My First Million - How I Live On $25,000/Month In New York City

Episode Date: September 29, 2023

Episode 501: Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) answers fan questions about his spending habits after selling his company, his approach to fatherhood and the words that changed his life. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to our YouTube channel here. Want MFM Merch? Check out our store here. Want to see the best clips from MFM? Subscribe to our clips channel here. — Check Out Sam's Stuff: • Hampton - https://www.joinhampton.com/ • Ideation Bootcamp - https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/ • Copy That - https://copythat.com/ Check Out Shaan's Stuff: • Try Shepherd Out - https://www.supportshepherd.com/ • Shaan's Personal Assistant System - http://shaanpuri.com/remoteassistant • Power Writing Course - https://maven.com/generalist/writing • Small Boy Newsletter - https://smallboy.co/ • Daily Newsletter - https://www.shaanpuri.com/ — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (0:42) What is top of mind as you become a dad? (3:30) What's the biggest difference in your lifestyle now that you're effing rich? (8:00) What were your alternative business ideas if you didn’t do Hampton? (11:30) What was the most painful thing someone told you and how did that change you? (15:00) What’s one trendy business model you think is over-hyped? (17:00) What did you do when you arrived [at SF] to start laying the foundation to meet interesting people and business builders? — Links: • “Lottery winners and accident victims: is happiness relative?” - https://tinyurl.com/ykbh275y • CB Insights - https://www.cbinsights.com/ • PitchBook - https://pitchbook.com/ • The Anti-MBA - http://www.theantimba.com/ • Monkey Inferno - https://tinyurl.com/yc842nww • Ikagai - https://tinyurl.com/3x9mytpb Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. — Other episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto • #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

My wife is like insane about this stuff. She has a drawer full of coupons. So we went to Costco this weekend because we had a $20 off or something like that coupon. So we still use coupons or coupons. 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. All right.

What's going on? This is Sam. Sean's out with some surgery. I've been telling people he's getting a nose job. I don't know if that's true. But let's just pretend it is. But anyway, we are doing a. quick 10 or 15 minute Q&A session. I asked some of the listeners and some of my Twitter fans

what type of questions they had for me and we'll talk about it. Let's get into it. So all right, what's the first question? What do we got? Let's start with one that's really timely. You're about to be a dad. Someone's asking, what is top of mind as you become a dad? So I'm going to have a child. November 1. That's the due date. We'll see. A little girl. What? So in preparation, of having this baby, I was like freaking out about like just the actual like the physical, her physical well-being of raising her. And so I read the biography of Lewis and Clark because I remember that Saka Joaya had a kid like on that journey or something like that. And so I wanted to read the book. And so it turns out she had a three month old that she carried like in a little

sack across America for two years in like, you know, in the winter. And that kind of like encouraged me like, I'm not going to hurt this baby. So I'm not too worried about that. I was. I was would say the biggest thing, though, that I am freaked out about is raising a spoiled kid and raising a kid that's going to be a drug addict. I'm very, like, like, that, like, I genuinely have, like, a deep fear in me. And so I've been trying to figure out how do I, like, in a very healthy way, withhold things from her. Like, how do I not give her what she wants just in order to instill some types of grit because the sound's got to dozy, but I can give her anything she wants, like, in terms of like physical stuff.

And I'm really freaking out about how do I stay strong and not give her what she wants in order to create grit. And how do I make sure that she's not spoiled and works hard? But my biggest fear is raising like a kid who is freaking out over that or or who like just feels like she doesn't need to work. And so my current thinking, this has not been settled. But my thinking, this is just me, not my family. Me is the only thing that I'll pay for.

is free tuition and free medical for life. And beyond that, give her nothing. That's kind of like my current thinking. That's what I had growing up. My parents paid for my school. And I never had to worry about getting braces or anything like that. And that's kind of like where I am now. I read the Titan by John Rockefeller and he was the richest person in the world.

