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- [00:00]
Sam Parr
Most people live their life like this. They build a well and they start to pump water. And at the end of their lives, after a lifetime of pumping, they see they are still thirsty. They spent their whole life pumping rather than drinking, which was the reason they started pumping in the first place. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.
- [00:18]
Shaun
I put my all in it.
- [00:20]
Sam Parr
Like, no days off on a road. Let's try.
- [00:22]
Shaun
What up, Sam?
- [00:22]
Sam Parr
I wanted to do something a little different today. End of the year, I was doing a little slack clean out and I was looking at. I had this one channel for, like, the best stuff I read this week. I call it my Content Diet channel. It's basically what were the vegetables, what were my whole foods that I consumed? Because I consume a lot of junk. But this stuff was actually good. I was just kind of browsing through what really stood out or resonated with me. And I have a couple I don't know, and I wanted to know yours because you read a lot more than me, and I think we read totally different things. So I'm curious if anything comes to mind for you on that topic.
- [00:55]
Shaun
Yes, for me, it's a lot of books. And so, like, for example, the topic that I got obsessed with this year was presidential assassinations. I went deep on the four different presidents who were assassinated, and that interested me. But, you know, I'm a huge history fan and so I could talk to you all about history, which. Which I can say some of the most amazing stuff that I learned.
- [01:17]
Sam Parr
I feel like we did a whole bit when the Trump assassination thing happened. On Presidential Assassinations, there's some crazy stories, right? There's like the guy who had a speech in his pocke pocket that, like, blunted the blow, and so he got.
- [01:27]
Shaun
Shot and he survived.
- [01:28]
Sam Parr
Roosevelt, and he gets shot by his car on his way to a speech, doesn't die because the speech is so thick in his pocket. Gives the speech while bleeding.
- [01:38]
Shaun
Yeah, that was Roosevelt. There's only been four presidents that have been successfully assassinated, and three of them happened between, like, 1865 and, like 1905. And, like, pretty much up until Andrew Garfield was assassinated, which I think was like around 1904. Any human, any American, it was like, customary. You can just go to the White House and schedule an appointment with the President. And the idea here was that they were supposed to be like, a man of the people. And I think that's ridiculous. And the Secret Service, Even up until 1963, 64, 65, when JFK was shot, it was only like 300 people. And so like basically was non existent. And so I'm like obsessed with that, about how like something became an institution even after four years or sorry, four deaths happened. And so I've been obsessed with that. I've also been obsessed with leadership and the idea of speeches. Have you ever studied any of the great speeches of American or world history?
- [02:28]
Sam Parr
Not in particular. Well, what you got?
- [02:29]
Shaun
So in particular, Winston Churchill. Have you ever seen the movie Dunkirk? You've never seen it, right?
- [02:33]
Sam Parr
No, I haven't.
- [02:34]
Shaun
The idea is like, early in the War of England, this was when, like the Nazi Germany had just invaded France and it was like clear that Nazi now was Nazi Germany was officially bad before it was like, yeah, they're horrible, but like they're going to stay themselves. They start evading other countries and people start freaking out. They go through France and everyone's like, oh my God, I can't believe. You know, imagine today, imagine like France getting taken over. France. Yeah, yeah. It's. It's just like insane. And so England, which is nearby, they were like, oh my gosh, now they are coming to us. And so they start officially getting into a war and have squirmish in Dunkirk where Nazi. The Nazis surround a part of England and they surround like, I think it was like 50,000 or even 100,000 soldiers. And basically if those people died, the war would have been over. And it was a magical moment where hundreds of ships that were just fishermen, but also the British Navy, they raced over and they grabbed these guys off this island and they saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Whatever, whatever. But that's not the important part of my story. But up until that point, England was like, fearful. They were very fearful. They're like, this is horrible. Like they were imagining all the worst things that was going to happen. Winston Churchill, who was in power, was a very fearful person and he was very nervous. But then he goes, screw it, we're not going to take this. We're going to get after it. And he gave this speech and at the end of the speech he does this in like, I forget what their. I think it's the House of Parl Parliament. It's like their like, physical setting where like, everyone's watching him and he was like, we're going to fight in the beaches, we're going to fight in the trenches, we're going to fight in the land and we will never, ever give up. And he like gave this like, amazing speech that basically changed the entire morale of the country. We Were talking about tens of millions of people and it just like I've always been very fascinated when there's one person who can exert a relatively small amount of energy and get everyone else to change their energy. So, so like have you ever been to a concert? I used to love watching these Oasis concerts. They'll be literally, they're famous. They, they, they were famous for helping create like this idea of like a mega concert. They would have 250,000 people in the audience and they're relatively high energy band, but it's just one or two guys singing into a microphone and they get 250,000 people to like light up and like push that energy back to them. And I'm obsessed with what is that one thing that person has and how do they leverage that amount of energy to, to impact potentially hundreds of thousands, or in the case of Winston Churchill, tens of millions of people. And so I'm like, like trying to figure out like what words does someone have to use? And like, if you think about Winston Churchill, do you know what he looks like?
- [04:57]
Sam Parr
Yeah, I mean I've seen photos of him.
- [04:58]
Shaun
Like he's a short, fat kind of drunkard. Like he's not like, he's not like a good looking guy. Like he doesn't have like the traditional movie star good looks or anything like that. And so what I've been trying to study is how people do that because.
- [05:11]
Sam Parr
You want to just deliver this at work or what's the like connect the dots for me.
- [05:16]
Shaun
Yeah. Because I do want to become a better leader. Like once your company gets. So my company, we're only like 25 or 30 people, but I'm getting to the point now where I'm not doing a lot of the work and I am having to not motivate people because all my. A good employee is already motivated, but in order to make it a good employee, a great employee, you do need to inspire them. Right. And so I've just been trying to figure out how to become a better leader. And so I've been studying some of.
- [05:35]
Sam Parr
The advertising, the banner ads. We're going to advertise in the podcast. We're going to, we're going to advertise everywhere.
- [05:40]
Shaun
We will advertise.
- [05:42]
Sam Parr
You know, what do you, what is the like rally cry that you're trying to, trying to get to that. Well, what would be like, what would be an example? Have you done it yet? Have you tried?
- [05:50]
Shaun
Yeah, like so, so right now AI is everywhere and I just, it's making me sick that I am like having to talk to AI all the time. And I'm not having a lot of, like, relationships in real life. I'm not having what you call these belly to belly conversations. And what I've noticed with Hampton is once we got people in, in the room, in the same room once a month to have their conversations for the core meeting, it literally will change their lives. Not because we're particularly special, but just being in a, in a physical setting with people who have been vetted and you know that you have like minded interest, interests, and you're indoctrinating them into having. What do we call the three C's, Confidentiality, candor, commitment. That will change someone's life and it changes their life just in a small way. These are entrepreneurs. It's not like the average show. So eventually we want to like, figure out how can we do this with everyone else, but just this idea that the world is going one way, yet everyone is so incredibly lonely and sad. What can we do that like, solves that, even if it's for a small group of people, like entreprene entrepreneurs?
- [06:40]
Sam Parr
Did you see churn, like go to zero when you went from digital to in person?
