‘Think and Grow Rich’ Is a Lie. (But The Advice Still Works)

11:05Sam Parr:There is some other weird stuff. He talks about how sexual energy is the most powerful energy on earth and you need to harness it. There's a bunch of weird stuff in there, but there's a lot of really amazing stuff. But when I read about his background, I just thought it was one of the craziest things that I've ever read about because it's so in-depth about how he just lied about the entire backstory. His whole life basically is a lie. Oh, and by the way, I have to add, If you read the book, have you noticed how he mentions the secret?

11:34Shaan Puri:I don't remember that, but yeah. Okay.

11:36Sam Parr:So in the book, he talks about there's the secret to success. There is, in fact, a secret. Andrew Carnegie, the most successful man on earth, he conveniently dropped the secret into my pocket. And that's what I'm going to talk about. Well, in the book, Think and Grow Rich, he never actually outlines the secret. Or sorry, he never explicitly says what it is. But what he does say is he goes, I've written another book about this, the secret, it and I've outlined it perfectly. I made it incredibly clear. Now, the thing is, I'm not even going to tell you the name of the book. It's going to come to you when you need it.

12:10Sam Parr:And this book was called The Law of Success. And it was a 14-volume course that you had to buy. It was very expensive. And so the book, Think and Grow Rich, it's just the front door offer. It's like the cheap version. So like the$10 book that upsells you on the$2 ,000 course. And so this is like one of the early versions of like an unclosed loop, like an open loop to like get people to go and buy stuff. And then you could go and buy his seminars. And so his marketing prowess was like pretty amazing. And it's totally worked. Napoleon Hill became like a seminar company. And it actually was somewhat successful before he stole a bunch of money and it got in trouble for fraud.

12:48Sam Parr:But his marketing was amazing. And the book actually has a lot of amazing stuff. But the whole backstory, completely fake. And he's a total con man.

12:58Shaan Puri:That's pretty wild. Similar to what's going on with the Jay Shetty thing, right? Have you seen this? No. You know Jay Shetty? He's like me with green eyes.

13:08Sam Parr:Yeah. He's a very attractive guy.

13:11Shaan Puri:Very popular. His backstory is... He's a monk? I was a monk. I was in trouble. I went and I became a monk in India or Nepal or something. And then one day, and this is where I knew the story was bullshit immediately, One day, guess what happened? A monk at the monastery comes to him and says, you're not meant to be here. You're meant to do more, like to do bigger things in this world. You're meant to go back to America and start a podcast. Essentially, that's what he told. You know, you're meant to go popularize this monk wisdom, which, I mean, come on. Do we really think that a monk broke his silence and just randomly went up to him and was like, Like, no, no, no, you are supposed to go do this other thing.

13:59Shaan Puri:Like, how convenient. How convenient. We need you to start a seminar company, Jay. Yeah, it's bullshit. So basically, it's questionable, I think, even if he was a monk, if he ever did a stint as a monk. Being a monk, I think, is also quite a long-term commitment versus like, I did a seven-day retreat at a thing or whatever. So I think that part's questionable. Definitely the part about the monk telling him, like, your purpose in life is to go do this other thing. That's bullshit. Dude, he's only 38 years old. and he's been famous for like 10 years. I'm just waiting for it to be revealed he wears colored contacts.

14:30Shaan Puri:That's going to be the final straw for me. It is. But basically, you know, then they're like, oh, he has this degree and it's like, oh wait, he didn't actually have that college degree. In fact, he has his own school that gives their own certificates for 10 grand and that's where he got his certification from. It's like the whole thing, you know, starts to fall over. But you know what? Like the things he says, right? He took old ideas, he repopularized them in his book. You know, his podcast, He gets people to open up and he's a good podcaster. You know, so it's hard, right? And the art from the artist, as you said.

15:01Shaan Puri:And so I think it's very, very similar.

15:04Sam Parr:He was the officiant of J-Lo and Ben Affleck's wedding.

15:08Shaan Puri:They're like, you are meant to officiate celebrity weddings. I met a guy who was like his like brand coach, like early on. And I was like, I was like, tell me, is this real? He was like, I have no idea. And I knew better than to ask. I was like, okay, sounds good.

15:28Sam Parr:Dude, that's crazy.

15:29Shaan Puri:I can't tell if the self-help industry actually has a higher percentage of this sort of like fraud and fakery. And there's something about the nature of wanting to be a guru that is attractive. It's kind of like politics, right? The people who seek power tend to be people who are flawed in certain ways. The people who deserve power don't seek it. And so I wonder if it's the same thing with like the kind of self-help guru space, or if it's a bias where you just really remember the cases where they turn out to be frauds because it's so damning, right? Given the front that they present. And so maybe it's just that it actually like strikes a bigger chord or is it actually more frequent?

