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  • Hal Finney Sent Shaan Down The Cryonics Rabbit Hole
    • Shaan Puri traced Hal Finney’s ALS post to Alcor and realized cryonics is an operating business, not just sci-fi.
    • Alcor charges about $80,000 for a head, $200,000 for a body, and has roughly 200 frozen people plus 1,500 signed up. Transcript: Shaan Puri Do you know who Hal Finney is? Sam Parr The man who, up until the New York Times article, I thought was the guy who created Bitcoin, but he’s dead. Shaan Puri So he may have been Satoshi Nakamoto, the guy who created Bitcoin, but even if he wasn’t, he was definitely the first person to ever receive Bitcoin from the creator of Bitcoin. And he’s an OG cryptographer, et cetera. A founding father. Founding father of Bitcoin. That’s a great way of putting it. So was on his old blog last night and he died. I don’t know. He died like 10 plus years ago of ALS. You know, it’s like terrible Lou Gehrig’s disease. I went and read the blog post when he announced it, when he was like sharing that he got diagnosed with ALS and he was feeling totally fine at the time. And I just saw this thing in the comments. It was so weird. It was like watching, you know, famous people today, but in some, like when they were like on the Disney show and they’re like young or whatever, you know what I mean? It’s like, he wasn’t famous at this time. He’s blogging on his own little personal website. And then the first comment is from this guy, Eliezer, whatever, who today is really famous for basically, he’s the biggest doomer on AI. So he, he’s the first comment and he’s like, have you looked into cryogenics? And then Hal responds, yes, I actually have already, I’m working with Alcor to freeze my body. Did you know that this is actually a thing that happens and how this all works? Sam Parr Yeah, I knew it because Family Guy made fun of it. Isn’t Ted Williams, do you know who Ted Williams is, the famous baseball player? Shaan Puri Ted Williams was one of the first people to do this. He’s frozen right now. Sam Parr Yeah, he’s frozen. And so, and I think that there was a joke that Walt Disney was into it as well. But basically the idea is you freeze someone when they’re dead in hopes that one day we’ll solve this and you can come back to life. Shaan Puri So he talked about this company Alcor. And so I was like, Alcor? Now, I was really ready for this to be like super evil megacorp, right? Like you pay them tons of money and they freeze your body and they’re like, whatever. But it turns out, I think it’s a little more innocent than that. It’s a nonprofit that was started by this husband and wife couple who they read this book. There was a book that was published. It was very influential in this space. And it was basically a book that argued that today you could do this thing, which is right when you die, if you’re very fast acting, you can essentially do put like antifreeze on your body. So you could freeze your body as is. I think it’s liquid nitrogen, not it’s liquid nitrogen, right? Yeah, but it functions almost like they basically inject something in your veins also because they need your cells to not like, like your veins not collapse or something. So they do – so they put something in your vein and then they use liquid nitrogen to cool you down. And then you are cryogenically frozen indefinitely. And I’ve always thought – I had heard of the concept. I didn’t actually fully realize that there’s a business behind this. You pay $200,000 and you’re frozen and that, you know, they’ve frozen, I think 200 people have done it, 200 something people have done it. 1500 people have, are working with Alcor saying, freeze me when I die. They just haven’t died yet. So I didn’t realize like, it’s a thing. It’s like a business that exists that people pay for. And you know, it’s, it’s $80,000 just to freeze the head and it’s 200 grand to freeze the whole body. And then you, you know, before you die, you pick up a hundred bucks a year to save your spot. And there’s like this whole operation behind it. (Time 0:00:19)
  • AI Makes Radical Longevity Feel Less Fringe
    • Shaan Puri thinks AI progress makes once-fringe ideas like cryonics, curing disease, and even reviving preserved people feel less crazy.
    • He connects stories like AI-driven cancer remission and personalized medicine to a future where death looks more technically solvable. Transcript: Shaan Puri Number one. Okay. So this kind of led me down a little bit of a rabbit hole of like, I’m like a hyper normal guy. Like I don’t really do that much fringe stuff. And I would have never considered doing this, but I’ve been reading a lot of these stories with AI. We talked about some of them on this podcast about like the guy who cured his dog’s cancer. And then you brought up the founder of GitLab who cured his own cancer using AI and like hyper-personalized targeted medicine. Sam Parr He’s trying to, he’s trying to. Shaan Puri No, he did. It’s in remission. Sam Parr Oh, he did? Shaan Puri Yeah, he did it. By the way, I have like a whole update on it. It’s crazy. I really want to have him on. It’s a, it’s a, let’s go to that in a second. It’s wild. I just like went down the rabbit hole. So I’ve been seeing this and it’s like, okay, like it’s not crazy that in the next 30 years that AI is going to figure out how to like cure a lot of disease, death, to be able to bring back cryogenically Frozen people to be alive or to like upload their consciousness, upload their brain into some sort of like LLM. Like that’s not like crazy to me now. Sam Parr Yeah. I don’t, well, so like, like I always get these videos. I get like emotional videos on Instagram all the time. And like one of my favorite videos is when a family meets the recipient of the heart of like, for example, if my kid or husband or wife died. And I get to, and I get to put my ear on the heart and hear, it always makes me emotional. And so I’m like, oh man, that’s like the greatest gift in the bad situation. So I do love that, but I’d much rather be alive than that situation. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Shaan Puri No, but like, okay, you’re saying, yeah, but you’ve never thought about this, right? You’re not actually, you’ve never taken a step in this direction. Have you actually been like, yeah, that would be something I plan to do. Like, you know, I don’t want to. The only step that I’ve made is I’ve read this Wikipedia before. Okay. So like. Doors (Time 0:03:29)
  • Elon Musk’s Aging Clock Framing
    • Shaan Puri found Elon Musk’s idea compelling that aging may be governed by a bodywide clock because cells age in sync.
