The $150B dollar business hiding in plain sight

19:01I tried, tried until I figured it out. and my daughter has a different one. That's really beautiful. And then we have one that's like for like the idea of gifts. So I told them, I was like, I was like, yeah, like everybody has like some gifts that you were given. And my son loves like Pokemon and things like this. He kind of understands the idea that like super, you have a superpower and like every, every character he watches in a show has like a special power. I'm like, yeah, like, well, you have one too. He's like, really? What's mine? And I'm like, well, yours is that you're this. And I just get to declare, I give them a reputation to live up to.

19:30You know, one that they're today quite inconsistent in, but there's moments. And all I do is I just highlight those moments. I pretend the inconsistencies don't exist. And I just keep reinforcing that until it's their identity. And I do that for each of them individually. And then one of the downsides is like, I make one sound so good. I'm like, Dwight, can I just say that the other one has the same? Because then it feels less special. I have to give the other one equally those, but you can also do, you know, it's a little tricky. It's not perfect, but man, this shit works. It is really powerful.

19:58And so there's a version of that that's completely non-business related, but in creating this like family dynasty idea of how do you instill a culture first in the home before you ever try to go do it, you know, in the office.

20:12Sam Parr:And I think the likelihood that anyone's children will ever want to work in their business is very low. And so like, if that even happens, I think, and they get along, that's like a miracle. And so what I've noticed, that is important. Also, creating long-term trust. So I talked about this a little bit with the Hearst organization, Hearst Company, which owns like GQ, it's like a famous magazine they own, but they also own like a hundred businesses that you've never even heard of. And they, including like, they own half of ESPN or whatever. And one of William Randolph Hearst, one of his great inventions was he created this trust within the family that was pretty ironclad and it was very long-term thinking.

20:48Trust like an actual legal trust or you mean trust like the feeling?

20:52Sam Parr:Legal trust. So for example, for him, it was like, you cannot dispute this trust. And if you do dispute it, you're out of the will. And the trust basically just says that Hearst, I don't forget the exact number, but Hearst hypothetically will have eight board seats. Family members are always two. I think it was like, you cannot argue with how much money you receive. Money is given out equally. If you want more profits, you cannot argue about it. If you do argue about it, you're out. Things like that. He did these things that were quite good in terms of making it last for a long time. Same with John Rockefeller.

21:24Sam Parr:He did that the same way. One of the great things about reading about John Rockefeller, he was this madman businessman. Think of Jeff Bezos, a polite guy, but like a ruthless businessman. His son, John, also John, he was a great dad. They were both great. He was a great dad and a great son. And they loved each other very much. And they showed a lot of mutual respect. And so what I'm noticing about a lot of this stuff, it's built on mutual respect. It's built about empowering and having these very explicit conversations. And that was a big takeaway from reading about him. Yeah, it's interesting.

21:51You got to find like these blueprints. It's kind of what I went back to when I was asking you about the long-term thing. You have to get to know your wiring to know where you're going to naturally have things come easier to you that are difficult for others. And other areas that are going to be difficult for you, and you better figure out how you're going to work around it. Either by patching up those weaknesses or getting people around you who complement those. And then you've got to learn the systems on top of it. Like, what are the habits? What are the actual systems on top of that to get the results I want?

22:21Sam Parr:But then there's like a wild card. Like, for example, I have a billionaire friend whose son is a homeless drug addict. Like they've tried numerous times to get this kid on the right path to the point where they're like, we're either, we just got to let you figure it out. And unfortunately that might mean death, but like it's a very challenging, tragic situation. The family crest didn't help. Yeah, like it's pretty crazy. You could have, I think, what's the phrase? You're the happiest of your saddest kid. Yeah, you're only as happy as your saddest child, yeah. Hey, let's take a quick break. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, everyone's aligned, and you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create all the content?