- [06:45]
Shaun
It's crazy. Like on a bad month it would be like 60s annual churn. Now it's like 80s and 90s.
- [06:52]
Sam Parr
Wait, 60s meaning? So 40% churn or what do you, what do you mean by that?
- [06:56]
Shaun
60S retention.
- [06:58]
Sam Parr
Yes. So 40% would churn every month before annual.
- [07:03]
Shaun
It's annual. Annual.
- [07:04]
Sam Parr
Okay. Of your annual membership. Okay, gotcha. And then now it's like jumped up.
- [07:08]
Shaun
Significantly just by making that 85, 90%. Like, it's not. It's like. But, but there's all this other work of like being crazy about the vetting process. I don't think people realize that thousands of people apply and we let in like 4 or 5% per month. So we do a lot of work, but in real life, does most of the work. The problem is it's a fucking pain in the ass. It's really hard to do. We gotta find these like, moderators in all these cities and train them. It's really, really hard. But not even close. Like night and day. All right. I read a ton. I would say almost a book a week. And the reason I read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is I wanna see what works for the winners that I love and what strategies they use. I want to see what mistakes did they all make, what were the common flaws that they all had? And I just want to avoid that and so HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025. And I did that. And so I listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life. And I explained what the differences that they had on me or what actions I took because of the book. And then also I listed out my very particular ways of reading because I'm pretty strategic about how I read and how I read so much and how I remember what I read and things like that. And so I put this together in a very simple guide. It's seven books that had a huge impact on my life. And you can scan the QR code below if you want to read it. Or there's a link. You guys know what to do. There's a link in the description. Just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide that I made. So it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far. And then also how I'm able to read so much. So check it out below.
- [08:39]
Sam Parr
So it sounds like one of the things you're doing is you're tying it to a bigger movement, which is what I think what the great leaders do. So you're not saying, hey, we are trying to win, we're trying to grow revenue because people only get so excited by the sort of financial success or metric success of your specific company. But when you say, look, the world is going this way, but we got to fight, we gotta fight. I don't want to live in that world. I think that world is messed up. The world where we just get lonelier, sadder. We're only talking to AI, we're not seeing other people. We're just living digitally like this digital overload is going one way. We're part of the resistance. And that sort of. We're part of the resistance is generally one thing that like most leaders do, they tie their. You know, you could play in a football game, a high school football game, but you'll feel like you're going to war and you're fighting for your brothers and like they took something from you and your family and you could make it so important when actually It's a Division 3, a high school football regular season game that you'll never remember four weeks from now. Right? But the leader can elevate the importance and what this means because the meaning, it is what it is. No, no, it is what you say it means. And so what you tell yourself it means is what you will actually what you'll actually feel about it.
- [10:00]
Shaun
And, you know, I don't. When you study, when you're in, like, social studies classes in, like, fifth and sixth grade, they used to talk about these Roman emperors. And I don't know if you remember this, but they would often refer to them as orders.
- [10:10]
Sam Parr
Yeah, orders. Yeah.
- [10:11]
Shaun
Which is kind of. I remember thinking, I'm like, that's funny. So this person who.
- [10:14]
Sam Parr
Content creators without the Internet, like, I.
- [10:18]
Shaun
If I had an order at Rome, was like someone who stands on a rock and like, hey, everyone, here's what we have to do.
- [10:25]
Sam Parr
Should we rebrand from podcaster to order?
- [10:27]
Shaun
It's kind of a. It's kind of like an interesting data.
- [10:30]
Sam Parr
Technically, that is what we do.
- [10:31]
Shaun
And you ask yourself, why on earth when order someone who could just speak good, why would they control, like, you know, the entire world? Right? And I started thinking about that obsessively, and I'm like, okay, well, what do the leaders have in common? And most of the time, it is great speeches and great speaking. And I underestimated that for a long time. So I've been trying to figure that out.
- [10:53]
Sam Parr
That's been a rabbit hole you've been obsessed with.
- [10:55]
Shaun
I'm shocked that you're not going down that track either. I think that you. I think you have that. I think that you study it as well. I don't think you get credit enough for studying that. But I'm shocked that that doesn't, like, fascinate you.
- [11:06]
Sam Parr
It does. It's just, what season are you in? Which rabbit hole do you happen to be in right now? That's a good one. I've got it earmarked. You know, that's of great interest to me. But right now I'm interested in a couple other areas. I want to give you. One. There's a book that I think a lot of people have heard about, probably even read. I read it, but I had sort of forgotten about this part of it. Die with zero. And die with zero is really like. It's just YOLO rebranded. And so what is it about? And I emailed her this passage. I said, here's from the book. It says, death wakes people up. And the closer it gets, the more awake we become. Cause when the end is near, that's when we suddenly start thinking, what the hell am I doing? Why did I wait this long? You can't live every day like it's your last. If so, you wouldn't bother studying or visiting the dentist or doing anything that has delayed gratification. But if you delay gratification for too long or indefinitely. It's just too late. You also can't live life as if it's infinite. So we all face the question, what's the best way to allocate our life energy before we die? And here's the principles. So principle one, timing matters. Some experiences can only be enjoyed at certain times. You can't water ski when you're 90. And in the book, he tells this great story about how his buddy, when he was an investment banker, his buddy was like, let's go backpacking through Europe. He's like, I'm down. He's like, awesome. It's gonna be a six week trip. He's like, six weeks? How are we gonna get six weeks off? He's like, we'll last. But they're probably saying, no, we'll probably have to quit. And he's like, quit? And he looked at his friend like, he's being so reckless. Like, wow, you're just quitting your job to go backpacking through Europe. What a reckless thing to do. What an irresponsible thing to do. I will do the responsible thing and stay in the job. And he talks about when his friend came back, and he immediately just sees the glow, sees how he's talking about his time abroad is like, oh, shit, I made a mistake. What I thought was responsible was actually irresponsible because I threw away this time in my 20s where there's only one. There's only timing matters. There's only one time to go backpacking through Europe and sleep in hostels. And so he actually talks about when he was 32 or something. He finally, you know, gets his promotion he's been waiting for, and he takes. He has enough time to take off and he goes and he, he goes and does that trip.
- [13:09]
Shaun
Bill Perkins, the author.
- [13:11]
Sam Parr
Yeah, Bill Perkins, he goes and does the trip and he's like, guess what? It's not as fun to go bumming around in Hostels when you're 32, 33 years old. Like, that was a game to be played when I was, you know, 20 to 25 and I missed it. I missed the window. And so timing matters. That's the first thing. Second thing, what to worry about. We can always make more money in the future, but we cannot go back and recapture time. So it makes no sense to let life opportunities pass us for the fear of squandering money. Squandering our lives should be of much greater worry. All right, the last one. Money is life energy. Think of money as the Concept of life energy. You trade some life energy working to get some amount of money, maybe $10 an hour. Then when you want to buy a shirt for $30, you don't think about $30. You say, hell no. You want me to go work for three hours for this shirt? Similarly, a higher salary doesn't mean more income on an hourly basis. If I'm making 200k a year, but only working 20 hours, that's better than making 300k working 40 hours. It's like eating a cookie. One cookie is one hour on a treadmill. Is that cookie really worth it?
