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Kind: captions Language: en now the grit score goes I think it’s zero to 10 I want you to guess my grit score 10 is super gritty gritty as it gets uh I would say I would put you six six seven you’re pretty gry I appreciate your faith in me I scored a 2.5 on this grit test bro D you should have took it [Music] again all right Sean you’re back how was the trip my trip was great me and Ben went to Phoenix and um I’m not going to share all the details but it was a dope experience dope life experience I think one great thing to share by the way when’s like Sam was the last dope life experience you had something you didn’t have to do but you did anyways probably Camp MFM two years ago don’t let that happen don’t let too much time go by uh I think like every three months or so should try to do something that’s uh a little extracurricular if you know what I mean just something that’s outside of the routine outside of what you have to do um so I did that anyway so we went to Phoenix um because uh Matt ishia who is the owner of the Suns the Phoenix Suns the basketball team there we had gotten in touch with them and he was like Hey if you guys ever want to come check out a game come hang out so we go down to Phoenix and we meet Matt we meet the team we get to go sit Courtside do like live life as an NBA owner which is awesome because I always dreamed of doing doing that now what I want to tell you though is not about Matt uh what I want to tell you about is actually much more uh in the weeds so here’s a little in the weeds um a little in the weed story so I think Ben emailed him when he bought the team and was just like hey congrats buddy and then was like thank you thank you Ben Levy goodbye and that was the first touch Point second touch point was we invited him to Camp mm we’re like hey you he used to be a college basketball player so he was a college basketball player now he’s a multi-billionaire who owns an NBA team well that’s a mix of basketball and you know entrepreneurship that that’s who we try to invite to the camp and so we invited him he was like oh I’d love to come couldn’t end up making the dates but his kind of make good was listen sorry I couldn’t make it but if you guys are ever in town let me know we’ll we’ll hang out we’ll check out a game hey what do you know Matt we’re in town what are you in town because that’s when we’re in town so we worked with his assistant to be like when do you think we should be in town and we did that so this is the rule of reciprocity by the way you offered someone something and regardless if they take you up or not they now owe you we should just host events that aren’t ever going to happen and we make sure we file the person online like oh they’re out of town that date they’re already busy let’s ask them we’re hosting a charity event honoring you uh so so yes we did that now the funny thing is uh well the background here is that what why what’s the randomness here Ben used to Ben is a DieHard Phoenix Suns fan he loves the Phoenix Suns more than you love your child he loves the Phoenix Sons with a deeper passion than Romeo loved Juliet and he was a ball boy for four or five years so like literally was was with the team every day volunteer ball boy basically um just to give you a sense of this guy so when every year when there’s an All-Star game so you what the way the way it works in the NBA is the fans vote on who gets to be named an All-Star so Ben supporting his guys being the loyal supportive guy that he is takes literally 100,000 ballots home forces his family every night to sit there and punch the ballots to vote the Phoenix Suns guys in and himself over the course of a couple months they churned through 100,000 ballots to try to support the team the guy the players didn’t care they didn’t know about this he just did it because he’s that that big of a Die Hard fan so that’s ridiculous Ben obviously does a lot for me I was like can I what’s a what’s how can I make a Ben appreciation weekend and that’s what this was this was go and and kind of let him live a live a child to dream out so he goes down there we we watch the game it’s all good one of the cool things was and this happens all the time by the way you think you’re there to meet the the famous person but it’s actually this other thing that’s really interesting that’s more accessible that ends up being the fascinating thing you wouldn’t have known it until you showed up so similarly we go and we have this great conversation with one of the guys in their kind of like data department so it’s like analytics data that’s become a big part of sports and so Ben is grilling the guy Ben’s like uh the guy came down to say nice to meet you and Ben’s like cool I have 1,000 questions for you have a seat and he’s like in the year 2013 you picked this guy why I’d like to know what telling you that what and he’s like what are the metrics that matter right now for us when we play a game obviously besides the score like you know what leads to the score and he’s he’s asking all these detailed questions and when Ben asks questions sometimes I’ve noticed the person won’t even finish and he’s like I got what I need next like it’s just like and he’s he’s he’s great because um everybody needs a place where they’re Shameless like for me and you like I’m Shameless about like I’m a monologue okay I got something interesting to say I know that’s not how this is supposed to work but I’m a monologue because that’s I just need to get this off my chest and trust me you’re gonna like it by the end your thing is like you’ll just ask a blunt question you’ll just be like well dude you keep saying this like what is it how much what’s in your pocket right now and they’re like I guess nobody’s ever asked me that here here’s the answer Ben’s thing is that he’s like oh we’re um you know we’re supposed to be at dinner I’m going to ask you all of the questions I will I my C is endless and like I don’t care what the social situation is like we’ll be playing basketball and he’ll be guarding a guy and he’ll be like he’ll be like so like what’s Revenue like nowadays like dude like you got to let it go for this moment in time like just give it a rest but he doesn’t he doesn’t do it anyways we’re doing that with this guy and one of the one of the fascinating questions that he asked we were like what’s you’re the data Guy what’s the data you wish you had that you don’t currently have like what data would would help you do this because he’s showing us these cameras in the gym where if you’re just shooting around there’s cameras now that will it does facial recognition it’ll track okay Sam is shooting in the practice session it’ll record the length of the session the number of shots the exact arc on every shot his exact um field goal percentage without anybody having to be there to keep track of stats so cool Tech right now his answer was very interesting so he was like you know we test for we can we know everything you’ve ever done on the court but what we’ve learned what everybody knows who’s been around Sports is that the difference between the Michael Jordans and the you know Isaiah ryers or the Kobe Bryants versus the Lenny Brooks it’s like it’s like what’s up top what’s in your mindset and the guys who are completely obsessed extreme disciplined they’re