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23:19Sam Parr:I went on this rant about phrases and why they're really important, the phrases we tell ourselves. So for example, using the phrase, I might as well, where it's like, well, I've already eaten bad today. I might as well eat. That's just a convenient phrase. You should not might as well do that. It is what it is, is my favorite one. It is what it is, is the complete surrender of power, of agency, of anything. It is what it is. Just replace it with, just say, it is what I make of this. So then you say, all right, well, what am I going to make of this? You know, like it is what it is. It's crazy. Can I tell you about a phrase that you're unfortunately need to know about and you're going to see everywhere online?

23:59Sam Parr:I also want to rebrand it. So this thing is called the Jevons paradox. Have you heard of the Jevons paradox? It's not even a paradox. A paradox means like, an example of a paradox is like, can God heat a burrito so hot that even he can't eat it? Like this is more like, like... What's that paradox called? The retards paradox? That's a paradox. This isn't even a paradox. It's just like an economic principle. Okay, okay. Let me read the actual definition. An economic principle stating that as technology makes use of a resource more efficiently, the total consumption of that resource actually increases rather than decreases.

24:36Okay, so as something becomes more efficient, you would think you're using less of it because you're being more efficient. But in total, you use way more of it because the demand explodes. Okay, go ahead.

24:44Sam Parr:And I'll give you a ton of examples. I want to rebrand it to Javon's paradox because... Give it a little flavor. Yeah, well, because it was created by this guy named James Jevin who was a British guy. And I think that it'd be cool to have a wonderful economic principle be created by an American brother. So I want it to be one of ours, not one of theirs. So right around the mid-1800s, James Watt creates this new thing. It's a new variation of the steam engine, which is basically the steam engine that everyone came to love and know. James Jevin was basically this guy in the 1800s. He wrote a book in 1865 called The Coal Question.

25:21Sam Parr:And he basically says, I have a feeling that because of how amazing this new steam engine is, that Britain potentially is going to get rid of all of our cheap coal and we're going to have a problem. We're going to have a coal shortage because everyone else was like, what are you talking about? The steam engine makes things significantly more efficient. Therefore, like there's only a set amount of work needs to get done. Like we're just going to use less coal. And he goes, no, brother, that ain't going to happen. We're going to use way more coal because everyone's going to want one of these steam engines.

25:49Sam Parr:And he was exactly right. And this is where things get really freaky. And this is actually what I want to talk about. It expands in a way that you cannot even comprehend. And so let me give you a really simple example. Eli Whitney, he was this guy from Yale. And he was like, I want to make it rich. I have this idea. So he goes down to the South of America. At the time, slaves would pick cotton and they would get cotton and it would take them hours to separate the seed from the cotton to the point where they could only produce about a pound a day of cotton that was usable, one person. And he comes up with this little handheld device where you can kind of like put cotton in there and kind of cranks it and it gets the seeds out to the point where one slave could produce 50 pounds of cotton.

26:29Sam Parr:They made it 50 times more efficient. And so some people were kind of happy in a weird way. They thought, okay, hey, maybe this might mean slavery won't continue to grow and that we won't import more slaves. That's kind of good. The exact opposite happened. Over the next 30, 40, 50 years, cotton got so cheap that in the South of America, particularly in Mississippi, where a lot of slavery eventually got really bad, they actually started calling it King Cotton instead of King George. And so America's best export was cotton. And it got so strong that we had to import like eight to 10 times more slaves than we currently had at that point pre-Eli Whitney in order to keep up with all this demand for cotton.

27:14Sam Parr:And one could argue that the reason why slavery in America lasted as long as it did was because of cotton and the demand. And that's one of the reasons why it was like our economic engine. And so this thing, this idea of this paradox, it's quite strong. And so the reason why it's relevant right now is because what's one product that AI is making significantly more efficient? Code. previously, code was very expensive to make. So you have to raise all this money from venture capital. You have to hire all these engineers. You got to make stuff. And hopefully three, five, 10 years, that code is actually working and makes a profit.

