We hosted a slumber party with 12 billionaires (our minds are blown)
en
January 29, 2025
TLDR: Sam Parr and Shaan Puri recount their weekend with billionaires in Greenville, NC discussing topics such as Confidence, identity, work ethic, wealth, health, and the Midwit meme.

In a groundbreaking podcast episode titled "We Hosted a Slumber Party with 12 Billionaires (Our Minds Are Blown)," hosts Sam Parr and Shaan Puri share their experiences from a unique weekend spent with a mix of entrepreneurs, billionaires, and innovative thinkers in Greenville, NC. The episode recaps the lessons learned from this extraordinary gathering and sheds light on the mindset and strategies of successful individuals.
Key Highlights and Lessons Learned
1. Fish Where The Fish Swim, Not Where The Fishermen Stand
- Core Idea: This phrase encapsulates the idea of seeking opportunities in niche markets that are less saturated. Sam and Shaan shared insights from conversations with successful attendees who emphasize the importance of pursuing curiosity-driven business ideas.
- Takeaways:
- Explore trends in niche communities (like Jesse Itzler’s venture into coconut water).
- Identify untapped opportunities in less crowded fields.
2. Becoming the Product
- Concept: The idea that to succeed, one must immerse themselves completely in their venture. Sam noted Mr. Beast’s (Jimmy Donaldson) deep engagement with his chocolate brand, Feastables, as an example of someone who truly becomes the product, not just a figurehead.
- Takeaway: Hands-on involvement and passion are crucial for success in any business endeavor.
3. Non-Obnoxious Confidence Beats IQ
- Observation: The billionaires present showcased varying degrees of intelligence, with many emphasizing that self-confidence and a willingness to act often trumps raw IQ.
- Key Insight: High achievers often exhibit an air of quiet confidence rather than overt displays of intelligence. Successful individuals are usually those who take action decisively and believe in their capabilities.
4. The Power of "I Am"
- Philosophy: A conversation topic revolved around the statement "I am" and how the beliefs we hold about ourselves shape our decisions and life trajectories.
- Takeaway: What follows "I am" can define your reality. Believing in your potential fosters a mindset of growth and resilliance.
5. Work-Life Balance: Taking Your Billions and Shove It
- Discussion: A billionaire shared insights about prioritizing family over business, highlighting that true success lies in personal fulfillment rather than just financial gain.
- Key Point: Evaluate your life’s game; wealth does not always equate to happiness. Many wealthy individuals at the gathering expressed that after a certain point, the pursuit of money becomes less relevant compared to quality of life and relationships.
6. Hard Work, But Not Always
- Diverse Perspectives: The group had varied views on hard work; some thrived on intense schedules, while others emphasized strategic, less time-consuming work methods.
- Insight: Working smart often outweighs working hard, especially as businesses reach maturity. The focus shifts from grinding to maintaining quality and performance efficiently.
7. Health as a Status Symbol
- Clearly Observed: The attendees showed a remarkable emphasis on health and wellness, contrasting sharply with the lavish displays of wealth stereotypically seen in other industries.
- Takeaway: Health is becoming the new status symbol; the connection between well-being and success is crucial in today’s world. Participants actively prioritize fitness, nutrition, and self-care.
8. The Midwit Meme
- Humor and Insight: The podcast humorously referenced moments where individuals exhibited bizarre decision-making, showcasing how intelligence does not always correlate with practical wisdom.
- Lesson: Don’t complicate simple tasks; sometimes, straightforward decisions yield the best results.
Final Thoughts
The episode encapsulated a rich weekend of learning and inspiration amongst some of the world’s most successful individuals. Listeners are encouraged to:
- Embrace curiosity-driven ideas.
- Practice confident engagement in their ventures.
- Prioritize happiness and health over mere financial success.
Through these insights, the podcast fosters a compelling conversation about redefining success in modern entrepreneurship. The lessons gleaned from this slumber party serve as valuable takeaways for anyone seeking to navigate the complexities of business and life.
Was this summary helpful?
All right, Sam, we just had an insane weekend together. We got to talk about it. We just live in a house for a weekend with
25 other founder entrepreneur types, probably five to 10 of them were billionaires, a bunch of others were close. And we didn't just like talk or hang out. We literally like slept under one roof, sat and saw us together, played basketball together, went to Walmart together a bunch of times. My Airbnb had bunk beds. So we bunked, we bunkbed together. Just as close as two men can get. So we had an experience and I have in front of me,
several sticky notes of golden lessons learned. And I phrased each of them. I don't know if you do this, but I phrased each of them.
to make it fun because nobody wants to hear your vacation story. That's one of the great rules of storytelling is just never tell a vacation story because it's so fun for you, but they weren't there. Nobody cares. But I think we should tell the biggest lessons learned with the story that backs them up. So it's real, not just a generic lesson. And I phrased all of mine like it's Confucius like, you know, Bruce Lee whispered this into your ear.
Yeah, I dig that. And to give the background, basically, I think like three years ago, you tweeted out, I want to play basketball with interesting people. I think Mr. Beast, like DM'd you and you're like, wait, is this real? You ended up phoning him and he was like, yeah, come to my place. I want to meet interesting people. The first year.
It was like you and Ben organized it. It was like 19 of us in an Airbnb and we're like, what are we going to do? So we played basketball the second year you organized it a little bit more and you had like an itinerary this year. You guys killed it. It was awesome. It was an amazing event.
I do like meeting interesting people when I go to conferences or events. I just hate conferences or events. Like I get a pit in my stomach when I have to go. And I know it's good for me. And I know in the end, I'll meet some cool people. I just hate the format. I hate the structure. So it was like, well, what's instead of just complaining about it, what's the structure I would like? It's like, well, I don't know. What if it was just doing the thing I love was playing basketball.
with those people. We basically play ball all day and then we talk at night. And that was the core idea is to use basketball as the icebreaker. And you broke your knee in the first two hours. Yeah, yeah. So this was an event where you could tear, you could tear up your knee and be done in the first hour. And I still had a good time. That means it must have been a good event because normally that's pretty brutal. I did have a little pity party for myself, but I feel better now. Are we allowed to say who was there? Yeah, I think we could say some of the people that were there. Yeah, let's go for it.
