We decoded the business behind this influencer’s perfect life

22:53And that's where the CEO, Emmett, would sit and the CLL at the time, Sarah. She would sit. They'd sit at the head of the table. And then basically every 30 to 45 minutes, a new team would come in. So then the trust and safety team comes in, the growth team comes in, the mobile team comes in, the international team comes in. And they basically come and they just dump their problems on the table. And then the CEO and the COO would try to help them, you know, work through it. And I remember sitting at a bunch of these tense meetings. And I thought, at the beginning, I thought, man, this Emmett guy's kind of a genius, but he's an idiot.

23:20Like, he's really smart. But man, he gets focused. He gets hung up on the dumbest things because he would always get hung up on words. and you could tell that the teams hated it, that he would get into these, what he would call the Socratic debates about things. And he would just be debating the team endlessly about the most like minor sounding things. And over time, it came to appreciate that, well, there were some times that he took it too far. There's a cost to doing it, but there was a great benefit in doing it too. I remember in one meeting, he was talking to the team that decides the homepage and they said something like, oh yeah, but that's algorithmic versus editorial.

23:55And he just like got hung up on it. He's like, what does editorial mean? And then they like laughed and he's like, no, what do you mean when you say the word editorial? And they're like, well, there's like editors who pick it. So it's editorial. He goes, and who are these editors and how do they pick it? And he didn't, it's not like he had some destination in mind that he was leading them into some trap. He literally wanted to understand the specific meaning of the words that were coming out of their mouth and get a shared understanding of what each of the words mean because in his view, in his view, it was like, we will never get to the right solution.

24:27If you say words that mean one thing and I say those same words and they mean another thing, we're screwed. And so he would always go to this painstaking, like semantical debates with people that for a while seemed like, are we just going in circles here? Like, what, does this really matter? And, you know, there was a bit of a method to his madness that you saw play out, you know, maybe not in that first meeting, but three weeks from then or four weeks from then or seven weeks from then when the teams then realized they had to be really precise in their language and they'd really know the details of their shit because it would be tested.

24:58And even just knowing that he might ask made sure that they came in knowing everything about what they were going to say and being way more precise about their thinking, their level of clarity on their thinking.

25:08Sam Parr:My sophomore year of high school, we had to take a class, a speech class. That was the best class I've ever taken in my life. And the best lesson that they taught us was you must always define your terms. and I deeply believe that that to be true. For anything that you're discussing, you have to deeply define your terms. The downside of that is that you look like an asshole and it's pretty annoying. It is quite annoying when we do this where someone will say something and you're like, what do you mean? And they'll say it again. It's like, those words don't make sense to me. Can you use other words?

25:43Sam Parr:And what you find is that if they have unclear words, they have unclear thinking. And so it becomes really obnoxious and annoying, but I do think it's really powerful. I just saw this other story. It was on 60 Minutes last night or the week before. You probably have never heard of this. It's called the Mountain Pass Mine. And the story on 60 Minutes was basically these two hedge fund guys. And I think that they were like mildly successful, but they somehow raised money. And I think they raised$20 million. and they bought a mine and I think at the border of Nevada and California. And now if you Google Mountain Pass Mine, I think the company name is called MP Materials Corp.

26:25Sam Parr:It's a$10 billion publicly traded company. And the whole story, which was really cool, and they had to use the platform of 60 Minutes as opposed to their own, and I think they should use their own, was two hedge fund guys who knew nothing about nothing are now wearing hard hats, driving an F-150 and they're in the thick of it. You know, they like are literally learning this as they go, although it's been 10 years now, so they've probably have learned a lot. But they're like these yuppies who knew nothing about blue collar work. Now they're living that life and it's paying off. And I heard this story and I'm like, I'm so in.

26:57Sam Parr:I'm so in on a mine. Well, I've heard of MP Materials. I didn't know the backstory of Mountain Pass Mine. How have you heard of that? Hedge fund guys. Well, it went public. It was like a SPAC, right? It was like a Chamath SPAC, I'm pretty sure, or something like that. He did it? either he did area to the pipe or something like that. I'd heard of it at that point. It was like a rare earth company. And I was like, what are rare earths anyways? And how does this work? So yeah, I've looked at it, you know, just kind of in passing that way, but I didn't know, didn't know the backstory. Hey, let's take a quick break.