able to work harder than the next guy they don’t take those days off they um you know are receptive to coaching and they’re going to improve on their weaknesses they’re going to double down on their strengths they can keep their confidence even when something goes bad it’s all about the mental right like every athlete every great athlete would tell you how much of the sport is mental but they have no way of measuring the mental and so we said interesting what would be the way that you would want to do that he’s like grit grit what do you mean grit he’s like well there’s this book that came out I don’t know have you ever read this book the book Angela Duckworth Duckworth yeah exactly so I went down this Rabbit Hole after that so that was just my segue into me going down this rabbit hole on these uh mindset tests so first I actually want to tell you about a different test which you’ve probably done in the past and that’s the Myers Briggs Test have you done this test yeah do you know the backstory of this you know where this came from no but is it even real are horoscopes real right are Palm readers real like there’s a lot of [ ] in this industry which is why I’m fascinated by it so let me I’m not saying it’s completely [ ] but there’s a lot of handwavy stuff here’s the story there’s a woman and her name is Isabel Isabelle 1942 uh I think World War II is going on and Isabelle is reading Readers Digest and she reads in Readers Digest this article about people sorting people sorting and basically it’s how companies are using test to do people sorts and so she reads that locki uh locki the aircraft uh company was using it to locate you know possible troublemakers they’re like we need to do some screening so that we can identify who’s going to be a troublemaker who’s going to have some Mischief in them another company was using it for finding uh you’ll appreciate this one henpecked husbands and they were basically the argument was that if the man is under the thumb at home then he’ll easily also be submissive at work fascinating right like people were legitimately doing this they’re like trying to figure out like who’s who’s got that Alpha who’s got that dog in them all right everyone a quick break to tell you about HubSpot and this one’s easy because I’m going to show you an example of how I’m doing this at my company when I say I I mean not my team I mean I’m the one who actually made this so I’ve got this company called Hampton you can check it out join hampton.com it’s a community for Founders and one of the ways that we’ve grown is we’ve created these surveys where we’ll ask our members certain questions that a lot of people a lot of times people are afraid to ask so things like what their net worth is how their assets are allocated all these like interesting questions and then we’ll put it in a survey and I went and made a landing page so you can check it out at join hampton.com wealth you can actually see the landing page that I made and the hard part with this is with Hampton we are appealing to a sort of a a higher-end customer sort of like like a Louis Vuitton or Ferrari so I needed the landing page to look a very particular way HubSpot has templates that’s what we use we just change the colors a little bit to match our brand very easy they have this drag and drop version of their landing page Builder and it’s super simple I’m not Technical and I’m the one who actually made it and once it’s made I then shared it on social media and we had thousands of people see it and thousands of people who gave us their information and I can then see over the next handful of weeks this is how much revenue came in from this wealth survey that I did this is where the revenue came from so it came from Twitter it came from LinkedIn whatever it came from I can actually go and look at it and I can say oh well that worked that didn’t work do more of that do less of that and if you’re interested in making landing pages like this I highly suggest it look I’m actually doing it but you can check it out go to the link in the description of YouTube and get started all right now back to MFM so she writes to her mom Catherine she’s like this is fascinating companies are doing this blah blah blah she’s interested in Psychology her mom writes back and says you should make your own test um and you should do it you you’re always telling me about that guy Carl Jung you should uh Carl Young J I don’t know how you say it uh he’s like you should do it on those principles so um she ends up creating and their last names are Briggs and Myers and she ends up creating the uh the I forgot what it’s called the Briggs Myers type indicator or something like that right like that’s that’s how this test started and she creates a test and basically he had this Theory the psychologist had this theory that there’s like people Branch out in this like decision tree it’s like you’re either a thinker or a feeler so you’re a perceiver or you’re a judger and and they if you just go down the tree it ends up with 16 possibilities and they gave each of the 16 like kind of a positive affirmation name so there’s no bad there’s no bad score yeah they give you a fortune cookie everybody gets a trophy and so they were like oh you are an executive you are a caregiver you are a scientist you are an idealist and they just had all these labels for the for the 16 categories now of course the funny thing is if you end up taking the test you’ll get one score and on average if you take the same test Weeks Later 50% of people will will end up with a completely different label so yeah I don’t know how reliable these things are and that you know people who criticize it they say this takes advantage of something called the forer effect have you ever heard of this thing the forer effect it’s basically the same thing that astrologers fortune tellers and other pseudo scientists use where they kind of cold read something general about you like you’re the type of person who um you know you don’t let everybody in but once but when some you get close to somebody you really open up or like you’re the type of person who um you know sometimes when things get hard you’re able to really you know you’re able to really stand up and and and make it happen it’s like know I do have a little bit of that in me you know you’re right how’d you know um here here’s some money and so anyways they create this test it’s not that popular at the beginning but it ends up getting picked up by uh you know fast forward many many years and gets picked up by a company called um CPP the Consulting psychologist press CPP and so and they picked up the distribution rights and they’re like hey we are going to Market this to American businesses we are going to tell American businesses about this when you say picked up do you mean was this a publication that promoted it or bought it it was a publishing company and they buy the licensing rights to Market it and they’re Isabelle and her mom are just going to get a royalty and basically right as she dies she dies at 82 sales start taking off by 1983 almost a million people are taking the Myers Briggs Test annually is it free no so the way it works is it’s a it’s kind of a brilliant business model so basically to take the test is somewhere between 15 and 40 bucks so everybody who takes a test you get you know let’s say on