And his wife has this famous quote where she says something like, the biggest joy that I have in life right now is withholding from my children things that they want because I know it's going to make them stronger and I'm kind of in that camp at the moment on how to do that. But I don't feel very confident

on the right way that I'm going to do that. But my fear is the outcome of a drug-addicted, indulgent child who won't work hard. That's my biggest fear at the moment. And so I'm preparing by like getting my mind right on how to like withhold things from her and not give in because I do give in to a lot of things. Is that a good answer?

You have kids in my, am I? I'm a very withholding weather, so I totally get. And speaking of you being effing rich, this is an next question that I personally am curious about. It's what's the biggest difference in your lifestyle now that you're effing rich? I have nothing to do with picking these questions. I just want to say that. I hate talking about, I don't like that topic, but I will. discuss it. So basically, before I sold my first company, my four years of salary leading up to it was

$20,000 a year, $20,000 a year. I think I paid myself $150,000 a year. And then the last year, I think I paid myself $350,000 a year. So for the first while, I didn't have a lot of money. I was, I was, I didn't have much. And then all of a sudden I sold a business and I, I had enough. at first I did something that I advise everyone not to do, which is I bought a few things. I bought some real estate. I think that I bought a fancy car. I think that that brings close to no happiness

and might be one of those things that you have to go through in order to truly appreciate. But I think that if you do have a windfall, you likely shouldn't buy anything crazy fancy for the first year or two and just get used to it. But I've also learned there's this story about the study about these people who have studied amputees. And they found that after six months, the level of happiness went back to where they were

when they had both legs. So you get hurt, you lose your leg, you're bummed for a little while. After six months, you go right back to feeling as good as you did with two legs. That kind of happens, I think, when you make some money. But the biggest thing that it did was not what it could purchase you, but the biggest change is my confidence. My confidence went through the roof. I'm incredibly confident in my ability to start something and to see it through to be a success. I don't think that I have the confidence where I think everything I'm going to do is going to be a success. I think I still have paranoia that I'm going to lose everything. And I still have massive fears about going broke.

That is something that my therapist and I are working through still. but it hasn't changed significantly. I think that someone had asked a question about monthly expenses. Before I sold, I think I was spending anywhere between $10,000 and $15,000 a month. My apartment at the time was $4,000 a month. I thought that was astronomical. I had a girlfriend. My wife now, we live together.

So it was 2,000 each. And I was like, that is insane. $2,000 in rent. I can, that is just like, that's evil. I thought. Now, when I rent the place, it's a bit more. You know, 10 or 12 or 13,000, sometimes when I go to New York for the summer. And so I increased my rent price, my home that I live in in Austin. I paid $900,000 for it. So my monthly nut or my monthly mortgage and taxes, I think it's $5,000 or or 6,000 somewhere in between that with taxes.

And so I think I increased my spend from like 10 to 15 a month to like 20 to 25,000 a month, maybe 20,000 a month when I'm not in New York. So I don't spend what I think is a significant amount of money. I don't have any car payments. I have two cars, a Tesla and a Mercedes. Those are paid off. I have a cleaning lady who comes once a week. That's $120 a week.

I do some health stuff. So I have a fancy gym. and I go to fancy doctors collectively, that's $1,000 a month. I don't own any jewelry. I'm wearing a fresh clean tea. It's a $10 t-shirt. I wear those constantly. So I don't buy a lot of fancy things.

So my burn, I think, is relatively low. When I go out to eat, I don't look at prices. And when I go to Whole Foods, I buy the fanciest stuff. And that's basically, besides that, I budget everything else out. And so, like, I have a, my wife. wife is like insane about this stuff. She has a drawer full of coupons. So we went to Costco this weekend because we had a $20 off or something like that coupon. So we still use coupons or coupons. But it has not changed significantly. I guess one significant thing, I hate flying. I do not like

to fly at all. So typically if I have to go somewhere, even if it's like 12 hours away, I tend to drive. I do not like to fly. When I fly now, I fly business class. And so that makes a $300 flight, $800, something like that. But my increased expenses, rent went up, business class, but I don't fly often. And then my home doesn't have fancy furnishing. My whole house costs $30,000 to furnish. So it hasn't really changed significantly other than my confidence. My confidence has changed significantly.

