Producer Ben sits in for Shaan and interviews Sam about traits of great conquerors and high achievers throughout history — from Hitler to Napoleon to Edison to Mr. Beast. The conversation covers committing to the bit, addictive personalities, charisma as a force of manipulation, and how all of it connects to a bias toward action in business and podcasting.
Speakers: Sam Parr (host), Ben (producer, guest host)
Introduction [00:00:00]
Ben: Hey, My First Million fans — this is producer Ben. I’m subbing in this week because Shaan is out with some family stuff. For this One Question Friday, Sam and I sat down to discuss how to take over the world — some things I’ve learned from studying the lives of great achievers and conquerors throughout history. Sam and I just got to talking about history, great people in our own lives, and what we’ve learned from them. It’s a little more random and less focused than a typical One Question Friday, but I think there’s some really good stuff in it that you’ll enjoy.
Ben: So I asked you about traits of conquerors. The reason I’m thinking about this is I just finished this epic book — it’s like 1,400 pages long. It’s called “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.” Have you heard of it?
Sam: Yeah.
Ben: It’s one of the seminal texts on Hitler and Nazism. And it’s crazy. I was reading it and I was like, this is nuts. The reason I read it was I wanted to figure out: why would a country be so complicit with such bad things? What on Earth was about this Hitler guy that convinced all these people to do all these horrible things?
Ben: So I learned about it, and it was wild. Basically it all came down to this: he was in prison once because he’d basically been a glorified protester — kind of like storming the capital, that type of thing — and he was arrested for it. In prison he wrote his book, Mein Kampf, and in the book he wrote, “I have recently discovered that it is my obligation to lead the German people to greatness.” And he dedicated his life to that.
Ben: And it was wild — there was like a decision to be made, and it was almost perfect execution. I mean, it wasn’t in the end because he didn’t achieve whatever he was trying to achieve, but like he got so freaking far — so past what I ever would have thought was possible. And at the time, right before the Nazis came to power, they were the freaks of Germany. They had a lot of oddballs, artists, people with a lot of anti-social behavior. They dressed funny. People were like, “Who are these guys? They’re a joke.” And then it changed quickly.
Ben: So I thought that was fascinating — these conqueror types, how on Earth they came to be. I wanted to ask you: what are some common traits among them?
Committing to the Bit [00:04:30]
Sam: Do you feel weird learning lessons from the life of Hitler?
Ben: No, because I’m not necessarily learning a lesson I want to emulate. But I do think you can learn good lessons from bad people — there’s no doubt about that. Everyone’s bad in someone’s eyes, but I can read about Napoleon and learn about war and strategy and apply it to business. You can always learn good lessons from bad people. I just wanted to understand: why did so many people go along with this?
Sam: So here’s a lesson I learned from Shaan, Mr. Beast, and Hitler.
Ben: Oh my God.
Sam: Hear me out. This was so fascinating to me. We did this Camp MFM thing and we’re at Cameron Indoor Stadium, and they decide to do a half-court shootoff between Shaan and Mr. Beast for ten thousand dollars. Mr. Beast goes, “Shaan, if you make a shot at half court I’ll give you ten thousand dollars.” And Shaan goes, “Will you give me 10 grand in Bitcoin?” He goes, “Sure, let’s do it.” I think in the end he told him he’d give him 10 grand in pennies, but anyway.
Sam: So they’re about to start shooting at half court, and Shaan turns to the camera and does his cheesiest Mr. Beast impression — totally hamming it up, kind of poking fun at himself — and he goes, “I’m about to shoot from half court with Mr. Beast, and whichever one of us makes it first is gonna make ten thousand dollars!” When we posted the video, it actually went viral on TikTok.
Ben: Really?
Sam: Yeah, that was one of our videos — I think it’s in the millions of views if not hundreds of thousands on Reels and TikTok. And what clicked in my mind when I saw that was: it’s actually not that hard to figure out what you’re supposed to do to be successful at this stuff. Very few people are willing to commit to the bit fully.