27:27You 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. That someone is usually you and it's due tomorrow. Well, the Breeze assistant from HubSpot can help. It works right inside HubSpot. You can draft a campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice, all using your actual customer data. So you don't create just content. You create content that converts. Check out HubSpot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Another kind of World Cup thing that's going on right now, you've probably seen this, is all of the international tourists that are coming to America for the World Cup and discovering America for the first time.

28:04And it's sort of like when a friend goes into town and suddenly you're like, okay, yeah, let's go to Alcatraz. And you've been living here for five years. You've never been to Alcatraz. But because somebody's visiting, you suddenly will go that week. Right now on social media, there's a whole swath of people. Have you seen these that are going viral? So Freddie L.A. is one of them. But basically, this guy, like, comes to America for the World Cup. And he's just touring through America, kind of like you did when you rode your motorcycle around America. And he's also like this one, for example. We found another surreal place on our way.

28:36I know some people will say I'm too positive about everything, but this place is crazy. And he's at an out, like a Bass Pro Shop Outdoor World. And it's just pictures of like, you know, there's just the enormity of this place. This giant fish tank. He's like, there's a shooting range inside the store. He's like, they're literally selling rifles in here. And so he's just been stopping at like Bucky's and he's been stopping at like, you know, we found this river in Chattanooga and we're in a tube and the guy said this. And, you know, at the airport, we asked this and the guy just gave us a ride.

29:05It was incredible. and so he's just like you know when you have kids and you get to like rediscover the world again because your kids are discovering the world and it's like yeah you know what if you take like a straw and you like squish the paper down and then you drop a piece of drop of water on it it expands like a snake and you're like and their mind is blown and you remember when your mind was blown when you were seven and that happened but you just you know took it for granted forgot about and just throw away all your your straw paper now and so this guy basically this is group of guys on Twitter and Instagram that are coming to America that are just posting all these things that are very like run-of-the-mill American things, but they're amazed by it.

29:45And it totally like makes you proud to be an American in a way and like rediscover like, yeah, do you know what? Like America's pretty awesome actually. And we have these kind of amazing things. And actually, have you guys been to Waffle House? I can't wait for Freddie to go to Waffle House, right? You want him to go to the next sort of like part of real america it's like more entertaining than the world

30:05Sam Parr:cup to me look at the title german tourist freddie is going viral as he visits louisiana on the way to world cup that's awesome exactly there's this great book uh i'm sharing it now i don't know how to pronounce their name but it's ilf and petrov's american road trip i read this a few years ago it's So good. So basically, and it has very few reviews. On Amazon, it has 40 reviews, and a paperback copy is$400. And so in 1935, well into the era of Soviet communist Russia, two Russians came over, and they took a road trip throughout America, and they described what they're seeing. And this book is one of my favorites.

30:45Sam Parr:It's so good to hear the history of America from people and what they're seeing. And it's very similar to what people would experience now, just like it's huge and everything's big and like there's processed food everywhere it's funny the same stuff in 1935 people would say today yeah i'm into this so let me uh let me show you this one so this is this japanese guy and he goes usa a mexican restaurant we have not ordered anything yet and yet the food is already arriving chips salsa unrequested free i stopped the waiter we have not earned these they just come with the table in my land hospitality is a debt every gift creates an obligation.

31:22Wade carefully. Return to the proper season with an interest of feeling. Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven you could pay for dinner. It is not an appetizer. It is a declaration. We trust you. Eat. I eat with the gravity the moment deserved. And then I must report calmly. This basket is empty. A new one appears. Did we refill? It's bottomless. Bottomless. They have wells of salsa. The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything my ancestors imagined. My friend warned me. Don't fill up on chips, dude. Too late. I had accepted three baskets. Honor demanded each one be finished.

31:54An unfinished gift is an insult. By the time my actual food arrived, I was a ruined man. I was not hungry. I was not uncomfortable. I had been defeated by courtesy. Generosity arrives before the request can be repaid. It can only be survived. I know the rule now. I made peace with my basket. One basket. Two at most. Who am I deceiving? There's no number of baskets I refuse. The trust of a nation is in that salsa. And I intend to honor all of it.

