We asked a $18.9B Investor how to survive the AI bubble

24:33It's old fashioned stuff. It's, it's your mode against AI is like the deep, deep relationships with your customers. So I would say go into something where you can really build those kind of customer moats. And then AI is nothing but a tailwind for you because your customer doesn't care how you're doing your backend, you know, but I would just be playing around with that. I think it's like, it's going to be a language that I would advise anyone, anyone, no matter what age you are, but it's certainly if you're a young student graduating, like you want to know that language extremely well. You want to speak that language because that'll also allow you to look at an opportunity and say, okay, I know I could do this with it because I'm so facile in these tools.

25:17Sam Parr:So I think, so Sean and I have both started companies and without sounding too like grandiose, I think that sometimes we view ourselves a little bit artisty and creative more so than like good or even interested in like financial models and things like that. And because of that, I think it's partially because I was jealous and partially because it's true that I thought that PE was kind of nonsense. I thought it was very effective, but I thought like, well, buying a company and firing a bunch of people, the only value creation is that is for the owners of the PE firm, not necessarily the betterment of the world, which there's a million examples of why that's totally wrong.

25:56Sam Parr:But I think what's interesting about you is you're sort of the antithesis of that where you're putting out this content that's quite soulful. And when I talk to you and when I see your talks, I'm like, this guy's got it. He makes me feel good. And yet he's in like the most soulless industry. Because you got to be good at both, right? You must be great at the ruthless analysis of business and finding the levers, cranking out that gross margin and doing all of that stuff while still like clearly not getting, not becoming what the caricature that Sam's painting. You know, like if I had to keep it really simple, I would, I would say like, let's pretend for a second that I wasn't interested at all in being a force for good.

26:35And I was just interested in generating returns. I'd run my business exactly the same way. A lot of it is for me is like, it's, it's having the confidence in building something that's going to be durable and enduring. So like, I'll, I'll use a real example. Let's say that I have this strategy. I won't use any names, but let's say I'm a software buyout firm and my strategy is I go into a business, I buy a software company, I fire people and I double price. I'll make money in the short term, but you look at a time like now where AI is coming, like you really want, the companies that are going to win in software have incredible teams that are on top.

27:19They're making, you know, agentic products on top of their software. And they're going to have AI be this incredible tailwind for them. And, you know, if you just destroyed your team and your cost structure, you're going to get attacked from both sides, from your customer side and from, you know, the LLM. So we found that building things is a lot more durable than ripping things apart because you can make like one and a half times your money or maybe even two times your money ripping stuff apart if you're lucky, if you time the exit just right. But if you actually build something times your friend and it could be, I mean, you can make a hundred times your money.

27:59And so like, I do think a lot of it is time horizon. I think underneath that is even deeper. Like, why are you in this business in the first place? Like if your goal to be in the business is to make money and you want to do it as fast as possible, then maybe that behavior does flow from that. But in terms of just being good at private equity, I don't think ripping things apart, I don't think you're going to be the best in the world doing that. What's the best deal you guys have ever done? What's the hero deal? You know, we've had a few really, really good ones that rhyme with what I'll describe.

28:33But, you know, you picked the plumbing and HVAC example at the beginning. that's one of our best deals. I mean, we back to people that we hired right out of business school. They joined our CEO and training program. They went through that program. They became eventually the co-CEOs of the business. We bought a small plumbing and HVAC business that had like$8 million of earnings. This year, that business will do 500 million of earnings.

29:00Sam Parr:How long, how many years did that take? It took six years. Six years to$500 million. dollars you have to break that down how hundred million dollars of earnings not earnings yeah three billion of three billion of revenue 500 million of earnings and and we i think importantly that that happened without us putting in any additional money wow so so an initial buy of like what 30 million or something like that how much we put in a total of 50 in the first deal we might have put in like that first year like another maybe nine or so that first year and then that was it then we never put in anymore what was going on was it that uh you just you guys just went on an acquisition spree and picked up all the mom and pops or was it that they weren't doing any sale they didn't know they didn't have a good website like what was what was missing that you guys added we got we got fortunate that the third deal that we bought we partnered with this guy so the ceos are named uh aj brown and will masson and then the the third deal we did we partnered with this guy named Ira Pruitt, who was like the grizzled HVAC veteran and just this wonderful guy.

