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 but i would also say there’s been a big lesson i’ve learned that is anytime people live anytime you discover a group of people who are very interested in and living a lifestyle that is different than yours it’s very easy initially to write it off and just say oh that’s frivolous that’s um that’s just kind of like whatever you know they’re out of touch or uh they’re weird or whatever like it doesn’t really matter what what category it is like when i when i saw gamers and people who stream video games and watch other people playing video games it was so strange to me i remember making fun of this kid in college because i walked in on him and he was watching somebody else play a video game on a live stream and the guy was playing in korea and i was like you’re watching a dude in korea play this video game why don’t you just play better yet why don’t you get outside and like let’s go go get some food and i made fun of him for and then years later i’m like selling my company to twitch and like i’m i’m like talking about how great this trend is and he’s like called me he’s like you motherfu you know like i dude you made fun of me for this 10 years ago and here you are now like now you’re on board and that’s happened to me so many times in life that now i go the exact opposite way i see some somebody like you who says the same thing that our other buddy said which is maybe i should go to the mayo clinic and get these advanced scans done once a year i think huh maybe that’s something more people are going to want to do why would he want to do this why are people choosing plant-based lifestyles what is that all about you know like and so now i lean in any time i discover these things and that’s become some of the best a like either like discoveries life changes i can make or b investments it’s a great way to invest because you’re actually on the like the cutting edge of stuff you’re in early which is super important obviously there’s a book on like a famous business book on it where he talks i think it’s crossing the chasm or something where he talks about like early adopters and then like the there’s basically this like bell curve of people where it’s like in the beginning of the belt curve it’s like late people who are late to it and then like the middles like the average joe and there’s like early adopters and then there’s one more like cutting edge and you and i both have like a handful of friends of which i would actually say that i i forget the names of them but in that bell curve there’s people who are getting names because you got the idea right but you uh like butchered all the names so it’s basically the earliest is innovators and it’s like the people actually like figuring things out and then there’s early adopters then there’s early majority that’s the kind of like big chunk late majority that’s the other part of the big chunk and then there’s the laggards who are like you know people who still have aol email addresses and like you know are looking driving around looking for blockbusters and for a lot of things i would say you are on the right side you’re uh either an innovator or the one next to it an early adopter and i’m trying to go i’m intent i’m intentionally trying to go that way so i thought uh you know i’m just not that i’m not like a futurist type of guy because i’ve been so wrong and i figured out the formula for it the formula for it is um have an ego make a prediction be wrong like five times and have it rubbed in your face how wrong you were boom you’re not you’re now a futurist uh like i remember the first time the iphone came out and i was like who the [ ] wants to like read tiny text on a screen like that’s awful i was like nobody’s gonna watch a movie on this i was like yeah you can watch who would ever watch a movie on this like tiny square like that’s like that would be the worst it’s worse than an airplane headrest like i remember saying these things to people and you know like i was in college i was like a junior in college there was nobody remembers this but i remember being that wrong snapchat i remember being that wrong my username still has the word test in it because i was so certain i was like snapchat this is this is stupid right this is just for kids and dick pics and stuff like that like certainly won’t go on beyond this bitcoin i was wrong early on right like guys in my office were telling me about it back in 2012 2013 and i was kind of laughing and saying guys let’s focus on something like legit here and now i’m like you know a [ ] bitcoin evangelist and so like twitch same thing i was wrong about streaming i’ve been wrong so many times that i’ve actually flipped the script now i kind of had to reassess my life and say i’m not gonna be very good as a technology entrepreneur or technology investor if i just continue to write off the big things as dumb and stupid early on like i need to go the exact opposite way okay what would it take for me to do that and i just i just inverted so instead of you know anytime i see that the same feeling i instead lean into curiosity what’s making people want to do this when i think it’s so strange and now that’s that’s like flipped the script for me and we either had justin or emmett on at hustlecon or on here and they’re talking about justin tv which was the site before twitch became a thing and it was basically uh anyone could log in and create their own live tv channel and emmett i believe you could tell me if i’m wrong i believe the story was like emmett with like there’s a small corner of the site where these like guys were watching video games and it wasn’t a lot of people like thousands of people but they were spending two percent i think of the traffic um at that time but they were spending a significant amount of time watching and he was like that’s this is the one that we got to go to and and i don’t even think it was that as data-driven actually the data pointed against it because again i remember it was a small trap it was a small amount they had a combination of two things working in their favor number one emmett was like i i guess actually the number one factor was they were [ ] the current thing wasn’t working and they had like no like they had nothing to lose they don’t they were gonna run out of money and fail or they had to try something dramatically different and when you feel like you’re [ ] and you have nothing to lose you actually have the one of the greatest assets on your side um which is that you know when you have nothing to lose you play completely differently than when you feel like you have something to lose