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 [Music] i’m gonna paraphrase but this was asked a ton of times which is how would you start again from zero i hate this question i don’t ever answer this question i’m like that’s an impossible thing to answer because you’re just looking for like a spoon fed thing um and you’re just not going to do whatever we say does i mean if you’re asking that question you’re probably not going to do it okay but still answer it what what answer it the way you want which is maybe you’re not spoon feeding a specific answer but like dude what does a guy like sam do in a day and age like this let’s put it there differently well and i also don’t like this question because the answer is i would do exactly the same thing again sean perry is how’s it going is it working wonderfully it’s working amazing it feels great to be sampar at age 24 or however you old you were when you started this i would do the exact same thing it totally works if you pick the right niche you but here’s the thing is like you care about this topic i cared about my topic which they were related but not the same you don’t mind writing every day i didn’t mind either and so i would do the same thing the only thing that you did differently was that you were already kind of famous and you had this huge twitter following which definitely helped i had a ten thousand person email list from hustlecon so i had a little bit of a base and we’re both doing the exact same thing you get make sure you have content market fit and so which means you see if you can uh create a newsletter every single day which both of us have done you cr find a way to get traffic in my case it was by blogging in your case it’s twitter and then once you realize that that works then you i would buy ads which you are now doing i think and i did do and you scale and you find out what your ltv is and then you just figure out how much you want to spend and then you go and get advertisers you’re already making like a lot of money every month doing this and you’re like great four months in it took me two years to get to where you are well that’s because i saw the blueprint right like i wouldn’t have even known this could even make any like when you first told me you’re like yeah email newsletter um i think you make a bunch of money and then i was like by doing what like email’s free with f what are you talking about this was there wasn’t like sub stack didn’t exist it wasn’t even i didn’t know of any paid newsletter and i didn’t even really real i didn’t even realize there’s like a newsletter advertising industry and if you had told me that i would be like oh cool like might as well have said you’re gonna go sell buttons at a flea market like right it doesn’t seem like that big of an idea and then you’re like yeah you can make and i think you had told me at the time 100 cpm which i don’t think turned out to be true but like no i i think i said 50 maybe but that is true yeah i don’t remember what i said but whatever i said it was ridiculous yeah you never said 100 and then i was like so wait a minute so you’re like a list of ten thousand people and like wait what’s the cpm i was like oh god gotta do math and then i like but like when i ended up at a number i was like so wait if you sent that every day you just make that much money every day and i remember just being like well okay maybe this is actually an awesome idea instead of like you know a kind of shitty idea but that’s only one of the ways that it can make money right which is what you’re seeing you’re seeing that that’s just the tip of the iceberg and you’re only on the tip yeah yeah just the tip as we like to say business do you see how this could scale to 100 million in sales maybe maybe not this is by the way not a q a we’re just giving tips and this is just the tip the justices it’s a short podcast so we can only do just the tip uh million in sales yeah i think you know probably for more than just ads but yeah for for sure yeah and i think so okay one general idea of what you’re saying is basically if you are good at content it is possible to build a large con content audience and then you that that is the door that opens more doors so either you use that to like you know like what i did with my following at first was i launched a fund i was like great investing is a cool way to make money first built an audience and then launched a fund and the audience became my investors i took zero meetings i did zero pitched calls or whatever and raised a multi-million dollar fund from just the audience so that’s like the superpower of an audience so i i think that’s one thing you could do which is already a like potentially an eight-figure thing for you uh at worst maybe seven figures but like that’s like already monetizing you don’t get that today but in the future and the the other thing uh by the way is that uh then by the way the next question is how well how how would you build an audience who started from scratch like that’s a that’s the next that’s next question which you probably is like your second most hated question yeah i hate that okay so that’s it’s like don’t ask a girl her weight or don’t ask samfar what he would do to build audience from scratch if he started just don’t like it because it’s like dude you’re asking me on twitter you see what i do yeah that’s that’s actually my middle lesson okay so can i can i do my rant for a second here yeah um which is kind of a buzz kill for the just the tip episode but let me let me do it anyways most of the people who ask that question i don’t want to answer not because it’s not a good question but because if you’re asking that question that basically means you’re not going to do it you’re not going to do it because the answer is so obvious it’s already out there everybody who’s building an audience is doing it super publicly so all you have to do is be like okay so this guy does it this way and this girl does it that way and this guy does it this way and like then you sort of just bucket it you’re like okay seems like you kind of need to just choose one medium like maybe podcasting or twitter or email they all have different benefits and then like on that medium you need to like maybe pick a topic and that’s your theme you become the the guy who always talks about frameworks or the guy who