that we’ve consumed. This might be short — 20, 25 minutes. You want to kick things off?
Sam: Yeah. Well, I want to say why I think this is a good type of episode to do. One of the best ways to change your life is to change your info diet. If you want to change your body, you go change your diet or your workout habits. If you want to change your mind, you need to change your info diet.
Sam: One of the questions I like asking — and I know you do too — which is like the dorkiest question ever. We probably should find a better way to phrase it.
Shaan: No, it’s a great question. The answer is so good that we don’t even care how lame the question sounds.
Sam: I’ve heard you say this before: “So what media are you consuming? What are you reading? What content do you like to consume?” I do that in job interviews and people will be like, “Oh I read The New York Times.” I’m like, no, come on. What subreddits are you on? Do you use Reddit? What about Twitter, Instagram? Who do you follow? Where are you getting your inputs? Who’s influencing you?
Shaan: Yeah. Palmer Luckey — we were like, “What subreddits do you go on?” Because his brain was firing off all these awesome things across all these different areas. That doesn’t just happen by accident. That happens because he’s got a set of interesting inputs that leads to a set of interesting outputs.
Shaan: We as MFM want to be one of those interesting inputs for you, so that you become a more interesting, smart person based off of listening to this. But we’re just one thing. So what we want to share is: what are the best inputs that we read, listened to, or watched this week that you should go check out? That’s the premise.
Shaan: I wish more people did this. I wish the people I find interesting would curate for me — “Here’s the one or two best things I read or watched this week, just to get my mind going.” Anyway, that’s the spiel. I want you to kick it off. Give me your top one.
Bill Gurley Goes Off on Regulation at All-In [00:02:30]
Sam: One of the best things I watched this week is Bill Gurley’s talk at All-In. Have you heard it?
Shaan: Yeah. He did a talk about Uber, regulation, and some surprising things they found.
Sam: So Bill Gurley was the lead investor in Uber. He goes to All-In and I expected him to talk about venture capital or investing. But he’s retired now — he’s in “no flex” mode, which is great. When you get a really smart person who feels like they have nothing to lose, they go off. That’s the best way to describe this. It wasn’t a talk — Bill Gurley went off.
Sam: The talk is titled something like “2,851” — that’s the number of miles between Silicon Valley and Washington DC. He talks about regulation and how screwed up it makes business. He goes through example after example, and it felt almost like a John Oliver thing — you know how John Oliver does those Last Week Tonight monologues where he’s exposing something messed up? Or like Coffeezilla on YouTube, where he’ll go in and expose a whole grift? Gurley exposed the grift of regulation.
Sam: He’s like, “Look, COVID happens, so they pass these laws about COVID testing. And this same test in the UK or Germany cost seven times less than in the US. Why? Because in the US it was mandated that only two companies’ tests would be allowed. In Germany it was a free market, so the cost went way down.” Or he’d give an example — here’s the guy who passed this law, said only three vendors could be used, and they charged crazy amounts. Then five years later, there’s his LinkedIn: he’s on the board as chief whatever at that same company he handed the prize to. The grift is real.
Sam: And the thing I loved is — you’re like, “Dan, that was a great talk.” He’s like, “I’ve been working on this for 15 years.” Every time he saw something that was just a complete grift, a messed up part of the system, he wrote it down. So this talk is 15 years in the making of observing what’s screwed up about how Washington works.
Sam: And his mic drop at the end is basically: “I called this talk ‘2,851.’ That’s the number of miles between San Francisco and DC. When I talk to people in DC and they ask how Silicon Valley does so much innovation — it’s because we’re so far away from Washington. We’re away from the poison of the way that place works. We’re the farthest possible place from DC on the map.”
Shaan: Was there any hopeful part of it? Like, this is going to change?
Sam: At the end they’re like, “What do we do about this? Can this change?” And he’s like, “Well, first we have to expose it. Shine light on it. The bacteria sort of grows in the dark.” And the second thing — it’s hard because the people who could change the laws, who could say ‘maybe if you write laws about companies you can’t trade their stocks,’ those are the same people who are profiting from the system. So it’s almost impossible to change that incentive. They’d need so much pressure to make those changes because the opposite incentive is enormous — their entire incentive is to keep the system the way it is.