So Mr. Beast, who like, you know, everyone knows him as like on YouTube with hundreds of millions of subscribers. I think he's a paper billionaire. I think that's public. Yeah. He's one of the youngest billionaires in the world. I think he's 26 years old and he's worth a few billion dollars. He's one of the most famous people also in the world, one of the most recognized entertainers in the world. And when you hang out with him, he's also one of the like most intense, yeah, fun to be around.
You know, just wants to play all in. Like somebody said this once about Elon, they go, he's playing, he's playing life as if the, as if the simulation theory is true. You know, Elon has a simulation theory. Yeah. Yeah. I'll just be one of many simulations. And so he, he therefore just goes all in because, okay, whatever, let's, let's make this the most entertaining version of that simulation. I think that's how Jimmy plays, plays life too. So we are with him. It was one of the founders of Airbnb who like on paper, like according to Forbes is like the hundredth or 90th richest person in the world.
It was another billionaire who was one of the first investors in Tesla and SpaceX. It was the founder of Reddit. It was Jesse Itzler who's on the podcast, you, me, Al Donne, who runs like a quilting company that does nine figures a year.
All right. So when I ran my company, the hustle, I think we had something like 2 million subscribers and we made money through advertising. We didn't actually make that much money per person reading the newsletter because advertising in general is kind of a crappy business model. And so I remember sitting down and I'm like, what are all the different ways that I can make money off the hustle that aren't advertising?
And so to make sure that you don't make this mistake, Sean, me, and the husband team, we went and looked at a bunch of different ways to monetize your business. And we put it all together in a really cool document where we lay it all out along with our research and we call it very appropriately. We call it the business monetization playbook. Go to the description of this episode and you're gonna see a link to that business monetization playbook. It's completely free. You just click the link and you can see it back to the episode.
You want to start first? Yeah, let's do it. All right, I got one for you. Here's one of the lessons I picked up. And this is about the business ideas that these guys were thinking about. So if you're out there and you're wondering kind of like, where's the opportunity? What should I be working on? Here's what I picked up from some of the most successful people in America.
And it says fish were the fish swim, not where the fishermen stand. Confucius AKA me. Did you just make that up? You saw me writing these five minutes before we went live. Well, I thought you had heard that. Did you hear that from us? There's a scratch out on it, right? But did you get like Chinese food last week? And that was like a fortune cookie.
Dude, I've had my share of kung-va-jig. All right, let me just tell you some of the ideas that I heard from people who were in at this event. So you mentioned Jesse Etsler, and I think one of the public things that he's done is he got really into racing, like running endurance races. So he just followed his curiosity. 100 mile races. 100 mile races. He started doing 100 mile races. While he's doing 100 mile races, he notices that the runners
that are trying to do these amazing physical feats are drinking coconut water. And coconut water was a big, like a big part of that niche, super niche community. And he became a believer and spent time hunting down what he thought would be the best coconut water company. It ends up finding Zico, coconut water partners with them. And Zico now is a big success. They ended up selling, I think, to Coke and they're in Whole Foods. They're, you know, it's one of the big coconut water brands. And he found it when he was small and just like,
just exploring these uncharted territories. So here's some other ones that I heard.
There was somebody there who's making hundreds of millions of dollars a year selling board games. I'd never even had that on my bingo card. I didn't even know that was an option. I didn't even know that you could do that. There was somebody there that was investing millions of dollars into women's sports. Like, you know, not even just women's sports. Like they're trying to do things now where you just buy a piece of a college program. I didn't even know you could do that. Like that's for sale.
What is that for sale? Where is this listed? It's not listed. I went to a talk recently with this billionaire who owned like the Timberwolves, Mark Glazery or something. And he was talking about the box. And he was talking about how he's trying to buy college. Do you buy the rights? They're going to like the University of Alabama or whatever. And they're just like, cool, we'll give you $500 million for the Alabama sports program. But we want to own 51%. But that's what I'm trying to do. Do they buy the future earnings? Is that what it is?
They're basically, I think what's going to happen is, again, it's uncharted territory. You don't know exactly how this is going to play out, but I think the short version is the college will spin out the program, their athletics program as its own business entity. They'll sell equity in it. They'll use that equity to finance all of their sports, like women's lacrosse, like things that aren't going to be the big revenue generators. So they use it to fund all their programs and maybe even school stuff.
And then those, and then the costs now are born by the private equity person, but now it's this asset that didn't even exist before. Like these college programs can make a lot of money, media rights and all the stuff, but they weren't even for sale. Somebody was doing that. There was somebody there that was like,
Yeah, seven years ago, I just got really obsessed with water. I'm like, yeah, me too. I thought my whole life is like, no, no, like I got really obsessed. Like, do you know what kind of water you're drinking? And I was like, uh, no, like, is this bad with microplastics? What's going on? And he was just like, yeah, like I got obsessed. And so I just started studying. Where's the cleanest water from? Where's the healthiest water from? And I realized that water was going to become like a oil that people were going to more and more be drinking, not tap water, but they wanted
They're going to want basically bottled water, canned water, things like that. And that water is going to have to come from somewhere. And I wanted to find the best sources of water. And so I went to West Virginia and I bought this aquifer, this spring. I bought this giant water source. And he was like, you see that drinker drinking right there? It's like some brand, like popular brand. And he's like, that's our water. And they use our water. So that's good water.
And I was like, what? This was just a side quest that he went on. And again, it was curiosity driven. Was this one of the billionaires? Yeah, basically. I mean, not not billionaire, but yeah, like whatever, close, close enough. There's a guy there, Al, who started a quilting company with his mom in Missouri Star Quilt Company, and they sell fabrics for people who want to make quilts.