30:03He had seven of his kids in the business and he gave us a lot of the playbook levers. And then the next deals after that, we were adding to that playbook. So eventually we just ended up with this amazing playbook about how to run those businesses. And then we began that talent program we were talking about earlier, where we started attracting a lot of incredible leaders, a lot of, not all of them, but a lot of them veterans. And then that allows us to go buy businesses that other people can't buy because like really the line of people that wants to go buy a$12 million revenue plumbing business in the middle of Louisiana that requires a management change is short.

30:40It's a short line.

30:41Sam Parr:You have to address this. So you just, you described one of the guys, I forget his name, as a grizzled HVAC guy, which in my head, I have a, I have a picture in my head of what that is. So I looked up, the company you're talking about is called Apex Service Partners, I assume. And I looked up Will Mattson. Sean, go ahead and look up Will Mattson. Yeah, he probably looks like the opposite of a grizzled. Will is a baby-faced guy. Honestly, he looks and he might actually be 28 years old. I think he looks very young. And he worked at J.P. Morgan and went to Wharton and worked at McKinsey. So the grizzled guy is named Ira Pruitt.

31:18and the combination of AJ, Will, and Ira is like amazing. That's what I want to ask about.

31:25Sam Parr:I want to ask about what makes this such a high-functioning team to go from$8 million to$500 million in profit. Teach me what makes such a powerful team and what attributes are needed in order to grow a business that fast because these guys look like the fairly odd couple. They are an odd couple. So the combo in this particular instance, The combo is AJ is incredibly focused on the talent and he's the one that rallies the Navy veterans and flies around and gets them excited. Will does the finance and the M &A and a lot of the hold co-functions. And then Ira is the one that's like, hey, this is how you actually run a plumbing business.

32:06Here's the playbook we got to implement. So that's how the combination works. what they all have in common. And then to answer your question, like what we look for in these leaders, number one is just this white hot will to win. And that's more important for us. We found that to be way more highly correlated than like, you know, any other factor, IQ or background or experience. But like each one of these three in some version of their life has just demonstrated this crazy will to win. We learned this from a book called Who, which was the sequel to the book called Top Grading. And it's about basically how to hire.

32:43And so we do like a three hour interview and you start with the person in literally like in high school and you go through yesterday and you're just walking through their background. It's kind of a conversation just like this. It's not super formal, but you're collecting data on this person. And you're in A.G. and Will's case, you know you'll or ira or really any anyone that had gone through our program you know you're just going to see example after example of like hey this thing went really wrong and it was a bummer and here's how i handled it i got i got up you know i plowed through you know i put my shoes boots back on and i kept marching forward and you're going to see that again and again and again we always say like if it'll leap out of that interview like and and if it doesn't then they probably don't have it.

33:29Sam Parr:So speaking of deciding what to do, in a bunch of your talks, it's basically like, I call it my rich life. It's like how to live a rich life. You call it an asymmetric life, and you've done a bunch of different talks on similar topics. You have this cool thing called the genie question, which I forget exactly how you phrase it, but it's basically like, what would you do if you couldn't fail? And it's an exercise to basically get people to decide truly what they want. Because a lot of people listening to this, Sean and I included, were ambitious people and sometimes we'll be, we only listen to where's the money or where can I fit into some traditional sense of success along with a lot of your Stanford guys.

34:07Sam Parr:They all think the same thing. Or fear talks us out of something. Yeah. I can't do that. I was supposed to go to business school. I got to go to McKinsey and then I got to do this. I can't do this other thing. So you have this question of like, what would I do if I couldn't fail? What would you say is the most common reason why people are really bad at answering that question? So there's a few things I'd say. First is, I think people don't ask the question. So that's probably 90 % of people. It sounds crazy, but they never ask themselves, what do I really want? And they haven't given themselves the permission to even think about that.

