Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en because i was like pipe that content into my ears baby while i’m falling asleep like i don’t i don’t even want to fall asleep i want to be entertained and pass out i feel like i can rule the world i know i could be what i want to i [Music] matthew mcconaughey do that it was awesome yeah apparently matthew mcconaughey when he wanted to write his book he drove into the desert like four hours into the desert and he lit he literally lived in a shack for two months and wrote his book did you read it i read that book or i read part um if you read it and you use matthew mcconaughey’s voice while you’re reading it it’s actually pretty entertaining because it’s good stories but also it’s like just stories about his life that like i’m not sure i care that much about matthew mcconaughey’s life why wouldn’t you just listen to listen to the audible book then if you wanted his voice to read it yeah i don’t know i’m not smart enough that would have been way better yeah you should have done the audible book then i just honestly didn’t think about it it sounds like a good idea i should probably do that so you uh andrew basically uh we’ll we’ll do the intro now andrew has is a great friend of ours has this big business called tiny uh where they own a bunch of different businesses north of 100 million ish or so in revenue took a company public do you you’re whatever you’re successful in terms of career and traditional sense of successful you’re a good friend you normally come on a lot but you just tweeted how you kind of like took off for all of august and you kind of bailed because you’re kind of having a meltdown in which we all have had before like a digital overload meltdown and you just bailed right totally it was it was really uh it was bad i mean it’s interesting to think about like i think this happened to everyone over kovid like their life just shifted in a weird way um and my life just became crappy over kovid which is weird because i had this amazing year like we took a business public we raised a big fund we got to work with all these interesting people we bought some great businesses i didn’t die of covid like all these great things happened and yet i was totally miserable and when i look at it when i kind of zoom out my old day i don’t know if you guys you guys know but i live in victoria canada and i didn’t even have an office so i actually like just working out of cafes i would just go to the same cafe every day and i’d sit there with headphones on three or four of my friends would always work there so it’s kind of like cheers there’s always like interesting people to talk to and my day was just broken up into a bunch of chunks so any given day i wouldn’t really be on the computer or in one place for more than an hour or two and my day went from that to sitting in a house on my computer all day on zoom and doing email and it just kind of made me miserable and so i i um you know when i look at like what i love about business i don’t actually love you know doing business is great doing strategy coming up with ideas all that kind of stuff but the cool thing about business is you get to meet interesting people like business is just a hack right so like if you’re interested in health you figure out like a health business you suddenly can meet all the most interesting people in that world um and i’m an extrovert so so anyway just i was totally bummed and i started um you know going on twitter a lot because i was craving socializing um i and i i went from like 20 000 followers to 170 000 followers so i got totally hooked into that and like a good day would be like i have a viral tweet or i go on your podcast or something something exciting happens a bad day would be i say something on twitter i get dunked on i got misunderstood or it doesn’t do well like what a ridiculous thing like i’d tweet and it would only get like 50 likes instead of 5 000 likes it would like throw my day off so i got to a point where i was just like jesus christ like this is totally ridiculous i’m thinking about twitter constantly i’m checking twitter constantly and on top of that i’m you know email uh you know checking stats stocks uh if i went to the bathroom without my phone i feel like i feel i feel like i was going to freak out constantly listening to audiobooks constantly listening to podcasts no silence so i just like hit this weird breaking point august 1st where i woke up and i was like i’m not stoked to get out of bed i’m not depressed objectively everything is fine i’m like i’m just like i have like anthony like i’m just not excited about anything so i just said [ ] it i’m just gonna what what what’s that word you just said that was a good one yeah it means like an inability to feel pleasure right like nothing nothing would get me pumped nothing would give me a hit like you know you know when you like you’re always you go on netflix you’re like scrolling endlessly for the perfect thing you just can’t find it that’s how my life felt and so i basically you know it’s the middle of august i live in british columbia it’s super beautiful and so i just said to my wife you know what i’m out for the next month let’s just go off to our cabin we’ll you know we’ll go on some trips and i’m just going to totally check out and i set a couple rules for myself i was like no phone no email no computer no podcasts no phone calls no social media no news i couldn’t even read non-fiction business books right so it’s pretty extreme and i put on my apple watch which has you know cellular so i was like okay if there’s an emergency i can get a phone call and i put my phone in a drawer and i just disappeared i went up to my cabin and hung out with my kids and honestly for the first like three or four days it felt like there was like a bug in my brain like i was just like so like like something i i itch i couldn’t scratch like just so irritable as being a huge [ ] uh i was like slapping my pocket every five seconds to check stuff i’d be sitting on the beach with my kids and i’d constantly be like oh i need to text this to a friend i gotta i gotta take a photo of this right so it’s really weird horrible withdrawal but then after like three or four days i was like holy crap like this is really interesting i started reading fiction books and just sitting for hours uh you know enjoying a sunset taking a silent drive doing all this stuff and i think it’s kind of like if you eat junk food all the time like you’re drinking coke and having burgers and stuff all the time and then you eat broccoli it doesn’t taste that good your brain is primed for like these extreme flavors and then if you switch to broccoli you know you don’t eat those things for a month then you eat broccoli broccoli is like orgasmic it’s amazing and so anyway i did this for four weeks and i was feeling really good and i came back to life like i kind of reintroduced myself into society and started going out and working and stuff and it was really bizarre like i you know would listen to a song that was playing in a cafe and it’d be like the greatest song i’ve ever heard i’d read some random article and it would be like fascinating and i’d just be completely uh like just you know engaged with it um and then problems i had to solve that would have pissed me off like seemed like no problem when i was excited to solve them and i was kind of going like man why why did that work like what was it about that and at the same time like around then i started listening to podcasts again and i listened to this podcast by uh andrew huberman huberman lab which i’m sure you guys have listened to he’s amazing yeah he’s uh he’s coming on the podcast oh amazing that’s that’s awesome so he did this deep dive on addiction and he did it with this woman anna lemke who’s a stanford addiction doctor and i was like oh this will be interesting it’ll be about like heroin addiction or something and how they treat alcoholism so let’s start listening to it those other people who have those other bad problems it’s fun it’s fun to read about them totally i was like i was like oh this will be you know maybe philanthropic you know i can help fund the heroin addiction center in victoria or something so anyway and as i listen i just go like oh my god like you know this is not this is universal like basically the chemical of dopamine the neurotransmitter is the thing that makes you feel craving and pleasure when you do things and it motivates you to do things and i realized you know basically like she said you know something along the lines of if you eat chocolate cake once a month it tastes amazing and you don’t really crave it that much you don’t really think about it that much it’s very pleasurable if you eat it once a week you know it’s still enjoyable but it’s not as good and you start having cravings you start wanting chocolate cake if you eat it every day your brain literally craves it and you’re in pain until you eat it and when you eat it it’s not even that enjoyable it just makes the pain go away for a little bit and she compares that to like heroin addiction or anything and so you know here we all are we’re stimulating ourselves with social media 24 7 we’re constantly taking these hits and the hits become less and less enjoyable and she talked about you know she’s at stanford so she’s treating students and she talked about these kids that would come in and they’re addicted to social media and video games and they have no motivation and so she said look i basically recommend a dopamine fast for four weeks they can’t do any of that stuff they got to go walk in silence drive in silence have quiet moments not avoid those things and i realized that you know i’d basically done that uh for myself and that’s why i felt better and i you know i was an addict it’s crazy how do you propose doing this though given like i hear everything you’re saying and i think i actually i’m sure i have the exact same problem but i’m like i’ve got to record this podcast i’ve got to text i mean i guess i don’t have to but you know it’s easy for you to say a rich guy right like that right for somebody who’s listening or even most people i would say the practicality of detaching for four weeks um is hard oh yeah and i think um my my version of it was extreme but there’s many different forms of it i mean it could be as simple as you just wear your apple watch and you don’t text and the only way you text is crappily on your apple watch you take calls on your apple watch and you know you do zooms on your laptop but you just don’t have that constant 24 7 imessage coming in or maybe you just screen time your phone super aggressively i mean how do you not eat junk food all the time and have a good diet don’t keep junk food in the house don’t keep booze in the house right self-bind yourself um so i mean i just basically like screen time the hell out of my phone and like today for example i drove to my office i just have my apple watch i don’t have my phone so i know if my kids fall down and hurt themselves my wife can call me but otherwise i’m not really texting do you do that sean because i think of you sean is someone who is connected a lot i am connected a lot i’ve consciously picked two parts of my day where i’m like these are my like disconnect days you know like these my disconnect hours at least because you know i think about it very much the same as andrea i heard two things that uh that kind of shifted my view on this so the first was naval had this great uh thing