His co-founder is his mom. I have a planned vacation. So he owns this thing. The company is called Missouri Quilting Company. And he basically bought, he did a podcast three years ago with us where he explained where he bought a town. Is it Hamilton? Is it Hamilton, Missouri? He bought like an 1800-person town where they own every building and they're building the Disneyland for quilting. You're just the thought of that. So the first to go into quilting, smart guy, like, you know, could have done any business, goes into quilting. It's like, what are you doing, man? You're throwing it all the way on quilting.
does a business with his mom, right? Like, again, independent thinking, not just following the herd. So then starts the business. His mom does the YouTube channel. He does the business side of it. Business keeps growing. And then it's like, you know what we could do?
We could create the Disneyland for quilting and he literally goes and buys a town. Again, who's, is that for sale? Can you do that? How do you do that? And that, that just kept happening, which was like people who were playing games that didn't even seem popular. Another lesson there was there was a person there who had sold a piece of their company to churn in and churn in is now kind of known. I first heard about it maybe like 10 years ago.
And Chernin is this really interesting. They're most famous for- He's teaching. Yeah, Peter Chernin was a CEO of Fox, so he's like a big swing and dick. He's been a baller for years, but they're most famous amongst like normal people because they bought Barstool what it was nothing and helped make it something.
And they just had this, again, independent thinking where they were like, hey, I think these things that other people see as small kind of toys, things that aren't going to make a lot of money, you know, media brands, blogs, YouTube channels. I think these things are going to be big. I think basically, and they had this thesis, which was content to commerce. It's like, I think if you're kicking ass at content, you're going to be able to, instead of just making your money through ad revenue and sponsorships,
you're gonna be able to sell stuff to those people. And they have this content to commerce thesis and they go and they buy Barstool content and ends up being this juggernaut with commerce. They buy
They bought exploding kittens, and they bought meat-eater, and they bought surf-line. All these niche content brands, we had a guy on the plant daddy. I met with them a couple times. There was early discussions, well, three meetings that I had with the hustle, and I was like, what the fuck do you guys know? Didn't get that one right.
It turns out they know a lot. They know a lot. Did he just like slide a P and L across the table and he's like, I'll leave you three minutes a little bit. Like they told me this story and I was like, you're full of shit. You don't know what you're talking about. Like you're talking about my company, right? I was like, you know, like, but they were right. I think what the premise was correct. But yeah, I didn't have that confidence that we're talking about now.
Dude, they're made of fortune because the market overlooked these brands. These brands were not valued like high-flying tech companies, but they became multi-hundred million billion dollar brands. I really admire what TCG did because there's so many investors that all love to sound like they're smart and contrarian and they're all just, what's your thesis?
AI is going to be the future of everything, right? It's like, OK, you're not wrong in that. But like, there's something really impressive about somebody who looked at just like this magazine or this blog or this YouTube channel. We've had a bunch. We've actually probably had three or four people who sold their company on the pod to those guys.
Right, right, and they've been right, and they've been right in a very, very big way. So I'm very impressed by them. So to me, that's the principle of fish, where the fish swim, so fish where the real opportunity is, not where the fishermen are standing, not where everybody, all the entrepreneurs are huddled up. This, this sporty cookie says, man does not sell chocolate. He must become chocolate. Okay, so what does this mean? Three years ago, when we did the first version of this event,
Jimmy, aka Mr. Beast, had launched his chocolate brand, Feastables. And it was like, OK, selling chocolate to little kids. I had the opportunity to invest. I think I had a $40 million valuation was like the series A. And I passed in like the Beast Empire or chocolate in Feastables itself.
So it's kind of thought about it. I was like, I don't really get it. I didn't really know much about the chocolate industry. I thought his involvement was going to be like this. Normal influencer brand is I'm doing my thing. I create my content. Oh, my manager hands me this. Hey, buy this. Smile.
put it down, move on with life. So I thought he's just going to influence it. I thought he's just going to hold it up and buy it. What I didn't realize is that this guy was going to go so deep into the world of chocolate and end up knowing everything about chocolate and up running this company like an absolute maniac founder. If I had known that, if I had known he was going to bring his full intensity at this,
I probably would have thought about it differently. I thought he was just going to hold up the chocolate bar and see how many people clicked the link. Um, I was dead wrong. So I want to tell a quick story. You were there for, for one of the Walmart runs, right? No, but I have a bunch of Walmart stories. So we're sitting there. We're about to record. He walks in. He's like, Hey, before we do this, you guys want to go to Walmart, which I realized like at the time, it sounded like a sort of a strange request. Nobody's ever asked me on a, on a mandate to Walmart. We walk in and, um, he takes us to the chocolate aisle.
And basically gives a like 10 minute masterclass on the chocolate industry right there in the aisle. And while he's doing it, he's not just like explaining like, well, this is how it works. This is how we do. This is our revenues, this whatever. He's also simultaneously restocking the entire aisle. Like he pulled the cartons up to the front because they were like three inches recessed. They were pushed back too far. Some of the bars had followed over. They were crooked. He straightens every single one of them out. He puts the right flavors in the right spots.
If a bar was crinkly or broken, he's like, he'd throw it to his chief of staff, like, hey, can you buy this? I want to have like, we should only have good bars, no broken bars up front. And he would basically restock the thing, but his hands were moving at a speed which showed you this is not the first time this guy's done this. So he restocks it. And one of the popular flavors was out. And so he takes out his phone.
And he's like, oh, I have a badge. And so he just badges into the back of Walmart and goes and gets the box himself and restocks it. And I was like, does any vendor get to do that? And he's like, no, not exactly. But they know, like, I, like, I just do this. I care. I really care. And two things stood out to me. The first was obvious, which was when high intensity, obsessive people want to win.
They do the same things that the rest of us do with the knob dialed up to 12. Like they just, they just take the knob and they just crank it past, even where you think you go. And, and for example, he was like, I think you were there. He was telling the story about like missing a flight or something like this. He like told the story about how apparently he flew to DC and had a connecting flight to North Carolina or something wherever he lived. And he was like, you know what?