34:43Or I think it's almost like the highest form of self-love is to trust yourself enough to say, I'm going to be on the path that excites me. You're asking why people fail. I'd say, so I'd start with people haven't given themselves the permission to even think like that. So let's assume now you have done that. But I would say for your audience, like, give yourself that permission, you know, to, you matter. Like, what you get excited about in this world matters. What are some example answers to that question? You've obviously helped a lot of people go through this process, I assume, when you teach at Stanford.

35:20I'll give you a couple just from my class in the last couple of years. Last year, I had a student who's building a theme park in Dallas, in Texas, like literally a theme park. Let's give him a shout out. That was her dream. What's that called? I think it's called Texas Land. I'm not sure. Maybe they haven't finalized that as the name, but that was her thing and she's going and doing it. I have a student this year who is, he is brilliant. He could go to any consulting or finance firm. He's going to India where his family's from to help them build free hospitals. And like that is his thing. Like it's super clear that's his answer to the question.

36:06I give him so much credit that he has the courage and commitment to go do that. And it's going to be very hard. But that's his answer. You know, what you guys are doing. I mean, you guys are building a podcast that's like really helping people. And you can just tell from being on this podcast, you guys love it. You're having a blast. Like you're doing it, right? I mean, you're doing the thing that you follow that energy and gave yourselves permission and be like, hey, that's a good place.

36:32Sam Parr:But I almost hate saying it that way because I don't want people to think that there aren't doubts yelling at us or anyone who's successful all the time. Because I think in another talk, maybe the same talk, you were like, I do this exercise And Alpine is a$20 billion fund. And I think you said for the first 14 years, you thought it was going to fail or you weren't confident that, I forget the phrasing, but you weren't confident that it was going to be a home run. Yeah, I think all of us have these like crazy limiting beliefs like that run through our minds all the time that are like beating us up with like, I shouldn't do this.

37:04I have to do this. I should do that. I might fail. Oh no. And the thing about that is that's very normal. Like having that fear and those doubts, it's a hundred percent normal. Everyone has it. It's just what, like, what do you do with that? And I think one of the things I try to help my students do is like, we have an exercise where literally we like spend an entire class writing all that down. Like we like, like empty your mind of all the limiting beliefs that are getting in your mind. Just let them flow out. Okay. I might fail. I might run out of money. This, no one might watch my podcast. You know, Alpine might not make it.

37:40AI might not work. whatever it is, write all that stuff down. And then, and then once it's down on paper, you've removed it. Like it does the most damage to you when it's in your subconscious and you don't even realize you have it. So if you're, if you're walking around with some fear and you don't even know you have that fear, it just looks like inaction and paralysis. And I'm not going to go forward and I'm going to stay stuck. But once you have it down on paper, let's say one of your things is I want to start a company, but I don't know how I'd pay myself or pay my loans or whatever. Or, okay, so fine, if that's in your head, you're just not gonna start a company.

38:13But if you write it down, you're like, you can rephrase and say, how would I start this business in a way that I could service my business school loans and still pay my rent? And now that's a problem to be solved as opposed to a fear that is creating complete paralysis. And so I like the act of just going right at your fears, doubts and limiting beliefs. It's a great exercise. I highly recommend that. I also just think like the, you know, you have the blank page and like there's a lot of things you could do with the blank page because I think you said it right. I think 90 is low. Probably 99 % of people don't really take the time to examine their life or think about what they really want and actually go answer that hard question because it's a lot easier to scroll.

39:03It's a lot easier to worry about what's going on in Iran and then what's going on in the market and what's going on everywhere else besides, you know, here, because those are arm's length away, whereas it's very, very personal to be here. 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.

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40:07For the person who's like, I want to build the theme park in Texas. Awesome. I want to build the hospital in India. Sounds great. I've been in that position before where it's like, I'm ready to have that answer, but I have no idea. And I'm kind of saying one out loud. It doesn't even feel right. I'm just making it up. And I had to, I've taught myself to basically go through this process of sort of dabbling. Like, you know, just take this mentality of a dabbler. Like, how do I go and run either lightweight experiments or brainstorm or just not feel like I needed to commit right away, but like go try to see where the energy is?

