Our Best And Worst Investments of 2025

Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Shaan Puri (host)

Shaan Puri: All right. So, Steph, welcome back. You’ve been on, I don’t know, a dozen times or so. You’re a great friend of the pod. We wanted to do this with you. So, we have categories, a bunch of categories for the year, and we’re going to go rapid fire through them and we’ll do it that way. Okay. So, Steph, you’ve been given the categories, but we don’t know what you said. Sam, I don’t know what you said. This will be a surprise for all of us.

Sam Parr: Well, I wish we actually would have recapped some of the numbers, but over the last 12 months, Shaan, I don’t know if you’ve known this, but we’ve had something like 90 million views across everything, downloads and views. So, pretty wild.

Shaan Puri: That always—

Sam Parr: We crossed, I believe, I think we’re close to 2 million subscribers across YouTube, Spotify, and Apple or whatever, which is bananas. I mean, that number 90 million, that’s a lot of view time. A lot of views.

Shaan Puri: It’s a lot. And there’s definitely one or two shorts that got 10 million. I think last year there was one where we told the story—maybe you told the story of Elon Musk. I think it got 30 million. So some go really heavy, but it’s been pretty crazy. So we’ve reached tens of millions of people in the last 12 months, which is astounding.

And now we do this at the end of every year and it’s one of my favorite things. We do mostly the same categories each year, but it’s always so fun to go through your phone and look at old photos and see what’s going on from your trailer in 12 months. So, I’m excited to do this. So, category number one: the best investment that you made this year. Is that right? Best investment you made this year. So, Sam, you want to kick this off?

Best Investment of the Year [00:01:45]

Sam Parr: Yeah. So, if this just says investment, it doesn’t say best money investment. My best money investment is always boring because I just do S&P 500 bonds, but my best real investment that I made was I moved to New York City. And let me tell you the story.

So, I was living in the suburbs. I decided to move to New York City. I moved here and I found an apartment that I loved. It was furnished amazingly. And I go to the previous tenants. I go, “I want to move into this apartment. Do you guys just want to sell me all your furniture?” And so I had them itemize all of their furniture. And it added up to be very expensive, $80,000 or $90,000 worth of stuff. I said, “I’ll give you 10%.” They took it.

So I ended up moving to the city in a furnished apartment where I get to see my in-laws four days a week. I go to my office five days a week and it’s made me so happy. So that’s been my best investment was moving to a furnished place. I sold all my cars. I don’t own basically anything and I love it.

Shaan Puri: Owning less stuff, moving to the city, being near your family, working in person in an office—that’s actually a pretty big change overall.

Sam Parr: Huge change and it’s definitely made me a lot happier.

Shaan Puri: Questionable if it’s an investment, but it is a huge change. I will give you that.

Sam Parr: It’s an emotional investment. I’m emotionally invested in this city now. See, this is why I don’t do index funds and bonds because imagine if I’m one day on a podcast and they ask me about my best investment of the year and I have to start talking about seeing my mother-in-law. That’s why I pick stocks, baby. That’s why I do.

Shaan Puri: Yeah. Like what am I going to say? My net worth went up by 30% this year through boring stuff. Steph, what do you got? Best investment of the year. Tell me it’s an actual investment and not like the “best investment.”

Guest (Steph Smith): I’m about to disappoint you, man.

Shaan Puri: Oh my god.

Guest (Steph Smith): The only time I check the S&P is to gauge my husband’s mood for the day. So, he invests all our money. And so, I got to come up with something else. My investment is also not really an investment, but it’s Accutane. You guys know what Accutane is?

Sam Parr: What? Yes. Is that like acne medicine? What is that?

Guest (Steph Smith): Yes. Yes. Yes. So, backstory real quick. I’ve had acne my whole life. Truly since I was 13. I’m 32 now. So, what is that? That’s nearly two decades of just unnecessary pain. Time applied. Just the worst. Anyone who’s had acne knows it sucks. So, I spent forever just being like, “It’ll go away. I’m getting older.”

And then I was influenced by the king influencer, MrBeast. He was on—I can’t even remember what podcast—but he just slipped it in one day. He was like, “Yeah, I took Accutane a few years ago. I didn’t really tell anyone, but one day my acne just disappeared overnight. I don’t know why more people don’t talk about this.” And I was like, first of all, yes, why don’t more people talk about this? And second of all, I’m going to call up my dermatologist and ask why I’m not on Accutane. And I took it for six months this year and I’m clear. And I think it’s like, obviously your mileage may vary. Go talk to a doctor. But I’m just like, this is the best thing ever. People, the internet can do the comparison. I mean, I always wear makeup, so take right now, go back to V1 of me on My First Million. It’s going to look different.

Shaan Puri: You should post a tweet of a true before and after.

Guest (Steph Smith): Well, that’s the thing. People are so embarrassed to—if I were to actually take—I’m sure I’ve got some images of me, no makeup during those periods. It’s embarrassing.

Shaan Puri: We have another category called biggest personal L you took and maybe there will be some photos we shared during that time. Okay so you also didn’t do the category. We’re off to a rough start here.

All right so my investment—this is actually kind of funny—a year ago to the day. So this December 17th today, I tweeted out on December 16th this tweet. I said, “I’m going Christmas shopping this morning. I’m shopping assets this morning.” Basically what I did was that day I took something like $1.5 million and I spread it across these stocks and I tweeted it out that day. I said I’m putting 20% into Shopify, 20% into Tesla, 20% into Eli Lilly, 20% into Bitcoin, 20% into Coinbase. The one I forgot to put on here is I also put 20% Google. Basically I put $250k into each one. So I think the total was $1.25 million invested on the same day on December 16. No dollar cost averaging, no research, no nothing. I was just feeling like these are things I would like to gift myself for long-term ownership.

And if I look at the results of these now, what are they? I just looked this morning because I haven’t really been checking too aggressively. So I had a couple that were flat. Coinbase and Bitcoin are essentially flat. Coinbase is up 1%. Bitcoin’s down 8% in that total year span, but everything else: Shopify is up 53%, Tesla’s up 16-17%, Eli Lilly’s up 35%, Google’s up 50%. And so, my public stock bet that I put out there is my best investment of the year because I think the blended average here is something—what is that? I think it’s something like 35% for the year. And so that was a good return on a one-day shopping spree.

Sam Parr: You use these words like “shopping spree” and things like that as if they apply here, which is hilarious.

Shaan Puri: I was supposed to be Christmas shopping, gifts for others, and instead I bought stocks for myself.

Sam Parr: I thought you committed to the index path last year. I distinctly remember you saying that.

Shaan Puri: No. If I did, these are false promises. I am part of this degenerate lifestyle for now and for always. So Sam, what do you do? Do you keep those five or do you pick five new ones?

Sam Parr: Well, the one part that’s not as—I’m not trading these. These are like what companies or assets do I want to own for a 10-year period. 10 years is my default hold period and that’s basically what I’ve been doing since then. I graduated in college in 2010 and it’s basically what I’ve been doing since then. I had one thing that I bought for 2010 to 2020 and then in 2020 I bought a bunch of stuff which wasn’t so great because that was when COVID was happening and it was a really crazy time. But in general when I buy things I try to hold them for 10 years. That’s the goal.

Sam Parr: Why Eli Lilly?

Shaan Puri: Because I do Ozempic.

Sam Parr: Because you told me that they had some drug that was incredible and you were like—what is it? You texted me something and I was like, listen, I didn’t listen when Sam said the Ozempic thing. But literally it was just you telling me that this drug is incredible and it put it to shame and it wasn’t fully out yet or something. You had some early info around this.

Sam Parr: Yeah, I had a guy basically. So, I like to biohack. So, I test all types of crazy stuff. A lot of times it’s compound stuff, meaning stuff from China. I don’t know what I’m allowed to admit to right now. I don’t want to go to jail, but yeah, your friend does all this.

Shaan Puri: Your friend also named Sam as well.

Sam Parr: And it did all of the stuff that Ozempic does other than make your stomach feel sick. And I started taking it and it’s amazing. It’s so good. I mean, I don’t take this stuff regularly and just anytime something new comes out, it’s sort of like, “Oh, what’s a DVD player? I got to buy one.” That’s what I do with drugs. You learn about new technology and it was amazing.

Shaan Puri: So, you told me this and then since then—no, no, no. Dude, you told me I think that day and I was like, “You know what? I’m putting Lily.”

Sam Parr: It’s up 34%.

Shaan Puri: It’s up 34%. I didn’t say I researched these, by the way. I operate on gut and swagger. Okay. And so the difference since then, the CEO of Eli Lilly has come on because Lilly has turned into a trillion dollar company. It’s the first pharmaceutical company to do that. And he’s explained all the incredible things that they do differently than the others and how they’re using AI. And I feel better about it now. There’s more to like, but I can’t say that any of those were the reasons why I did it. They do seem to operate more of a tech company now, but I don’t know. It just seemed like people were going to want—I just sort of was like Ozempic is the best product ever and Sam says they have a better Ozempic coming. All right, great. That’s enough.

Sam Parr: Shaan’s investment thesis just says “Sam tried some drug.”

Shaan Puri: Well, the history of four of Sam’s other ones and so I thought well for once I’ll do this.

Sam Parr: For example, remember when we invested in the mobility trend on Instagram?

Shaan Puri: No payoff but yeah.

Sam Parr: Yeah. There has been a few things. We invested in Andrew Huberman early on. We’ve gotten a couple investments right. It just turns out this one was financial. That’s cool.

Shaan Puri: That’s great. Steph, you have some offer for people who are listening. What is the offer? What is the thing that you were giving people if they go in the comments or the description and click? What is it?

Steph’s Trends Database [00:08:30]

Guest (Steph Smith): Oh yeah. HubSpot and you guys at My First Million were very kind and generous to offer. Internet Pipes is a project I’ve worked on for the last 2 years. Probably heard about it on the pod before. So if you go to the link in the show notes you can enter and get one of 10 copies and if you enter you get my digits database. So it’s 100 plus generation-defining trends that hopefully will mean something meaningful in the future. Things like: what did Elon see? He saw that it was possible to exponentially decrease the cost to send a kilogram to space. What does that mean? Well it means completely rethinking our communication system. Starlink, right?

Shaan Puri: What does it mean? They go in, they definitely get the database and then 10 people will also get free access to Pipes.

Guest (Steph Smith): Exactly.

Shaan Puri: All right. Go get it. Okay. So, does that mean that worst investment of the year is also going to have no answers for you guys?

Worst Investment of the Year [00:09:45]

Sam Parr: I have one. When I sold my company, I got a bunch of HubSpot stock and I held on to a lot of it and then I saw how multiples were getting crazy and I had to even out because it was making up too high of a percentage of my net worth, but I still kept some of it. So, I got my ass kicked on that one. How about you, Steph?

Guest (Steph Smith): Shaan’s not going to like my answer, but it’s not financial. I did get—

Shaan Puri: It’s a vitamin. Is it a vitamin or a supplement of some kind?

Guest (Steph Smith): Worst investment? A vitamin? No. I did get a notice that a bubble tea company I invested in a few years ago during peak syrup went under. Unsurprisingly, huge.

Shaan Puri: Oh, dude. I’ve got like 20 of those bubble tea.