Screw it. I'm driving from DC to Greenville, North Carolina. It's normally like, I don't know, a three hour drive or something, but I noticed that there's 14 Wal-Mart's in between on that route. I'm gonna stop at every single one of them to learn. And it turns like a three hour drive into like, you know, a 20 hour drive. And he told me at one point he goes, I have scanned. I guess he's got some app where you scan things in Walmart and it teaches you about each excuse.
He said he scanned every single product in Walmart. And I don't know if he was like, if someone said, Oh, no, I've scanned all of them. You'd be like, Oh, so it's like saying it's a thousand degrees outside. You're just exaggerating. But with him, I was like, Oh, I bet you you literally have scanned every single one of them. In the podcast we did, he was
like, yeah, like, you know, we want to do a thing where you buy every item in Walmart for somebody in a video. And he's like, you know, but it's 16.2 million dollars. It's like, he knew the actual cost of the total total inventory. If you bought one of everything in Walmart, like what it costs, I forgot what the number was. But so, but I don't want to make this a just a jibby left us because there was another guy who was a top seller in Target.
Yeah, man, I heard him nerding out. It was wild. He took us to the shelf and he was like, this shelf right here. He's giving us a tour of Target. And it shows you how the store works. He's like, this shelf right here is the most profitable shelf in Target is the highest profit per square inch, which is how Target measures success. And he's giving us this Target masterclass. And we were like, are you also in Walmart? He's like, yeah, we're in Walmart, but we're not doing so. Well, I asked him what's exciting for you coming up.
And this guy runs a billion dollar plus company. I assumed he was just going to say, I've got some board meetings to line up. I'm going, I'm taking the family debt to the Aspen. And he goes, actually, I'm working the next three weeks as a Walmart associate. I was like, what?
And he goes, yeah, I'm gonna be, he goes, our sales in Walmart are not the same as in Target. And I've been trying to figure out why. What I found remarkable is that you expect the people who are the most busy, the most accomplished, the most high net worth to be above these tasks. Jimmy restocking the skews himself. This other guy going to be a Walmart associate for three weeks. You know, they don't have to do any of this.
But they're going to do it anyways. They're not just doing it now. Now that they're successful, that's how they got here. And so that was the first really big takeaway from this whole thing was the intensity with which certain people play the game of business and how that leads to success. That guy who you're referring to was the quietest person there or one of. And there was a point where I was hanging out with him. He goes, can I get your guys's opinion?
I'm thinking about potentially making some type of business move, which would value us at this valuation, and we were like, what valuation? And it was in the billions, and we were like, do you know who we are? Why are you asking us this question? What are you talking about, man?
I don't know who you asked this question to, but he was the most humble person there, and he was crazy successful. It was pretty wild. That guy who you're talking about. All right, I have one. Confidence beats IQ.
So, you know, there are a lot of like really successful people out there. Like when I read Warren Buffett's biography, he does the opposite where he is like, oh, you know, I'm just this guy is like, dude, you're, you're a butterfly. Awshucks downplaying them. Yeah, you're a baby genius. Like he was like, when he was like four, he was like making 10 grand a month selling Pepsi. But in general, the group of people who we had there,
There were some people for sure who are genius. I think Jimmy is one of them actually. I think when you talk to him, you know, he's like brilliant, but and like Mario from Oscar was one of them. Mario co-founded a company called Oscar, which is a health insurance company, which is one of the hardest things ever to do. It's worth publicly traded for a billion dollars. So he's like the man and he doesn't even speak English or he does. That's a second language. So like he's from Germany. So I imagine it's genius.
Dude, imagine going to Germany and revolutionizing the German healthcare bar. You know what I mean? Like, it's pretty wild. Extra degree of difficulty. Yeah. Just go to someone else's motherland and fix their shit. Yeah, which is wild. But, you know, he was a genius. But in general, dude, the wealthiest people there, I noticed we're not even close to the smartest. And here's an example.
One of the billion there guys was there. He goes, man, AI is just going to change the world. You guys, I don't think you guys get it. Like, I use it every day. And I was like, how do you, how do you use it? He goes, I can show you right now. And he pulls out his phone and he talks to chat GBT and he goes, hey, chat GBT, you know, I have a question. And he like starts like reading a question to it. And then he's like, now watch how amazing it is. And he like, it repeats the answer. And I'm like.
Oh, so you're saying that you just use chat gbt like all the time like yeah, and I was like well like have you like trained it he goes. Train you could trade it like like he didn't know that you could do these things in this particular guy read a company doing billions a year at revenue.
I guess what I mean is like the percentage of intelligence greater than me or you or someone else there versus impact or net worth was not like that. It wasn't totally totally totally agree with that, which is that when you sit in a room like this, two things happen. One, you just get to sample like it's Costco and it's noon at Costco and you're just getting to sample.
different life. Oh, what do you do? Oh, wow, you seem kind of stressed out. Gotcha. Like not interested in going down that aisle. Yeah. You seem like you're having a lot of fun. What do you do? How do you think about this? You got kids too. How are you doing both? Right? And you get to sample people's lifestyle when you're hanging out with them like this for like, you know, 48 hours straight.
Um, on top of that, you also get to do the measuring stick thing, which kind of sucks because you're measuring yourself against like some of the most creative, successful, ambitious people in the world. But a big part of it is you're trying to figure out the diff, right? It's like those, see those little children's games is two pictures. What's the difference between these two pictures? And on one side is me. And the other side is them. And I'm always looking at what's the difference. And sometimes if it's like a Mario or whatever, it's like, Oh, cool. Like.
His brain has an extra library in it. There's an extra wing that somebody donated to that brain. All right, cool. I can live with that. I can sleep easy. But there were other people where it was like, oh, it just seems like they didn't limit themselves. That's what I mean. They just kind of went for it. Or their courage was just a little bit higher supply than mine. And you're right that when you look at the diff, very rarely was the diff. These people are smarter than me.
