Watch These 40 Minutes To Unf*ck Your Life

so the quote is this it says most of us have two lives the life we live and the unlived life within us between the two stands the resistance more powerful than a locomotive and harder to kick than a crack crack cocaine habit and here's the biggest [ __ ] we don't even know what hit [Music] us all right Sam I got to ask you about this so I was watching that Leman Brothers play I don't know if you remember I was telling you I went and saw the Leman Brothers play and there's a line in there there's a part that's stuck with me the the point of the play is it's talking about the generations of the Leman brothers from the great-grandfather to the grandfather and I don't know if you know this story but basically they started out their their German immigrants they come to America they they land somehow in Alabama and they open up a small little store selling Fabrics okay so somehow they went from German immigrants who had nothing selling Fabrics in Alabama to the fourth or fifth biggest Investment Bank in New York in like a couple hundred years so how did that happen the story is how did that happen and the transition goes they're selling fabrics for you know for clothing in their store in Alabama and then they realize they could just buy the raw cotton so then they start going to plantations and buying the raw cotton and selling it to the guy who makes Fabrics out of it so then they become the largest buyer and seller of they become a middleman and they kind of like they in the play they say they invent the idea of middleman I don't think so but like they really popularized the idea of being a middleman where they weren't making the cotton nor were they making the Fabrics they were just in between brokering the deals and so then somehow that that ladds up and eventually they become a bank and so it's like generation two or three so what they show is it's realistic like one of the kids that took over was really smart had new ideas he's the one who turned it into a bank but there's other kids who was like maybe a little bit more of a gambler and a bit Reckless and that put them in positions that you know maybe they shouldn't have been in they got a little too greedy a little too aggressive which ultimately in 2008 Leman Brothers Falls and it's the biggest bank collapse in the history of the country it's because of you know some decisions that were made along the way the seeds that were planted by You Know The Heirs heirs to the throne so in one of the scenes it's the the kind of the older generation and then the younger generation they're both in the boardroom and at this point the older generation is kind of the figurehead he sits there in the boardroom but he's not the guy he's not the guy making the decisions his son is the guy making decisions and so if forgot who it is somebody ask them some some bank or someone else comes and ask them they say um what is your secret recipe what are the ingredients that let you do what you do and they think long hard and you know I forgot what answer they give but it's something like it's the people or it's the the trust that we have that's what that's the special ingredient and then the sun comes up and he goes in our you know when we're baking our flour is money some people use money to buy things we use money to make money our flower is money and like that was like one of the big transitions where they became a bank versus becoming before they were Merchants who were like buying and selling products buying and selling commodities and it shows that like once they have that realization like they never go back mean they just get more financialized more financialized more financialized where they're trading on computer screens and they're trading these subprime mortgages and they're never they're never issuing the mortgage they're not living in the house they're not they're just it's numbers in a spreadsheet from there on out basically and um and we've talked about this idea of like what is it that you sell and it kind of comes down to like the way I think about this is there's many moments in my life where I'm choosing between two paths the path that's opportunistic meaning I see green on the other side I see money on the other side and then maybe the path that's more interesting or fulfilling yeah ART versus money that's a good way of put it uh but for others it might be others might be impact it might be like making a difference in the world right might be the the fulfilling path for them so and as much as I could hear the advice like you know the answer the answer is go do the fulfilling thing however me and many people like me out there are just sway let me just make a quick pit stop over here and those pit stops add up you had one pit stop after another where you choose the opportunistic thing after after I make this money then I'll go do the thing or well this is too good to pass up right and I do that many many times in fact am still doing it today even as I am ashamed to admit it I do that all the time and so I wanted to talk a little bit about people who choose one path of the other yourself people you know well and see if I can get a little bit of wisdom on this um so do you have any stories on this or I can share maybe something I'm reading right now that that really stood out to me but where do you want to start I want to hear the story because I think you're reading a book that I've always wanted to read but I've refused to read it so far because I know what it's going to tell me and I don't like that answer because it's because it's hard it's a hard thing so you're reading uh is it the war in art by stepen pressfield yeah the war the uh war of art so it's like the opposite of of The Art of War sunu book so it's the war of Art and I wasn't going to read this book and then yesterday I um I asked Diego my my guy I was like Diego you read books he goes he goes not really but I'm reading this one book right now pretty good called The War of Art and I said give me the what's like one thing that stood out to you and he just screenshotted this passage that then I went and ran and tweeted out wait hold on so you're not actually reading the book you've just been inspired by one this is the trigger I'm just giving you the whole story here so I got the excerpt first which is actually a great way to to decide to read a book then I read half the book last night so it's a very fast read all right so the so the quote is this it says most of us have two lives the life we live and