average 30 bucks from them but then well you can’t just take the test it has to be given to you by a practitioner well the practitioners have to pay $2,000 to become a certified practitioner that’s the only way you could take this test and so like last year they enrolled 5,000 practitioners who each paid you know about $1,500 to $2,000 each 8 to 10 million bucks in Revenue off of just the practitioners and then each of the practitioners um then distributes the test and they get they get paid by Distributing the test so they it’s kind of like a multi-level marketing scheme right the practitioner makes 30 bucks a test and then the extra royalty the extra 10 bucks on top goes back to the to the um to the parent company to the publisher and uh so this thing they don’t know the revenue because it’s still private it’s been private for like whatever you know since you know the 80s and uh they once said their number was over 20 million in Revenue I suspect it’s higher than that um there’s been millions of people who take this whove taken this test and Myers Briggs is that company CPP it’s their biggest earner it’s that that’s their Cash Cow and so that’s insane dude it’s used by the government it’s used by 200 federal agencies use this um you know just the EPA itself they use it on a quarter of their 20,000 employees I think 80% of the fortune 89 oh 89 of the Fortune 100 use this test 89% of the Fortune 100 isn’t that insane there’s a few things that are insane about it one to create something so when did you create it in 42 1942 yeah so we’re coming up 880 years now as we’re going to be close to 100 years soon that’s amazing to create something that lasts that long I mean that that’s it’s such a reputable brand even though I think it’s nonsense uh but many people think it’s reputable that it uh it’s at this point it’s an annuity so you just like it’s predictable Revenue all the time um we talked about uh was it Gallup Gallup pulling and they own Clifton strengths which is famous for strengths finders 2.0 and I tried to find how much revenue they did and I could not find anything I believe Gallup I we did this two years ago so I don’t remember I believe Gallup does something like a billion a year in revenue or or hundreds of millions but if you go to the strength finder website and you look at their traffic it’s huge it’s a huge huge huge thing and it costs the same thing 20 or $40 for one of these tests I loved this business because the test business is so fun because you’re desperate to know like when you’re in a hard time you’re desperate to know you just want affirmation that things are going to be okay and I loved it I love it and I used to do these all the time and I would even game them I’d be like well that’s not right I should I should take it I I should take it again I probably answered a few a few wrong uh so check this out so I read about that now when we meet this guy and he tells me about the mental makeup the the grit the mindset and being important I’m like he’s totally right the mindset thing is super important and so I’m like what was that book grit Angela Duckworth what was that all about I I believe it’s um uh you could put off desire what’s that called or you could put off gratification delayed gratification is like the I think that’s a part of it but the ones I think they had is basically it’s ability so like your talent basic your ability times Zeal which is like your passion or enthusiasm about something times capacity for hard labor is the formula for success and with what with grit specifically it’s around Zeal and the perseverance so it’s you know basically your Your Enthusiasm your passion times times perseverance okay so here’s what’s interesting about this thing so he tells me about this and I’m like all right Doug like how what’s my grit score let me go let me go test it now the grit score goes I think it’s zero to 10 I want you to guess my grit score 10 is super gritty gritty as it gets who’s who’s a 10 David gaggin is a 10 uh I would say I would put you six six seven you’re pretty gry I appreciate your faith in me I scored a 2.5 on this grit test bro D you should have out of 10 I am I am in the bottom 10 percentile of grit so what were the questions you so check this out I’m gonna read you some of the uh The Testament and this is the this is why I was like this is [ ] why is this [ ] okay so here’s the claims the she writes this book and becomes a bestseller you see Keith for boy they be like oh grit’s the most important thing and all these CEOs are like grit’s the most important thing they’re not wrong it’s it’s just that like many of these best-selling books it’s like pop science right like the principle is not wrong but the the depth of the evidence is actually quite shallow and so here’s what it says so it says uh so she starts off by saying well showing up you know what’s that old quote 80% of success is just showing up and you know and people realize well yeah like if I guess if you give up that almost guarantees failure if you give up and they looked around and they said well 50% of solders quit the army during the selection process 50% of marriages end in divorce 25% of students drop out of high school sales jobs 50% of people will turn over every every year in sales jobs and um they noticed that like uh there were there what’s the Counterpoint the Counterpoint is basically what they looked at was West Point and I don’t know if you know much about the school West Point but it’s got a pretty like uh pretty high bar right it’s like being a guest on this podcast it’s a high bar and so what they do is say to get into West Point you don’t apply when you’re a senior in high school you apply when you’re a junior you apply in 11th grade and you don’t just apply with your test scores and whatnot you have to be nominated by a member of Congress to get into West Point so you have to hustle your way to get a congress member to vouch for you in order to do this you have to do a leadership interview you have to do a fitness test and out of 14,000 applicants they’ll select like a thousand people to come join this thing and even after they filter with all that like you have to run through walls to get here 20% Dropout during the one the the seven-week orientation period that’s called the beast is West Point free I don’t think so so you got to pay money to do all this and then go to the Army like all the best things in life all right all right the Beast is a rotation of calisthenics marching classes weapons training Athletics you go 5:00 a.m. to 10: p.m. with no breaks no weekends no contact with family or friends and you have to be subscribed to this YouTube channel in order to get in and so even if you’re not going to do all the other things you should go to YouTube right now my first million and you should subscribe to our podcast all right so basically grit was a higher predictor with this grit score they said was a higher predictor of West Point success than your SAT score then your high school rank then the leadership interview then all the other things and so anyways I thought here’s the grit test I I can even just give it to you so here’s some of the questions they ask on this thing it says new ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones basically do you get distracted by new ideas and projects from your current one uh