Sam: Mr. Beast fully commits to the bit. Every time he looks at the camera: “I’m about to give a hundred thousand dollars away to these people if they eat a cockroach” — he fully commits to it. And Hitler is the same thing. You go watch those speeches — he’s ridiculous. He’s gesticulating, he’s yelling, he’s screaming. But he fully committed to being Hitler, to representing German greatness and the Aryan race or whatever. He didn’t care. Tons of people outside of Germany mocked and made fun of him. He was very mockable, very easy to make fun of. And you can easily make fun of Mr. Beast too.
Sam: Sorry, Mr. Beast, for comparing you to Hitler. But that idea of — just throw away your shame and embarrassment, whatever you’re trying to do, and fully commit to the bit — you’re going to be really successful. I think that’s very true.
The Power of Charisma [00:09:00]
Ben: And I want to talk about other people and what they had in common. I was emotional reading this thing. So basically, Joseph Goebbels — he was head of propaganda, and if you Google him he looks like the most evil person on Earth. He was journaling like crazy throughout this whole process, and the book cites his journal. They tell the story of basically Hitler having just killed himself, and Goebbels and his wife have five or six kids. And they write in their diary: “We’re going to go kill our kids right now, then kill ourselves, because us and our children belong to the Führer, to the Third Reich. If the Third Reich won’t exist, we do not deserve to exist either.”
Ben: And I was like — that’s the worst. They went and killed their children. Six of them, all below 12 years old. And I was like, this is the power that charisma or whatever it was had over people. They committed. I mean, they obviously killed five or six million people — it was horrible — but that act is even more intimate in some regards. I remember reading that and I’m like, holy crap. That was one of the more emotional parts of that book.
Sam: Yeah. That’s tough. Okay, let’s talk a little bit about military strategy and good strategy. Let’s pivot from the darkness.
Blitzkrieg and Massed Focus [00:11:30]
Sam: Common attributes of great conquerors. One of the things I find interesting: have you heard of Blitzkrieg?
Ben: It basically means when they attacked, they’d go all out for short periods — the opposite of what World War I was, right?
Sam: Yes. It means “lightning attack” or “lightning strike.” The idea is short, quick attacks — you shock the enemy, you go faster than they expect. What’s interesting to me is that Blitzkrieg was sort of a marketing stunt. It wasn’t anything the Nazis talked about internally — it’s really kind of an American invention to explain German success.
Sam: What the Germans actually talked about was this word — I can’t remember it in German — but it essentially means “gravity.” Schwerpunkt. And it wasn’t just that the attacks were fast, although they were. It was actually about massed strikes. They attacked fast, yes, but they were able to sustain that attack and follow up on it for a long time. Which is actually the same thing Napoleon did.
Sam: In the Napoleonic Wars, before he came along, people were stretching out their troops further and further to try and flank their enemies. And then he’s like, “Well if everyone’s going to do that, I’m just going to pack all my troops in the middle and punch a hole in the middle of their lines.”
Sam: And I think that has big applications in business. Have you heard the phrase “Blitz scale”? That’s Reid Hoffman, right? It’s not just about going fast — although fast is important — it’s about focusing tons of resources on a small focal point. The Amazon example: starting with bookstores. Starting with just books. “I’m going to take tons of resources and just focus on this tiny place, and then follow up on that victory. Win books first. Then follow up with other marginal victories.”
Ben: Yeah. That’s interesting — gravity and narrowing the focus.
Obsession and Addictive Personalities [00:15:30]
Ben: What else did conquerors have in common? Like the stereotypes — Napoleon, or even business people like Edison?
Sam: For me, the number one thing is total obsession. With Edison, the big thing that clicked for me was he was inventing so much that he basically wasn’t eating — super skinny, super gaunt, wasn’t washing his clothes, smelled bad, barely sleeping. He would invent and tinker until he fell asleep at his workbench, then wake up in the morning and start inventing again. His family was worried about him.