27:46Sam Parr:Well, Javon's paradox, it comes into play here because my opinion is this. A lot of people are saying that AI is going to put people out of work. I think it is the exact opposite. I believe that code will get more cheap, Therefore, demand will increase a significant amount to the point that we can't even understand. For example, Gutenberg invented the printing press. When he invented the printing press, people were thinking, you know, maybe people will read like two times, three times, five times more books than they're reading now. And Gutenberg, this guy creates this printing press, I believe in the 1400s.

28:24Sam Parr:And the offspring of that, like on the extreme end is this idea of the Kindle. One could even argue that like reading text on a page, like on a computer screen is like a way further down. But like it didn't make five times more books. It made like, it's infinite. Like it doesn't create like 10 times more. It's like, it creates a whole new thing. What I have noticed, I've noticed this with the cotton gin. I've noticed this with the creation of the steam engine, which then went to create the railroads, which created a massive boom in America. When technology makes a product that already has some demand more efficient, there is turmoil amongst those who are directly impacted.

29:02Sam Parr:For example, have you ever heard of the Luddites? Yeah, people who don't adopt technology. Yeah, so now it's used as an insult. Back then, it wasn't. So the history of the Luddites is basically right around when, in the Industrial Revolution, there was a machine invented that allowed people to weave cotton, sorry, wool into yarn much faster. Previously, there was like 500 ,000 or 800 ,000 people in England who did this by hand, and they were considered craftsmen. this new machine comes in. They get put out of business to the point, they create a fake character called Ned Ludd. And in England, this group of people go around smashing these new machines and it starts ruining the process of creating this new like wall to the point - And they were like, on behalf of Ned Ludd, right?

29:44Like a person that you couldn't attack because he wasn't real.

29:48Sam Parr:It was a fake person. And it was so serious that it was a capital punishment in England. So if you got caught breaking one of these machines, they would put you to death. And so this idea of like, There was like 500 ,000 or 800 ,000 people who were willing to risk their lives in order to ruin new technology. That's like the history of Luddites. But my point being is when there is a new creation, there is a subset of people that are screwed. For example, when switchboards went away in America in the 1970s, there was like 800 ,000 telephone operators, mostly women. They didn't exist. Those jobs didn't exist.

30:16Sam Parr:But in general, more technology that creates a more efficient process creates new jobs sometimes because of increased demand. Sometimes the other thing is that because there's new industries created that we can't even comprehend. And so my opinion, AI is actually going to create a net positive, not a net negative, which I previously thought. First of all, excellent monologue. Highly informed, highly entertained. I enjoyed that. You told me you were reading about the Industrial Revolution because you were trying to figure out like, history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes. What happened in the past?

30:55What did we say? What did we think then? Does that sound like what we say and think now? And what actually happened?

31:01Sam Parr:Yeah, like one that came out like 10 or 15 years ago that's now popular again that I read a while ago is called Americana. And it goes through breakthroughs in American capitalism. So like different inventions. And you'll notice that people have the same fears consistently. So let me ask a different question. One of the most dangerous things in business is to think, well, this time it's different. Those are very dangerous words. This time it's different. However, it's also dangerous to say, it'll be just like last time. You have to almost consider both possibilities. I'm not saying that, by the way.

31:34Sam Parr:What I'm saying is that human nature is human nature. And there's something special about the 30 to 60 hour a week work week that has happened for centuries. And also time and time again, there's this idea that I always come back to. I used to be a beekeeper and bees are really interesting. With bees, if you get one hive with one set of bees, you just stack that over and over and over again. Bees fill up space. They just fill up space. And the same way, whenever you've gotten a new home, anyone has experienced this. They get to this new home. They previously only had a thousand square foot. They get to a 2000 square foot.

32:07Sam Parr:They say to themselves, I'm never going to fill this place. And then magically over the next three years, they go, how do I have so much junk? That is a, like the human need to expand, to grow, to fill space is innate. It does not go away. And so that is what I'm saying is the same every single time. Not the how. I don't know how this is going to happen. That's sort of the point of my monologue is that I don't know, but I know it will happen. Yeah. And not to be too abstract here, but the one thing I don't get, or the one thing I haven't figured out with that. I buy everything you said. All this new demand will get created.