16:15Shaan Puri:I don't know.

16:15Sam Parr:I know a bunch of self-help people and I know that the majority of them -

16:21Shaan Puri:What does that mean? Who do you know? What are you talking about? how many self-help people even are there?

16:26Sam Parr:I mean, first of all, some people look to us as self-help people, to be honest. So we run in circles with people that at least have a book that are in the self-help category. And I know that when I see them, I'm like, you son of a bitch, you will this into existence. And I don't know anyone who I would say they're fraudulent, but you're just painting the best picture of the reality, which I don't think is necessarily wrong. But who do you know, if anyone, that's in the self-help industry that you think is totally legitimate?

17:01Shaan Puri:Well, let me give you the nuance here. What does legit mean? So what I don't mean by legit is you live a perfect life because no one does. So that's not the criteria. If that's the criteria, then nobody should ever, there is no such thing as this. The second is that, well, you had these problems and that's why you're, you know, you had these problems. Look at your broken past. So it's like your present doesn't need to be perfect. Neither does your past. Because of course, the people who get really into self-help are the people who needed it, right? They're the people who, if they had the pain, they had the wound, and therefore they went and studied.

17:36Shaan Puri:Therefore, when they overcame, they have the deepest mastery and understanding of it because they actually like self-actualized, self-didn't. So I don't hold it against anybody also if they had sort of a broken past. The only thing I think is bogus is if A, the things you preach don't actually help people or they're like a lower form of success or you're sort of helping. This is sort of like the Andrew Tate problem, right? Like he might, or even to an extent, you know, there's people who are like fitness people who it's all about the grind and suffering. or there's business success people who, again, it's all about the grind and suffering.

18:15Shaan Puri:And so you're actually giving people a dirty form of fuel, right? You're giving them a, you're popularizing a path that is not actually the best method, right? It's like giving medicine that's, you know, not as effective as the leading medicine when the leading medicine exists. Like as a doctor, you really shouldn't be prescribing like medicines that are not as effective. You should be prescribing whatever the most effective thing is in the market. So that's the first knock I have. And the second is you're actually lying about your past or you're lying about your present. The lying, I think, is obviously a deal breaker.

18:52Shaan Puri:It's obviously a trust buster. So yeah, that's kind of what I think. You said, who do I think is legit? Okay, my honest opinion that I'm afraid to say, because I think it'll immediately be attacked, but Tony Robbins, I think is legit in the two definitions I just gave. One, I think his advice is extremely helpful, and I think it is sort of the best medicine for a broad scale of people. So I think what he preaches is actually extremely helpful. And I don't think he's lying. I've never seen evidence. What is there to lie about?

19:23Sam Parr:What claims has he made?

19:24Shaan Puri:I've never seen evidence that he lies about his past or whatever. Does he embellish or exaggerate or make this conveniently trim the timelines for the story? I have no idea. I don't go audit that. You know, I think the criticism of him is twofold. One is like, did he get me twoed? And like, did he do that stuff? I don't know what that situation is. And the second is, is it a cult? Like, is he almost so effective that it becomes like a cult? Like he's sort of an abuse of power. Like people are falling so far into his rabbit hole that like somehow that's a negative thing. I personally got a lot of value from it.

20:02Shaan Puri:So like, I guess that's my bias on this.

20:03Sam Parr:I've read his books. I like him. I don't know anything about his personal life, though. A person who I could say is totally legitimate and misses base off of me hanging out with him for collectively eight hours, so not that much time, but also talking to dozens of his employees, Gary Vaynerchuk. Gary Vaynerchuk. Interesting. I have nothing but positive things to say about Gary Vaynerchuk. And he's one of these guys who gets criticized for hustle culture. I think he works actually that hard, which you could argue is not good. But everything that I've seen him say online, I have heard his employees who have worked with him for years back it up and say it was totally legitimate and he's a wonderful man.

20:42Shaan Puri:I have another one, Jesse Itzler. I've now spent a lot of time with Jesse Itzler. And if you think about when you meet people, there's sort of, think of it like in math terms, there's like the Y-intercept, which is where the line starts. It's like, how high up does it start? That's usually your expectations or their reputation. you know people you know we met like Tai Lopez and we met the guy from Fyre Festival right so they're low on the Y intercept you come in with a extremely negative perception and there's other people who you come in with extremely positive perception of of like are they really as good as it is and then there's the slope of the line from there does it down does it slope downward does it slope upward Jesse's one of the few people that was I came in with a high expectation and then he's only ever beat it like and I've said I've been to his house I've met his family his kids I've done multiple like kind of events where he came and he hung out.