Sam: And I was like, substitute inventing for meth or heroin, and be very clear: this guy was an addict. He was a junkie. That’s when it clicked for me — all of these people who are super successful have addictive personalities. It just so happens they’re addicted to something considered positive.
Ben: Was he born that way, you think? Are a lot of people born this way?
Sam: I think so. If you look at the numbers — CEOs, highly functioning people — you’d think they don’t have problems with substance abuse. But it actually turns out they have higher rates of addiction and substance abuse than the general population when you study it. So I think they’re born with this propensity to addiction. They’re the kinds of people that could end up conquering a vast European empire, or they get hooked on drugs as a teenager and end up a junkie on the streets. They’re going to end up addicted to something — let’s just hope it’s something positive.
Ben: Have you ever heard of this book called “A First-Rate Madness”?
Sam: No.
Ben: The author has this premise where — in times of stability, a non-mentally-ill leader is needed. But in times of turmoil — the American Civil War, MLK during the Civil Rights Movement, someone trying to dominate and conquer — a mentally ill leader is actually ideal and tends to be better. The author defines mentally ill as: a propensity to be addicted to drugs and alcohol, huge bouts of depression. Lincoln actually tried to kill himself two or three times before he became president. Churchill was like, “I’ve thought about killing myself a ton, but I’m just too much of a coward to do it.” And he was an alcoholic. Basically, the great leaders during troubled periods — the majority of them had some form of mental illness.
Sam: Yeah. And this is something, going back to Mr. Beast — I was talking with him and he was like, “Yeah, I can’t really gamble because I’m kind of a gambling addict.” He talked about this highly addicting crypto gambling site where he’d be wagering tens of thousands of dollars.
Ben: Yeah, well — that’s no secret. People who get there are like that. And what I realized is that for him, YouTube is another form of gambling. You put out the video and who knows how it’s gonna do, and then you get that dopamine hit of, “Oh, this got 50 million views.” The variability, the way the algorithm can pick it up and make anything go viral — it’s just a gambling addiction put into something positive. For a lot of these people, in normal circumstances they can’t just chill and be happy and be normal. They have to be running at a 10 at all times. That’s useful in certain circumstances, but not in normal ones.
Sam: I remember at like 11 p.m., someone mentioned basketball and how excited Mr. Beast was to play. He goes, “Let’s just go right now.” And we were like, “What? It’s 11 o’clock.” He’s like, “Yeah yeah yeah, let’s figure it out.” And as he said that, his assistants were calling high school gyms trying to wake up principals, like, “Hey, I’ll give you five grand if we can come play basketball right now.” And I was like, no, I don’t want to do that. It sounds like hell.
Ben: But he was serious.
Sam: He was dead serious. Yeah, it was crazy.
Conqueror Types in Real Life [00:22:00]
Ben: Who have you met, besides him, that you’d put in that category — these obsessed, almost conqueror types? Who have you met that kind of has that gene?
Sam: You, I think. You kind of have a screw loose in that way. Look at the way you approach fitness. You have trouble dipping your toes into things.
Ben: Yeah, that’s for sure. And I have an addictive personality too. I definitely am crazy in that obsession regard. Though I think I don’t have the drive in the same way — I’m a little more self-aware where I’m like, “No, I don’t want to do that, that sounds too hard.” But yeah, definitely crazy.
Sam: Yeah. Okay, I’ll give you one. Do you know who Tucker Max is?
Ben: Yeah.
Sam: Tucker Max is an author, he’s my friend — or was, I haven’t talked to him in a while. He wrote “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.” Lately he’s been taking a fairly far right turn, writing these articles predicting that the world’s going to end. I don’t agree with anything he says about that type of thing. I disagree with so many of his points.
Sam: But whenever I hang out with him and hear him talk, in my head I’m going: “I think you’re wrong, I think you’re wrong, I think you’re wrong.” And yet I find myself fighting from buying into what he’s saying, even though logically I know it’s not true. When I get around him, I’m like: dude, you are so confident, you are such a good storyteller, you have such strong energy driving you in one direction — it’s sucking me in. I find myself having to pinch myself like, “Snap out of it.” Tucker Max has that hardcore. And if you read his writing, it comes through even there. You’ll read something and think, “Oh, this guy’s totally right,” and then you have to go read the counterpoints.