the unlived life within us between the two stands the resistance just like every Sun casts a shadow a genius's shadow is resistance resistance is faster than a speeding bullet more powerful than a locomotive and harder to kick than a crack crack cocaine habit and here's the biggest [ __ ] we don't even know what hit us I never did from the ages of 24 to 32 the resistance kicked my ass from the east coast to the West Coast back 13 times again and I never even knew it existed I looked everywhere for the enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face that makes you sad right well that's one reaction to it I felt the other way I felt like a inspired rage I was like no I'm not going to have the unlived life within so I pick up this book and I start reading and there are a ton of just like Banger passages that are uh they're just so good that I wanted to I wanted to you know talk a little bit about with you keep reading a few more what are the other good ones all right so the premise of the book if you didn't get it from that that is basically we have the thing that's our calling that we kind of know that we should do or the direction we know we should go and then there's us not doing it and that's maybe choosing what to work on but then there's just a dayto day so he'll point out like you know hey you got that diet that you haven't stuck to you got that that book that you haven't written you got that uh that that startup you want to go start you know of course you'll start it after you you know just save up a little more money and he goes you know fast forward the clock you're 40 50 60 years old and you're that great author that never wrote a book and he gives tips as well so he was like if you're going to be a writer you must write every day you don't not write because you don't feel good just like you don't do this other thing because like if you are just like feeling bummed you still got to go to work he he calls it the difference between an amateur and a pro he goes an amateur they do it because they love it that's what people think he's like oh they love it so much that they only do it once every month they love it so much that they never stick with it he goes you know who loves it the pro the pro who wakes up and shows up to work like it's like it's a job like treats it like it's a job you don't not show up to your job you do it every single day and you do it whether you feel like it or not you don't just wake up and decide am I going to do the thing or not today and so he talks about being a pro and how the pro sits down and quote unquote does the work and the work is he's like I don't care what it takes you know you basically you sit down and it you know it doesn't matter how long you sit there it doesn't matter if you wrote three lines it doesn't matter if those three lines suck you did the work today and that soon enough if you just do the work often enough those three lines turn into lines turned into 30 pages and those 30 pages turn into you know terrible just Mindless driil to you know your best work and the only way it gets there is by actually sitting down day by day and doing the work all right look the question that Sean and I get asked constantly is what skill set did we develop early on in our careers that kind of changed our business career and that's an easy answer it's copywriting we've talked about copywriting and how it's changed our life constantly on this podcast and we' give a ton of tips a ton of techniques a ton of Frameworks and throughout all the podcast well we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document so you can read all of it you can see how we've learned copywriting but you can see the resources that we turn to on a daily basis you can see the Frameworks the techniques we use it's in a simple document you can check it out in the link below all right now back to the show do you follow Jerry Seinfeld at all because he's he talks about the about this topic all the time he's one of the few Comedians and actors and uh whatever you would describe him as that actually gets into the Tactical stuff uh of like what it goes through dayto day and he's like I have a a big pen and a yellow notebook and I and I write jokes like all day uh not all day he said I'll do like an hour a day but I try to get it done just a little bit every day and he goes most a time it's garbage and then he talks about when he was writing Seinfeld he was like I would go into the office I I would go to my office and I would sit down and I would actually write things out and then I had a process and he's like a lot of times I didn't want to do that but I just did it anyway because that's my job and I wanted and and I need to be great and so anyway he's a really good guy to follow because he gets really specific about the tactics uh behind this stuff which people rarely discuss have you ever seen this clip of him at a comedy club talking to a struggling comedian who's like asking he just caught Jerry backstage and asked him for some advice about how to make it yeah what's he say it's just like you get to a point like how much longer can I take it it's time running out you out of time getting older please getting older it's not it's not you can listen I'm I'm 29 I feel like i' I've sacrificed so much of my life the last 30 years you guys something else you would rather have been doing uh not other appointments or other places you got to be not necessarily not necessarily I see all my friends making a lot of money a lot of money on Wall Street I see like you know but I just see that like my friends are you know they're moving up and I don't I'm worried moving up moving up are you out of your mind no I'm not out of my mind I just uh least that's not going to do with your up no no it's a special thing my this has nothing to do with making it or did you ever stop and compare it in your life and go okay I'm 29 my friends are all married all having kids they're all have houses they they have some sort of sense of normality you what do you tell your parents what do you you know how do you feel with that they're parents yes [Music] I your parents let me tell you a story about uh this is my favorite story about Glen Miller's Orchestra they were doing some gig somewhere they can't land where they're supposed to land ENT a snowy night so they have to land like in this field and walk to the gig and they're dressed in their suits they're ready to play they they're carrying their instruments so they're walking through the snow and it's wet and it's