My First Million: Controversial Business Lessons From Napoleon, Edison & Hitler

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now.

HubSpot just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell.

And they break down why these pitches were winners or losers.

And each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

Basically all the things you want to know about how to survive the tank and scale your

company on your own.

If you want to give it a listen, you can find another bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

Do you feel weird learning lessons from the life of Hitler?

Well, I'm not necessarily learning a lesson that I want to emulate, but that said, I do

think you can learn good lessons from bad people.

Like that's you definitely can learn a good lesson from a bad person.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to.

I put my all in it like the days off on a road, let's travel never looking back.

Hey, my first million fans, this is producer Ben.

I'm subbing in this week because Sean is out with some family stuff.

But for one question Friday today, Sam and I sat down to discuss how to take over the

worlds and things that I have learned from studying lives of great achievers and conquerors

throughout history.

And Sam and I just got to talking about history and great people in our own lives and what

we've learned from them.

So it's a little bit of a more random and less focused one question Friday, but I think

there's some really good stuff in it that I think you'll really like.

So enjoy.

So I asked you traits of conquerors.

And the reason I'm thinking about that is I just finished this like epic book.

It's like 1400 pages long.

It's called The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Have you heard of that?

Yeah.

It's kind of one of the seminal texts on Hitler and Nazism.

Yes.

And it's crazy.

And I was reading it and I was like, this is nuts that the reason I read it was I wanted

to figure out why would a country, you know, be so complicit with such bad things.

And I was like, what on earth was about this Hitler dude that like convinced all these

people to do all these these bad things.

And so I learned and it was wild.

And I started and basically it all kind of came down to like he was in prison one time

because he like tried to like basically was a glorified protester.

Like I do he kind of like stormed the it was like storming the capital kind of like type

of thing.

And he was arrested for it.

And in prison, he wrote his book called Mein Kampf.

And in the book, he wrote like I've recently discovered that it is my obligation to lead

the German people to greatness.

And he like dedicated his life to that.

And it was wild that there was like a decision to be made.

And like it was almost perfect execution.

I mean, you know, it wasn't in the end because he didn't achieve his whatever he was trying

to achieve.

But like he got so freaking far so past what like what I ever would have thought.

And at the time when Nazis came to power right before they came to power, they were the freaks

of Germany.

Like at the time they were like they had a lot of homosexuals in there in the crew,

which was like not looked on nicely, you know, at that time, they had like a bunch of artists,

a bunch of like oddballs, people who are like had a lot of anti social behavior, like they

dressed funny.

Like people are like, these guys are a joke.

No one's gonna take these idiots seriously.

And it changed quickly.

And so anyway, I thought that was fascinating about conquerors and like these types of people

and like how on earth they came to be.

And so I wanted to ask you, like, what are some common traits amongst those?

Do you feel weird learning lessons from the life of Hitler?

No, because I, well, I'm not necessarily learning a lesson that I want to emulate.

Like, but that said, I do think you can learn good lessons from bad people.

Like that's you definitely can learn a good lesson from a bad person.

There's no doubt about that.

And like, I mean, everyone's bad in someone's eyes, but like I can read about Napoleon and

learn about like war and strategy and apply that to like business.

So I can, I can always learn good lessons from bad people, but I just wanted to learn

like, why did we do this?

Why did so many people go along with this crap?

So here's the thing.

Here's a lesson I learned from Sean, Mr. Beast and Hitler.

Okay.

There's your headline.

Oh my God.

So here's the, this was so fascinating to me.

So we're, we're do this camp MFM thing and we're at Cameron indoor stadium and they decide

to do a half court shootoff between Sean and Mr. Beast for $10,000, right?

And Sean, which basically Mr. Beast goes, Sean, if you make a shot at half court, I'll

give you $10,000.

And Sean goes, will you give me 10 grand in Bitcoin?

He goes, sure, let's do it.

So yeah, I think in the end told him that he'd give him 10 grand actually in pennies.

I don't know if he ended up doing that or not, but so they're going to go start shooting

at half court and Sean turns to the camera and does his cheesiest, like he's joking around

Mr. Beast impression.

And he goes, I'm about to shoot from half court with Mr. Beast and whichever one of us makes

it first is going to make $10,000, right?

Totally hamming it up, kind of poking fun at himself, right?

The funny thing is when we post the video, it actually popped off and went viral on TikTok.

His little really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That was one of our videos that is, I think in the millions of views, if not, it's in

the hundreds of thousands of views on Reels and on TikTok.

And what clicked in my mind when I saw that is, oh, like it's actually not that hard to

figure out what you're supposed to do to be successful in this kind of stuff.

Just very few people are willing to commit to the bit fully, right?

Like Mr. Beast fully commits to the bit, like he actually does that every time he looks

at the camera.

He wants to give $100,000 away to these people if they eat a cockroach or whatever he says,

right?

And he fully commits to it.

And Hitler is the same thing.

Like you go and you watch those speeches and he's ridiculous, right?

He's gesticulating, he's yelling, he's screaming, but he like fully committed to being Hitler,

to like representing, you know, German greatness and the Aryan race or whatever.

But like he didn't care.

Everyone thought he looked ridiculous outside of Germany, right?

Like tons of people mocked and made fun of Hitler.

He was very mockable, very easy to make fun of.

And you can easily make fun of Mr. Beast and the thing he does.

Sorry, Mr. Beast, for comparing you to Hitler.

But like that idea of just like throw away your shame and embarrassment, whatever you're

trying to do, just fully commit to the bit and you're going to be really successful.