Guest (Steph Smith): It was literally these founders who were on one of those crowdfunding sites who had no real evidence that they would make a great bubble tea company. But I was like bubble tea is great and invested in that. But my actual answer for worst investment that is not financial is just networking events. I feel like you guys already know this, but it’s taken me way too long to—

Shaan Puri: Name names. Which conferences do you regret this year? Let’s put them out there.

Guest (Steph Smith): All of them. Yeah, I think that’s my worst investment. Going to all these things that you just know beforehand are going to suck. You’re not going to like them, but there’s some sliver of you that thinks there might be something good there.

Shaan Puri: Were you required to go or it was an optional attend and then you’ve regretted it?

Guest (Steph Smith): It was an optional attend. It was a lack of judgment.

Shaan Puri: Gotcha. What about you, Shaan? I like it. Sam, anything you want to add to her networking event answer?

Sam Parr: No, I mean, I agree with you. But yeah, I’m on board. What about yours, Shaan? What’s your biggest loss?

Shaan Puri: I went to one networking event with you and I thought you did great. I was like, “Wow, she’s such a natural at these events.” Not because you weren’t trying. And I was like, “Oh, people just seem to gravitate towards Steph. They want to hang out with her. She seems like a safe space for everybody who’s exhausted from the networking part of this event.” And I just remember thinking, I don’t know how she did that, but I like that.

Guest (Steph Smith): By the way, I had a great year at networking events. I went to an email newsletter conference. We went to Shaan’s basketball thing. I went to the HubSpot conference somewhat recently. I had a great year.

Shaan Puri: Sounds much better than the other. So you had a great—

Sam Parr: I like going to networking. Good time.

Shaan Puri: Yeah. Because I like seeing old friends. I’ve been in the industry for long enough that it’s the only time that I see old buddies. That’s fair. Yeah, that’s true. I didn’t really go to anything this year. You went to—

Sam Parr: Well, that was in San Francisco. I just showed up and gave my talk and I left. So, it was a very quick thing. I hung out with Dash actually at the event. That was kind of the only thing I did.

Shaan Puri: Yeah, that sounds awesome. But, okay, I’ll give you my worst investment of the year. Once again, I took these literally. This wasn’t—okay, so I guess this is a little less literal. I didn’t lose money much in any investments this year, which was nice because in prior years, if you go back and watch these awards, it’s like, “Hey, invested in this crypto Ponzi scheme. What’s up with that?” That was pretty bad. I’ve run into some trouble along the way.

This year, I didn’t have any. But I will say this, I realized I found out this year that I had passed on three different $10 billion startup investments that were right in my wheelhouse. Unbelievable. The first one was PolyMarket. I was one of the early users, probably the first 5,000 users of PolyMarket. I’m a degenerate gambler. My college GPA is like half a point lower than it should be because I used to go gamble on river boats in international waters and stuff instead of going to class. I am a degenerate gambler. I was using PolyMarket. I was VPNing to pretend I’m in Morocco to place bets allegedly. And so, I’m using PolyMarket. I love the thing. The founder is in my DMs. He screenshotted his phone and posted one of my blog posts as the background of his phone. He’s like, “I thought you’d like this. This is my background of my phone this week.” And I was the ultimate in and didn’t somehow end up making an investment. Just didn’t go actively try to do it until it was too late.

Kalshi, same thing. Another prediction market, same product. If I didn’t hit the winner, the first winner, PolyMarket, maybe I could have hit the second winner. I go back, I check my DMs, they’ve been DMing me since 2020. “Hey, huge fans of the pod. Would love to do something with you.” All I needed to do was answer. And guess what? I did answer. And here’s what my great answer was: “Ah, so pretty similar to PolyMarket then, huh?” That was my son of a gun answer.

Sam Parr: How much would you have made?

Shaan Puri: The valuations of those were probably sub-$100 million for sure at that stage. And now they’re both above 10 billion. So, no public math, but somebody in the chat can tell me how much money I lost.

And the last one was Whatnot. So, I get acquired by Twitch, the number one live streaming platform. When I’m at Twitch, guess what I do? I tell Twitch, “Hey, we’re losing the battlefield on mobile.” I become the leader of mobile at Twitch to do mobile live streaming.

Sam Parr: Dude, we talked about these guys on the pod, too. You had a great spiel on them.

Shaan Puri: Talked about on the pod. I actually meet with them. I asked to invest. I’m like, “Guys, I could help you. I know this space inside and out. I know all the talent you need to recruit. I know the best people from Twitch. We’ll go poach them. We’ll raid the pantry. This is going to be amazing.” And they were like—he was like, “Yeah, you know, we’re pretty oversubscribed.” And I was like, “But it’s me. Make some space.” And he’s like, “All right, let me get back to you.” He did not get back to me. And I did not get back to him. And I did not invest in Whatnot’s first round. And now it’s a $10 billion company also. And it was literally the thing I was doing, the thing I know probably—there’s not a hundred people on Earth that know that space better than I do—and missed it.

Sam Parr: How many of your investments went under this year? Because this was the year where I probably got 10 emails of different angel companies that I made that went under. It took about three years.

Shaan Puri: Well, it’s the worst phase, right? So, we’re probably both since we started angel investing—you had a syndicate, I had a fund—

Sam Parr: Like ‘21.

Shaan Puri: The worst phase is going to be like year three, year four because the only companies that are exiting are either small exits or just shutdowns at this stage. Your winners are going to ride for another 5 years. So it’s like AngelList, you got a distribution and you go check and it’s like $341 from this company and then the founder’s bragging about their acquisition on Twitter and you’re like just shoot me now.

Sam Parr: Would you—going back—how many angel investments have you done, Steph? I don’t know, like 15. Okay. So, going back and—first of all, look forward in the future, five years from now. Let’s say you invested $100. What do you think that $100 is going to turn into for both of you or what IRR? I don’t know how you want to measure it.

Shaan Puri: It’s hard to say. I think it’ll three to four-x basically over the 10-year period. So it’ll be something like a—this is a guess—my personal guess would be like something like a 3 to 4x over that over the 10-year lifespan.

Sam Parr: That does not seem worth it.

Shaan Puri: That doesn’t even seem worth it for the K1s I have to deal with. Honestly, I don’t know if you guys are different. My learning from Peak Zerp was I never want to angel invest again unless it’s a company that I want to be involved with actively.

Shaan Puri: It depends. So like I use a conservative estimate just to not get my hopes up or just false promise myself. But the thing with these is it depends on basically your bet. Like I did 110 deals. It just depends on your top four deals. So it’s like I have these four companies right now. They’re doing amazing. They’re whatever 100x returns on each of them or 50 to 100x. But will they last? Will they exit? Are they going to go up another order of magnitude from here? That’s what you need in angel investing is to get like this sort of multi-hundred-x or thousand-x type of return and then you look like a genius but you don’t really know for a while to be honest. Even the companies that are kicking ass right now, the breakouts, it’s hard to know. Can they sustain it? Will they get the—will they time the exit? Will they actually IPO? What’s going to happen? It’s hard to know.

Sam Parr: But that’s the normal hit rate.

Shaan Puri: It’s normal but it doesn’t feel good when you’re on number 48.

Shaan Puri: The trick isn’t even out of 100 can you get 12 instead of six? It’s: are your six as big as the big winners are in any given cohort of companies, right? And it’s also hard to know. I invested in Replit and it had like 2 million in revenue. It now has 250 million in annual revenue. It’s growing like crazy. It’s unbelievable. But where does this all go? It’s hard to know if that’s sustainable to keep growing as fast as they’ve been growing.

Biggest Personal L [00:15:30]

Sam Parr: All right, so next category is the biggest personal L that we took. Okay, I’m going to tell you what mine is and it’s going to make you guys all just cringe. So basically, I was at a party about 6 months ago and I overhear this group of people talking about being pregnant and this one lady—I can’t even tell you—I asked her when she was due.

Guest (Steph Smith): I’ve done that.

Sam Parr: She wasn’t due.

Shaan Puri: She wasn’t due and I spent—

Sam Parr: I said, “What do you do? What?”

Shaan Puri: Why you looking at me like that?

Sam Parr: I spent 30 seconds looking for—oh, I thought I—and then in front of five other people, I just apologized. I said, “Sorry,” and I walked away. I said, “I’m so sorry.” I tried. I was like a guy falling off a cliff grabbing for trees and I couldn’t grab a branch. And I was like, “I thought you said you were pregnant. I didn’t see your kid with you, but so I didn’t know you had a kid. You left him behind.” And then eventually it just was—I’m sorry. I really I just apologized.

Shaan Puri: It’s so funny because on podcasts, self-deprecating is good, but what’s full deprecating? Don’t go full depre. You went full deprecating there.

Sam Parr: I’m not joking. And then my nanny was with me—we went to a party—and she was like, “You really blew that one.” I was like, I could tell. I did that at a Christmas party in 2013. I can tell you the exact place and date that happened once and then it was like I’ve just never—it’s never left me.

Shaan Puri: I knew not to do that. I knew not to do that but I just—

Sam Parr: I told you but when I did it I knew not to do it but it’s sort of like—I don’t know—when you instinctively stop at a red light. I just thought I heard her say that she was pregnant and I just said, “Wait, what do you do?” I don’t know. It was horrible and it’s one of these things that I’m going to remember for the next 50 years.

Guest (Steph Smith): Wait I’m so curious. What do these women say when you apologize? Are they like, “Oh, it’s okay. People do this to me all the time.” Or are they like, “You’re an asshole.”

Sam Parr: No, she looked at my face. She basically just smiled smugly. You know, screw this lady actually because it’s her fault. No, she looked at me and she acted disappointed in me, which she was.

Shaan Puri: She looked pregnant. She looked like a normal person just had a big belly. Doubling down. Wow, that’s outrageous. Amazing. Shaan, you go next.

Shaan Puri: All right, so I have a bad one, too. So I got jury duty this year in April and I was like—I’ve never had to go. They call, sometimes you call in because it’s an every year thing but it’s like Russian roulette. So, you know, you call in, they’re like, “You don’t need to come in.” Or you go in and right away they’re like, “Hey, you’re good to go.” I used a hardship thing, like I got to be at work. I got out before.

So, this year I expect it’s going to go swimmingly again. And I show up and all of a sudden it’s like, “No, no, you’re definitely going to be needed. You’re definitely going to be seen. There’s a really big case.” And I’m like, “What? I don’t want a big case. This is bad.” And so I get into the jury duty vetting where they’re vetting people, right? And the judge gives this big speech about civic duty and there’s a presentation—not even a presentation. Remember Prezi? The judge had a Prezi going on and the judge is proud of his animations.

Sam Parr: Exactly. Like everybody is the first time they use Prezi they’re like, “Holy shit. This is better than Avatar.”

Shaan Puri: And so, the judge is doing a Prezi about the founding fathers and how jury duty is the bedrock of society and all this shit. As you might guess, I’m completely unmoved. I’m completely unpatriotic in this way. I do not care. And so I’m formulating my idea of how I’m going to get out of this. So I’m like, “Oh, I’ll just say I have a work trip.” Easy. They gave the dates. Funny enough, I got a work trip.