    • If aging is synchronized across roughly 35 trillion cells, changing the clock could slow or reverse aging rather than merely treat symptoms. Transcript: Shaan Puri Then I saw this Elon clip. Sam Parr I do think it is a very solvable problem. When we figure out what causes aging, I think we’ll find it’s incredibly It’s not a subtle thing. The reason I say it’s not a subtle thing is because all the cells in your body pretty much age at the same rate. So why is that? That means that there must be a clock, a synchronizing clock, that is synchronizing across 35 trillion cells in your body. Shaan Puri So have you ever seen this clip before? No. I didn’t know that he cared about that. The guy just asked him a question. He’s like, well, I’ve never, I haven’t spent time like looking into it. It’s not like, it’s not one of my missions I’m on right now. But then he said this thing, which is like, you know, if Elon says something, you sort of pay a little bit of attention. So he’s saying, you know, I suspect it’s solvable that the solution, that, you know, the problem is obvious. And the reason why i thought was like a pretty first principle way of thinking about it which is like there’s got to be a clock because your entire body is aging at this you know roughly The same rate and if your body’s synchronized that means if there’s a clock maybe the clock can be changed maybe you could turn turn the hands of the clock and slow down the aging or reverse The aging or set it to a different time and you know, we’ve seen this with like stem cell treatment and peptides, there’s all this stuff going on. And so you’re like, hmm, that’s interesting. Maybe there’s something there. And so, by the way, the reason he does say why he hasn’t spent much time on this and it’s pretty, he’s, he’s basically like aging slash death is like a feature, not a bug. So he’s like, if people live forever, society will like ossify because like the people in charge will be the oldest people and the oldest people want the least change. And like progress and change comes from some, like an out with the old, in with the new mentality, which comes like with the physicality of out with the old, in with the new. (Time 0:06:07)
  • Longevity Could Have Its ChatGPT Moment
    • Shaan Puri predicts longevity will get a ChatGPT-style breakthrough after decades of slow, fringe progress.
    • He links Aubrey de Grey’s wear-and-tear theory with longevity escape velocity, where medicine adds more than one year of life per year elapsed. Transcript: Sam Parr So you make fun of me a little bit, and it’s deserving, because I brag about how I think that when Brian, he told me, we were the first media appearance Brian Johnson has ever done. And I take a lot of pride in that, because if you go and get past the silliness of the whole thing and how easy it is to tease him for what he’s doing. If you actually go and read his blog, it is pretty miraculous some of the stuff that he’s doing. And the way that he looks, it’s easy to make fun of him. It seems quite amazing that if you just take a little bit of what he’s doing, there could be benefits. I just signed up for a fancy doctor. I went, and this was the first time that I’ve met a doctor where they didn’t not laugh at him. Every doctor that I’ve ever talked to, they’ll been like, oh, that guy’s crazy. Like, you know, that’s just stupid. Same with like the things that you and I did where you, the preventative MRIs. Yeah, they like laugh at them. They’re like, well, it just sets off so many potentially false alarms i’m like that’s the downside and that’s why you don’t want to do it that’s incredible that’s kind of silly so i but My point being is i do think that a lot of people are coming around to this and it is quite interesting it’s way out of my iq level to when people say uh disease and aging is solvable i think That’s like a platitude that sounds cool but it’s it’s hard for me to understand because I just don’t know anything about it. But it is interesting. I wonder if in the history of the world has the richest people on earth, which now they are richer than potentially ever before, that many of them have made this their cause. Shaan Puri Have you ever heard of this guy, Aubrey de Grey? Sam Parr Yeah, he’s like the researcher who does this. He’s like an academic, right? Shaan Puri So he’s been doing this for like decades. And he kind of got canceled, I think, because he was like hitting on his like lab assistants. I don’t know what was going on. I’m not saying this guy’s a great guy or whatever, but he’s this very fascinating guy. He looks like Dumbledore. He’s got a huge gray beard, like, you know, down to his belly button or something. He looks like a researcher. He’s like a longevity researcher who looks ancient, essentially. And he’s got this theory, which is like his theory. If you’ve ever gone down the rabbit hole, which I did one night, like, I don’t know, five years ago. What he said is basically that death is not a mystery, that there’s these like 12 things that basically cause cell damage. It’s just wear and tear. Like your cells in your body are like a car. And the more you use them, the more they accumulate damage and eventually enough damage, they die. Okay. It’s not like some mandate from God. It’s not like, you know, something that we don’t understand at all. His belief is like, actually, we could see the factors that lead to it. If we could just reverse those factors, then we wouldn’t die. The second thing he talks about is like this idea of like longevity, LEV. Sam Parr Ever heard of this? I’ve never heard of that, but is that as simple as basically your biological age grows slower than your, or sorry, your chronological age grows slower than your biological age? Am I explaining that correctly? Shaan Puri I think you had it right the first time, but no, this is a different concept. But what he says, it’s sort of like the, that guy Ray Kurzweil, who talked about AI, he talked about the singularity. What he meant by that was like, at some point, it won’t be the humans that are programming AI, but the AI will program the next AI to be better. And then that smart AI will program the next AI to be better. And it’ll just keep, and then that’s when you get this explosion of intelligence. And he’s like, no, you can’t see beyond the singularity. Because once that happens, all bets are off, which is like kind of what we’re getting close to doing inside these research labs. It’s not just the highly paid people at OpenAI or Claude or whatever, Anthropic, who are coding the models. The models are coming up with ideas and running experiments and coding next models soon. And that’s like partially happening. But once that fully happens, the progress, the rate of progress will like go exponential or a little hockey stick in a crazy way. Sam Parr Claude did the greatest PR release ever or PR thing where they said, this model is so powerful. We can’t release it. Too dangerous. I’m like, okay, I want it. Yeah. Like sign me up. It’s like the four locos of AI. I heard in Tennessee that they make them at 11% alcohol, but we in Ohio, we can only get 7%. Shaan Puri This kid had the greatest night in his life and his heart exploded. We should do that with a podcast, by the way. We should just be like, this one is too dangerous. We can’t release it. We simply cannot. But, sorry, anyways, the idea being, there’s going to be a point where medical research on longevity is adding years to your life faster, like adding more than one year to your lifespan Than one year. So like the research and the interventions and the protocols and the knowledge around extending your life is going faster than your actual chronological age. And when that happens, then you sort of get at least like multi-hundred year lives, if not like, you know, indefinite life, which is like a pretty crazy idea. But when I read about this longevity stuff, it reminds me of basically what’s been going on with AI. Like AI was something that had been talked about for 50 plus years, theorized, talked about, worked on, always seemed niche, never seemed like a breakthrough, always seemed like a Boy who cried wolf type of industry, where never really made enough progress. And then suddenly you get, you know, Alex net, and then you get chat GPT and you get these like breakthroughs and then the world’s never the same again. And I kind of, my prediction is that in the next, I don’t know, 15 years, we’re going to have a chat GPT moment for life extension and that you’re going to get some breakthrough in this longevity And life extension. (Time 0:07:57)
  • The Future Org Chart Puts AI In Charge
    • Shaan Puri argues companies may invert from humans using AI assistants to AI becoming the boss and humans supplying context.