do that very much like me mostly like me somewhat like me or not like me that’s guess what it’s very much like me okay another one setbacks don’t discourage me I don’t give up easily okay that I scored well on that one I set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one I am a hard worker like come on this is not science this is this is what I call nothing that’s what this test is this no there’s some stuff here I finish whatever I begin so for example bro do you trust people’s self assessment of this no here do you have any uh unfinished Lego sets in your home I don’t even have a Lego set no but I would if I did I would I got a box of un unset up Furniture right over here I have a half half written book over there yes of course yes I I do fail this test and so you but the thing is I can think of 10 examples where I’m not like that I can think of 10 examples where I am like that this is you know what I’m low in grit I’m high in honesty and to somebody who’s like I’m really high on the grit score I’m like is this real like is this is this honest is this an honest assessment I think your butt hurt I think that you got I think change comes from within brother I think that you Gotta Be You gota the stages I’m in denial right now I’m bargaining yeah is there like grits Anonymous you need to like go and go through the the 12 steps my friend you’re you’re in Step number one if there’s anyone else out there what’s the opposite of grit by the way just like cream cheese soft the word the marshmallow scale um so yeah well you know what I want you to take this uh test actually just take it right now let’s take it together let’s see what your grit score is all right uh new questions okay here we go all right I’m gonna give you the grit the grit test okay Sam you have to just say uh true or false basically yeah very true very false so new ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones false false all right very false would you say not much like me false all right not much like me setbacks don’t don’t discourage me I don’t give up easily is that very much like you you don’t give up easily or not I don’t give up I don’t give up easily uh yeah I often set a goal but later choose to pursue a different one mostly like me I am a hard worker somewhat I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take me more than a few months to complete that’s not much like me I finish whatever I begin very much my interests change from year to year not much I am diligent I never give up somewhat I have been obsessed with a certain idea or project for a short period of time and later lost interest somewhat I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge not much like me I I’ve not had that many setbacks like I’m just so good it just works I just try easy stuff wow all right that’s a grit score of 3.5 correct okay so you got a 3.5 okay so I had it wrong the scale to five you’re a 3.5 out of five you scored higher than 40% of Americans what does that mean I’m in the 60th percentile no you’re in the 40th percent right I don’t [ ] know I’m between 40 and 60% so I’m not that good you’re like above average yeah no wait you scort higher than only 40% so you’re actually average to below average grit yeah that sucks this St is stupid it would have been a lot better if I was a four or something yeah the segment needed you to be amazing and me to be terrible inste you’re pretty average and I’m way below average so anyways go back take your grit score you just go to you just SE Google search grit score and uh take this thing and then post it in the comments on YouTube I want to know who is the grittiest YouTube commenter of them all it’s probably the spammers that never go away that keep impersonating us and being like to everybody who comments they’re like Dy that’s not us we’re not telling you we’re not trying to sell you something like that that if we try to sell you something you’ll know it trust me that’s not the way we would do it I want to tell you about someone who would score a five out of five on the grid score can I tell you about this person tell me do you remember a few years ago in 16 or 17 I think there was this company called lunch Club it was basically like the social platform where you I guess meet up with people for lunch I thought it was really Dum I used to do that I used when I moved to San Francisco that’s how I made friends I I joined the lunch club and I would go get lunch with stranger Tech Bros I thought that that was a stupid idea I thought it was very stupid I’d never used it but not I I was alone on that one I think that like when you didn’t have setbacks you’re like I always have friends and I never have setbacks yeah I scored low on this one as well uh but here’s the thing not everyone else thought it was a dumb idea in fact they raised $30 million from adri and Horwitz and all these like really smart people and I don’t think it ever became that big of a company but they raised $30 million at $100 million valuation have no idea what happened to it today uh because it’s not really relevant anymore however the guy who started it is amazing and this is just proof that smart people sometimes do like they’ve got silly things that are just stepping stones until the real thing and so the guy who started it his name is Scott woo and recently I think yesterday it was he launched something that’s pretty amazing and we’re going to do another episode where we talk in depth about what he launched but basically what it is is it’s called cognition labs that’s the name of the company the product is called Devon the summary of it is you just tell Devon make me a website that looks like Yelp except it’s just for uh agencies or something or make me a website that’s like Airbnb but for cars and what Devon does is it gives you a checklist of all the things it’s going to do and then it does it and it builds the website for you and this is like gamechanging technology because it basically makes coders obsolete it’s an AI software engineer or programmer yes and many really smart people Patrick cison the CEO of stripe they’re basically saying all right this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this actually be as good or better than a human and it’s amazing whatever the product’s awesome we’re going to talk all about it but what’s more interesting to me is Bloomberg did this article on the three it’s basically three co-founders and then they have uh the main CEO his brother also works there they did this amazing profile on the 10 person company that created this and they are magnif everything about these guys are beautiful the Magnificent 10 should we call them yes the Magnificent 10 everything about this company is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen in my life so check this out it’s 10 employees they’ve raised $21 million amongst the 10 employees they have 10 gold medals uh that they’ve won from Top coding competitions and many of the people on Twitter when they when they came out with this they go I remembered Scott Scott was the guy who was winning all of the math competitions that I used to go to as I sat in the crowd wondering how on Earth this guy did this and this one guy named by by fan his name he tweeted out this thing he goes I want to show you all some tiger mom porn and it’s basically and it’s basically this young