32:18Sam Parr:That's beautiful. There's no way that's real. Is that real? I don't think it's real, but it's hilarious. So I don't know if it's real or not. But have you seen all the Japanese lore that's just being honored in America for the World Cup? Have you seen what's going on? No, man. You're World Cup deep. I'm in New York City. I just got done burning down a bus because of the Knicks. It's like, you know, one time I went to this basketball game, and I was in the owner's suite, and there was just all these Instagram hoes basically there. And they all had their phone out. And I was like, wow, they're so into capturing the second quarter of this game.

32:49And I realized all the phones are pointed at them, not at the game. And that's me with the World Cup right now. I'm the ho. Where I don't watch the game. I only watch the crowd. And there's this incredible thing with the Japanese crowd where they're all waving these blue, well, looks like blue, kind of like, is it flags? What is that? No, it's a trash bag. And so they use trash bags to cheer at the game. It's kind of like their version of carrying a sign or waving a foam finger or a flag. And they were like, why are they all waving trash bags? Like, oh, because then we can cheer. It makes sound.

33:20It has a color. But then we can just clean up after ourselves on the way out. And they clean up their whole section using the trash bags at the end. And they showed the locker room of the Japanese national team. And every single item is folded properly in the middle. The locker room is pristine. And that's how the Japanese soccer team is leaving the locker rooms. And I'm like, God, if Japan couldn't go any higher on my list of like incredible cultures and people that, you know, you sort of have to see it to believe it. They're just the stock continues to go up. It's a it's untethered with reality.

33:52Sam Parr:Before UFC was a thing that was called Strikeforce and it was a Japanese fighting league or whatever. And it's they're the best videos to watch because in the crowd, they're silent. And then you hear you hear the punches and it's really hard to watch almost. and they only cheer on like the epic big punches. And it's like very strange and awesome at the same time. You know, I think a guy who we both admire, I think he's one of your heroes, definitely one of mine is Jesse Itzler. And it's this idea of like buying into the lifestyle. And I think that in particular right now, we're in this phase where people are trying to balance, like how do I work hard in my job?

34:33Sam Parr:And particularly women, how do I work hard in my job and be a good mother? But same thing for fathers. How do I work hard and be a family person while also being fit? Like I see everyone. Did you see Jesse's story on Instagram the other day? I just know that right now. He's like, he's like Uncle Rico. Jesse wrote the song for Go New York Knicks, you know, Go New York. And whenever the Knicks start playing again, that's his, that's his story that it brings up. And I love it. I'm not sick of it. So he was at Madison Square Garden when they won, I think, game four, maybe. and he leaves and he sees this guy who's given like rickshaw rides or whatever.

35:09What do they call it in New York? Where it's like the guy's biking and you sit in the carriage behind it, whatever that's called. So he hops in as billionaires do. And he was like, and that guy's playing the go to New York, go New York, go. And he's like, that's my song. And the guy's like, no. And he's like, what's your name? And he like looks it up. He's like, that's your song. And he's like, I gotta give you a ride around town. So he just rode around all of New York with this guy and he just posted it. And there's a small set of people that I feel like they don't have any more time than the rest of us, but they seem to be getting a lot more out of their time.

35:40And there's something to be studied and learned. And there's a reason that I get interested in these folks. Nick Gray is one of these people. I think Jesse's one of these people. There's a handful of these people that seem to kind of go with the, whatever way the ball of life is bouncing, they seem to just experience more and have a sort of like tap dancing through life sort of experience. Even when they do hard things, it just seems like, you know, enjoyable in this way because they're like surrendered into it. I don't know. I don't know what it is, But that's something I think the art of living well is not well understood.

36:08And, you know, for me, it's a bit of a mission to understand what gets more out of the hours rather than like always feeling like if only I had more time, then I'd get more. And it's like, actually, I think kind of bullshit. I think, A, you're wasting a ton of time either doing fake busy work or just on social media. And two, even if I gave you an extra four hours, I don't think you'd get any more out of life. I think you just fill it with more of the same, more of the same feelings you currently are having, whether they're stress or anxiety or any of the others.

36:34Sam Parr:I've been meeting these people. So I live in a building in Manhattan and there's rich people and there's poor people in this building. And I really like that. And we were contemplating getting a big, we got a great place, but we were like, oh, should we get more space for more kids and all this stuff? And then I met this family that has, it's a family of four, a husband and wife and two girls, twins. And the girls are now 18 or 19 or something like that. And they've lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for 30 years. So the mom and dad lived there. And I was like, how do you guys, like, what's your sleeping arrangement?

