How this dumb doll makes $2M per day

How this dumb doll makes $2M per day Shaan Puri: The stock has grown in the last year from a $7 billion company to now a $44 billion company. $44 billion. Sam Parr: Okay. Shaan Puri: You know what I mean? That's what Elon bought X for. This guy's selling labooboos. Sam Parr: It's insane. It's crazy. Unknown Speaker: All right. Shaan Puri: Dude, Sam, do you know What one of these are? Sam Parr: Oh my gosh, Ramon will not quit talking to me about these things. Okay, so for the listeners, Shaan is showing me... Shaan Puri: What am I holding up? Sam Parr: They look like dolls, basically in the same vein as a troll, but I have gotten texts from our friend Ramon who says, have you heard of this thing? It's worth... and he says the number and I'm like, oh, it must have been a typo. So what's the deal with these things? Shaan Puri: Do you know what they're called? Sam Parr: I don't know. Super something? Shaan Puri: No, this is a La Boo Boo. Get yourself educated. This is a La Boo Boo doll. Sam Parr: Does it have a Prada sign on it? Shaan Puri: Yeah, that's part of the shtick here. Okay, so what's the story with these things? This is basically the most viral toy in the world. It's one of the biggest crazes since Beanie Babies and things like that. And so the story behind this thing is pretty crazy. I just wanted to tell you some of the things that I know about it. Of course, my wife put me onto this months ago and I just ignored it. The stock of this company is up like 7x in a year because this thing is going crazy. Sam Parr: Chinese company, right? Shaan Puri: Chinese company. Yeah, so this is made by this these dolls are produced by a Chinese company called pop mark and the maker for this guy Wang Ning. He is now the 10th richest man in China and like he's adding like a billion dollars to his net worth in the last, you know, but he's like 30 right or like he's he's really young like dude. Look at this picture of him. Sam Parr: Yeah, but Chinese guys always look really young until they don't. Unknown Speaker: Until they don't. Sam Parr: Yeah. Haven't you ever heard like all of my Asian friends, they're like, we always look young and then we fall off a cliff. All right. Shaan Puri: Do you see this guy? Sam Parr: Yeah. I mean, he could be 12 or 50. I don't know. Shaan Puri: Yeah. So this guy is behind this company, PopMart. But it's kind of fascinating what's going on with this craze, right? Like it's really taken over. So somebody gave these to my kids. As like a gift and I didn't really understand the significance of it. I was like, oh cool. Thanks. I didn't realize that we were just gifted a really important thing. This is one of the more valuable items in my house right now. These things sell for thousands of dollars. The top ones can sell for six figures. That's how crazy the craze is for this. Sam Parr: Tell me the story because this sounds like a good stock to short because that's typically how these collectibles tend to go, right? Shaan Puri: We'll get to that. Yes, I agree with you. We'll get to that. All right. There's a guy who's an artist around 2015. He's in the Netherlands. He gets inspired to create like a kind of like a toy world, so like a character world based on where he's at in the Netherlands and he designs these dolls. These kind of like, look at their teeth, like the little like gremlin looking doll. There's hope for us, okay, because the experts are describing this as ugly cute, and it's succeeded because it's ugly cute, and I just thought, like, our podcast, I just feel like that just gave us, like, some wind in our sails for what we could do as well on YouTube. Sam Parr: It's worse for us because we're not particularly ugly, but we're not particularly good-looking. Is there, like, a, eh, cute? Shaan Puri: What the kids call mid. Sam Parr: Yeah. Shaan Puri: All right, so He creates these in 2015. Not a lot happens from there, but in 2019, so four years later, he partners with this company, PopMart. And PopMart was started about a decade ago because this guy, Wang Ning, had this insight, which is he thought that this kidult trend, we've talked about this before because you're into Legos. So he's like this kidult trend, this like kids' toys for adults is going to be a thing. And so he creates this store and the store really takes advantage of this business mechanic called blind boxes, which I don't know if you've seen LOL dolls or mini brands where you buy the box, but you don't know what's inside. Similar to like Pokemon card packs. You buy the pack, you don't know what cards are inside. And so this mechanic, which I think they call the gotcha mechanic, creates a lot more spending, right? People will keep buying because it's a little bit like a treasure hunt. And you want to see what you can find, what you can get, whether you get the big, rare prize. Sam Parr: And this used to be a scam. I remember Logan Paul or Jake Paul were sponsored or did business with a company called Mystery Box. And that was a rage, a very trendy thing for three months. Do you remember that? Like 10 years ago. Shaan Puri: Yeah, these loot boxes are in games. And people know that, okay, this is kind of... It's not a scam per se, but it's basically manipulative, right? It gets people to buy a lot more. People get addicted to this thing. And especially when you're targeting kids, which is why Logan Paul and those guys got in trouble was, hey, this is targeting kids. The beauty of this is it's not targeting kids. So the way these blew up. It's through celebrities. Sam Parr: Wait, can I ask a question about the company, PopMart? PopMart, yeah. PopMart. It was a toy company for a long time? What was the origin? Shaan Puri: So the story is, 2010, he opens up a small designer store in Beijing, and he's trying to build it off this Kidult Collectibles brand. He starts selling blind boxes. Labubu is not in play at this point. There's other blind boxes that he's trying to sell. And in 10 years, they grow from one store to, you know, 300-plus stores, 2,000 vending machines where you could just, like, it's just, you know, you just buy one of these boxes right out of a machine. It ends up going public in 2020. Stock doubles on the first day. The stock has grown in the last year from a $7B company to now a $44B company. $44B. Sam Parr: That's insane. Shaan Puri: That's what Elon bought X for. Sam Parr: That's so insane. When it was just a $4B or $7B company, they just sold dolls that people liked. A $7B toy company, that's already a mega success. They sold other people's stuff. Shaan Puri: That was over four years. But yeah, yeah, they're selling collectibles of different brands, different IP. And this is one of the IP that they have. And this doll alone, like these, these LeBoo-Boos did like $700 million last year. So they're like now like almost, it's getting close to about half of the revenue of the company overall, because the trend has exploded. Sam Parr: And then they connect with this artist. And so that brings us to where we are now. Shaan Puri: Yeah, so the question is, how did this explode? The thing that fascinated me is, where does a trend like this even come from? How does this happen? Because it's totally irrational, right? Like, why this doll? Why not another doll? Is it the teeth? Is it the outfit? What is it behind it? So there's some, I guess, learnings to have from this about the psychology of a winning product. So I just want to tell you a little story about how this happens. So check this out. Exhibit A, 2023. Sam Parr: Okay, so this is a photo that you clearly can tell it's just Rihanna getting coffee or leaving a hotel. Shaan Puri: She's going to an airport. Sam Parr: And she just looks like it's not sponsored. She's just being a lady, and she has one of the toy bebops or boo-boos or whatever they're called hanging off of her book bag. Unknown Speaker: Book bag? Sam Parr: It's a purse. It's a Louis Vuitton purse. Okay, I'm looking from far away. It looks like a book bag. Shaan Puri: Okay, so she's spotted with it. Hmm, interesting. At the same time, another trend is happening in Thailand. In Thailand, people are starting to see these labooboos, for whatever reason, as possible good luck charms. In Thailand, people are quite religious, and they started to view these as almost like a spiritual, like a little guardian that they could have with them. And so that rumor starts to spread. And then what happens is, do you know the band Blackpink? Have you ever heard of this band? Sam Parr: No. Shaan Puri: It's like a Korean pop band. This is one of the most popular pop bands in the world. It's a girl band like Spice Girls. Sam Parr: Oh, I know it. Yeah, I like those guys. I see their music videos. They're very eye-catching. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. Well, it's a sensation. You'll go on YouTube and you're like, what is this thing with a billion views on YouTube? It's sort of like the sensation of the BTS thing. Shaan Puri: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so this is right here. Now we're talking about BlackPink. So Lisa from BlackPink goes to Thailand to visit her friend. Her friend says, hey, what do you want to do today? They decide, let's go shopping. She thinks, okay, we're going to go shopping. Clothes, bags, what are we going to go buy? But no, she wants to go to PopMart. And she says, I don't know what PopMart is, but they go to a PopMart store. At the PopMart store, the friend really wants a LeBubu. And Lisa says, honestly, not into it. I don't get it. Don't care about it, blah, blah, blah. But the friend gets super disappointed because they're all sold out. And the lady at the store is like, listen, it's impossible. You're not going to get one. And that little memetic monster inside Lisa starts to roar, the one in her stomach, and she's like, you know what? If I can't have it, I must have it. And she decides, actually, I think I do like La Booboos, and I think I do want to go get La Booboos. And she starts to collect these. Now, she starts getting obsessed with Pop Mart. She goes, she buys my boxes, and she starts collecting these. This becomes her de-stress type of thing she does from the stressful life of being a world-famous pop star. She gets caught having a la boo boo. Why? Because she posts it on her Instagram. So now we're fast forward 2024. This is the photo that created the craze. It went from just like, you know, how a hurricane starts and there's like some sweeping winds, maybe a casual storm, a casual rainstorm. And then comes the hurricane, and this Instagram story started the hurricane, and it's her hugging her lububu. Sam Parr: Can I say something? I kind of get it. That looks pretty cool. Shaan Puri: This one did it for you, too, this photo? Sam Parr: Yeah, it's like an old white guy in overalls. It's kind of what it looks like. It looks like a farmer. Shaan Puri: Yeah, this does look like a Midwest farmer, actually. Sam Parr: And it's big. It's about two feet tall. I kind of think that's neat. I understand that. This is a big one, yeah. Shaan Puri: So they come in different sizes. The one that sold for over $100,000, that was a human-sized one. Sam Parr: Okay. Shaan Puri: Okay. So this is the stock since that photo was taken. And you can see the stock is up 7x since then. Sam Parr: Oh my God. It's just been crushing. Shaan Puri: And so, the Louboutin craze starts, and what's interesting about this is why, okay, so celebrities started posting about it. Okay, I get that, but what else? So, here's some of the other things that I found kind of interesting from a, I don't know, behavioral psychology point of view. The first is the lipstick effect. Have you ever heard of the lipstick effect? Sam Parr: I don't think so. Shaan Puri: So there's an economic theory that basically says that whenever people are under financial pressure, so maybe the economy is a little bit choppy, maybe there's inflation, there's wage pressure, whatever it is, people think that you'll stop spending. But what actually happens is you shift the spending. And so instead of buying a new bag, you'll just buy some lipstick. You'll buy a new lipstick. And so lipstick sales will explode at a time during economic pressure because you take away from bigger luxury purchases and they go into smaller luxury purchases. So instead of a $200 outfit or a bag, you're going to buy a $20 item instead. And so people think that this is part of what's behind Le Boo Boo, which is that this thing, you know, initially started where these are like, you know, a $20, $25 box that you buy and you get a Le Boo Boo. But the thing with these, the smart thing of these is I showed you the doll. This is the most important part, this little ring, because most stuffed animals, you just keep them at home. So there's no virality to it, right? You just have it at the comfort of your own home. Nobody sees it. You don't get to show it off. It's not a status symbol. By just having the bag clip attached to these things, they suddenly became like luxury accessories. And so that's why Rihanna had it attached to her bag, and this Blackpink lady had hers, and then David Beckham is posting that, and Kim Kardashian posts that she has 10 of them, and she starts clipping them to her bags, and it becomes this add-on to your luxury bag, this cute little add-on that you could put on your bag. And then each one of these has an outfit. So I can take this off, And I can buy new clothes for this, and I can upgrade my LeBubu. So now you have all... Sam Parr: Can you spell LeBubu? Shaan Puri: L-A-B-U-B-U. Sam Parr: Oh, okay. I see. Shaan Puri: By the way, LeBubu is actually only one of the characters, but that's just what it became called. The character structure is called The Monsters, but that didn't stick. Sam Parr: Oh my gosh. I'm on their website. I think it's kind of cool. Yeah, exactly. Shaan Puri: And so what I think is interesting here is that you have this kind of what Charlie Munger calls the Lollapalooza effect. So maybe you have the lipstick effect causing people to look for little luxuries. Then you have the kidult effect where you have adults looking for, you know, Maybe comfort and pleasure because that's another economic theory here, which is that when adults face stress from work and global events like wars and whatnot, they find emotional relief in collecting toys and things that connect with their childhood. So you have that effect kicking in. You have the lipstick effect kicking in. You have the status symbol effect of this, where you can attach this to your bag. You have the ugly cute effect, which we are just crushing with right now. And so all these come together to create the phenomenon that is Le Boo Boo. Sam Parr: Great, great, great job. Good find. I've been hearing about this, but I didn't exactly dive deep, so that's cool that you did this. This is not sustainable, and this is definitely going to go away in the next five years, but let's get it while the getting's good. I've built a few companies that have made a few million dollars a year, and I've built two companies that have made tens of millions of dollars a year. I have a little bit of experience launching, building, creating new things. I actually don't come up with a lot of original ideas. Instead, what I'm really, really good at, what my skill set is, is researching different ideas, different gaps in the market in reverse engineering companies. And I didn't invent this, by the way. We had this guy, Brad Jacobs. We talked about him on the podcast. He started like four or five different publicly traded companies worth tens of billions of dollars each. He actually is the one who I learned how to do this from. And so with the team at Hubspot, we put together all of my research tactics, frameworks, techniques On spotting different opportunities in the market, reverse engineering companies and figuring out exactly where opportunities are versus just coming up with a random silly idea and throwing it against the wall and hoping that it sticks. And so if you want to see my framework, you can check it out. The link is below in the YouTube description. Shaan Puri: So I started thinking, how do I make money on this? All right, so the first way I should have made money on this was when my wife started telling me about this, which was, I don't know, six to eight months ago. I should have either brought the stock. I should have looked. I didn't even think it was going to be a stock. I just thought it was like a stuffed animal. I didn't think it was a public company. Should have bought the stock or, you know, you could have tried to collect and flip. Okay, that's too much effort. So what's the play here? So I went and looked up. I asked AI. I said, Tell me the last five toy crazes, as crazy as La Boo Boo, over the last 50 years and compare them. Sam Parr: What were some of the other ones? So it would have been Cabbage Patch was the first one that it came up with. Beanie Babies. Shaan Puri: Beanie Babies was the second. Sam Parr: I think Trolls were popular for a minute, but I don't know if they were