The Pelosi Tracker Growth Hack [00:08:10]
Shaan: There’s this interesting thing going on. I don’t know if it’s the Senate or Congress, but there was one of the few things where a handful of hard-right Republicans and hard-left Democrats were actually agreeing on — create a political index fund. If you’re a politician, you have to put your money in this particular index fund. You can’t own individual stocks. You know how Nancy Pelosi is accused of, you know, doing whatever — and the head of the New York Stock Exchange, or whoever it was, sold a bunch of stocks like two weeks before the government shut down over COVID, and it all looks suspicious. So they’re arguing there needs to be a political index fund. Seems like a pretty cool idea actually.
Shaan: By the way, there’s a startup called Autopilot — it’s like automated money management. What you can do is put your money in the app and copy a public portfolio, like the Michael Burry portfolio.
Sam: Yeah, it’s cool. What did they do?
Shaan: The business was doing okay, then growth just took off. And I was like, “Dude, what happened? Incredible chart.” He’s like, “We made this Twitter handle called the Pelosi Tracker.” They have the Burry tracker, the Pelosi tracker — 339,000 followers. Every time she makes a trade they post about it. They dig through the filings.
Shaan: It’s hilarious — her gains are insane. Somehow Nancy Pelosi happens to be up 30% year to date. She’s outperforming Warren Buffett, outperforming your favorite hedge fund guy. How does a government official do this? Well, maybe they know some things before some things happen. It’s insane. It’s corrupt. That was a genius growth hack.
Deion Sanders on 60 Minutes [00:11:00]
Shaan: All right, I’ll give you one. This has been going around Twitter, but I went and watched the whole thing. Deion Sanders — I’m not a football guy, you’re going to know more about this than I am.
Sam: He’s now the coach of Colorado, the Buffaloes.
Shaan: He was on 60 Minutes a couple weeks ago, a 12-minute segment. Really fascinating. I remember Deion Sanders as this cocky, showboat guy. He’s still a little bit of that, but he’s incredibly insightful.
Shaan: So he was coaching at Jackson State, a historically Black college, did a decent job there, then got recruited to go to Colorado which is a big deal. And what he’s doing is two really interesting things. First, one of his sons is filming the whole thing — it’s like his GaryVee thing. His son is filming behind the scenes and posting it on YouTube.
Sam: Have you seen that? It’s amazing. One son is the starting quarterback. Another son is on the team, I think as a cornerback — which is what Deion used to play. And the son who’s not playing football is basically the GaryVee vlog guy, just in the locker room documenting the whole thing and sharing it on social as they go. They’re doing a better job of it than anybody else following that stuff.
Shaan: Yeah, it’s awesome. And the second thing is his leadership skills are really good, and they’re kind of shocking because I just thought he was a meathead. But the guy’s really insightful.
Shaan: They show a clip from one of his first meetings with the team, and he basically says, “I’m here to encourage most of you to quit.” The reason being: the team lost constantly — one win in eleven games the year before. The coaching staff is gone. He goes: “I brought my guys who I know are good. The coaching staff is partly to blame. But so are the players, because that coaching staff probably recruited a bunch of losers. And I’m here to get the losers to quit.”
Shaan: The guy on CNN was like, “Hey man, that’s a little harsh, these are kids.” He goes, “If you’re willing to quit the team because I said that, you’re probably weak. You’re not an asset. If words scare you, I need you out of here. I need the tough guys to stay, the assets, not the liabilities.” He re-ramped the roster — brought 40 new players in, which is half a roster, and 50 left through the transfer portal.
Sam: Yeah.
Shaan: He’s like, “Truth is good for the kids. This is what I’m here to teach you — football, how to live life, how to be a good man. What you need is truth. I’m going to prepare you for the real world.” And then the interviewer asks, “So who do you think is the best football coach right now in the NCAA?” He goes, “Do you have a mirror? It’s me.” But then he does a good job of being humble too: “I learned a lot from Nick Saban. He’s forgotten more about football than I’ll ever know. I’m looking for crumbs from him.” It was really inspirational — this kind of pound-your-chest leadership delivered really well. Very inspiring on how to lead a business.