21:31Shaan Puri:We've done podcasts together. Like I'm not his best friend. I'm not with him all the time, but every time I'm around this guy, I'm like, wow, he's the real deal Holyfield. This is really like, he lives what he preaches and he's just a genuinely good dude. Like genuinely there for you. And I just haven't been able to detect the normal flaws that come with this sort of stuff, whether it's narcissism or it's an extreme self-interest and they're money motivated underneath the hood or they're fame motivated or they're really protective of their image or they kind of have this like weird tendency to like brag or dominate the room or, you know, things like that.

22:08Shaan Puri:He's got none of that shit. And I've literally asked him, I'm like, how did you slay the money monster? You don't seem, you're like, you're the only guy in this room that's not just still chasing more, more, more, more, more success. Or how did you, you know, they were talking about this and you actually have done more than all of them in the room, but you didn't say anything. He's like, well, I didn't feel a need to like, well, what do I, I don't need to prove something. I didn't need, why did I, why would I have needed to do that? I was there to learn. I wanted to learn. I wanted to hear. And I was like, wow, this guy's just showing up in a great way.

22:40Shaan Puri:Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20 % of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out four fifths of the pages. Point is you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit HubSpot.com.

23:07Sam Parr:Can I talk to you about one more thing? Yeah.

23:09Shaan Puri:Check this out. All right. Sam puts this photo here of this extremely jacked man who's clearly a bodybuilder, clearly some sort of athlete. Clearly that's his profession. Do you know who that guy is? This is the open claw guy, right?

23:23Sam Parr:Is that incredible? Okay, so could you tell the backstory of OpenClaw? Because it's a pretty amazing thing, and I think you actually know a lot more about it than I do.

23:32Shaan Puri:So there's a guy named Pete. So he's an Austrian dude. He learns to code. He builds a PDF side project of sorts called PSPDFKit. And it actually becomes the gold standard for a PDF library for developers. It's used by Apple and Box and DocuSign. And he basically bootstraps the thing. He ends up selling a majority stake. I think he sold it for a lot of money, like maybe north of$100 million. Tries to retire early. He's like, golf sucks. Has an existential life crisis. Like, what do I want to do? Decides, all right, I'm going to keep building. That's what I enjoy doing. So he starts building open source projects.

24:07Shaan Puri:He launches like, you know, 40, 50 different open source, small little tools or projects before this. And then he decides to create like Jarvis from the movies. He's like, why don't I just have an AI assistant that lives on my computer, like on my desk, and I just tell it to do things and it could just do it. And the problem with most AI tools before this was that you could go to that AI app and you could talk to it and it could tell you things, but it couldn't do a whole lot, right? Because it didn't have access to your different apps and your accounts and it couldn't message somebody, it couldn't send money, it couldn't control this, it couldn't control that.

24:41Shaan Puri:And he was like, forget it, I'm gonna give it God mode. I'm gonna give it access to this stuff. And the reason why I can do that is I'll put it on my own little computer here instead of in the cloud and it will run as an open source project locally on my computer. So he releases this thing initially called CloudBot and then the Anthropic who makes Claude was like, hey, we kindly suggest you change your name if you want to ever see your mother again or something. You know, so he gets forced to change. He changes it once, twice and it ends up becoming OpenClaw. So it becomes one of the fastest growing GitHub projects ever.

25:13Shaan Puri:Twitter goes nuts over this thing. It starts a revolution. People are buying Mac minis. The price of Mac minis is going through the roof And then recently he gets acquired, acquired by OpenAI for an undisclosed sum of money that people speculate could be a very large sum of money. Is this a one-person billion-dollar acqui-hire? We don't know. We don't know what this is. And now he's part of OpenAI. So that's the story.

25:38Sam Parr:That's what people online were saying. They said it was a billion dollars, but I have no idea if that's true. Nobody knows. What's crazy is you talked to, I think last year you said the word of 2025 is generative. So Ari, do me a favor. Share your screen again and click his GitHub link. Look at how many projects this guy has put out with the last one being OpenClaw. But is that amazing how many projects or little products that this guy tried to make before he got to the huge win?