    • He says Jack Dorsey and Brian Halligan imply future org charts center on one decision-making AI instead of layers of managers. Transcript: Shaan Puri Would that look like? Or like, I guess like, do you, what do you mean when you, cause COVID obviously was a pandemic sort of a catastrophe. Sam Parr Do you mean catastrophe? So here’s an example. So, uh, in, in January, I think it was, what’s his name? Is it Balji? Yeah. He wrote this post because, you know, the joke was like, these autistic venture capitalists understand exponential growth. They see the numbers and they’re like making people wash their hands before they come into the office. How stupid of them. And Block or Jack Dorsey’s company just laid off a ton of people. And we’re thinking to ourselves like, huh, this guy’s crazy. What’s he doing? But secretly, every other company is like, should we? Should we do this? And is there going to be a domino effect over the next 12 to 24 months where it’s like, it starts happening. Another one starts happening. Another one. 10 more this week. And they’re all doing these layoffs because it’s actually effective. Shaan Puri Like that is what I’m, that’s like what I’m wondering. So you mentioned the Jack Dorsey thing. And I think the way you said it kind of undersells what actually happened. Because the way you said it was, Jack Dorsey’s company, formerly known as Square, now known as Block, off a bunch of people. I’ve heard that. There’s been tech layoffs. There’s even been huge tech, deep tech layoffs like that. That’s happened many times in history. What’s different this time? And I think the reason is different is he laid off the people because he was like, oh, the normal corporate model doesn’t work or make sense anymore. That actually we’re not going to have this like org chart with like a CEO and then like managers and managers and managers and managers underneath. Like, actually, there’s just going to be one central brain called AI and all of us feeding context into it. Sam Parr That’s what Brian Halligan, the former CEO of HubSpot, told me. He was like, the future companies, it’s a hub of AI. They make the majority of decisions and everyone’s around it. Shaan Puri It’s a hub to spot. We’re like, bro, I see what you did there. Come on. Get out of here. But yeah, so okay, so what does that actually mean? It sounds esoteric, right? Like the central brain or whatever. Here’s the flip I don’t think most people appreciate. Today, it’s like, oh yeah, I use chat GPT all the time. I use it for dumb questions. I use it with my job. You know, my piano teacher was like, have you heard of this thing called Claude? And I was like, yeah, I’ve definitely heard of it. You know, making out with it all day, basically. And then she’s like, my dad loves it. And I was like, what does your dad do? And he has some normal job. And he was like, yeah, I use it to make my presentations. And it seems today like there’s junior assistant worker that you can task to go do everything. Everybody gets an assistant. Everybody gets a junior programmer. Everybody gets like a chief of staff. That’s kind of like, I would say the mental model most people are operating with. Wow. If I use this, this makes me so much more productive. I think what’s obvious to me, and it sounds like to Jack Dorsey, is that, well, the super intelligence is not going to be the junior thing to your average intelligence. The super intelligence is going to be the boss. You’re going to be the junior thing. And so, and that’s what he’s, that’s what these guys are talking about, Brian Halligan and Jack Dorsey, which is that actually there’ll be like a central AI that’s making the key decisions, Allocating resources, figuring out strategy, coming up with the core campaigns of what you’re going to do, the product, the roadmap, the building of it. And that your job as humans will be to feed context, feed information to make the brain smarter. (Time 0:14:44)
  • Indian Factory Workers Are Training Their Robot Replacements
    • Shaan Puri described an Indian data-labeling factory where workers wear headset cameras and repeat tasks to train robots.