talks about crypto or the guy who always talks about business ideas or whatever it is and then you can expand once you already have a base exactly and then like you should try to get the you start to make viral content because it’s going to get shared a bunch you can kind of like get sponsors and turn that money into like buying out like it’s so obvious what all of us are doing that if you if you if you don’t know how to do it at this point like you failed the iq test and i don’t mean that to be mean i just mean it like to me you’re not serious about the question um yeah because the answer is already like visible to you and if and i think there’s some like more nuanced questions like which platform would you pick today would you pick email or twitter or whatever like i think there’s different questions that might be slightly better questions um but the generic one is pretty bad and this is how i rant so last night i’m watching tick tock i try open tick tock as i do for my tic-tacs basically like my bedtime story and um and i see this guy on there and he’s like some like sean connery looking guy and he’s like this like kind of like complete gray beard guy and he’s cooking an egg so he’s like the perfect that he cooked the perfect egg let’s do it and he’s like you know he’s like we got eggs we got black salt we have this like you know i know he’s got like what looks like just like a branch with leaves on it and that’s probably something like seasoning he’s like you know we have these things okay cool turn the pan to high heat crack the eggs put the eggs in now we’re gonna like keep it on high you know you have your oil you have it on high and you’re trying to get this crust he’s like how do you know when there’s a crust watch this jiggle it and like so he’s he’s like literally teaching you in like a 30 second format how to cook the perfect eggs and by the end he like takes that out of the pan you’re like dude i just want to try that egg more than anything in my life right now and it had 10 million views had 10 million views and like all the comments are like you know be my dad and like you know i’ll marry you if you cook me these eggs every morning and he like cuts into it the egg yolk starts running and it’s cur like it’s crispy on the bottom and soft on top it’s like just looks amazing right and it got me thinking i was like he made it look so simple i saw the egg crack right so um you know i saw what he did it wasn’t like that complicated he explained every step of what he was doing and there’s like 10 million likes on this video which means like a lot of people have seen this video i thought how many people are going to cook an egg like this so how many people are even going to try to cook an egg like this how many people could actually cook the egg like this after watching it and it’s got me thinking i was like you know when i watch this video of this guy telling me how to do it it seems all simple enough but i know if i walk to my stove right now and i took the two eggs and the salt and the pan with the oil my egg is not going to turn out like that right like i would need a lot of reps to be able to ever cook an egg the way the guy did it and he showed me the exact formula he told me the formula and it got me thinking about business advice i go this is the problem with twitter and even podcasts like this which is that imagine now that i watch that video of that egg and then tomorrow i come on and there’s another video of like this guy cooking eggs and then there’s like the next day there’s another one and like maybe the next day the guys when you’re gonna go make your own damn egg exactly and like after six months i would kind of in my heart i would feel like dude i know how to cook eggs but again if i walked to a stove and i tried to do it i would make a runny mess and it would be horrible and like the problem with twitter and the problem with the people with the way that people use twitter and use podcasts is they get on every day and they just watch other people cook eggs they watch guys like you and me cook eggs like we we don’t listen to them anybody but we record our own right like right we are happy to take your attention well it’s like they uh they’re just masturbating instead of having sex exactly exactly and like but you convince yourself like i could just imagine if i had done this for six months i’d be like dude i know everything there is to know about cooking eggs and that’s that same person who’s on twitter who reads advice from every investor and founder who’s tweeting out their you know three ways to you know three of my the biggest mistakes i made before 30 a thread you know my six hiring mistakes about managers a thread um you know like all these things right like it’s like when i ask my daughter when we play this game i say who’s your best friend she goes the floor that’s how i feel about the thread you know like basically it’s like here just i’m gonna say this arbitrary [ ] and like i can imagine that if you listen to that and read that every day you would think you are learning how to but you have no idea how to cook eggs even after reading all of that in fact you almost are worse off than somebody who just tried to cook eggs for two weeks straight and then maybe in the on the 14th day of cooking their eggs they go on twitter and they see something they’re like oh that’s how i should change the way i’m cracking the egg because like you know how the heat is too high oh that’s it okay let me go back and make an adjustment and so my rant is basically don’t be the dude who just watches the video of cooking eggs like go crack some eggs make a bunch of mistakes and then come back to twitter and podcast like this for your just in time learning to like just give you a tweak on the thing you’re actually doing right right right right i i’m i’m on board i completely agree with everything you said you want to do uh let’s go back to answering some questions yeah from people let us watch us crack some eggs all right you pick one you pick one and then i’ll pick one and so forth okay sounds good uh let’s do this first one so what are the key traits you look for in a co-founder and red flags so that your business is successful and you guys stay happy and i think you’ve had like multiple co-founders i think right ish i was always like the guy and then