he used to say where he goes the ancient struggle was scarcity you know the ancient struggle was we just didn’t have enough we didn’t have enough food we didn’t have enough water we didn’t have enough um you know access to medicine entertainment whatever and uh the modern struggle is abundance which is where overloaded with cheap dopamine and like um and then the idea of cheap dopamine is something that a lot literally last night i was listening to hubermann a little clip that came up my youtube feed of andrew huberman and it’s funny by the way because it’s like i literally i have it’s like the addict is like learning about rehab while like shooting up basically because it was 3 a.m i had just i was going to bed i had stayed up way too late already and i’m the type where you know if i get like you said i’m going to the bathroom and i don’t have my phone with me i’m like oh i’m gonna miss out on like my entertainment like right now i could watch something listen to something do something while i’m just peeing or whatever like brushing my teeth and i had literally bought this uh headphone that i can wear to sleep because it’s comfortable so it’s like a headband it’s like a soft headband that has small earbuds baked into it so you could sleep with headphones because i was like pipe that content into my ears baby while i’m falling asleep like i don’t i don’t even want to fall asleep i want to be entertained and pass out like that’s kind of the way i was sleeping and so even last night i was doing that my bad habit and it was just like you know ultra connected too connected and i started listening to superman thing and he goes he said something that really struck me he goes he goes one way to think about addiction is it’s a progressive narrowing of what gives you pleasure um so it’s a it’s a uh you are narrowing the things in your life that that will give you this rush of pleasure so andrew when you when you when you dopamine fasted you started getting pleasure from silence in the car from the sunset from fiction books but before that it’s like twitter was this cheap fast instantaneous guaranteed source of pleasure and so it was it narrowed the number of places you were going to get that pleasure to like this most common over time it also became more painful though more like when i first started doing twitter it was pure pleasure so fun and then over time it took more and more of a hit to satisfy me the numbing and then yeah you get numb to the sort of like you you build up tolerance right like you would with alcohol or anything else and of course you had to turn your you turned your experience into a thread which probably became one of your most uh reached of course totally totally well and this is the debate right is do you want to engage like okay like obviously it’s a good thing that we can all uh use imessage and use these devices like they’re they’re a bicycle for the mind there’s all these amazing things you can do you can meet all these amazing people but the question is how to use them in a responsible way so like on twitter i have a one-way twitter client that i’m using so i don’t actually see the results of my tweets right although in this case i’ll admit i did when i did go and look but my goal is to actually fully screen time on every device so i can’t access twitter only the uh the api i think there’s here’s a good way to look at it so have you guys heard of this person named uh earl nightingale so basically he probably died in the 60s maybe he died in the 70s and he was famous in the 50s and 60s and he basically was almost like a tony robbins of that era but he was a little bit more well known as like a writer he was like um almost like a like a like a dan rather’s meets uh tony robbins mainstream famous guy and he told this famous story on this on his radio broadcast where he talked to a farmer and he went to this farmer’s house and this was right when the telephone got popular he went to this farmer’s house and he’s talking and they’re just having this conversation and the phone starts ringing and the farmer doesn’t flinch he just keeps making eye contact and having uh the conversation and about five minutes later the phone rings again and does the same thing he keeps making eye eye contact and then a few minutes later it rings one more time and the guys uh the guests go earl goes hey do you need to answer that and the farmer goes what that thing no no that’s just there for my convenience uh i i answer that whenever i want and whenever i heard that story a couple years ago i was like that’s how i’m going to treat my phone it is there for me and so i don’t feel guilty about clicking ignore deny or don’t not replying it is this this thing this phone it exists for my convenience not the other way around i i own it well the other thing is you know do you ever think well like the 1950s so in the 1950s if you’re an executive at a business you would a have a secretary right and the secretary would be keeping everyone away from you and then you’d get your mail once or twice a day and so you’d batch it right so you’d get 100 letters half of them would be done by your secretary you get 20 or 50 of them or whatever you just do that over an hour you write all your letter responses then you’re done for the day whereas what we have is a mailman who’s coming to the door every five minutes knock knock knock here throwing a bunch more letters in there and you’re kind of doing it in the middle of everything so i think like batching also is incredibly helpful the other thing is like you know people who talk about being friends with their family with an alcoholic they talk about how the alcohol will will actually if someone gets in in between them and the alcohol they will always choose the alcohol and i think the hard part is you know you think about and think about all the arguments i’ve had with my with my wife where if i don’t get to follow my routine my dopamine routine of well i like to listen to podcasts in the shower and then i like to do x and y and z and i’ve got my whole routine and process if she would mess with it like hey i’ve got i need you to go and do this or whatever i would like rage right and i just thought i was an [ ] or ocd or something and then now being off of that i’m not raging and getting frustrated in that same way so it’s really fascinating all the addiction stuff just really flows through this i’ve created basically three two windows in the day so uh exercise is one exercise is beautiful because uh you know i have a very low urge to check my phone when i’m working out anyways so that becomes a full kind of like almost 90 minutes of uh of not looking at my phone and i don’t care what’s happening and i don’t care who’s i don’t care how much sales we have i don’t care you know who’s mentioning me i don’t care who’s emailing me slacking me um and so sam i think you probably have the same where would you work out i don’t think you are checking your phone uh during it yeah i don’t i it means nothing to me i do look at it to mark down what i’m doing uh but typically what i’ve been doing lately is i’ll mark down on a notepad with my workout and then i transfer it after the workout specifically so i don’t touch my phone you guys listen to music while you work out because one of the things huberman talks about is you don’t want a dopamine stack so people work out to experience pleasure and dopamine but if you start stacking it so you say i when i work out i watch game of thrones and i get a smoothie after and and and you start to not enjoy the actual workout whereas if you do it for intrinsic reasons you can actually train yourself to enjoy it right i do that because i listen to music too and i like i love the like that’s i feel like that’s music listening time you know what i mean we’re basically i’m here i am training i am going to love your addiction you watching sorry go ahead that’s funny andrew say i’m i’m getting between you in your addiction sam raged out immediately um you know the i’m i’m doing the opposite where uh like dan ariely the kind of like famous behavioral economist he was talking about this thing where he had this medicine he had to take because he has really bad burns he had really bad facial burns he had to take this one medicine all the time or apply this ointment it burned it was like really uncomfortable and so he was like instead of trying to wrestle the brain and convince the brain through logic that this is a good thing for me when the brain is just saying ew this i don’t like the way this medicine makes me feel don’t take this um he’s like i just attached a really i think i really loved uh to taking the medicine so every time i take the medicine i would take it during the intro of my favorite movie and i would watch my favorite movie or my favorite show and he’s like that helped me stick to my routine of taking the medicine actually get healthier and so for me that’s almost like working out where working out wasn’t something i found super pleasurable that’s why i didn’t work out for so long because it kind of felt like work and so i had to retrain myself using music having a great trainer who i like hanging out with you know like doing different types of workouts that are more sporty so that i would actually get pleasure from working out so i would actually like it so i stacked it intentionally i stacked things i knew i loved onto working out so that i started to love working out because i only got to do those things when i worked out yeah and i i’d also say though andrew um well you’re taking the stance i don’t know if you actually feel that way is addiction necessarily bad like all right so i had i’ve talked about this one i’ve had like alcohol problems and then i started like going to cigars like one way that i got off it is i started smoking and then like after smoking i like started doing sugar or something like that and i went to the doctor and she’s like i was like you know i’m eating so much sugar and she’s like well is it helping you not drink i go yeah she goes i’m gonna [ ] it just do it and uh i’m like yeah why wouldn’t i just do that and so some addiction i i’m whenever i think of like i’m like just it’s not necessarily bad like so like if you’re addicted to one thing or the other well is that is that like does it kind of make you a little bit happy you know i think actually some addiction can be okay that’s kind of there’s there’s a lot of different levels to it right like i think obviously heroin alcohol drug abuse that leads to a life of guaranteed misery very quickly and you die young and you’re depressed and everything else but the fundamental question is if you’re addicted to work and it’s making you depressed then you know just because you’re objectively achieving whatever you’re achieving if you’re depressed right so i think that’s the way i would think about it what’s the highest order bit right if the highest order bit is that i’m feeling good on a daily basis i enjoy my life i feel i feel good then cool whatever your system is is serving you but as soon as that spirals out and it might start that way the same behavior might start feeling that way and then all of a sudden it’s you stop feeling that that’s what kind of happened with you andrew is like let’s say like at first you were getting this great pleasure and rush from connecting with people on twitter and sharing your ideas and that’s fun and you were helping people because people heard those ideas and took them for their own and then like you know