    • Companies collect clips like towel folding, penalize bad footage, then sell the movement data to robotics firms through labeling intermediaries. Transcript: Shaan Puri So watch this video. This is a factory in India where they’re like just sewing garments, I think. Every single factory worker is wearing a headset camera to track their hand movements of everything that they’re doing. And this is all data that they’re being paid to give to the robotics companies like Tesla and Figure and like all the big robotics companies who are quickly trying to create robots that Can do any work. And so the humans here are the training data. All these Indians in this like frigging factory sweatshop are wearing cameras on their heads, training the AI overlord that will replace them. Sam Parr You’re digging your grave. Shaan Puri You’re digging your grave. And there’s a great meme. Look at this. Scroll down. Scroll down one knot. Look at the, look at the, go down, go down right there. This one. Look at this meme of this, the guy sitting on the tree branch, sawing off the branch. And this is kind of what we’re all doing. So isn’t that crazy, by the way? Like just that thing I showed here? Yeah. Sam Parr Who’s the vendor or who’s behind that, does it say? Shaan Puri So there’s a company that’s doing this. So it’s a company. This one is called Object Ways. It’s an Indian-based data labeling company founded by a 20-year entrepreneur, soon to be billionaire, Dev Mandal. Dev, come on the podcast. He spotted an opportunity in the gap between what AI wants to do and the training data that they have. All these humanoid robot companies like Tesla’s Optimus, Figures AI, there are prototypes that need vast data sets of real-world movements to master tasks like cooking, laundry, Et cetera. And so, but collecting this in a high wage country like the US is very expensive. So enter India where their team of 2000 employees produces hundreds of videos daily. And in one batch that, you know, so they’ll, they’ll get like, you know, 2000 clips of towel folding. So the workers sit there and they have to fold towels over and over and over again. They’re penalized if they have bad footage. Your camera wasn’t pointed at the thing. Hey, you messed up. Don’t give bad training data. Give good training data. And so they’re doing this all day. And then they send it to companies like Scale AI, like the big data labeling companies here, who then resell that to all the AI labs. What? Is incredible. It’s something. There’s a big word. I don’t know if incredible is the word. There’s something, there’s something insane going on in the world right now. This is straight out of like, dude, like this is black mirror. On one hand, it’s, it’s hyper logical. It’s hyper rational. It’s capitalism at work. Dude, these robots, when they work, it’s going to be the biggest product ever invented in the history of mankind, bigger than the iPhone, bigger than anything. When you get a $20,000 robot that can do, do it is the biggest product ever. It’s why I have a huge chunk of my net worth in Tesla right now is because that’s obviously the biggest product in going to the biggest market in the world. It’s just a matter of when, not if. To do that, you’re going to need data. That means the data is very valuable. If the robots are valuable, the data is valuable. How do you get the data? Well, obviously, you’d go to the lowest cost place where you got a bunch of humans doing these handheld tasks and they’re happy to take a hundred bucks a day to wear the camera on their Head. Yeah. They got a little neck pain. That C5, C6 vertebrae is a little strain because they’re wearing this heavy ass camera for eight hours a day. (Time 0:18:19)
  • Robot Training Data Follows The Biggest Market
    • Shaan Puri says humanoid robots could become the biggest product ever, which makes real-world movement data extraordinarily valuable.
    • That logic explains why training work gets pushed to low-wage countries: cheaper humans create the data needed to automate human labor. Transcript: Shaan Puri There’s something, there’s something insane going on in the world right now. This is straight out of like, dude, like this is black mirror. On one hand, it’s, it’s hyper logical. It’s hyper rational. It’s capitalism at work. Dude, these robots, when they work, it’s going to be the biggest product ever invented in the history of mankind, bigger than the iPhone, bigger than anything. When you get a $20,000 robot that can do, do it is the biggest product ever. It’s why I have a huge chunk of my net worth in Tesla right now is because that’s obviously the biggest product in going to the biggest market in the world. It’s just a matter of when, not if. To do that, you’re going to need data. That means the data is very valuable. If the robots are valuable, the data is valuable. How do you get the data? Well, obviously, you’d go to the lowest cost place where you got a bunch of humans doing these handheld tasks and they’re happy to take a hundred bucks a day to wear the camera on their Head. Yeah. They got a little neck pain. That C5, C6 vertebrae is a little strain because they’re wearing this heavy ass camera for eight hours a day. (Time 0:20:40)
  • Rubber Duck Your Brain With A Coach
    • Use a coach or even a passive listener to talk through your thoughts; explaining them aloud exposes bad mental code.
    • Shaan Puri compares it to programmers rubber ducking: his Twitch coach barely advised him, but speaking freely surfaced absurd assumptions fast. Transcript: Shaan Puri Have an executive coach, and he told me something in the very first meeting, because he spent over a million dollars on his own, like getting coached by the best coaches in all these different Modalities. So like somatic therapy or whatever the hell that means, internal family systems and this and that, all these different, like any different branch of sort of, I don’t even know what You would call these like coaching modalities, I guess. He spent a million dollars on his own training. And he’s like, I just went, he’s like, who’s the best at that? Even if I don’t fully believe in that method, like I want to go experience it firsthand from the best person in an immersive way and get like, you know, four years of like exposure in four Weeks type of deal. One of the things that he told me, I was like, so what is it net out to? I was like, you do all that. You travel the world. You spend a million dollars. You get all the help and self-help and therapy. You can get in all the different versions. Where do you land? I’m guessing it’s something like, you know, that book, The Alchemist, where it’s like he goes around the world searching for something and it’s in his own backyard or whatever. I’m like, what’s the thing that was in your own backyard? And he goes, oh, all philosophy and religion basically like condenses down into three words. Be here now. And he’s like, it just, whether it’s Buddhism or it’s philosophers or it’s, you know, a different, whatever religion you’re looking at, fundamentally it’s about presence. And can you, can you be here now? And what be here now means is not just about like not checking your phone or being present that way, but not worrying about what happened in the past, which can’t be changed, being anxious Or even excited about what’s happening in the future, which is not here yet, but like actually being able to center your mind around what is happening like in this moment, because it’s The only moment that’s real. What comes with that is the lack of desire. So like the Buddhists say, desire is suffering. And so it’s the idea that you can be in a moment and not be wanting anything more than what the moment is already giving you. Not wanting to be anywhere, not wanting something to happen. And like, oh, then the fun will start. It’s like, no, no, this part is the, this is the fun. There’s nothing missing from this moment. Sam Parr Has any other learnings that you’ve gotten from him turned into action? I like that. What else you got? Shaan Puri Is that kind of what you’re saying? Sam Parr Like, what’s the, what’s another one that that’s kind of, well, I’m actually thinking, like, is