like i had first people that were more batman robin yeah yeah yeah um and but then with joe spicer for my fund that’s 50 50. uh the and what i’ve learned number one uh they have to be emotionally healthy and very emotionally stable i would consider myself to be mostly stable on the big things but my mood goes up and down and for me to be a good partner with someone they need to be emotionally stable even if i was like really stable it’s really important because i’ve seen a lot of like it’s just like the same way you ever have like a friend that’s got like a husband or a wife and they’re just [ ] crazy and it’s like i don’t know how to advise you here like this person is acting irrational like it’s really challenging it’s like you want to separate them like you stop acting crazy and you stop acting crazy that’s my only advice to both of you guys yeah it’s like dude this is this is just it’s not going to work out and so i married a woman that was like very stable and even keel and i realized oh that’s perfect so what i look for in partners is people who are emotionally stable uh and and i also want a partner that’s incredibly honest and undersells themselves uh i also and if i find out that they lie at all like even on small [ ] it’s game over for me so really high integrity is important um and then finally having really high energy so like who can just like who wants to push the pace and uh basically with my best partners i feel intimidated and inspired by them that’s a great way of putting it and i think it shows like i’m pretty chill sarah is very chill i don’t know joe that well but he seems also very chilly very chill you know very cool your your partners basically and your ventures are like you know resting heart rate under 40. like it’s hard to get a heart rate up and like i think that’s good that’s a good pair for you yeah because i don’t mind being the high energy like i’m typically the one that can be the catalyst and be the igniter right and then a person that wants to be the guider i enjoy right yeah that’s that’s a great one there’s this book that i read called why you will marry the wrong person have you read that by uh tim urban no no he has a it’s the school he’s a blog post called that oh yeah you’re right you’re right school of life so the in it like the very first principles like we marry the wrong person because um you know one of the things that says like we don’t even know how we are crazy everybody’s nuts you just if you but if you don’t recognize how you’re nuts um you’re not gonna know how to pick a partner who could deal with your level your version of crazy and you’re gonna have to deal with their version of crazy and the idea that you’re gonna change them to not be so crazy is like not a thing like everybody’s weird or you just don’t know them well enough so like you got to have your you got to know your weirdness is and then be like cool is this person compatible fundamentally compatible with my my type of weird uh that’s kind of a version of what you just said so what what are yours so i kind of steal from like you know warren buffett said this thing and then i think paraphrase it as well which is like two things you just said energy integrity and intelligence so those those three so break them down um energy is the one i think most people overlook i think everybody wants intelligence they’re like oh yeah i want somebody who’s like really smart or really good right it’s like yeah that’s that’s true you don’t want to you don’t want somebody who’s incompetent it’ll drive you nuts in the long run i’ve had that problem before you don’t want somebody who’s low integrity right because a smart person is low integrity is a crook it’s just a matter of return until they screw you and then the last one is energy and the energy thing i think is the one that everybody overlooks i put it as my number one which is like some people call it vibe some people call it energy i call it mood you know whatever it’s basically does this person bring enthusiasm by default or are they always looking for something like do they need an excuse to be high energy do they need an excuse to be motivated do they need an excuse to be optimistic and enthusiastic about what you’re working on because if they if they do you’re gonna i feel like i’m constantly like a doctor with the shock paddles like all right clear give me you know give me give me 20 amps or whatever and like just trying to like get them to be like yo wake up and i i’ve had this with like business meetings because ben who’s my business partner on all my different businesses ben’s a very low-key guy he’s very low low he comes acro he’s not actually low energy but his speaking style is low energy and so sometimes we’ll be in meetings and i’d just be like guys i just don’t want to ever be in a meeting that feels like this right now like nobody’s fighting but like also nobody’s saying anything like hello wake up like you know do you care are you there do you have ideas or are you just creatively bankrupt and like i just don’t want to be in a room that’s like low energy so can we just shake that up right now and they’re like oh yeah sorry let’s [ ] go like they give me some token thing i’m like it’s fine even a token thing is fine it shows that you understand what matters to me i was going to say the two people i think do actually have good who show that i was both of our ben so ben uh our ben here ben wilson he has good energy and vibe because whenever i’m around him i feel happier and i leave happier right uh and he does a good job of matching and then ben levy is uh whenever same thing whenever i’m around him i feel happier and he also uh gets a lot of energy talking to people which is which i [ ] hate doing so ben levy’s a great partner yeah he’s amazing uh he’s really amazing um okay so that’s kind of what i guess i answered that question um which one do you want to do next okay let’s do this one um what did you tell your friend on twitter so okay question is what it what did you tell your friend on twitter that resulted in his audience’s growth to 100k in just a few hours so he tweeted i helped him write another one today did you see it no no is it pop it off oh yeah right away it got like five or ten it got five or ten thousand likes in the first 30 minutes and it’s already reached five million people