The idea of like creating something from nothing that, changed significantly. How was that? Did that answer those two questions? Loved every minute of it. So now you can get out of the hot seat on your personal life. And I'm going to throw to you the night. This was the most liked question. So what were your alternative business ideas if you didn't do Hampton? So I, I think I mentioned this last podcast. There's this thing called Eiki Guy that I'm totally bought into. I'm very fast. name with Japanese culture. Japan has this like this philosophy where I think I said it last time, it was like a Venn diagram of like what the world wants, what the world wants to pay for,

what you're good at, what you love doing. I try to find something in the middle. One thing that I'm obsessed about is data and numbers. I really am like I if you search, if you go to my personal blog, which don't judge. I started when I was 21 and I quit blogging there. But I used to have this document called the CEO document. And I try to. hundreds and hundreds of people. I read lots of biographies. And I tracked when they're born, when they started their apprenticeship, when they found success, and then like what the success was. And I made these like in-depth databases. I'm obsessed with databases. I'm obsessed with researching things. So I have hundreds of pages of my Notion document where I deconstruct how different companies work.

So I thought about creating a research company or a database company. The the reason I didn't start it. It's because I couldn't find an appropriate problem to solve for. So I have all these databases of information and I like to analyze them and figure out what they mean. But I couldn't find a good use case or I couldn't find a reason why people would pay money for it other than it's interesting. But I sought out like for six months like different companies in the space and I couldn't figure out the right like go-to-market strategy. So I wanted to start a database company or a research company because I love it. I thought about starting a media company. I do have a non-compete, so I can't start like a business news email for another one year, I think. And so I couldn't do that.

And so I kind of fell into Hampton because I thought it was perfect in my little Iki guy. It was like what I'm good at, what the world wants. But I was really obsessed with research businesses. We just had Jason Yanowitz on the pod. This episode will go live, but he came the episode before this, and I asked him a lot about research businesses. I think they could be really big. I also think that there's not a lot of like youngish entrepreneurs attacking that space because it's a pretty stodgy old space that hasn't had a significant amount of innovation, but I'm very fascinated by it. So research in database businesses is what I wanted to do. One of my favorite examples is CB Insights. I love CB Insights. I love pitchbook. I love those companies and I wanted to build

something like that. Okay. This next question I love, although it's painful for me even to ask it, because it's really, it cuts deep. This comes from Omar. What was the most painful thing someone told you and how did it change you? Okay. I saw that question and I was trying to think of a good answer. My answer is boring. So my best friend, his name is Nevo Medora.

I met him because he had a great blog on copywriting. And one year in 2013, I think it was, 14, I called email them. And I said, Neville, my name is Sam. I'm going to host this conference. And I want you to come speak. And I'm going to pay for your flight. I'm going to take care of your accommodation. Well, the conference was really like 15 of my friends hanging out talking.

And I bought him a $250 Southwest flight. And he slept on my couch. And we became best friends after that. And when he was there in my couch, I gave him a towel to like take a shower. And it was like a moldy towel. And he was like, dude, you are disgusting. You're acting like this. bachelor, 23-year-old, which you are, but like, you need to be a man. You need to get your act together.

This is disgusting. And I remember that changed my life when he, and so I, like, got together some of my, like, my domestic skill set. I also, like, I was like, I need to act like a man. I need to dress better. I need to, like, be more appropriate. Like, I got to get my act together. So that helped me a ton. He also, Neville does this a lot. He criticizes me all the time, but in a really nice way where he's like, I'm going to tell you this because I love you, but I'm going to give you feedback. And another thing was when I met this woman that he was like dating or maybe one of his friends, I think it was one of his friends. He was like, you're asking way too many intense questions the first time you meet someone. You need to chill and quit talking about work. And that was like painful to

hear because that was my identity. And so that changed how I had conversations. And so he's done a good job. Neville's six years older than me. So he's kind of done a good job of like being my brother a little bit and like teaching me how to like act like a man. So that was like, a good thing. I remember when I started my first company, The Hustle, and this CEO of a large multi-billion dollar media startup that everyone knows, I'm not going to call him out, he told me, I go, I'm going to start this thing called The Hustle. I think it could become a huge thing. He said, this will never make more than a million dollars a year. Just come and join my company. And I was so hurt because I admired this guy so much. And my admiration for him turned to hatred.

