My First Million

Sam and Shaan explore opportunities in AI and longevity, diving into the life and vision of cryonics pioneer Hal Finney, longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey's anti-aging work, and various cultural moments including Oz Pearlman's mentalism and Kevin Hart's meeting with Jeff Bezos. The episode weaves together philosophy, tech investing, and personal reflection on mortality and meaning.

Steph Smith, the trends researcher behind a database of 100+ stats shaping the next decade, joins Sam and Shaan to discuss macro trends with real business implications. The episode covers the Silver Tsunami (aging population), sports economics, mega-trends like declining birthrates and air quality, physical health impacts (nerd neck), nature-based opportunities, and the psychology of breakup spending.

Get Steph's database with 100+ stats that will shape the next decade: Episode 814: In this special episode, we’re pulling our best moments with the trends queen herself, Steph Smith ( ).

Get our CEO lessons in one guide: Episode 813: Shaan Puri ( ) talks to Jon McNeill about his time running Tesla and working side-by-side with Elon Musk. — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:18) a job interview with Elon Musk (5:07) Being a sniper for talent (8:20) solve a real problem, right now.

Run your life like a $100M business. Get Sam's personal system here: Episode 812: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk to Graham Weaver ( ) about how which moats will win in AI and how he runs a ruthless PE strategy.

Free: 200 business ideas with execution plans, tools, and frameworks Episode 811: Shaan Puri ( ) and Chris Koerner talk about the most overlooked businesses that anyone can start.

Get our business idea database: Episode 810: Sam Parr ( ) sits down with Oz Pearlman to talk about how to read people and the pressure of performing in front of millions of people.

*Get Sam's top 7 books for entrepreneurs (+ his reading strategy):* Episode 809: Sam Parr ( ) teaches the one skill you need to know to become irreplaceable in the age of AI.

Want to invest like the best? Get Mohnish's investment playbook: Episode 808: In this special episode, we’re pulling together the most replayed moments from our episodes with value investors like Mohnish Pabrai, Howard Marks and Guy Spier.

Get Sam's exact system/playbook for ChatGPT: Episode 807: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk about the wildest stories in AI right now.

Get Sam's guide to run your life like a $100M biz: Episode 806: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk to David Heinemeier Hansson ( ) about AI, being wrong in public, and taking on Apple.

Get Sam & Shaan's pro-level biz resource vault (free): Episode 805: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk to the branding genius behind BlackBerry, Sonos, Vercel and Swiffer about how to create a billion-dollar brand name.

Get Shaan's 4 money rules that took him from broke to $25M by 30: Episode 804: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) team up with the TBPN boys John Coogan ( ) and Jordi Hays ( ) to break down the companies that could make you a millionaire as an employee.

Run your life like a $100M business. Get Sam's system here: Episode 803: Sam Parr ( ) sits down with legendary investor Bill Gurley ( ) about how to avoid the biggest mistake you can make in life.

Free course: Build a profitable AI side hustle in 7 days Episode 802: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk to 19-year-old Zach Yadegari ( ) about selling his $50M/yr app to MyFitnessPal. — Show Notes: (0:00) How much?

Get Shaan's money rules guide: Episode 801: Shaan Puri ( ) talks to Sheel Mohnot ( ) about the biggest life lessons from investing, who wins in the AI race, plus AI-proof business ideas.

Get Sam's top 7 books for entrepreneurs (+ his reading strategy): Episode 800: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk about the backstory of Think and Grow Rich, lessons from prolific indie hackers, plus Sam’s new career to becoming a dating expert.

Get Pat's guide to find a $1M business idea: Episode 799: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk to the Starter Story founder Pat Walls ( ) about selling his company + business ideas he’s seen lately.

Get our 140+ business idea database: Episode 798: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) tell the story of the all-inclusive resort king.

Get our free database with 140+ business ideas: Episode 797: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) react to the wildest Elon Musk interview yet.

Get Scott's no-BS guide reveals on building wealth and living well: Episode 796: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) ask Scott Galloway ( ) 10 burning questions. — Show Notes: (0:00) What’s the illuminati like? (5:27) You’re post-economic. What can money not buy you?

Get the cheat sheet: 5 AI tools to make your first million Episode 795: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) show each other the cool things they’ve built with AI.

Get 100 more side hustle ideas to make your first $1M: Episode 794: Sam Parr ( ) talks to his mother-in-law about how she built a $1M business in her 50s by selling pillows. — Show Notes: (0:00) Smithe's origin story (6:37) Pillows!

Get our free database with 140+ business ideas: Episode 793: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) talk about 6 ideas that will explode in 2026.

Get Sam and Shaan's hard-won CEO lessons in one guide: Episode 792: Sam Parr ( ) and Shaan Puri ( ) recap a weekend spent with billionaires like MrBeast, Scooter Braun, Nick Mowbray, and Jesse Itzler.

Run your life like a $100M business. Get the system here: Episode 791: Shaan Puri ( ⁠ ) and Sam Parr ( ⁠ ) talk about how to how to decide if an idea is worth chasing.

Get Shaan's money rules he used to go from broke to $25M by 30: Have a newsletter? Want to pitch it live on an upcoming episode of My First Million for a chance to win Shaan and Tyler becoming official advisors plus $10K?

Charles Duhigg discusses his book Supercommunicators, explaining that the best communicators succeed not because they are eloquent but because they match the type of conversation their partner wants to have -- practical, emotional, or social.