okay so explain the thought process how did you alright what advice did you give them that would help them do that people hate this advice but look here it is the guy made a hundred million dollars in the nhl and he spent 20 years being a hockey player and i’m just helping him craft some of the stories that he’s already lived so step one is there’s this massive unfair advantage which is he’s he’s lived in he’s lived an interesting life yeah and i was talking to my friend logan who has this book called how to not die alone and she’s like a dating coach and helps uh men and women find partners and i was talking to her about how i think men should find dates and i’m like you know the best thing about being able to attract a woman is as long as you focus on yourself and live an interesting life and constantly improve yourself that’s what women really care about and that’s really it goes beyond women so with chris it was like well you just live an interesting life are you are you looking at his tweet right now so it says first tweet is when you hear about x player making 30 million over five years six million dollars a year you think wow he made it however that’s not always the reality in this field i’m going to break down how much they take home and where the rest of it goes i’m curious tell me more yeah what’s the result so far uh so it has 10 000 likes it was posted five hours ago wow so um so with chris what i do is i basically uh talk to him on the phone and he’s like hey i’ve got this idea where i want to talk about like finances and he’ll like he’ll have a conversation with me for 20 minutes and i’ll say he’ll say yeah you know it’s crazy about escrow and i’m like wait hold on what the hell is escrow he goes yeah so like basically when you get paid 30 goes into escrow and i was like oh so when you get that money back he was you actually never get that money back that money is used to afford the lead the league and i’m like oh that’s interesting because yeah it’s no big deal so anyway and then like i’ll keep talking i’m like no no no no that’s the thing that’s the thing and so when what you have to do is you have to find the big idea and you have to do this thing called the it’s called like the knowledge complex but basically if you wanted to get good at twitter you’ve got to a live an interesting life and b understand that the interesting and unique experiences in your life it’s really not well known to a bunch of people and you have to realize that like what seems boring to you isn’t boring to most other people and so you’ve got to figure out how to tweet that and if you don’t live an interesting life go and live an interesting one or go and learn about a topic and just tweet everything you’re learning exactly exactly i think you said it perfectly i’ll only add one part to that which is uh in in my power writing course i teach this uh exercise and um basically i use this i explained the exact same way you said i said you have two choices like fundamentally you can either be a generous expert meaning you know something so well you could just be sharing it with an audience or a curious novice curious beginner so it’s like you just say yo i don’t know anything about this but i’m curious i’m going to dig in and find out if you want to learn what i learned you know going from zero to understanding you know defy uh just follow this threat a bunch of people like great i’m also a dummy if you’re gonna do a bunch of work for this i would love to hear what what your takeaways are at the end and so people vastly underestimate the curious beginner path which almost is a better path really um because they think you have to be a generous expert you think they think you have to have played in the nhl made a hundred million dollars in order to share this type of info um there’s other formats like you know meme king um yeah spicy analyst like i have all these like names for these like different different like lanes you can go down for content to win but like those are those are two of them let’s say the other thing i say is there’s exercise because most people like well you know i haven’t made 100 million so what do i talk about and so there’s this exercise from the book story worthy that i stole called first last best worst have you ever done this yeah you well you did it with me it was great oh okay cool so we’ve done it before but like basically let’s just play it again for people who don’t don’t know it but like and we can pick maybe even a different topic so you take any category of your life so it could be relationships it could be colleges like um it could be hustles yeah this could be jobs so let’s take jobs so what would be sam parker’s first job janitor at a bakery okay great didn’t know that um what was your uh worst job i uh staining decks in the summer in st louis you’re totally miserable doing okay great then uh what was your um what was your best job being a podcast host and then what was your um like let like say we usually say last job but it means like most recent job so like in that case i was ceo of a media company that was making tens of millions of dollars great and and oh also weirdest what’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had what’s the weird it doesn’t have to be a job what’s the weirdest way you’ve ever made money i was a skateboard instructor at the ymca that’s a good one or the hot dog stand i think it’s a great one also for them all right a hot dog stand yeah um so so you take that and you say all right and everybody has some version of this everybody has an answer to these questions then then you say all right within that what’s the story people don’t know about staining decks or what some people think people don’t realize about about those hot dog stands you see and then they’re like well you know they don’t and you’re so it’s kind of like you said the knowledge complex whatever it’s like you’re so in the weeds you don’t remember what it’s like to not know so you kind of got to talk to somebody about it just say it all out and you see when they raise their eyebrows or when they get curious it’s like that’s your hook you need to know like you know how much those hot dogs really cost or like where the heck do they go when the game is over right like you know okay now i want to know like you know yeah i have always wanted