Sam: You know, I’m usually — believe it or not — not that big a believer in the pregame or halftime speech. That’s probably overrated in terms of what a coach can do. What’s vastly underrated is the systems, habits, and standards you enforce and instill.
Sam: What people see going viral are the speeches. But if you watch the other stuff Dion does, he sets a bunch of standards. It’s almost like that book, The Score Takes Care of Itself by Bill Walsh — we want to win, but the score takes care of itself if we do the inputs right.
Sam: The famous story is Bill Walsh making people answer the phone at the front desk a certain way. John Wooden did the same thing: “We’re going to learn how to lace up your shoes.” Just making the point that what happens out there is a direct result of what you put in.
Sam: Dion does this too. He shows footage from a previous practice and goes, “Look at what’s happening here. Can anyone tell me what’s wrong?” And it’s nothing — it’s just guys walking in between drills. He’s like, “Exactly. You’re walking. If we’re on this field, we run. We do not walk.” He created a whole new set of standards — where you sit in a team meeting, how you show up, whether you’re on your phone.
Sam: So while the speeches are getting all the shine, I think the more interesting thing is the daily standards, the inputs that go into it. And of course right now they’re undefeated and doing really well, and I think it’s more because of that.
Shaan: Yeah, it’s awesome. He did a good job — when he did the whole “let me hold up the mirror” thing, he was like, “Look, I tell my kids I expect them to be the best, so I’m going to be the best. I think you can win the Heisman Trophy and I’m going to be the best coach.” He does a really good job of balancing cocky “we’re going to take over the world” with high expectations for everyone. I thought that was really inspiring.
CFO Secrets: The M&A Working Capital Post [00:21:00]
Sam: All right, I’ll do another one. This is in the nerdy realm. There’s a Twitter account I really like called CFO Secrets. He has a newsletter. I didn’t subscribe to it, but I saw one of his posts that was really great. It was called “Uncovering the Mystery of Working Capital in M&A.” I was like, okay, that sounds boring, has a market size of like three people — but dude, when I sold to HubSpot, it took me a week for them to explain what working capital was and I still don’t fully understand it. Read this post. It’s really good.
Sam: One of the things I look for is when somebody actually knows their stuff. Honestly, sometimes when I go on Twitter or YouTube I just want to delete my account because it’s so annoying that the most vocal people just don’t know what they’re talking about.
Sam: What happens is: some people know their stuff and produce content, everybody loves it, but then some people instead of taking that content and going to execute, they’re like, “I too will create content about how to be successful, although I am not successful yet.” Then there’s a ladder below that — people telling you how to do sales even though they’ve never done sales, never sold more than ten thousand dollars in their life. It just ladders down that way. And those people have the most time on their hands, so they’re the most active publishing stuff. It’s crazy.
Sam: So seeing this guy’s newsletter — I was like, finally, somebody who knows what they’re talking about. He has this thing about M&A and if you’ve ever sold a company, so much of what he says rings true.
Sam: The post starts like this — I’m going to read you some of the best parts. It goes: “It always starts the same. We’re tired. They’re tired. Everyone’s been sprinting to get this over the line. And we’re sprinting because time kills deals — momentum is what oils the deal wheels.”
Sam: “There’s always a point where the deal is mostly agreed. We’ve agreed on the headline valuation number, that took a lot of negotiating, it’s tired us out. And now there’s only two or three points left. Most of them are boring stuff like reps and warranties. There’s maybe one commercial point left. So the other side picks up the phone: ‘Hey, we just need to iron out this one detail about the working capital peg.’”
Sam: He goes, “I’ll say something like, ‘Oh, thanks for the reminder — I’ve been so busy on the documents I haven’t had much time to give that thought. I’ll get back to you tonight.’ But I’ve been thinking about it. I’ve been thinking about the working capital this whole time. I’m just setting up my position — acting like I haven’t put much thought into it, then I’m going to come back with a very well thought through thing.”
Sam: He goes: “There’s one last trade left in the negotiation. In my experience, this is one to three percent of your total enterprise value — just this last thing. And it’s a pure win-lose negotiation. You’re tired, they’re tired. Who’s going to feel like, ‘ah, screw it, let’s just get the deal done’?”
Shaan: And you know this from our negotiation. The person who can be comfortable with the most amount of discomfort will win.