slushy and in the distance they see this little house and there's lights on on the inside and there's a pear of smoke coming out of the chimney they go up to the house and they look in the window and in the window they see this this F he's a guy and his wife she's beautiful and there's two kids and they're they're all sitting around the table and they're smiling they're laughing and they're eating there's a fire in the fireplace and these guys are standing there in their suits and they're wet and they're shivering they're holding their intiments and they're watching this incredible Norman lovewell scene and one guy turns the other guy and goes how people live like that that's what it's about right and he just leaves the guy with this parable and the guy is just like you know stunned basically but the point is like this guy says that he's doing the thing that he loves but he's like jealous of the of the comfortable people who are who are not living that life basically and like the true artists the people who are going to make make the great [ __ ] the people who are going to live their sort of the their most fulfilled life they're the ones marching through the snow in the discomfort but they're doing exactly the thing that they want to be doing they chose this discomfort and um I love that story I'm going to remind you of something that we did so in February I think it was the Lego episodes so if you could go my first million Lego at the very end you had said something of like I forget exactly what you said but it was something where I remember the energy being I own this company um that I'm not sure if it gives me purpose uh and it's not really related to my main thing and I said uh well you know the product that you're selling doesn't necessarily have to be uh something you're passionate about you could be passionate about creating great jobs or you could be passionate about uh creating a wonderful place to work making it so your employees can afford a car whatever you know that it doesn't always have to save the world and I think that kind of helped you a little bit and I was reflecting on it because I talked to Brett Adcock the other day when you w't here it's gonna go live after this episode I think so Brett Adcock uh started figure it's a humanoid robot company that like it's one of those companies that you would Peg as like it's going to change the world whatever he did two things that were interesting the first thing is I tried to nag them a little bit to get like some good content out of them and I go Brett you know you're doing this world changing thing now but before this you had a company called V which basically is just like a glorified job board and he laughed and he he knew I was just giving him a hard time and it was a hundred million dollar company it was a great exit and he explained how figur is changing the world and how he was thinking about doing uh artificial meat so meat that you grow in a lab he was like I was worried about these really big problems and I go well veter was not a big problem and he was like he kind of laughed but then he got serious and he goes uh well the way that I thought about it was that you know you spend 50 hours full hours a week away from your family with a company you should be spending it on something that you really truly love and enjoy and that you get value out of and I was like you did it again man you just wo this story around something that makes it really inspirational and world changing is he saying that the job board is helping people find that that's what he was saying or he was saying he got he got that out of it he got that out of it and he was like and it's not really a job board it's significantly more complex than that but I wanted to like just give him a hard time to get get get them to come out of a shell but he was saying like he's like well no it's not just a job board like we weren't just helping people get jobs we were helping them find Value in their lives and helping them find passion and he did such a good job of telling himself a story that I also believe I believe his story to be true and the other thing and anyway it inspired me of like telling myself a story these vegetables aren't just crackers with cheese if you think about what makes a sandwich you must ask yourself do I need all of it or could I reduce it in size could I have could I do more with less what is enough and that's what the Lunchable stands for it's a reminder of what is enough that's exactly what he did and I thought it was great but then he's got this new thing so his new thing uh it's called cover so if you go to cover. it says cover is a AI security company developing concealed weapon detection systems covers technology scans students backpacks I think for concealed weapons in K through 12 schools our goal is to prevent school shootings by identifying concealed weapons inside of bags and underneath clothing apply to work here listen to this so he had just sold one of his companies or no sorry one of his companies went public it was called Archer it was uh basically an electric helicopter big deal it's a big deal and he was thinking what am I going to work on he had three ideas idea number one was Meats grown in a lab which we've talked about which is like it's pretty insane that you have have to have all these cows in order to get ground beef is there a way that you can make real beef in a lab he was really fascinated by that and he read a bunch of research he's like that that that's on my short list but that's not the one I'm going to do the second idea that he had was robots where he was like uh we just can't get enough uh warehouse workers to fill these jobs I wonder if a robot can uh fulfill this uh demand that's what he ended up doing the third one that he didn't do that he was very close to doing he read this study he read this study that was done I think or a research paper done in 2014 or 12 or something like that and basically it was about NASA creating this technology that could use not exactly x-rays but almost like a like a cellular phone like uh like cell phone rays and from 50 meters away so about 150 feet this thing that looks like a video camera can you a human being can walk in front of it and you could see if they have a bomb on them you can see if they have a weapon on them you could see if they have anything underneath their clothes or in their backpacks and he goes That's amazing I wonder what we could use that for he saw this graph about school shootings where basically there's