Or they had some advantages I didn't have coming up, right? Like, in fact, it was usually the opposite. It's like, damn, they had this huge chip on the shoulder because their dad wasn't around. And because of this happened and they were dyslexic. There was a bunch of people over there that were dyslexic. Dude, dude, I wish I was dyslexic. Yeah, I know. But I think that's autistic was the goal is dyslexic. Dude, every dyslexic guy there somehow was a good freestyle rapper.
Like not only rich, but also cool in a group of men huddled around together, right? Yeah, I wish I was charismatic like a dyslexic guy like it's crazy It's like if you're if it's like if you're blind you're a good like piano player And if you're dyslexic you're like the most charismatic guy on earth. Yeah, exactly
All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you about a friend of the pod who's got their own podcast. If you know Steph Smith, she is a legend. She's been on MFM many times and she's got her own podcast called the A16C podcast. And it's all about technology. If you think about it, technology has evolved like crazy. I mean, I grew up in the 90s. I had CDs, phones had cords. You couldn't use the internet if your mom was on the phone. And now there's like
3D printers and there's rockets that could go up into space, AI. There's so much crazy stuff going on. And you got to have a place that helps you stay ahead of the curve. And that's what the A6 and Z podcast is trying to do. It's a podcast from the VC firm, Andries and Horowitz. And it's trying to give you an inside look at the trends that are shaping our future. They've had guests like Mark Cuban and Neil Stevenson on, and they talk about topics like deep fakes or the science behind GOP ones or autonomous drones. No small boy stuff at all. Steph is the host. She's awesome.
I think you'll enjoy the podcast. So check it out. It is the A6Z podcast and I like this tagline to say it's like eavesdropping on the future. That's pretty cool. That's a good tagline. So check it out. The A16Z podcast, wherever you get your podcast.
I have a related point, which is I just wrote these two words. I don't know if you can read this. I am. I am. So my trainer has a like a clothing brand that he creates called super conscious. So one of the shirts he gave me from super conscious. My favorite shirt is just on the side. It just says I am. And then it's after and after underneath it says the two most important words in the English language for whatever comes after them will define your life. If you think you are destined for greatness, if you think you belong at that table,
You will make different decisions along the way and then it becomes sort of self-fulfilling, right? You'll work at a different speed. You'll take different risks. You will, you will go for it in a different way. Several conversations I had at this event where I realized, damn, a lot of the, a lot of the downstream decisions start with the little voice in your head, the little director of your movie who's deciding like, what kind of movie is this? Is this like an indie budget? Is this a tragedy? Is this a comedy? Are you a joke?
Or is this a Marvel movie? Are you the hero saving the world, right? And like, I'm not saying one is better than the other, but you get to decide what that little voice in your head is going to tell you. Because the director says, you know, what happens in the story where you stand, what you say, all of those things. And I thought,
Damn, a lot of what I'm seeing in how people are living their lives and what they're doing differently comes from the little voice in their head, just has a different script in mind for that, what their life is all about, that I am statement. Or like, here's a small example. How about Jesse bringing his sauna? Jesse, it's like, brought his sauna. And he had two guys and I was like, what do you guys do? He's like, oh, we...
bring these saunas, like whenever he wants to go. He keeps the sauna hot. Yeah, he's like, whenever we go, when he wants to go to like a conference or something, like this sauna is like a really cool way to like create a bonding experience, which it was by the way, just chilling in the sauna was fricking awesome. And I was like, wait, Jesse, you got these two guys who's just like job is like trail around this like sauna, like across the country to break to events. That's the coolest thing I've ever heard of. He's like, yeah, isn't it great? We get to hang in the sauna. I was like, yes. And that's like another example of like intensity, but like on a more relatable scale.
Right. All right. I have one. You could take your billions and shove it up your ass. Seneca? Put that on one of those inspirational posters that you've seen your office. There is this one guy who was one of the first investors in a variety of Elon companies.
And presumably a billionaire, investing in Tesla at a $60 million valuation or $100 million valuation, I don't know what that is. Is that like a hundred thousand times? So something like that. We don't do public math. It's now a trillion dollar company. Yeah, so it's a big deal.
You know, there was this funny story where this guy was telling a story about working really hard and like he was grinding and his kid was sick and he's like, I had to take a week off to like go and help my kid and you know, that was a big deal because I was working so hard. And then this other guy came and he goes, you know how you guys are all talking about working 16 hours weeks, 16 hours a day on your companies.
Right now, I'm doing that as well, but my company is my family. And I have retired from business and I work 16 hours a day as the CEO of my family. And when he said that, I was like,
This is awesome. I imagine he was exaggerating a little bit because I imagine he still does some type of deal making or something like that. I don't know him well enough to know, but I thought it was so cool when he said that. I thought you have it figured out. Same with Jesse Itzler. These two guys, I can't say the first guy's name, but Jesse also had the same energy
where I was like, this is the way. And this is all personal preference. You know, Jimmy wanted to be Elon cool. Go do that. But when I heard this other way of talking, I was like, you know, after, this is easy to say because everyone was wealthy. But after some number, I don't know what that number is, 10, 20, 30, some millions of numbers, not a lot of it really matters. And just like having a good time with your family is something I really admired. And I thought it was really cool that that guy said that. And it made me,
Realize that I was getting sucked in this vortex of like money, money, money and achievement, achievement, whatever. But when I saw these guys talk and their energy, I was more drawn to that than anyone else there. Do you agree? Yeah, 100%. I think when I go to events like this, my instinct is to figure out, oh, how do you win? Oh, how do you win? How do you win? What tactics, what techniques, what strategies, what approaches work? And instead, the better question, almost every single time is what game are you even playing?
and picking the right game matters way more than figuring out how to win the wrong game. Dude, there was people there who were like mini Genghis cons, where it's like they want to dominate, like they get joy out of war and domination. They want to build cities, they want to dominate industries, they want to do that. That's one game you could play. And by the way, no judgment, great. Do whatever game you want to play out. I just want to know what the games are so I can pick.