Ben: Yeah. I just thought of one that’s a little off the wall. His name is Dallin Oaks. He was on the Circuit Court of Appeals — one of the highest judges in the United States, on the short list to be on the Supreme Court for Reagan. He didn’t become a Supreme Court Justice. He ended up becoming an apostle for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is now the number two person in the church, set to take over probably in a few years.
Ben: What I found interesting was that I think it was the first time I met him — I was like 16 — that I encountered true charisma. And it felt different than I thought it would. Because when I talked to him, he talked to me for like 10 minutes, unbelievably charmed me. But the impression I came away with was: “Wow, I’m so smart.” Because he was so good at playing on my feelings — making me feel comfortable, getting me to divulge information about myself, focusing all his attention on me. I came away like, “Man, I’m super special.”
Ben: And I think that’s what truly charismatic people do. People think it’s inward magnetism, but it almost goes the opposite direction — somehow they make you feel like you’re the special one, and then you get drunk on that.
Sam: Totally. I used to work for this guy named John Cobbs. He ran a company called Apartment List — they bought my other business, maybe raised one or two hundred million dollars in funding. I was only 22 when I worked there. He would give these talks at the office and I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” And we weren’t even doing anything that interesting — it was just a Zillow competitor. Not exactly the most sexy thing. We’re not saving the Earth, not going to the moon. Just a cool money-making scheme and a slightly better way to find an apartment.
Sam: And I remember hearing him talk and I’m like: “I am so — we are democratizing housing. We are making people’s lives so much better. We owe it to the world to do this.” And you begin to think that rules don’t apply to you. He’d say it’s “us versus everyone” — which is a common tactic in cults, and you should always do this in a good company too. You have us, and then you have the enemy. And everyone’s on the enemy side. Create that dynamic.
Sam: And I felt with him, whenever he gave these Friday talks — we used to have this thing, Friday at 4 he’d give a talk — I remember thinking: rules don’t apply to us. And I’ve heard the same stories about Travis Kalanick at Uber. The people around him weren’t like, “These laws we shouldn’t be breaking.” It was: “These laws shouldn’t exist. They are wrong. We need to prove they’re wrong.” And you just get intoxicated with it.
Ben: You know who’s pretty good at this — from Camp MFM — is Sahil?
Sam: Your friend?
Ben: Yeah. When I was talking to him, I think he kind of brain-raped me a little. At the end, I don’t know — I just… did I just tell Sahil everything about my life?
Sam: And like he won’t tell you a thing about his.
Ben: No. I was like, “How is it that you’re the multi-millionaire, you have the successful business, you’ve done all this impressive stuff, and we just spent 20 minutes talking about me — you know everything about me and I don’t know anything about you. How did this happen?”
Sam: He’s so good at it. So is Ben Levy — Shaan’s partner. He’s really good at that. I always call Ben a shark, but he’s not actually a shark because he doesn’t mean — he’s probably not gonna harm you. But I’ll have to stop myself, like, “Dude, shut the hell up. You don’t need to tell this guy all this stuff. Be private about some things.” He’s so good at getting stuff out of you.
Ben: Yeah. Another guy I found myself getting intoxicated with — Sam Bankman-Fried. FTX. When I hear him talk I just think, “Oh, you’re right about everything.” It’s hard for me to hold onto any other opinion. And I have to remind myself: this guy’s just a 29-year-old smart guy, which is cool and all, but he’s just a dude still figuring it out just like I am. But I will hear him talk and I buy into everything he’s saying.
Ben: And another one — Malcolm Gladwell. If you ever read a Malcolm Gladwell book you’ll think everything he says is facts. In reality, a lot of it’s just theories, and he’ll say, “This is just my theory based off the data — who knows if I’m right or wrong.” But I’ll read it and think, “Oh, this is just how the world is.”