- [14:11]
Shaun
Just imagine if your credit card, imagine if your credit card like starts at 100 years old and every time you buy something and now goes to 900 years. You know, 900 years in six months, it's like, oh, that was six months. I just paid for that.
- [14:23]
Sam Parr
If when you checked out, it was like awesome based on your, your salary, that was, you know, four and a half days of work. So, you know, would you like to, would you like to work 108 hours right now? You know, like, you know, when would you like to schedule that? You're like, nevermind, just keep the blender, dude, I don't want it. I'm not interested in this. And so I thought there's a lot of good stuff in this book. I actually didn't really read the full book because it's kind of like a book should be a blog type of deal. But the core concepts in the first, let's say 50 to 75 pages I thought were really, really good. The last one, this is one for you. The vast majority of financial fears are completely irrational. There are real financial fears that do exist, and then there are irrational or illogical financial fears, like rich people who still worry about money even though the math clearly shows they're fine and will always be fine. And I think this is also true for a lot of people.
- [15:15]
Shaun
But I hate, I hate that advice though, because, well, you didn't. You know, I'm not gonna criticize the book because I think it, maybe it goes into like actual tactics, but it's sort of like selling like a young guy, like, who's struggling to date someone. Like, just be yourself. It's like, well, but myself sucks. So can you like, maybe instead just teach me how to be a better self? So like telling someone not to worry is like telling an alcoholic. Just like, try harder, you know?
- [15:39]
Sam Parr
So, so what is the solution?
- [15:41]
Shaun
Fuck, I don't know. Years of therapy, I'm not sure exactly, but, but, but I haven't found it. No, you. I have found it. It's just get richer. Like what there?
- [15:51]
Sam Parr
No, I don't think you found it.
- [15:57]
Shaun
I don't know. I think you have to. There is a point. I have hit a point where I'm like, okay, there. There's enough for this current lifestyle, that's for sure.
- [16:05]
Sam Parr
And by the way, the final visual he has, he says most people live their life like this. They build a well and they start to pump water. And as the well fills, they use a cup to scoop out a small amount of water. They take a sip and go right back to pumping higher and higher. And at the end of their lives, after a lifetime of pumping, they see they are still thirsty. They spent their whole life pumping rather than drinking, which was the reason they started pump pumping in the first place.
- [16:29]
Shaun
When I. When I see these things, a lot of times, the takeaway that people have is that I shouldn't work or I shouldn't do something. And I think that that's not the takeaway that he implies or what he wants the takeaway to be, but that's the takeaway that a lot of people have. And I think that that is such a bad idea to, like, not work. I do think that there is something magical about 30 or 30 to 50 hours a week. There is something magical where you have to have a thing that you're contributing to with others for a shared mission. And so when I see this, I don't want people to think, young people to think I should get rich and not work. I think that's not the goal. I think you should have a mission in life that aligns with yourself, but you have to contribute to society, otherwise you're just going to feel empty.
- [17:14]
Sam Parr
Yeah, I think the idea here isn't work or don't work or don't care about money or care about money. Those are sort of false choices. It's really the idea of the way most people live their life is I'm speaking to the type of person who's going to listen to this podcast. You're probably an overachiever type. Probably a little type A. You're probably pretty hungry for success. You might be slightly impatient. Right. These are, I would say, common disorders of the MFM listener group. Right. I know this because I am one. And I would say the trick is, for most of us, we basically work, work, work, work, work. And then we try to fill in some life around the gaps. And the idea, I think, of what he says and what I picked up from Jesse Is, look, you got to decide what you want to do in life. Schedule that. Don't worry, the work is always there. The work will fill in all the cracks around those things. But if you just wait till you have large gaps of free time or it's the right time to go do that thing you always wanted to do, work just as like a liquid or a gas, it just expands to fill the container you give it. And so you have to be really conscious of how you let that fill the container. Like the analogy I use with Jesse is you have a jar.
- [18:30]
Shaun
Jesse Itzler.
- [18:31]
Sam Parr
Jesse Itzler, yeah. You have a jar. And imagine for your year, you have next to the jar, the jar's empty right now, but you have sand. You have small rocks and big rocks. And the sand is gonna be like all your day to day life routines. It's gonna be your errands, it's gonna be your zoom calls, it's gonna be your meetings, whatever. That's the sand. It's stuff that you do, you gotta do. You gotta do a lot of it, but you're not gonna look back a year from now and remember any of those. You know, your zoom calls don't go in your sort of your lifelong memories or your photo albums. It doesn't make it there. Right. But you gotta do some of them. Then you have the small rocks, which are like little initiatives, little efforts, and then you have the big rocks, the things that really matter to you. Trip or going and visiting your parents, even though you don't have to, and maybe you don't have time to do it, but hey, they're getting older and you want to go visit them or it's learning that new skill or whatever it is, launching that project. Those are your big rocks. And if you've put the sand in the jar first and then you say, great, now I'm going to fit the big rocks in. They don't go in at all. But if you put the big rocks in and you say, I'm doing these, these have this much space, they're in here. And then you fill as much sand as you can. Turns out you can fit the whole, you can fit all the things into the container. If you do it in the right order, the sand will fill in all the cracks and crevices. But the big rocks don't work that way. So you just have to make sure you sort of figure out what are my big rocks, what do I actually, really, really care about? And then how do I put them in the jar first? Not do the first. But even just schedule them first so that my life doesn't just become, you know, a jar full of sand.
- [19:57]
Shaun
Dude, that's so funny. That's the same analogy that the book, the book Traction that teaches you how to use their EOS system. They use the exact same analogy on why you should, like, set goals and work hard and all this stuff.
- [20:09]
Sam Parr
Ye. Is this like. I mean, somebody did this to us in like high school or something. They did some. It's like a magic trick. It's like, oh, try to fill all these in. And if you do it in one order, it looks like it's physically impossible. You put it in the other order, it all fits in. And you're like, oh, I didn't need a bigger jar. I just needed to put things in the right order. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book but then tearing out 4/5 of the pages. Point is, you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to, to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com what else.
- [20:53]
Shaun
Did you read this year that you liked?
- [20:55]
Sam Parr
There's this Howard Marks blog post that I mentioned called Selling out is the name of the title. Have you read this blog post?
- [21:01]
Shaun
That's a new one. Was that one of its more recent ones?
- [21:03]
Sam Parr
No, it was in January of 2022.
- [21:06]
Shaun
Oh, that's cool. What'd he say?