everything in excess sort of has the the cons will sort of reveal themselves over time totally well another the other thing that’s interesting is like i’m the kind of person where i’m always hacking everything right so i was like okay if i do the dishes i found a way to enjoy the dishes so i’m stacking on i’ve got my podcast i’ve got my music i get my treat after you know all those things and recently what i’ve been trying to do is just do the best job of doing the dishes i possibly can in silence it’s almost a meditative practice and what i’ve noticed is again the first couple times i did it i was raging i was like this [ ] sucks i don’t want to do the dishes you know this is bs and then after a while of just silently doing the dishes i started really enjoying it and now when my wife says can you do the dishes i don’t get irritable and i’m not expecting a treat and i’m doing it because it’s intrinsically enjoyable feeling the hot water and washing the pan and doing a good job which sounds ridiculous but it’s no different than gardening or any other thing that people like it’s just tuning your brain for it so can we talk about something that doesn’t seem similar but kind of is but basically andrew you bought this company aeropress which is actually like in my opinion probably one of the best companies that you could own if you are trying not to get addicted to uh fast twitch uh notifications alerts because it’s been around forever it you do you guys even sell anything do you even sell it online really other than amazon a little bit only i think it’s like three percent of sales are online right now so like it’s a pretty like low stress like because you haven’t built anything new or aeropress is it’s basically a if you don’t know what aeropress is it’s a coffee maker that’s been the same way since the beginning is that right yeah it’s been around since i think 2006 and it’s like this it looks like a pvc tube and you press down on you put some coffee in the bottom of it you put some hot water and you press down and it makes like a concentrated coffee and uh it’s been around yeah for for a long time and it was started by the guy who made the aerobee frisbee he’s like a serial inventor so that those like neon pink frisbees from the 80s um yeah it’s it’s an amazing product can you say what you bought it for uh the deal was 70 million uh 70 million to buy it and can you say how big it i mean what can you say about it it wasn’t for sale or this was one that you were like let me see if i can if they’re willing to sell so i mean uh basically the story is four or five years ago i was making coffee i’ve been using aeropress for years we had one at our office someone brought brought one in like 10 years ago and i looked down at it and i was like oh man i wonder who owns this so i started googling i realized the founder still owned it and he is this 80 year old serial inventor who lives in palo alto so i sent him an email i looked up his email on voila norbert and i said hey can i come to palo alto and you know would you ever explore selling and he said i don’t know if i want to sell but i’m happy to meet you and so i flew down and chris and i spent a whole day with him just kind of talking about the business um and there’s just so much to love about this business so what was he like he’s like this like really funny old guy he reminded me a little bit of my grandpa uh you know he had hearing aids he he like just clearly loved inventing and coming up with ideas and he started walking me through you know all the different inventions and ideas that he had and things he wanted to make did he actually work there yeah yeah yeah he um so he really like ran he was really responsible for inventing in the product and then he had a president who was running the day-to-day business um uh you know this is like it’s such a crazy business so there’s zero marketing so they spend absolutely nothing on marketing um it’s sold in pretty much every single gourmet coffee shop in the world like you walk into anywhere blue bottle from down to like little independent ones everyone sells it um it’s very very uh like um it’s like it’s a a category owner i would call it right so if you think about like a commodity product even like kleenex or band-aid right it is the it’s it’s the category defining brand right so no one searches like pneumatic tube coffee maker they just search aeropress so um and it’s literally written on grinders right so like one of the settings on the grinders aeropress so basically this is an opportunity for us to buy a category of like making coffee a way of making coffee um and like people are fanatical there’s like world aeropress championships baristas get like tattoos of aeropresses like it’s totally nuts so anyway i spent four years trying to convince him to sell his business and i literally emailed him every single month for four years i’d call this the dennis the menace just like i have an email reminder and superhuman and i just kept asking and then finally uh you know over the last six months we negotiated a deal and got it done and the idea is very simple i mean this is an incredible product it’s really just about selling it in more places and they really just didn’t have a ddc strategy so we’re basically coming in we’re going to focus on d to c and keep the business as it is otherwise and just scale that channel so we’re super excited about it what you just said that’s wild to me when uh i think he said this on the podcast i think i could share it when uh when moyes ali was selling native and native at the time was just uh just a deodorant um that’s all they sold one one one one product with a couple of uh scents or flavors and um and so it was like a you know here’s this this um paraben free aluminum-free deodorant and he’s going to be selling and like part of the sales pitch of like how to get more upside in the deal was hey right now we’re doing so well with just deodorant imagine if we expanded or whatever that’s kind of like the the high level idea but i thought the way he said it makes a big difference so like it was wonderful he and this is like i call this out because i you know when i teach this power writing course i live for these phrases these let’s take the same information let’s say it two different ways and watch what happens and so you know one is there’s lots of room to expand into other product lines okay emotionally registers as a one and then the the uh the way he said it when he was meeting with somebody they were like well how big can this the other thing be and like you know what’s the upside here for us he goes he goes um do you know how to write the word native on other bottles he’s like like if could you write that on a shampoo bottle could you write that on a toothpaste bottle and he’s like that’s your upside and it’s like you know obviously kind of a funny [ ] thing to say but it really like hits home and so when you when i was hearing about the aeropress thing i it reminded me of that which is like you know do you know how to make a website because right now if it’s all if it’s all done not through d2c not done online it’s like it doesn’t take a genius to make this like the genius thing was buying it not making it better and bigger than it is today and that’s like your sweet spot right is you’re not looking to be a genius yeah there’s this period where factories went from being steam powered to powered by electricity right and you could basically go and you could buy a factory and convert it there’s a lot of money being made to be made in just electrification in factories or products or anything and this is one of those things right where you find a business that’s using a legacy sales process via retail which we’re going to keep i mean it’s an amazing advertising mechanism and we love all the distributors and everything but at the same time it’s like hey we can also sell sddc awesome and it’s such a simple insight that we don’t need to be geniuses a even if we don’t do as great as we think we’ll still do fine we’ll have a great business and if we do well we’re going to blow the doors up one more point on that that you bought it for 70 million dollars what is the annual ruffle roughly the annual marketing and advertising spend that has created this business that you bought for 70 million dollars is it or less than one million dollars yeah so it’s like 20 000 exactly so i mean here’s the other one right if you include salaries there’s there’s a few people in the marketing but let’s call it if you include salaries maybe let’s call it 150 200 grand hold on how many people are in there why do you have a marketing person if you’re spending twenty thousand dollars yeah why does there are salaries well they do do what they do is lots of like um i wouldn’t even call it influencer but like they do a lot of pr and outreach but the company the company this company is it’s like it’s like [ ] carmex or something it’s like you made it one time and then like what when i imagine a business like this what do the people do every day like do you have like like you know roughly how many orders the hustle i used to be like why do you have 25 people here you write one email and you’re like yeah it just it takes a lot of people to like you know make this email great and like have ads well for us for us it was redundancy you needed redundancy because because it relied it was a it was a digital thing that people made every single day and i actually think you could run the whole business with 15 people or less but with aeropress you probably could do did you only need like ten or five or how many people did yesterday i think there’s sub ten employees wow and they’re managing the distributors and making sure manufacturing is good and all that kind of stuff that’s crazy and so a five or ten person company for 70 million dollars that’s freaking awesome that’s so cool like you you know what carmex is andrew it’s the like the challenge the lip balm yeah yeah this is it’s like this is like one of those you i think you up here you call it a cruise ship this is one of those things where just it just does the same thing like you guys didn’t create anything new after the initial thing right no no we haven’t done anything explain this cruise ship investing philo framework what is this well okay so i think um when i talk to any young person and you know myself included i really glorified startups right and i i i like to kind of turn these into like um analogies or whatever just so they’re easy to explain and i was like oh you a startup is really like a speedboat right it’s exhilarating it can go anywhere but at the end of the day you know you’re driving over waves you’re getting your you know body destroyed you’re freezing cold you might hit a rock you might get drunk you really have to be white knuckling and pay attention and you’re constantly worried you’re going to run out of gas right so i was like okay so that’s a startup a cruise ship is slow and steady it moves on a straight course so you can pretty much estimate where they’re going you can make an educated guess that you’ll end up in hawaii versus antarctica based on where they’re going and what their course is and you can get a comfortable sleep lots of amenities there’s very low odds of failure it’s not dangerous at all and best of all you don’t have to buy the whole boat you just buy a ticket and i was saying you know a stock certificate right so essentially i just as a mental model i go i when i look at a business i go is this a