40:39How do you advise people to, if they don't have the answer of, oh, this is the thing that would light me up? Like, maybe you don't even know. Where do you go to figure that out? Yeah, I love that. Well, here's one idea is maybe don't have one thing. Make a list of like nine things that would light you up, you know? Okay, I think I'd like to go to India. I also think I'd like to start a podcast. Maybe I really want to, I don't know, become a DJ. You know, I don't know. Write down your things. And then like you said, you know, keep your day job and devote X number of hours a week to testing those things out.

41:11Maybe you're going to do some work on it, take some classes. You're going to start hanging out with people that do it. Maybe you're going to get trained. Maybe you're going to do podcasts and nights and weekends and see if it's as fun as you thought it was. And you're not looking there for, this is what I think is really important. You got to, you got to be careful that you're not going to get a false negative on the outcome. So like a student who says, okay, I want to start a company. So I'm going to spend five hours a week this quarter. And if I get traction, I'm going to do it. Like, no, no, no, no, no.

41:44You're going to get no traction. Like five hours a week. If you could build a business in five hours a week, like it wouldn't be worth building, you know so it's not that you're looking for like does it light you up it like in that five hours a week was that the five hours you were looking forward to that all week or was that five hours where you were like kind of like oh man i gotta do five hours on this thing you know like that's what i think you're looking for in those like experiments because by and large if you are lit up and you i mean you plus being lit up plus a long time frame there's very few things that won't yield to that.

42:19And that was me at Alpine. You mentioned, you know, it took 14 years for us to know it was going to succeed. Yeah. But I was fired up. I was willing to do it for a long time. And I was in it. I was excited. And like most things will yield to that formula with enough

42:33Sam Parr:time. Was that right? In year 14, were you still like TBD if this is going to work? And what were the numbers? Can you say what your numbers were then? Because I would think you were financially successful at that point, no? Well, we lost money on our first fund. So fund one was 2001. We lost money. How'd you get a second fund when you lose money on the first? Well, we were very transparent with our investors about what was going badly, what we were fixing, what we were learning. So they were like, okay, we see you're on the right trajectory. You're transparent. At one point that fund was marked at 40 cents we ended up returning like 95 cents so they appreciated that and they gave us another shot thank god you know and um but but what i was going to say is so we had fun one was it you know we had that anchor for more than a decade because these business you have to go in you buy the companies you run the companies you sell the companies it takes probably 10 years and then fund two comes along and so it was kind of another 10 years after that after fund two, where we actually had some success, you know, where, where we could have the outcome of that fund, you know, proving out that it was working.

43:46And so that that's the 14 years I talk about, but to give you the numbers, we were 14 years in, I want to say managing maybe two or three, three or$400 million, something like that. That sounds successful, right? It might sound like a lot, but we're trying to run an entire team and we have all these portfolio companies and. Well, let's ask the question. So we called the podcast, my first million. And when we started, there was a tradition. We would always ask every guest, when and how did you make your first million? And we like to really put that in reference because a lot of times the answer was longer than people think.

44:15You try to get, you know, when you're 20 years old, you think it's going to be when you're 20 and a half, you know, you think it's right there and it takes a lot longer. It took me, I was 30 when it happened. It took Sam, I think, same thing, 30, 31. And so it takes a little longer. And also we talk about how did it feel? like what do you know what did anything change and what changed i love to hear that that's such a great question all those are such awesome questions because it's so not what i thought it was going to be so a couple different ways to answer the question one thing to be a millionaire on paper it's another thing to have a million dollars in the bank they're different they're different feelings as you as you guys probably know yeah one pays the rent one doesn't yeah so i'll say a million dollars in the bank because i think that's the that's when i actually felt like i had a million dollars yeah and that was the that was year 14 that was one week oh shit that was year 14 of start so i'm i was 29 plus four so yeah i'm in my 40s i guess when i when i made my actually had a million dollars in the bank but to put that in context by the way