And then other people were like, I want to be CEO of my family full time. And I'm like, eh, I've done a four hour stretch with my kids. Like, I think I'm more of a 45 minutes a day, 45 minutes at a time, four times a day. That's, that's my ideal. So, okay, I'm not going to be CEO of my family because I would actually be miserable if I was a full time stay at home dad personally.
But okay, that's a game I could play. Then I talked to Jesse and I was like, Jesse, what do you do? Like what do you do every day now? I'm training for races and I'm coaching my kids sports things. I do public speaking because I feel like it keeps me sharp and I get excited to get up on stage and say some shit that lights people up. He's like, I'm selling calendars. He's like, it's not gonna, he's like, I'm not making a fortune. Like these guys, you know, they'll do that in a day or two a week. Well, we'll do in a year, but I don't know. I like doing it. I'm doing what I want to be doing.
And he was very at ease with that is at peace with that. And I think obviously some of that comes from maturity, but a lot of it comes from.
It's easy to be at peace when you're actually doing the thing that puts you at peace when you're doing the thing you'd like. And if you're kind of, I don't know, like masquerading around trying to just do what you think you should be doing, I think that becomes very exhausting. And so I'm with you that figuring out what game to play seems like the much more important question at every phase of your life. And the game I wanted to play in my 20s is different than the one I'm playing currently in my 30s. It's probably going to be different than what I play in my 40s and 50s.
And I just got to kind of reinvent myself. Dude, there was one guy there who said he worked with Elon and apparently she had to do a meeting or something with Elon and like the secretary told him like, all right, you're going to do this meeting, but I need you to know that Elon makes his companies make $20 million every one hour. So this better be a $20 million meeting. I heard a similar thing from a guy who worked with him that he was like, uh, Elon would have a meeting, but he would.
there would be like 40 or 50 people in the meeting. And the reason why was not because that makes for a more effective meeting, but because it was like, if the right, if the person who we need to talk to is not in this room, it's such a colossal waste of his time that we'll just fly everybody here. And we're going to have this, you know, 45 minute block. And that way everybody's here because all of your time collectively is not worth as much as his, his hour.
Which is like such an episode. It's hard to fathom this. Let me tell you a really quick one, which is hard work amongst this group, not universal. So there was one guy, you weren't there. Sean busted his knee in the second hour or something like that and had to stay at home for this whole session. And there was this guy there who was explaining how hard he grinds. And then there was this other guy who was one of the more successful guys there.
I work like 20 hours a week. He's like, once my companies got to be like some type of like predictable, stable, like, all right, if we just keep doing this for 10 years, we're gonna grow 50% a year, hopefully, like it's gonna, whatever. He was like, I started working 20 hours a week and he's like, I wouldn't work Fridays. And it was really interesting to see that not everyone worked hard. Did you get that sense from people? The thing I pulled from it was some people were basically operating like monopolies.
and other people were not. Meaning there were some people playing a game where the competition is so vicious. Like it's as easy as example as YouTube. If you stop uploading.
the music stops. There's literally a million other businesses in that same exact space to the exact same exact thing who already launched. And every idea you put out there in a video, somebody else is going to copy. And a lot of people do copy the exact videos that he does and the exact script. It's all public information. It's all super competitive. There's no gatekeeping. And then there's other people who were like, yeah, all we had to do was get to this. Like we just had to get this shelf space. Like it was one guy who was showing us a shelf at Target. And he was like,
Basically, seven years of the company was just dedicated to getting on the shelf. But once you're on the shelf, it's almost impossible for anybody else to get on the shelf. All we have to do now is stay on the shelf. By the way, this shelf right here, this little rack you're looking at, this is $300 million a year.
And you're just looking at it, you're like, oh damn, like, wow, one shelf in Walmart, one shelf in Target is like the entire revenue streams of like these online only companies, but you're extremely defensible compared to other businesses where the moment you take a break, you have the entire internet competing with you on that same thing, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. That was an interesting thing. Do you have? I have a quick one. Health is wealth.
in a room full of very wealthy people. How many fancy clothes did you see? How many fancy watches did you see? How many fancy cars did you hear people bragging about? Everyone, but Joe Gabbia looks schleppy. Joe Gabbia looked great, even in work out gear. He was wearing some dice chips. He looks like he should be in a Taylor Sheridan show. If he made an appearance on Landman,
I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even blink. Everyone besides him, dude, you know, he's on the board of Tesla. I didn't know that either. Like he does a lot of interesting stuff. Everyone besides him looked like we're like, we were like at a slumber party. Well, we were also. Yeah, but during the day, yeah, that should be the title of slumber party with billionaires.
Hey, can I tell you a Steve Jobs story real quick? So Jobs once said that design is not just how something looks, it's how it works. And a great example of that is my new partner, Mercury. Mercury has made a banking product that just works beautifully. I use it for not just one, but all six of my companies right now. It is my default. If I start a company, it's a no-brainer. I go and I open up a Mercury account.
The design is great. It's got all the features that you need. And you could just tell it was made by a founder like me, not a banker somewhere who hired a consultant in an agency to try to make some tool. So if you want to be like me and 200,000 other ambitious founders, head over to Mercury.com and open up a account in minutes. And here's the fine print. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. All right, back to the episode.
So the, but the health is well thing was very real. There was a lot of flexing on stuff you're doing for your health. What's your eating and not eating? How much? Who's your doctor? Who's your, what's your protocol? No one was like that jacked or ripped or anything. Were they other than Joe?
I thought people were in pretty good shape. If you go to other industries, non-tech, internet, not our bubble, but go to a conference with the wealthiest people in finance, or oil, or whatever. Pick any industry. Their body shape looks a lot different. They look like a healthy 55-year-old.
Dude, after basically our day was go play basketball for three hours, like an intense basketball game, come home, go into a 250 degree sauna. Then when you're tired of the sauna, go into this pond that was like freezing cold in North Carolina and go plunge for three minutes. So then go back into the sauna, then go back into the plunge. Then there's like a masseuse doing bodywork and myofascial release for you. Then you're eating and everybody's been cleaning.