something like a school shooting a day and I'm not talking necessarily school shootings where it's like predetermined where I'm going to go and I'm GNA like you know have be overly violent to 30 children I'm talking about like kids who just have a gun in their book bag at school and someone says something rude to them and they freak out and someone gets hurt and shot and he was like that's what we need to solve that uh we need to solve that problem and so he didn't end up taking uh and running with that idea he did figure however figure's kind of working a little bit and he has a little bit extra money and so he went and Cole called the NASA guy who created this research report that explained the technology and he convinced the guy to let Brett come and check the technology out he has now since licensed it and he's funded cover. with $10 million of his own money and he's hired a team of NASA Engineers to build technology to build this stuff out So eventually they're going to start with going to stadiums so you can see if someone's coming into a stadium with a weapon and then they want to like give away that technology to schools to prevent school shootings because schools don't exactly have money to afford this software and he was telling me this story and I'm like who wouldn't want to prevent school shootings that's like the greatest thing ever uh that's a that's a really hard thing to compete against when I'm recruiting an employee to come and join a newsletter business versus like going to like literally save lives and it got me thinking of what what what I was saying to you about well a company doesn't have to be X Y and Z I felt that was a cope I felt that when I heard what Brett was doing I felt solving big problems and going after your passion and not exactly caring about how big of an opportunity is in some regards in some ways that is better than doing it the way that we you and I tend to do it well I I think that um what Brett stone is pretty awesome here he he did it as a uh you know we talk about one chart businesses that's exactly what I told him on the podcast I go Sean's going to love this yeah it's it's a one chart business because uh we we talked about this before which is some businesses the best businesses really are so simple that you could just put up a single chart on the screen and say that's why we're doing this and the example we gave before was that the rise of uh cremation so crem cremated funerals has grown from like you know less than 10% of the market to over 50% of the market now the majority of funerals I guess in the US are are cremations which is surprising to me still uh but if you're creating a business that's around that which we we we met these guys um I think after was the name of them and like they had a whole deck and I told them I was like you didn't need to send the deck this slide three was enough all you had to show me was that and say we enable this we make it easier to do cremation like look at this rise that's what we're doing and so the best businesses are one chart businesses I know a lot of people that did DDC Brands and if you ask them about their DTC brand they'll tell you this and that about the market that they're in and about the business model about the direct relationship with the consumer all they needed to show was time spent on Facebook that's all these markets were based on was time spent on Facebook Facebook and the CPM on Facebook that's a single chart would have told you that hey there's a new way to reach customers and it's called Facebook ads and we're going to just work backwards from Facebook ads and start selling products via Facebook ads that's really what happened in DC over the last 15 years any anyway so when I asked Brett about like this idea I was like oh so give me the pitch what's the thesis around this what are you what are you excited about he goes oh it's this Google image and he just searched school shootings per year pulled up the chart he goes and it's just a it's like a up into the right exponential like it's like a it's what you want a startup growth curve to look like you know it starts really small and it starts getting bigger and bigger bigger except it's school shooting so you want it to go in the opposite direction and uh because I was like dude how do you have the time don't you just want to go take a nap like you want to be with a kids but like even if you're not with your kids [ __ ] it take a nap dude like why do you why do you're already working doing one insane thing compe with Elon Musk how dare you go start another hard thing and he's like well I have to I feel like compelled to yeah and when I think about like uh you know this isn't actually realistic but I when I think about a company trying to compete with Brett when you're recruiting someone it makes it really hard and I asked them I go uh why do you do these big things he goes well I think big things in many ways are easier uh it's easier when I have this crazy awesome mission to get employees investors customers like it's just it's just actually easier and it kind of it messed with my mind a little bit so my takea away from that by the way is not that you have to go solve a really gnarly problem in the world to be doing something um I think that is definitely One path and the way I think about it instead is instead of saying what should I do a better question is what would I do if I wasn't afraid like if I wasn't afraid what would I go work on and usually you're afraid of failure usually you're afraid of it not working out usually you're afraid that it might be too hard like so for some people it might be starting a humanoid Rob company might be the answer but you're not doing it because you're too afraid that like it's too hard I don't really know how to do that it's it'll take too much money what if I can't raise it what if I do this or if I do that I'm competing with Google and and Elon and all these people and so they wouldn't do it and for other people like for me it's a creative Endeavor right it's to say well what like I don't know I think the thing I really want to do is go write this killer book or go make a TV show or go do something really really interesting and the reason I don't do it is because it might fail right I might spend a couple years writing a book and it comes out and people are like yeah cool book man and that's it that would be disappointing and that would be the failure and I think one of the good things about um about this book that I was reading the war of Art and uh some