that so oh wow you put it in this area whatever um and so so i think that’s what you want to do to come up with great content ideas you don’t have to be chris pronger and nhl star who made 100 million dollars i bet you could have done maybe not as successful maybe not like you know 100 000 followers and like one tweet or whatever you did for that guy but like i bet if you worked for three months with somebody who’s a completely normal person like you know project manager at deloitte i bet you could get them to 30 or 40 000 followers on twitter within a month and if you look at well look at so you didn’t have a following on twitter like three years ago you started right two years ago yeah two years ago now you’ve got over two hundred thousand trunk fam the guy who worked for me for a long time when we when he started working at my company i think we helped or he signed up for twitter now he’s got what three or four or 500 or something yeah 500 000 and then there’s like loads of employees at my company that have done it like it’s very easy to do yeah exactly all right let’s do a different one um what would you say to a lawyer with a very i’m a lawyer with a very good salary what would you say would be a great answer to motivate me to leave my cushy but soul-sucking job and jump into entrepreneurship if my boss asks i’m asking for a friend i would say don’t jump into entrepreneurship and get happy with your job if you’re someone that needs another person to give you motivation to bail you’re you shouldn’t bail you’re only doing it because you think that people think that it’s cool because people they admire do it i would say don’t do it i don’t think that you’re the personality type that this that will be happy doing this if you need someone to motivate you yeah exactly uh and by the way there’s a trick there which is if that pisses you off it makes you want to do it cool you are an entrepreneur go ahead you know you may pass go you may collect your 200 if not like if that answer feels so wrong for you it doesn’t sit well with you and it annoys you that sam even said it and you get this like random chip on your shoulder for no reason like yeah you kind of are that’s that actually did get you going on the right path and also if you’re if you’re a lawyer i do think that the hours lawyer works lawyers work are ridiculous but you could make a lot of money and i bet there’s a world where you could do like a nine to five legal business or be a lawyer and have a really good life so like why bail if you if you’re not compelled to do it enough that you’re just gonna do it maybe don’t just don’t bail be happy yeah for sure uh all right pick another one um would you would you consider buying an existing business and growing it or would you only want to start things from scratch frankly i don’t know why i haven’t done that like it’s pretty clear to me now that that is a better path for entrepreneurship unless you really just have the killer idea um but for some reason i haven’t done it yet i just keep starting new things from scratch i think there’s some fun in that and it’s not really the logical decision it’s more of the emotional decision but i for sure would and in fact think i should be doing that because i know how to run a good business i know how to grow businesses and taking something that’s already doing 5 10 15 million dollars a year and getting it to 50 would be a lot easier for me than getting something from zero to 50 and um so why not yeah i said makes sense i just don’t get i don’t maybe i’ll do it one day i i i know people talk about this all the time i agree that it is actually easier and i agree that the likelihood is better and your life would in most cases be better i can’t i just don’t give a [ ] about something that someone else made i i enjoy starting it i i think that to me building a business is like my art and i i like doing it from the ground level and what about okay i got a question for you from uh from twitter here so john williams asks how hard should i should you be willing to work to create a successful business is it an 80 hour a week job is expecting to only work 40 hours a week unrealistic and by the way his tagline is john williams [ ] work let’s play um i think we know what even what he’s trying to do here um so let me just say this when i started my company the first two or three years i was working constantly all the time and people would be like what do you mean like you’re in the office you’re thinking about it obviously i would get to the office at 8 or 9 a.m and i would go home at 7 or 8 pm um and i i would dick around at the office and hang out my employees but i it was really important to me that i was the first to arrive and last to leave and i didn’t i didn’t expect i would work sunday evening but not saturday so that’s like this let’s take that you know as as uh literally what you said so let’s say 12 hours a day five days a week that’s 60 hours a week plus maybe a couple hours of the weekend so maybe 64 hours or something like that in a week yeah but i couldn’t sustain that so i only did that for like the first two years and to get to like profitability and hiring people and then i was able to to where it was like some weeks it was 80 other weeks it was pretty chill it was 40. um and uh so i was able to relax a little bit more um one time i took a month off so i was able to like but that was we were making like eight million dollars that year so um i was able to chill a little bit um if i had to start something again i would expect that i would work 40 or 50 hours a week getting it going but here’s the thing whenever even now even though i’m not like actively involved in building a business i i think about this type of stuff 24 hours a day people ask us sean if we prepare all the time and i’m like yeah kinda but also not kinda but like we’re like everything we read it’s like we’re relating it back to this trade of i don’t know what you call this thing improving ourselves and sometimes making money by doing it yeah yeah it’s like what’s that um i want to keep referencing this like douchey uh this story that makes me sound like a douche it’s like picasso’s at a restaurant and somebody comes up and they’re like will you make a piece of art for me and he grabs a napkin and he scribbles on it and he’s like you know that’ll be 30 