speed boat or a cruise ship do i need to be white knuckling this and do i need a you know amazing captain or can i just go and board a cruise ship that’s already doing really well and it’s much more boring to ride a cruise ship no one’s going to give you an award or write a book about you for having an amazing crossing of the atlantic or whatever on a cruise ship but it’s very comfortable and enjoyable so i’ve just been using that example when i talk to young entrepreneurs there’s a similar example to that so this guy named joel uh what’s the the guy who started um joel on software um yeah joel on software withdrawal and software what does it call it so what’s the thing that ev everyone knows uh trello sack overflow yeah so this guy he’s he’s amazing so his name is joel on software his blog if you want to read good writing it’s this guy it’s called joelandsoftware.com it’s amazing and he’s got this amazing blog post where he talks about different strategies and he basically calls it the ben jerry’s or the amazon and so with amazon it’s new competition or sorry new technology and there’s very little competition at first and you basically need to go balls to the wall like a speed boat you need to go as hard as you possibly can early on to grab as much market share you’re okay with losing a lot of money and you know it’s um and you gotta go fast otherwise you’re gonna lose and it’s a zero-sum game or there’s ben and jerry’s where there’s already a lot of ice cream competition you can go to a bunch of different ice cream places throughout the week and it’s no big deal and if you do a good job this could last for 50 or 100 years um and that’s kind of like the different strategies although i would say that the cruise ship analogy is probably even better totally i wanted to ask you uh you said something about the cruise ship thing which was like you know you don’t get to be the hero because you didn’t you know white knuckle uh and like um survive the the crazy storm and come out the other side which is like you know the startup founder who pulls it off and disrupts the industry and blah blah and you had a thing on here which i think is more related to your twitter stuff but i think they’re they’re both the same they’re both uh they’re both related which is what’s the perfect amount of notoriety so what’s the perfect amount of fame and to what extent do you do you um do things in order to build your profile build your build your frame right so what are your kind of like most what’s your most up-to-date thoughts on that because i think you’ve done a good job right you do have a high profile you have a higher profile than i don’t know of people who do what you do which is private equity um and you know so so you’ve done a good job in that and i think that’s paid work dividends and it’s probably had fun you know uh ego dividends too where you feel good about it um but you know there’s downsides so what do you what do you think now what do you think’s the perfect amount of notoriety well this one i’m trying to figure out and i i don’t really know if i have the answer and i think you guys have probably gonna gone through this exact same thing as i have i mean i was sitting in a cafe my my wife was like hey you know go take go take a couple hours to yourself and so i went and i sat at a cafe and i was reading a book and a friend showed up i started talking to him your wife just said go take a couple hours for yourself could i just the mvp of uh look what’s going on i need to tell my wife this is a thing this is because i haven’t been irritable right because i’m not an addict right now so anyways i’m sitting there and chatting with my friend and you know i’m sharing personal stuff and you know talking about what’s going on in my life and maybe 20 minutes into our conversation there’s this guy who’s sitting to our left and he goes hey i’m really sorry to interrupt but i heard you on my first million and i’ve got a business over in vancouver and that was so cool right like that’s i’m sure you guys have that too every once in a while someone else is that is that a real story by the way yes 100 real that’s awesome there’s the guy i’ll mention the guy he runs a uh he runs the best gourmet coffee shop at ubc which is a big university in vancouver uh it’s called bulldog coffee and i was like wow that’s actually genius you’ve basically gotta capture you’ve captured a market that’s smart but anyway what was going through my head after that is oh my god what did i say like you know here’s this person who heard everything i was saying i don’t think i said anything bad or you know overly personal but there is this sense of like oh there’s a loss of privacy and not only that but you have to be consistent so if i go on this podcast and i say i’m about x and y and z now every time i talk to someone if i change my mind or i want to be kind of a chameleon and just be a different person or whatever like they almost like call you out or whatever so it’s just it’s it’s very interesting and some of the other downside is that i’m sure you guys have had is consistency and commitment bias right so an example is i talked about the um sugar-free bakery thing i was doing and we ended up getting uh we weren’t legally allowed to use a key ingredient in canada until it’s approved so i was like okay i have to shut this down but i didn’t shut it down for like two months longer than i should have because i’d gone on here and made a public statement to everyone hey everyone look i’m doing this this awesome thing and i felt ashamed it was like in a logi in a logical thing um there’s this great quote by bill murray that said if you think you want to be rich and famous try being rich first and see if that covers it and i think that that’s really interesting and i i think like you want to be respected in your world you want to be like in the in film you’d want to be like the coen brothers right where it’s like no one knows what the coen brothers look like but if they’re at the academy words they’re like ballers and they can get the attention and do whatever they want i don’t think do you know what dad do you know who daft punk is yeah oh dude dude i was like they’ve got the best job because i mean they don’t even have to show up and they probably make 10 million each a year just help these concerts because the edm or whatever the genre is they’ve they’re huge concerts i’m like they don’t even have to show up they could be anyone underneath that mask that could be anyone totally i think it’s super smart and i don’t i don’t know what i mean what do you guys think sam you’ve shared some stories about being stopped in the street and stuff yeah i get sean do you get stopped i get stopped probably uh once or twice a week i don’t think our audience is big in uh the suburbs of california so you know my my neighbors like average age is like 70 probably or something so i don’t think these guys are listening but what’s cool is like my trainer he came to me the other day and he’s like i met these two guys in the gym they’re like 21 22 years old and they were telling me like oh dude you gotta listen to this podcast it’s like we’re hooked on it and then we’re getting so many ideas we’re going to quit our job we’re going to do the stuff and um and they should they’re like he’s like what’s the podcast and it was like my first million he’s like bro that’s my buddy like that’s that’s why trey i’m going there right after this and they’re like no way and so it’s more of these like secondhand stories that have either a happened to me or b like kind of light me up a little bit like i mentioned my cousin’s name on the last podcast because jack a jack who was on the podcast had invested in him and uh he’s like dude he’s like i know you do a podcast or i know you mention me the podcast because i’ll just get a bunch of messages being like oh somebody you know he shouted you out or can we invest in your thing he’s like it’s amazing how much instant like kind of um you know love i get if you just say my name or say our company’s name on the pod and those are cool moments yeah the serendipity like i talked about this idea sam and i were riffing on like um you know what business would you start if you could start anything today or just throwing out ideas and one of them was ddc pregnancy health so how do you build a super baby using supplements and blood work and all that kind of stuff and now i’m in partnership with this woman named katie dewhurst and we’re working on this business together and it’s been super fun and i never would have been able to do that and i literally you know met the best possible person for that idea i never would have been able to do that so it’s like the pros are huge but then the cons are those kind of odd things or for you guys i would assume you’re probably addicted to your podcast stats right oh where are we ranking on the itunes no well i would say we do i’m more addicted to twitter i think yeah so like i i was like oh i’m gonna be slick and turn off my notifications but what i do is i search the sampar my twitter handle like i search that and then type in latest so it’s like i see my face yeah like i’m like so uh that kind of like that’s stupid podcast is not podcast is not designed to be addictive because you don’t get these like viral spurts uh it’s slow and steady compounding with no immediate feedback you don’t get comments after every episode like and that makes it suck and there’s a lot of bad things about that but the good thing is it’s very zen and so like of all the things i’ve done newsletter twitter and i’ve like tried to be successful in them try to grow them gotten some growth gotten to success gotten made money off of them and they all i like fade out because i’m you know i don’t like what this does to me you know i i i think one of the most toxic things you can do is care too much what other people think of you and it’s fundamentally the loop of what social media is is you post something and then other people react to your either your photo what i look like what i sound like or what i said or what i thought right karen you know i hate tweeting something and then wanting to go check the mentions check the reaction to it because fundamentally i’m putting all my awareness and attention to what do other people think about me and that’s it that doesn’t have to be that it doesn’t have to be bad so let me give you an example andrew you probably don’t know this but i’m a fitness influencer now i’ve got four thousand so i here like i was i kind of did it as a joke but kind of not so basically uh i this the year of 2021 i wanted to work really hard to get very very very fit and i had a hit a little bit of a plateau and i was joking with sean but i kind of wasn’t joking i was like i’m just gonna start posting on instagram constantly and just because i’m gonna change my identity to become a fitness person and i’ve been doing it lately and it’s obviously it’s not a big deal like no one actually watches but it’s made me not eat certain foods because i’m like i i said i posted that i was gonna hit this weight and these people are like it’s not real but in my head these people are expecting me to do it i have to come with the results so i can make fill this make this story complete and you know like be like the love of their lives and like get their attention and is that unhealthy kind of but i’m getting a great result yeah well i think um we got to talk about this book i read called wanting have you guys heard of this