guy I get judging off his name I guess Scott woo I guess he’s Chinese he there’s this video of him when he’s uh like 12 or 13 years old and he’s had a math competition Sam we gotta do this we got to do this test sorry put I have the thing here’s the question the question says if the pattern continues what is the letter in the 2010th position and it just says mathl mathlete mathlete mathlete and and it says dot dot dot what letter will be the 2010th letter in this sequence and he goes a dude you know how you know how like in Jeopardy how by the way he looks like he’s like 12 years old in this video by the way like a child he’s a kid and then you know how in Jeopardy they show you the question uh as the reading it so you could read along with it he answers one of the questions where it’s like what’s like uh 352 to the 4th power times like this other 384 to the eth power he answered the question before the announcer finished reading it like he literally hit the beat all right so same the digits 1 two 3 four and five can be arranged to form many five-digit positive integers with five distinct digits and how many such integers is the digit one to the left of the digit two two such integers include 14,3 52 and 51234 go ahead just walk me through your thought process here I feel like an integer is like an Advertiser I ordered last night with a little bit of Parmesan cheese on top sounds like an influencer mom on Instagram like coming up with a cool name for their baby there like we have Bronx and integer they’re going to math today like it sounds like a an amazing roller coaster ride at Six Flags I don’t know what an integer is I can’t even answer this question but these guys were crushing it at these at these at these questions and there’s three of them and so listen to the third listen to this segment from the article so this guy named Ashley Vance he’s the one I think he wrote um he wrote uh the uh the biography of Elon Musk he he wrote this article and he goes the third co-founder he’s currently the CPO he asked me that I not explicitly say what his current status is his enrollment status at Harvard is because he doesn’t want his parents to fully understand what he’s done basically the CPO the the co-founder of this company now is worth hundreds of millions of dollars has yet to tell his mother that he’s dropped out of Harvard even though he’s now worth tens of millions of dollars because he’s too afraid to break her heart and in the article the author the author goes I just want to let you know uh you’ve raised a wonderful son and this can work out wonderfully it’s okay if he’s may or may not be enrolled in Harvard anymore and this article it’s the greatest thing I’ve seen I just Googled the guy’s name Scott woo and the top it is a Reddit post from 18 hours ago in the subreddit r/ next [ ] level which is an amazing subreddit by the way I go to there I go there all the time it’s just next level [ ] and it goes here’s Scott woo the CEO of cognition labs in a math quiz 14 years ago it’s a clip this thing has 5,000 up votes and the first first reply is if anyone’s wondering here’s the tricks that they used here you know for question three the standard permutations of 54321 blah blah blah and then the top comment of that is it took me longer to read your explanation than it took him to actually do it and answer the question it’s ridiculous parentheses I just said read not even understand what you just said so anyway these guys are ridiculous uh and what’s it’s just amazing that a there’s young people that are like self- Gathering into like this is like to me like truly like that Facebook [ ] like that movie of Facebook when they’re just in the dorm room doing it these guys are doing it right now they range between ages 20 and 27 it was so inspiring to read about these guys and I’m so happy that freaks like these guys exist uh it was it was an awesome article about this company the company I’m sure it’s great the story behind these guys is even better this is like the American dream to me yeah I don’t know if it’s the American dream or like the robot dream or like the math wet dream I don’t know what this what dream this is but it’s it’s the Chinese mother it’s the Chinese mother Chinese tiger mom dream for sure um except for the dropping out part exact yeah they go you know it’s not too late son you can still go back that’s what they’ll say after this article Harvard should launch a tiger extension school which is you get to remain a student or you get to graduate it’s dropping out by graduating early because we’re like you’re you’re done here your mom will be fine we just get 0.1% equity in your company thank you and and all they have to do and we get 0.1% and what you get son is you get a photo of you wearing that gown and we’re going to go get one of our our our teachers to shake your hand on on we have this guy Charles he’ll shake your hand he looks like the dean and uh we have a green screen here it’ll look like you graduated and your mom it’ll make your parents proud this is the Harvard version of a fake ID of some guy running a scam um anyway I wanted to bring that up I thought these guys are amazing um what do you got you have a thrill of a shill right right now don’t you oh I have something cool I’m doing okay so this is not really a shill it’s just a it’s just a thrill to be honest with you this is actually costing me a lot of money it is not making me any money so um I have an idea which is wouldn’t it be amazing if you like this podcast you like listening to us maybe Sam you were at a Meetup last night that’s cool people got to meet you would anybody like to text with me because I got a number that you could text and if you text me I’ll text you back um and so what I’m going to do is I create a number so all you got to do is just text me you just go 650 334 0790 I think we got to work on that number uh but if we do that 65033 4079 I’m just going to send out texts of stuff that we’re doing uh that’s cool I’m going to share like you know stuff that’s on my whiteboard throughout the day like just random stuff that I think is interesting or let’s say the main thing I wanted to do the the re reason we had this idea was after every podcast you don’t know this after every podcast um Ben Le is usually not listening on the on the recordings but he was usually like really curious like oh oh yeah you guys had Gary von like what did he say but he’s he doesn’t want the full hourong podcast he’s like can you send me like a voice note of like the two or three most interesting bits and so I do that and I’ve been doing that for like three months now where after every episode I’m like oh yeah me and Sam talked about that uh that company co uh uh that’s doing the AI software engineer and how that dude the founder actually is like the mass genius and I also shared like Myers Briggs does 20 million a year and how it was how it’s kind of [ ] we did that and I’ll just give him a two-minute voice note of the thing and and so he loves it he’s like dude this he’s been telling me for months this needs to be like a thing but we didn’t know how to do it and so everything we looked into was like you could try to create a giant telegram group but not everybody uses telegram I like dude I just want to like just the way I get it where I just you just text me this as a voice note or