Every single person's eating clean while we're there, right? Like, it's like, dude, that was the norm. Like, that is not normal. You know, if you were drinking something out of a plastic bottle, it's like basically doing heroin at this event. Dude, me and Nick Hubert got Taco Bell at midnight. We want a secrecy. Yeah, like we didn't want to tell anyone. Like a feasible bar in my like, I like hit it in my hoodie and it crutched over to my bedroom and ate it like in shame over there because
What if I could do sit here and eat a chocolate bar in front of these men? Hey, he's just 52 years old and ripped. I was like, wow, this guy is, you know, on the Forbes, you know, self made billionaires list. And also also just ripped for fun as a side quest. Dude. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he looked great. And then Jesse's 56 and runs 100, 100 mile races. How many 50 year olds are ripped and run 100 mile races? Nobody does that shit, especially successful guys.
Jimmy wanted to do like a taste test. He had everyone like gather around to do a taste test of like Hershey's versus his stuff. And like, I like pretended like, Oh, wow, Jimmy, your stuff is great. I've never had this before. But like at every Airbnb in the kitchen, did you see this at every Airbnb? It was like literally 100 candy bars and
I've literally had 2,000 calories per night of his candy. I ate so much of it. I could tell you about all of it. I didn't need a taste test. I'm already an expert on it. I could tell you about all the flavors, the peanut butter ones, the dark chocolate ones. You don't have to lick the wrapper for the taste test. I'm thorough.
Like I've already, I've liked to be like, I already know. Like I've eaten all of them and I had M&Ms and Hershey bars on the plate on the way here. Like I could tell you about all of them. The other thing is when he's hanging out with like the upper ecelot of the group, he's just like, and just try a piece of this one. You don't have to eat the whole thing, but like, you know, it's more for younger people, but like whatever. That's what he's going to think is it's for kids. It's for kids. And he's like, he'll give you like the dark chocolate flavor. Yeah. And I'm sitting there with like cookies and cream all over my face. And I'm like, I like it. I like the cookies and cream one.
It's like my daughter just learned my favorite more of this one. Yeah, my daughter just learned how to say more and but I feel like this more More More Can I give you some some of the negative ones how about the guy who goes At that point I was broke. I think I really had like 20 million dollars
Yeah, he's telling some story. Well, there was a hilarious conversation about prenups, which is, you know, nothing more can be said, except for there was an incredible conversation about prenups. I was about to go outside me and, uh, me and someone else were going to go outside of the sauna and someone said, Hey, can I ask you guys about pre-dup? And we were like, Oh, let's just sit right here. I just want to listen. It was one of them. That like next three hours was one of those entertaining three hours of my life. Like, I don't think I've laughed that hard in
Five ten years like I was literally a big belly laugh crying some shocking
set setups. People are billionaires are not like you and me. If you're listening to this, billionaires exist and they're not like you. They're not like you. I would say is the midwit meme was in full effect. I'll give you one example. So the way we play our basketball tournament was three teams and we played and then it was supposed to be the top two teams played for the finals. But when all the teams finished the same record, we all had one win, one loss after everybody played each other.
So I was like, okay, well, which two teams advanced to the finals? And so I, but everybody's getting tired. So I had to make something up. So I was like, all right, we're going to do a, like a penalty kick shootout. So what's the most exciting, you know, like thing in sports is in hockey or soccer where they do the shootout. Um, and it's not going to take up a bunch of energy because like we're old guys and people are getting hurt. We got to like, we can't play an extra game to figure out who's going to go. So we said, all right, everybody step up to pick every team, each team pick five guys. They're going to shoot a free throw and then.
The team that makes the least like pressures on everybody's watching you so it was interesting one team my team was like This is a dictatorship like y'all are the five best to the other guys
They're, they're better than you. These five are shooting. Who was the dictator? Well, I was addicted. I didn't even think there was another way. I was like, of course, we're just going to pick our five best and do this. Like honestly, I didn't even consider another method. And I was the coach of my team because I had gotten injured. I'm on crutches. So I was like doing that. The second guy, the second team did merit based and the third was like kind of like a volunteer voting system or whatever.
And in the merit base thing, a funny thing that happened was one of the guys was probably less good at basketball overall, made it in the practice shot. And one of the guys who was one of their better players on his team just happened to miss. So it's like, damn, are y'all really going to.
not have one of your best players shoot and have this other guy shoot. I was just watching. I'm like, I just want to see what happens here. I want to see what happened with the egos. I just need to know. I need to see this. Like I was like, you sure? You want to do it? He's like, no, no, you should do it. You made it. If you want to, I'll do it. And then the guy's like, no, I mean, I don't know. I think I'm going to do it. He's like, OK, go ahead and do it. So the guy steps up and he shoots.
And he makes it the guy who's probably like, you know, the weaker basketball players makes it clutched it up and has this awesome moment and his team advances to the finals. And I feel so happy for this guy. And I'm like, that was amazing. I'm like, I'm, I'm glad that they kind of ruined it. He had his Rudy moment. He honored it. He made it good for him. That was awesome under pressure. I love, I wanted everybody to have like gold moments during the, during the event.
But then after the final and this, their team goes on wins the finals. Happy they're holding the trophy. It's all good afterwards. We're all like packing up to leave. And he's like, he goes up to that guy, the other guy who sat out and he's like, Hey, I want, can you, you and me go shoot free throws? I want to know if that was the correct like EV decision statistically.
And the guy's like, oh man, you already made it. Like you already made it. We already won. Like you're God, dude, you did it. He's like, no, no, no, I need to know. I need to know. And he's like, no, like it's like, honestly, it's done. I'm glad you did it. You made it. He's like, I need to know. And he's like, all right. So they go and they shoot. And of course the guy who's played basketball his whole life makes more of the free throws in like the with the larger sample size. And then the other guy was like kind of head down for like, he's kind of bummed out about it for a second. And I was like,
What a, what an intelligently stupid thing to do, right? Like he wanted to know like, was this a positive EV decision? Was it statistically the correct move? What does EV mean? Expected value. It's like if you're playing poker, you can, you bet your chips. And even if you lose, you're still happy because you made the right decision, even if the result didn't pan out. So funny. There's chances.