a craze. Shaan Puri: Then it gave me Pokemon, Pokemon cards, which had two bumps. There was the one when we were kids, where buying and collecting packs reached about the same revenue, about $2 billion a year. And then it died down for about 20 years. And then recently with like kind of Logan Paul started collecting them again. Sam Parr: Yeah, the video game. Shaan Puri: Another peak and it had $1.6 billion in its sales on the cards recently. So, Pokemon. And then the last one it gave me, which was I thought kind of interesting as AI, but actually is a good point. Because I was thinking maybe Furbies or Tamagotchis. I didn't know what it was going to give me. Those were smaller. It gave me Stanley Cups, which actually makes total sense because it's the same thing. It's the exact same thing. And so it gave me those. And the funny thing about these is, on the scale, Le Boo Boo is actually still small. So this doll did about $700 million. Those all at their peak were kind of like $1.6 to $2 billion in sales. So I actually expect that over the next year, this thing goes even, the star kind of goes viral, it burns out and it hits a $2B or $3B in revenue and then it's going to crash. Because the funny thing with all of these is they all had about a two to three-year peak tops. And so I think the actual play, if you want to make money on this thing, is to short PopMart stock starting around end of 2026 and maybe through 2027. Now, shorting is dangerous because you could lose your shirt because shorting has sort of asymmetric downside. But I think if you were a betting man, the odds are that by 2027, this thing is not a $44 billion company anymore. Sam Parr: Okay, so you had a friend, Michael Smith, Michael Acton Smith. The guy who created Calm.com, before he created Calm.com, the meditation app, he actually had a stuffed animal toy company called Minnow Monsters or something like that. Shaan Puri: Yeah, that's right. What was the name of it? So his company was called Mind Candy and it was Moshi Monsters. Moshi Monsters. Minnow Monsters was a mobile game. Moshi Monsters was his. Sam Parr: If I remember correctly, this is all 15 years ago, so it's hard to remember everything, but he raised lots of money as a technology company almost, or at least from tech VCs, And he was like, I'm going to build a massive toy business. And I remember reading at the time, this is insane. You're stupid. But now that I think about it, there's been many examples of where that is not stupid. And this is yet another one of them, where you could actually build a really cool IP toy company. And he sounds like he was on the right track. It didn't work out. Shaan Puri: It was big in the UK. So in the UK, it was like, I don't know, one out of every three kids is playing Moshi Monsters. It was like insane. It was like 90 million users globally. And I remember meeting him, I think it was still during the kind of like, it was kind of like the tail end of the peak. So it was big. But it had stopped exploding. And he was like, that's okay. We're going to try to turn this into a thing. And he was telling me, they're making Moshi shampoo and body wash. And it's going into every category. But unfortunately, that one didn't work out. We have to get Michael on, by the way. Sam Parr: I was going to say that. We have to get Michael on the pod. Shaan Puri: Have you met him? He is one of the coolest guys I've met. He's such a nice guy, first of all. Total, genuine, good dude. Super creative, really creative genius, and then also like I'm a rock star, kind of. When you meet him, you're like, oh, I'm talking to Russell Brand's cooler brother. Sam Parr: Everyone should Google him. His name is Michael Acton Smith. I remember back in 14 or 13 or 12, I mean, I'm still interested in this, but I was looking for a person I wanted to be like. It was like him because there were photos of him holding hands with Paris Hilton. If you Google Michael Afton Smith... Shaan Puri: But they're not even dating. That's the best part. Just hold their hands. Sam Parr: He had paparazzi photos of him because he had this tech angle, even though he wasn't exactly in tech. But if you guys Google him and see what he looks like, you'll understand. Shaan Puri: The Daily Telegraph described him as a rock star version of Willy Wonka. That's his Wikipedia page. Sam Parr: It's great. This guy was so cool. And now he has since started Calm, which I have no idea how big it is. Hundreds or hundreds of millions or billions. Shaan Puri: A multi-billion-dollar company. Sam Parr: He's the man. This guy's absolutely the man. And he's been the man for 20 years. Shaan Puri: He has. He has. He's amazing. Okay, I'm going to call him after this and be like, I will fly to you. Sam Parr: Let's do an episode. Where does he even live now? Shaan Puri: I think he was in the UK. He was kind of back and forth between US and UK. I think he's in the UK now. Sam Parr: He's just like a rich guy now? He just does what he wants? Shaan Puri: Well, I think he always did what he wants. That's why he was our hero. I don't think I had anything to do with being rich. Sam Parr: That's the difference between guys like me and guys like him, I guess. Exactly. Shaan Puri: We chased money and money chased him. Sam Parr: Yeah. He didn't run very fast. This guy's the man. Cutting your sales cycle in half sounds pretty impossible, but that's exactly what Sandler Training did with Hubspot. They used Breeze, Hubspot's AI tools, to tailor every customer interaction without losing their personal touch. And the results were incredible. Click-through rates jumped 25%. Qualified leads quadrupled. And people spent three times longer on their landing pages. Go to Hubspot.com to see how Breeze can help your business grow. Shaan Puri: Okay, I have another one for you. Can I give you another one? So we did kids toys. I have another one. You might know the story of this one. Have you ever had one of these before? Sam Parr: Okay, what's this? Shaan Puri: I'm holding up a box of Tony's Chocolonely. Sam Parr: Hell yeah, brother. I love Tony's Chocolonely. Do they have some that have pop rocks in them? Shaan Puri: I've been saying it wrong for a long time. It's not Tony's Chocolonely. It's Tony's Chocolonely. Do you know that? Sam Parr: I just call it Tony's. I love Tony's. I have always bought them and then when we hung out with Mr. Beast, he told us the backstory. I didn't realize how amazing they were. I love Tony's. Shaan Puri: Yeah, yeah, they're and their backstory is even better than I thought because when we were hanging out with Jimmy, he was like, oh, yeah, I, you know, he for for Feastables really wanted to get Feastables to have a supply chain that had no child labor. He's like, you know, most of the cocoa farms in Africa have child labor, all the big chocolate brands, you know, Hershey's, etc. They all buy from them. When I learned that that was effed up, I went over there and we basically have been spending a couple of years now trying to fix the supply chain so that that doesn't have to be the case. Sam Parr: He was like, every company, I don't like this or that thing about them, but there's one company that I really admire that seems to be doing something well. And I think that's how he phrased it. And he said, Tony's is the one. They do things right, is basically what he said. Shaan Puri: Exactly. And he actually called the founders of this and learned from them of like, okay, what do I need to do? Which is cool because they were the ones who initially made the push. But do you know the backstory of why they made the push into doing this? Sam Parr: Wasn't it started by an actor or a famous person in Holland or something like that? A journalist. A journalist, okay. It was like a non-business person who started it and they started it with, it's one of these cool stories where they didn't so much care about chocolate. They cared about like helping the earth or human rights or something. And we're just so happy to be doing it via chocolate. Like it was something like a story like that, wasn't it? Shaan Puri: So the story is, I think there was two Dutch journalists, but These two just journalists, they're covering the chocolate industry on their TV show and they hear about, you know, that the chocolate companies are, all the chocolate, all the cocoa comes from West Africa and that there's a lot of child, yeah, slavery and child labor. So two separate things, right? Slavery and then child labor happening on the farms there. So they want to go and investigate. So they go down