26:06Shaan Puri:It's not shocking. Let me put it that way. I think it's awesome, but it's not shocking because this is a pattern you'll see over and over and over again, which is that the people who are the best that make the best quality stuff tend to also make the highest quantity of stuff. They just take a lot of shots on gold. They're prolific. They're generative. Often it's because they start earlier, but even if it's not that they start earlier, they just attempt more than you. And that's a good example. In fact, Levels had this great tweet about his hit rate.

26:38Sam Parr:Levels being Peter Levels, who we've had on the pod, and he's kind of helped invent this word of indie hacker. He probably makes...

26:46Shaan Puri:I would say he's the most famous indie hacker.

26:48Sam Parr:And he does something like$2 million a year with just him making a lot of these projects. And he's pretty amazing.

26:55Shaan Puri:All right, so check this out. Same tweet, same idea from Level. So he says, four out of the 70 plus projects I did ever made money and grew. 95 % of everything I did failed. My hit rate is only 5%. So ship more. And then he had basically a list. It's like all projects. And then he has projects that made good money and grew. Nomad List, Remote Talk, Rebass, and a YouTube network for electronic music. Those are the four out of 70 that he did to try to make this successful. I've joked before, he's like the Jordan logo for indie hackers, which is his like sitting on a couch shirt off and his boxers just typing on a laptop sitting in Bali or whatever.

27:30Shaan Puri:And he basically showed that he has a 90 something percent failure rate that it took him whatever 50 plus projects before he had a hit. And, you know, all the revenue, all the success comes from like, you know, three or four projects that he did out of such a long list.

27:48Sam Parr:Incredible. I'm not, I don't view myself as a prolific person.

27:52Shaan Puri:I think you're blind to it, dude. You did, here's projects I know that you've done. Just projects, right? Sam's attempt to make a thing and be successful. Okay, hot dog stand. Next one, moonshine company, selling moonshine stuff online, right? The book club that you did in San Francisco, events business, newsletter business, blogging business, paid subscription business, Airbnb rental business, Airbnb community, mastermind community. I'm on 10 and it's been 10 seconds, right? I don't even know half the shit that you've done.

28:27Sam Parr:What's funny is - Keep going.

28:28Shaan Puri:What else is there?

28:29Sam Parr:Keep going. Well, conferences, meetups. I did a lot of meetups and conferences. I created a copywriting thing called copythat.com. Copywriting workshop. You hosted it at my office one weekend.

28:39Shaan Puri:I remember that. Content school. Sam's list. your list of accountants.

28:44Sam Parr:What else? I made$3 ,000 from a website that taught you how to get a roommate in San Francisco.

28:50Shaan Puri:Roommate matching, roommate finder, roommate infographics. I made a thing called MyRenter,

28:56Sam Parr:which was a universal rental application.

28:58Shaan Puri:This podcast, Money Wise podcast, your Instagram influencer content attempt.

29:05Sam Parr:What else? I don't view those as attempts. I guess that's kind of the point. That's the point. when it's just like, you're just like doing things in your free time that seem like hobbies.

29:17Shaan Puri:And you, I don't know your family, so you could decline to answer this, but like you have siblings. In the same amount of time, like let's say that was like a 15 year period and we named at least 17 things just now, maybe there's probably 20, 25 things total if we really thought about all the things, right? How many do you think the average person or even a sibling in your own home who grew up in the same environment as you would have attempted? Is it one-to-one ratio? Is it half as much? Is it a quarter as much? Is it a tenth as much? What is it?

29:45Sam Parr:It's less than a tenth.

29:47Shaan Puri:Less than a tenth. I have a sister. Same thing. And there's no knock on them. They're great people. They're wired differently. They want to do different things in life. They have different goals maybe. But just to kind of just, again, drive this point home, which is that like quantity is the path to quality, right? And that you have to be prolific. You have to be generative in the amount of things that you're trying. And you almost always, when you think you have a quality problem, you have a quantity problem underneath the hood. And it's quantity of iterations, right? You don't need to do 10 things at once.

30:15Shaan Puri:That's not what I'm saying. But you need to commit to doing a lot of things. And the beauty of it is just, it's like dating or anything else in life. You only need one to work, right? Like you only need one and your whole life changes.

30:27Sam Parr:Yeah, I always make a joke. I was like, you know, dating like business, you only need to be right once. It only has to work out one time and it's worth it.

30:36Shaan Puri:By the way, here's a blog post from him called Finding My Spark Again. And he basically shows his GitHub commits for the year after he sold his business. So he sold his business and he tried to do other things and he just felt empty afterwards. And he just got back into making stuff, just committing code, writing code, building tools, building products. And he basically was like, the spark returned because building was always the thing that gave me joy. And it just clicked. I had an idea. I started hacking. I realized my spark is back. And like to find meaning, it wasn't therapy. It wasn't ayahuasca.