37:06Sam Parr:And they're like, well, mom and dad get the bedroom. And we just, we have like this Murphy bed that we sleep in the living room. And part of me was like, obviously, it's like, ooh, I don't want that. But then the other part, they start telling me these stories. And I actually go to their apartment and we all hang out. And I'm like, there's a lot of inconveniences here. But there's a lot of conveniences here at the same time, which is you guys are all together at the same time. and it's kind of nice and i think that like uh we are looking at this other place and i'm like there's two living rooms why i don't want two living rooms i want one living room i want everyone to be in the same room at the same time all the time and uh i think that like there is this inherent want that many of us have myself included of more more more bigger bigger bigger and i just don't think that that is oftentimes the answer to creating a memorable life and um there's an amazing a post that's kind of gone a little bit viral.

37:55You might have read it by Julie Zao. I read your comment on it. So the blog post is called, yeah, Julie, the blog post is called, to all the folks who are about to be rich. And it was released the day before the SpaceX IPO. And she basically starts with like, you did it, congrats, like all the hard work, blah, blah, blah, you've led you to this day, your stock is about to be liquid. You're about to be rich. And she, I think when she was at Facebook when Facebook IPO'd. And so she was kind of like telling a bit of the like, almost like your older sibling, like, hey, like, you're going to go to college.

38:29Like, guess what? It's going to be crazy a little bit. And here's some things that are going to happen. And so she's almost describing like what happens from here. And there were so many incredible one-liners in this. And, you know, part of it is like, you know, scientific studies say that like, you know, blah, blah, blah.

38:44Sam Parr:After one year, lottery winners default to the same happiness that they were before. Yeah, exactly. And so there's one line I love. She talked about like the three groups of people from when she saw the Facebook thing. Some of my former colleagues slipped away from tech like aquarium fish being flushed out into the ocean, off to find their true homes. Engineers who decided they're not going to code anymore. I saw people become chefs, hoteliers, artists, therapists, writers, teachers, parents. These groups always fascinated me because I was watching some sort of Cinderella transformation. Who would you bloom into once you were given the gift of true freedom?

39:16So that's like group one. She calls the fish. And then group two, she calls the leisure class, which is basically people who say, oh, I'm going to pursue this lifestyle of leisure. So I'm going to travel to all these wonderful places, Michelin star restaurants, have a sleek new home with all the fancy furniture. Forget, forget Ikea. I'm going to do the Disneyland VIP tour, Coachella. I'm going to buy a$500 hoodie from Japan. And then she's like, and then there's the others who continued on the same track in tech. They become VCs or founders and they continue to march to try to get a higher high for the next few years.

39:46They're chasing the thrill of the climb. And she's not really saying one is better than the other, but she does sort of have her own take. But she says, I saw it play out in all three groups. I know people for whom the money simply let them check off some goals, like paying off their parents' house or having enough for retirement. Maybe they upgrade their car or their house. And largely they stopped. They didn't change how they carried themselves. They didn't change who they hung out with. They did not take up the game of more. And so she talks about this idea of the game of more. And I think the way she said it was like, there is a game and that game is called more.

40:18And once the money lands, a question will be waiting for you to think deeply. Am I still playing? And I just thought, like, if you just take this idea of there is a game and a game called more, but it's more of what? What do you want more of? Do you want more leisure? Do you want more travel? Do you want more challenge? Do you want more impact? Do you want more authenticity to who you are? Do you want more joy? Do you want more kids? Like, what do you want more of? And I think this is a very powerful question of if you assume for a second that everybody's playing some game of more, right? We've not renounced our desires.

40:48We all wake up today. We're going to go do some shit. But in the name of what? And I just think it's actually pretty powerful to put a name on like, what is the game of more that you're playing right now? I think it's actually a really, really hard question. I think you might be embarrassed by the answer to those questions if you looked at your actions and you said, what is this action in the game? What am I seeking more of? You know, if I'm going to post a story of my vacation right now on Instagram, what am I seeking more of? I'm playing the game of more, and that's a game of more validation, more status, more prestige.

41:19You know, I like that I don't post stories because I've opted out of that. But like, I have opted into a game of more in other flavors. And so I just think this is a really, really powerful idea. I don't know what you think about that.