- [21:07]
Sam Parr
And it's a conversation with his son Andrew. So there's Howard Marks, who came on the pod and was awesome. His son Andrew is also a great investor. And. And so they were talking and basically they're like, you know, the basic idea in investing is buy low, sell high. Okay, great. But like, when, when do you actually sell on the high? Like, do you sell? Like, you know, when it goes up a little bit. You know when it goes up a little more. When do you wait? You hold it forever. Like, how do you actually do this? And he's talking to his son about it. He's like, hey, you have this position. Do you think you should sell? And his son is like, no. And he's like, well, is there any price that you would sell? Like, certainly there's gotta be some price. And his son's like, yeah. And so they have this sort of back and forth, almost like Socratic dialogue. And he basically says like, the premise of the blog post is he's like, there's only two. He's like, after lots of thought, I've realized that there's only two reasons people sell. Because things are up or because things are down. And he's like, that sounds a little silly, but let me explain. And he's like, you know, you could sell because it's up as in you're taking profits, you're maybe afraid that the gains will go away. And so you want to do that. But like, it certainly doesn't make sense to just sell just because it's up. Right? That would be like you would be selling, let's say you own Amazon back in 1999 and it's $5 a share and it goes to 9 and you sell. Like, obviously that wouldn't have been a good decision. And so like simply saying sell when it's up doesn't make any sense because how far up? And. And just always that doesn't work. And selling when it's down is, you know, usually emotional reaction to things. Panic, fear, you know, sort of disappointment leads people to sell. The whole market gets pessimistic, and so you do too. So clearly just selling because it's down isn't a good idea. So, okay, so then when do you sell? And basically he talks about the concept of basically it's a. It's like an opportunity cost. So all investing is about relative selection. So you know, two things. You sort of look at two things. One, this is all gonna sound very basic, but the reality is that myself as an investor and most people as investors don't actually act in accordance with this very simple logic. So the first part of the logic is you initially invest in something cause you have some thesis. Well, over time you'll either feel more validated about that thesis or less like, you know, more information will come out. Does the reason you bought this thing, does that feel more true today or less true today than it did at the time? You know, so maybe you believe that this would be the best thing ever. Then they release the product and it's not so great. So now you know, your confidence level should go down when that happens. So the first part is like. Is the primary like principles behind why you invested getting more true or less true? The second thing is all investing is relative. So putting a hundred dollars in one stock is.
- [23:43]
Shaun
Wait, sorry. But Was he saying that? That is the. What was he saying for point one? Is that the right way or wrong way that your opinion shouldn't change?
- [23:50]
Sam Parr
No, no, they should change. As new information comes out, you update your thinking and you say, well, if the reason I bought the investment is no longer true, like, then I need to either have had a new reason to invest or I should not be invested in the thing versus just sticking.
- [24:04]
Shaun
With it because of cognitive bias of.
- [24:06]
Sam Parr
Like sunk cost fallacy or cognitive bias trying to like convince yourself that like, no, no, no, there's. Despite all this evidence, I still believe, you know, it's all wrong. The facts are wrong, you know, and so you sort of going in your sort of putting blinders onto to reality. Well, the second part of it is it's all about relative selections, opportunity costs. So if you were not invested in this, you would be invested in something else. So do you have more conviction in the better prospects investing in something else than you do in this? Right. And so that's the second thing. So he's talking about, like, there's a third factor which is if you're too concentrated. And he's talking about with his son Andrew, he's like, you know, you're really concentrated because this thing has gone up, you're overweight. This one thing he says, his son is basically says, well, that's true, but it depends on your goals. Right now, trimming or selling would mean selling something that I have immense comfort in based on my bottoms up assessment of it and moving into something I feel less good about and know less well. And to me, I would rather own a smaller number of things which I feel strongly about because I will only have a few good insights over my lifetime. So I have to maximize the value that I have from those. And you know, this is tended to be true across like, you know, most people who are active investors is that you only have a few good ideas. Whether this is, you know, angel investors who, like, you know, the vast majority of their portfolio comes from, you know, two, three bets that they made out of, you know, potentially hundreds or it's George Soros saying the most, the most important thing in investing is position size because you're going to be wrong a bunch. I think his hit rate was estimated to be about 30% correct, so 70% wrong. And he's like, so the key is that the 30% correct, I need to be correct in a big enough way where it's going to make outsized returns. And when I'm wrong, I need to be wrong. In smaller ways, right? So position sizing. The game is all about sizing. I don't care if you're right, if it's too small. And Stanley Druckenmiller, who's now this legendary investor, says that's the number one thing he learned from Soros. He came in with a great idea, and he expected Soros to say it's too risky or whatever. And he's like, well, if you're so confident, we should be betting 10 times the size. Either you're wrong about your thesis or you're wrong about your size. You can't be right about both right now because your size is too small on what you're saying you believe in.
- [26:14]
Shaun
The reason I love talking to people like Howard Marks, and I would love to have any of these investors on. Not because I particularly care about investing. I find it mildly interesting, but it's. Whatever, it's fine. But I care more about what they can teach me about how to live a better life. Because when I hear you talking about truth in this with investing, I'm like, oh, I made that mistake with this relationship. Therefore, my flaw is thinking is my. My thinking is flawed. Did you have any takeaways on how this could apply to life other than just through investing money?
- [26:44]
Sam Parr
No, I was thinking about it more from a money money point of view, to be honest. But, I mean, his solution, it's not like he gives you, like, some formula at the end, right? He says the bottom line, we should base our investments based on our own estimates of the asset's potential. So that's the first. Like, you have to think about the assets potential. That's the reason you invest, not because it's up or down. We should not sell just because the position has risen. There could be a reason to limit the size or how concentrated you want to be, but there's no scientific way to calculate what that limit should be. It's a personal choice. So in the end, it comes down, like everything else in investing, entirely to judgment. So it was less about, like, how do I apply this philosophy to everything? It's like, damn, dude, everything. You know, judgment is the ultimate lever. Because just like you're saying with relationship, who you pick to marry, where you choose to live, what you choose to invest in, where you go with your career. Like, these are all judgment calls that we put very little thought into. I would say, you know, most people are pretty thoughtless about. About a lot of those decisions. Or we put very little effort into becoming better at judgment. Like, if I asked you today, how do you become better at judgment? And how much time did you spend this year working on that, that muscle?
- [27:50]
Shaun
None.
- [27:50]
Sam Parr
It's like none. Consciously, Right? So consciously we're spending no time on probably the most important muscle to us to, to our like, long term happiness. Right. Because your decisions become your destiny. So how do you make better decisions?
- [28:01]
Shaun
Do you study that?
- [28:03]
Sam Parr
Do I study it? Well, I do a couple of things. I don't know if I study it, but I told you this before, I write down all my decisions. So I have this thing called the decision register. It's a table. And I write down two things. When I'm making a decision, I write down what it is and why I'm making it and my confidence level in the decision. And then I go back and I assess the decision register and there's two things that come out. First I see, was I right or wrong in that? And then the other thing was what were important decisions that I didn't even realize were important at the time? Like going on a whim to that conference. It felt like a small decision at the time, but actually this amazing relationship came out of it. And that led to this, you know, huge outcome for me.
- [28:41]
Shaun
That's a good way to be retroactive. Explain to me how you said you write down what it is. Part of solving the problem is defining the problem. I buy into that. But how can I use your, your framework for making a better decision in the future versus just looking back and trying to adjust my.
- [28:58]
Sam Parr
So here's, here's. I call it the decision survey. So here's the actual questions I have in a Google Doc. So first, what is the decision? Write it in the length of a tweet. So I'm deciding to do X. Right. So actually write it down. Then two, check in on your feelings. So what am I feeling right now while I'm making this decision? Is it extreme fear? Some fear, neutral. Some greed? Extreme greed. So like, why? What is my emotional state when I'm making this decision? And I know if I'm on either end of the spectrum, you know, on the far end of the greed spectrum or in the fear fear spectrum, I shouldn't be making the decision.