this so amazing that I should also get an executive coach? Cause I haven’t had one in forever. Shaan Puri Um, yeah, I think anybody with the means should have one. And I think by the way that with AI, everybody will have the means because it’ll drop the price of this pretty dramatically. But yeah, it does. And I think, you know, have you ever heard of rubber ducking? I think I’ve mentioned this once or twice. Have you ever heard of this phrase? So rubber ducking is a programming term. So let’s say you’re a software engineer, you’re coding, you’re writing, writing code all day, and your code’s not working. It’s not compiling, you have a bug, it’s not doing what you want it to do. So the way that most people traditionally solve this problem is, you know, they sit there, they bang their head against the wall, or if they want to do better, they would invite someone, You know, another smart programmer to come, look at the code, and see if they can help debug it and figure out what’s wrong. And rubber ducking was this observation that you don’t even need another smart programmer. There’s a programmer who had a little rubber ducky on his desk, and he found that just by talking out, like explaining the code to the rubber duck, he would find the issues much faster And much more painlessly. Sam Parr It’s sort of like the, I think it’s called like the Solomon complex, which is basically like you tend to give other people better advice than you give yourself. And so if you pretend that you are the third party and you advise that person and give them some wisdom, you should just take that and it will be better advice than if you just said, do this, Sam, to yourself. Shaan Puri Right, right, right. So this idea of rubber ducking is very powerful. So even if my coach wasn’t great, even if he didn’t spend a million dollars, even if he himself wasn’t a successful business guy who had learned a bunch of lessons that way and lived a bunch Of life, even if it was a rubber duck, it would be useful. And so I’ve, and by the way, I’ve tried this. I had a coach when I was at Twitch, they like gave you a coach if you’re on the exec team. So it’s like, here’s a free coach. So I was like, I’ve never tried this before. Let me try this. And I was very skeptical going in. Cause I was like, ah, life coaches. Like I’ve been to enough Tony Robbins event to know that like, it’s the biggest loser at a Tony Robbins event who becomes a life coach. It’s like the, a third of the audience at Tony Robbins is like broken people who are, if you ask them what’s their job, they say they’re life coaches and you’re like, oh my God, you’re coaching People like that. Wow. That’s like, it’s like the bartender being your driving instructor or something. I don’t know. It’s like, I didn’t know the analogy, but it’s like, I don’t want that. So I had this like very skeptical view of it. And sure enough, I get on the call and her zoom background is like this cheesy green screen thing. And then she’s like in, in, she moved to Florida because her own life fell apart. And then she was like, yeah, I’m a coach now. I’m like, wait, so your life fell apart and you have kind of like none of the things I want in life, but I’m going to take advice from you. Like, oh God, this is, ha, this is exactly what I thought. I felt so smug. And then after the first session, I was like, damn, that was really useful. And I was like, she didn’t even say anything. I just talked. I just had space to talk out loud. And as I’m talking, I hear the comical absurdity of some of my thoughts and I was able to get rid of them. And, you know, for some people, this is journaling. For some people, people have different ways of doing this. Other people just talk to their friends or whatever. Or maybe other people just have this solved without needing anything. But for me, I have code running in my head that is buggy software. It makes mistakes. It has, you know, self-induced errors. And I want to fix that code. And so even just rubber ducking to a person who doesn’t say anything or the things they say are just like very simplistic questions is so useful. (Time 0:23:43)
  • Begin With Wins To Counter Problem Seeking
    • Start reflective sessions by listing wins so you train your attention on progress, not only problems.
    • Shaan Puri celebrates tiny victories like reading, helping his son at soccer, and skipping a late-night snack to build momentum and joy. Transcript: Shaan Puri But yeah, it’s incredibly useful. And I’ll give you another one that’s kind of like a realization. So we start every session with just wins. So I basically turn into Eminem. I turn into Juice WRLD. I start just freestyling at the top. I just, we don’t even, I just say, all right, I’m gonna start with wins before he says anything. And I just start saying random wins. So I’ll be like, I’ve been reading this book and it’s awesome. And I just feel proud of myself for reading books. I’ve been saying I want to do it and I never really do that shit, but then finally I’m doing it. So I’m proud of that. I took my son to the soccer game today and last week he was crying about it, but this week he went in and he actually did the class and I didn’t have to help him. And I felt awesome about that. Another win is that last night I really wanted a snack, but then I just avoided it. And I went to, I just got a glass of water. I went to bed and I have no filter with somebody. And like, if I was to say this to you or to a friend, they’d be like, whoa, like I didn’t ask. Like, what are you doing? What’s happening right now? Or I would feel self-conscious that I couldn’t say a small thing as a win. It’d have to be a big thing. And like, that’s like literally robbing yourself of joy because like, actually the better way to live life is to be excited about the small things, but there’s no space where you could Just be excited about the small things, right? Like, where is that cool to do? But in this case, it’s like, yo, I’m paying you. I get to do what I want here. I don’t have to care about how you feel about this. I don’t have to listen to you. I don’t have to like, we’re not here to do another thing. And I’m just like ruining it by sidetracking this way. No, that’s what this is for. This is the space for me to do that. And I heard this great quote from Jimmy Carr, the comedian, where he said. Sam Parr Dude, he’s like a thinker now. He’s not even a comedian. He’s like a wisdom guy. Shaan Puri If you haven’t, have you listened to, he did a podcast with Chris Williamson recently that was so good. I texted Chris, I was like, this is like one of my favorite podcasts in years. And it’s because he’s a philosopher and he’s like, he’s very, very thoughtful. And so Jimmy Carr said, he was like, oh, everybody talks about like gratitude. Gratitude is so important. But gratitude is this like, almost like heavy activity to do. It’s like, I know I should be doing that, but I’m not doing it. It’s like, and you feel a little cheesy doing it. He’s like, celebration is just gratitude in motion. And so he’s like, just celebrate what’s going on in your life. Like just be, it’s okay to be excited about what your life is. It’s okay to be excited about what just happened. And so that’s like an example of like a simple thing that I do with the coach that actually makes a difference because I build a lot of momentum and I check in on the positives of life and Not just the problems of life, right? Because me and you were probably, most entrepreneurs by default are problem solvers. We get paid to solve problems. Our company is just solving a problem in the market. And then as CEO, you’re solving the nastiest problems in the company. And then when, you know, anybody, if they get stuck in their job, you have to dive in and help solve that problem. And every day there’s a new problem. So we get wired for problem seeking and problem destruction. It’s good for achievement, but it’s not good for happiness is to be a problem seeker. (Time 0:29:39)
  • Oz Pearlman Mixed Incredible Tricks With Brilliant Positioning
    • Sam Parr said Oz Pearlman felt unsettlingly powerful after repeatedly guessing names, places, and other personal details in the office.