so that was the first thing they had to change they the things that were popular were all like illegal streams it’s legal streams of sports so they knew oh people want to watch this but we can’t ever build a business around this yeah so what 90 of people are doing on this site we can’t use the two percent thing worked and then the other one was he was like i personally like watching these so he’s like i’m gonna go with that like these are my favorite things to watch on the network so if i’m gonna work on this i’m gonna work on the ones that i personally find you know the most interesting and actually most of the company wanted to go work on the hotter sexier idea which was called uh what was the thing called the video thing they had not vidi their their their version of that called social capital cam so the company split in half they said all right justin tv is not gonna work abandon ship and we gotta figure out you know what’s the what’s the emergency ship and so they had this i think michael cybel who now runs y combinator and justin khan they wanted to do social cam it was instagram for video instagram is the hottest startup in silicon valley but it’s photos we’re gonna do instagram for video and they were able to instantly raise money they got tons of initial hype and traction and press and all the talented people in the company wanted to go work there so i talked to this guy jacob who’s the og designer at twitch and he’s still there he’s still at the company today and i said uh how’d you know like to bet on twitch instead of social cam he goes oh no dude i wanted to be on social camp they were just like nah like we don’t teams full bro like you go work on on the thing with emmett because emma’s his childhood friend he said you got to go to that one he’s like oh [ ] all right whatever you know so like that was what seemed like the great idea but actually what emmett did which was leaned into this really weird behavior unique lifestyle that these gamers were doing where they were streaming themselves playing for eight hours a day that turned out to be the thing and that’s kind of my point which is like i think that there’s like these i i do it on online communities particularly reddit but you can right now you can do it on twitter or you can just type in like any idea or any hobby and type in the word forum and you can just find like these niche communities of people that are kind of freaks and it’s fun to like learn all about it like for example intermittent fasting fasting is now like we all talk about it um i remember like eight years ago i remember business insider wrote an article about like a microsoft executive and they mocked him for the like intermittent fasting what is this and uh but there’s there’s been communities online where i’ve like read about people doing this for forever and you’re like fasting like no like breakfast is the most important meal of the day just look at anything they make fun of silicon valley for at the beginning coronavirus like vcs are so paranoid about the real world that they’re wearing masks to conferences guess what everybody’s doing now i’m wearing masks right oh my god intermittent fasting silicon valley’s latest craze not eating till noon every day you know what a google what google engineers are doing right it’s like media loves to make fun of it guess what that’s what everybody’s going to be doing um you know what are some other things that are like that i think you know some of them are meditation by the way was like that too people made fun of it and then you know boom it’s like the new yoga uh the other ones i think that are happening are like stem cell or any like blood platelet spinning stuff where it’s like oh you have knee pain well these guys they like go to puerto rico and like go to germany and like get this [ ] blood spinning treatment and go get stem cells injected on their knees that and uh now they feel good and gene editing i think is gene editing’s one another one uh breath work i think breath work is where meditation was i invested this thing called other ships they just actually launched their app i use it every single day and um like i use it religiously because it makes you feel so good and to to the average person like i do it outside now after huberman was like get get some light on your eyes first thing in the morning so i do it outdoors um and i’m sitting in my driveway basically doing it and neighbors are walking by they’re walking their dog what they feel is a very normal behavior go go for a morning walk and they see me like doing [ __ ] breathing techniques on my driveway and they think i’m a nut uh and i love it i go louder as soon as somebody walks by because i want them to know they live next to somebody from the future dude there’s this guy his name was bill uh well we’ll start with there’s this guy named arthur leonard he’s uh he’s dead now but in the 60s and 70s he was a new zealand track and field coach and he had runners like paul walker uh or not paul walker that’s john walker uh peter fury yeah yeah peter snell and all these like new zealand guys who started winning the olympics in the 1500 meters 5k and 10k and everyone’s like dude what are you doing with your runners and he goes we run like 120 miles a week we do long distance running and we go slow and we just do it just a shitload of it and this one coach from oregon got really interested and uh his name was bill bowerman and he goes well i’m the track and field coach at oregon university i have all these great runners what are you doing and he goes over to in the 1970s in new zealand and he learns from arthur leonard and he comes back and he starts making it popular and two things happen university oregon gets really good at track and field and he ends up um making shoes for his runners so they can run a little bit faster and he calls it nike he calls that company nike he starts it with a with another runner phil knight and the other thing that happens and this just it worked out perfectly is he starts talking about it to all of his friends he even writes a book about it and i believe it’s called like the joy of jogging and the idea of jogging it wasn’t even like a thing in the 70s people like what do you mean you’re just going to run like art isn’t yeah like aren’t the police gonna go after you and and like like it was like astounding like prior to the 1970s right so there was it was a jogging craze of the 70s prior to that people didn’t go out and run that just like wasn’t like a thing and so anyway that’s like another example where like running became popular and bowerman created nike to kind of capitalize on it