So I’m in the row, there’s seven people ahead of me. First person stands up and says, “Your honor, I have a work trip. I’m not going to be able to attend.” And he says, “Do you have the booking information? Can you please show it to me?” And I’m like, “What?” And so that guy starts to—so I go on my phone and I’m like, “Booking.” So I book a flight. Person number two goes, I don’t hear him. I’m booking a flight. Person three goes, I’m booking a flight. The judge has reviewed that person’s booking and says, “This was booked today and you got your notice—the flight needed to be booked before that.”

So now I’ve got a booking and my lie is gone. So I’m like, okay what am I going to do next? So the next person goes and they say like, “I’m really important at work,” and so I’m like, “I have this podcast,” and I’m like, “That’s not going to work.” So what do I do next? Eventually it comes to me and I’m like, “I have a baby at home.” So I was like, “I have a baby at home. I need to be there to take care of the baby. My wife works.” And so judge is like, “Does your wife work at home?” And I’m like, it’s a personal question, but—so I’m like, do I lie? Do I not lie? I’m like, she is at home, but I’m trying to figure out how do I muddy the waters a little bit? I was like, “But you know she’s—” and basically the only idea that comes to my mind is to insult her.

I’m like, do I just say she’s a bad mom? That’s not going to work. I’m the primary caretaker.

Sam Parr: Drunk, sir.

Shaan Puri: So I’m like, “I’m the primary caretaker of this baby.” And then like, I even remember the baby’s middle name at this point. And then she’s like, “So could your wife take care of the baby?” And I’m like, “Oh god.” I’m going way deeper in than I thought I was going to go. And so I’m like, “Yeah, but I just wouldn’t feel comfortable with it.” And then she’s like, “Why?”

Sam Parr: You’re like, “Look, your honor, it’s noon. She’s already about 8 Xanax deep.” Okay.

Shaan Puri: I basically made my wife sound like either a bad mom or like a drug addict or something. Like she’s a drunk. And so I was like, “You know what? I’ll be fine. I’ll be here. Can’t wait. I’ll be there.” And so I just let it pass. Girl next to me, she goes—the lady asks, “Can you do it?” And she’s like, “No.” And the judge goes, “Why not?” She goes, “It’s against my religion. I don’t believe you should judge anyone.” And she’s like, “What religion is that?” She cited a Bible passage which was basically about don’t judge anyone, therefore, because they don’t judge you or something. And the judge was like, “Okay, thank you. You’re dismissed.”

Oh my god. That was it. Couldn’t you have just told him you’re racist or something? Yeah, I thought about that, but I was in a very diverse crowd and I was like I still have to—in case I don’t get off with that—I don’t want to be around these people where I’m saying a lie that I’m racist. So, it was a tough moment, but the biggest L I had was just embarrassing myself. And by the way, it was so fun. Jury duty was a great time and I’m glad I got to do it. It was a great opportunity.

Sam Parr: Did you make them guilty or innocent?

Shaan Puri: I didn’t get picked in the end for the actual eight in the box or whatever—the people who actually go sit there. I just didn’t get dismissed early. So I spent three days there.

Sam Parr: You should wear a Purple Heart, man. Look at you. You really just taking one for the country. It was true. What’s yours, Steph?

Guest (Steph Smith): Guys, I swear my answers get better from here. My biggest personal L was staying in a job too long. No shade to my previous employer, but I think—

Shaan Puri: Sounds like a lot of shade.

Guest (Steph Smith): No, I promise. I promise.

Sam Parr: Sounds like a canopy.

Guest (Steph Smith): I just—you guys know I was working on a podcast for 3 years. It was a really cool opportunity, but I think the epitome of when other people think you should be good at something and you think therefore you should be good at something and that you should figure it out versus driving full force towards a thing that you love doing.

Shaan Puri: And it was a pretty prestigious job. I think a lot of people would have been drunk off that as well.

Guest (Steph Smith): Yeah. And so now I’m at Grok working on growth and it’s just for me way more fun.

Shaan Puri: And Steph, did we not have a conversation about this? Did I not tell you this was the case? Did I not try to tell you to don’t carry this guilt or this feeling like you need to prove whatever and that you’re a superstar and you should be doing superstar things? I think I gave you that “you’re a superstar, you should be doing superstar things” talk.

Guest (Steph Smith): You 100% did about a year in and it took me two more years to make the call myself. It didn’t land.

Shaan Puri: I’m not very persuasive. All right. Next category we have is coolest moment. Coolest moment of the year. Actually, can we skip to—let’s do a couple of the non-personal stories? We’ll come back to that one. So, let’s do Billy of the Year or favorite guest? Which one you want to do?

Sam Parr: Let’s do Billy of the Year.

Billy of the Year [00:21:30]

Shaan Puri: Okay. Billy of the Year. Sam, you go first.

Sam Parr: I did this podcast with this guy named Steve Houghton. Steve Houghton is a billionaire via real estate and oil and gas, which is very vague, but I can explain. But, at the end of the pod, I made an off-handed joke because we had talked about this whole podcast about how he was a billionaire. But, it seemed like his kids really loved him. And I made an off-handed comment like, “Yeah, man. I should—I got to come out and see how you manage your family sometimes. It’s an inspiration.”

And without skipping a beat, he was like, “How about in 4 weeks? We’re going to be at our ski house. We have a room for you.” And I was like, “All right.” And I just said, “Yes.” And I had to go downstairs with my wife. I go, “Pack your bags, Sarah. We’re going to Utah.” She’s like, “With who?” I was like, “I met this guy. I just did a podcast with. I’ve only known him for 60 minutes. I don’t know anything about him, but we’re going to his house.”

And I got to his house and it was amazing. And it was amazing for a bunch of reasons because I got to see how he worked with his family and it was really amazing. But it was pretty funny. They say money doesn’t buy happiness, but I was very happy being in the 17,000-foot home with his entire family. And I mean, this sounds like I’m being a dbag, but this is the truth. I do think that wealthy people see their grown kids more than non-wealthy people simply for the fact that there was room for all of us to be there and be comfortable and it was amazing and I’ve since stayed in touch with his kids and he had another family there as well and it was such a fun experience and so Steve Houghton was my Billy of the year.

Shaan Puri: Billy of the year love it. Steph who you got Billy of the year.

Guest (Steph Smith): All right. So, I tried to start from the perspective of what is a piece of technology that I think is just incredible and mattered this year. That piece of technology for me was Waymo. A lot of people are familiar with it. I got to interview their chief product officer a few years ago in a Waymo. And it’s kind of crazy when you actually think about it. I think that was max two years ago, maybe three. And when we were riding in that car in San Francisco, people at that time were still peering into the windows like, “Oh my god, look at that crazy thing.” And in the last few years, at least in San Francisco, Phoenix, a few other cities, it is so normal. There’s Waymos upon Waymos. I’ve been at intersections where there’s eight Waymos at that intersection.

Shaan Puri: Does it make traffic faster?

Guest (Steph Smith): No, not necessarily. But I think if you could have all the cars on the road, it would make traffic faster for sure. But the person I chose, the Billy—I don’t know if he’s actually a billionaire, so I’m cheating a little bit, but he’s for sure a hundreds of millionaire—is Sebastian Thrun. He was one of the early—

Shaan Puri: He’s like the father godfather of self-driving.

Guest (Steph Smith): Exactly. So, let me throw out a few different pieces of his timeline. So, he was motivated by personal tragedy. His childhood friend was killed in a car accident when he was 18. That got him invested in trying to figure out this self-driving equation in 2005. So 20 years ago, DARPA had a grand challenge funded by the US government. His team won. Then 2007, he goes and he joins Google. And he didn’t just create Waymo, he also co-founded and led Google X, their moonshot factory. He co-developed Google Street View. And of course, he was one of the creators of Waymo way back when.

But here’s the thing. He left in 2014. And he’s also gone on to do some really cool shit. So in 2011, he put out this introduction to artificial intelligence course online for free. 160,000 students enrolled because he saw how people could learn online. You don’t need to be at Stanford to learn about AI. He created Udacity in 2011. And then since then he’s also led the Kittyhawk Corporation that they were building electric flying cars. Didn’t ultimately end up working out, but that’s another thing that he’s been super early to. We’re now seeing these eVTOL companies get off the ground. I just think this guy is super cool. He’s been early to all of these trends and is just continuing to build even though he’s already rich and he’s just continuing to dabble.

Shaan Puri: This guy’s prolific. Good find. There’s a lineage I think of people under him. He had his initial lab maybe at Stanford or whatever and somebody who was doing self-driving was describing basically all the modern self-driving leaders—if you just trace their lineage, it’s like he had six people or seven people under him. It was that school of thought that sort of branched out and created all the different people in the industry today. So he’s very much a sort of grandfather or godfather to the industry. He’s also got some range because he created these cars things which is the most brilliant thing on earth but then also he has a course business. I’m being silly a little bit but that’s not in my opinion in the same category of flying cars, but Udacity to me is a very respectable amazing thing and so it’s pretty cool how much range he has.

Sam Parr: Yeah. So, all of us who create courses, we’re just like these self-driving car guys, right?

Shaan Puri: You have to do the other half of the range. So, usually range is wide. His is almost up and down.

Sam Parr: Yeah. Our barbell doesn’t have the weight on the other side yet, so it’s a little awkward to hold. So, we definitely have to go do that. But that’s pretty cool, though. All right. Mine came down to a coin flip between John Morgan and Jesse Cole. I went with Jesse Cole.

So, we did an episode with him on the podcast and I was incredibly inspired by this guy. So, he’s done what I think is basically impossible. If somebody had told me 10 years ago, “Hey, there’s going to be somebody who is going to make a minor league baseball team, have more followers on social media than the Yankees—and, by the way, all other MLB teams combined—they’re going to have a 3 million person waitlist, and be selling out 80,000 person stadiums.” And that he bootstrapped the business with his wife to 100 million plus. I just think that is playing business on such hard mode.

That is the equivalent if you’re non-technical—that’s the equivalent of rockets that land themselves—is to take a minor league baseball team that nobody gives a shit about in a league that nobody gives a shit about with players that nobody’s ever heard of and turn it into this incredible entertainment thing. And the way he did it was just so—I don’t know—from the soul and passionate, right? There’s a lot of creativity in being basically a modern day PT Barnum. There was a lot of this passion and soul to the hustle to do this. He’s on the pod, he’s written four books behind him, they do a show every weekend, they’re traveling the world, he’s just doing everything. And it’s just like, man, I would never ever ever be able to do something like that.

And then the last thing was he was just a sweetheart when he was on the podcast. He was such a nice guy, so genuine. I think Sammy told me they foster kids as well. I was just like, geez, how good is this human being? And I just feel like we are lucky that there’s somebody as creative and such a force of creativity as this guy walking the earth. I think I even told him that on the pod: “I’m glad you are walking the earth,” which I’ve never felt the need to say to another man, but I did that day.

Sam Parr: We used to joke and have this concept of the “total man” and it was like: what does it mean to be a great man? And he is one of the maybe three people we’ve had in the podcast that I would go in that category where I felt like, “You are a very special human being and you are the epitome of what it means to be a man.”