other stuff I've been consuming is you you really separate the like choice of what you do and the result of what you do as two different things and like you know you control the controllables the thing you can control is did you spend the time doing the thing you really wanted and did you give it your all you cannot control the outcome and if you listen to Rick rubben talk he says the exact same thing he goes your job is not to make it popular popular is not something you do you don't make popular you make stuff and you make a lot of stuff and you put your best stuff out there and you do your best job doing the best stuff you can and popular I mean that's not even something you think about that just happens or it doesn't happen and it's irrelevant at that point whether it happens or doesn't happen because you're just going to keep making stuff and eventually popular starts to pay attention to the guy who's making a lot of stuff um we talked about Rocky in last episode The Story of Sylvester Stallone so after the episode I went and did like a deep dive on it I went and I watched Rocky last night and I watched all of his old interviews from the 1970s and I really got into it and there was so many good parts but the one thing that he said he's interview he's being interviewed by this guy and this is the movie come out it's it's been a success at this point and he but it's like a year in and he says you know so they offered you a lot of money for this and you needed money we talked about how he had to sell his dog because his do he had a big like Mastiff and was eating too much he's like either I'm not going to be able to feed the dog and not feed myself or I sell the this dog and then I could feed myself and hopefully the new owner will be able to feed my dog and as much as it killed him to do it he's like I I have no choice here so he was like down to the dumps and he the way he says it he goes I had $106 in my bank account I had a $300 a month rent and I had a pregnant wife and he goes the wolf was at the door I love that phrase he goes the wolf was at the door why did you because they're like how did you write it in three and a half days the the the V1 of the script he goes the wolf was at the door I had no choice and so he um and they were like but then they offered you money for this like a lot of money for this he goes yeah they go how much do they offer you he goes well first they offered me about 100,000 and I said No and then they came back 150,000 they're why'd you say no he goes well they said we'll take the script but like you know you go away we we will go get Bert Reynolds to to be Rocky like we don't need you to be Rocky we like the script no that's who they went to uh they went to Bert Reynolds they went they went to three or four guys who were big at the time and he's like no I only want to give you this script if I'm going to be Rocky and they were like oh God okay forget it then they came back 150,000 but you're not Rocky no then the final offer was $265,000 but you're not Rocky and he says no and they go he goes how did you say no to $265,000 when you1 that's like 800 Grand now yeah exactly it's like a million bucks basically and they they were like uh how did you say no when you had $106 in the bank he said a couple lines he goes he goes um it's not he go it's not that hard to say no to money when youve never had money you don't even even know what money is he goes he goes if you've never ridden in a Rolls-Royce you don't mind bumping around in a Volkswagen it's all you know he's like I goes I didn't have a frame of reference for that he goes I did want to get out of some misery he's like my land lady was a a big just Beast of a woman and she would you know she would show up at my door every month and her she was so large she cast almost like a shadow at the door he's like and I just remember being afraid of that shadow all the time he's like but I you know my goal was rent my goal wasn't $265,000 I didn't need all that and goes um they go but you know they go did you ever have any doubts he goes yeah he goes before when I was telling them no I was saying are you kidding me Bert Reynolds that guy like I can out act all these people I will kill this role I will be so good in this role you you guys have never seen anybody act like I act and then as soon as they finally relented and they were like cool um you know you can do the movie they B what by the way the deal they ended up doing was a million dollars of production budget which was very little at the time like the big movie at the time King Kong was like 25 million won only had a milon budget he produced the whole thing for 960,000 and he like casted his brothers and his uncles and like you know they did one take on everything and like if they couldn't get something like there's a scene where they're they're supposed to be ice skating on a date but uh Rocky he didn't didn't know how to ice skate they like you don't have time to learn uh so they they just changed the scene where he's walking and she's ice skating and they like made an they just changed the script to why that would make sense and they just brought cameras to an ice rink and stuff like that probably like to get his dog back he cast that guy in the movie plus gave him money it was like all you going to be in the movie so the guy's in the movie for like one line so anyways he's making this movie for for less than a million bucks U they go well now you've made a lot of money right he goes he's he's laughing he goes I about $400 more than I had before this they go $400 he goes yeah I mean I I had a lot of bills before this and that land lady cast in that shadow she showed up for the rent and then taxes and then all this he goes he goes but you know what he goes it he goes I basically paid myself the um stage Actors Guild minimum the SAG minimum so he made $600 a week doing the movie and I think he owned the like some percentage but it was going to be on the back end so he didn't have the money yet and so he goes uh he goes but you know what the money never mattered he goes I would have done this whole thing for a doughnut and a tuna fish sandwich the money meant nothing it was always about the opportunity I had to prove to myself that I wasn't a liar that I wasn't living a life of disillusionment because that's very difficult CU I thought of myself as a creative person and I told myself that I was a great actor but I had never had an opportunity to go f figure out am I any good or not and so when you ask me should I take