there. They investigate. They find that it's true. And they put out a story to try to help. And I think the exact story is that At one point, all the big chocolate companies signed like a treaty. They signed like a pact to say, we're going to stop this. And I guess like years later, they had gone back and they had gone to investigate and it was like the exact same situation. They saw that it kind of nothing had really changed. And so these guys are pretty disheartened by it. So they decide like this is where the story gets crazy because a normal person, even a normal, a great journalist would just report the story, maybe use some Some choice language when they talk about it and then they would shake their finger at them and move on. But these journalists went and did like, you know, took the exit off of High Agency Avenue and were like, no, no, no, watch this. And so the guys, they come back and they decide to do a publicity stunt. So he eats the chocolate and he calls the police and the police come and they're like, what are you doing? And he goes, I'm eating chocolate that was made with slave labor and child labor. And they're like, that's not a crime. You're eating chocolate. That's not a crime. He goes, no, no, no. Actually, according to statute, blah, blah, blah, knowingly consuming this product, knowing what I know, that this is the product of child labor and slave labor, that's actually illegal. Arrest me, boys. And so they lock him up. They take him to jail. And that becomes this viral sort of news stunt that brings even more attention to this. Now, prosecutors end up dismissing the case because they're like, we're not going to prosecute this. But they decide to go in and create their own ethically made chocolate brand. And they decide to call it Tony's Chocolonely because they're like, the guy's name is Toon. That's his Dutch name, but the Americanized, Westernized version of Tone, I guess is his name, would be Tony. So they go, Tony's, and he said, it's going to be very lonely to build a chocolate company that's actually trying to be ethically sourced. So he called it Tony's Chocolonely, okay? Sam Parr: Great. Shaan Puri: And that's how they felt in their fight against the cocoa industry. And it becomes a hit pretty much right away. They sell 20,000 bars in two days because of the public like resonance with their story. And it becomes the best-selling chocolate brand in their market, which is the Netherlands. They get like 20% share in the Netherlands. It passes up Mars and Nestle and other competitors there, and then they start expanding, and they keep expanding, and then they start finding like-minded brands. I don't know if you know about Ben & Jerry's, but Ben & Jerry's is also one of these very strong, ethical, moral... Sam Parr: Yeah, opinion-driven, they stick to what they want to do. Shaan Puri: Good people corporations. I actually saw Ben or Jerry, I forgot which one, talk at an event I was at 15 years ago. And I've ever been pretty blown away by the like how genuine it was for them and how the extent that they had gone. Sam Parr: Right. Shaan Puri: So, for example, I don't know if it's like they have this one flavor that's like their brownie flavor. I forgot like, you know. I'm so fucking fit now, I can't even remember the name, dude. It's insane. It's chocolate fudge brownie. Something fat people eat. That's so my past, I just can't even remember. Sam Parr: You're like, I barely remember how that felt last week. Shaan Puri: By the way, meanwhile, I'm holding up this Tony Stark Lonely. Three bars are missing from this pack. Blame it on the kids. Sam Parr: My wife gets pissed off at me because whenever we bring a treat to a friend's house, we bring dessert, they cook dinner, and it's already opened. She's like, what the hell? You can't give a pack of ice cream when there's one. I'm like, why not? We're going to open it anyway, like half an hour. Why can't I open it now? That's sort of what happened. She always compares me to a bear looking in the cabinets for honey, and I get my fingers stuck in the jar. Shaan Puri: My brother-in-law is like this. My brother-in-law, Aaron, he's one of these people that doesn't eat a ton in general. He's not a big foodie, but if you leave a snack, he's like a bear. If you leave a treat in their house, it's gone by the morning, and you're like, did you wake up? And so like, he'll eat the whole bag, right, of anything. And so my sister calls it, like with Oreos, like we got a pack of Oreos, right? And she's like, oh my god, Aaron's doing a line right now. And doing a line to her meant you eat the entire row of Oreos, like he did a whole line. Unknown Speaker: And I just thought that was so funny. Sam Parr: Aaron likes to party. Unknown Speaker: Exactly. Shaan Puri: We've got to have him back on. Brother Aaron, the OGs, the real OGs now. He had two guest cameo experiences, like, way back in the first 30 episodes. It was hilarious. Anyways, Chocolate Company. So, Tony's Chocolonely, what did they do? Ben & Jerry's, to finish the Ben & Jerry's thing, they opened up a factory, I think somewhere, like, in upstate New York or something like this, and it was after they met What's it called when you get out of jail and you're in a program but you don't want to go? Recidivism. They wanted to reduce recidivism. People end up back in jail. Sam Parr: Which is traditionally incredibly high. Shaan Puri: It's really high. One of the big drivers of why do people who after a long sentence get out and go back, it's not because they're morally corrupt at their core. They couldn't get a job and they didn't have any money in their social life. Sam Parr: Previous friends were losers or they left prison without knowing anyone but only had $50. Exactly. Shaan Puri: And so one way to decrease recidivism is if people can get a job, but nobody wants to give them a job. So they created a whole factory. Their brownie factory is all brownies made by ex-cons, basically, the Ben & Jerry's flavor. They met some guys who had a good recipe and they built a factory around them, essentially. So they're do-gooders. So Tony's Chocolonely to break into the U.S. starts partnering with Ben & Jerry's. And the revenue has just grown and grown and grown. And so like last year, I think they did $200 million in revenue. And they've made this like a legit chocolate company that started with two journalists just basically trying to make a stand against the man. How cool is that? Sam Parr: This is awesome. This is so cool. Do they run the company now? Shaan Puri: No, so they're out now. There's like a CEO. It's just kind of run by normal suits basically at this point. And they get some flack because their supply chain is still not perfect, but they're very transparent about it. So the crazy thing is they'll report that they had 11 issues this year of child labor discovered in their supply chain. And people are like, see, you're not totally free. And they're like, what? We're trying to be transparent and say, you know, we're way less than anybody else. We're also honest about this and we're reporting it so that we can keep improving this. But they get some flack as like, you know, I guess like skeptics say that maybe they're just greenwashing at this point now since the founders left. And even I think the founder has sort of alluded to like, it's not the same since we left. I don't know the exact story. It's like, I'm trying to read these like Dutch translations of articles and decided that like, I'd rather just eat the chocolate and chill. So I'm not sure the exact story, but I think there's maybe a little controversy around that. Sam Parr: Yeah, I've known about this brand for a while. I only knew what Jimmy had said, which wasn't in this depth, but it makes me like them way more. The product's awesome. I mean, I love the brand. I eat the shit out of them. I mean, it messes me up, but that's cool. Shaan Puri: Maybe you could be the influencer that blows them up even more. Sam Parr, I eat the shit out of them. Sam Parr: It's just like most of my guilty evenings start with a bar of Tony's. The issue is they would sell their candy. It used to come in the extra can size. It was a huge bar. They only sell in bulk. By the way, did I ever tell you about the time? We were talking about recidivism. This is not entirely related to business, but I think you'll get a kick out of this. Did I tell you about the time? I think we've talked about this. I've been to San Quentin a few times and Indiana State Prison. Shaan Puri: You've mentioned that you did, but