- [29:31]
Shaun
It's like going to the grocery store hungry.
- [29:33]
Sam Parr
Exactly. Then I write this. I say, what is the one decisive reason to do this? Blended reasons are bad reasons. So learned this from Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn guy. I think he learned it from Peter Thiel, which is if you want to go do something, you don't say, well, it'll be good because you Know, he gives the example of like, oh, should I go speak at this conference? He's like, well, it'll be good because I've never visited Canada before, and, you know, I might meet some cool people there, and it might be a good reason to work on my speech, my public speaking skills, and, you know, it'll be a good time, chance to spend time with this person. And basically, that's what bad decisions sound like. You can just blur out the words, but that if you hear that tone, you're about to make a bad decision.
- [30:12]
Shaun
But you're saying bad decision, meaning a bad outcome, or you're deciding on the wrong thing. Like, does bad decision mean I'm saying no when I should say yes? Or does bad decision mean I. I shouldn't even.
- [30:23]
Sam Parr
Poor judgment process, A poor use of the skill of judgment. So a better way to make decisions, right? The input, right? Making the decision because the outcome might work out, right? It's like in poker, sometimes you play do seven offsuit. It's a bad decision. You shouldn't have made the bet, but you got lucky. 2. Two sevens came out and you, you hit trips. Okay, cool. You don't want to let that fool you into thinking, well, I should always play do seven. It's my lucky hand, right? That's what really bad players would do. Same way where there's people who will fold pocket kings because they got beat once, and it's like, well, no, you should always just put your money in with, you know, with good odds and then let things play out based on the probability. And over time, it'll work in your favor, right? So you kind of. Only you can't do what's called resulting, where you judge every decision only on the result. Like, you have to be able to judge the decision based on how is the input, not the output, which is easier in poker because the odds are known than it is in life because the odds are unknown. But you got to do your best to do it either way. So anyways, I try to write the one decisive reason. So if I'm going to go give that talk, it's literally because I want to go spend time with this person, and they live in Canada. And that's why I'll go give that talk. That's why I'll take the trip. And if that one reason is not enough to do it, then there's really no reason to do it. So you should have one reason that's strong enough to do the thing, and everything else is bonus, but you can't count it. You gotta. And what I do is I make my strongest reason for and my strongest reason against, and then they joust. So it's like I write the single reason I would do it and a single reason I wouldn't do it. And I look at those, I say, who would win this? If that's an arm wrestling match, who wins, which one is stronger?
- [31:51]
Shaun
But what attributes does each of those arguments have? Like, for example, it could be like, I don't want to. I want to be around my family versus this one thing could change. I can make a lot of money because it's a new customer.
- [32:07]
Sam Parr
First, it's got to be honest. That's the first thing. Because I think we're not honest sometimes about why we're doing certain things. I think it's got to be concise. So it can't be a spaghetti reason because your brain can't even understand it. And then the last is it's got to figure out. You got to tie it to the value. So right now, is your top value making more money, getting in great shape, or is it spending time with your loved ones? Right. They're all good things. But, like, do you have one that that's valued more? And secondly, do you have good substitutes? So, okay, I could do this to spend that time with this person, but couldn't I just go hang out with them when they're back? Right. Couldn't I? Couldn't I just call them once a week? Right. Is there not like a valid substitute that doesn't have the same cost? And if there is a valid substitute, you do it. Okay, secondly, I write down, what are the secondary benefits? And then I ask again, if I took all the secondary benefits away, would I still make the decision? These are all related to. Don't do blended reasons. Because that's the number one thing that we try to do. Especially smart people, because we love making lists. So we make, like, long lists, like, pro you.
- [33:06]
Shaun
Well, a lot of times what people do is they do pros and cons, and they go, well, the cons list is way longer, therefore. That's right.
- [33:13]
Sam Parr
Yeah, exactly right. Or they just don't even make a decision. They write a big pros and cons list and just paralyze themselves. I don't know. It's too complicated. Right? Like, that's why you don't want to do that. So what triggered the decision? What made me want to do this? Basically, which is usually a sneaky way of figuring out the fear and greed thing. It's like, oh, because my buddy did this and he got this great thing, and now I want it too. It's like FOMO or something like that. Seven is what alternatives did I consider? Which is usually just a test of did you consider any alternatives or are you just trying to do the first thing that you thought of? And it's a sign of shallow thinking, which results in bad decisions. Eight, is it a reversible decision? If it's a reversible decision, good. I don't need to worry about it as much. If it's irreversible, I should think about it a lot. What's the upside if I'm right? What's the downside if I'm wrong? What follow up is important to make sure this one decision would be higher chance of being a success. So that's kind of like you could almost make a decision, a good decision if you do it with enough intensity. If you follow up and follow through and do secondary actions, when and how will I know if this is success? And then lastly, what do I think is going to happen? Just write down a quick prediction of the future.
- [34:17]
Shaun
Did you create this? Yeah, it's pretty good.
- [34:21]
Sam Parr
Thank you. It's a lot of effort. I'll tell you. I do this probably one third of the time I should. And I would say the average person does it 0% of the time. And the reason why is because it's like going to church or something. It's like, oh, man, I got to go do this thing. I know it's the right thing to do. I know I should do this. I know it's good for me, but it takes a little bit of effort and it's going to require me to be critical of my own thoughts. And it's so much easier to just not check in on those things.
- [34:50]
Shaun
There's this, like, I don't know what it's called a quadrant four, four squares. You know, the graph when it's like high urgency versus low urgency and then highly important and not important. And I think the idea is like, you want to spend. You have to allocate a certain amount of time to things that are not urgent and are very important.
- [35:08]
Sam Parr
Right.
- [35:09]
Shaun
But that bucket tends to get no love. Typically it's unimportant and urgent and important and urgent. And because of that, you don't make, you don't. You don't invest enough time. That has actually builds the foundation to a lot of things in the future. And what's really fascinating is that we're discussing, like, how do you get good at making decisions which Is like one of like the top 10 things on Earth you could ever potentially learn. Right? Like. And yeah, I have never actually thought about that. I've tried to read. Charlie Munger is, like, famous for being like an interesting thinker in his. When he died recently, they wrote an article about him and he, like, had these funny quotes where he was like, you know, it was really hard in life because I just knew I was so much better than everyone else. And even though I talked a lot, I wanted to talk so much more to show how much better I was than everyone else. So he's just like, really, really cocky guy. But his, like, thinking is very good. And I have, like, tried to read poor Charlie's Almanac like five different times, and I just find it incredibly boring. But now that I think about it, you find it boring too.
- [36:10]
Sam Parr
Yeah, I'm like, I should love this. On paper, everything about this, I should love it. And then you read it and it's like, I'm reading about Charlie's grandkid. Do I care about this? No, no, no. And it's just a little slow to give me some. Like, I need. I don't know, I need some. I'm like a kid. I need some zingers every few minutes.
- [36:27]
Shaun
It's very textbook. It's very textbook.