as a photo that’s what I want what did you use so um we’re using this this app that will let you do it it’s really expensive and so I kind of just want to limit this and so maybe I don’t know exactly what the limit is I’m thinking just like the first thousand people I’m going to cut it off because like this is going to cost me tens of thousands dollars a month to do this but I think it’s going to be great um so the number is 650 334 079 that’s right I’ll put it in the show in the description so you can just tap it and send a text you just have to say hi you just have to say hi to the thing it’ll ask you your name and then I then it so then it shows me so when you reply to me I can see oh it’s Jeff from you know Cincinnati or whatever it is I could see who it is and I can I can reply back and so gonna try this out I want to try it with a thousand fans I’m looking for don’t do it if you’re just like super casual with it like if this is your first time listening to this episode don’t don’t bother but like if you’re like all about MFM uh and you’ve been listening to this for years and you know you’re cool do this that’s so funny this cost me a lot of money so please only do it if you really care about only like a thousand people do this uh I don’t really want more than that to do this because it’s quite expensive but you know whatever leave it to me to cut it off at a certain point tell me about your friend walking back you have on here walking backwards and speed running is it speedr running just sprinting no so so uh we did a pod with Gary ve yesterday and it’s not going to come out for a couple of months two months I think it’s going to come out when his book comes out or whatever but he said something very interesting I don’t know if this stood out to you but you had asked him a great question you go Gary you started with like um like family business mom and pop or actually before that you were just flipping you know baseball cards as a teen then you joined your family business and was like a a family shop and then as you started to grow your brand now like you have all these business owners who listen to you but also your brand has grown so so much you now get to you know rub shoulders is it rub should elbows I don’t know what people rub you rub against you’re rubbing you’re rubbing chest to chest with a bunch of billionaires and you were like what I want to know is have you observed any difference between the guys who end up guys and gals who end up making it to the to the highest tier of the the of winning in business the billion dollar Club let’s say versus the the small business owner the convenience store owner versus the the the solar preneur whatever what do you notice in the is is the biggest difference he instantly answered something that I thought was not what I would have expected he goes the willingness to walk backwards we like what what do you mean and he said it and kind he didn’t fully explain it but he explained two things he goes number one the great ones always reinvent themselves uh you know uh you could look at Elon Musk Elon Musk starts out doing zip 2 and he he then he creates PayPal and he’s like he’s like this the internet entrepreneur and then after that he was willing to walk backwards and go back to zero and he was basically like cool I’m going to now try Hardware which is a completely different game it would have been easier for him to just stay with PayPal keep growing that or do another software company internet company but he was willing to walk backwards and so he started a a rocket company something he didn’t know anything about at the time but he’s like I’m gonna start from zero today I can’t tell you how to build a rocket and then fast forward to today he’s got self Landing rockets that can go up and come back and land on themselves right it’s kind of amazing he was also willing to walk backwards financially so he invested everything that he made from zip 2 and PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX to the point where it would have gone to zero if those companies had failed which they almost did so the willingness to walk backwards both in terms of um where you’re at in the mountain can you go back to being a beginner and the second thing is can you go back can you are you willing to risk it Gary told us that his he has a safety net you were like I have a safety net some amount of money that I just don’t touch if everything else goes to zero I always got that he’s like me too and you’re like how much is it and he I don’t what did you expect that he would say and what did he say I expected I mean he seems pretty wealthy I expected 10 or 20 he said 1 million so he said $1 million he said a safety net was $1 million which if I had to guess that would cover his life expenses for like less than six months right as current lifestyle yeah exactly it’s like safety net that’s a that’s a safety floss my friend that’s a thin thread you’re going to land on there uh obviously it’s a lot of money in the grand scheme of things but like relative to his level of success and wealth that’s a lot less than I would have expected but he’s like that’s all I need and he’s like that’s all I needed safety I’m willing to roll everything else and I thought that was very fascinating then I’ve seen so I thought that was cool and uh nval has said a very similar thing he goes one of the hardest things to do is you start to climb the mountain and when you’re in your 20s you don’t you know you don’t know anything so you just start going up the whatever the trail that you see is and you start going up and the problem is let’s say say your ambition your dream is to get to the top of the mountain but halfway up you learn that the trail you’re on is not the path that gets you there and so what do you do he’s like the reality is that most people you’re now 33 years old you’ve realized that the path you’re currently on is not the lifestyle or the path that you want but it is very hard to say I’m GNA walk back to the bottom of the mountain and pick a different path and what most people do is they just settle they say I guess like I guess I don’t need to get to the top I’ll just this is high enough and um they’re not saying it because they actually want that they’re saying it because the thought of starting over is so hard mentally but the great musicians the great actors the great entrepreneurs the great scientists they reinvent themselves they go into new Fields new new studies new beginnings and they start again and so I find that pretty inspiring that and I’ve seen that so many times in the people of my life that people who aren’t willing to walk backwards aren’t willing to go back to being a beginner again um it’s really tough I’ve met met multiple people who have started something and sold it and then went back to went back to college daresh being one of them that he started HubSpot in college after he already made say the name say the name you want to say say the name you’re dying to say Brett Adcock did the same thing um our friend sea did the same thing um that’s right and it was hard at the time when your whole friend group is doing one thing when your own success does one I mean I’ve even felt it in the smallest ways this podcast is does pretty well I know that if I come on here we’re going to put out some content a lot of people going