not really hatred but like rage I was like I want to like I want to destroy you now and the reason I thought that was because I was so hurt my feelings were so hurt that this guy that I admired just totally shit on me and he was wrong but I believed him for like six months

I doubted everything I was like this is stupid but he told me that he won't even remember saying this guy by the way he probably made he thought it was like an offhanded comment or something like that but it hurt my feelings so badly that I remember that like terribly. And then the last thing was like anytime a girlfriend has ever like broken up with me,

that like that has always like stung me. I'll, I'll remember that for for decades. Like I'm still like trying to like prove them wrong. So like I'm pretty sensitive to like rejection. Yeah. For sure the most painful moments always come from high school. I think everyone can agree with that. Yeah. Like high school and college girlfriends where you're still trying to figure out yourself a little bit and they like and you get in and they're right like you're not doing. things the right way, and they're rejecting you. It's like, it's the most painful thing ever. Girls are so brutal. Okay, this next question is from Caitlin. What is one trendy business model you think is over height? I think the NFT and Web3 stuff is just complete nonsense. I think it's

inferior entrepreneurs slapping their Web3 name on crap that no one wants in hoping that it's going to work. but everyone knows that now. I think what's overhyped? I think starting a newsletter is really popular right now. Most people don't realize it is a treadmill. It is very challenging to create new content, just like this podcast. It's hard.

This is a hard job. I like it because I think I'm good at it or I'm decent, but it is very challenging. Any type of content business, very, very, very, very hard to do for like two or three years. And the newsletter space significantly different than when I started. It is way more competitive, way more challenging. So I think that is a bit overhyped, although I would still start one because I like it.

I think that most of the people in the space are not going to work. And it's pretty bad. Their content stinks because it's just a rinse and repeat of what already has existed. So I think that's quite overhyped. I would say getting popular on the internet can be awesome because you get an audience but in general, I think that creating businesses based off your, or like getting popular on Twitter and Instagram and things like that, I think it's incredibly empty feeling for most people. And I think it's complete nonsense.

And your time would be spent building a company or focusing on your family than getting popular on social media. I think it's empty. I think that it's like small boy stuff. And I find it incredibly uninteresting. And there's many days that I regret trying to like become popular. popular on the internet. Okay, are you up to do one more? We'll do one more.

Okay. This one comes from Jared Seidel. He is moving to San Francisco. He's curious about this idea of proximity to power. So he's moving to SF with the clear intention to start a company and surround himself with high achievers. His question is, what did you do when you arrived, or what did Sean do when he arrived in SF to start laying the foundation to meet interesting people and business builders?

Moving to a big city when you are young and have no family, I think is absolutely awesome. My time, I lived in SF for eight years. I got angry at the government and I left because it was dangerous. Otherwise, I would still be there in a heartbeat. I have no problem paying the high taxes in order to live there. I think it's a beautiful place. I would still even go back there today if my wife wanted to, maybe. So 100% worth it.

I loved it. What I did when I got there was I went to meetup.com. And I went to crazy amounts of meetups. I also did, I started an event. So I created, it's so funny. Sieva Kazizki. So Siava is one of my best friends. Siva has a business that does like close to a hundred million a year in revenue.