book no no have you ever heard so peter thiel talks about mimesis or memetic desire have you guys heard about this concept yeah he talks about like renee’s gerard or whatever renee gerard i buy the books and i’m like i can’t [ ] read this it’s so dense like i know it’s like a french david david david perrell did a bunch of articles about it and even then it’s just too dense it’s too academic i didn’t get it and finally you know one of my friends who’s like super into peter thiel gave me this book wanting and it was kind of a revelation for me so the idea is basically that you want the things that are modeled to you by other people so you know you meet a friend at a bar you want a beer here there’s a martini maybe you go oh maybe i do want a martini right so that’s that’s like the most generic example of like a meaningless thing what about if your friend tells you he just raised around from sequoia capital right you start asking yourself why didn’t i raise from sequoia why don’t you know why does his startup have more employees than mine does why didn’t i get that job title he has a sailboat why don’t i have a sailboat why don’t i have a rolex he moves to brooklyn why don’t i live in brooklyn right so basically when you surround yourself with peers you start competing with them and you start wanting those things and you know i see this in my own group of friends uh you know when one of us buys a new car within a year we’ve all bought a new car right there’s these waves or the other thing you see is mirroring so you know let’s say i buy a tesla my friend might say i’m buying a classic ford mustang and i’m going to constantly talk about how much i love the rumble of the engine or working on it right it’s like this like counter mirror um so it’s super interesting because you don’t actually want these things these are not real desires these are modeled to you and so in this book they talk about thin desires so these are like extrinsic things coming from the modeling of others right so wanting a rolex because people you know that are your peers value rolexes and then there’s thick desires which are intrinsic they come from inside of you so you enjoy working in your garden you don’t need to tell anyone you don’t post about it it’s not part of your identity you don’t do it to impress anyone it’s just something you quietly enjoy and so i think the big thing is coming up with what are my thick desires what are real versus what come from wanting to be like my heroes or my friends or whoever it is because if you’re not careful of pruning this you will become this and if you spend too much time around people who want things that you don’t actually want you will still desire and achieve those things so i love what you’re saying keep going so you read this book and then there’s like the question of what are your models who are your models and what did you you know what did you take away from this so yeah i mean like are you jealous of jeff bezos no jeff bezos is not someone that you compete with right jeff bezos is off in this celebrity world right jay-z that’s not someone you compete with right the people you compete with are people within your bubble like it could be each other us three maybe there’s other things that there could be other things that people are more jealous i i guarantee you anyone who’s on twitter for example anyone on twitter in business you know you and the morning brew guys like it doesn’t matter if you like them or anything you’re still in a memetic competition when i see sam’s post as a fitness influencer you bet your ass i work out harder that day totally well and exactly he now values health so that’s that’s good if you want to be healthy hanging out with sam will probably make you healthier over time right so that’s a good thing um but so you know and there’s so many different bubbles there’s so many different worlds so for example if you live in san francisco the thing that everyone wants is you know fundraising and valuation or who your investors are if you’re in new york it might be about your wealth your art collection or your fashion in la it would be you know what awards have you won where do you get restaurant reservations uh you know athletes it’s olympic medals chefs it’s michelin stars comedians with netflix specials uh you know you you name it so the way to figure out who your models are as well is actually to ask kind of an odd question you say who do i not want to succeed right and maybe it’s deep within you right but it might be that guy on twitter who you know you’re friendly with and everything’s fine but you kind of he bothers you or he’s maybe a little ahead of you has maybe ten thousand more followers you just don’t want him to succeed that’s probably who you’re in memetic rivalry with um and and so the real question is you know how do you a align with people who will lead you down a path of this mimetic copying that will actually make you happy so that’s spending time with people who are actually similar to you and want things that are your thick desires right being healthy being safe gardening you know whatever that is and then the other question is how do you opt out um and and really that’s pruning you know what do you read who do you listen to who do you spend time with um and you know for an example i thought about for myself you know i was spending all this time reading about warren buffett i’ve idolized warren buffett forever but when i think about you know what does warren buffett actually do in his day he’s a guy who can sit there and read all day reading annual reports that’s what his life is set up for i would kill myself like i have no interest in doing that and i think i’d be very bored so i have to be very careful not to over index on warren buffett the other thing you can do is you can opt out so you can say you know i’m going to be like dave chappelle i’m going to move to ohio where i’m just you know a redneck and you know in a small community or whatever for me i live in victoria you know i’m not as exposed to this as other people and there’s this great story of this guy who’s a michelin star chef so you think about chefs the ultimate is you open a restaurant and a really high-end restaurant you get a michelin star this guy sebastian brass did that all he wanted was to get a michelin star and he got it and when he got it it didn’t actually make him happier he just wanted a second star then he got a second star it didn’t make him happy either and he just lived in fear of losing it because they just come and inspect you you know it’ll be like they’ll come to your restaurant and if the tablecloth isn’t perfectly clean or the food is in a certain way you know you get rejected and so you end up living your life by these arbitrary rules that don’t actually make you happy and you fight for something that you know is not what you actually want so this guy is a baller he just said michelin i want you to remove my star take me out of the guide i’m out right so you can do stuff like that but that takes like brass balls that’s very difficult to do why did you mention read why i mean you’re talking about reading and everything and i want to ask you what you’re reading why did you mention read-wise uh on your document well i think like you know i’m like you guys i just read all sorts of random stuff and i’ll read all these books that’ll make a huge impact on me but then i’ll forget everything right and so i use this tool called read wise where my kindle highlights basically get emailed to me once a day at random and it’s like uh there’s like a memory uh thing called spaced repetition and so it basically sends you uh you know every week every month i’ll get all these ideas back boomerang back to me and i just kind of am reminded of some of these things i’ve read when you’re reading do you just read book after book yeah usually what i i do that as well i’m thinking that’s actually really stupid if i find like a book that like has a big impact or as like has a ton of learnings i should probably reread that every handful of months or something you know you you you should do whatever it takes to really understand and grasp and assigned reading not as much like go from thing to thing to thing you know what i mean you know do you know what the feynman method is no it’s basically you you read the thing and then you teach it and you can’t truly understand it until you teach it so like a way of remembering really well would be go on the podcast and in a very cogent way summarize what you’ve learned and then keep bringing it up for yourself right like i i mean you know just even writing out some notes for this podcast it forced me to actually go what did i learn in this book and i’m sure it’ll actually hammer it into my head better that’s how i used to be in college uh i didn’t know that that was a technique but i had figured out pretty early on that the way i could get better grades like i wanted to have good grades but i didn’t want to keep studying as my other i felt like other people studied so much they spent so many hours in the library and i just didn’t find it i didn’t want to do it and i was like well here’s what i’ll do i’ll basically quickly skim the material and then i will lead a study group where i’ll teach it to that group and in that process i was like a horrible teacher for the first like hour when i was doing it because i don’t know the material yet i actually don’t even understand it i barely remember half of it but i remember half of it and like by teaching it i remembered that half and i quickly figured out the other half i didn’t know and i just remember like that’s how i studied for every final when i was in college and it was um it was pretty amazing because i could study half the time as other people because what they would do is they would try to just ingest it and just keep ingesting it they just try to keep reading it and rereading it and writing notes and rereading it and they would never try to articulate it off the top of their head to anybody else or answer a question you know in public with anybody else and so they never did that and they just tried to like solidify it in their head but it never really did um you know for them or took way longer to do it it’s such a hack right to be able to summarize it in one sentence or have a you know have a metaphor or you know whatever it is can you do that just by writing a blog post about it or do you actually have to speak about it oh you could do that i i used to run this thing called the anti-mba and it was a weekly book club basically we would read a book a month and each week we would divide that book into quarters so we’d talk about a book every week and i would basically be leading this and we would have 10 or 20 people show up and i would lead it and i remember i learned like crazy every book i was like mastering it but i wasn’t sure if i could do that now just through blogging or if i actually had to like organize and talk to people about it because that’d be a pain in the ass one thing i’ve seen is my uh uh i don’t know this is kind of an unpopular uh way to think or something i don’t know i don’t think this is the this is how much people think but listen like andrew so i think andrew i think you’re super smart and amazing and great and i love when you bring these ideas because it makes me feel like it brings all these new thoughts into my head um but i think you and i think sam to an extent do something that i used to do that i’m trying to stop doing and that is