41:29Sam Parr:Well, I want to know, did she say which one she has found people to be most happy in? And amongst your friend group, I believe she's mostly referring to people who overnight are now liquid, which is a very interesting phenomenon. on. I've seen it happen many times. Not rich to super rich. Yeah. So versus like someone who has been a lawyer for a long time and they've like made money throughout their career. I was in the category of I wasn't. And then I was all of a sudden. I think you have been like accumulating along as you've gone. But we know a bunch of people who have overnight made it. Have you noticed any similarities or commonalities of who ends up in a place that more people would desire to be in that place?

42:11Yeah, I mean, this is probably the thing I'm figuring out the most. So I have some thoughts, but I bet in five, 10 years, I will have a much simpler, wiser perspective on this than I do today. Is your question of what's the right answer or what's your question really?

42:23Sam Parr:Well, there's no right answer, but I'm just saying, like, can you stereotype each bucket of what you've noticed? I only have maybe one friend who has done the first one where he's opted out. So here's a couple of observations. I think there is actually a better and worse, even if there's not a right answer. And I would say the leisure path doesn't seem to result in anything good. I completely agree. Sure, take a few trips. Sure, you could upgrade your car, your house, whatever, that's fine. But the diminishing returns are very real and very dramatic in that path. And the people who seem to do that and seem to wander, they sort of lose themselves in a way that like everybody sort of looks back.

43:02It's almost like funeral-esque when people talk about them at some point because they're sort of seeking something, but they're in the wrong place, right? It's like searching for your keys, but this is not where you drop them. And so that path actually does genuinely seem to be worse. I would say very few people can do what I call slay the money monster. So very, very, very, very, very few people can actually achieve financial independence by my definition. So most people feel that financial independence is the ability to buy whatever you want. You have the freedom to buy, to do, to go, to fly, to whatever.

43:37And it's actually freedom from that you want. Financial independence to me is not the ability to buy whatever you want. It's that you make decisions not based on money. So sometimes that's about buying what you want, right? You might order a certain dish or buy organic or whatever. You might buy things because you're choosing what you want and not based on the pricing. But for the most part, it's you choose to whatever your next project is. you didn't do it because this could be a 10X or this could whatever, right? So freedom from, I think is very, very rare. The second thing I would say is very, very rare.

44:09It seems valuable when you have it. And by the way, like Jesse, we've talked about earlier, Jesse's a great example of this. Like I've talked to him on the phone about ideas that can make a ton of money that we're like, yeah, that would make, we could be making 20 million a year if we just did this. And then we're both like, I don't know, man. He goes, and I was like, what do you really want to do, Jesse. He's like, I think I just like to ride my bike. He's like, I want to go do these races and triathlons and Ironmans. He's like, I think I just like riding my bike actually. And because we both agree, like money at a certain point has very little utility to you.

44:37So at the beginning of your money curve, when you're, let's say in debt, money has a tremendous amount of utility. When you have no savings and no safety net, money has a tremendous amount of utility. And then as you get to be comfortable, money has less utility, but it can, if it buys you back your time. You don't have to work. You get way more utility. At a certain point, you're trading very valuable hours of life energy for useless dollars that you have no ability to even spend to improve your life. And I find that vast majority of our friends who have achieved that, they still make that horrible trade of valuable life hours for useless dollars.

45:10And so I think that that's like probably the most common observation is, man, that must be really hard to kick that most people can't do that. 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?

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46:08The other observation I have is that you have, like man needs a quest, man needs a project, but you got to choose what is the quest and what is the project that is going to light you up. And I don't think very many people are able to do a very good job of that because we're incredibly mimetic creatures. So if all our friends are starting companies, we start companies. If all our friends are investing, we start investing. And we rarely ask ourselves, what do I really want? You know, there's this idea of like mimetic, which is Rene Girard and Peter Thiel have like really popularized this idea around what we want, what we want because other people want it.

46:44And so I think a very valuable trait in humans that I've sort of started to observe is people who are anti-memetic, meaning people who seem to want things from their own internal volition and not because other people want those same things.

46:57Sam Parr:Tell me examples of people you know who fit in that category. Nick Gray is incredibly anti-memetic. He is surrounded by goofballs like us that are always on to the next company and the next investment and the next this and the next that. And Nick Gray was like, I'm going to prioritize hosting cocktail parties. I'm going to prioritize, you know, writing my blog. I'm going to prioritize going and traveling to India and living like a villager in India. He wants what he wants and he wants it because he wants it. And you could tell because he's very lit up while doing it. And you could tell the people who don't because they have everything and they're still not lit up.