We've had them on the pod. You guys maybe have heard of him. He, so I created this book club called the anti-MBA. And the idea was we're going to read one book per month. And we're going to break it up into quarters. So week one, we're going to read a quarter and discuss it. week two, the second half or whatever. And I would have an expert come in on the book's topic,

and we would just shoot the shit with like 30 or 20 people on this book. And I posted ads on Craigslist on meetup.com. And where else? I think I bought an ad in the newspaper for like $200. Like I just posted these ads. And Cieva was one of the people who replied. And after doing that for every week for about a year, I had an email list of like 2,000 people who,

were like following this book club online because I would write out my notes from the the meeting and doing that book club changed my life. So I just hosted a book club and it was awesome. It was so good. It was such a fun way to meet interesting people. And so that's what I did in order to meet interesting people is we just read cool books and we brainstormed and talked about them. Most people, by the way, didn't even read the book. They just wanted to talk about it because I wrote notes ahead of time on like I wrote a summary on the book. So that changed my life. The way that I met Sean was I had this event called HustleCon, and there was this article in TechCrunch about Monkey Inferno,

which was this incubator that Sean ran. And I saw a picture of his office, and it was magnificent. And I cold email Sean, and I said, Hey, man, I'm hosting this event. Can I host the pre-dinner at your office? We'll take care of all the food. I'll even hire someone to clean it up. But can I just host it at your sick office?

And in exchange, you can come to the dinner and meet all these wonderful speakers and attention. attendees. And he said, yes, and that's how I met Sean. And so I think what I did, what I think more people should do is you just reach out to tons of people. And I would say, don't even reach out to like ballers or people who are like ahead of you. Find other peers who seem like they got the juice, who got the charisma or who seemed like they're going someplace. Like for me, it was Ryan Hoover. Ryan Hoover started this thing called Product Hunt. We were buddies before he even started it. And I've got lots of friends that are now incredibly successful where we were just,

all like losers who were ambitious, but we had nothing. And I did a good job of like cold emailing those types of people. And we hung out a lot. And we just, I became wonderful friends with them. And it was through my book club. It was through cold emailing. Twitter wasn't popular. I didn't even have a Twitter back then. So I just cold email tons of people. And I would highly recommend, that's what you do is find peers who you think are going to go places and you guys all try to succeed together. And you try to be pretty selfless in the sense of like, like when I hosted my events, They all volunteered to help me out. When they needed something, I helped them.

And so just like succeeding together, I think, was a really big deal. Now, the issue is that takes like 10 years or 15 years, but it's worth it. And you're not doing it just because someone's going to be successful. Like, I had friends who are artists and, like, they financially weren't successful. But it was just people who were like kicking their dent in the universe. And that was addicting to be around that. And we all kind of did it together. And that's what I did.

I had a book club. The anti-MBA is what it was called because I was so. jealous of the, I didn't go to a fancy school. I remember when I moved to San Francisco, I took a bus out or a train out to Stanford because I was like, I want to see what this shit's about. Like, what's so special about this place? And I felt like in awe. And I was like so jealous that I didn't know what Stanford even was when I was in high school. So I was like, I need to create my own Stanford because I'm jealous of all these people that went here. And so that was kind of the idea. It was the anti-MBA. It was free and I organized it. So I would suggest bookclubs,

meetup.com. I don't know. Is meetup.com still a thing? I bet. you it is. Right now when I was in San Francisco, I went there like six months ago. And there was, and someone, someone like recognized me and they go, Sam, I love the pod. We're hosting a AI meetup and a hackathon right now. Do you want to come? And my wife and I were like, yeah, let's go. And so we just, you got a car here? We were like at the farmer's market. And they're like, yeah. I was like, all right, come on. I'm going with you. And so we went to this guy's meetup. And it was magical. I met all these AI people who I knew nothing about. And it was magical to be those meetups at these places where you have like a homogenous group of people working on something

that is not mainstream. It felt really magical. So I would say go to those events. Right. Awesome. Book Club. Another thing that you and Oprah have in common. I love it. Yes. We have a lot in common. Me and Oprah. So there were a lot of other questions we didn't get to, but we'll do another one a little later. Let me know if you guys like this stuff. Peace. 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.