Ben: My takeaway from that is: storytelling is so important. I think Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap — most of his stuff is of little to no value as practical information. But anyone who asks me how to do storytelling, I’m like, “Just go listen to Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast and analyze every single sentence.” It doesn’t matter what you think of what he has to say — I think he’s this generation’s most gifted storyteller and it’s not even close. He gets you intoxicated. You feel like: of course this is the answer, of course what you’re saying is true. And I have to purposely go seek out other opinions to remind myself this isn’t necessarily true.
The Slippery Slope: Storytelling as Craft [00:31:00]
Sam: Ogilvy has this good quote — David Ogilvy, very famous copywriter and advertiser — that the job of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence, and the job of the second sentence is to get you to read the third. If you read Gladwell with that framework in mind, he’s such a master. The first sentence of every podcast is independently extremely engaging and gets you to listen to the second sentence, which is itself extremely engaging. Every single sentence is a masterpiece that gets you into the next one.
Ben: And he does a really good job with voice inflections. His voice is soft and welcoming and warming, so it’s more subtle than when Shaan and I get animated. Everything he says is kind of a whisper, but he knows how to use empty space and silence, and then he knows how to come back in and lead you a little further, and then break it to you. You know what I mean — he has his whole thing.
Sam: That’s what I call the slippery slope. Same as that copywriting concept — the first sentence gets you to read the second, which gets you to read the third. I want to pull you down that slope, because the further I pull you along, the more bought-in you get. Tony Robbins does this too. He’ll say, “I’m about to tell you the one thing that’s going to change your life,” then spend the rest of the chapter saying, “We’re almost there, we’re getting to it — but before we do, I need to tell you why it’s important.” There’s a reveal at the end, and oftentimes it’s a little anticlimactic, but you’re so deep down that slope that you’re bought in.
Sam: That’s what Malcolm Gladwell does wonderfully. He gets you to go down the slope and pulls you along. And a lot of the great dictators and CEOs and leaders — both good and bad — they were awesome at oratory, which is something we don’t really talk about anymore. Obama was like that. I heard Obama talk and I’m like, “Whatever you say — yes.” It’s seductive.
Ben: It’s seductive. The root of all this is learning how to write well, how to storytell, and then if possible how to speak.
Bias to Action [00:36:00]
Sam: Can I talk about one more attribute — one that you and Shaan have been getting on me about recently? This idea of bias to action.
Sam: My favorite story about this: Napoleon comes into command of the French Army in Italy, and it’s just been sitting there for months. The reason is they don’t have enough guns, enough ammunition, enough shoes, enough clothes. Horribly undersupplied, morale is low. The general before Napoleon is like, “We cannot go give battle to the Austrians like this.” And Napoleon comes in and says, “Okay. Today I’m going to take account of everything — you’re going to give me an accounting of exactly how many shoes we have. And tomorrow we’re going to march to go fight the Austrians.”
Sam: They’re like, “This is a horrible idea.” And he’s basically like: Newton’s first law. An object at rest stays at rest. An object in motion stays in motion. I don’t care — we’re going to go attack. So they go out, they attack, they score a quick cheap victory, and then they’re just rolling. They roll through Italy and kick the crap out of the Austrians in a matter of weeks.
Sam: And I’ve been talking to you and Shaan about doing better, getting bigger — and I’m like, “I have all these problems, I need more researchers, I need more writers.” And both of you were just like, “No. Just put stuff out. Just put out more episodes. What’s wrong with you?” And so that’s something I’ve been focusing on: it’s so easy to focus on all the inputs, on getting everything ready, on planning and preparing. But bias toward action means every single day you need to be taking steps that have measurable outcomes, that advance your goals forward. You need to have a bias toward doing those things rather than planning.
Ben: And a good example of that: only about six months ago or something, Shaan’s microphone wasn’t working — he’s always a little disorganized — and he’s like, “Forget it, I’ll just use my AirPods.” One of them was out of battery. And he goes, “We’re just going to record this shot with your webcam and one AirPod. That AirPod is your microphone.” Versus waiting 20 minutes to charge it, he just said, “No. We have to do it right now.”