45:19Sam Parr:that is pretty slow love like having a having like a pe firm your job is to get good returns and to not having like that well yeah i wouldn't i want to say what we had what's called a european waterfall which means we have to return all the money in the fund plus an eight percent return before we take any profit and so we had we had to first of all fund one generated no carry at all and then fund two, we needed to sell. It was really the very last business in that fund that we sold until we got paid. So it was, that's what I was saying, like the part about on paper versus in the bank. You know, I was a millionaire on paper before that, but actually in the bank, it was 14 years.

46:03But I want to talk about wealth for just one second. The interesting thing is like, I felt wealthy way before that because my denominator has always been small. So, you know, like there's two parts of wealth. There's the numerator, which is what you make in your denominator and what you spend. The biggest mistake, and this is something everyone who listens to this podcast can benefit from, the biggest mistake people make is the denominator. And so they go, like, here's a perfect example. I really want to start a business. I'm going to go take this other job first. And then I'm going to make some money.

46:44And then I'm going to start my business. Okay, that's what they say. Never happens. Because they go take that job, then they get a new house, then they get a new car, then they move to this other city, then they have kids, then they have kids' schools, then blah, blah, blah, blah. And their denominator is keeping pace or even surpassing their numerator. and they're never, they're never actually feeling wealthy. And ironically, they're creating less freedom every year, you know, because there's fewer, fewer things they could do to maintain the lifestyle. And there's no way they could, they could start that business.

47:20And so probably like one of the most underrated things that happened in my life is my wife, I married my wife who was an elementary school teacher and made$18 ,000 a year pre-tax. And like our first apartment that I think was like 900 a month, you know, she thought it was the Taj Mahal, you know, Does the IRS just send you money if you're making$18 ,000 pre-tax? Do you actually just get a bunch of money every April? That's awesome. They literally should. They should. I mean, she would drive around for like 30 minutes to save$2 on parking. I was like, okay, well, we got to not do that. So yeah, the denominator, so I felt wealthy way before that because I just had a big cushion between what I earned and my expenses.

48:02Sam Parr:There's this story, and I don't think at this point that this is true, but it's Reuben Carter. Have you guys heard that song, The Hurricane by Bob Dylan? Yeah. It's basically about a boxer who... Great movie too. Yeah, it's basically a black boxer who is incorrectly imprisoned for triple murder. And he didn't actually do it, but it was like a racist thing. And there's a story that's part of this that at this point, I think it's fake, where he was like, I don't belong in prison and I'm going to take cold showers every day just to remind myself that this ain't home. I'm only here for a minute, but I'm going to get out eventually.

48:34Sam Parr:And like I said, I don't think it's real anymore, but I heard about that story when I was like 15 years old. And so when I moved to San Francisco to like start things and like, I remember making a little bit of money sometimes and then I would go for long droughts where I wouldn't make any money because I was trying to start something. And I was like, when the money comes in, I still got to take cold showers because I can't get used to this. I'm not out of it yet. And so I was always reminding myself like, take cold showers. We're not home yet. Do not get used to this. But I remember there was freedom in that.

49:00I love that. I love that. And the freedom part is so true, Sam. You know, like the steepest curve of utility with money was going from like, the first one was having peace of mind of like not having to worry if I had to fix my car or whatever, you know, some, some unexpected expense happened, but I've got money saved away and I don't have to stress. That was actually very steep because that wasn't always true for me. You know, like my car would break. I'd be like, oh, no. You know, and then the next curve that was really steep was I have enough money to do what I really want to do with my life.

49:34I mean, how magical is that? Like, that's really where the utility, it's flattened out after that. You know, so that's really where the utility of money comes for me.