    • Shaan Puri admires not just the tricks but the business: Pearlman rebranded from magician to mentalist, engineered viral moments, and uses multiple prepared outs. Transcript: Shaan Puri So O’s Pearlman, the magician, came to my office, and we did a thing with him. We did a pod with him. By the way, great pod. Loved that pod. It didn’t get a lot of views on YouTube. I don’t know what people are doing, sleeping on it. It was a great podcast. Thank you. Sam Parr I don’t know why it didn’t either. But listen to what he did. He came in and we only chit-chatted for 10 minutes and then we chit-chatted only for 10 minutes after. And in those times, he was just performing. And I was like, I had an off, like for some reason in my company, it’s like mostly like young women who work there and they are enthralled by this guy, as I am too. They walked in, and I could tell they were waiting, and they’re like, you don’t have to, but you know that they’re just wanting you to dance. If you want to, you can, but if you don’t want to, just let’s… He was like, no, I’ll do it. He guessed the name that we had a woman who uh is giving birth soon he guessed the name of her child uh like he was like you’re like he you know she hadn’t yeah he likes he’s like let me figure Shaan Puri Out what name you’re gonna let’s walk through this step by step because i’m fascinated by magic he walks in the office but i’m trying to figure out how the hell he does all this shit so So Did you talk to him beforehand? Like, how much did he pull from you before he showed up at the office? Sam Parr Was there a lot of talk? Was there any talk? There’s one trick that I think I know how he did it. But he thought that you were going to be there. And he was like, oh, I’d prepare tricks for both of you guys. Yeah, because I was texting him. Yeah, and he was like, I thought you guys were both going to be here. I was like, oh, no, I’m so sorry. I thought we communicated with you. And he’s like, okay, well, I had a different thing prepared. So let me try something else. He was like, can you, um, write down, think of, you know, they, they, they, and he, he, he says before the podcast, right. Shaan Puri There’s off the podcast. Sam Parr And he says this phrase is like, uh, like he thinks he thinks that you’re going this way and then he changes. So he’ll be like, you know, I want you to do actually,, let’s do this. Let’s do this. Write down, do me a favor. Think of a party that you want to have, a birthday party, and think there’s one person who you want to show up there. Write that person down. Actually, screw it. Let’s just do this on air. And he went and he grabs that paper that I wrote and he tore it up. And then he did the trick on air. That same trick. And I think that, I think the tear was fake. Right. Shaan Puri Does that make sense? Okay, okay, okay. That’s good. That definitely, right? That definitely has to be the way that that’s done. Sam Parr Okay, cool. But then, listen, right when we finished the pod, we walked out and the women were just sitting there like to greet him. And they were like, can you do something? And he goes, yes. And he goes, how about you? And he points at a random lady and he goes, do me a favor, think of your best friend. She thinks of her best friend. And he was like, it Hannah. And she was freaking out. And he was like, let me write something down. He writes it down. And he goes, tell me, where did you meet Hannah? And she goes, Mexico City. And he turns his hand. And he’s like, that’s what I thought. And it was Mexico City. He wrote down Mexico City. And people online were like, yeah, he just researched everyone. I’m like, I had 18 women there. He can’t research every 18 person’s best friend. No, but he doesn’t need to, right? Shaan Puri He researches one and then he randomly, you, right? He chose the person. Sam Parr But do you have a best friend? Like how and how would they know? That doesn’t seem reasonable. Well, I do think that’s the genius of what he does. Shaan Puri So because I’ve watched hours, I’ve watched 18 hours of clock time of debunking him, figuring out how he does it, interviews with him, because I’m fascinated by the whole thing. And by the way, I’m fascinated by it in two ways. One is the tricks, but the other is the business side of it. Because if you just think about what he did by rebranding as a mentalist instead of a magician is an all-time marketing move. Sam Parr Dude, post-podcast, someone sent me an email. They’re like, check this out. I booked him to do a party for me. And it was $150 10 years ago. And he told me how much money he’s making now. It’s astronomical. Shaan Puri Yeah, exactly. Because he’s the number one, right? It’s a classic marketing thing, right? The law of category. Instead of being yet another magician. Oh, he’s like Copperfield or David Blaine, but he’s not David Blaine, right? David Blaine is more famous. He does better tricks, bigger tricks, blah, blah, blah. He’s like the street magician. Okay, the cool. No, no, no. He’s not a magician. Those are, those are magic tricks. We all, every kid knows, everyone knows how a magic trick works. It’s light of hand. I’m a mentalist. And he became the number one mentalist. And it wasn’t, he wasn’t even a category. So I’m like fascinated by the, the positioning, the marketing, the business side of what he did. That’s not an accident. He created this motherfucker, right? Like he created this thing that he is. Epic. And then he figured