like um this constant optimization and so like you know this idea that i’m going to read a book i’m going to find a great book and then sam’s like i’m going to reread it because i want it to sink in i’m gonna drill it into my head and andrew’s like no what i do is i highlight using this tool and i set up an auto trigger to email me back the best highlights like old me would have been like dope love that that’s gonna be my solution to this like underlying ever present problem i’m going to keep seeking these solutions that are like new hacks new optimizations new like kind of techniques and solutions and methods and um and the one like realization i’ve had by talking to some other people outside my trainer is really the one who drilled this in me because he would be talking to me during a workout he would say something to me i would go run to my notepad i would write it down because he said this really wise thing and it was so good i wanted to like remember it as a nugget of gold and he told me he goes he goes you know you you won’t have to write these down and i go i go what do you mean also how nerdy of you to be writing this down i would literally stop a set and i would drop the weight and i would go write the thing down because i’m like you just said it so perfectly and in my head i’m like i’m gonna know this i’m gonna remember this i’m gonna tell other people i’m gonna say this on the pod it’s gonna look great my head actually is silently thinking all these other things it’s like trying to like achieve some stupid goal because i’m like this is the answer this is the nugget that’s going to be my next hit my next tweet my next whatever that’s going to be great so that’s like you know a lame thing to admit but that’s true that’s where my brain was going um but i was like what do you mean i’ll have to write these down like you know i’ll just remember it and he’s like you won’t feel like you lack something and so you’ll stop like trying to catch everything and grab everything and hold on to everything and learn the next new thing what you’ll realize is like you already know the answers uh he’s like you know it’s like a thin book you didn’t like imagine a book that ended in 20 pages and it’s like you know for for a diet book right you can keep searching for the next fad diet you know the atkins diet then the slow carb diet and then the carnivore diet and you’re you’re just cycling through to all these different diets trying to find the next solution and read the next thing and in reality you kind of know the answer the answer is you know don’t eat too much and eat like basically like eat real food mostly plants and not too much three lines you that is the answer and but instead of actually just let sitting in it you want it to be more complicated than that you would like it to be that actually there is more i need to go learn and find and try and buy this you know get this app that’s going to do my intermittent fasting and then put this ketone drops in my drink and then wear a patch that measures my glucose monitor and like all these optimizations and so i’ve actually spent so much of my life trying these different optimizations and i’ve really i’m just saying this as almost like a public service announcement of like if that’s you if you’ve done a bunch of these optimizations you’re kind of on this endless path of optimizing and you do get results it’s not that you don’t get any results but like i’ve now found this like other way that’s a lot more peaceful and a lot more fun and it’s basically um get rid of the underlying like feeling of lack and doubt that you have that’s causing you to constantly chase the next best method and solution and answer i think that really resonates and one of the things i didn’t talk about was my routines and how that was making me miserable i think often routines are great and best practices are great but they end up creating conditions under which you can have a good day and if you don’t follow the conditions your brain starts saying oh it’s not a good day because i didn’t get that workout in or i didn’t get i didn’t do my cold plunge and do my tim ferris tea in the morning i didn’t do my evernote routine i didn’t do a gratitude journal i didn’t use this app right there’s endless things um and i totally resonate with that like one of the practices for me was like how do i not check my aura ring how do i not check my blood glucose all these stupid things that are giving me they’re tickers right yeah there you go like they’re tickers for life and tickers make you miserable you know look at a stock ticker look at kpis look at revenue day to day hour to hour and you’re miserable you shouldn’t have those for your life yeah and i i should say it’s bad for business for me to say this because this podcast and all of my content and all everything i put out is optimizations hacks shortcuts you know ways to be better ways to better yourself and this constant uh curiosity about what are some other things i could try to better myself what are some other areas i want to be better and what are some ways i could be better and so i’m like juggling these two things that are almost complete like opposition um and like you know and i and i’m not perfect on it either right like i still wake up swipe over and check the bitcoin price even though i know it’s this roller coaster and like when it’s red i’m starting my day off with like you know a tiny jab and when it’s green i start my day off with this this this great little delight that like i don’t control and so now my my first mood is up to you know the conditions of like you know [ ] crypto prices which is silly totally sean what do you think what do you think people are going to think of an episode like this i’ll be i’ll be curious i’ll be because i i sometimes i get nervous about talking about this [ ] because i’m like i don’t want to pontificate too much i don’t want to like act like our way or my way or your way is necessarily better than any other way i get nervous about like having like a guru productivity vibe i get nervous i’m like and then i also get nervous i’m like these people just want like money-making schemes let’s just give it to them um i’m very like think about like chamath right why is true math interesting he’s interesting because he goes you know he goes on cnbc he talks about all this crazy investing stuff and then he goes with kara swisher and he like pours his heart out and he’s interesting and empathic well yeah and like he doesn’t give a [ ] yeah you do a disservice if you don’t show the negative side of all this stuff at the same time because people will just blindly think you know oh yeah these guys have it all figured out and we don’t so i think we’re all as miserable as anyone else i think two things is what you said i think you’re not giving the audience enough like the people who really listen to this podcast they they know this is not money making schemes we just like we are shooting the [ ] about business stuff and we’re kind of business nerds and that’s what they like so it’s not actually that they’re looking for oh god i came to this to find my next million dollar idea that’s the like surface level thing and then when you get when you get through the door you realize that’s that’s not it the second thing is it’s just like like this feeling you’re having like what are people going to think of this episode i’m riding myself of that that question uh that question doesn’t come into my brain anymore why because who really not at all i’m i’m not gonna be wearing red robes he’s gonna have his head shaved dude he already does she shows up to the podcast half the time wearing a robe exactly uh that’s i’m not saying i have rid myself of it i’m saying i am trying to rid myself of that uh of that question right and it’s coming up less and less why because two things hey i don’t want to be that way i don’t want to sit here and be the dancing monkey performing on the stage just just for their entertainment i want to be here for my entertainment and um like who are the people who are going to love this podcast the people who love what we talk about period so if we’re talking about something we are interested in that they’re always going to be into it and if we just keep that as the method right who are my customers the people that love what i do that becomes the sort of like the the the most joyful way to do you know any kind of business or any kind of product because it is just you pushed out and so then you don’t have to worry about what are they going to want did they like me do they not like me is this good is this bad you know i liked it but are they going to think this it’s like those questions just disappear if you commit to uh who are my customers the people that love what i do so same thing for this who who are listeners the people that like what we talk about period so then i don’t need to if if i liked what we talked about then i don’t need to worry about it and that becomes a very simple filter that’s internal and not like seeking kind of what what are other people going to think about this yeah yeah yeah and and you and i agree on a lot of stuff about how we feel about the audience i guess sometimes i think of it like i’m going to do whatever the hell i want to do and other times i do think i am here i exist to serve like others right so like you could say like well just don’t give a [ ] don’t give don’t care about what other people think yeah i but what if i phrased it of like well i’m i’m here to service other people or you know what i mean it’s like that and that’s a fine line andrew’s saying one of the things one of the top is being you you know that’s the service the services being you in public public transparently you know lately i’ve been watching all the dave chappelle stand up comedy from netflix i just kind of like rediscovered him and watched them all and if you watch the first one it’s kind of like a generic dirty stand-up or yeah his old one from like 20 early 2017 or whatever and then as you watch them they get more and more introspective and darker and longer stories and different style and it’s cool to see someone evolve or see some you know deeper emotional range or whatever so i don’t i don’t think it really matters like at the end of the day yes you guys you know this podcast you do i i listen i have to treat it like crack right when i listen to you guys i get so fired up i’m always in the shower and i’m going [ ] why don’t we do that business or i should start this or you know i i love it but and that’s that’s the that’s what people love about the podcast but at the same time like yeah i think talking about this stuff is fine like i think look at a couple of the bigger podcasts that are kind of like people we like to listen to sometimes so look at rogan do you think rogan gets on the pod every day and says like do you think he’s thinking all right um you know what do the people want like what does the audience want how do i make this conversation entertaining for them like i think that’s so far back in his mind where it seems no like he’s just having a conversation with somebody he finds interesting he talks about what’s interesting to him in that thing but you know what if rogan came on and he said i had a big fight with my wife this morning and he started talking about that for 30 minutes and didn’t let the guest talk yeah he’s broken the format yeah but but also with rogan like you’ll notice he like for example um he’ll say stuff like uh he changes his words