Sam: Exactly. The short version: the more stubborn party wins — always. People think the person who wins a negotiation is the one with the stronger logical case. Hell no. It’s the person who’s more stubborn. Always. How do you be stubborn? You need to be comfortable in the discomfort.
Sam: And honestly, when we did our negotiation — maybe we should do a full breakdown on it sometime — one of the things we didn’t do a good job of was this last bit. The last one to five percent of value. We were so tired after four months, we just wanted to get the deal done. I don’t think we did a good job there.
Shaan: Yeah.
Sam: And the real way to do that is to dig in the most on that last deal point. You can get it and you’ll thank yourself later. Even though in the moment you’re exhausted — it’s like any workout. Do I push here or do I stop? Anyone who knows about working out knows: push through. You’re tired but you’ll feel so satisfied. All the gains come on those last two reps.
Sam: So anyway, he gets into the nerdy part — a spreadsheet, enterprise value versus equity value, what’s the difference, how debt and capital in the business factor in. Very useful. Probably overkill to read early, but if you’re going to do M&A it really pays to have somebody good at M&A on your side. This newsletter is a really nerdy find.
Shaan: I’m going to read this. I went through a deal that involved net working capital and I still don’t entirely know what it means. It was very challenging. And this guy’s writing is really good — he sets it up perfectly. Working capital was thrown in at the last minute and I’m like, “I don’t even know what that is. I’m dead. I want to get this done, it’s supposed to close in eight days.”
Cultural Tutor: McDonald’s to 1.5M Twitter Followers [00:30:00]
Sam: All right. Do you know this account, Cultural Tutor on Twitter?
Shaan: Awesome follow.
Sam: So the story is kind of crazy. He went on David Perell’s podcast, which I just recorded an episode for last week.
Shaan: David’s a cool guy. Lives in Austin. Teaches people about writing online. He’s got a new podcast — the set is beautiful, looks like they’re in the Royal Library in the UK or something.
Sam: So he has this guy on — Cultural Tutor — and I’d seen one of his threads go super viral. He did a thread about why all architecture looks the same now, all minimalist. That thing got like 100 million impressions or something. It was really good. Hit a nerve. Not even something you’d think goes viral.
Sam: So this guy does his interview, and I’ve honestly only listened to the first 10 minutes. Like many books I recommend, I got a lot of value out of the first 10 minutes and was sort of satisfied. But he said something at the beginning.
Sam: So this guy was literally working at McDonald’s — flipping burgers, doing fries. He had a mutual friend, Harry Dry, who’s cool. And then David basically sponsored him. He became his patron. “You want to write? What if I just paid you to write?” So the guy quits McDonald’s, decides he’s going to write every day, and David funds him.
Sam: The important part isn’t that, though. The important part is this: the guy decides he’s going to write one amazing Twitter thread a day. And he says this line that’s great. David asks, “What’s your schedule?” He goes, “I wake up at like 4 PM, and then I just start thinking about my thread. I smoke cigarettes, go for walks, write, go for another walk, smoke some more cigarettes, eat some food somewhere in the middle, and then I write, and then I publish, and then I pass out, and I do it again the next day.”
Sam: David’s like, “That’s crazy.” He goes, “Yeah. I’m not the guy who’s going to tell you my morning routine. Don’t follow me. But this is what I do. My whole day is about publishing one amazing Twitter thread.” Then he said this line that I love: “That sounds silly. I understand that my whole day is just about posting on Twitter.” I love it.
Shaan: And what are the results?
Sam: 1.3 million Twitter followers. He’s built a massive following in like a year.
Shaan: Is it making money?
Sam: I don’t know, I don’t think he makes any money yet. But you can — it’s not that hard to turn attention into money once you have it. It’s harder to turn money into attention than attention into money, to be honest. He has 1.5 million followers and a hundred thousand person email list.
Shaan: Yeah, he’s doing fantastic. That’s incredible.
Sam: I just love the intensity this guy brings to something. And I’ve actually noticed this as a common trait: if you bring a level of seriousness to something that everybody else considers not serious, you can actually win much bigger than most people realize.
Sam: That’s how we felt about newsletters. I was doing the math like, I think this could be a legit thing. We sold early, but the business could make $100 million a year. Morning Brew is close to that. And one of the reasons why is people thought it was silly. But if you did the math — the math was there.