the money or should I take the opportunity to find out am I living the life of a liar or not I had to get that answer because if if not it would have eaten at me for the rest of my life he goes I'm I think of myself as a creative person I didn't want to wake up and be 50 years old and realize that I'm this creative person who's never done anything creative that would be terrible I'd be living a lie it would kill me dude is is he our new kind of crush move over BR Adcock yeah Sylvester salon's my guy now and he looks great amazing uh the dude these interviews are so good like I'm gonna make a separate YouTube video just as like a homage to to to sly because he's got so much swag which I didn't realize he's very funny and by the way this is another thing I love about the guy he not only did all this stuff but he kind of overcame the adversity right so the reason he wasn't getting casted is because he talks funny well why does he talk funny do you know the story didn't when he was born or no didn't he h he hit his face or he was born with like no nerves on one side of his face right when he was born they used forp to get him out forp damage the nerve and it's the nerve in your mouth that when you go for a dental procedure they numb you and you know you like your tongue doesn't move right you can't talk right imagine that for your whole life that was his whole life and so because he was really jacked and because he talked with kind of a slur and like a sort of his mouth part of his face part of his mouth is paralyzed people assumed he was dumb this guy was incredibly intelligent he was very well read he wrote the script for this he is a very creative eloquent person he's a great writer and people just thought of him as this action hero like this like uh you know like an action figure basically oh you got abs and muscles and that's why you're why you're doing these rols but that's not it at all this guy was a very deep and interesting person but he was sort of masked by this maybe my doctor used forceps and [ __ ] cuz I slur everything and I have abs as well and I'm kind of smart yo Adrian y Adrian that was pretty good I think I think my my doctor also must use that same tool was I born in New Jersey as well um I want to tell you a story about an interesting person I hung out with but before I get to that this is kind of the inspiration episode it seems and you feel inspired you know but it's sometimes it's hard to feel inspired when it's 105° and I'm sitting in Austin Texas sweat my ass off what would you do Sean if you wanted to feel inspired maybe write a book maybe get away from it all what would you do I writing a book seems hard I'd get away but but where would I go I think I would wander today's sponsor is wanderer.com we like wander so go to wander uh am I even saying that funny by the way do am I saying that with a weird accent you didn't stillone it you're good um so wanderer.com um it's a really cool website where they operate really luxurious high-end properties they're awesome if you go to their website you'll see every photo they take is inspiring like all these beautiful beaches like a cabin in the mountains it's just like high-end stuff and they've got gyms and work sometimes I don't even take the trip I just go to wanderer.com just look at places and I get like 10% of what it would feel like to go on vacation right now and it's like okay well that just took me 10 minutes that was great yeah my wife wanted to go to Greece and I was like hey let's just look at Google Earth and look at the parking like pretty dope right did that do yeah that that's what I do with uh with wanderer.com so check it out they're today's sponsor they're an awesome company um I want to tell you a quick story about what I did the other day so I get this text this guy Michael just joined Hampton and I become became friendly with him and he's like hey are you free on Tuesday at six o'clock I was like yeah sure what's up he goes do you want to go fishing uh I was like yeah okay whatever uh I like I'm currently uh right outside of New York City so I'm like where do we get like do we fish like is it going to be like sewage water where do you fish I I I don't know so I go to this guy's house it looks like I'm at like a high school or an art museum he's got this massive beautiful home that's built like on a peninsula and the boat to get into the the Long Island Sound which is like a body of water right here he it's like right on his front porch and we're basically 30 minutes outside of New York City it was one of the most spectacular things that I've ever heard of and so we go out fishing and I get to know him a little bit and I had to tell you about this guy so he's really fascinating because he's one of those guys who you know his products but you may not have ever heard of him so have you ever heard of uh fog Creek software they launched in 2010 as like so fog Creek software launched in 2000 and it was sort of like an agency where the internet was just getting started and these guys were like the early nerds amongst amongst the Nerds so if you wanted like some the development work they were the guys their mission early on was like you know we want to work with programmers and we want to create create a great place to work for programmers and they start this little agency or a consultancy but like a lot of Consultants they're like just doing service work kind of sucks let's create some products and so they create a handful of products the first one being fog bugs so fog bugs was like a a bug tracking software and after 10 years it does all right it's like you know in the eight figure so 10 million plus in Revenue it's doing pretty good but it's kind of stagnates a little bit and they go let's like spit off some more stuff that we've been working on so I believe I don't remember which order it was but let's just say the first one was Trello so they spin off Trello and they fund it with a little bit of money so Trello it's an asonic competitor it's a uh task management software they grow this business they raise only $10 million uh it gets started and they and they grow it a little bit then they raise $10 million they grow this business and they eventually sell it to atlassian software for $450 million I believe and if you look at atlassian software stock I think when they sold the stock was $17 and when it eventually peaked uh like last year two years ago whenever thing when everyone went crazy it was like 20x set and so they got a combination of stock and cash for this