out distribution. And he’s like, ooh, I need these viral moments. So he goes to NFL training camp during hard knocks. He piggybacks off their distribution. He blows their minds. And everyone’s interested in seeing LeBron James get fooled. That’s more interesting than just seeing a random guy on the street getting fooled. Ooh, okay, good. Sam Parr Like even more viral than- Well, he told me before the podcast, he was like, I’m starting to do podcasts again because I got overexposed last year. Like he, like when he used the phrase overexposed, I’m like, oh, so this is all part of the plan. Shaan Puri Right. And so then in one of his interviews, he just says a great thing. He talks about like, the secret is having multiple outs. So meaning like, let’s say you said the best friend thing. It’s a probability game, right? So you’re not always going to know the answer. And so you’re like, it starts with a letter. It starts with a letter. I’m getting like a K sound, a T sound. Is it a T? He’s hearing, looking at your reaction. He’s like, T, okay. Then I know it wasn’t Steve, it’s Trevor. So now I had Steve on my left forearm, but I had Trevor written on my right forearm. I’m just never going to pull the sleeve up on my left. I’ll pull the sleeve up on my right. Sam Parr Well, he told that story on the podcast. He went on the Today Show and he tried to get Al Roker to guess who a celebrity president would be. And he originally said George Clooney. And he was like, oh no, what about a female? And he said Taylor Swift. And then he pulled the shirt off. Shaan Puri Or he’ll be like, let’s someone modern let’s do something and he gets you to change it and you don’t know that he had you know Taylor Swift on his thing and he had you know uh whatever Chalamet On his butt and somebody else on his shoe he just never needs to show it I’m like wow that’s actually pretty great pretty pretty genius the way he does that it was it was just incredible. He told me a story. Sam Parr He was like, I was like, did you, do you, I made a joke first. I was like, it’s pretty funny that you can do all of the stuff. And it’s as if they like sent an alien from outer space. Like we brought up like a set. He’s like, we told this Seth Meyers show and they had you like perform at bar mitzvahs. Like, why aren’t you like doing something more special? That was a great question. Yeah, yeah. What was his answer to that, by the way? He was like, he’s like, well,… (Time 0:34:06)
  • Stop Being Too Cool To Shoot Your Shot
    • Don’t be too cool to approach impressive people directly when you sincerely want to learn from them.
    • Shaan Puri cites Kevin Hart walking up to Jeff Bezos at a party, expressing admiration, and plainly asking for a future conversation. Transcript: Shaan Puri There’s a great clip that I think people should watch. It was like oddly inspiring. And it’s Kevin Hart on the Joe Rogan podcast talking about when he met Jeff Bezos. Have you ever heard this clip? No, no, no, no, no, no. The clip is he’s on Rogan and he talks about meeting Jeff Bezos at a party. He’s like, I’m at a party. Jeff Bezos is there. I don’t know Jeff Bezos. Jeff Bezos, I don’t know if he knows me. I have no idea. And I tell my friend, like, I’m gonna go talk to him. And his friend is like, no, man, come on. Don’t be that guy. He’s like, what you mean? He’s like, that’s Jeff Bezos. He created some shit that I think is awesome. Like, I don’t know him. I’m not going to see him again. I don’t know when I’m going to see him again. I’m going to go say something. He’s like, all right, man, but be cool about it. And he’s like, that’s the problem. Everybody’s too cool. Like everybody wants to be too cool about everything. He’s like, no, I’m thirsty. He’s like, what do you want? What do you want from me? I’m thirsty for knowledge. I want some information from this guy. This guy’s done, he’s built empires. He’s built, he’s, he knows more about the money game than me. He’s built, he’s built technology. He’s like, I just, I want to go learn. I’m going to go talk to the guy I’m not gonna be too cool for this so he goes up to him and he just says like hey man Jeff I’m Kevin I admire what you built you know I think it’s I think it’s amazing I would love to to talk to you a little bit more now is not the time and place but I would love to talk to you more at some point to to get to know you um and like hear a little bit more about how You did this because I think it’s fascinating and I think there’s a lot I could learn from that but anyways i just wanted to come over and say hi because i mean i admire what you do and i hope Someday are you know our paths cross he’s like that was it i got out of his way and he’s like i don’t know if i’m ever going to see him again but if i do like i put my face out there i put my intent I let it be known that i think it’s awesome what you do and i would love to to to chat with you sometime about it. And he’s like, he was super kind and that was it. But he gave this like impassioned speech about really about shooting your shot and like, dude, like don’t be too cool to learn. Don’t be too cool to make progress. Don’t be too cool to put yourself out there. And I just think that that was a, it was an awesome clip. I was very inspired by it. That is a great clip. (Time 0:44:36)
  • Dave Wehner Praised Bezos And Zuckerberg As Calm Leaders
    • Sam Parr met former Facebook CFO Dave Wehner and asked which elite executives were actually pleasant in person.