49:43Sam Parr:But when you're giving advice to your students, what do you tell them that number is? For example, some people say that like financial freedom is 25 times your annual spending. Some people have like, some people will say like, as long as you have six months of savings, like that, you're good. Like, is there like a, like a threshold that you like? Yeah, there is. I would say having three to six months of savings is level one, which is like the peace of mind. Because then, you know, like I said, you have some unexpected expense and you're, you're fine. You don't, you don't lose sleep over that. You know, you don't have to decide if you're going to pay your rent or fix your car.

50:13That's like three to six months of savings. That doesn't sound like much. It's dramatic. it makes a huge difference in your life. And then the next one, I think it's lower than that. Like when I say freedom, I don't mean like the like, okay, I'm going to live off the interest of my money I have in treasuries. You know, that, okay, sure, that's nice if you get there. But I'm not even talking about that level. I'm talking about I'm spending, I'm still working, but I'm spending my day doing something that I enjoy that is the job that I want to have. I think that's probably nine to 12 months of savings.

50:50It's not that. So I think both of those are really within people's grasp. People who are like, oh, I really want to get to the like, you money where I never have to work or anything. And then what? You know, like, then what are you going to do? And I want to go back to the other question you asked. Did it feel the same that you thought it was going to feel? No, it did not. So when I actually had wealth and I'd worked and I go back all the way back to the lawn mowing and the all the sacrifices i made and getting good grades and getting to the right school and then getting the job and then suffering through fun one and then finally getting on the other side and then finally getting this big liquidity event it was it was like the most disappointing and like it because because i thought it was going to change everything it didn't really change hardly anything and and like what was still there was like maybe the thing i'd been running from which is like i'm not enough you know like well so what

51:49Sam Parr:what like what career milestone since everyone listening to this is interested in business but it could and family it's too easy to answer uh but like what career milestone actually did move the needle on happiness if it wasn't like a financial thing is there anything else like for example, you probably have hundreds or thousands, I don't know how many employees you have, whatever it is, like you've created like an institution. Has that made you feel good? What teaching at Stanford, what career milestone have you had that a listener can like be like, okay, that's like a cool idea on how he actually got happy via career?

52:21Good question. There are two ways to answer it. First is, one answer is you're not going to solve an internal problem with the external outcome. So like, if I feel like I'm, I'm going to be enough when like, whatever you answer that with is going to be disappointing to you, you know? So that on, on that answer, it's, you can't kind of get there with the career and, and you, you have to, at least for me, I had to do a lot of internal work, therapy, coaching, journaling, um, meditation, and start to just like let go of this, you know, I'm not enough part. And that's probably created more happiness and peace of mind than the career, probably the career achievement that I remember the most.

53:08It wasn't even really an achievement. It'd be like my three partners and I up in Napa, you know, together, working through something where I would just have the self-awareness to look around and just be like, wow, this is really special. These are people I really love. We're doing something we love. And we created this together. So it wasn't like a big wire came through or something. It was more just like these little moments. Can we get some secondhand smoke therapy from you? So you talked about like doing the work kind of like internal work uh therapy coaching reflection introspection all that good stuff you know a lot of people either haven't had the time or don't have the the sort of guts they don't make enough time to do that sort of thing but i think you know if they're listening right now we can kind of benefit them i remember we had daniel negrano one of the great poker players come on the pod and he told us nothing about poker i don't remember anything about poker but i do remember he said the most impactful thing in my life was a mentor a lawyer guy who I really like.

54:13I thought he lived life well. He told me I should go to this event. And I went to the self-help event. I hated every minute of it, but they made us do this one exercise about like total radical accountability, where you write the worst thing that ever happened to you. And you rewrite the story where you are the cause of all of that thing. And you own the, the, the entire thing yourself. You don't blame anybody. Rewrite the story. And he's like, that changed my life. And so like, you know, I almost secondhand got the benefit of going to that seminar, just understanding that principle, then, you know, then taking it and doing it myself.

54:44I'm curious, were there any kind of breakthrough, really important kind of realizations or exercises or questions or conversations you had anywhere along the way that we would benefit from? Yeah, a hundred percent. And I'll give you a couple things that I learned. So one is almost all your battles that you have are you against you. it's true it seems like this whole thing is happening out there and you're you know you're winning this or you're doing this and like but you're remember all that stuff that happens goes through this filter which is called like the story you're writing about it then it goes internal and like you can you can change the easiest part of changing your life is to change that filter you know it's it's way easier than changing what's going on out there it's a lot easier to change how you're interpreting it.