32:42We'll want code in places we didn't have code. So yeah, it'll be more efficient to get code, but net-net, you're going to have way more code, way more people creating code. In this case, if AI is so good at doing things, like AI is a technology that basically is the technology of doing work, like generic work, human work. It's like basically a model of the brain. Like who's to say that AI won't also fill those jobs? Meaning like, yes, it creates all this demand, which creates new job opportunities, new industries. But who's to say that AI also isn't the one who supplies that demand also? Because, you know, the printing press, these were more rigid technologies that could do one thing.

33:19AI is weird in that it's this like flexible general thing that can do so many things. So who's to say it doesn't also become the supply?

33:26Sam Parr:There's a few ways to look at this. The first is like, you could say, well, is this going to be like hot water? So for example, when hot water was invented, this idea that you could like take showers every day like a king. Like that was incredible. And so hot water surged and water heaters were put in every home in America. But you know what happened? We sort of figured out how much hot water we need. Like we don't actually need that much hot water today than we did like 50 years ago. So it took off and then it kind of got flat, right? But another example is electricity. When electricity was invented, it basically became like a base unit of measurement for life where if physics dictates, if it can exist in physics, there's a way that you can uniquely use electricity to make it happen.

34:11Sam Parr:I think potentially code is going to be like that, where it's going to be a unit, a measurement, where you can find infinite ways to get done what you need to get done. And I do not think that it's going to be like water, where it's going to be like, all right, we figured it out. We don't really need that much more hot water. Well, why are you saying code instead of like intelligence? I'm just kind of working through this, to be honest. Like I'm still like, but I was trying to think of like, that's like a unit. Intelligence is, I don't understand how to like quantify it. But now this is actually interesting to you potentially.

34:42Sam Parr:There is always a point of turmoil with these new technologies. And I've been trying to actually break down, is there like a formula that you can figure out? Will the economy boom? Well, I think it will. I think that's inevitable. But like, how long will it take? So for example, the railroads came about and there's like this weird chart that if you look at like how many railroad tracks were laid and how the average person's protein consumption went up. Because like what the railroads did was they made America smaller and it created like towns that didn't exactly have to be where they were anymore.

35:17Sam Parr:And it created this massive like booming economy. However, it took 50 years because we had to create railroads, which is a very labor intensive thing. We had to create steel, which was like entirely new invented. And so there's this equation where it's like the breadth of the technology, meaning how many people does it impact, multiplied by the intensity of how it impacts you, multiplied by the time of co-invention, and that equals the length of turmoil that someone will go through. With ChatGBT growing as fast as it has, there is a world where the tumultuous period is relatively short compared to past breakthrough technologies.

35:56And if you knew the turmoil, either when, how, or how long, what would you do with it? Because you said there's like an opportunity. What's the opportunity?

36:05Sam Parr:Like if you knew that like the, like it's only going to take us three to five years to like figure this thing out to where we're humming again, you can make bets on that. Yeah. Actually, you know, one of the kind of Jevons paradox plays over the last few years has been NVIDIA because what a lot of people thought is, hey, people are buying these GPUs, but each training run, each algorithmic improvement that the labs are making is going to make you need less and less of these GPUs in order to train these models. And Jensen went on TV saying was he was like, you're right, the training is going to become more efficient but the inference is going to go up by 1 million percent or whatever, 1 million X and people are like 1 million X and he's like 1 million X And it's kind of what you were saying at the beginning, which is that when these things do diffuse, the demand goes up, not by like some kind of easy to understand percentage or multiple, but like in a mind boggling way.

37:08Where, you know, from the time of the printing press to now, like if you were trying to market size, how many people will create text and how many people will read text, you couldn't have thought of Twitter, right? Twitter would have broken your brain. It didn't make any sense, but that's kind of what happens. And so he's been saying that about inference, which is like when you query AI, when you use AI to do something, you use inference. And he's like, inference is going through, people don't understand how big the inference need is going to be for the world. It's mind boggling.