Shaan Puri: We should have just been like, “Can you lift your shirt up? If you’ve got visible abs you are in the club my friend.” That’s the only thing—the fitness side is the only other part of the total man franchise that we don’t know about him yet. I think that we’ve talked about this podcast on living a rich life which means business, family, having a good life, treating people wonderfully. I think that he is one of the richest people that we’ve ever had on the podcast in terms of a holistic rich life. He felt like a very special person. If you look through his Instagram, he pays tribute to his wife. He talks about his team. You see him giving these inspirational talks to the players. I was just like this guy’s got no flaws. It almost it’s kind of intimidating.

Sam Parr: The one little nugget that just showed a lot was they don’t charge—they eat the sales tax on ticket prices. So they’re like, “It’s $25 for a ticket flat.” And it’s like, okay, but you know there’s always tax plus tax. He’s like, “No, no, no. We pay that. We eat the cost of that.” At the scale that they operate at, that’s just millions and millions a year just so that the average customer when they’re checking out feels like they were taken care of versus being stuck at two and—which is how Ticketmaster and these other things like Live Nation—when you go buy from them you just feel like you’re being mugged basically at the checkout counter. It’s like, “Oh and then here’s the service fee, convenience fee, parking fee, and this fee,” and it’s now triple the cost. And I just thought that little nugget of how they don’t just leave money on the table but they put money back on the table told a lot about actions versus words. Everybody says they’re customer friendly, but who actually does that? Very few people.

Shaan Puri: He also—we talked to him—he made a comment where he was like, “Whatever you see that you’ve seen for predictions on how big our business is, it’s much bigger.” And so I thought that was really cool too and he didn’t even say it as a flex. I think we teased it out of him, but he didn’t talk about numbers at all other than that one comment and I thought that was really cool.

Sam Parr: Yeah, that was amazing. All right. Next category we’ll do is coolest moment in life.

Coolest Moment of the Year [00:31:00]

Shaan Puri: Coolest moment. I’ve got one. Shaan organizes this thing where we go to MrBeast’s house or his town and we tour his property and play basketball with a bunch of successful people. Last year he had someone that was like the 90th richest person in the world. He had all these powerful people. He had MrBeast and MrBeast was giving us a tour of his campus. It felt like a movie studio and all of these guys there were trying to kind of be cool a little bit in posture and not—and MrBeast was saying the most ridiculous things that you could imagine. Like where you have this guy living in this home for one whole year and he can’t leave the home until he loses 100 pounds and he’s like, “I spent this much money on this studio and we’re doing this,” and he’s just saying ridiculous stuff.

Everyone was trying to be cool like, “Yep, this what it takes to be the best, totally get it.” And Jesse Itzler who was there was in the back and he was like, “This is the craziest thing. Why isn’t anyone calling this guy out? This is the most ridiculous stuff I’ve ever seen. I can’t believe this how one person lived this way. This is just insane.” And Jesse Itzler was the most sane person there. He wasn’t insulting MrBeast, but he was a very reasonable person.

And we’ve met, Shaan, a lot of people on the internet who appear a certain way. We met him in real life and there’s often times a gap or if you do meet them in real life, you think, “I don’t want to be like you.” Jesse Itzler—it was one of the coolest moments in my life to meet that guy because he was better than he appears on the internet and he was very inspirational and he was like, “Can we acknowledge that this is just insane and ridiculous? It’s cool but it’s just insane.” And then there was a funny thing where MrBeast parks his car in front of the entrance of the building—he drives his car over the parking lot—and Jesse made fun of him. He’s like, “Dude, there’s an open spot right there. What are you doing?” And I just thought it was funny that he was teasing him and he didn’t get swept up in it like the rest of us did.

Shaan Puri: No. And it was so funny. And we were talking about some ridiculous stuff. Like we had a billionaire there who was talking about how aliens are real and he knows this because he hangs out with White House people. It was pretty funny stuff.

Sam Parr: Did you see that new documentary by the way about that topic? I’ve been wanting to watch this. There’s a documentary. What is it called? Do you remember the name?

Shaan Puri: When we were there it was—I don’t know if I won’t say who it was—but it was a very powerful person who goes, “Tomorrow you’re going to see a news story about aliens. I know all about it and they’re real.” Like he was talking about it.

Sam Parr: Yeah. It’s called The Age of Disclosure. I watched it. Color me not fully convinced, but partially convinced. You should watch it. Did you agree that Jesse Itzler was just the man?

Shaan Puri: Yeah. So, my coolest moment’s also a Jesse. We didn’t plan this, but Sam, I don’t know if you know this. I was at his house yesterday. I flew to his house. I spent all yesterday with him. And my coolest moment has to do with that.

Sam Parr: What were you doing with him? Recording a podcast. Sam’s jealous. You knew we were doing Sam’s coolest moment was meeting the guy and you just dunked on him being like, “I hung out with him yesterday.”

Shaan Puri: Well, he did a talk in Manhattan just the other day, but I already had plans, so I didn’t even get to go. So, it just shows how much I really care. But, no, he was—so, I just flew his ass. And so, the coolest moment of the year. All right. So last year, this time last year, Jesse came on the podcast and he explained his New Year’s planning process and philosophy, how he attacks the new year. And Sam, I don’t know if you remember, but we were both pretty inspired by it.

One of his core concepts is this concept of a Misogi. So he says the years fly by. If you asked me right now, “What did you do in 2018?” I don’t know. I’d have to really think how old was I, where was I living, what was I doing. Whereas what he does is he picks a Misogi which is a Japanese ritual of a challenge, a hard year-defining thing. So you’ll always remember, “Oh that was the year I hiked Everest. That was the year I did my first Ironman. That was the year I did XYZ.” And he could tell you 2015, 2016, 2017. 2015, that’s the year that David Goggins lived in my house and I trained with Goggins. 2016, that was the year I lived with the monks. 2017, that was the year I did my first whatever.

And so after the pod, I was trying to—I was pretty inspired. I was like, what am I going to do? And Jesse’s really adventurous. He’s big into these endurance races. That’s never something I’ve been drawn to. So, I had the will, but I didn’t have the idea. And that night, before I went to bed, I was on YouTube and I saw this recommended video of this—I don’t even know why I clicked it—it was this dude playing the piano. And it was this guy who’s this Italian composer. He’s basically the most famous piano player in the world at this point. He’s a modern-day composer. And he was playing this song and he was playing it at a performance he did at the Steve Jobs Theater which is 10 minutes away from where I was at my sister’s house. I saw it and I was like, “What if I did this this year? Forget business.” I was like, “What if this was the year I learned—I can’t dance, I can’t sing, I’ve never played a musical instrument, I don’t have that innate talent—but what if that’s a thing I picked up? What if I could just jam out on the piano specifically? What if I could play this song?”

And so, as you know, Sam, I’ve been practicing all year. I’ve been learning to play. But the one thing I didn’t do was—the way Jesse’s philosophy is—is that when you decide you’re going to do something, you don’t just make it a wish or a goal. You plan a date. It’s like, “I’m going to run this race on this day. I’m going to take my kids here on this day.” It’s on the calendar. It’s a thing I’m working towards. So, that was the one part I never did. I was like, I don’t know. What am I going to do? A piano recital? I’m not 7 years old. I don’t know what to do.

So yesterday I’m at his house and he’s giving us a tour and I’m there to do a podcast with him, another annual planning thing. And we’re walking by. He’s like, “Oh, this is my favorite thing in the house. This is a piano my mother gave me before she died.” And I was like, “Do you play?” He’s like, “No, nobody’s ever played this piano since we got it. It’s just here but I love it.” And I’m like in my head, “Oh this might be the perfect thing.” Like that was my Misogi last year when we did our annual planning. We’re doing it this year. He doesn’t know that. He kind of triggered me to actually go do something.

So I was like, I’m gonna do this. So when we were talking about it, I go, “Can I show you my Misogi?” And he’s like, “Well, what do you mean?” I was like, “Let’s walk over here.” And so we go and I play this song. Now I’m playing this song. No, no, it’s not a singing thing. It’s just a piano song. I’m playing this song. And just the context here is I’ve been playing this every day at my house. I play upstairs in my room. And honestly, nobody particularly gives a shit. My wife is like, “Good for you, but can you come help with dinner?” She’s in the middle of three little kids. It’s not like I’m getting a pat on the back for this thing. My kids don’t really care about classical piano music. My wife doesn’t really care. I have never really played for anybody else.

And so, this is my first time ever playing for anybody. And I turn when I was done and it was the craziest thing. Jesse’s there. He’s crying. His head of strategy there, she’s crying holding the phone. Sara, his wife, who I never met—she’s the founder of Spanx—had come downstairs because she heard somebody playing the piano. She’s weeping. It’s all on camera, too. I happen to have a camera guy there because we recorded the podcast.

So, basically, there’s this full circle moment of last year, he planted the seed. I worked hard on it all year. No real payoff for it. No real purpose for doing it. I just wanted to do it. And then there was this amazing payoff moment where they actually gave a shit about what I was doing and they appreciated it. They were like, “That was amazing.” And I never felt that ever. And so it was for me not only the coolest moment, it’s one of the coolest moments of my life if I’m being perfectly honest. I’m a little embarrassed to say it, but it really was this incredible high and it was totally serendipitous. I didn’t plan for any of that to happen. It’s this song called—I don’t even know how you say it properly—it’s Italian, but it’s Nuvole Bianche. I don’t know how you pronounce the second word, but I’ll put it in the description. But this is a great song. And I was like, I don’t know what’s happening. I don’t know why everyone’s crying. I don’t know what’s going on, but I feel like my parking pass just got extremely validated just now. Thank you guys for that.

Sam Parr: That is so cool. What did they say afterwards?

Shaan Puri: Dude, he couldn’t even continue the pod for like 20 minutes. He’s like, “Dude, I’m blown away.” He’s like, “I need a minute.” And he was like, “That is so cool.” He’s like, “You know, you’re 37 years old. You pick up an instrument. You can do that in a year.” He’s like, “If you could do that in a year,” and his son had come down to listen while we were doing it. And he’s like, “I’m just so happy my son saw and heard that because I hope it planted a seed with him of like, yo, if he can do that in 11 months, dude, you could do anything. Anything is on the table for you.” And he was just very inspired by it and I was like, here’s a guy who I admire—like you and I have both talked about this—he’s our kind of entrepreneurial North Star. A guy who lives a life well-lived all around. Four kids, beautiful relationship with his wife, does all these adventurous trips with his friends, he’s in great shape, he runs 100-mile marathons, he’s had incredible business success, he’s a great content creator, he’s just a prolific guy. He’s built brands like Zico Coconut Water and sold a company to Warren Buffett. It’s like what more do you want out of life, right? This guy’s played the game in a way that I would love to play the game of life. And so to get that moment with somebody who I admire, that was definitely my coolest moment of the year.

Guest (Steph Smith): Shaan, I got to say when I first saw that you were learning piano, I thought that was the coolest thing I had ever heard about you. So, I think there’s something. No, genuinely, like that’s not to dismiss any of the other stuff, but I was just like, you know, when you’re a creator online, as we talked about earlier, people make these assumptions about you. They kind of sometimes dictate what is in your orbit. And for you to be like, “No, no, no. This is something I want to learn. I might not even be sure exactly why, but I’m going to go do it. It’s not what people expect.” And then to do what you just did. I actually think that is so cool.