55:35And so you can either be your own worst enemy, or you can actually be your own best friend. And I can tell you that I was my own worst enemy. Like it did, it almost didn't matter what was going on out there. I would look for what was wrong. I would have a bad story about it. I would beat the crap out of myself. And then I would tell myself another story, which is me beating the crap out of myself is why I'm successful. Total bullshit. Um, it was just what made me miserable. It's like running through life with your foot on the brakes. So one is just that awareness, like that, wow, I'm, I'm having more to do with my peace of mind, meaning success, uh, happiness than anything that's happening external.

56:18I think if you really think about it, you'll realize that's true. And then the, and then the formula for like actually programming, actually changing that. I finally understood like in a simple way why to meditate and, and how to be, how to be, um, how to make it work and how to have it actually impact your life. So you go to the gym and you work your bicep and your bicep, you break it down, it gets stronger and then, you know, it regrows and is bigger. So meditating is very similar, except the muscle you're working is your, basically your mind and your, your self-awareness, your presence. So you pick your meditation, you're counting your breath, you know, that's simple one, right?

56:57You just close your eyes, you count your breath. And then your mind starts going off and talking about, thinking about whatever, you know, I've messed up this conversation or I should do this or I've got some more, I've got to do this, whatever. And then you notice that and you, it might take you a while, but you notice that your mind just took off and you bring it back to your breath and you do that again. And then it happens again. You notice that you bring it back. You're basically building this muscle. You're building a muscle. The muscle is like, I'm going to two things. One, I'm separating from my thoughts.

57:28I'm realizing those thoughts that are happening aren't me. I'm creating this muscle of observing my thoughts versus just, you know, succumbing to them. And second, and even more powerfully, I'm building the muscle being present. Like if you want to have a great life, like be present. Like if everyone in the world was present and here, right here all the time and not in their head, like people would be like in this great state of joy. Like, and so building that muscle of, of watching your thoughts coming back and being present, um, is the same muscle of being your own best friend because you're, because you, you're, you're, you're seeing like, oh wait, I see that this thing happened and I, you know, maybe I didn't answer this question really well, or I could let that thought go and just be here, you know, and like doing that over and over.

58:18Well, it's a great reframe, right? because normally if you meditate and then you're sucking at it, your mind is drifting, you're not doing it, you're not having fun with it. You're like, I'm bad at this. This is not working. It's like going to the gym and you pick up a weight that those last three reps are hard, but at the gym, you know, oh, that's great. I did exactly the thing I was supposed to do. I was building the muscle. If I just went and I did curls with a three pound dumbbell, I wasn't doing anything then. I shouldn't have even been here. And so reframing the meditation, the failure in meditation as more of, great, I'm building this practice, this muscle.

58:54I'm getting better at doing that. And how do I get better by failing at it?

58:58Sam Parr:Hey, can I ask you really quick before we wrap up about parenting? I saw that you've got three kids. You blogged about how one of your kids went to college. Do you do any of these exercises with your children? And at what age did you start doing that? Or were they like, you're my dad. I ain't listening to you no matter what. all of the above my kids are definitely like you're my dad you know it's funny because in most circle like worlds i'm i'm you know i'm a professor i'm running a firm or whatever at home i'm i get you know i have teenagers like they're ruthless right they make fun of everything i do um and uh i i do it in a in a way that's not maybe as obvious but you know i'll give you a real example it's easier you know my son was like trying to decide his friend he had a really tough year his freshman year and he was deciding if he was going to play lacrosse the next year because he had a tough season it didn't go how we wanted and it was brutal and so you know we i did a exercise with him and we said like i said okay blake like let's go through and talk about like i want you to play out your next three years as though you didn't play lacrosse like let's go through it like i want you to really like think through okay we get home from school here's what you do you know here here's the cross season comes along your friends are playing you're doing this now i want you to go through and you go through the season but it's hard you do this and after that he's like i i definitely want to play lacrosse like i know for a fact that's what i want like by the end you know when i get done with my my four years like i want to have gone through that and so yes I use these tools but it's it's more letting them kind of it's in service of their their lives and and it comes up more like as when they ask almost when they ask for it versus me saying okay it's Tuesday we're going to sit down and do this having said that my kids also watch you know your kids watch what you do more than they listen to what you say and so you know my kids have goals.