000 or whatever she’s like but you just you just made that in two seconds and he’s like no this this ma’am like you know this took me 20 years or whatever to make this scribble um and that’s how i feel about the podcast like there are days where i will show up and it’s like wait are you you know what are you guys talking about like right before the pod i’ll be like hey i’m gonna go record my wife what are you guys going to talk about today i was like i have no idea and it’s not that i have no idea i have a long list of things that throughout the week i’m writing down here because i’m doing calls with all these interesting people that i’m researching this thing and if i’m watching a documentary i’m taking notes it’s like i’m doing things that the average person doesn’t do in order to generate a bunch of ideas so that when i show up it can just be natural i can just speak naturally about interesting topics because i’ve already put in the whole week of trying to learn interesting things and have interesting conversations and all that stuff so um and i would say like if if you know a lot of this these questions are like career advice listen if you can find a way to do that in your career you’ve won which is basically there’s no separation there’s no separation between the things you’re most interested in and liking to do and spending your nights kind of like learning about or experimenting with like find a way for money to be the byproduct like the exhaust coming out the chimney of that factory of interestingness and like that’s it i have heard that before yeah that’s pretty good right that was that was that was that was great that’s really good yeah and so i’m a little in awe of that oh hell yeah all right great put it on a t-shirt um i had heard things like that before but again it was just crack and egg watching other people crack eggs advice finally when i did it it’s like this is the way this is for sure the way which just go for the most interesting things and then learn core business skills so that you can turn you just doing what’s most interesting to you on a daily basis into a profitable money making event like venture and then you basically are funding yourself to live exactly the life you want and how long were you working when you uh at bibo six seven years something like that but uh sorry i meant early on how many hours oh i was i would work a lot but it was more like i don’t necessarily know if that was productive like i was at the office every day from let’s call i would get there like 9 9 30 usually and then i would leave either like 8 p.m or i would sleep there because there was like an apartment built into the office and i was a single guy i didn’t mat like who cares if i go home to my apartment or i sleep in this apartment like sleeping here saves me time and i could just keep you know working on stuff and basically what i would do the way i thought about my day was like i had decided when i took the job i go i’m going to work here instead of starting my own company i’m going to work here i’m going to pack like 20 years of experience into the next four years that was my goal right and then i said okay well how am i going to do that i said all right well my day job needs to give me reps working on startups and like trying to build them and grow them because that’s the thing i like to do and then basically as soon as like everyone would leave the office around five i would walk out i would go get like like you know westfield mall was like right there i’d walk to western mall walk to the food court that’s why i gained a bunch of weight i’d walk to the food court i’d be like tired super hungry i’d go eat some shitty food in the food court i’d come back to the office and then i would like like i’d have my night job and my night job was basically like what are the most interesting companies who are the most interesting people how do i like learn about what they’re doing how do i meet them how do i invite them over for a beer right now at the office or dinner right now at my office and like pick their brain on what they’re doing and basically i would build my network and i’d build my knowledge at night or i would like build my skills so i’d like teach myself sql overnight i’m like okay i’m tired of asking the developers to run queries for me i’m gonna learn how to write my own queries and like you know so i would like spend two weeks just trying to learn secrets and then i would spend two weeks really like studying up on like you know how mlms grow and like just like i just picked these like intensives and i would just go down them so now i kind of have a whole bunch of obscure knowledge but because i like dedicated a period of my life to really only learning about those things i didn’t didn’t do other stuff but it’s okay i was like you know happy as a clam just to do those things that’s badass i think that’s a really good answer um all right let me pick one what are your biggest regrets what past time do you sorry all right what are your biggest regrets in business and life what past time in your life do you miss most what future time do you most look forward to so i’ll answer really quick my biggest regret i wish i would have taken my work my school my sports more seriously as a young person so like in grade school high school and college i kind of dismissed it i wish i would have like taken it why yeah because i think that like i well when you’re in high school and college like there’s a time where all you have to do is acquire skills and like get good at stuff and i like would just i didn’t like eat well uh i didn’t like sleep as much as i should have for when it was as relates to sports i didn’t train as hard as i could have trained and that’s just like a period of time when you’re young from like the ages of 12 to like 20 or 22 if you’re a college athlete which i was for a little while where it’s like you can just get good at a sport also with school i kind of [ ] off in high school and i actually regret that i wish i would have like took the time to learn you know i’m getting paid to read books now or i’m i’m sorry i have all my free times to read books now i read my free time so i wish i would have taken my my schooling and my um athletics a lot more seriously because that’s like the only time you have to do that and uh i i’m most looking