to consume it the thought of doing Tik Tok which a I didn’t even know how to edit a Tik Tok B I’m not like good at that style of content C I got zero followers over there but I was like all right well like I need to be somebody who can go back to the beginning so Tik Tok is like you’re Tesla exactly now you get it and I’m just like Eli so so what about these guys then the then there’s the opposite speedrunner so I’m going to tell you about uh I saw this story and I want to tell you about three friends so the story I saw was that the founder of RX bar speedr running is such a better term for sprinting for running yeah so speedr running what is speedrunning speed running is the opposite speedr running is where you don’t go back to that beginner’s mind you don’t go back to the bottom of mountain you literally hike the same Trail again and now you know that trail so well you can do it so much faster they do it faster faster it’s a video gaming term I don’t know if you’ve seen it but like there’s people that they don’t play the new game they don’t buy the new the new the new uh you know the next the next edition of whatever fortnite or whatever they play Mario that was released in whatever 1985 they play the first level and they play it over and over and over again to where they can flawlessly Sprint through the level hopping on all the Goomba’s heads and they could finish the level perfectly in like 32 seconds and that is like the actual fastest that a human being could do this and they do it and they’re they’re called speedrunners and people love to watch them because you’re watching absolute mastery over something that you know has been around for a while that they can just keep replaying until they absolutely Master it like that jro guy who just like packed sushi for like 50 years and like didn’t change right right exactly he’s not trying to make the new [ ] he’s like spicy tuna roll this is what we’re going to do and so I’ve noticed that I have friends that are the beginners and I have friends that are the speedrunners so let me tell you about uh the speedrunners so first I noticed that the RX bar founder who built RX bar ended up selling it for $0000 million came out with a new bar and it’s called the David bar did you see this no but that that must mean that it’s not compete ended like right then yeah yeah exactly he sold his company in 2017 and so now it’s um you know whatever yeah I don’t know how how many years what I don’t know what year it is it’s been eight years or something like that it’s uh he could start a new bar so he started this thing called the David bar it’s just like epic protein bar that he’s doing David protein.com looks sick by the way looks awwesome looks sick sick name and the macros are also pretty insane like look just look at the macros do you see it on there no uh 160 calories 28 gram of protein sugar-free that’s amazing pretty I’m in yeah I’m in so I want to tell you a couple things about this before we finish actually I’ll finish the speed running point and I’ll want tell you some RX bar story so anyways speedr running we have three friends I think you know I think you know at least two of the three people I can’t say their names but let’s just call them e-commerce friend number one two and three e-commerce friend number one sold their first e-com sold a e-commerce company so the company let’s let’s say won the first time they played the level uh for hundreds of millions of dollars almost $500 million and then they decide they’re going to start a new company do they go into AI do they create a space company a satellite company no they’re like I’m going to start another e-commerce company in almost the same Niche and I’m going to do it again I’m going to speedrun the same level because the first time I was an idiot I didn’t know what I was doing I figured it out along the way now I figured all this knowledge out why not just do it again and so they they say they’re going to start a new company they are talking to somebody and that and they go yeah I think if I they go I think if actually they weren’t even planning to do it they go I think if I started one today I could hit a million dollars a month in Revenue in three months and the other person goes no way no chance dude [ ] like you think that but that’s not true challenge accepted only for that reason this person starts a new company and and how big are they now month two hit a million dollars a month in Revenue you know they’re they’re you know a couple months in and you know they’re going to do probably two to three million doll this month in revenue and it’s less than six months old can you can’t can you even say the category nothing I can’t say a word I might even I might get shot just for saying what I said already so so that’s the first and who’s who’s person two person two e-commerce person two sold another company also for nine figures nine figures means $100 million or more doing literally the same company again doing the same company in the same category obviously there’s like a you know 10% twist but like back to e-commerce back to the same category back to the same Playbook how big are they now doing phenomenal again right off the bat I don’t have all their exact Revenue numbers but I know it’s like tracking faster than it was the first time friend number three friend number three was friends with person one and two saw them run the levels helped them a little bit along the way and then friend number three had an experience that triggered them also a little chip on the shoulder moment so they were invited by a very successful company to come to their annual like come check out the office come to our annual Retreat and they go and they are watch they they go through the office they like wow this is really impressive they go to the annual like company uh conference or something like that and they’re like wow this is really impressive but the problem was that the the people invited them you know there’s like a good faith way to invite someone which is like hey check this out you’ll really like you’ll enjoy it I’d love to show you what we’re doing blah blah blah and then there’s hey you want to see my car collection and that’s what was going on it was you want to can I brag to you real quick and they were arrogant they were incredibly arrogant the whole time and my friend told me they said friend number three told me they go you know that scene in um The Big Short where these Bankers are are talking about how they’re giving loans and they don’t have to do any uh they like don’t have to do much much of a a credit check and they they’re able to about giving strippers like five houses yeah exactly and they then the guy the main character’s like why are they um why are they uh confessing and then this friend goes they’re not confessing they’re bragging and he he goes he’s like short this like we need to short mortgage back whatever my friend says same feeling walked out I just like why are they why are they bragging about all this and it’s like and he’s just got turned off he’s like okay you showed me you showed me exactly how big this Market is you showed me exact how lucrative this is you show me how arrogant you are you show me how bloated your company is I will come out with a lean mean fighting machine doing the same thing that company gives him 10 million plus in