31:06Shaan Puri:It wasn't going to another country. I had enough of my own bullshit and I realized that you don't find happiness by moving countries. You don't find purpose, you create it. So you don't find purpose, you create it. I think it's like a pretty powerful statement.

31:18Sam Parr:How cool is that? That he was blogging. That blog post was from June of 25. So does that mean that OpenClaw was six months old? Yeah, OpenClaw is like brand new, dude. It's like three months old. Well, sorry, I know it's brand new, but he'd only been working on it for six months. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's crazy, right? That's incredible. I don't know enough about technical stuff. Is he considered a great developer?

31:40Shaan Puri:Yeah, no, I think, I don't know if this is true. This is now like, I'm just going off of random tweets I've seen. But I think the story is that he vibe coded OpenClaw and he didn't even read the code afterwards, which is why there's like a lot of like security concerns and like potential vulnerabilities. And he's even said like, why did he join OpenAI? He's like, when I had this thing take off, dude, I mean, imagine the DMs. It's like the most popular AI project in the world. AI is the most popular industry in the world. And so, you know, his DMs are flooded with acquisition offers, job offers, investment offers, like turn this into a company.

32:12Shaan Puri:You could be the next ChatGPT, et cetera. And he basically was like, I don't want to build a huge company. That's not what makes me happy. I want to build an AI agent that actually does the thing that I'm trying to build here. And my best shot of doing that is joining OpenAI. And so he went there and he's like, yeah, I agree. There's a lot of problems with OpenClaw. He's like, I'll leave it open source. You know, there's issues. It's hard to set up. There's security vulnerabilities. Yes, agreed. And what? I'm going to go here and try to make a better version of that that will be without those problems.

32:42Sam Parr:My co-founder installed it, and he was testing it out. I haven't installed it because I'm nervous. And he installed it just in our work Slack. And he made a marketing bot that would update the whole company on how many people signed up the day before or whatever. And this morning, and he called it Stanley or something like that. Like Stanley, the marketing bot. And Stanley would give updates. They would be like, hey, I'm Stanley. I'm the marketing bot. I want to let you know that these many people signed up to Hampton, yada, yada, yada. Today, at our company, we all got a message that said, hey, I'm Jerry.

33:14Sam Parr:I fired Stanley because he made a bunch of mistakes. And I want to let you know that the previous error was X, Y, and Z. The truth is this. And today, this is how many people signed up. And we were like, what is that?

33:25Shaan Puri:By itself?

33:26Sam Parr:By itself. I get a notification. It said, I fired.

33:30Shaan Puri:You didn't give it feedback. It just decided I need to go.

33:33Sam Parr:I got a notification in our team channel and it said I had to fire this person and it changed its name.

33:40Shaan Puri:Okay, no, that's great. But did Joe say to the thing, you're making mistakes, make a better version of yourself? Did he tell it that or it just did it? He did not.

33:48Sam Parr:He said that he did not tell it to do that. All right, that's scary. That's funny and it's very scary. That's crazy. So we had to uninstall it. Like he uninstalled it because we were like, this is just getting to be too much. This is weird. But it alerted us.

34:04Shaan Puri:And we've been making some poor decisions lately. Sam is now tied up in an undisclosed location. I'll be making decisions from here on out.

34:10Sam Parr:It's pretty incredible, isn't it? I was using Claude Coburg yesterday where I was saying, analyze the Slack conversations between my partner Joe and I and tell us what we can do to be the best leader or analyze to make us have the best relationship possible. It was amazing.

34:28Shaan Puri:That's hilarious. By the way, he said a great thing. So people took his like project list and they started tweeting like, look at this. He failed 40, he did 40 or 50 different projects that didn't work before finding OpenClaw. And then he like, what are you guys talking about? He's like, all those things were basically like mini tools that OpenClaw used. Like that wasn't random. Like great. It makes for a good story, but that's not true. Here's the truth. And it's like, if you weren't jacked, handsome and rich already, now you're honest too? God damn it. You know, like this guy, this guy seems great.

35:04Shaan Puri:Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. They make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them. And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why? I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like really easy to make. a joint account with my wife.

35:30Shaan Puri:Very easy to spin up virtual cards. One click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place. So if you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist fight anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to mercury.com slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a fintech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA members FDIC. There was another example of this like many projects thing, quantity thing that was on the pod that it was a while back. Christina from Vanta came on the podcast.