Sam Parr: Yeah. I commented on this podcast. I was like, you know, all this business stuff is great, but the piano thing, it’s for some reason oddly inspiring.

Shaan Puri: Well, the funny thing is in the moment, it never feels that way, right? Because I’m walking out of my piano teacher’s class. There’s only—it’s like, “All right, Brandon. Good luck, buddy.” There’s only seven-year-olds there. Their parents are there. They’re looking around like, “Where’s your kid?” I’m like, “No, no, it was me.” I was the one getting the piano lesson. And it was just kind of an odd thing to be doing pretty regularly. But, again, trusted my gut, went with it. Just leaned into it. I’m having fun. I’m not forcing myself to do something I don’t want to do. Why does everything have to be with an agenda? And this kind of validated like, yeah, just keep doing that. Good things do happen as you keep doing that. Don’t worry. You’ll also get the rewards you seek in life. Even when you’re doing the stuff that seems like it has no rewards, you’re just doing it because you like it. Next podcast, I want to know all of what it was about hanging out with him.

Shaan Puri: Yeah, we will do. What about you, Steph?

Guest (Steph Smith): My coolest moment—I was in between two. I did a big trip to Africa and if you haven’t done gorilla trekking, it is one of the most incredible things I’ve ever done.

Shaan Puri: Gorilla trekking. What did you say? Tracking?

Guest (Steph Smith): Yes. Yeah. Trekking. Tracking. You do both basically.

Shaan Puri: Are you tracking down a gorilla or you doing something? What?

Guest (Steph Smith): You’re trekking families of gorillas that live—we did it in Rwanda, they have it in Uganda, not many countries other than that. And they’re wild. So yeah, they live in the wild and they move every night. So they have these trackers who go out every day and try to locate them and then you trek through the rainforest truly like there’s mud up to your knees at points and try to find them.

Shaan Puri: Which place?

Guest (Steph Smith): In Rwanda. But super cool experience. But my actual answer is going to see the World Series with my dad. He’s been a Blue Jays fan since before I was born. The last time they won the World Series was in ‘93. They had a double year ‘92-‘93 and then I was born and ruined it all. And so he kind of makes fun of me for that every year and is like also the person who goes and it’s like, “This is their year, this is their year.” They made these trades, watches every game, 160 plus. And he’s also where I get every ounce of my cheapness from. And so he would never ever buy tickets for himself. And so once they hit the World Series, I flew home, bought him tickets for game six when they had their first chance to win—didn’t win. Then yoloed it for game seven. Totally worth it. Can’t really think of a better way.

Shaan Puri: Oh, you did two in a row. That’s awesome.

Guest (Steph Smith): Yeah. I mean, I wish they had won either of them because they lost, but yeah.

Shaan Puri: That’s amazing. That’s a great thing to do. I could see why all NBA players like their first thing is like, “I bought my mama a house.” There’s probably very few things you could do that will feel as good as taking your dad or your mom to do something that they would love to do they’d never do for themselves and get to do that with them when you’re a grown-up.

Frame Breaking Person & Favorite Guest [00:41:00]

Shaan Puri: Do you guys want to combine frame breaking person and favorite guest?

Sam Parr: Okay. What you got?

Shaan Puri: Well, do you have a favorite guest? Well, let’s explain what frame breaking is. Okay, so me and Sam use this term a lot. Frame breaking: everybody walks around with some frame. A frame is like a border, right? And everything that’s inside the border is what you sort of—I’m used to that. I’ve seen that. I expect that. That’s what’s in the picture. That’s how wide my lens goes. And then occasionally you’ll meet these people who will just completely break your frame. And it’s like, oh, I didn’t—it’s like imagine a painting where somebody just starts drawing past the frame onto the wall. You’re like, “What? You can’t go out there.”

And so this is maybe somebody with extreme ambition or they live life to the fullest in this way that you don’t really do or they’re really intentional about their time. There’s these things that people do that you thought you knew what level 10 looked like in that category and then you realize, oh, what I thought was a 10 is a seven. And now I know what a 10 looks like. Somebody’s broken my frame. They’ve turned the volume knob up further than I thought it could go in that aspect of their life. So that’s the setup. Who was your frame-breaking person?

Sam Parr: So, there’s this Aristotle quote that I’ve been thinking about for like a year now. I think last time when we did this, I was saying I was trying to use my phone less. And there’s an Aristotle quote. It says, “Excellence is never an accident. It’s always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.” And the reason I think about that all the time is because I don’t know about you guys, but if I’m on a Zoom meeting, I’m probably browsing the internet. If I’m watching TV, I probably have my phone up and I’m doing something. There’s this constant pattern of interruption and never focusing on something and it’s kind of been tearing me apart. It’s kind of making me go mad.

And so I’ve been working so hard on being intentional about my attention and focusing on excellence but in a very few amount of things. So just picking a couple things and being great. And we had this guy—I don’t think you were here Shaan—but we had this guy named Will Guidara who wrote this book called Unreasonable Hospitality. And the story is—if you guys have seen The Bear—it’s one of the inspirations for The Bear the TV show. But basically the story is that he owned this very famous restaurant in New York called 11 Madison Park and they are famous for going above and beyond.

Shaan Puri: Wasn’t it the top rated restaurant in the country or what’s the claim to fame?

Sam Parr: It was the top rated restaurant in the country in part because the food was special. It was a Michelin star place so it was fancy. But the other part was that they were known for being unreasonable. So, I’ll give you an example. They had this couple or family from Europe come to the restaurant that they had planned for months to attend and Will or a waiter overheard them say, “We’re leaving tomorrow. But the one thing we didn’t get to experience was a New York street hot dog.” And so Will has this guy at his company who they called the Dreamweaver. And his only job was to make dreams come true to their customers. And so this guy ran outside and he bought a street hot dog or a couple of them and they chopped them up and put a cute garnish on it. So, it sort of looked like it was fancy restaurant food, but it was actually a street hot dog. And they said, “We heard you talk about you wanting a hot dog. Here you go. Your dreams have become a reality.”

And that’s rooted in unreasonable hospitality, but the reality is it’s about being excellent. And he gave this amazing spiel. And it’s crazy—this did not hit on YouTube but this was the best podcast I’d ever recorded based just of what he told me of the idea of just—he was like, “We are going to go above and beyond and we are going to be excellent.” And I found that to be overfilling my cup not just in the business category but in life of just pursuing excellence for the sake of just trying to be great at a couple things and I found that to be a very inspirational book and I find him to be a very inspirational person and kind of broke my frame.

Shaan Puri: That was awesome. That was an awesome rant and summary of it, too. I love that.

Sam Parr: Thank you. It was awesome.

Shaan Puri: That scene in The Bear is the best. They recreated that idea in The Bear. And it was peak television.

Sam Parr: It was the best. And then my favorite guest sleeper of a guest: Sean Frank. So Sean Frank’s this guy who’s the CEO of Ridge Wallet, which is a popular wallet company. I want to—guys this guy’s so funny and so interesting Shaan because he’s kind of like you and I. He can be silly and everything but his silliness is—I think he’s actually a very serious person. And I found this blog that he wrote last year. Listen to this. He said, “My goal is to sell Ridge for a billion dollars in the next 3 years. I have to time it right because we’re coming out of a bubble and interest rates are going to go up and then they’re going to come back down hopefully by 2025 and then by 2026 or ‘27 I’m going to sell this company.”

And I just thought it was hilarious that this guy called his shot like that. And if you listen to the podcast that we had with him, he was a very direct person. And I find that to be incredibly refreshing. So I think Sean Frank was my favorite guest.

Shaan Puri: He’s a great follow on Twitter as well.

Sam Parr: Dude, he’s like a wholesome guy, but he’s very blunt and I find that to be a very cool combination.

Shaan Puri: Yeah. Yeah, he’s funny. So that’s my favorite guest and my favorite frame breaking people. How about you, Steph? You want to go next?

Guest (Steph Smith): Sure. Have you guys heard of Fiona Oakes?

Shaan Puri: No. Who is that framebreaking person?

Guest (Steph Smith): Okay, so I discovered her because I’ve gotten into running lately and I watched this documentary. Fiona Oakes. O-A-K-E-S. This documentary was about her. It’s called Running for Good: The Fiona Oakes Documentary. Okay, so get this. She has been a vegan since she was six. She lost her kneecap at age 17 due to an injury and medical complications. Yet she is this crazy marathon woman. She lives in some farm area in England. She just runs a crazy number of miles. Doctors to other patients who have lost their kneecaps are like, “You can’t even walk downhill.” She’s running these marathons. She has multiple world records.

And the craziest part is she does all of this because she just loves animals so much. She didn’t grow up running and enter competitions. She wasn’t on cross country. She just one day realized, “Oh, I’m pretty fast.” And then started entering marathons to win money so that she could go fund her farm business and take care of her animals better. So, this woman was just the most framebreaking because I’m just like, who is this? And how is she running 2:48 marathons? That’s like 6:24 minutes per mile. And she just does it like no one knows who she is until someone discovered her and they’re making documentaries about her. But she’s just the craziest combination of things and she’s a world record holder.

Shaan Puri: She ran marathons before she lost her kneecap also or she started this hobby after?

Guest (Steph Smith): I don’t know how much running she was doing before the kneecap, but all of the records, all of the marathons—post-kneecap. And she’s 56 now and she’s doing this shit. It’s pretty wild. Yeah, it’s crazy. The documentary is funny, too, because they start out and they don’t share any of her times. They’re kind of hyping her up and you see her, she looks kind of old and you’re like, “Okay, sure. She might be fast for a 50-year-old, but no way she can be that fast.” And then you actually look up her times and you’re like, “Holy shit this woman is a legend.”

Sam Parr: I don’t know how these guys run so much. The more I run, the more hurt I get. She doesn’t have the kneecap. I—

Shaan Puri: That’s the trick. Are you not willing, dude? Remember that guy with the fake legs who ran the 400 meter in the Olympics?

Sam Parr: Oscar Pistorius.

Shaan Puri: He also went to jail for killing his wife. Yeah. I always thought that was nonsense. Why do these guys—

Sam Parr: He broke a frame or two.

Shaan Puri: Well, yeah. Why do they get to be in the Olympics? They don’t have any—

Sam Parr: Was he in the normal Olympics or like—

Shaan Puri: Yes, he was in the normal Olympics, which is nonsense. He doesn’t have any legs that can get full of lactic acid. They’re metal legs. Why does he get to go? It seems ridiculous.

Sam Parr: That is ridiculous. I’m enraged.

Shaan Puri: Yeah, it’s ridiculous. Fiona Oakes. What’s the documentary called?

Guest (Steph Smith): It is called Running for Good: The Fiona Oakes Documentary. Really crazy.

Shaan Puri: Did you have a favorite guest also or you do you want to just use her for both?

Guest (Steph Smith): No, I’ve got a favorite guest. You mentioned him before so maybe he’s your favorite guest. He’s recent: John Morgan. I listened to a bunch of the episodes and there were people like the Exploding Kittens guy, there was Eric Ryan, there was Shield. All of those people I went into the episode expecting to like. I went into this episode expecting to not like John Morgan and he just was incredible. The number of businesses that he’s gone into, whether it’s his attraction stuff, apartments, ad agency, tech company, is insane.