37:40Sam Parr:I think what's going to happen over the next six months is, and this is partially for a listener, because I think you potentially might know this, is I think the popular smart people, which I think we're relatively popular. I don't think I'm that smart. But I think the popular smart people, the narrative is going to change. It's not, and this is, and it's self-serving to have this narrative, particularly if you're a president or whatever. But the narrative is going to change. This is going to be a massive net positive and they're going to cite Javon's paradox and they're going to excite everything that I've just said, which isn't particularly unique.

38:14Sam Parr:And nothing I'm saying is unique. Dude, I see this all the time. It's like, yeah, this is going to be great for you if you make it great for you. People are just sitting back as like the recipient of this. And it's like, is this hand going to slap me or is it going to put, you know, grapes in my mouth? And it's like, well, it depends. Like it depends what you do. Are you learning how to use this shit? Are you paying attention to what's going on? Are you thinking about how you can use this in your field? Are you talking to smart people? Are you moving where the puck is going or not? Like, I feel like people are so passive about like what's going to happen as if everything is happening to you and that none of this is happening potentially for you and that you have no agency to be generative and democratize this technology for yourself.

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39:47Sam Parr:The reason I was studying the Luddites is I think that same movement is already happening right now, and it's going to continue to happen. You know, you saw like at this recent college graduation speeches, like Steve or Solomon, I forget his first name, Solomon, the CEO of Goldman, was like talking about AI and everyone was booing. Yeah, people walked out, right? The reason I'm bringing this up is if you go back and study the Gilded Age, which that's one of my favorite arrows, as well as the Industrial Revolution, it all just repeats itself. Everything's repeating itself. It's very, very, very similar over and over and over and over again.

40:22Sam Parr:This is all quite predictable. Not the time and the how is who knows, but the general trend. It's all been there, done that. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy to me that it's become a high-status thing to do to be anti-data centers and AI and things like that. It's really bizarre. But that's not fair. I don't think that's fair. I don't think we should dismiss it. I think they're stupid. I understand their sentiment. Can you imagine being 21 years old? First of all, if you're 21 years old, you fucking graduated high school during COVID. That sucks, okay? The world changed dramatically over the last four years, the point where you were expecting to get a job at Deloitte or as a law clerk or whatever, and they're like, nah, we don't need you, dog.

41:08Sam Parr:There is anger, which I understand, but I think that the way that they act is dumb. You're asking me to put my mind in the mind of a loser and I just can't do it. It's just not possible to do this. The loser thing is just not acceptable in my mind and I'm sorry, I just don't have the ability. Maybe you can. Maybe you can go in the mind of a loser, but I simply can't. I think they're wrong, but I have empathy for it. I understand that feeling and I think they're stupid.

41:37Sam Parr:Dude, there was one point where like ATMs had just gotten invented and these people who were like the bank tellers. Bank tellers. It was like a big deal. That was like a big job. And they revolted. They were like, F this. You're going to put us out of business, this or that. And do you know what happened? Way more banks went up. Way more banks were created or branches, like physical locations, way more. And so I just think if I'm telling these young people, I would say it might suck for a minute. Dude, if you're young, you have no excuse. Okay, I can get it if you're like 65 and you're 75 years old or whatever, and you're like, oh my God, there's a lot of change.

42:15It's gonna be really hard. I've been running my business. It's pretty difficult for me to reinvent right now. Like I have a lot more understanding for that. If you're 18, 19, you didn't know anything anyways. You know, hop on this train. This train is exciting. This training has like so much room to run. You know, you sort of have to look at the counterfactuals, right? So you might say, well, it's going to be harder than ever to get a job or this or that. It's also true that more people than ever are going to create new things. More people than ever are going to become successful. More people than ever are going to become millionaires out of this.

42:44And so it's entirely possible to have that result if you choose, if you do the actions that will get you to that result. So I guess I just have very little empathy for like the younger folks. This should be easier, come more naturally for them. they have less invested and less sunk costs and less rigidity of the past to even like be tied down to. So I don't really understand that. And the other side is like, is this serving you? Like, is that attitude serving you in any way? Like, forget arguing who's right and who's wrong. Like, at some point you just have to ask, does this belief serve me or not?