deal so huge hit this guy just made it Well turns out they spun off another company as well and that other company was called stack Overflow so stack Overflow was basically like it's still exists it's kind of like a message board but originally for developers and eventually you can make one of these message boards for a variety of topics it's huge did you know that that company sold this wasn't in the news too often but did you know that company sold for $1.8 billion who bought it uh uh a European publishing company uh pro pro process Pro I don't know are you you have it up no I don't have it here but that's okay just some insane traffic by the way they get almost like 200 million monthly visitors huge site and so I was talking to this guy and he was like yeah then we also sold sold fog Creek software and I made a little money there so he's like I've had a hatrick and so this guy has done all these amazing things and so just like learning about his Story how he's pretty low-key in the sense that like he he doesn't have Twitter he doesn't really use social media and he's like giving me all this like interesting Intel on growing their companies and making him huge it's called proess according to Ari um and he's like yeah I sold that one we sold that one for 1.8 we sold this one for you know 400 and something but the stock like appreciated a ton so who knows what the actual price was and I was like what are you doing now and he's like just fishing just to thinking and so he goes fishing on this boat like every day during work hours and he's like showing me a tour his home and he's like yeah this is where my office was but I don't really open up a laptop anymore did you know this guy or why is he inviting you fishing I met him in Hampton and we just started talking and he just was like do you want to do you want to come over and I guess this is look when you're you look like a guy likes to fish like spotted I thought here's why this guy was cool to me he's like an Outdoorsman in basically New York City and he's like living a very unique life uh and it just but he's very zen-like he's super Zen and he was telling me stories about how he like overcame certain things at the company the whole time he's like telling you stories he sounds really Zen and calm and low-key and I thought that this this guy was one of these people who deserves a little bit of love because super under the radar as successful as anyone we've talked on this podcast but does not have a big mouth so I'm kind of uh blowing up his spot a little bit but I I asked him if it was all right that I said all this and super interesting guy that you should look into Michael prior is his name he's awesome what was um anything cool from your conversation anything you you learned or an Insight or an observation you had that made you think yeah so he was uh I just liked how lowkey he was about everything so he was basically the CFO of stack overflow stack Overflow I don't know what their revenue was but they sold for $2 billion doar and I was like did you are you like an accountant did you were you a CFO he's like no I barely knew how to do any of this stuff uh but the company needed a CFO when we started he's like I was a programmer he's like I haven't programmed in forever but I just kind of learned like to pay taxes and I just had to learn how to pay taxes and I had to learn how to do payroll and he just like rolled with the punches and I think that uh I was like were you intense he's like no I'm not intense at all and we hear stories about how people are doing what do Elon must say hardcore hardcore mode hardcore and this guy he was like I'm not I wasn't really hardcore he's like we were smart and we worked pretty hard but like I would not describe what we did as intense and we just kind of R rolled with the punches it was really cool to hear something that differs from the loudest people who are incredibly successful of being intense you got to grind you got to do this that wasn't the vibe that I got from Michael and like the early founding of these companies and I thought it was really inspiring I thought it was awesome I also think and this is for anyone who wants to build a company you have to look up his partner his partner's the louder one his partner is called uh is named Joel Joel and he's got this amazing blog that I've read for years it's basically like Paul Graham but more a little bit uh a little bit more hotheaded a little yeah well it is it's very tactical but he also writes like he he he's a little bit more jokey and it's a little bit more Brash which I appreciate and it's called Joel on software I think it's one of the best entrepreneur blogs out there I don't even think he updates it anymore but he has probably a thousand articles and so it was awesome just like hearing little bits of like Intel from these guys and so I wanted to uh shine a light on this guy it was really fascinating yeah that's amazing uh that's cool how's your fishing game dude it was like on easy mode like the poles were like attached to the boat and it was like once you once you hear like a bell rig you just go and grab like you like grab the thing and just like barely crank it in it's like the door dash of fishing yeah like his boat like told me where the fish was like it gives you like a little alert so it's like fish here and you just like sit there I'm just like sitting drinking water and it's like oh we got a fish I guess and so oh did you see the picture of it it was three foot long this [ __ ] fish I saw that thing and I was like how the hell did you catch this what what is going on that was like a record cat that was like a record setting fish it was just like the fishing rod was just like in one of the holes on the boat and you just like barely touched the Reel and it came up I mean it really there was really no glory in it it's like AI for fishing it's like wait a minute yeah like like the boat these I don't know anything about boats a lot of people look at me they think that I'm like an Outdoorsman I don't know [ __ ] about this stuff and like it like has these sensors that tell you where the [ __ ] fish are like there was no work involved so like this fishing shit's easy I don't know why people are impressed by this let me ask you one more question I'm always interested in what other PE what other interesting people are interested in what was this guy interested in when he was talking to you what kind of questions did he ask you we talked about being popular so basically like a lot of people who are