But it was his one-liners that I was just like, “Dude, this guy simplifies all of this shit that us tech company people overcomplicate into just the best lines.” He’s like, “I don’t hunt deer. I hunt money.” When he’s talking about his URL, he’s like, “I went for justice for all.”

Sam Parr: Yeah. He was like basically I was worried people couldn’t spell justice.

Guest (Steph Smith): Yeah. He went with “For the People.” He also had this line where he’s like, “I’m good at sharing the profits.” And I was like, “You know what? There’s actually something to that. So many people are so bad at spreading the wealth.” And he’s just like, “Look, I treat my people good. I share the profits.”

Shaan Puri: Bombs, crazy number. He got on and Shaan and I—I don’t know who booked him but we didn’t know I don’t think we entirely knew what we were getting into because he’s now on this tour but there wasn’t a lot of information about him and we didn’t know what we were getting into. I was going into it like, “Eh, we’ll see.” The first sentence he goes, “I got these attractions, this upside down museum,” and he goes, “and let me tell you, it prints money.” No, he didn’t say money, prints—

Sam Parr: Yeah. He goes, “Prints,” he said the f-word so hard and we don’t say the f-word really on this show. And we both like eyes went open and we were like, “Buckle up, baby. We are going on a roller coaster.” This was something and there was 20 lines and I showed it to my dad because Morgan & Morgan I think has an office in Missouri so that’s where the commercials are and he was like, “You can’t air this. It’s going to ruin this guy’s reputation.” And I was like, “I don’t know man I think he knows what he was doing.” Because I showed him, I go, he said the f-word literally 15 times and another time he goes, “Do you know why we win? Our competitors, they’re lawyers, they’re pussies.” And then he goes, “And then when we win we go into a case and they want to settle, but 6 weeks in they see how serious they are and they want to settle and I go ‘Fuck you’ and I take him for everything they’re worth.” He was a very vulgar guy but—

Shaan Puri: If I was a Netflix showrunner I’d just be like I need to follow him around because I’m going to build Ari Gold-like characters around this guy’s personality and the way he rolls.

Sam Parr: And we go, “Why are you even—” we said, “Why are you doing this?” He goes, “Because it’s good for business.”

Shaan Puri: Yeah. Yeah. I also love that he’s not—I mean he built a tech company but he’s not in our tech world. So he’d be like, “I was on the Business Insider,” or he’d be like, “See Shaan, have you—are you aware of this thing called first principles thinking?” This guy’s a G.

Sam Parr: He said, “My whole thesis valley was: what would Google do?”

Shaan Puri: Yeah. That was awesome. Shaan, what about yours?

Shaan Puri: Yeah, he was amazing. Also I would say one other thing about him which is I had this opinion—I don’t know from where it came from but just my default never even thought about it again—was personal injury lawyers: sleazy ambulance chaser, blah blah blah. And it’s like, wait a minute. So what’s his actual story? His brother gets basically paralyzed on the job, has poor representation, he gets mad about that, decides, “I’m going to go to law school, become a personal injury lawyer to fight for that.” And it’s like, wait, yes, it’s basically people who are fighting for the common man against large corporations for the most part. I wonder why this isn’t seen as a more noble profession. Obviously there’s aspects to it. I get why it gets that bad rep, but I think the public opinion is far overrated on negativity towards this profession in this way.

Sam Parr: I totally agree, man. Have you ever known someone who got hurt at work and you’re like, “This is a travesty. These insurance companies should be paying you this much more.” There’s nothing you could do, you know? Have you ever tried? I’ve been in a car—my car got messed up and I was like, “This car is worth way more than you guys are telling me, but I just got to take it.” Now, imagine if this was your mom who got hurt.

Shaan Puri: Exactly. Yeah. I think most of his cases are against companies like insurance companies, right? So, it’s a little weird that they have their reputation. All right. I have a frame breaking person that you guys probably don’t know. Her name is Kristen Berman. And Kristen is somebody I met at an event. I went to one event this year—I lied. I did go to one event. I went to the Dialogue conference and honestly didn’t love the conference overall but there was one conversation I thought was really great and it was this conversation where Kristen was there. She is partners with Dan Ariely. So, if you’ve ever read the book Predictably Irrational, he’s one of the famous behavioral economists in the world.

Sam Parr: Like business partners or like married?

Shaan Puri: They run Irrational Labs which I think is a consulting firm. So companies come to them and Panda Express will come to them and be like, “Hey, we want to provide healthy options, but how do we frame this in a way that will be like people make the choices that they want?” Or, “How do we get people to choose to insulate their water heater because it’s good for the environment? It’ll save them money, but we can’t seem to get them to do it. What are ways we could do that?” So, they’ll go to them and try to say, “You guys understand how people’s consumers brains works. What are ways to do this?”

Anyways, she’s telling this story and the reason it’s a frame breaking story is she made some money. So, let’s just—I don’t know, I’ll just make up some numbers—but she made a couple million bucks, let’s say. And at the time, her and her husband were living in, let’s call it, a two-bedroom apartment. And what everybody I know does is you make money and then you upgrade your lifestyle. So, you go from a two bed to a three bed to a four bed to a five bed, whatever. And then soon you’re at the—Sam you talked about like a 17,000 foot mansion—and the more you keep going and that’s how they use their money to improve their life.

She being a behavioral economist had a very different perspective and it was not out of trying to be a good person or do something different. She was just like, “Well this is what the data tells us matters.” And so she kept the same apartment she was in but she bought the three or four units right around her and created basically a compound and then invited people who they really liked. So people that they basically built their own little micro community. So it’s like: who would be an amazing neighbor with us? She rented it to them for below market rent and she’s like, “You know, I just—it didn’t even matter. We’re not trying to make a rental property and get this cash flow. I’m not trying to upgrade my own lifestyle, live in this baller place. No, basically the data says that the people you have around you, your close-knit community, is the number one thing that will improve your happiness. So, we did that. So, we bought these other units. We now have people who are friends or friends adjacent apply to come in. They’re really rigorous about who gets in and then when they’re in, they’re a part of our life, we see them all the time and it’s been amazing.”

And she wasn’t even really preaching about this, but I was kind of like, “Wait a minute, this is—that sounds simple. Sounds simple to do.” I don’t know anyone who’s done that. Do you know anybody? We know a lot of rich people. Do you know anybody who’s actually done that?

Sam Parr: Well, I kind of did that. Me and Neville bought homes together.

Shaan Puri: Bro, you moved away.

Sam Parr: I had—yeah, I moved away to be opposite of doing that. I moved away to be closer to family, but I will say we were intentional about it and it was freaking awesome.

Shaan Puri: Yeah, you might be the only person I know who’s also kind of been like, “I’m going to live on the same block as this person.” And that’s more important than getting the bathrooms with the marble and the way we want. How most people I think pick and choose what they’re going to do. In fact, most people I know who make money, they isolate themselves. They move into more private communities, bigger and bigger places with bigger and bigger lots and they basically create a pocket of loneliness because maybe their family can’t afford to live right next to them or their friends aren’t also in the same category or looking to move at the same time and they move into a place where other people are used to not talking to each other and they—it’s isolationist.

So, I just thought this was amazing. It kind of broke my frame, but it was very inspiring because as much as I’m inspired to learn how to make money, I think Morgan Housel said it best: you can either use money in one of two ways. Number one, as a tool to improve your life, or number two, as a measuring stick to measure your self-worth. And it’s so easy to get caught in the money as a measuring stick thing. But money as a tool to improve your life, that means you got to learn how to spend it just as much as you got to learn how to make it. And so this was an example of how to actually spend money to improve the quality of your life.

Sam Parr: We should have her on. This sounds great.

Shaan Puri: Yeah, we totally should. She was awesome.

Sam Parr: That’s cool. That’s a great one. I never heard of this person. That sounds badass. Does she have a book or anything?

Shaan Puri: Predictably Irrational was kind of part of their thing. I don’t know too much, but yeah, let’s have her on. She’s gonna be great. Favorite guest was Nick Mowbray. So, this is basically the closest person to Elon Musk that I’ve ever met. Not like closest as in friends, but like, “Oh, wow. You’re basically like Elon.” He just—and Elon was born in South Africa. This guy’s in New Zealand. And he went into the toy industry. And if you haven’t heard the pod he did, he does very few podcasts. I think when I was doing research, it was like one interview from 15 years ago was the only thing I could find.

It took like 30 emails to get him to come on. And he was amazing. Such a good dude. And his story is like a movie. Literally sleeping in a bush in China trying to make it happen. It was just unbelievable. The sort of sleeping on the factory floor mentality. The level of grit living off a dollar a day until they made it. And now the brothers are the wealthiest men in New Zealand. They’re self-made billionaires. Own the whole thing. Not only built one of the biggest toy—probably a top three toy company in the world sitting in New Zealand—but also built a top three diaper company, also built a top shampoo company.

This guy is an animal. To the point where after the pod—I don’t think we caught this on the pod—but he said something like—I asked him, “Dude, you’re like Elon. Have you ever met Elon?” He’s like, “No, I’ve never met. I would love to have met him.” He’s like, “You know, at one point me and my brother, we were the largest shareholders in the world of Tesla stock.” He’s like, “I’m a big fan.” And I was like, “What do you mean?” He’s like, “Yeah, I think we owned—” I forgot if he said 1% or 4% of Tesla. Just personally, they owned it. And he’s like, “Yeah, but then when COVID hit and the world stopped and the factories had to shut down, we didn’t know. We had such a huge position. We reduced during that time.” He’s like, “Huge mistake. We left like $15 billion on the table by not holding for the next 5 years.”

To the point where his brother flew to California and installed cameras on buildings that had an angle at the Fremont factory because they were like, “This is such a huge position we should monitor the factory production.” And I was like, “This is the most high agency person I’ve ever met in my life.” I was very very inspired by Nick Mowbray. It says on Wikipedia that they’re worth collectively $20 billion. I didn’t realize—I thought that he was a billionaire, like 1 billion. That’s incredible.

Shaan Puri: No. And now they’re 3D printing houses. They’re doing crazy crazy stuff.

Sam Parr: And the base is just the toy company. That was the foundational wealth.

Shaan Puri: Yeah. That is so insane when you hear these people who have side quests that are like orders of magnitude bigger and better than anything you’ve ever built.

Guest (Steph Smith): Wow.

Sam Parr: That was awesome. I knew the story, but I didn’t realize how successful they were. That’s really amazing. We probably only have a couple more that we’re going to do. Do you want to do biggest change you’re making and then the meme of the year maybe?

Biggest Change for Next Year [01:03:00]

Shaan Puri: All right. So, after hanging out with Jesse, I was like, “What’s my new Misogi going to be?” And we were both talking about—he’s written a lot of books, but he was like, “Dude, honestly, I feel bad. I don’t read that many books. I don’t even read five books in a year. Something I really feel like I should change.” And I was thinking about this. I’ve thought about it very similarly, and I was like, “You know what? All right.”