he’s like well like and i agree with this he’ll be like well you know i’m not informed on that topic so i don’t even want to rant about it of course or he’ll say like uh you know i um like i’ll notice how he’ll use certain words to be respectful um and he’s like well you know and people have asked him i was like well i just didn’t know and i know that i influence people so i just want to keep in mind that i don’t want to you know say something incorrect and so that’s keep so i i i don’t think you have to entirely tell people to uh that you don’t give a [ ] about that i guess what i mean is like rogan’s format where he’s like yeah i’m going to talk to an astrophysicist one day and then i’m going to talk to an mma meathead the next day and then i’m going to do a drinking podcast with my buddies while we watch some other [ ] that you don’t get you’re not looking at i’m just looking at i’m going to talk out loud and i’m going to do it for i’m going to do three hour long episodes yeah dude but rogan’s a [ ] comedian his whole shtick is that he gets in front of people and like comedians are inherently like the most neediest people he gets on a stage and like it needs them to laugh and reply and if he bombs he feels bad what i’m saying is his show broke a bunch of rules that other people would have had our episode should be one hour you should have like this you know like this intro you shouldn’t one day be talking about one topic and then you’re the the people who want to hear neil degrasse tyson don’t care about brendan shaw or whatever else sure and then you have like like lex friedman huge huge podcast his channel he’s created and the guy’s talking about the nerdiest of the nerdiest subjects in the most like monotone voice right so it’s like he’s not mr charisma he’s not um talking about uh pop culture and like other topic because he’s not he found the balance of doing what’s interesting to him in his normal personality um and i just think that’s just like a better way to go than yeah i’m just trying to say don’t don’t act like rogan’s not human and has the same insecurities and like well i want to please people i want to look oh wow bernie did really well i should do bernie more often you know like [ ] like that actually yeah i don’t buy i don’t buy that you don’t care like i think everybody cares you can say it and i i get what you mean like you know that should be the attitude going into it but it is unavoidable sure i think like well we all give a [ ] how we’re perceived and we’d all be choked if you know i i made that tweet the other day and um i got a i got a message from a friend that said are you sure you want to tweet that right because he’d gotten some messages from people saying oh my god andrew’s having a mental breakdown on twitter he yeah you said are you sure you want to tweet that and i was like oh my god have i made this terrible yeah [ ] that’s why i tweeted it yeah i know yeah resonated with lots of people it got lots of traction and got lots of nice notes about it but um you know it’s it’s scary putting putting this stuff out there yeah i i i don’t find that stuff to be scary but that’s weird when someone says i hate i would hate that interaction are you sure you want to tweet that yeah dude i just like it took me like an hour to write that i’m [ ] sure it’s a double down for sam it’s like you know what like i’m going to double down on that now yeah i want a friend to text me that if they actually think that though like i think that’s a valuable service right yeah no i don’t but uh that’s okay different breads i i i like also if i have a friend my friend jack sometimes i’ll tweet stuff and he’ll like reply like that’s not true or like what are you like he’ll like argue with me and i’ll tweet i’ll text him i go jack don’t argue with me in public like don’t don’t you dare like like what time he like brothers do that sometimes drives me crazy oh dude i’m like we’re family this stays in the family don’t you don’t you [ ] you defend me you you laid out a traffic for me as i will for you you don’t talk you don’t argue with me in public he always [ ] does that like one time i tweeted out the the numbers of the podcast and he was like um but like megaphone is wrong or he said something like uh he’s like oh but you count youtube that kind of like uh that’s not really a dollar he said something like that i don’t even remember what it was and i’m like well what the [ ] jack just like shut up i’m like just text me but we’re not going to argue in public you’re supposed to i don’t even know how we got on that but anyway my point was not bringing up that we shouldn’t do this stuff i’m just curious just to hear what what the feedback is we care about feedback i care about i’ll take care of myself i care about feedback tweet at us and uh you can test me and see if i respond to any of it and fail my uh i think so how how often are you keeping this how often are you holding your phone how often do you use your phone oh well i’m basically i’m down from six hours a day of screen time to two just over two hours and i’m basically just around random days i’ve just been taking my apple watch so if i have a zoom call or something i’ll take my phone but if i don’t i’ll just bring my apple watch and it’s been strangely freeing right because you look i can still see the text and i can get the calls what is it apple watch to airpod yeah i watched the airplane and if i’m texting i’ve got to do this stupid scratch or siri and so it’s just not fun to text and so i just don’t do it andrew one other thing you met steve jobs yeah i met steve jobs tell me what that was what happened well so a lot of people don’t know this but when i was 15 my very first business was a website with an incredibly embarrassing nerdy name it was called mac teens.com and it was me and a kid from hawaii and another canadian kid and we all made this tech news website and we started writing you know reviews and news and all that kind of stuff um and we started getting a lot of traffic and like breaking apple rumors and stuff and i ended up getting invited to go to mac world as like a member of the press and you know i got invited to this tour of the apple store in new york when that was a you know it was brand new it was the first one i think and so i walk into this tour and i think like we’re just going to get some pr flack touring us around and i’m standing outside waiting and a limousine rolls up and it’s steve jobs and he gets out and he shakes my hand and i’m you know 15 the guy’s my hero i’ve read every single biography of him i’m like a quivering mess and i spent the next hour me and like five other journalists getting toured around the apple store with steve jobs and i just asked a bunch of questions about you know about the products they’re releasing it was like a pr thing so it’s not like i got to ask him deep questions but it was pretty freaking cool on the bucket list and what was his like uh presence like or how did he treat people or what did you kind of take away from from just being around him well i mean you gotta remember he was he was in steve jobs pr you know mac world ceo mode so he was just incredibly polished i remember he was talking about uh the cd burner in the 17-inch imac and i was like enraptured it’s a [ ] like oem cd burner right but he’s making it sound like it’s the greatest thing in the world i mean you know the reality distortion field is obviously real um and yeah he’s just an amazing amazing guy and it was it was cool to me did you read this story that this guy tweeted out yesterday i thought you might have a story uh related to this this guy his tweet kind of went viral about he was trying to sell his company to steve jobs and he [ ] up did you read this no like i said it’s the guy who was what happened ceo of ilike which was like a kind of like a music discovery service kind of like in the early yeah you know like startup days and um it was like a popular service and um it’s like apple wanted to apple was interested in acquiring them and he’s like perfect like apple would be my dream place to get acquired and they go and he gets to have a meeting with steve jobs and he sits in the meeting with steve jobs and he’s like you know i started off a little rough because i was so nervous to be in front of steve jobs he’s like but we kind of hit our groove in the presentation we hit our demo like you know like first he’s like the demo kind of went off the rails first because the executive suite wi-fi was down and it’s like oh [ ] how are we we’re not on the internet how do we do our demo well we like recovered and steve asked a few questions while we were talking but we had great product answers and you could just tell he was digging it and um so his story is basically that at the end of the the meeting he was like look like i think you guys are great um and i think you built something something good here uh you know we’d like to buy your company i’m gonna um you know like like i’d like to buy your company we’re i’ll talk to eddie and we’ll figure out you know eddie will take it from here he’ll he’ll deal with the details and uh and then he’s like see the guy like kind of didn’t want the meeting to end right there he’s you know first he’s like that’s amazing but he’s like you know like what uh what range you know would you be thinking about for for price for for an acquisition and then like steve kind of like the dial the dial like turns up a little bit like this conference gets a little more serious talking about the price now and he’s like um he’s like what’s your revenue and how much did you raise what was the valuation at your last financing and the guy’s like uh like you know revenue uh like we haven’t we’re pre-revenue we’re super small right now but you know we we raised that 50 million valuation and we’ve added like like millions of users since then um i think he said 50 million users since then which is some absurd number and uh and steve jobs like uh we probably acquire it for 50 million and then the guys like went from this high of like steve jobs just said he wants to buy my company to like oh [ ] we’ve been working like since the last round we raised two years ago we’ve been working acquired all these users um i’d have to go to my team and be like hey you’ve created essentially no value between last valuation and and the exit here um so he’s like you know doesn’t want it to just leave it there and he’s like um he’s like uh you know i just think i don’t think my team will be i don’t i don’t think my team or the investors would uh you know that would be acceptable to them and then he’s like he’s like we’ll make it he’s like we’ll like we’ll convince like that was like steve jobs response something like that and the guy’s like you know i just feel like um you know i think we’re worth more than that i think we’re i think we’re worth 150 million and he like pause for a second he goes actually like i know we’re worth i know we’re worth 150 million and he’s like jobs got like pissed he’s like you know do you have another offer on the table have you been offered 150 million dollars but is that how you know that you’re worth that and then the guy’s like just pause for something he’s like he’s like [ ] he’s like you’re a liar and he’s like he’s like forget this we’re not doing this deal and basically like walked out and then he’s like we tried to salvage the deal like we tried to like with eddie eddie tried to like make it all good he’s like steve jobs called him later it was like