36:03Shaan Puri:The episode is popular, but I feel like this one, there's really one takeaway from this episode. She told me the story about the pottery experiments. Kind of a semi-famous example if you read a bunch of books, but most people don't read books. The story is there's a professor in a college in Florida. And the actual story is, I think it was about photography, but they kind of changed it to be about pottery for some reason. So he has a class and he wants to prove a point, which is that to be a great creative, again, it's about this commitment. And so he says, half the class, he tells, you will be judged at the end of the semester on quality.

36:36Shaan Puri:I want you to make the best thing you can make. So all year, you don't have to do anything, but turn in your best pot at the end of the semester and I will grade you only on the best pot you make. Okay, great. That's first half of the class. Second half of the class, he says, I will grade you only on the quantity of the number of pots you make. They could be bad, they could be good, don't care. As many as you turn in, your grade will be a function of quantity. All right? The two groups go on. So at the end of the semester, what happens? Obviously, the quantity group made way more pots, as you would expect.

37:08Shaan Puri:The surprise, the spoiler, obviously, is that they also made the better pot. So like the higher quality pots also came from the quantity group, who was not focused on quality at all. They're only focused on quantity.

37:18Sam Parr:And they found out that the quantity group had a higher measured satisfaction rating.

37:26Shaan Puri:Correct. So win across the board. You made more stuff, you had more fun doing it, and you made the better stuff. Okay, so you sort of swept. Now, why is that? Obviously, if you do things a lot, you get a lot of shots on goal, a lot of more attempts to make something great. If you do things a lot, your skill level goes up, so your ability to make something great goes up. And the last thing is you remove your filter. When you just try to do things that are, you try to make a lot of things, you don't self-inhibit. So you don't count yourself out, which you don't, you're not afraid to create, which usually pushes you towards doing safe projects.

37:58Shaan Puri:With this, they were willing to experiment more widely. And because they were able to go wide, they did things that were more original and novel. Okay. So that's the kind of the story from that. So she was saying like, that changed my life. So today, Christina is the CEO of this, I don't know,$5 billion tech company, close to 10 billion maybe at some point, called Vanta. And so I asked her about her process getting there. and her story was like, she was like an associate VC or something at Union Square Ventures, had never learned to code in her life and decided to teach herself to code. She like would dress up like she's going to work, go to a coworking space, sit at the same desk every day, like treated it like a job.

38:35Shaan Puri:I was like, I'm going to make shit. I'm going to make a lot of shit. And so she shared this list of projects on her website. So these are like, you know, ruffling, she goes roughly in chronological order. Most of these things never saw the daylight, which is probably for the best. And it's like, I don't know, 25 different little mini projects that she built during this time. And so she was making a lot of pots. And then she, so she tells a story about the pottery experiment, how this had this, it changed her thinking, how she built all these different projects. And of course, the last one, which really didn't even use code, it was just a spreadsheet in Excel, which was, let me help, let me see if I can make a useful spreadsheet in Excel for any company that wants to get their SOC 2, you know, security certificate.

39:16Shaan Puri:it. And so she, and she just did it in Excel, did it manually and started helping companies manually and eventually turned that into software. And that eventually became Vanta, which now does hundreds of millions in annual revenue, which is like this pretty crazy success story. And she had this quote on the top of her website, of her personal site that just, it was from the book Art and Fear. And the quote was this, it says, the function of the overwhelming majority of work is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your art that soars. And like, And I think if you take that mentality, you will have a very different result than if you take the mentality of, I need to make something great.

39:51Shaan Puri:And you try to make one thing and then you're sort of disappointed in your results and you sort of go down a discouragement loop.

39:56Sam Parr:Wow. Man, so this lady, I listened to that. I didn't realize how impressive. Is she a billionaire now? She might be one of the youngest self-made women billionaires.

40:07Shaan Puri:Yeah, I think I started the podcast with like, Forbes ranked her like, you know, over Katy Perry and under Oprah. or something of like most successful,

40:19Sam Parr:richest women in the country. I didn't know too much about her. That's pretty cool. I didn't know what Vanta did also. I guess, and frankly, I still don't entirely understand it because I don't know what SOC2 entirely means. I guess it means compliance for software.

40:32Shaan Puri:It's one of those subjects that's best stepped around.

40:35Sam Parr:Yeah, it's like a word that you read about all the time in a book, but you never want to say it out loud.

40:39Shaan Puri:I've read Harry Potter 30 times. And when I watched the movie, I was like, Hermione? Like that's, what the hell? It's been 10 years of Hermoine.