forward to having children nice all right uh it’s great it’s a great answer what’s your favorite isn’t this question really hard to answer like a regret question like i feel stuck when i try to answer this question well what do you think about all the time and you’re like man i wish i would have had i wish i would have behaved differently during that period of my life so i kind of let me break it up into two different groups there’s like knowing what i know now oh wow like i could have done so much better maybe made more of the opportunity whether that’s like you know paid my parents basically paid a bunch of money for me to go to duke it’s like an expensive ass school and it’s got like tons of like you know opportunity i think there was like this thing that came out which was like in the in one in like 2007 on on duke’s campus there was founders of like i think seven or eight like billion dollar companies um so like i was there um i didn’t know any of these people i didn’t even think about entrepreneurship i didn’t think about like meeting i didn’t even think about like wow i’m on this campus with a bunch of really awesome people like i should go not just try to make friends and party but like who are the people who are actually working like trying to do something interesting you know who are those people who okay i’m just like focused on my classes and passing them but like why don’t i actually focus on figuring out what classes are interesting to me right there’s a whole bunch of ways i would do college differently if i had like had the wisdom i have today it’s not really like a regret though like when i hear the word regret i think about like that word you said behavior where did i where do i feel like i kind of let myself down in my behavior and the only things that come to mind are like any time that i’ve been like lower integrity so like either lying to somebody exaggerating to somebody um kind of making a selfish move or like i got some benefit and other people didn’t really get a benefit there’s not like a big one that comes to mind but there’s like really small ones that come to mind i think those are my only regrets like uh the ones that you don’t sleep well and you’re not proud of like a simple test i do is like if everybody knew about this move i was making would i would that be a thing i’m excited about like if i could magically get distribution and everybody knew this about me would this be something i’d be proud of or embarrassed of um or neutral and it’s like basically anything that’s in neutral i’m like why don’t i just do it more interestingly you know like let me just take the comment and make it more uncommon like that would be all that and so that’s helped me a lot and the things that i’m embarrassed of it’s like that’s just a sign i shouldn’t be doing this and i need to like bite the bullet and like reverse course on this and like i think before i used to definitely be like an exaggerator white liar like kind of like not like nothing that harmed people but like definitely things that like benefited me and like over time i’ve like tried to stamp those out um so i would say like just little stupid things like that would be the only things that i actually regret whereas everything else it’s like i don’t know like yeah i was dumb i didn’t know things at that time and whatever you know who cares i learned them by doing the thing the wrong way i learned the right way there was one time when i was 18 and like uh a limo or i was like in a shuttle from the hotel to like on a college visit or something like that and the man driving the bus was the little you know it’s like a van when you’re at the marriott and they take you around and he was like all right you’re at your stop and i you’re supposed to tip him sometimes and i tipped him five dollars he goes oh no it’s okay and i said oh no you need this and i meant to say like you earned it or something and i said you need this and that’s one of those things that i look back and i’m like i cannot believe that was so condescending of me i cannot believe that’s something i think about all the time i’m like i can’t believe i said that i cannot believe that’s that’s one of my big regrets dude i have like 10 of those have i told the orlando bloom story on here no people make fun of me because i tell the story so often if i haven’t told her i’m gonna tell you now okay here’s one of my biggest regrets so uh i’m in london i’m 21 years old maybe and my buddy comes to visit uh for college and so i i was living in london at the time my parents up there and like so i’m like okay let’s go out now i hadn’t really gone out in london so i didn’t kind of know where to go i didn’t know the protocols the etiquettes i just been kind of hanging out with my parents at their house i wasn’t drinking i didn’t have a big tolerance at this time uh you know like i basically hadn’t still don’t yeah still don’t didn’t have big towers back then still don’t have it my buddy comes to visit and i’m like all right i want to be cool with with his buddy uh shout out to my buddy goops if he’s listening he he’ll know this is him so we go out and london i’m trying to act cool because i’m like he thinks i live in the center of london he thinks i still kind of like go out like i did in college he doesn’t know i’ve just been in my mom’s apartment you know like doing nothing for like three months you know just like i don’t know watching reruns of lost and so uh so i’m like oh let’s go over here let’s go over here i’m like oh this place is popping because i see a place just with a line outside i’m like this is the place we’re going here he’s like you sure we can just go to this bar i’m like no no we’re going over here so we go to this place lying outside and he’s like i don’t think this is like a bar club it turns out it’s a theater and i’m like oh [ ] but i’m like kind of pot committed to my like plan of like no no this place is the the best i’ve now picked a theater like a place but the plane just ended people were waiting outside i’m like and there’s this group of girls they were all visiting for the university of georgia and uh duke university has like uh kind of notoriously like um not the hottest college girls and so these girls to me were like a 14 out of 10. and so um and and they probably didn’t have the hottest guys either yeah right