I don't know the exact story. Sam Parr: What's the story? I have to tell you the background of this. I have a friend. This is the story. It's going to be about him. I've been to Indiana State Prison a couple of times or once. I went to San Quentin a few times. One time, I went to Indiana State Prison. We go because my friend has this charity called The Last Mile. The idea is When you commit a crime, particularly murder, you're not always sentenced to life. You're inevitably going to get out. It's better for that person if they get out and have a job. It's better for society if they get out and get a job. It's better for the taxpayer if they get out and get a job because you don't want them to go back to prison because that's bad for everyone. We are all incentivized. It's totally bipartisan to get this person to be trained and to get a job. This company, The Last Mile, started by my friend Chris, they help you learn. I think when I went, I think they were learning WordPress. I don't know what they learn now, but this was a while ago. They were learning WordPress or they were learning like some front-end development so you can get a job at like an eBay or like a huge... Shaan Puri: They're just vibe coding now? Sam Parr: Yeah. I don't know what they do now. Yeah. They have like some like weird like hot or not app that they vibe... Shaan Puri: They're just minting NFTs? Yeah. Sam Parr: I don't know what these guys are doing, but My friend Chris started it. He was a prominent venture capitalist. He was the first investor in Wish. He was an early investor in Snap. He did Boom. He did all these other cool startups. For some reason, one day, he went and volunteered at San Quentin at a prison. He was like, I think this is my life's mission to help reduce recidivism. Meaning, when you get out of prison, you don't go back. He created this thing called The Last Mile. They now have hundreds of employees. They've had thousands of people who have gone through their program. He told me this stat a couple years ago, so I don't want to jinx someone. I don't know the update, but of the 1,000 or 2,000 people who graduated, not one had ever been back to prison. And that's, like, a huge thing. And so it's really interesting that this tech person has, like, he quit. So he doesn't invest anymore. This is all he does. And I talked to another guy, Mike Novogratz. He was on the pod two weeks ago. And that's his thing now, too, is reducing recidivism, so reducing the rate that you go back to prison. But I know a bunch of people who have given up their careers to go pursue this. Shaan Puri: I'm on their website right now. Pretty crazy stats. It says, since the 70s, the prison population in the U.S. has increased by 700%, which is not what you would expect. That's not just like, oh, that makes sense. It should grow every year. It's like, no, no, the prison population should not necessarily grow at that rate. It says that every person in prison Has an annual cost to the American taxpayer of $70,000, which means we pay about $50 billion a year is spent on state and federal prisons. Isn't that crazy? Sam Parr: It's it's it's it's amazing, right? Shaan Puri: The last miles participants in the last mile who go through there, I guess it's like an education program as they get out. Have a 75% employment rate when they come out, which is yeah, I wonder what the non I wonder what the baseline is. It's gotta be. Sam Parr: Basically what happens, and I talked to some of these guys when they were in there, they were like, look, when I got out, I had been in for 10 or 15 years. I was a thug. I didn't want to associate with my old people. My family had either died or wasn't around. They basically gave me a bus ticket and 50 bucks. I was like, sir, where do I go? I'm not sure where I go to right now. What do I do? They're like, that's why I came back here is I just started going back to how I used to behave. Shaan Puri: By the way, this guy Chris looks awesome, Chris Redlitz. Why does he have a serious radio show? Does that get broadcasted in the prisons in some way or is that just an external thing? Sam Parr: Both. So Chris is interesting. So we had Michael Harris on the pod. Harry O is his nickname. Harry O is the founder of Death Row Records. Chris is kind of, I joke, he's an OG. He's an original gangster. So he knows all of these guys. So he's friends with Dr. Dre, Snoop. The founders of Death Row, all these cool guys and they all have this like blend of like hip-hop but also like crime like interests and so he decided to have a show with Sirius where he would get some of these cool guys on the radio show and they would talk about what his issue is but also it was like wrapped up in like kind of cool stories because it's kind of like hip-hop and like celebrity and so he had a show for Sirius where he would talk about it. Shaan Puri: This guy's living the dream. Got rich. Decided to do good in the world. How's the great podcast? It's a triple threat. Sam Parr: I love it. He's cool. I became really close with him. He invested in my company when I was a 25-year-old or 26-year-old in San Francisco. Very coincidentally, we both moved to this small town in Westport, Connecticut together, and we hang out all the time. His wife, her name is Beverly. She's a 95-pound woman. I've been to San Quentin. We were walking on the yard with these guys doing bench press and sit-ups and whatever. And I walked with this little lady through the yard and the Red Sea parted. And she just walked through and she's like, Tyrone, how are you? And she would go, Miss Bev, nice to see you. It was the craziest thing that I've ever seen. I'm telling you, she ran this prison yard. She was the only woman there and it was the craziest thing I've ever seen. And they have a joke that says, if it glow, you may go. When you walk in to San Quentin, they stamp your hand. And so when you leave, you have to show them your stamp underneath a black light in order to get out. And they would do jokes where she would wink at the guy when I'm walking in, and he didn't actually stamp me. He just pretended. And I would go to scan my hand to leave, and my hand didn't glow. And they're like, sir, you cannot leave. We have to get this figured out. And I was like, I'm not staying here. So they would pull tricks on you when you go and see this place. It was wild. But Chris and Bev are two people, when I think of how to live life, it's them. That's the way to go. Shaan Puri: That's dope. Can I tell you a related story? So my buddy Trevor, I was writing a book, and he did this great, a very smart move, which I'd never really heard anybody else do, but I thought it was a good idea. He goes, hey man, check your email. I check my email, and there's like a plane ticket, and it's a plane ticket to go see him, and he's like, I'm gonna do, I wanna write this book, and I want it to be great, and I could sit here and brainstorm this on my own, but I really wanna do something that I'm calling a bookstorm, and he basically decided to fly out the five kind of smartest, most interesting people he knew, To hang out with him for a day and just help him flesh out and brainstorm the book together. And he's like, I will owe you one for life, but I just really respect you, trust you, and I really want your help with this because I'm trying to make this great. I go and in the room is basically my buddy Trevor, his brother, and then there's the head of like the women's volleyball, the U.S. women's volleyball team, which is like way outperformed in the Olympics and won like a bunch of gold. And there was one other person and then there was this guy, Larry. I'm like, oh, I'm a professional brainstormer. This is literally what I do. I'm like just ready to rock and roll. But I'm just blown away by this guy Larry. Every time this guy Larry opens his mouth, he says something that's super wise, super smart on the nose. Just a few words, but he's always on point. And so after about an hour of the brainstorming around the book, I was like, dude, I gotta ask, Larry, I missed the intro. What's your story, dude? Because you're incredible. And Larry tells the story where Larry's like, you know, my name's Larry, blah, blah, blah. And he goes, I was incarcerated for the past 22 years. And I think he had just gotten out. I don't know how long it had been, maybe a year or two, something like that. And he goes, yeah, from the age 18, he's now 40. He's like, at age 18, I was arrested and I was in for, you know, whatever, 22 plus years. And I was like, Larry, no offense, but