why you ask you good question I think I was like uh uh the tallest [ __ ] here like where I was just I was like the only one that he could like uh talk to whoever who has even a slight popularity we were talk so I found it odd that and I don't think he actually envied me at all nor does he want this type of thing but a lot of like rich and successful people who are low-key are curious what it's like to have an audience and what I tell them all the time and I don't know if you feel this way I go hey I will trade you my audience for your Networth any any day of the week I'll gladly make that trade and of course none of them would ever actually want to do that but I think it's funny and and I'm I'm not talking about him but people in general uh that they're into what it's like to have like an audience and be internet popular or something like that and I always remind them I'm like it's really just like me in my bedroom just or on my toilet just typing out stupid tweets and like there's like not that much joy in it and I would I I would much rather have A2 billion dollar company and so don't get like don't actually Envy this or think that it's awesome and so a lot of these people are curious what it's like to be like a a popular internet person um let me ask you a question hypothetical how much would somebody have to pay you to never create content again delete everything on this podcast delete your blog and never you never get to publish again no Twitter no social media no nothing how much would you have to get paid $30 million what about you a really specific number very quick and specific number well I had to think about it I had to think about what it's worth for half a second well I had to think about what you know what it's worth what would you would your number be I think 100 no think more than 100 I think it would have to be like yeah I think it would have to be more than dude you are not Sylvester Salone you are not you are not Sylvester Salone you you you don't have the landlord's not here like you've tasted the nice life you want more of it you would do it for much less no no I I really wouldn't so your official number is 250 250 that's insane to me I do not believe dude that's like you'd be no no no no no no I think you I think you are full of [ __ ] I think you are absolutely you take power of attorney and change my decision for me I just don't like sorry my friend's an idiot I'm gonna change that number why why why why because I think I'm GNA end up at 100 to 200 anyways doing what I'm doing and I like doing it so it's basically if I think I'm going to make that anyways doing this um and I like doing it so then you have to pay me a premium on top of to make me stop doing a thing I like doing and then there's the additional like time value of money that I get it all upfront right now guaranteed right so so you know I'm just kind of factoring that in and I would just rather air on the side of um what's a number I would not I would not regret like what what's a number you could pay me that I okay I'll go figure out some other Hobbies well would you still be allowed to do anything anonymously like under a pen name no no your your hands are taped you can't you can't type can't can't do any of that stuff yeah maybe it would be higher then like if I could if I could do something anonymously I would do that I think that um I think the anonymous thing is actually pretty cool it might be better anyways I think it's better anyway I think the anonymous thing is cool I'm really fascinated by these authors who use pen names so we had uh Jack Carr on the podcast that's a pen name um but it like was it a pen name because it's a stage name or is a pen name because he wants to be anonymous in real life I imagine the second one of course he's not anonymous because like we see his face but yeah I think it's just a stage name uh which is different I don't know what you call it yeah I don't know but I just know that's not his Jack car just sounds cooler you know I I remember I was in a movie Once dude my name rhymes with that why does his name sound so much cooler it's the C it's the the k sound right K is the coolest letter everybody knows that um I was in a movie once and the main actor was Cal pen and I was like oh man Cal pen what a guy Cal pen what a name sounds like a hero sounds like a Hollywood star Cal pen dude that guy's not you know what his real name is is he's his name is like culpen sesh Modi that's his real name he couldn't get auditions and so they changed instead of his first name being uh Gulpin they changed it to Cal pen and then all of a sudden he started getting auditions and he was telling me this like he was like embarrassed by not embarrassed by but he was like effed up that this is what we had to do he's like I didn't want to change my name I just wanted to act and the price of having to Act was to change my name and this is super common like Mindy King her name is not actually Mindy King uh like a bunch of Asian actors same thing like they all Chang they all change their name to sound cooler and more uh you know whatever in fact Leonardo DiCaprio that they tried to get him to change his last name they wanted him to be like Lenny Williams was what they wanted to seem to be and he refused and so we we were almost robbed of Leonardo DiCaprio he was about to be [ __ ] Lenny Williams if he had listened to the to the suits Lenny Williams would have been so much worse for him cuz Lenny Williams sounds like a 50-year-old who dates a 19-year-old Leonardo Le Leonardo DiCaprio is a 50-year-old at least there's some Suave or whatever you know like for some reason wait is that illegal no he's kind of Italian I think so it's okay last name is different so I guess if we question it Lenny Williams sounds like like a 50-year-old guy who watches on TV you know what I mean like yeah he did the right thing Leonardo DiCaprio he pulled it off good job for him um do we end here on this rambling wandering uh podcast I think so I think that's it all right that's the pod [Music]

Channel: My First Million

Views: 46,092

Keywords: my first million, my first million podcast, my first million podcast episodes, the hustle, the hustle daily, the hustle trends, shaan puri, sam parr, sam parr the hustle, the hustle podcast, the hustle podcast my first million, startup podcast, entrepreneurship podcast, business entrepreneurship podcast, business, podcast, entrepreneurship

Id: tT4C5geCHTk

Length: 46min 5sec (2765 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2024