47:31Why? Because they're choosing things that other people want. Tony Robbins had told a story once at his event where he was talking about eating dinner with his wife. And she said this thing where she was like, you know, the waitress brings out her burger and it's a burger with, you know, pickles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. and then they were talking about this idea of like, are you even doing what you really want? Or are you just sort of still programmed and conditioned by your upbringing, by society, by your friends, by whatever? And she's like, whose burger is this? Like, why do I even order with pickles?

47:58I don't even like pickles that much. Maybe I should start ordering differently, right? And I think that metaphor applies to a lot of life. Like a lot of what's around you is a burger you ordered. That's like, is this even how I like my burgers? Maybe I like my burgers, you know, medium or rare. You know, maybe I like this. Maybe I like that. And so once you sort of become alert to it, you might start to observe examples of people who operate this way. Like I think Palmer Luckey is incredibly anti-memetic. You know, he was doing everything. Every project he's picked is incredibly unpopular when he picked it.

48:29This is sort of the test, right? Like how popular is the thing you're doing amongst the people who you associate with or want to be like? And, you know, doing virtual reality goggles when he was 19, living in a trailer park. You know, he was not, like, keeping up with the Joneses, you know? And then even afterwards, when it happened, he stayed wearing his Hawaiian shirts and his jorts and his flip-flops. He didn't suddenly start wearing, you know, designer clothes and this and that. He didn't become a venture capitalist. He didn't start worrying about his summer vacations. He then went and worked in the defense industry, started building weapons when that was incredibly unpopular to do in Silicon Valley.

49:08You were seen as sort of a black sheep for doing that. It was hard to get funding for doing something like that because it was incredibly unpopular. So you look for people who do unpopular things because to them, it's what they want.

49:20Sam Parr:There's this book I read last year called Status and Culture. And it was this idea of what does high status mean and how does that impact trends, whether it be fashion or whatever. And the book's author, one of his points was to be inauthentic is the lowest status thing. and if you look at all the people who you admire, they're truly, whether they've become that person or they're born that way, both are fine. They are truly authentic. And if you look at like who we admire, for example, I was just reading about this mathematician. Have you heard of this guy? His name's Gregory Perlman. No, who's that?

49:57Sam Parr:Well, he's one of the greatest mathematicians of all time and he won the Nobel Peace Prize, or sorry, the Nobel Prize for math, I guess, or was it economics? I forget. I think there's a math one. And he turned it down. And he's like, I'm not about this. I didn't do this for this reason. And then like someone calls him to like say, hey, you won the prize. And his famous quote was, you're disturbing me from picking mushrooms. And he hung up and he never collected the prize. He never collected the prize. Yeah, exactly. And you hear about these guys that are rebellious like this. And what I've noticed is that the worst thing that you can do if you're going to be someone.

50:37Sam Parr:Like, for example, I think I've fallen partially in two of the categories of the three that you've mentioned. And I've been a little bit half pregnant with them. And I think the worst thing that you could do is to be unbalanced about where you fall and to go all in on which type of person you want to be and to not half-ass it and to go all in. Not hedge. Yeah, it's a very scary feeling. But if you do go all in, so for example, I don't like everything Palmer Luckey does or says, but I respect the hell of the fact that he seems authentic and he does believe the way that he acts and says. But if you look at other people, for example, some of the times you'll hear Elon say something and you're like, dude, that's cringe.

51:16Sam Parr:Why is that cringe? It's like, well, it's cringe because I don't think that you truly feel that way and you're just doing this for laughs. And that's like the idea of authenticity. Yeah, exactly. Let's get an example of somebody who's incredibly anti-memetic, Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett became at one point the richest man in the world. He lived in the same house in Omaha. He drove the same car. He liked his breakfast from McDonald's. He liked to drink Coke. You know, he loved to read. So he read. He resisted basically every fad and trend. He did not participate in the tech bubble, basically.