you just got out a couple of years ago. How are you so smart? How do you know all this stuff? Because he would have these amazing polls or whatever we're talking about. He would reference this thing in this book and this quote, he could just recite by memory. So, Larry, I'm like, Larry, how do you know all this? Eddie goes, I was incarcerated at age 18. They lock you up and throw away the key, right? You're basically the lowest man on the totem pole for society. Nobody invests in you at that point. You're a sunk cost. And so he's like, I was getting in trouble, and it was a rough place, and it was not a good time. And he's like, I made a decision. I'm no longer in prison. I'm in university. And he's like, so every day, I just studied. I just decided to go to university for the past 20 years. He's like, I decided to read all the books and learn and write and better myself. And he's like, I would literally change what I saw. I would walk in the prison yard and I wouldn't see the barbed wire. He's like, I saw roses. He's like, I literally just brainwashed myself that I am not in prison. I am in university. And I carried myself like that. And I acted like that. He made the most of what was otherwise a very bad situation. I just remember being so blown away and inspired by this guy, Larry, when I heard that story, because I was like, If Larry can do that at a life sentence in prison, this sounds stupid, but then I can be bored in a line at Starbucks for an hour or whatever. You can change where you are. You don't have to be in the situation that it looks like you're in. You can literally just decide, no, no, I'm in university right now. No, no, I'm in a spa right now. No, I'm in the brainstorming session right now. I am where I want to be. Sam Parr: That's so cool. Yeah, it's really challenging because on one hand, for some reason, you feel sad for someone because you meet someone. A lot of the guys I met, I think they kind of had a tone for their sins a little bit where they've changed. But you're like, oh, I feel so bad for you. That sucks. You didn't deserve this. And then you learn about what they did and you're like, actually, no. Consequences exist for a reason. That sounds fair to me. Whenever I've done these things with these guys, I get so many mixed emotions. It's a very challenging thing. It's a very hard thing to be part of too, but it is a no-brainer, right? You want someone to not go back. So, you guys know this, but I have a company called Hampton. Joinhampton.com. It's a vetted community for founders and CEOs. Well, we have this member named Levon, and Levon saw a bunch of members talking about the same problem within Hampton, which is that they spent hours manually moving data into a PDF. It's tedious, it's annoying, and it's a waste of time. And so, Levon, like any great entrepreneur, he built a solution, and that solution is called Molku. Molku uses AI to automatically transfer data from any document into a PDF. And so if you need to turn a supplier invoice into a customer quote or move info from an application into a contract, you just put a file into MoQ and it autofills the output PDF in seconds. And a little backstory for all the tech nerds out there. Slavon built the entire web app without using a line of code. He used something called Bubble.io. They've added AI tools that can generate an entire app from one prompt. It's pretty amazing and it means you can build tools like Moku very fast without knowing how to code. And so if you're tired of copying and pasting between documents or paying people to do that for you, check out Moku.ai. M-O-L-K-U.ai. All right, back to the pod. Shaan Puri: Did I tell you my embarrassing prison story? Sam Parr: No, but that sounds so awesome. Unknown Speaker: It's very embarrassing. Sam Parr: This could go so many ways. Shaan Puri: So I go, I go with this. Sam Parr: What, are you making dad jokes at your first day in? Shaan Puri: So, um, so I moved to Silicon Valley and I'm working with this guy, Michael Birch. And Michael Birch is this wonderful guy. Michael's built a successful career in Silicon Valley. He's basically like a billionaire. So one day he messages me like, Pack it like pack a bag with enough clothes for a day. I got two days and Meet me like at like whatever like meet me at like 8 a.m. At this spot. You're not going to work today All right. I don't know what's gonna happen. So I go and we started no idea where you're going I think he tells me on the drive that we're going to he's a part of this group called the inside circle and And Inside Circle was where they take guys from the outside to go meet guys on the inside. And it was at the prison, Folsom. Was it called Folsom Prison? Sam Parr: Yeah, Folsom. Shaan Puri: And so we go drive there. It's a maximum security prison. And I'm basically just a huge wuss, right? So I don't know what I'm getting into. I didn't actually sign up for this. Michael's just kind of like, trust me, you'll like this. This is good. You should do this. I still don't really understand what we're doing. I think it's like a, you know, like dare, where they like scare you, they like take you in. Sam Parr: Yeah, like you're scared straight. Shaan Puri: Yeah, I thought it was scared straight. I thought we were just going to observe from like behind this like really thick glass. Unknown Speaker: I'm like, oh, cool. Shaan Puri: We're going to be like, watch. And I'm going to be like, wow, I learned so much today from observing. Sam Parr: Tapping on the glass. Shaan Puri: And then they open the door and they're like, all right, guys, come on in. I'm like, what? And so we go in and they're like, All right, you know, pick a buddy, pick a partner. And so I'm like, and I like pick this guy and the program starts. It basically, it's like a men's group. So you sit in a circle, you talk about your feelings. Oh, and by the way, when I walk in, immediately my eyes are drawn to one person because it was so obvious to me like this was the hardest guy in the prison. Somehow this guy had sunglasses and I don't know why he was allowed to have sunglasses. He had a cane, which I thought like you're not allowed to have like a Like something that could be like a weapon. But he's got a cane and he's got sunglasses, but he's not blind, by the way. He has the sunglasses like up on his head sometimes. Sam Parr: And he's queer. What, white guy or black guy? Shaan Puri: Black guy. And he had like an entourage. He had like two guys with him who were really big, but they deferred to him. And he was kind of older. And I was just like, I don't know who this guy is, but I've seen enough shows and movies to know that this guy is somebody here. And maybe somebody on the outside, I don't know. But he's somebody in here. Anyway, so he's in my group. And his two like entourage guys. So we get in the circle and I'm like, okay, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Am I giving advice? Is this a mentorship test? What is this? And it's like, no, no, you're here to talk about, you know, this is a safe space. Unpack your feelings. I'm like, oh, God. And so first guy starts and he starts talking about how he's feeling pissed off. He's feeling pissed off because like, I mean, crazy story, but he's locked up in here and his sister outside, she's being abused by her boyfriend. He just wants to kill this guy, but he's on the inside. He can't get to this guy. He feels powerless. And he's sharing this heavy, emotional, real-life problem, like a grade-A real-life problem. And I, of course, because I'm horrible, I stopped listening. I'm just panicked, thinking of, what am I going to say? You know when you're supposed to be listening, but you're actually just planning what you're supposed to say? I start doing that. Sam Parr: Everybody's going to retell a fake movie so you sound hard. Shaan Puri: Yeah, so I'm like, my startup doesn't have product where it fits. I'm really grinding my gear. What the hell am I going to say? I don't have real-world problems. My life's pretty good. We're going around the circle, and it's just one crazy real problem after another. And then it's getting to me and I'm just like, what am I going to say? And so I'm like, all right. I guess I go deep in the bag. I'm like, all right, I do have, you know, there is something that's like pretty heavy. I don't really talk about this normally, but like, I guess, thank God I have this, because this is the time and place to unpack this story. And so I start unpacking this story. And in my mind, and also I'm like, I'm talking kind of