- [36:29]
Sam Parr
Well, he has like, this speech which is like, him and a lot of other people really love these, like, cognitive biases. Like, I think he gave this talk once called the top reasons of human misjudgment. So it's about this exact topic. And I've listened to that. It's good. But I find it pretty hard to memorize 23 cognitive biases and carry them around in my head all the time and identify them when they're happening and then find some root cause. And I find a much easier thing is this sort of Socratic method of like, well, what are you doing? I'm doing this. What makes you think that that's a good idea? Do this. How will you know if this worked? It's like, I don't know. Stop asking me questions. But like, that Socratic method to me is just a much clearer indicator of when I know what I'm doing and I'm making a good decision or I'm making a bad decision. And it helps me avoid things in the moment. The other thing is just time. So don't try to make a decision in the same time. You're sort of gathering information or sleep on it or let three days go by as a cool down period. If you can it's like same thing with like any impulse control, right. You need. If you just add a time delay, you can avoid a lot of mistakes.
- [37:36]
Shaun
When I was younger, in my early 20s and late teens, I used to do book reports on all the books that I read. And I still occasionally do it. But before it was like, I'm going to read this one book this quarter and I'm going to read the bibliography and like all the cited sources, and I'm going to master this and then I'm going to write a book report on it. And one quarter it was like the 48 laws of power. Because I was like, well, if you like, learn about power, then I could see when people are trying to manipulate me. And if I want to get powerful, hopefully I can memorize it. And I was like, but there's 48 of them. How on earth am I supposed to memorize all of them? And so for the longest time, if you google 48 laws of power summary, I had this Google Doc that I wrote and I wrote all my thoughts and I wrote and I summarize all 48 laws and I shared the document with people. But you know, when you share in Google Doc, you sometimes put like, share with link or sorry, share a link to anyone. You forget that that's searchable on Google. And so for the longest time, I think it was like three years, my Google Doc was number one. And every time I logged in, there'd be hundreds of people on this document. And it was so funny that it became number one. And then what I did was I put made it so people could comment. And so people started commenting on it and they would add like, interesting, like, takeaways and stuff. So it was like a crowdsourced thing. It was actually really cool. But I was obsessed with like, how do I memorize this stuff? And now that you're talking about this Charlie Almanac thing, I'm like, I've just said I've tried to read this like tons of times. And right now I'm telling myself and everyone else listening that this is important, but I have not done it. I need to do this. This is actually so fascinating. And a really interesting, interesting thing is I asked myself, do I wish I would have done this three years ago? Yes, I should probably do it, like immediately then, because I will be less regretful if I do it in the future. And so this is funny that we're talking about that.
- [39:21]
Sam Parr
Well, Naval had this thing about reading that changed kind of the way I think about reading. So I used to Approach it similar to you, which is like, I'm reading to get information. I'm really reading to learn something. So I was like, this book contains stuff. And the goal is to get the stuff from the book to be stuff in my head, right? And that was hard. And sometimes I'd be like, ah, this stuff isn't that great. Or oh my God, how am I going to memorize all this? How am I going to remember any of this? Do I remember the stuff I read recently? No, I don't. Does this even work? And Naval put it differently. He goes, when you read, it's like rubbing two sticks together. All you're trying to do is create a little bonfire in your brain. So he's like, you're looking to spark a thought, an idea. So you read not to get the stuff, all the stuff from the book to be all the stuff in your head. You're reading to just catalyze some spark, some thought, some realization, some thought process, some new idea in your mind. And if you look at books as creating that spark in your mind, you look at them very, very differently. And so you don't need to even. You often don't even read the whole book. And you don't feel any guilt towards that. You don't need to remember things from the book. The book just needs to be a consistent tool to get you to think more interestingly and think more deeply in the moment itself. And if you just do that habitually, you'll just consistently be a good thinker. And once I started doing that, once I kind of went into reading with that mindset, I enjoyed it a lot more because there was way less pressure, there was way less obligation. I didn't feel obligated to finish, I didn't feel obligated to remember. All I felt obligated to do was ask, like, what thoughts does this spark in my head? And when I started paying attention to that, like, it changed. You know how I read. All right, let's take a quick break. Cause I gotta tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank. And you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form. And it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction, they locked my account, they put me on hold for 45 minutes. And then they told me I gotta visit my local branch. And that was the day I started looking for a new Banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money, I can pay invoices, I can reimburse the team, all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies and so do 200,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column A and Evolve bank of Trust Members. Fdic.
- [41:56]
Shaun
Did you read anything else that you like to share?
- [41:59]
Sam Parr
I read a lot of stuff. I mean, fiction. There's this book called the Will of the Many. Highly recommend if you like stuff that's in the kind of like, Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, like fantasy sci fi. Like, it's not sci fi, it's more fantasy. But it's basically this book that's like this kind of. It's like mirrors, like the Roman. Like the Roman political structure. So, like, when there was like, you know, the. There's like a hierarchy and so the Will of the Many was a good book. And it's a series. The second book just came out, Strength of the Few. I just crushed that one. That was, you know, I'm into this series right now. This is a good series. And like, for me, one of the great joys of life is like, getting into one of these, like, fictional series. Like whether it's again, Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or like one of these. One of these different ones. But they're pretty hard to find. They're pretty hard to get into because it's a lot of world building. When you do, it's like really, really rich.
- [42:48]
Shaun
And so with Jack Carr this year.
- [42:50]
Sam Parr
You know Jack Carr, he does what, mystery novels or. What does he do? Is it like war? Like Tom Ryan or whatever?
- [42:56]
Shaun
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's called the Terminal List. And we actually had them on, on.
- [42:59]
Sam Parr
My first million, the James Reese series, which starts with the Terminal List, which is like the bestseller.
- [43:04]
Shaun
Dude, it's crazy. So this guy was a. We had him on. On the pod. I didn't want you to come because I wanted to nerd out with him. And I was embarrassed as, like, how much I like, love this book because it's one of these things where you read one of these books and you, like, fall in love with, like, these fake things and you, like, don't want to, like, tell anyone else fake things. Like, like, have you ever read A book. And you're like. You're sad it's over, and you're like, I have to remind myself that this person isn't real. Like, there's been times that, like, I've read a fiction book and I'm like, googling. I, like, need to see, like, did other people ever draw this character or was an act? Did an actor ever play them so I can, like, you know, like, get to know them further? That's how it was with. With this guy and Jack Carr.
- [43:42]
Sam Parr
What'd you read? Which books do you read?
- [43:44]
Shaun
Like, seven of them. He's got, like. I think he's got like six or seven of them. I've read almost all of them, and he's got a. He's got a bunch of them. He's one of the more prolific guys. I don't know how he writes so much, but he was.
- [43:53]
Sam Parr
He came on the podcast. What was like. Is there, like, the one thing you remember from what he said or did he say anything really insightful?
- [44:00]
Shaun
So listen to this. He was a Navy SEAL where he was. He was bad. He was a bad to the bone dude. And he basically started writing these books, which was funny because writing is not like, a very typical masculine thing. Writing fiction, writing stories. But this guy is like. I mean, he's a masculine dude and he starts writing these.
- [44:18]
Sam Parr
Like, he writes like this. Like, his grip on the pen is.