i don’t trust you you you i don’t trust you i think you’re a liar you know over you overstated like you know ever you overplayed your hand basically and i was like we’re not doing this oh i love that that is awesome who wrote that oh wow what company that is an awesome story this guy uh let me pull up his name so his name is ali uh partavi so his his twitter handle is a-p-a-a-a apart ovi so a-p-a-r-t ovi what what ended up happening to his company that did it so i think uh let’s see what what ended up happening so it’s what a baller story i think that’s like soon after that apple released the itunes genius sidebar it was a rip-off of their thing facebook copied their thing and they sold the company for a loss within a year um that was the sort of like the oh my god the other good one is drew the story of drew houston going into they were talking about dropbox apple and steve jobs just starts saying feature not a product you’re a feature not a product we can just rip you off and i mean in some ways steve jobs is right i think that criticism is fair over the next decade couldn’t rip them off though it’d be irrelevant but at the same time drew houston went on to become a billionaire and build this great public company so dude i actually i love stories where steve jobs is wrong because the guys it was like a [ ] [ ] like you know he [ ] that guy was he a brilliant yeah but like i was thinking the other day um where he like had this quote where he goes to that guy who uh who was selling pepsi and he was like do you want to sell sugar or water your whole life or do you want to come and change the world and i’m like part of me is like badass that’s awesome steve good job yeah soda sucks whatever you’re doing is doesn’t suck and then i’m like dog what you’ve just created is [ ] candy if we hate if i if i’m supposed to hate zuckerberg i should dislike you too like you’re selling the crack pipe he’s selling the crack what’s the difference you know what i mean like it’s like it’s the same it’s like it’s the same thing like so so anyway whenever i hear these stories about him and being arrogant i’m like yeah you’re badass you’re awesome you’re always right and then also like you’re a dick shut the [ ] up like i was i was as a ceo i was terrible because i couldn’t do that right like imagine sam you’re hiring someone and you say like do you want to change the face of publishing forever right you just sound like such a douche but you talk to most silicon valley ceos and they say something like that i just could never bring myself to say that well part of me is envious i’m like oh wow you actually believe that you are doing something and then part of me is like um you’re full of it i just read this book uh called endurance have you guys heard of this book called endurance oh my god it’s amazing it’s i never want to feel like your life is good read that oh my god i couldn’t put it down sean you know what it is i haven’t read it but i’ve never seen the tie i’ve seen the cover i know the cover in my brain so basically in the early 1900s probably between 1900 and like 1925 it was called like the heroic era of arctic expeditions so they had steam engines and they had combustible engines but it was still they still had sails and they didn’t have radios and so these guys would sail from england all the way down to antarctica the very southern part of the world to try and figure things out the world wasn’t really well mapped out but it kind of was so basically it was kind of safe but mostly not safe and this guy named ernest shackleton basically led this expedition of 30 people and they got stuck in the ant in antarctica and it’s basically the story about their two and a half year or maybe two year expedition to survive and what i learned reading that book is basically the pack the the the people you’re leading they mimic the behavior of the leader and so for a while i was against this like we’re gonna change the world or like you know i should be vulnerable and i should let people know like you know things aren’t going that good but now after reading that book i’m like ah no [ ] it you gotta like convince everyone that it’s gonna be okay no matter what totally it’s an amazing book too i am when i get stressed out at work one of the things i love to do is to watch um what is it called alone have you guys seen that show they literally dump people in the middle of nowhere and it’s competition to see who can survive in the wilderness all by themselves for the longest oh my god you know you’re watching people eating rats and like trying to catch fish in the freezing cold how long do they last he cuts his leg open with a hatchet or whatever you know usually it’s like some some people go like three months four months six months but a lot of people are out pretty quick and the the shackleton book is exactly like that i watch it and i just feel so relaxed because i’ll be cozy on the couch and warm in my bed reading the book and it really makes you appreciate uh just how comfortable our lives are you should read that book sean so we could talk about it because it like i read it over uh two days i think it it it was it it’s riveting i i posted really it was crazy i can’t believe that that that people survived that and it made me feel thankful and it showed me that like in order to be a leader you do need to convince people and yourself that everything’s going to be okay when i read that i was like i don’t want to be a good leader i’m not willing to do what this guy was willing to do am i willing to go this far something funny just happened on twitter so uh speaking of distractions and and all that good stuff and speaking of the the memetic kind of like uh who are your models and then who do you want to see who do you not like to see win all right uh so bezos jeff bezos just tweeted out this thing he goes uh he goes you know you should listen and be open but don’t let anybody tell you who you are this is just one of the many that this was and he posted a photo of a baron’s article of a headline of a front page of barons which says amazon.bomb and it’s a picture of jeff bezos’s face on a bomb and it says that the title is the idea that amazon’s ceo jeff bezos has pioneered a new business is silly he’s just another middleman and the stock market is starting to catch on the real winners this was in like the early 2000’s yeah this is in um i don’t know when sorry go ahead giannis or something like that oh yeah this is 1999. he goes uh it says the real winners on the net and it’s like apostrophe net like internet uh the real winners on the net will be firms that sell their own products directly to consumers just look what happened to sony and dell that’s what’s gonna happen to amazon and so bezos was basically saying like you know people told us there’s one of many things where people told us we’re gonna fail he goes today amazon is one of the most successful companies and has revolutionized two entirely different industries and then elon musk tweeted that it replied with just a silver a silver medal with the number two on it like the emoji with a place [Laughter] you gotta give them because elon’s currently richer than bezos either because of that i don’t know space yeah it’s doing better than you know i think it’s the rich thing which is douchey if it’s a space thing that’s not douchey if it’s a rich thing that’s douchey but it’s so funny because you were cinematic right those guys were in a rivalry yeah you were saying like to us jeff bezos is not really the rival we don’t really root for his you know whatever uh it doesn’t like hurt us personally when jeff bezos wins a little bit more but but for these guys these are their memetic rivals right like these are their their peers uh that they sort of are in competition with but dude also this is i do want to see elon lose a little bit because he gets too smug with his help gradius be smart because he is in fact amazing but how baller is that tweet hilarious it has way more like you said earlier you said you know you said [ ] steve jobs and i think in order to be that successful you have to have some kind of personality disorder oh yeah or like yeah or something and you look at musk or bezos or if you read more about bezos i think he’s a really difficult person to work for like all these guys are so complicated and a hundred years ago you just wouldn’t know there wasn’t twitter you just wouldn’t see this this would all go on behind the scenes and it’s crazy that we get to see stuff like that well i don’t even think it’s that complicated musk is really successful because he’s incredibly smart and has a a complex because his father probably didn’t love him um like like it’s probably quite simple and but it’s it works right i’m thankful that well that’s uh great i think i don’t know where you got it from but you know show me a great man and i’ll show you a bad man what is that quote well i always say um i don’t know if i got it from anywhere not but uh all men are also evil men all great great and like something like that right yeah great men are bad men um and in order to in order to be great you have to do bad stuff or you may not think it’s bad but like let’s say that like uh 60 of americans think obama is a saint well like the people who he droned they don’t think he’s a saint i’ve got afghani friends and they’ll be like oh i [ ] hate obama you know he he droned my family and so but like so in order to like do great [ ] and be loved by at a large scale you’re going to piss off a lot of people the way i would put it it would be better might be all but great men are sad men right so they have a sadness don’t want to help me andrew don’t want to be a disorder that’s driving to do this because why else would anyone do it right talking about the shackleton expedition these guys are the shackleton expedition of business why would anyone choose to do that unless they have a personality disorder or like deep trauma right but memetic rivalry andrew just went up to you perfect uh yeah like actually i think your example of like obama drone striking people is a little too extreme i think it’s more like uh elon musk isn’t a is a great inventor and businessman uh that doesn’t also mean he’s got great views on the vaccine and uh on he’s not a great husband maybe and like yeah you know we will praise somebody for an aspect like on this podcast i will happily pray somebody for an aspect of something they do that’s interesting like this is like the jake paul tweet i did where i was like jake paul is a great marketer a great self-promoter like i don’t even think that’s arguable like i think he’s clearly a great self-promoter that is how he is so famous as he promoted himself uh into fame and uh like people are like yeah but he you know he’s accused of assault on this girl and like he’s a jerk and like haven’t you seen these videos where he makes these crew jokes i said oh like sorry did i say he’s my like he’s my hero and that like he is a great boyfriend like i don’t think i said that i think he said he’s a great marketer and self-promoter and you can learn from right i appreciate that and that’s the way i take it which is um you know anybody that that you praise or you call out for being awesome or call out for being bad it’s not you’re not saying they are either all great or all bad it’s like they are great in ways and bad in ways and everybody is that and it’s not even that you need to get point you can like how he builds cars but not how he treats his marriage right yeah you