profit a year personally just 10 million in profit in your bank account every year um and this is less than five years raise no capit raise no external Capital all that stuff right amazing amazing story and when I was talking to this person I was like I was talking to one of the friends and I said this is amazing number one but it’s also kind of lame and they’re like what do you mean and I was like you’re playing the same level of the game again like yeah you’re so talented like you could do anything and like it’s fun to win and I get that but it’s also fun to grow and like I feel like you opted into fun to win with no growth but you’re so talented that you could get the growth and win that was like kind of my argument but I might also just be that they’re like cool my broker friend thank you for the advice you know like and so I wanted to get your take are you a walk backwards guy or are you a speedrunner Guy where do you land in the philosophy of this and I’m curious actually for all the listeners I really want to know because both ways can win but there’s like a almost like a political opinion on this I have a political opinion and a belief that walking backwards is the is the way it’s the right way to to do it your life not the speedrun the same level again for years I thought you owe it if you have talent you owe it to the world to like almost be a steward of that Talent like you you owe it to the rest of us because you’re so special to exploit your ability to the max now that I’m a little bit older and I have a family I think [ ] everyone do what makes you happy uh like make your kids proud of you and like just whatever you think is exciting and fun do that you don’t owe anyone anything so not explore exploit basically like you’re not uh don’t wander out just Harvest what I what I think is if it if you so like for example I’ll name drop him again Brett adock I was like Brett why are you doing all this complicated [ ] you don’t have to and he’s like I just think this needs to get done and I should do it I love that attitude I also love the attitude of well I’m just gonna do the same thing over and over again because I get joy out of it and this is awesome and I just love it I think that is also a total win I think both are wins and I don’t think that you owe it to the world to do anything unless you choose to owe it to the world so let’s say we’re not telling other people what they should do what do you how do where do you land on that let’s say you could have started another newsletter right after the hustle but it’s not like I’m starting like huge like world I’m just starting things new things I’m doing new things because I do I have a chip on my shoulder to prove myself in multiple Industries or multiple business models but I don’t want to risk everything and I’m not willing to isn’t that so funny it’s like prove yourself to who who car is there anyone Sam’s successful but only in one industry not give him respect until he lands industry too like nobody has ever even had that thought besides you like oh you don’t know anything about Ecom bro uh um so for me personally I would say that I I don’t feel like I owe I don’t owe it to the world to explore and I don’t owe it to someone who’s less talented not that I’m partic I mean I think I’m mildly talented but when I see someone who’s really talented I’m like you owe it to me because you were gifted this well let me ask you this would you run it back let’s say you were the RX bar guy would you run it back and do another bar company so I think when I run back newsletters no cuz that bores me uh the RX bar I think it’s pretty dope I think it was great for the world uh I think that so yeah if I’m if I’m him I would and there was actually an article written about him how he was retired and he was bored and he had nothing to do and they had a picture of him but they made this photo the article of the of him really great where it was him by himself on a lawn chair like in front of his mansion and he was lonely and they talked about like you know what I’m talking about that famous article that that was caption Rock Bottom a recliner in front of a mansion well and it was like in the middle of the day and he was just like by himself and the whole article was like he’s looking for his next thing and so for someone like that I’m like just do it again man that was exciting that was cool I think that’s awesome and I think RS so if I’m David uh would I redo it yeah I think I would by I don’t even know if his name is David um the I think his name is Peter so by the way the RX bar story so he’s obsessed with Crossfit do you know do you know this story or no no so he’s obsessed with Crossfit he’s like they don’t sell any snacks that are like paleo um at the time this is 20 13 and he goes to his dad and this is the best part this is the whole reason I only wanted to tell the story just to drop this one line he goes to his dad he’s like Dad do you know any investors I want to start this like bar company his dad literally says you need to shut the [ ] up and go sell some bars if you want to start a bar company he told him you need to show the V up and go sell a thousand bars and so he’s like okay um and so he’s like and he talks about like you know he was in school he was not very good at school and he’s like you know so when I um when I was failing with this business I was comfortable I was used to eating [ __ ] I had been a failure it was not foreign to me I had been a failure already at school so oh okay great I’m bad at that I’m bad at this he’s like I just kept going I didn’t like doubt myself I didn’t like second guess it because I was like so comfortable in that like the the failure mode that every company starts with um his first first business was in high school selling weed by the way um all right let’s see the next one so his next thing was like he’s like I um I thought raising money would solve my problems but actually it was such a blessing that they didn’t raise any money so they sold for 600 million I don’t think they raised any money they bootstrapped the whole way and he’s like it was so good that because we were so forced on the one important thing selling the bars that was the only way to continue the business and so he’s like we would just sell I would email I would call I would give bars out on consignment we would do anything to try just try to sell more bars so in the first nine months they did 600k then the first in the first year they did 2 million year two 6 million uh year three I think they did 36 million wow and year four they did 161 million and then they sold to Kellogg for 600 million at that point wow and then there’s there’s there’s an article that’s amazing there’s an article making fun of the article I referenced it says Michigan company pays guy $600 million but he’s kind of bored now uh this guy is awesome the article was called what happens when you become a millionaire over that second headline that’s amazing uh it was just like a shitty radio a local radio station because I guess David or whoever this guy is he lives in Chicago and so like a local radio station like made fun of him uh it’s pretty funny that’s a good um dude this guy’s awesome we should um we should get him on the Pod right yeah Peter come on the Pod tell the story um all right I gotta run that’s the episode good one