And so I took my phone and I just deleted X, deleted Twitter, deleted YouTube, deleted Reddit. And I was basically like, I think I can give myself back 10 to 15 hours a week of time and mind space and I’m just going to not consume any social this year. I’m just going to get off social completely. I’ll still post. I’ll have my team post stuff. I can create for social. I just can’t consume. And I’m going to—I call this the Luka Dončić trade. It’s like: what if I could get the best thing back, which would be reading some of the best books of all time, and I’ll give up some crappy assets, some problem-riddled assets like all these different social media apps. And so that’s my trade I’m making for this year.

Sam Parr: Damn. When did you make the change? Delete the apps on the flight back. So how many days ago?

Shaan Puri: I started early. It’s not like I do. I used to use social media just like you guys yesterday. I know exactly how you feel.

Sam Parr: Oh, I can’t wait to look down upon people who use social media. Imagine how self-righteous I could be.

Shaan Puri: That’s a great move. I used—last year I used the Brick for it. It was really helpful and I don’t actually have social media on my phone. But I do use it on my computer which is not good either but that’s a good move. You already do this. You read like 25 books a year and I think you’re very—

Sam Parr: I read a lot of books lately.

Shaan Puri: Breaking your phone, putting your phone in a box. I think you’re very self-actualized in that whereas I’m still like the mouse or the rat pushing the pedal trying to get a pellet of cocaine out of the thing.

Sam Parr: Having a second kid has reduced my reading to close to nothing because I get up extra early and I go to bed and I have—that makes me feel better. I have to go to sleep. So, I haven’t read a full book in months. It’s taken me a month to read this thing because I basically have to get up at 6:00 and at 10:00 I have to go to sleep. I’m so exhausted. So, hey, having a second kid has ruined my reading.

Shaan Puri: Change for next year.

Sam Parr: You’re not going to see this, Shaan? But lately, I’ve been going a lot harder on Instagram and Hampton is going to be—we have this YouTube channel called Moneywise and we’re going to rebrand it and call it Hampton. And we just rented a new office down the street from my current office and it has seats for 60 people and a big studio. So, I’ll be recording this from that new studio and we’re going to be creating a new YouTube channel and I’m going to be doing a lot more Instagram content. And I feel like the other day I did a video and I was recording and I’m like, “So, I talk about this on my page,” and I’m like, “Oh my god, that’s such like a boomer.” I can’t believe I just said that.

But I’m going to be going a lot harder on content and it’s going to start with me writing.

Shaan Puri: Are you doing this to grow Hampton or are you doing this because you’re like, “I want to be influential” or “I love creating content”? What’s the true why on this one?

Sam Parr: Well, I started my career because I enjoyed creating content and then when it became a little bit of a job, I disliked it as much and so I put it away for a while and then I was like, “Look, the best way to grow my company is just to do this thing.” And I started doing it as a job and lately I’ve been doing it and I’m like, “I love this. I love writing and figuring this out.” And so, I’ve been doing this stuff on Instagram now for only about 3 or 4 weeks and I’ve got millions of views and I’m like, this is actually a fun little game to figure out and I enjoy like: can I grow Hampton via content that isn’t slop? And I’ve enjoyed that. So, that’s my big change this year.

Another simple change is I’ve been doing it the past month to prepare for the new year. I get my workout finished at 7 a.m. I’m done by 7 a.m. And I know that again we’re doing self-righteous stuff here, but I hate getting up early, but I love having gotten up early. And it’s been a huge difference in just my time.

Shaan Puri: Naval had this great quote. He’s like, “I don’t know any loser who wakes up at 5 a.m. to work out.” And it’s kind of true, right? Have you ever met a loser who does that?

Sam Parr: No. Being at the gym at 6:00 a.m. and done at 7:00 a.m. You’re like, it feels amazing and it’s so hard to do, though.

Shaan Puri: Do you think you can sustain that one?

Sam Parr: Well, I have to because it’s my job to—my eldest kid, I get her out of bed at 7:30. So, if I’m going to exercise, it has to be done by 7:00 or 7:10. And so, I’ve been doing it now for 30 days and I think I can stay. The secret is very dumb. The secret is you have to go to bed at 10:00. If you’re in bed by 10:00, this is easy. That’s challenging to do, but you have to be in bed by 10:00, right?

Shaan Puri: Every time I wake up at 5:00 a.m., I’m like, “This is amazing. I get so much done. Why don’t I do this every day?” And then, a year later, it happens again. My biggest change is maybe kids. We’ll see. I’m feeling nervous about it.

Having Kids [01:08:00]

Sam Parr: Is this an announcement? Are you announcing it?

Guest (Steph Smith): No. No. No. Sam, are you going to ask me if I’m pregnant?

Sam Parr: Are you pregnant, Steph?

Guest (Steph Smith): No. To be clear, I am not currently pregnant. We have not started trying, but it’s on the radar.

Sam Parr: Do you want us to give you tips like how to be a pregnant woman?

Guest (Steph Smith): No, not tips. More like: what do you feel great about with kids? What makes you—I don’t know. I think there’s a lot of especially when you’re a woman, you have to actually grow the kid and then you have to provide for the kid for the first few years in ways that men don’t. It’s a little daunting, but I love hearing from both men and women the best parts of having kids because I feel like I don’t hear those.

Shaan Puri: Sam, how do you talk about this without saying the most cheesy advice?

Sam Parr: That’s the problem. It’s every cliche, everything you’ve already heard, but it’s actually true. So, that’s why it’s hard to—you feel lame even saying it because it’s so obvious to you when you’re in it that whatever I thought life was before this was just pregame material for the real game and that’s kind of how it feels in many ways. Level of intensity, level of love, a sense of purpose.

But I would say the good thing about little kids—because me and Sam both have little kids, Sam’s are a little younger than mine. So, he might not even be fully in this phase yet. But by the time your kids are kind of three, four, they’re talking, they’re walking, they have a personality, it’s a whole deal. And they’re just like a little joy machine. So imagine having like a jukebox in your house and every time you go, you push the button and your mood lifts. And the reason why is because kids are experiencing everything for the first time. So you get to experience everything for the first time with them being the excuse for you to actually indulge it and actually care and be like your own version of a little kid.

And then there’s also these incredibly satisfying moments because it’s like—whatever you feel about building a company or building a product—the truth is the ultimate product is this little kid you made and you get to shape it and you get to see it grow and you get to see all the amazing things happen. Take any of the feelings you’ve had out of entrepreneurship or creativity or creating and now add some 3,000 years of biological hardwiring to love all those aspects at a much higher level.

Sam Parr: At this stage, when I see Instagram stuff of the dad coming home from the military and hugging the kid or whatever, things like that, I cry. I get so emotional by it. I put my eldest to bed at night and she lays on my stomach and I’m like, “This is—” You ever think about when your parents die, what age will you remember them? And with my little girl every night I’m like, “This is perfect. I will remember this forever and it’s so important to be present.” Because when I feel her stomach on my chest I’m like, “This is peak happiness.” I have never felt this good and I get to experience it every single day and it’s very special.

I think that for a lot of men, you don’t love your kid right away and it takes a little warming up too. And I’m at the phase of my life now where I say this as a joke but it’s sort of real where when I got married I felt like, “I’ll kill someone to protect you.” And then when I had a kid it was like, “I will die for you.” And that’s a very weird way to think of it, but it is so fun to be—it feels so great to just know I’m willing to dedicate everything I can to this thing. And it feels really good to feel that way.

Shaan Puri: And the downside and the upside are both the same. The downside is, “Oh my god, this is a lot of work and I don’t have control over my time or my schedule the way I used to.” And for people like us who are like, “Wow, there’s always more projects I want to do and things I want to learn and stuff I want to go do,” all of a sudden it’s like, “Oh, I can’t. I don’t get to do that. It’s not my schedule anymore.” That’s the worst part of it for me at least, unless there’s a health issue. That’s the worst part of it on just normal life. But also the best part of it is it’s not about you anymore. It’s like actually all the problems in your life, all the bad feelings you had was just an overimportance of the self. And so the thing with kids that’s great is it’s about them now. And so you get the highs from that, but you don’t really get the same amount of lows because you don’t have that sort of self-rumination, self-indulgence of all the little things that bother you in your world because it’s really not about you anymore, you know?

Guest (Steph Smith): Totally. Yeah. I had a friend who had a kid recently and I visited her and she was just like, “Your emotional spectrum is just stretched but in the most beautiful ways because you’re responsible for this being.” When she was walking out with her kids for the first time, she was like, “I’ve never felt more stressed because I just saw all the things that could maybe harm my child.” But at the same time, like you’re saying, it’s more of a new set of emotions. It’s maybe not as self-centered. It’s just a more interesting aspect of life that if you don’t have kids, you’re never going to get to experience is my sense. I haven’t had them, but I find that a good way of putting it. Like, “Oh, there’s three new colors you didn’t know about.” It’s like this whole other thing you get to see.

Sam Parr: And I hate saying that. I agree with you. I hate saying that because when people don’t have children, it’s not a reversible decision. So, I don’t ever want to make someone feel bad. And, you know, so I don’t love talking about that. But, I do feel like it’s sort of the first time I’ve ever felt like my purpose in life is being fulfilled. You think that way about work sometimes and then we had it and I don’t—I hate being high and mighty. But you have a kid and you’re like, “Oh, this is why I’ve tried to impress a girl and so she would like me and then I could reproduce with her and now I have this thing and it’s like I am now connected to the 50 billion people before me and it feels kind of special.” Feels very strange but special.

Shaan Puri: Yeah, it is hard to talk about because you feel lame and cheesy and you don’t want to—it’s just your personal experience. You don’t want to influence others but when you ask, you’re like, “I think I want it. I’m kind of on the fence. I want to hear about it.” Then okay. Permission to cheese.

Meme of the Year [01:15:00]

Sam Parr: Well, we’ll end on a light note. We have favorite tweet/meme of the year. What do you have? Let’s start with Steph.

Guest (Steph Smith): Guys, mine is boring, but I just loved the “May I meet you” meme. It was so good. It was so good. Like, what is this activist investor doing giving dating advice? And just the versatility.

Shaan Puri: You as a woman who’s also in business and tech, you get on Twitter, you see this happening. What was going through your mind?

Guest (Steph Smith): I thought it was truly hilarious because I think also—I don’t know—as a woman there’s so many times when men think that they know what women want and I’m sure Bill Ackman is a catch. I’m sure he’s also like six feet, right? He’s got a bunch of money and you know he’s going up to these women saying like, “May I meet you?” and he’s gathering that that is what is the defining action that the women are liking.

Shaan Puri: Steph, so you saw that advice. What would your advice have been? If Bill—he meant well, right? He was like, “I heard that it’s tough out there for young guys. Here’s a little bit of advice.” If “May I meet you” was wrong, what’s the right advice?

Guest (Steph Smith): I feel like—well, I mean, he’s right that you just got to approach a girl, right? Because girls like confidence, but I also think girls like humor and you being authentic. And so even just going up to a girl and just being like, “Hey, I’m really nervous, but I got to talk to you.” This is not the best pickup line. But I just feel like you just walking up to a girl is what probably nine out of 10 guys will not do. If you happen to say, “May I meet you?” it’s probably fine. But I don’t know. Just be natural.

