5 ruthless business lessons from one week in NYC

**Sam Parr** (0:00)
Okay, I just got back from New York. I was there for a week. It was probably the most fun business trip of my life. And I wrote down five bullet points I have here that I think we could dive into. And the first one I want to dive into is...

**Shaan Puri** (0:20)
When was the last time you've been to New York City?

**Sam Parr** (0:22)
Oh, dude, it's been like 10 years since I went to New York. Like, I just don't really go.

**Shaan Puri** (0:26)
Well, you had a great time. That's good. Whenever people come here, I feel like I want to be a steward, where I want to be like, look, it's not that crazy to live here, and it could be awesome, and it's exciting. And I'm not like one of these guys that's like, I'm not a Knicks fan. I'm not like a New Yorker. I just live here. So I don't want to pretend that I'm that type of person. But I felt proud to show you around.

**Sam Parr** (0:48)
Yeah, and you did.
Also, I think a lot of people had that in New York because they'd be like, hey, we're going to hang out with this person. And it would be half hangout, half city tour, because A, there's a lot going on, and B, I think there's a lot of pride in knowing the city and being a part of the city and bringing friends from other places to the city, which I think is pretty cool. So one is trust as a service. The next one is marketing. Third one, proximity.
Fourth is city brands. The fifth is what is it really? Okay, so those are my five key phrases. Which one do you want to start with?

**Shaan Puri** (1:26)
Number three.

**Sam Parr** (1:27)
Proximity?

**Shaan Puri** (1:28)
Yeah. We use that word all the time.

**Sam Parr** (1:30)
Proximity. So what do I mean by proximity? Proximity is being closely together. So I want to read you some notes from one of my Hangouts. So I hung out with the comedian, Hasan Minhaj, and he's been on the pod before. He's listened to the pod sometimes. We've gotten to become friends from afar. And I got to go to his office and hang out and meet his team and see how they work. I'm a big fan of watching how different people work. You know, go to their office, that sort of thing. He saw that me and Ben were together. Now, Ben lives in Austin. I live in San Francisco Bay Area. So we're not together. We don't work together in the same office, but him and his team do in New York City. He commutes in from like wherever, Connecticut or something like that, to the city to work.

**Shaan Puri** (2:10)
It's his main job, his podcast.

**Sam Parr** (2:12)
I don't know if I, I don't think he would say that. I think his main job is just being a creative of which a podcast takes up maybe half of his pie chart and the other half is movies and his tours and things like that. So it's like Netflix specials, those sorts of things. So he said this thing, he goes, as soon as you walk into a creative office and there's the hot secretary and the all glass windows and the fancy matcha in the kitchen, he goes, you've already lost the plot. You've already forgotten what it's all about. And so he was like, he's like, it's not about all that stuff. It's not about the glass and the hot secretary and the matcha. It's not about any of that. It's about this and he hands me the yellow legal pad where he's handwriting his script. And he's like, it's about these sticky notes on this wall. And it's not even enough space, but we got to figure it out. Act one, act two, act three. This is the work. And he goes, I wanted it to be tight. I wanted us to have close proximity. He's like, it's a covalent bond. And he was talking about the power of proximity. He goes, you know what, I even take it further. He goes, whenever anyone's in New York, like you're in New York right now, come to the office, come hang, come be a part of this. You need to work for a day? Here, come work right here. Oh, you're shooting this movie? You need a place for hair and makeup? Do it right over there. He goes, because it's when you're here and we're just doing things, you know, we get to sort of bump into each other. Like, you know, our atoms get to bump into each other. Good things happen. I pick up a little bit of what's going on in your world. I figure out a way to help you. You figure out a way to help me.