My First Million's Origin Story, How to Find Winners, and More

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All right, there's this amazing book called Getting Everything You Can Out Of All You've Got. I read it a few years ago and it changed my life.
And the reason I loved it was because it basically talks about how to get and make more money using things that you already have.
Coincidentally, today's podcast is brought to you by Business Made Simple. It's a podcast by Donald Miller, who I'm gonna tell you about in a second, but he has this amazing episode that's all related to this book and the things that I learned in this book. It's called How To Make Money With What You Already Have. It's an incredible episode. It talks about all the stuff that I learned in this book. The host is Donald Miller. I didn't know who Donald Miller was up until recently, but over the last 12 months, this is totally by coincidence. It was all separate people. They said, you have to check out Donald Miller. He's amazing. So I'm happy that he's part of HubSpot's podcast network. You can check it out, Business Made Simple Podcast. It's where he coaches you on how to build your business like an airplane, where the cockpit is your leadership, the body is your overhead, the right engine is your marketing, the left engine is your sales.
You have to check it out. This guy's amazing. It's called Business Made Simple with Donald Miller.

**Sam Parr** (1:02)
Describe your approach. Like, okay, you're starting a company from scratch.
I would say like, it's just a question of priorities. And I would say this versus priorities is building an awesome team. They're recruiting like high level people and then like really setting a cultural foundation around that. So that's like the, that's the non like non poking fun way of looking at it is like that's their priority. So what's your priority when you like start an endeavor?
Did you see this email I sent to you? So I forwarded you an investor update I got. Did you see that email I sent?

**Shaan Puri** (1:39)
No, from who?

**Sam Parr** (1:41)
Well, I can't say, because I was sort of like, this person's smart, they actually sold the company before.

**Shaan Puri** (1:46)
Which address did you send it to?

**Sam Parr** (1:49)
I don't know, maybe you're hustling, I don't know. But just see if you see an email from me. Anyways, I'll just explain to you. You don't even need to read the email. Basically, this is like, I was like, this is so different than anything I would do. And I was like, if this person wasn't already successful, like they built a cool company before this. They are a smart person, I've met them before. But they, you know, their company updates or their investor updates are highly like aspirational. Like, so they haven't launched yet.
The team is like, it's like, oh, the team is growing. We have like, I don't know, I don't know how many people they have, like 30, 40 people now.
We did our, you know, a second offsite because remote work, you know, is hard to build our bonds. And on our offsite, we played these games and we did this mission statement thing. And here's our values. And then like, on top of the values, we're thinking about like how to build a culture that's really, you know, transparent and collaborative. And like, again, haven't launched yet. No revenue, no nothing.
But like-

**Shaan Puri** (2:49)
Professional photographer.

**Sam Parr** (2:51)
Professional photographer, the update is like super robust. And like, again, on one hand, I'm like, when I read this, I'm just like, oh no, like this is like, I just like watching a car drive off a cliff. It's like, this is like all the parts of a startup except for the important parts.
And like, I know they must be doing the important, they must be building the product too. It's not like they're not. But like, I would never prioritize these things in my own companies. I know you're the same way, where we're both a little bit like, you know, brash and like, you know, you're like, no, the office doesn't have cups. Like, we use these like, yeah, like, can you put your hand like this?

**Shaan Puri** (3:27)
Yeah, what do you think hands are for, dog?

**Sam Parr** (3:29)
Yeah, like, they don't call me Sam Hosewater Parr for nothing. Like, grab the hose and suck some down. Like, if you need some, I'll bring it to your desk so you don't even have to waste time.

**Shaan Puri** (3:38)
He's convenient.

**Sam Parr** (3:39)
The hose is 18 foot. I sprung for the big one. And it's like, and so I know you're like me, where like, we do this like very bootleg company building and like, you know, oh, like we look up and it's like, oh, shit, we have 18 dudes. Okay, diversity. Yeah. Like we're, you know, we're going to change that. Or it's like the company culture is like, oh yeah.