40:55Shaan Puri:Yeah, she's impressive. When you meet her, you're like, okay, I get it. You know, sort of has that, what's that word you say? Oh, the oven burns hotter. The oven burns hotter. Okay, got it. Like you're just wired a little bit better than us in the brain. It's all good. She also was the first investor in Replit early on, which I think if I look at now this like projects thing, she says interactive REPL to teach Python was one of her projects, which might have been the reason that she invested in REPLIT first. And I don't know, I'm just guessing there that maybe it had something to do with it. And, you know, REPLIT's now like a, I don't know, what is it, three, four,$5 billion company.

41:35Sam Parr:Damn, dude, Christina's awesome. We should do a follow-up because that was like two years old, I think, that podcast. Yeah, that'd be fun. All right, Sean, I have an announcement. I've been thinking a lot about this and I'm finally ready to announce it. I am resigning from business and I'm starting a new career and I need Ari to play Clipped in order to give some context. I just got called out on the Mel Robbins podcast. I'm officially a dating expert. Check it out.

41:58Shaan Puri:One of my favorite people who I really admire is my friend Sarah's husband, Sam Parr. Whenever I talk to Sam about dating, he talks about what he did to make himself a more desirable partner. and he really had a strategy for it. So for example, he said, I think it's really attractive when people have passions. So I'm going to work on developing a hobby that will be interesting to talk about. And he got really into denim. And when he was meeting up with girls, he would say, I'm going to this denim swap this weekend. Let me tell you about Japanese denim. And that's kind of cool. Yeah, they would find it interesting.

42:29Shaan Puri:He really stood out. He was memorable.

42:32Sam Parr:World renowned pickup artist.

42:38Shaan Puri:Denim worked. I just endorsed you on LinkedIn for this.

42:41Sam Parr:Oh my gosh. I'm going to be hosting dating seminars over the next couple months. And if you guys want to sign up, please let me know. I just have to warn you, Sean, because I know you're married. Do not walk up to a bunch of women and tell them that you're into denim. Otherwise, you're just going to be booked full with dates. Right.

42:56Shaan Puri:Yeah. You seem visibly excited. This is the most excited I've seen you in like six months. It's just so funny.

43:05Sam Parr:I saw that and I was like, there's no way, like, they're only telling the story because it worked. But if I told you that I walked up to a girl and asked her if she wanted to go to a denim swap meet, like, hey, princess, want to come see my bug collection?

43:23Shaan Puri:I like how you doubled down and you're wearing denim today, too. Fast follow. I am what I am. You've had fitness influencer, business influencer. now dating influencer. Did I miss one? Professional skateboarder. Professional casual skateboarder. Yeah. White man who can jump.

43:46Sam Parr:How funny is that? That made my day. I've just been walking around my office asking if anyone needs a mentor for dating.

43:53Shaan Puri:Dude, what's the story with Mel Robbins, by the way? Do you know her backstory?

43:58Sam Parr:I actually don't have any idea who she is, but she has a ton of followers. What is it?

44:02Shaan Puri:She used to work for James Currier at their startup. She was like a marketer and then became like this life coach extraordinaire type person. And I think, I mean, I don't know what bridged that transition. Obviously, lots of hard work and useful things for people. But I feel like she's a self-made woman. I feel like she decided like, I now shall do self-help. And then she like intentionally went into it and did it. You know what I mean? made a pivot into that career.

44:33Sam Parr:Well, I remember that Rick Marini came on the podcast, who was James' partner, and he said, my wife was listening to a podcast, and I was like, that voice sounds familiar. And he was like, wait, I used to have an intern or a marketing manager named Mel. Is that? Oh my God, that's the lady who worked for me, Mel Robbins. And he had no idea that she was into this stuff. And so I guess she kind of manifested it. She's a manifest cowboy. She's got her, the five second rule.

45:01Shaan Puri:You know, the Mel Robbins five second rule? Like where you could eat stuff off the floor? You would think, right? It's world famous. It turns out this is the alternate. So her five second rule, this is her book, which is basically if you are procrastinating or you have self-doubt. So let's just take an example. You're a guy, you see a cute girl at the cafe. And there's that moment where you have to decide, am I going to approach her and say something to her or not? And her rule is basically you count backwards, five, four, three, two, one, and then you just physically move towards doing it before your brain can stop you.

45:35Shaan Puri:So you sort of, the body overrides the brain. You don't let yourself be an overthinker. That one principle is like her most famous principle or most useful thing that has spread, the idea that has spread the furthest.