Sam: And I think that’s the way to go. The world wants you to be vanilla. The world wants you to be safe. So many people write on their goals for the day — I bet a lot of people listening have one task today that says “plan workout” or “plan how I’m going to launch this.” And that’s really just a way to make you think you’re actually doing something. Instead you should just start and figure it out along the way, because virtually everything related to a project is reversible. You should always just make it happen. Always have a bias to action, because it’s also intoxicating.
Ben: Have you ever sold anything on the internet?
Sam: No.
Ben: So when people talk to me about “how do I do this, how do I do that” — I’m like, dude, whatever you do, build it so you can get it live tomorrow. Just get one dollar in revenue in the first five days. Because the second you hear that first Shopify “ka-ching” sound — the first time you hear that you’re like, “Oh, I need to feel that again. Let’s go.” It gets you amped up. So that’s why whenever people ask me, “Which platform should I use for my new blog?” — I’m like, it doesn’t matter. Just go to Substack right now and make your first post live tomorrow. The second you see traffic on the analytics you’re like, “Oh, I like how that tastes. I gotta do it again. I need another bite.”
Ben: So whenever people talk to me about anything they want to do — if you’re a beginner, launch right away, immediately. If you’re someone like Brett Adcock who sold a company for two or three billion dollars and his next company is a robot business with 200 million dollars invested and five years of research — all right, that’s cool, you’re a proven hit-maker, take your time and perfect it. But if you’re a rookie, you’ve got to jump right in and get that taste of dopamine immediately. Otherwise it will never happen, or it just fades and you’re not interested anymore.
Greeks vs. Romans: Theory vs. Action [00:43:30]
Sam: It’s interesting what you’re saying — it reminds me a little of the difference between the Greeks and the Romans. Hear me out.
Sam: The Greeks were much better academics than the Romans. They knew geometry, algebra, philosophy. The Romans were basically dumb jocks — they didn’t know any of this stuff. And it turns out that Roman construction and bridges were actually much better than Greek ones. Why? Because the Greeks would sit down and try to figure out the geometry of the best way to build a bridge. The Romans did not. The Romans just went out and built a bridge, and then it crumbled, and they’re like, “What if we did this?” And they rebuilt it, and that didn’t work out so well, and then over the generations they just went out and did stuff until eventually they had the perfect way to build a bridge that would stand forever. Did they ever know the math behind it? They literally never did. They just tried stuff until they found what worked best. And that’s what let them take over the world.
Sam: So that backs up exactly what you’re saying: you don’t need to know why this stuff is working, you don’t need to know the math behind it, you don’t need to do the research. You literally just need to try stuff until you find out what works.
Applying This to Podcasting [00:46:00]
Ben: Yeah. I think I just heard two things, and this is all kind of wrapping back up to how this applies to podcasting. One: bias toward action — just go, go. Two: be very methodical about how you tell stories, like Malcolm Gladwell does. So let’s say you’re starting a podcast today, zero to 25,000 downloads — bias toward action. 25,000 to 100,000 — you’re really dialing in the storytelling component. But then it sounds like you’re flipping back to bias toward action again. Like, at different stages, do you want to focus on just making things happen versus being more methodical about leveling up the podcast?
Sam: Can I use an example? Danny Miranda — I was on his podcast a few days ago. I don’t think he’s figured out his niche very well yet. He needs to work on that. But guess what: he’s in a really good position to figure it out, because he just got started, he’s been doing great interviews, he’s super action-oriented, and he’s going to figure out what the data says. He’s got the data now and he can pivot. He can try different things, think about different ways to position it. Versus the person who’s like, “No, Danny’s not doing it the right way — I need to position my podcast perfectly.” Just start with action. You can figure out your niche and exactly how to position your podcast later.
Ben: It’s way better to execute a bad plan than to execute no plan. Because you can change a bad plan into a good plan as you go. But if you’re doing nothing all day, you’re just stuck.
Sam: Yep. Exactly.