Jon McNeill, former president of Tesla, shares inside stories of working directly with Elon Musk -- from 3am text messages to manufacturing floor problem-solving. McNeill provides a nuanced portrait of Musk's management style and what it is actually like to execute at Tesla speed.

Sam and Shaan identify SaaS opportunities for 2025: vertical SaaS for specific industries, AI-augmented tools for small businesses, and the 'picks and shovels' approach of building tools for other builders. Why the best SaaS opportunities are boring and specific.

Sam and Shaan reveal their biggest business failures: products that flopped, investments that tanked, partnerships that exploded, and the lessons each failure taught. The episode nobody wanted to record — and the one that taught the most.

Ben Horowitz discusses leadership, the Hard Thing About Hard Things, and what he looks for in founders. Horowitz argues that the defining quality of great founders is not vision or intelligence but the courage to make terrifying decisions with incomplete information.

Ring founder Jamie Siminoff tells the story of building Ring from a rejected Shark Tank pitch to a $1B+ Amazon acquisition. He discusses the persistence required to build a hardware company, the pain of being underestimated, and why rejection is data, not destiny.

Sam and Shaan on the challenge of scaling content businesses: hiring writers, maintaining voice, and the tension between volume and quality. How to grow without diluting the personal touch that made the content valuable.

Sam and Shaan on personal branding as business infrastructure: how a strong personal brand reduces customer acquisition cost, increases trust, and creates opportunities that no amount of advertising can match.

Sam and Shaan on turning boring businesses into interesting ones through content, brand, and community. The thesis: the most profitable businesses are boring; the most successful boring businesses find ways to make them culturally interesting.

Sam and Shaan share the wealth-building strategies they actually use: buy cashflowing businesses, invest in tax-advantaged vehicles, compound through ownership (not salary), and avoid the lifestyle inflation that destroys most high earners.

Sam and Shaan share their trend-spotting methodology: tracking Google Trends, reading niche subreddits, watching what teenagers do, and the importance of being early vs. being right. The art of seeing the future 18 months before the mainstream.

Sam and Shaan analyze 5 e-commerce businesses built from scratch: how they found product-market fit, scaled through social media, and built brands that survived the DTC crash. Lessons from real operators who went from zero to $10M+.

Sam and Shaan create a step-by-step guide for buying a small business: finding deals, evaluating businesses, structuring offers, due diligence, and operating post-acquisition. The practical playbook for buying instead of building.

Sam and Shaan analyze MrBeast's content empire and extract lessons for any business: test relentlessly, study what works, reinvest everything, and treat content creation as a science rather than an art.

Sam and Shaan break down 7 side hustles that can realistically replace a full-time salary: content creation, course building, productized services, micro-SaaS, newsletter businesses, agency models, and digital product storefronts.

Sam and Shaan discuss Noah Kagan's Million Dollar Weekend framework: validate a business idea in 48 hours by getting real customers to pay before building anything. The anti-perfectionism approach to entrepreneurship.

Sam and Shaan argue the creator economy is maturing: ad rates are falling, audience attention is fragmenting, and the 'become a creator' gold rush is over. What's next: creators as business owners, not just content producers.

Shaan on identity as a career prison: the labels you adopt ('I'm a tech person,' 'I'm a founder,' 'I'm an investor') limit what you see and what you try. The most successful people hold their identities loosely.

Sam and Shaan break down the newsletter business model: audience building, monetization through ads and products, and why newsletters are the most underrated business model on the internet. Lessons from The Hustle, Morning Brew, and Substack.

Greg Isenberg on building businesses from online communities: find a passionate community, understand their unmet needs, and build products that serve them. The playbook for turning Reddit threads and Discord servers into profitable companies.

Shaan shares his personal philosophy journey: discovering stoicism, applying dichotomy of control to business and life, and why stopping worry didn't make him less ambitious — it made him more effective.

Sam and Shaan identify AI business opportunities beyond chatbots: AI-powered services for small businesses, AI-augmented content creation, and 'picks and shovels' plays. The thesis: the money in AI is not in building models but in applying them to specific problems.

Codie Sanchez on acquiring small businesses (laundromats, car washes, HVAC companies) with creative financing. The thesis: millions of baby boomers are retiring and their businesses have no successors. The greatest wealth transfer in history is happening in boring businesses.

Sahil Bloom on the mental frameworks that shaped his career: the Razors, Luck Surface Area, the 5-to-9 before the 9-to-5, and why building in public is the highest-ROI career strategy in the internet age.

Sam reveals the copywriting principles that built The Hustle: subject line psychology, open loops, storytelling formulas, and why the best copy is invisible — it reads like a friend talking, not a marketer selling.

Nick Huber on building a self-storage empire through sweaty, boring work that nobody on Twitter wants to do. The anti-tech-startup thesis: service businesses in unglamorous industries have lower competition, higher margins, and more predictable returns.

Alex Hormozi's origin story: sleeping on the floor of his gym, $100K in debt, building a gym turnaround business, selling it for a massive return, and creating Acquisition.com. The path from broke to $100M+ net worth through relentless execution.

Sam Parr tells the full story of building The Hustle newsletter from his apartment to 2M+ subscribers and selling it to HubSpot for $27M. The behind-the-scenes of building a media company: growth hacks, revenue models, and the psychology of the exit.

Sam and Shaan brainstorm 50 business ideas for 2023, analyzing trends, markets, and opportunities. The episode showcases their ideation process: starting from trends, identifying pain points, and designing businesses around them.