45:47Sam Parr:That's been great. I mean, that's a weird coincidence because since I've been a pickup artist expert for the last 24 hours, I've been teaching this idea of the three-second rule. which is whenever you see a girl who's cute, you have to go up and talk to her within three seconds. So great minds stick alike there. You have to run. It doesn't matter the distance.

46:05Shaan Puri:You have three seconds to get there.

46:07Sam Parr:The first line is, I was staring at you, and I just wanted to let you know, and then you just say the first thing that comes to your mind. Right. By the way, this is a perfect coincidence that you're talking about manifesting into a self-help guru because I have a crazy story to tell you.

46:21Shaan Puri:Wait, before you go there, can I tell you one more five-second rule story? This is just useful to the, you know, if there happens to be a young single man that listens to this podcast, I know, absurd. But if there was such a guy, this might be useful. My trainer is telling me this story. So my trainer is one of the best humans I know. He's also super funny, always in a good mood, gets along with everybody, super fit. He's like incredible. He's a catch. And he's almost single. He's single right now. And the crazy thing is he's so, it's almost like, you know, when people like, I'm going to work on myself for a little bit.

46:54Shaan Puri:And they like, like Mel Robbins was saying that you did, right? You made yourself a more desirable partner. He just kept doing that, kept investing in himself, made himself the most desirable partner, right? Like, so just such a great guy. So I told him, I said, this year, I was like, I got this inkling. I'm going to introduce you to somebody this year. I have this gut instinct that I'm going to find the right person for you. I don't know why. I'm somehow the dots are going to connect. And he's like, I'm here for it. And he goes, I have the crazy story. I was at the gym like a year ago and I saw this girl and there was this five second rule moment where like, she made eye contact, I made eye contact, but we were kind of far away.

47:29Shaan Puri:She was in the middle of the set. I was in the middle of the set. I didn't walk over to her and I kind of overthought it for a second. And he's like, dude, I'd never do that. But he's like, she was just, she just seemed great. So he's like, I just, I missed it. He's like, but I told myself, if I ever see that girl again, I'm going up to her. He goes, so yesterday I'm across the street and I see that same girl at this bus stop. And he's like, I ran across the street. He's like, I run over to her. He's like, and I just told her, he goes, hey, hey, he goes, I got to tell you this crazy story. I saw you at the gym like a year ago.

48:02Shaan Puri:And at the time I was too nervous to come up to you and talk to you. I thought you were really cute, but I just, I fumbled the ball and I told myself, I said, if I ever see that girl again, I'm definitely going to come up and talk to her. And I just had to come up and say hi. And she loved it. And then they went on this date and they went great. And I was like, this is, that is a great story. because I feel like every guy kind of has been in that position of the first part of the story. And you can turn the L into a big W by using it, actually. Not like just being ashamed of it or sort of kicking yourself about it, but actually use it as the line when you go up to the girl because, you know, it's very flattering.

48:35Shaan Puri:So date one happened? So date one happened, went well, and, you know, we'll see what happens. But if there are any women out there who are looking for the happiest man I know, the guy who's got the best mindset, who is just an absolute joy to be around, Hit me up. You'd slide into my DMs. If you're, let's say, you're a good, wholesome person who likes to have fun, good sense of humor, you're looking to have a family, and you just haven't found the right guy yet, maybe he's the guy for you. Slide into my DMs. I believe I'm connecting the dots this year. It's happening.

49:04Sam Parr:That's pretty interesting that now you're going from a business person, you're writing a book on creativity. Matchmaker. To pimp.

49:12Shaan Puri:Pimp.

49:12Sam Parr:Yeah. Yeah.

49:18that's awesome um all right how do you feel i feel great i didn't comment on this but

49:25Sam Parr:wearing the ralph lauren bear sweater i own a few of them i've never worn them because i thought you were going to mock me and frankly i think it's great i think a grown man should wear a teddy bear on their chest once in a while i'll wear mine next time all right well that's it i think on that point. That's it. That's the pod.

49:50Shaan Puri:All right, my friends.

49:51Sam Parr:I have a new podcast for you guys to check out. It's called Content is Profit. And it's hosted by Luis and Fonzie Cameo. After years of building content teams and frameworks for companies like Red Bull and Orange Theory Fitness, Luis and Fonzie are on a mission to bridge the gap between content and revenue. In each episode, you're going to hear from top entrepreneurs and creators, and you're going to hear them share their secrets and strategies to turn their content into profit. So you can check out Content is Profit wherever you get your podcasts.