43:18And I don't believe that that belief serves you. I also don't believe that you can control it. Just like Ned Ludd and the Luddites found out, it didn't matter how many windows you smashed This shit's happening. It's like getting mad at the weather. It's like, it's going to rain whether you shake your fist at the sky or not. Like, you have zero chance of slowing down AI. The AI freight train has left the station. It is happening. And so all you should really worry about is what you can control, which is your reaction and response to the new playing field. Trying to argue that the new playing field is bad is sort of stupid to me.

43:53It's like, again, like yelling at the weather. You don't get to have a say in that side of things. The New York, who is it, the governor, the mayor, whoever it was, that was proudly like, we have banned data centers in New York State. They were so happy about it. Politics is already very performative, but man, taking so much smug pride in banishing the technology that's going to create where all the growth is coming from in the economy is sort of silly.

44:25Sam Parr:And one that's being popularized now is data centers use electricity and use water. And I actually have no idea if that's true or not true. But whenever I see these things, I'm like, we should actually learn if that's the reality. Because I have a feeling that like the Super Bowl is significantly more inefficient than a data center. And yet we celebrate that. Anybody who has this feeling and you're like, man, Sean's really not empathizing with my, this guy's being a jerk about this. He doesn't understand how hard it is right now for me. Just watch this clip. You just need to watch this clip of this guy with no legs completing the last man standing race, which is like this insane 26-hour fitness event.

45:08And he's crawling. He's pulling his wheelchair through the mud using his arms, finishing this race. And anybody who's got an it is what it is attitude, go watch this on loop. This should be your commencement speech instead of just sitting there smug and walking out of it because some guy said two letters you didn't like. I usually think of Sacagawea and Lewis and Clark.

45:31Sam Parr:That's mine. In moments like this. I think, look, they walked across an unknown territory for two years with a three-month-old baby. They could do that and that baby still lived. I can do this. That's what I need. Actually, that should be a service when you're in Disneyland as a dad and it's like hour seven and it's so hot. The kids are crying cranky after you spent$1 ,000 taking them to the happiest place on earth. And you're pushing the stroller and you've got the turkey leg dripping down your arm, the juice of that thing. And you just hate your life. You need the Sacagawea example. Yeah. That's what you need.

46:09Sam Parr:Look, kids, the story of Moby Dick is real. These guys floated across America on a raft for 90 days before they were discovered. Okay? If they could do that, we can get to McDonald's without crying. Can I tell you a very inspiring entrepreneurial story, just to leave on a high note? Have you ever heard about the Ice King? Frederick Tudor, you know this guy? Not personally. All right, so Frederick Tudor. So this guy is known as the Ice King. This guy, basically, he lives in the northeast of the U.S. So he lives near like Boston or something where it gets cold. And, you know, Boston gets cold in the winter.

46:46There's tons of ice. and he realizes, he learns that in South America, they never have snow and they never had ice. And so he has this brilliant entrepreneurial idea. He's like, I'm gonna sell ice to the South Americans. And this is pre-refrigeration, pre the freezer being invented, right? So he basically goes out wherever there's like a frozen lake and he would get blocks of ice and he would figure out how to transport it on boats to South America and go try to sell this stuff. And he was like, I will sell, I'm not selling ice. I'm selling winter. And people are like, how are you going to even transmelting?

47:22And he's like, so he starts getting in the lab and he uses wool to wrap that. He realizes like, oh, I can cover it with sawdust and sawdust will preserve this ice for like a little longer. And he would start the thing with like 200 pounds of ice. And by the end, he would have like, you know, 70 pounds left, but he would still sell that 70 pounds. And then when he got there, people didn't understand what to do with the ice. He would sell the ice. And then people would come back complaining, being like, it melted, dude. He's like, what are you talking about? That's what it does. It's ice, it's hot outside.