- [44:21]
Shaun
Yeah. And like, when he's thinking, he's, like, picking his teeth with, like, a big knife. Like. But he's, like, a pretty hardcore dude. And yet when he talked to us, he was very soft. He was the politest guy. He was so kind. And the book series is basically a Navy SEAL who was wronged, and he goes to the end of the world in order to wrong the right. And it just so happens that he gets into different, like, adventures, you know, seven different times, seven different books. Sort of like James Bond. Like, how on earth is one guy, like, constantly saving the world? So. But it was crazy how soft this guy was, yet at the same time, he was, like, very. I mean, he had. Definitely has killed a lot of people before, and he was like this pretty hardcore dude. But he was so gentle. And I found it really. Is that. Is that a weird thing to take away?
- [45:10]
Sam Parr
Well, this. It's a thing you do a lot, which is like, we have someone on, and you're almost like a feeler rather than a listener. Like, you. You're more into their vibe and their Persona. Always. It's always the first thing, like, which Is cool. Like, it's different than, like, the way I operate. But, like, I. I find that often when I ask you about somebody, it's always, like, the way they were, not what they said, which is cool. And I think, actually, it's probably a lot of people pick that. Like, that is what we pick up from people is, like, the unspoken. But you are, like, particularly in tune with that.
- [45:46]
Shaun
So that I felt that way with John Morgan, where I'm like, I don't even remember half the stuff that he said, but, like, he had this cowboy vibe that I was into.
- [45:54]
Sam Parr
I'm all vibes.
- [45:56]
Shaun
I am all vibes. That's an interesting observation. I do do that all the time where I want. Like, what. I don't even remember what him and I talked about. I can't remember anything. But then you will do these things constantly where you recall these stories, and they're very minute. Like, I've been with you, and I've heard you retell the story, and you'll be like, and he set this thing down, and he looked at us and he said this thing. And I'm like, he did? I don't even remember that. How do you remember that? Like, I don't. I don't think of those details. Or, like, we've been with, like, you've told stories of Furcon, and you're like, retell a story with a detail that I had no idea, but I just remember him as, like, a really nice guy.
- [46:33]
Sam Parr
Yeah. It's kind of interesting also to figure out, like, what. What do you want to observe? Right. Like, I wonder how intentional you could be about that and be like, well, how do I. Like, can I change, like, my little, like, metal detector here? You know what I mean? Like, can I. Could I actually improve it? Could I be more intentional about what it is, or is it just, like, that's innate? It's very hard to change.
- [46:54]
Shaun
Bullshit. It's sort of like people who say they're bad at names. And I'm like, no, you're not. You just don't care. So, like, I. Someone said that to me. I was like, I'm bad at names. And they're like, no, you just don't care. And that bothered me. And so I was like, okay, I care. So whenever I meet someone, so if someone recognizes me on the street, I'll say, what's up, man? What's your name? Kevin. Okay, Kevin. Where are you from, Kevin? You're from. You're from Idaho. Okay, Kevin from Idaho, man, it was so good to meet You. Thanks, Kevin, man. Like, I'll, like, you, like, repeated a bunch of times, and then you associate and I'll associate with where he's from. And so I will always remember someone's name. All because someone made me feel bad. And so I think I should change to, like, how do I remember, like, certain details? And the way that I think you have to remember those details that you're referring to is you have to remember the story. It all has to be the story.
- [47:37]
Sam Parr
So Eric Jorgensen is another thing I read this year. So Eric Jorgensen, he runs Scribe and he wrote the Naval Manak. So he wrote a book that compiled all of Naval's wisdom.
- [47:46]
Shaun
Dude, I think he sold a million copies of that. Is that true?
- [47:49]
Sam Parr
I think he sold a lot more than that.
- [47:51]
Shaun
More than 1 million copies?
- [47:53]
Sam Parr
Yeah.
- [47:53]
Shaun
How many books have sold more than 1 million?
- [47:57]
Sam Parr
He's made a lot of money off that book. And it's great because the funny thing is the genre of that book is a in your own words, in his own words, biography type of book, right? So he doesn't write himself. He compiles what Naval said without adding any of his own commentary. Naval has this philosophy of, like, you open source your material, you let other people sort of fork it, remix it, and, like, your idea spread. Like, what more do you want than your ideas to spread?
- [48:24]
Shaun
This is a win, win for everyone, right?
- [48:27]
Sam Parr
So. So he's doing one on Elon right now. So he sent me, like, an advanced copy of his Elon book, and I was excited and I cracked it open. And one thing that I like right away is, you know, smart by Eric, which is he puts something that you don't already know about Elon Musk at the front just to at least signal to you there's going to be shit in here that you don't already know. Assuming you're like any lawn general, like, fanboy or, you know, you're in the tech bubble already. If he was like, yeah. Elon likes to think from first principles. I'm like, I know, I know. I've read all this shit before. But he talked about. It's Elon talking about memory. And he's like, yeah, like, when I was a kid, I learned how to do these, like, memory palaces. He's like, you can remember pretty much anything if you learn that, like, memory is a skill and there's like, a way to do it.
- [49:10]
Shaun
Is that like walking through a house?
- [49:11]
Sam Parr
Yeah. You know, like, of a memory palace. Like, you, like, create like a physical 3D, you know, structure in Your mind. And then you sort of link the, the thing to a room or a location, a visual object, and then you create a little bit of like a story of like walking through from one to the next.
- [49:28]
Shaun
Like. So like the people who could. The people who could memorize, like all the cards, they're like, the king is like a real king and the number seven is a house. There's a king in a house. He meets a queen, so he has a wife.
- [49:38]
Sam Parr
The king is on Sevens Lane. And on Sevens Lane, his wife, the queen, she loved diamonds. And so she, you know, and you do that and that's how you sort of build this thing. So it's like Elon talking about like memory palaces. And I was like, this is great. Just give me more Elon stuff. I need, I'm happy to get, you know, an unlimited buffet of like new Elon anecdotes and nuggets because, like, how rare is that, right? So I thought that was pretty cool. And in general, his book is really good. It's going to be good.
- [50:03]
Shaun
I can't believe he has sold that many copies on that book. That is absolutely insane.
- [50:08]
Sam Parr
So one of the topics I was going to do today is a work smarter, not harder topic. And Eric is an example of this. So how do you write a best selling book that sells millions of copies? Well, what if I told you it's none of your ideas and none of your words? Would that interest you? It's like a way smarter way to write a bestseller, right? So Eric doing that, there's this incredible interview that came out that there's a clip that came out. Did you hear it? It's Akon talking about his music.
- [50:39]
Shaun
No, What'd he say?