And so I was like, wait a snatch, like, wait a snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. And there was so many of these little moments where like, there's this guy there who's like, he's a total catch. He's like smart, he's good looking, he's ripped, he's successful, all these things. And he, I just thought a guy like this could walk into a coffee shop and like the cute barista would want him to talk to her.
I've always wanted to be that guy. This guy could have been that guy. It could be so easy for him to just meet someone amazing. Instead, you want to describe? All right. I think what he did was that he scraped, he built a program that scraped LinkedIn. Start with a desired result. He's like, I want a beautiful, intelligent, successful woman or something like that. I was there for the whole thing. Someone who fit his heritage.
And so he was like, cool. So he built a AI bot to crawl LinkedIn to then scrape all the like successful, beautiful, like trained on images of women that he thought were beautiful. Like every woman who was like of a certain like look in New York, who was between, you know, whatever, 22 and 30 or whatever, he had like a date. He had binders of women.
He had this whole system for how he could reach out to them with like, it was amazing. I don't want to go into all the details, but like she had a dedicated iPhone there. He goes, this is my iPhone. And I he goes, I have two full time engineers who have built this program that auto DM them this particular DM on Instagram. Let me send her a voice note. I go, you send voice notes. He goes, I have found that voice notes convert better. And like he like showed me
as you told this whole system is like, what's that thing called the Roshak test or whatever? Or you see the block and it's like you either see like, you know, a killer or an angel or whatever. It was like some people are like, this is the most impressive thing I've ever seen. And then some people like the married guys who are like, you know, 50, 40 to 50s were like.
Brother, it's too much. You're doing too much here. You gotta just see a cute girl and go talk to her. It's okay. Let it roll organically, baby. It's gonna work better that way. And I just thought it was hilarious. I'm really late. I gotta go. I'm supposed to be speaking at something right now. I gotta jet. I just realized I'm way over. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my law in it like my days on. For the road, let's travel. Never looking back.
Hey Sean here, a quick break to tell you an Eve Williams story. He started Twitter and before that he sold a company to Google for $100 million and somebody asked him, they said, what's the secret man? How do you create these huge businesses, billion dollar businesses? And he says, well, I think the answer is that you take a human desire, preferably one that's been around for thousands of years.
And then you just use modern technology to take out steps. Just remove the friction that exists between people getting what they want. And that is what my partner Mercury does. They took one of the most basic needs any entrepreneur has, managing your money and being able to do your finance or operations. And they've removed all the friction that has existed for decades. No more clunky interfaces, no more 10 tabs to get something done, no more having to drive to a bank, get out of your car, just to send a wire transfer. They made it fast, they made it easy. You can actually just get back to running your business. You don't have to worry about the rest of it.
I use it for not one, not two, but six of my companies right now. And it's used by also 200,000 other ambitious founders. So if you want to be like me, head to Mercury.com, open them to account in minutes. And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank banking services provided by Choice Financial Group and Evolve Bank and Trust members FDIC. All right, back to the episode.
Was this transcript helpful?
Recent Episodes
He made $100m betting on the NBA… here’s how

My First Million
Get our Business Monetization Playbook: https://clickhubspot.com/monetization Episode 674: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to the most successful sports better of all time, Haralabos Voulgaris ( https://x.com/haralabob ). — Show Notes: (0:00) Stumbling into gambling (6:19) Finding your edge (19:23) Alpha (27:28) Casinos are for losers (30:02) Betting 160% on Bitcoin (35:36) Getting paid (37:31) Buying a soccer team (46:11) Investing every dollar into Bitcoin (49:27) Analogue things and biohacking — Links: • https://www.cdcastellon.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
February 07, 2025
The craziest rags to riches story I’ve ever heard ($1/day to billionaire)

My First Million
Episode 673: Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talks to Nick Mowbray ( https://x.com/NMowbray23 ), the founder of the most profitable toy company in the world. — Show Notes: (0:00) Selling DIY hot air balloons door-to-door (5:57) First product (21:32) $30M David Beckham Tamagotchi fail (30:18) Nightball (36:18) Robofish (41:43) Diapers (48:44) Shampoo, pet food, confectionary, supplements, home products (1:00:07) Zurutech - a self-funded moonshot (1:03:28) Serial entrepreneur flywheel — Links: • Zuru - https://zurutoys.com/ • Zuru Tech - https://zuru.tech/ • Boom Supersonic - https://boomsupersonic.com/ — Check Out Shaan's Stuff: Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com • Hampton Wealth Survey - https://joinhampton.com/wealth • Sam’s List - http://samslist.co/ My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano
February 05, 2025
I was offered $200M at 24 and I turned it down

My First Million
Episode 672 features Sam Parr and Shaan Puri interviewing Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress and Automattic. Topics covered include turning down a $200M offer at age 24, WordPress's period of irrelevance, battling Shopify with WooCommerce, Matt's 'Villain Arc', auditions instead of interviews, employee front-line engagement, and Matt on Deepseek.
January 31, 2025
I run a $180M+ company...here's how I'm using AI on a daily basis

My First Million
Episode 670 features Sam Parr, Shaan Puri, and Andrew Wilkinson discussing how AI tools are replacing new hires in administration tasks. They cover topics such as AI for 24/7 agents, software becoming a commodity, and AI hedge investments.
January 24, 2025

Ask this episodeAI Anything

Hi! You're chatting with My First Million AI.
I can answer your questions from this episode and play episode clips relevant to your question.
You can ask a direct question or get started with below questions -
What was the main topic of the podcast episode?
Summarise the key points discussed in the episode?
Were there any notable quotes or insights from the speakers?
Which popular books were mentioned in this episode?
Were there any points particularly controversial or thought-provoking discussed in the episode?
Were any current events or trending topics addressed in the episode?
Sign In to save message history