slower and dramatically, because I'm like, let me really ham this up a little bit. Like, let me not, let me not be me and laugh during this. Let me, you know, try to be serious here. And I think I'm doing a great job and the guy with the glasses just midway through is like, man. I don't believe none of that shit. I'm like, no. And I immediately I'm like, no, it's true. He goes, I know it's true. And I'm like, so what? Just to clarify, you said, are we cool? What's going on? And he was like, man, that ain't your truth, though. So he's like, it's true, but that ain't your truth. And I'm like, what is this puzzle? What is this riddle? I don't know what this means. And then it creates this really intense moment where I had to stand up. And he's like, they're like, all right, it's time to do the work. I'm like, what? And so he's like, he's like, what's your truth? And I'm like, what? I just feel and I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, no, but that is a real situation that has happened to me. And they were like, no, what's your truth? And I was like, all right, the truth is, I'm just trying to say what I think you guys want me to say because I just want you to like me and I point at the guy. I'm like, I just want you to not hate me. And he looks at me, he just stares at me. He stands up, he gets in my face, he goes, that's no truth. Unknown Speaker: He gives me a big hug. Shaan Puri: And then we sat down. And then for the next hour, I was like, I don't know what the hell just happened, but I think I'm in a prison gang and this is awesome. I think I'm accepted. This felt amazing. Sam Parr: That's called a breakthrough. Shaan Puri: Yeah, I had a breakthrough. So that's my embarrassing prison story. Sam Parr: That's great. How did it end? information? What do you do? Shaan Puri: My insecure, neurotic self and that's fine here. Okay, cool. I don't have to pretend. Great. And then they were like, cool, he ain't pretending anymore. We like this guy. Whatever you say now, we don't really care, but we just know that you're not pandering to us. Sam Parr: What value do these guys get? Shaan Puri: What a lesson learned. Sam Parr: What value do these guys get? Shaan Puri: Well, I think, you know, they live a pretty hard life. No, I think just in general, they live a pretty hard life and they go to this meeting every week. So they have this kind of like two hours a week where they get to go and kind of like, as they would say, like, take the mask off, put the armor down. In fact, like, it would be a mix of like the Hispanic guys, the white guys and the black guys in this session. But then they would like openly say like, yeah, but like he, his friend like shanked my friend. And so it's on, but here it's not on. But as soon as we get out, it's on again. And I was like, this is like a pretty bizarre dynamic, but they all agreed like, all right, when we're here, it's whatever, but when we're out there, it is what it is. That's just the way things are. I remember being like, that's insane. But, you know, understandable in a way. So they have this as a space where they can, like, deload kind of emotionally, mentally, which is important, and feel like a human being and be able to, like, express themselves. I think it's a pretty dehumanizing feeling, right? When you're, again, locked up, throw away the key, and, you know, anybody who comes in, they just see you as your label, right? But, like, in that environment, for those three hours that we were there, There was no status. Nobody was better than anybody else or like yeah there was us but I was worse than everybody else. I guess it's probably more accurate way of saying it but like there was no they got to like be treated well and be helped and be just talked to one man to another man. At least, again, this is my interpretation of it. I'm sure that people who do this more have a more sophisticated way and a better way of saying it. Sam Parr: By the way, now that we're talking about this and we can wrap up, but Jack Smith, I forgot, this is his big philanthropic cause as well. So Jack Smith, if you ask him what he's doing on a regular basis for a long time, I would say, what are you doing? He's like, oh, I'm pen pals with people who are locked up and I have a system where they can order any book and I'll get it for them. Shaan Puri: Isn't he giving books? Isn't it a book program? Sam Parr: Yeah, where he created a website. I forget how he did it, but where they can order a book and he'll buy them any single book that they want. Shaan Puri: Dude, most generic name, Jack Smith. You can't find anything when you Google for Jack Smith. Okay, well, maybe we do this. So there's The Last Mile, which you can donate to. So go to thelastmile.org. You can donate there. There's Inside Circle Foundation, where you can donate there. So maybe we do a little good. So if there's anybody who's listening to this and is inspired either to start your own thing or to attend one of these or to donate, go do it, man. Seen it firsthand, does a lot of good, and I think doesn't get the type of attention that it would ever want. By the way, the Inside Circle guys, they also made a movie, a documentary about the program. Sam Parr: Chris Redlitz is the guy who's kind of my mentor and someone I look up to. You can find him on Twitter. He's super low-key, but he's been the seed investor of probably 5 to 10 different unicorns, hugely successful, and now has dedicated his life to this. I want to do whatever. He's pretty open-minded. Shaan Puri: Do you think you're going to do something like this, by the way? Sam Parr: Yeah, I haven't found my cause for a long time. Shaan Puri: Do you have a career arc in mind where you're like, cool, I climb Success Mountain and then I parachute over to save the world? Sam Parr: I told Sarah that at the age of 40, I'm going to stop the getting of money. So I said, by 40, I will no longer pursue any money. We will have a cause and that's what we will dedicate ourselves to. Shaan Puri: You've also told me that you're going to disappear off the internet. I think this is badass and you should talk more about this. Sam Parr: I said at the age of 40, yeah, I want to get off the internet and I want to not pursue any money-making things ever again. I don't want it to ruin my perspective and just be a shallow capitalist and only care about that and just delete the internet. And just focus on doing something good. That's the current plan. Shaan Puri: How old are you now? Sam Parr: I turned 36 a month ago, so I'm 36. Four years away, dude. Do you think that's a crazy plan? Shaan Puri: Of course it's a crazy plan, but it's a pretty cool plan. I think it sounds pretty cool. I said by 40. What's your level of seriousness about this? Is this like, that's what's happening? I'm just testing this out, seeing how these words sound in my mouth. Sam Parr: No, I just think that if you only pursue making money, I think that you become a very shallow person. I think that there's more to life. I think that there's been so many times where I've seen something inspiring and beautiful, and in my head, I think, oh, then we could do this and turn it into this and then optimize by doing this, as opposed to saying, this is beautiful, this is wonderful, I want to experience, let's keep it small. I want to force myself to appreciate that. One of my heroes is this guy named Felix Dennis. He wrote the book How to Get Rich. Felix Dennis was a publisher in England where he founded a bunch of publishing companies. Eventually, it was worth $600 or $700 million. He wrote that he was diagnosed with cancer something like at the age of 60. Then at the age of 61, while he was learning about his cancer or something, he got into poetry. He was like, I'm obsessed with writing poetry. Why on earth did I not discover this sooner? And he quit business partially because he was dying and because he fell in love with poetry. And he wrote in his book that if I could do it all over again, I would have quit at the age of 40 because I had enough and I would have pursued poetry because that was my calling. And I always found that to be amazing because I think that oftentimes when we're doing what we're doing every single day, we get caught into the make more, do more, optimize more when it's like, I want to be in the present and I want to enjoy the things that I want to enjoy regardless if they make money because how many hobbies have you had where you're like, I would only do it if I could make like, oh, I want to buy these toys and maybe I could buy 10 