51:51He did not participate in tech altogether because he didn't understand it and stayed true to his principles, right? He loved to read, so he read. He loved to play bridge, so he played bridge. He had certain small set of friends. He stayed with them. He closed down his fund at one point because he was like, I just don't see good opportunities. He goes, I think what everybody's doing in the market right now seems crazy. I can't understand it. And the fools are getting rich. So I just, I'd rather not play than play their way. There's literally like the definition of anti-media. He literally closed down the Buffett partnership after like he had run it up to like 100 million.

52:23He'd gone from like a couple hundred thousand to 100 million in the 60s or 70s, something like that. And I'm like, damn, that's incredible. And then I think, you know, practically speaking, it's kind of like, you know, when you want to get fit, like if you were to advise me, you're like, all right, Sean, you've been talking about getting fit, let's get real. All right. You want to get fit? Here's the first thing you need to do. Here's the second thing you need to do. What would be in the top three of things you need to do if you're real about getting fit?

52:48Sam Parr:Probably eat your body weight in grams of protein. Okay. So you pick one metric that you're going to optimize for that like is a non-negotiable daily set point that you're trying to hit. Okay. Next. I would say probably walk 10 ,000 steps while lifting weights three days a week. And what's usually the leak for somebody who's trying to get fit, but they keep snacking? Are they eating late? What's the solve for that? Because that's the problem. How do you solve that? You remove barriers. So for example, the day you say you want to get fit, you immediately go to the gym and buy a one-year membership.

53:22Sam Parr:Or the day you want to eat better, you immediately throw everything away that you think is bad. You have to remove all friction. don't have it in the house. And so that I think there's, what's the equivalent of that in terms of living life well or living this sort of antimemetic life where you actually, if we take this train of logic, which is that you will be most lit up and happiest when you're living authentically and in line with what you really want and living in line with your own values. To me, it's basically like if you spend all day, you spend three hours a day looking at other people on Instagram and TikTok and the way they're living their life, I think you're basically, it's the equivalent of having like a free vending machine of snacks in every bedroom of your house.

54:02Sam Parr:This sounds like such a silly hack, but I've noticed whenever I wanted to become something in life, if I unfollow everyone on Instagram and only follow the people I aspire to become, you 100 % get closer to being that person. So like I remember when I wanted to get fit, my Instagram feed was literally only shirtless ripped dudes. Yes. Immersion. Total immersion. To dress better, I unfollowed everyone. I only followed people I wanted to dress like. Did I tell you this story of when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast and he told me the story about getting fit? Well, I know that he painted a thing on his wall, which you'd explain.

54:34Sam Parr:You got to explain what he painted. So I was hanging out with him. We see him every year, once a year. So I was like, dude, you got an incredible shape. You know, congrats, man. Like, how'd you do it? What was the thing? And he goes, you see that really jacked dude right there? And he points over at like a guy who thought it was like his bodyguard or something. He's like, that's my trainer. He's just with me everywhere I go. He's watching everything I eat, everything I do. and I just hang out with him a lot because then I told all my friends, like his boys that he's grown up with, that he does all his videos with, and he's like, hey, I'm getting fit and this is gonna be a lot easier for me if you get fit too and you have to be as committed as I am.

55:10Otherwise, I'm not gonna be able to hang out with you. He's like, because if I'm hanging out with you and you're eating pizza, that's too hard for me. I'm gonna have to suddenly resist pizza. So like, how about we just all do this? Or if you're gonna be the guy eating pizza, just know that I'm not gonna be hanging out with you as much because like, I just can't do that. This is my priority, so I'm going to do this. And basically, like, changing your peer group, what it usually means is, like, you go join a different set of peers. You move to a city of really ambitious people if you want to, you know, go start a company or move to Hollywood if you want to be an actor.

55:38Or you, you know, start to go to the gym with people who go to the gym every day because it'll become a part of your lifestyle. Well, he was like, for his own friends, he's like, you need to change your lifestyle because I'm changing mine, and otherwise this is not going to work. We're not going to be hanging out very much. And I just thought that's actually, like, Again, a very direct path to the outcome. You brainwash yourself. You just gave me a good ad. You use your lizard brain or your monkey brain to your own benefit rather than having it used against you all the time.

56:06Sam Parr:I'm just going to steal this word for word as some of our ad copy for Hampton. Thank you. All right, man. Well, good talking to you on this podcast. Mahalo, dog.

56:21I'm not in Hawaii. Actually, that's good. That's good. cover story. Bye. All right. See ya. 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. All 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 and 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.

56:58So check it out wherever you get your podcasts.