Shaan: And I think that’s the same thing with my latest business, too. We’re just taking something seriously that most people treat as a hobby.
Sam: Yeah. Well, there’s a few that take it seriously, but many others in the space think it’s just a small thing you charge $100 a year for. There are a lot of hobbyists.
Shaan: The better frame, I think, for what I’m doing is just — we joke about it but it is the “beautifully done” thing. Like, I’m trying to do that. Your stuff is more stylish, more cool, more desirable for a variety of intangible factors: design, people feeling FOMO, the content, the first hundred members you added. I remember getting sales calls to join Vistage or whatever — they missed the mark completely.
Sam: Well, I love guys like Cultural Tutor because what I do for a lot of my brands is I follow people like him and look at what was cool in the 60s and 70s that I can reuse today. For example, the color for Hampton is the color of this really cool Jaguar car that was popular in the 70s. When I made the branding I found old Rolex ads — what was cool then that could still be cool now.
Shaan: Have you seen the sunscreen company Vacation? It looks like a guy who filmed an 80s or early 90s vacation. That aesthetic.
Sam: Jeremy Summers — he did the branding for Milk Road. He didn’t do the character, but he helped develop the whole brand, and he’s amazing at that aesthetic. Kind of vintage, classy, nostalgic. Beautifully done.
David Perell’s Studio and His Standards [00:38:00]
Shaan: Actually, I’ll wrap up with a quick story about David Perell. I went to his apartment in Austin. He has his own apartment in the building, but he also rented this other apartment, and when you walk in it feels like an Airbnb or like you’re walking into a Restoration Hardware store. Everything is perfectly set up.
Shaan: David is really OCD. He’s got this three-bedroom apartment — they knocked down one wall — and one room is the studio where we sit, and another room is the guest room where if you’re a guest and want to fly in, you can stay there. There’s a record on the wall, books on the shelf. I’m like, “David, did all these have meaning?” He goes, “Of course. You know me. Every single thing here has a purpose and a story.” He perfectly picked everything in this studio.
Sam: “What is that?” “Oh, would you like to see this cream-colored book on my bookshelf? Does it even have pages? This one says… Tango Lessons. Did I read this book? No. Did I go on Etsy because someone said go buy cream-colored books to put in your background, it makes you look classy?” Dude, everything at David’s place is on purpose and it all has a story.
Shaan: I sent you a video and was like, we have to step it up. This guy is so particular. He’s the Deion Sanders of podcasting right now. All of his standards are perfect. I saw his trailer — he’s sweating every detail.
Sam: David’s awesome. He does a great job. He’s gotten way further with a topic that I think is incredibly boring. He makes millions of dollars a year teaching people to become writers. Like, I don’t even know how he does that. Writing long essays is not something most people want to do. To me that’s a 10-out-of-10 execution on a 4-out-of-10 opportunity. If he was doing used car sales he’d be a trillionaire.
Shaan: Well, he’s obsessed with it. He loves it. He’s doing it for the right reasons. I think he said this publicly — I met him two years ago. He’s Jewish, and he was going to a Bible study class every week. I was like, “Why are you doing this?” He’s like, “Well, the Bible is really important as part of culture. I’m so fascinated with writing, and I’ve noticed there are a lot of Bible references, so I started going to the class.”
Shaan: I see him again after about a year and he’s like, “I’ve converted to Christianity. They got me. I just read it so much, and I thought I really want to go one step further.” Like, he just bought into the whole thing, hardcore. He is an academic in the coolest way possible.
Sam: I was trying to flirt with him — instead of sending nudes, I just sent him a font. He was over the moon about it. “Loved it. Is that Jaran? That made me weak at the knees.”
Recap [00:44:00]
Shaan: Let’s recap real quick. We got the Bill Gurley talk — that’s a YouTube video. The David Perell interview with Cultural Tutor — watched the first 10 minutes, it’s great. What was yours?
Sam: Deion Sanders on 60 Minutes.
Shaan: 60 Minutes, Deion Sanders. And then the CFO Secrets newsletter about nerdy M&A stuff — there’s a 19-part series, I read two of them, they’re very good.
Sam: All right, that’s the pod.