of them and turn it into a money-making thing. Now, what you're doing is actually pretty cool, but you still have a capitalistic mindset to it. You are playing the piano and you are live streaming it, which I think is amazing. But in my head, I'm like, I want to do that too. It's like, well, I only want to do that because I want people to see me learning a hobby. Do you know what I mean? That's like tainting the thing. Shaan Puri: Well, I only livestreamed it once. Sam Parr: No, I'm not criticizing you. I'm criticizing I was inspired to do it because I want glory. Do you know what I mean? Shaan Puri: Well, I learned pretty quickly when I started playing the piano that Nobody gives a shit if you can play the piano, by the way. It's not like a thing. If somebody plays the piano well, it's like, oh, cool, you can play the piano well. They don't want to listen to even one song. Nobody wants to listen to somebody play a five-minute song on the piano. That's a very clear thing to me since learning to play piano, but it doesn't matter because playing a five-minute song is incredibly fun. In fact, I sent Ben a text message. I'm going to read you this text message because I think it's very relevant to what we're talking about. So Pomp did a SPAC recently. Did you see this? Sam Parr: Yeah, I saw it, but I don't entirely know what that means, but yeah. Shaan Puri: So our friend, Pomp, Anthony, they spacked a company. And the company's goal was to do the kind of Michael Saylor playbook, which is it's a Bitcoin acquisition and finance company. And so what they're doing is they raise, I think, $750 million. They spacked it. It's now public. It's going to be a public company. And they basically bought $750 million worth of Bitcoin. Then they're going to raise debt and buy more Bitcoin. Sam Parr: Because companies or pension funds can own pump stock, but they can't own Bitcoin, so this is how they get exposure to it. Is that right? Shaan Puri: That's one aspect to it. There's others, which is like, it's levered. So like, you know, you can, for every dollar you put in, let's say you buy Bitcoin directly, you could buy $1 of Bitcoin, but like, their thing might, they're gonna borrow and buy more than a dollar of Bitcoin for every dollar of equity, you know, for example. They also want to eventually turn it into like a full financial services thing. So essentially like a Bitcoin-backed bank. I think that's a part of the vision. Anyways, I don't know exactly what they're doing. There's, you know, they're only allowed to say certain things, but point is, It's like Pomp, this guy who's very much like us. I think he's the same age. Sam Parr: I hang out with Anthony all the time. Shaan Puri: Creator on the internet, good dude, and he's not like some uber, uber, uber genius, but he's relatable, is what I'm saying. So he's like one of us. And it's clear that this didn't just happen. He's been working on this for some period of time, maybe six months, maybe a year, maybe two years, you don't know. It's like, oh wow, Pomp raised $750 million, has this public company now. I think he owns 8% of it, I saw from the filing. Theoretically, Pomp has $80 million of value from this. Some creators make courses. Pomp's going to make probably hundreds of millions of dollars from this thing if it goes well. That's clearly what he put a lot of energy and focus on and did a great job fundraising for. I was texting Ben. I was like, wow, that's incredible. I was like, meanwhile, I've logged 120 hours on the piano in the last six months. And I go, honestly, no regrets though. Fucking love the piano. Sam Parr: Dude, so listen, you tweeted out, you said, I used to think jealousy was a bad thing, like a sin, and I'd try to avoid it. But jealousy is a wedding crasher. It shows up uninvited. And recently, I started using jealousy to my advantage. Jealousy is an incredible signal. It tells me At a very primal, no-logic level, what my subconscious wants. It's a heat signal for taste. I don't obey the signal, but I do observe it, and it helps me now. And so, this sounds very strange, but when I saw what Pop was doing, I was like, that's so badass. Congrats to him. But then very weirdly, when I saw you streaming, you played the piano. For some reason, I thought that was oddly one of the cooler things you've done in the last year or two. And I felt stronger and I'm like, well, why do I feel that? Why do I think that that is cooler? I don't know why exactly, but it relates to that tweet where I'm like, what's the signal there that that's sending? So anyway, I thought that was really cool. I thought that was significantly cooler. And I said this as well, when you were contemplating making a play or starting a business or something like that, it's like, I don't know, for some reason, the play is so much cooler. So I think I would pursue those like artistic things over the money thing and this sounds like a very trite, you know, like not everyone has the Privilege to be able to do that, but I do think that like it's better for your soul that way. Shaan Puri: Yeah, exactly. I mean, you could already, you know, hear the comments. Oh, it must be nice for you. You don't have to work. Another version of it is, tech bros discover hobbies. There's more to life than money. Also, by the way, both true. Both very valid points of view. I don't think it's the important point of view, but I do think they're valid points of view. I think the important point of view is like, Try to figure out what you actually want to do and then pursue it like in a relentless sort of unashamed way. And I think it's very cool. When you said that thing, I think you told me like in five, seven years, I plan to delete my social media, disappear from the internet. And now you're talking about stop pursuing the getting of money. I really hope you stick to that. I don't know if you will because I think it's a very hard thing to do. It's like, hey, can you turn down? It's like being like, I no longer eat sugar. It's like those people who are like, I'm going to stop. I'm going to diet. It's hard to stick to a diet. But if you actually did that, you would shoot up in the rankings of the most badass people I know. You know what I mean? You're already top 10, but you would shoot up. Sam Parr: I've got four years to go I better get all I better get all of it while I can but I do think that that it's also give me a percentage How certain are you you're gonna do that at the age of 40? I just need to know I'm gonna hold you to this 60 to 70 percent. I mean look I feel this a lot of it has to do it family to like I feel I Like when my little kids start like talking and having personalities, I think I would fall in love with them even more and I just want to like be a good example that there's more to life than just the getting of money. Shaan Puri: Yeah. Yeah, I'm totally washed. Kids are so cute. I'm just washed up now. I can't do anything, dude. Sam Parr: I'm hooked. Yeah. The more personality she shows, the more where I'm like, oh, nothing really matters except our health and being around each other. Shaan Puri: Right, right. Sam Parr: I don't know. Does that stay linear or does it keep getting higher the more they talk to you? Shaan Puri: Yeah, it is. But I think, at least for me, there's a cap. It's not one of these unbounded things. It's not like I want to spend every waking moment with you. I'm like, yeah, you're too annoying. I'm too tired. This is too much. But it became my favorite thing for three hours a day. For three hours a day, my kids are my favorite thing in the world. That's three hours a day that my favorite thing used to be working. It used to be reading. There's other things that were in that spot of like, that three hours a day of like voluntary time I could direct towards anything. And now my kids are that, right? Like we're just like jumping in the pool with them and doing stuff or playing a game or whatever. That's like, it is super, super fun. But it is capped at like a three to four hours a day. Beyond that, I'm like, Like, how dare my wife make me raise my own children? This is too much. I need to be helped and saved. Who's here to save me? Sam Parr: This is the softest episode we've ever had. Unknown Speaker: All right. Shaan Puri: We should get off before we start crying. Sam Parr: All right. That's it. That's the pod. All right, my friends, I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit, and it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content Is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.