47:50They didn't get it. And he's like, okay, I just got on this boat for like a month and brought them ice and they didn't want it. I have to get them to want it. I have to build the desire in their mind. And so he goes and he figures out what's the key product? What's my hero product here? He's like, I need to sell cold drinks on a hot day. So he goes to the bartenders and he says, look, I'm gonna chip you off a little ice here. This is free for you, but you need to start serving rum, cold in a chilled drink. And so he gets the bartenders free ice. They start giving people ice out of the cold drinks.

48:22And guess what? Once you've had cold rum, you never want to go back to that warm piss again. And so the demand starts to get built. People start to want ice. And this guy builds this amazing trade. He pioneers new methods of refrigeration and freezing in order to transport the ice and ultimately puts himself out of business because people realized, oh, wait, we can just freeze water and make ice ourselves? and then the ice trade kind of collapsed. But Frederick Tudor for a day was the man.

48:48Sam Parr:I'm also always interested how you got interested in this because sometimes those stories are equally as good. So me and Diego, who's right over here, five feet away from me, one of the things we do is we try to read as many books as we can. And so he's been reading this book called The Medici Effect. So this was one of his stories. And I was like, wow, that's an incredible story. I'm happy you're reading books now. That's condescending, but I like it. I appreciate it. I did not say that. I mean, I said what I just said, but you previously said that you normally don't make it past the table of contents.

49:21I don't know. I think you said that. I buy the book with great enthusiasm, and I really don't even open them. I've actually, you'll appreciate this. I'm creating a bookshelf, so you'll see my office is going to change soon. So I'm creating a bookshelf that is like a Trello board. So it's basically a progress bar bookshelf. So I have all the books I bought. That's my icebox, my pipeline. and then a book moves into like the reading phase and then it moves physically into the completed phase and then there's the hall of fame of like great books, which will be like the few, the rare, the ones I would actually recommend to anybody else.

49:53Sam Parr:It's sort of like one time Steph Smith told me she invented a water bottle that reminds her to drink more water. And I was like, just chug the water. Just sit down and read the book. Are you sure my bookshelf not being a progress bar has not been the thing holding me back? That's what I've been telling myself. So my old boss, Emmett, from Twitch, he would tell me this because I have a tendency to do this where I will over-architect a solution to something. And I will convince myself that this elaborate way will be the solution instead of the obvious. And so he would just listen to me talk. And I would tell him for 15 minutes what I'm, this great idea I have.

50:33And then I'd be like, it's great, right? and then he would say, simply, he'd go, have you tried solving the problem? He's like, have you tried actually just solving the problem? And then he would say things like, the only way out is through, Sean. And I was like, oh, wow. I was like, yeah, I'm kind of an idiot. He goes, no, actually, he goes, I'm a partner at YC and this is the most common advice I give to YC startups. They'll say exactly what they're planning to do and then I'll ask them, have you tried solving the problem? then they'll be like, what? And it's his like shock value way of reminding you that like in many situations, the only way out is through and you're trying to find a way around.

51:14Sam Parr:There is no around, there's only through. I waste so much time like charging my AirPods, looking for the holster to hold my iPhone, making sure that like this. And I'm like, dude, you're just going for like a 30 minute run. I will buy, I will, I do this the other day. I was going for a run. I door dashed, you know, the little arm plastic, like blood pressure monitor where you put your phone. and I was like well I certainly couldn't run without my phone so I guess I'll just wait 45 minutes for this thing to arrive before I go for my four hour four minute run I was gonna run half a mile I do the same shit all the time it's one song I could have just hummed it

51:58Sam Parr:what was it like come my lady come come my lady you're my butterfly Sean's like running. Is this guy singing Hoobastake to himself? Why do people listen to us? Why do they listen to us? That's the pod.

52:27All right, let's take a quick break to talk about a podcast. Because if you're listening to this, you like podcasts. And what's better than one podcast? Another podcast. And let me tell you, another podcast you should check out. It's called Success Story. If you like hearing about different success stories and hearing Q &A sessions with successful business leaders or hearing keynote presentations or just checking out conversations about sales and business and marketing tactics, this is a great podcast for you. So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.