- [50:41]
Sam Parr
So Akon, the rapper, he was on a podcast and he told the story. He's like, they're like, dude, so you, you know, you had a crazy career. You know, they were talking about his Guinness Book of World Records that he owns for ringtones. He tells the story. He's like, yeah, man. He's like, I was recording music and at the time, the way we sold music was you would sell your single on itunes and it'd be $1.99 for your four minute song. He's like, but then I walk around and I saw everybody had a phone and they all had like a ringtone. They had this song as their thing. So I asked them, I said, hey, do you get to pick what that is? They're like, yeah. He goes, how much did that cost? Is it free? And they go, no, you pay for it. 4.99. He goes, 4.99. A four minute song is 199. 10 second ringtone is 499. He goes, and even better, he goes, I called my lawyer. I say, hey, check my contract with the record label. What's the cut on ringtones? And he's like, calls him back. He's like, akon, there's nothing about ringtones in here. There's nothing about digital anything. There's nothing for ringtones. He goes, say less. So he hangs up the phone, he goes, I started making music songs that were meant to be ringtones. Every song I did, I would focus on how is this a ringtone? And so Mr. Lonely became the number one ringtone in the world. And he wrote that song to be a ringtone. He's like, I would write the song with a ringtone in mind. I would record it with a ringtone in mind. I would chop it up and make it really easy for these songs to be ringtones. And he's like, I broke the Guinness Book of World records. I sold 11 million ringtones. He goes, 499. That's $55 million of gross sales on ringtones. And he's like, I became the ringtone king. And then he's like, then the next time they tried to redo my contract, they tried to slip in. Oh, and ringtone sales. He's like, let's take that out right there. Nope. You know, that's not going in the contract. We're gonna have to renegotiate a separate deal on that. And I just thought it was brilliant. The Akon ringtone work smarter, not harder. How do you sell a 10 second song for five times the pri, you know, for two times the price as a four minute song?
- [52:44]
Shaun
I so remember like being 14 and hearing girls that had that on there. I'm gonna put that on my. As my ringtone now.
- [52:51]
Sam Parr
You do ringtones? Does that still work?
- [52:54]
Shaun
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I had a.
- [52:55]
Sam Parr
Nobody has a ringtone now.
- [52:56]
Shaun
No, I did. If you called my. It was a remix version of the Nokia one and so actually had beats. It started off like a normal, like da da da da da da da da da da.
- [53:04]
Sam Parr
Crocs came back. Can you just bring ringtones back? I feel like if. I feel like if I was the music industry, the number one thing I would try to do is bring ringtones back.
- [53:11]
Shaun
Well, do you know what I. Here's. Let me tell you what I'm bringing back in my house. I bought a DVD player and an activity, because I don't let my kids watch tv, but I'm letting them. Like, sometimes on Saturday when we're, like, over. Like, if it's just me watching, watching two kids and I'm overwhelmed, I'm like, I need, like, something. But I don't want to turn YouTube on because I don't like the ads and stuff. And so I've got a DVD player. And we go to. There's a thrift store down the street from my house, and there's DVDs, and I will find the DVD. And it's incredibly fun to, like, put the DVD in there. And there's this new toy. Have you seen this toy called you.
- [53:42]
Sam Parr
You know what you're talking about? It's the little red thing, right? That plays music? That plays music?
- [53:46]
Shaun
Yeah. What's that called? Like, the yuck box or Yum. Like, it starts with a Y and it. They kill it.
- [53:54]
Sam Parr
Tony's.
- [53:55]
Shaun
What is it? There's two of them. There's one that starts with a Y as well. So there's. Is it okay? It's in the. It's called. Tony's is like, the box. And you put, like, a disc in it.
- [54:03]
Sam Parr
You put. It's a. It's a box, and then you put a character on top, like a record. And then it just starts to play songs. But actually, you buy it, and then it doesn't connect to your Wi Fi because you don't have a 2.2G connection. You only have 5G. That's. That's my story. But with the Tonys, it doesn't connect. It doesn't connect. You gotta have two G. You gotta have less GS.
- [54:21]
Shaun
I have too many GS. Like, I mean, yeah, I don't even have, like, five G. I've got one above that, I think. But they, like. It's an incredible toy. Like, I'm playing with this. And so we're actually. I'm actually on the hunt for a boombox. I wanna buy a boombox where you just put the CD in and a cassette tape and click play. It's so fun. We've had so much fun in my house, like, doing some of this stuff.
- [54:43]
Sam Parr
Tony's. These guys crush, by the way. They do, like. Like hundreds of millions. So Tony's.
- [54:50]
Shaun
Let's see.
- [54:51]
Sam Parr
Is this the right thing? Yeah. €510 million last 12 months. €510 million on this kid's boombox? Isn't that insane?
- [55:00]
Shaun
Tony's. The other one is Yoto. That's one I got y. O T O. Have you seen Yodo?
- [55:06]
Sam Parr
No.
- [55:06]
Shaun
It's like the same thing. I don't know how they're different, but I just remember one time I typed in Yodo, and it said, like, Yodo.
- [55:11]
Sam Parr
Versus Tony's 127 million in revenue. Are you joking me? What's going on?
- [55:16]
Shaun
Crazy, right? It's an incredible toy.
- [55:19]
Sam Parr
It's ridiculous. Just makes me mad.
- [55:22]
Shaun
Why? It's pretty brilliant.
- [55:25]
Sam Parr
Yeah, that's what makes me mad, that the brilliance was not mine.
- [55:28]
Shaun
Dude, I followed this guy on Instagram. Now, who started Poppy. I don't know how he came on my feed, but I saw him and I thought it was me. He looks just like me, but he's better looking. Have you seen what he looks like?
- [55:40]
Sam Parr
Hold on. Poppy the drink?
- [55:42]
Shaun
Yeah. Poppy founder, the man. It's a husband and wife. Look him up.
- [55:45]
Sam Parr
Let's see. So you thought this was you?
- [55:47]
Shaun
No. Click a video. Go to his Instagram. Yes. Trust me, go to his Instagram right now. I'm telling you, look at the videos. I was like, am I really a billionaire CBG guy or what? I said, want to do a video together? We look alike. And he said, could be funny. Let's do it.
- [56:13]
Sam Parr
He's got a podcast. Better.
- [56:15]
Shaun
Podcast?
- [56:15]
Sam Parr
Yeah.
- [56:16]
Shaun
I don't know if he has a podcast, but he just, like, does Instagram.
- [56:18]
Sam Parr
Shit, dude, are you mad? This guy's just taking everything you work for. There can only be one.
- [56:25]
Shaun
And I was shocked at just, like. Do you know that Poppy sold for, like, two or $3 billion? And it started out as a probiotic soda? That sounds like the worst idea ever.
- [56:35]
Sam Parr
He lives in Austin. Oh, my God. This guy is you.
- [56:38]
Shaun
Yeah. If he wants to trade spots, we could. We could talk. He just crushed it on that. And it's like the ultimate hack when you start a company with your wife and it works and you both get all of the equity.
- [56:54]
Sam Parr
Yeah, that's crazy.
- [56:55]
Shaun
Is that it? Is that the pod?
- [56:56]
Sam Parr
All right, that's it.
- [56:57]
Shaun
That's it. That's the pod.
- [56:59]
Sam Parr
I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be. Be what I want to.
- [57:03]
Shaun
I put my all in it.
- [57:05]
Sam Parr
Like, no days off on the road. Let's travel.
- [57:07]
Shaun
Never looking back. All right, everyone, if you're listening to mfm, you probably want to make more money. Well, I want to tell you about a podcast you might want to check out. It's called the Sales Evangelist, and it's hosted by Donald Kelly. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts who share their strategies to succeed in sales. They share actionable insights and stories that will encourage challenge and motivate you to hustle your way to the top. If you're someone looking to raise your income level, check out the Sales Evangelist. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.