1:01:02They work hard. They write down their goals. They try their best, I like to think. But I think a lot of that just comes from osmosis.

1:01:13Sam Parr:What about your employees? Because when I listen to your stuff, I listen to your stuff because I'm looking to change my behavior. Most people don't change their behavior, though. And you talked about hiring these operators, these people who have these wonderful backgrounds and who have a track record to where they have this white hot will to win. Are you able to change any of their behaviors ever when you hire someone or are you looking for someone who already has uh it so i'm definitely not looking to teach someone how to be motivated or to care or to run through walls like i can't teach that however um we've bought 800 companies i've been doing i've been in private equity 31 years we built some incredible businesses so we have incredible frameworks and tools and playbooks that we use that have been battle tested.

1:02:06And if one of the things we're screening for is, do they have a growth mindset? Are they open to learning? And so if you look at our companies that we have in our portfolio, there is a pretty much a 100 % correlation between how much of the playbooks they're running and how successful their businesses are. So they're coming into Alpine wanting to say, hey, look, I'm 32 years old. I want to run through walls, but I don't know how to run a business. Can you help me do that? And that's a great partnership because we have so many great tools. Now they will take our playbooks and they'll make them their own.

1:02:46So five years from now, they've added to it. They've, they've you know changed it they've they've made them better and they've made them work for them but but we're definitely providing a lot of the foundation of like here's some amazing tools you know like we have kaizen projects we run we have process mapping we have a one-page planning planning tool we use have you ever published this and can i have it just like colonel sanders chicken recipe or is this yeah i'd be happy to share with you it's probably come through in some of my materials. But, um, but yeah, we've, I mean, we've, we've, we've definitely codified a lot of this and over the years and yeah, I'm happy to, happy to share with you.

1:03:28Sam Parr:That's awesome, man. You're, you're, you're wonderful. You know, I don't want to compliment you too much because I've, I've, I don't want to make you uncomfortable, but, uh, Sean and I have this, we have this joke where we, we call it the total man. We're like, you know, we interviewed all these amazing people. We've interviewed people who are deca billionaires. We've interviewed people who whatever. And like, we're always 19 year old who just sold his company, you know, the whole spectrum. The whole spectrum. And we're always looking for someone who's like this combination of a good parent, a good husband, a good business person is interesting.

1:03:55Sam Parr:Looks like, seems like they have fun in life and is kind to one another. And I think you've checked a lot of the boxes and it's really cool talking with you because you, I think you're a good inspiration of what like a person should aspire to be. Oh, thanks, Sam. That, that really means a lot. I, I really appreciate that. And I really admire you guys a lot and I've, I really enjoy your podcast And this has felt to me just how you said it would, which is just hanging out and talking about fun stuff that we all really are excited about. And I'm really grateful you had me on. Happy to come back anytime.

1:04:27It was really fun. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing it. Where do you want people to follow? Is YouTube kind of your main spot or Instagram or TikTok? Yeah, probably Instagram. and I mean I'm on all the platforms but I'm Graham C. Weaver at I think that's all of them. I think I'm the same username at all of them. So yeah. Well badass brother.

1:04:52Sam Parr:We appreciate you coming on. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. If you made it this far, then you're going to love what I'm about to tell you. So there's this amazing entrepreneur. His name is Neil Patel. He's been on MFM. He's one of our favorite guests. And he has a podcast. It's called Marketing School. And it's brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. Marketing School brings you daily actionable digital marketing lessons learned from years and years of being in the trenches.

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