    • Wehner said Jeff Bezos gave full attention instead of scanning the room, and Mark Zuckerberg was consistently even-tempered and polite as a boss. Transcript: Sam Parr I went to St. Louis recently for Easter and Jesse Puget invited me to go walking around. Jesse’s from St. Louis. He’s like, hey, do you want to come to my office? We’ll go for a walkout. I’m going to bring my friend. So he brings his friend and I start talking to his friend. His friend is named Dave Wehner. Dave was the CFO, or now he’s the chief strategy officer, but he was the CFO of Facebook for the last 15 years. And we were walking around just like we were all like St. Louis guys. And he’s just telling great stories. Dave was telling great stories. I guess I’ll call him Dave now. He’s my buddy. And it was pretty cool. He was saying some cool stuff. Nothing confidential, just cool antidotes. And he told the story about meeting Jeff Bezos one time. Dave used to work at the Sun Valley Conference Company, Allen& Co. And he has been able to meet these ballers forever. He’s been, I think, the CFO of Facebook for 15 years. And before that, he was hanging out with Titans of industry. And I was asking him, I was like, who’s cool? Who’s not cool? Just messing around. And he was like, I met Jeff Bezos a couple times. And he’s one of the only titans of industry who I’ve ever met. When he looked me in the eye, he was never looking around to see who else was in the room. And he was like, I was a little kind of a small fry compared to all the people who could be around. He looked me straight in the eye, and I totally felt like we were connecting and being buddies. And he was always really calm and really nice to me. And he never was trying to be like, all right, nice to talk to you. Now I got to go talk to Putin. And that’s what this guy Dave told me. Well, who the hell does like… It was a crazy happy hour. Who does Jeff Bezos talk to i don’t know like who’s he like itching to like go to i don’t even know um isn’t that crazy i get i get to go on a walk and hang out with this guy what do you say about Zuck he said he’s a pleasure to work for i swear to god he said he’s even tempered i’m not joking this sounds like i’m brown nosing he said he’s even tempered. He’s like, man, he’s been a great boss. Like he’s been, he’s never like, uh, is, uh, lashes out. He has always even tempered. He’s very polite and, uh, that he’s just been great. He’s, I mean, Dave’s worked there, I think for 15 or 18 years. I forget exactly how long, but for a long time, Dave, (Time 0:46:40)
  • The Art Of The Deal Reads Like Motion As Strategy
    • Shaan Puri read The Art of the Deal to understand Donald Trump’s negotiating style during current geopolitical tensions.
    • He found the opening vivid because Trump frames dealmaking as art and describes a day as nonstop short calls, improvisation, and keeping options open. Transcript: Shaan Puri I don’t like to follow a lot of world events and news or whatever, but when there’s a possible World War III, it probably, it gets, it goes above the, above the, above the bar and you start To pay a little bit of attention to it. And so I was like, I don’t really understand what he’s negotiating with Iran about. I’m not totally certain. So I bought, I bought the art of the deal. I was like, I’m going to read the art of the deal to try to understand what is the, what is the strategy here? What’s going on? What did you learn? Have you ever actually read The Art of the Deal? Sam Parr No. No, I’ve read books on him, but not that one. Shaan Puri You got to read it, dude. The first 20 pages of The Art of the Deal, cinema. Absolute cinema. So the way he writes the book, the beginning of the book, so just check this out. This is the first paragraph of the book. I don’t do it for the money. I’ve got enough, more than I’ll ever need. I do it to do it. Deals are my art form. Other people paint beautifully on a canvas or write wonderful poetry. I like making deals, preferably big deals. That’s how I get my kicks. Most people are surprised by the way I work. I play it very loose. I don’t carry a briefcase. I try not to schedule too many meetings. I leave my door open. You can’t be imaginative or entrepreneurial if you’ve got too much structure. I prefer to come into work each day just to see what happens. And then he talks about how, how he’s like the, the first 20 pages are just, yeah, that’s cool. Sam Parr If you’re running, you know, a privately held company. Yeah. Shaan Puri But, but you can see he’s just doing the same shit. I just do it to do it. Uh, you know, I play it loose, show up and see what happens. And so he, he goes like, it’ll be like nine. He basically says like, I do 50 to a hundred phone calls a day. Most don’t last more than 15 minutes. I just work the phones all day. And so it’s like 9am, you know, Lee Ioka called, you know, 915, my broker called, we got a, we got a million dollars of Hilton stock. People think I’m going to do a takeover. Honestly, I don’t know. I might just sell it. If it’s a profit, I might take over the whole company. I’m keeping my options open right now. I feel like there’s more value there, but then again, a nice profit is a nice profit. I hang up the phone. We decided that we’ll call back again this afternoon. And he just goes call after call of like, you know, the permitting guy called, said, we’re not going to get the permit. It’s, you know, like whatever, like it’s pissing me off. I got to call, I got to call this other guy to see if I can get the permits through. He owes me a big one, a big one from the old Atlantic City deal that we did. You know, it’s, he’s just going like kind of deal by deal, call by call for the first 20 minutes. It’s honestly pretty fascinating. And like, I think he ghost wrote the book. I don’t think he wrote it, but the style of it. Sam Parr The ghost writer like talks mad trash about him. Shaan Puri He was like, I haven’t spent all this time with him. The style of it though is very unique. Like I actually really enjoy the like stylistic way. Sam Parr It seems like, you know, his personality, even if he’s not the one writing it. I read a book that was written about him and they’re basically said like starting at the age of 25, or I forget when, they’re like, he didn’t have an office in Manhattan, but he had a limousine. And he would just drive to city, where the mayor is. I forget. What’s it called? City? City Hall. City Hall, sorry. And he would just start badgering people. And then he would go to properties that were selling and start badgering them. And he just went from place to place to place every single day, just driving around. And he’d be like, I got to go back to my office. But he didn’t have an office. He just would drive around from place to place to place. And in doing that, he just kind of created motion, kind of created a handful of things. And it was just like this insistent, like nagging almost. I don’t know what you’d call it, but it’s like, all right, is that it? Shaan Puri If that ain’t it, I don’t know what it is. (Time 0:52:50)