like i was a strong seven at duke i’m a three-year-old private school seven public school three and so you know i’m a state school of three so so basically um i’m like okay i’m trying to still trying to recover from groups being like why are you telling me to go to this theater and i’m like because i want to talk to these girls and so now i’m like trying to act cool for these girls which was i was already failing and acting cool in front of my dude brown friend now i’m trying to focus for this girl so i’m like you’re like the tinder swindler man of your friend group so i’m like what are we doing here what are we waiting for and they’re like oh the other you know the play just ended and orlando bloom did a drop in at the show and so he’s coming out and like we’re all just waiting for his autograph face to take a picture of him and i’m like in my head i’m like like you okay do you know who orlando bloom is if i say that do you know the who who that is because you have a picture in your head i know exactly who he is okay i didn’t so i’m like i’ve heard the name but i’m like i have no idea who this guy is or why he’s famous but like clearly he’s famous as a crowd here waiting for him and so we’re waiting 20 minutes and i’m just chopping it up with these girls and so what year was this this would have been uh i don’t know 13 14 years ago so like dude so orlando was like peak orlando bloom like exactly he’s just done pirates of the caribbean i didn’t i didn’t know how to connect it and i couldn’t ask because i’d already again told troops we got to go here told these girls i’m waiting for orlando bloom they don’t know that i don’t know who he is but anyways we’re just kind of shooting the [ ] because i have this captive audience these girls can’t leave they’re waiting for orlando bloom so they gotta talk to me basically at this point so we’re having fun we’re flirting with these girls things are going well now so my night has turned around but problem is people are coming out from the plane i don’t know who orlando bloom is so i’m just sort of waiting to see where the reaction comes from i’m expecting like i don’t know brad pitt and his prime i’m expecting like you know bruce willis i’m expecting just like some like just some hunk to come out because like clearly all these women are waiting for him lando is pretty pretty hunky man he’s pretty good person he’s a lot more like um petite petite exactly the word i’m looking for so this guy walks out and he’s just this kind of small guy and he’s got this wispy body in this wispy mustache and i’m like this is the [ __ ] guy and so like i’m just sort of like i’m a little bit drunk i’m pretty drunk at this point i’m just like oh my god so he’s facing these exciting autographs for the other people he’s about to get into this car this limo and like there wasn’t a lot of space you know like the distance between me and my kind of like like you know this window in front of me is two feet away that’s how far he was away and he’s just not turning around to like sign our autographs or whatever i don’t want his autograph but somebody just tap him on the shoulder orlando orlando and like i’m screaming his name and so i said it like kind of like medium and then he doesn’t turn and so then i’m just drunk so i’m like i’m just going to say this loud as i can so i’m yelling and americans are already like 40 louder than europeans and now i’m trying to be loud and so he’s he’s not american right now but so he probably doesn’t like that either nobody liked it nobody liked it trust me like these girls who i was shocked they were like oh my god this is so off-putting why is this man so loud right now and so um it sounds like i’m just screaming and i am screaming he turns around and i just go orlando and he turns i go and i’d see his face for the first time i’ve only seen a petite body from behind which is basically a woman’s body so he turns around and they see his mustache i go what’s with the stash i thought it was from the play i thought he had left it on because it looks so ridiculous and so he’s like he just sort of rolls his eyes and the girls are like you’re the most uncool dude on the planet now you’ve annoyed and he just like he starts walking into he just he just sort of aborts and the girls are pissed because he didn’t like acknowledge them now either the whole section got blacklisted so he gets in the car trust me that’s not the worst of it he gets on the car this is where the story ends in the in the the final crescendo and i’m like and something comes over me i’m like you know i’m like a entrepreneur i’m action oriented i’m a go-getter so i decided to be a go-getter with orlando bloom and i go to the car and there’s no security because again nobody expects a buffoon to just like open up the car door so i i reach through the window he’s waving bye to the fans through the through the back seat i reach through the passenger front seat into the back seat while he’s waving and my hand just wraps around his um like i was going for like a high five but i’m he’s waving so it’s a moving target i only catch his thumb have you ever had another man’s thumb inside your full hand yes one of the most uncomfortable feelings yeah i immediately sober up he looks at me like yo bro like why are you like why are you grabbing my phone and i’m just like i was like dude i’m so sorry and i just i let it go and i let go of the whole night and i basically it’s the most embarrassing thing that i’ve done um you know since then it’s never done never topped that moment so that’s my biggest regret oh my god that’s awesome grabbing orlando bloom’s thumb as he drove away after making fun of his mustache if orlando if you if you’re listening to this if if your cousin is listening to send this to orlando let him know that guy you know he was just he was just trying to impress his friend you know he was just trying to be i don’t know what he was trying to do but it was an accident i didn’t know we know you’re trying to do you’re doing it for the tail whatever everyone’s been there he would empathize with that um do i don’t think we should do any more i think we have to end on that that was awesome that was the best story i’ve heard in a long time [Laughter] all right fantastic good uh good q a just the tips uh from your boys just the tips all right we’re out of you