Sam Parr: I forgot what it is, but Lil Dicky has one that’s great. I wish I had this back when I was single. It would have helped me. But he’s like, “Oh, I have the perfect pickup line.” He would go up to a woman and he’d be like, “What’s your availability as far as being hit on right now?” He’s like, “She would laugh and she would know my intentions and then I gave her an out and I gave her an in.” And he’s like, “It works every time.”

Shaan Puri: Do you remember when you guys—Sam or whoever—was screen sharing? I just sent an example of one, but the best content on social that I’m following this year—do you remember Shaan when we talked about cinematic content? I think we talked about Creator Camp. Is that what we talked about?

Sam Parr: Yeah.

Shaan Puri: So, like here’s just one example of a podcast, but I can—well, I’ll send you a few more examples, but that’s just one example of a podcast. Who is this? Mark Brazil. Have you seen this guy’s podcast?

Sam Parr: I’ve seen this because it stands out. What is this like hostage negotiation situation?

Shaan Puri: And so, we’ve talked about cinematic content. So, we talked about this company called Creator Camp. And I’m noticing that if you guys follow these there’s a bunch of 22, 23, 24, 25 year old kids making content that is not just talking head videos and it’s beautiful and it’s starting to transfer over into podcasting which is—normally they don’t do this. And Chris Williamson has done this with his sets for Matthew McConaughey and I’m noticing that this type of cinematic content where it’s a beautiful background and it’s not just your phone—it’s way more popular and I love it. I love this stuff. I’m loving internet content at the moment because of this trend.

Sam Parr: So, not a tweet or a meme.

Shaan Puri: You’re right. You did say meme of the year, but I think it’s cool. And you’re right, dude. I don’t know. Do you pay attention to memes? I don’t pay attention to memes.

Sam Parr: Anything’s a meme these days, guys.

Shaan Puri: But it’s always like a meme is not a long-lasting thing. It’s just like whatever was like the Drake video or all the trends on Instagram. Yeah it’s cool for a week and I love it and then it’s like move on. I’ll give you two. The first—I’ll give you a funny one first. This one just—it wasn’t the most funny thing but I got to say it’s affected every day of my life. So the tweet is: “A reminder that tapping your credit card is a spiritually passive and feminine behavior and men should pay via confident and penetrative thrust into the chip reader.” And I read this, I laughed and now every time I pay for something, I can’t help but think about this and I’ve been thrusting, my friends. I’ve been thrusting.

Sam Parr: You got to walk around with that wad of cash. That’s the most manly thing you can do.

Shaan Puri: That would be John Morgan. You do need a lot.

Sam Parr: That would be John Morgan right there. You know what I mean? Having pulling out a wad. Give a finger lick before I start unfolding some bills.

Shaan Puri: Dude, just—that’s how you pick up girls. Just count your bills in the corner. They’ll count.

Sam Parr: My father-in-law did that. He had like $1,000 in 20s and one time he had it in a rubber band and I was like, “I’m in.” So, like when I bring a wallet, I definitely like to have $500 or $1,000 of tens and 20s. It just looks weird in the pocket though. They know. They know something. They know.

Shaan Puri: And then I have a wholesome tweet and this is from Jay Yang. Young guy Jay Yang who said something very wise.

Sam Parr: Is that the “you could just do things” guy?

Shaan Puri: He’s the “you could just do things” guy and he said, “Here’s the hill I’m willing to die on. Real success is how many people thank you for theirs.” And I thought, “Wow, that was actually really profound.” And I think I’m gonna steal that as what’s the point of all this—what is the North Star as far as success goes? And I was like, I think that’s the best metric.

Sam Parr: Can I say something that I’ve noticed, Shaan, with you and me is—and I’m wondering if this is true for everyone or a lot of people. So inspirational, motivational, cheesy content—it’s I don’t know if it’s called the bell curve. It’s like an upside down bell where you’re in the middle. You’re in the beginning of your career and you use it like crazy. So, I read so many self-help books and I would listen to Tony Robbins audio books constantly. Then you start getting in the thick of it and you’re like, “I just got to get this thing done. I got to spend five or 10 years doing it.” Then you get past that and you’re a little bit on Maslow’s highest hierarchy of needs and it’s so back. I listen to so many Jordan Peterson or Alex Hormozi compilation clips where it’s just yelling at me or reading inspirational stuff. Are you guys doing that same thing right now?

Shaan Puri: Love me a good quote. Love me a good little—I don’t know. Give me some italics. I need some italics in my life. That’s how I feel. I love a good quote. I’ve actually realized that most smart people look down upon classic quotes or cliches or motivation or inspiration. Good. More for me. More for me. I’m all in on that. That is the index funds of content for me. Put me in. I want it all.

Sam Parr: Same. I’m on board with—

Guest (Steph Smith): You guys are into “Live, Laugh, Love.”

Shaan Puri: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. I was going to say that this is the “Live, Laugh, Love” version, but you know what, Steph, there’s a reason why millions of basic Oklahoma and Missouri women have this on their walls.

Guest (Steph Smith): Oh, I know. I know. I’m just two years away. I see it coming.

Shaan Puri: Yeah. Are you Steph, are you like, “I don’t like fortune cookie stuff right now”?

Guest (Steph Smith): I spent years reading personal development books and now I’m at that point where I’m like, “I know it all.” I read a new personal development book, I’ve seen it before, but I hear what you’re saying. In a few years, it’s going to come back and I’m going to be like, “These people were so wise.”

Shaan Puri: Look, Steph, I’m going to be patronizing to you. You’re young. You’ll figure it out. You’ll get there.

Sam Parr: I remember when I felt that way.

Guest (Steph Smith): Two years older than me, something like that.

Shaan Puri: You’ll get there. You’ll understand once you have a few kids, Steph. And then when you have one kid, we’re gonna say, “Wait till you have two.”

Sam Parr: Wait till they have two. That’s the most patronizing thing.

Shaan Puri: Shaan’s got a gaggle. I got three.

Sam Parr: You going for more?

Shaan Puri: So, I get to do it to Sam. Sam’s got two. So, I’m like, “Oh, two. So, you’re on vacation, huh? Oh, that must be nice.”

Sam Parr: I’m not going to blow up her spot. I’ll let you decide, Shaan. But Shaan’s wife on Instagram is a great follow right now. She does some wild Elf on the Shelf stuff and it is a great find. Me and Sarah will be like, “Look at what she did today. It’s incredible.”

Shaan Puri: We went to a kid’s school performance today and this mom came over to her and she was like, “I just got to say, I live for your story right now.” She’s like, “Every day I’m checking when is she going to post it?” She’s like, “I’m not going to do any of that stuff, but I love that you do it.” And I was like, “Oh god, you never want to be in that position.”

Sam Parr: The other day, she took a huge wall—imagine a one-bedroom wall—and using Post-it notes—I think they are Post-it notes—she outlined the Grinch. So, imagine the Grinch’s face, but the art is Post-it notes.

Guest (Steph Smith): That is so sick.

Sam Parr: It was like a Monet.

Shaan Puri: It’s still up. We’re not taking that down.

Sam Parr: I don’t think you can. That looks like she must have used string to make the grid, right? It looked like a pretty intense project.

Shaan Puri: It was hilarious because it was the only one of the season I did with her because it was such a big one to do and we needed some bonding time and so I was like, “Okay, let’s do this.” But she’s a perfectionist and is good at things and I’m a “good enough is good enough” kind of guy and so it was just an awful experience for both of us to try to do that together because she’s trying to create a grid and if something was off—packing together furniture with your girlfriend, it just doesn’t end up. I’m like, “They’re 4 years old. They’re not going to know. They can’t even see this high.” So it’s like they will never know that there was this 1 mm gap and she had to fix it.

Sam Parr: She must have listened to the Will Guidara pod that I did. That was her. She must be a listener. Wait I want to hear you guys. We didn’t do best new habit. Did you guys have a good one for that one? I also partially just want to brag. What is—you’re a runner now, Steph. We get it.

Best New Habit [01:22:00]

Shaan Puri: Yes, we missed that one. You’re a runner and you’re fast.

Sam Parr: Sam’s like, “We missed it intentionally.”

Guest (Steph Smith): No, I have—I think you running—you’ve been running really—I assume you’re going to say running, right? Because your times are actually incredibly fast.

Guest (Steph Smith): Yes. I’m like now we can finally talk about it. What am I running all these miles for? No. Yeah. My best life hack/new habit that was the category was running. And I just wanted to say that I started running about 14 to 16 months ago and I’ve run two marathons and I’m mentioning it because I feel like everyone runs now, but also there’s a ton of people that have never done it because they think it sucks and it’s awesome and I think anyone can get to the point where they’re running marathons, running three miles a day. That’s how I started. And yeah, I feel pretty good about it.

Sam Parr: What was your—wasn’t your time like sub 8 minute miles?

Guest (Steph Smith): Yeah, I just ran my second marathon 3:30, so just under eight.

Shaan Puri: That’s incredible, Shaan. That’s fast. Why? Why do people do this? Why do all of you who are doing this do this? That’s how I feel about running marathons.

Sam Parr: It is awesome. It is awesome. I like to run. I’m horrible at it. I get more joy out of running than any type of weightlifting or any other exercise. I think that it’s less good for you than the other stuff, but it’s the most enjoyable when it hits.

Guest (Steph Smith): It’s because you can—I mean, you can do this with weightlifting—but you can measure your progress so clearly and you can also progress really quickly, I think, compared to other sports or athletics.

Shaan Puri: It’s going to be one of those things for me. Mustard, pickles, running—just things I don’t like that other people seem to love. I just can’t do it.

Sam Parr: I don’t know, man. 20 minutes into a 50-minute run, you go into a little bit of a cave. And it is kind of special. It is cool. You should try it.

Guest (Steph Smith): Here’s my pitch. Everyone talks about this running high. Don’t chase the running high because it’s far away. Think about: do you like walking?

Shaan Puri: Love walking. Huge walker.

Guest (Steph Smith): So, the feeling you get when you’re walking is not “I can’t wait for this to end.” It’s like, “I’m outside. Look at this beautiful thing. My body feels good.” There is a spectrum, not a binary difference between walking and running, right? So people talk about them like they’re two separate things, but there is some version of running—it might be really slow right now—where you feel like you’re walking. And so if you start there, which is not where we’re taught to start, and you just run at that pace for a mile a day and then two miles a day and then do that for a while, you will get to a point where your body becomes more efficient. And over time, you’re going to be running 10-minute miles at that walking-feeling pace, and you’re going to love running. I’m telling you.

Shaan Puri: Okay, nice try. The jury will consider what you said and—

Sam Parr: And he might be out for a flight. I don’t know.

Shaan Puri: Guilty. All right. Did you have a habit you wanted to do or no?

Sam Parr: No. Waking up early.

Shaan Puri: All right. Well, Steph, I hope you got that in. That’s great. All right, guys. What a year. God bless America. God bless this podcast. Shaan, good year.

Shaan Puri: Oh, another one in the books, brother. You guys didn’t even catch this. I can’t see. What does it say? I’m on a spot. Is it backwards? It just noodles. That’s a wrap.