I think that's very true.

Dude.

And I want to talk about like other people and what they had in common, but I was like

emotional reading this thing.

So basically Joseph Goebbels.

Is it Goebbels?

Goebbels.

He was like head of propaganda and this guy, like if you Google him, he looks like the

most evil person on earth and he was a horrible guy and he wrote in a journal throughout this

whole process.

Like he was journaling like crazy.

And so his book cited his journal and they tell the story of basically Hitler has just

killed himself and Joseph Goebbels and his wife have, I think five or six kids and they

write in their diary and tell people they're like, well, we're going to go and kill our

kids right now.

We're going to kill ourselves because us and our children belong to the Fuhr to the

Third Reich.

And if the Third Reich won't exist, we do not deserve to exist either.

And I like, I was like, that's just like the worst crime.

I mean, I don't know about the worst because they did so many horrible things, but I mean,

they just went and killed their, their children, six of them all below 12 years old.

And I was like, this is the power that charisma or whatever it was had over people that like

they went and committed, I mean, they killed five or six million people that it was horrible.

But like that act is even more intimate in some regards.

And I remember reading that I'm like, holy crap, I cannot believe that this person, this

evil guy got all these people to do this crazy shit.

It was that was one of the more emotional periods of that book.

Yeah, that's tough.

That's tough.

Okay.

Let's talk a little bit like kind of military strategy and good strategy.

Like let's, let's pivot from the darkness a little bit.

So common attributes of great conquerors.

So one of the things that I think is interesting, have you heard of Blitzkrieg?

It basically is a, it's a German thing where it says like, when they attacked, they, they

kind of go all out for short periods, right?

Like the opposite of what World War I was, wasn't it?

Yes.

So it means lightning attacks or lightning strikes.

And the idea is it's these short, quick, like attacks before, you know, you shock the enemy

and, and go, go faster than they expect.

What's interesting to me is that Blitzkrieg is, was sort of a marketing stunt.

It wasn't anything that the Nazis talked about internally.

It's really something of like an American invention to explain German success.

What the Germans actually talked about was this word, Schwerpunkt.

It essentially means gravity.

And so it wasn't just that the attacks were fast, although they were, but it was actually

like massed strikes.

So they attacked fast, yes, but they were able to sustain that attack and follow up on it

for a long time, which is actually the same thing that Napoleon did.

So in the Napoleonic Wars, before he came along, people were stretching out their troops

further and further to try and flank their enemies.

And then he's like, well, if everyone's going to do that, I'm actually just going to pack

all my troops in the middle and then like punch a hole in the middle of their lines.

And I think like to go back to the Amazon example, like I think that has big applications

in business as well.

Why haven't you heard the phrase Blitzkale?

There you go.

That's Reid Hoffman, right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not just going fast, although fast is important, but it's that like focusing tons

of resources on a small focal point.

So like to go back to the Amazon example, it's starting with bookstores, right?

Starting with just books.

Like I'm going to take tons of resources and just focus on this tiny place and then follow

up on that victory.

I'm going to win books first and then I'm going to follow up on that with other marginal

victories.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that was interesting to me that like that is what all of them did.

That's what Napoleon did.

That's what Hitler did.

That's what Caesar did.

Is this like taking tons of resources and focusing them on a very small point and taking

lots of gravity and to kind of narrowing the focus.

So that was one interesting takeaway for me.

What else did they have that did a lot of like conquerors, which I don't even know how

we would define a conqueror, but there's like the stereotypes of like a Napoleon.

I don't know like what would a good American leader example of this would be, but like

whoever we describe it as, what else do they have in common or even the business people

like Edison or something?

Yeah.

I mean, so for me, the number one, you know, you mentioned Edison and the one I think I

think of is total obsession, right?

With Edison, the big thing that clicked for me was he was inventing so much that he was

basically not eating.

He's super skinny, super gaunt.

He wasn't washing his clothes.

He smelled bad.

He was barely sleeping.

He would like invent and tinker until he fell asleep at his workbench and then he like

wake up in the morning and like start inventing again.

His family was worried about him and I was like, oh man, like substitute inventing for

meth or heroin and it'd be very clear that this guy was an addict, that he was a junkie.

And I, that's when it clicked for me.

Oh, all of these people who are super successful have addictive personalities.

It just so happens that they're addicted to something that is considered positive.

Was he born that way?

You think?

Realize people?

Are they born this way?

I think so.

And if you look at the numbers, people who achieve a lot, CEOs, you think that like they

don't have problems of substance abuse, right?

Because these are highly functioning people, but it actually turns out that they have higher

rates of addiction and substance abuse than the general population when they study it.

And so I think they are born with this propensity to addiction.

And they're the kinds of people that like they could end up, you know, conquering a

vast European empire, or they get hooked on law to them when they're like a teenager

and end up a junkie on the streets, right?

Like they're going to end up addicted to something.

Let's just hope it's something positive.

Dude, have you read, have you ever heard of this book called the first rate madness?

I think it's called?

No.

So this author has this premise where he was like, in times of like stability, a non-mental

ill, mentally ill leader is needed.

But in times of turmoil, which includes like the American civil war or includes like someone

who's like trying to dominate and conquer, or it includes like MLK, you know, trying

to like during the civil rights movement is like a non or sorry, a mentally ill leader

during those periods is actually ideal and they tend to be better.

And the author explains like, well, first let's define mentally ill and it's like a

propensity to like be addicted to drugs and alcohol or like huge bouts of depression.

Or in Lincoln's case, he actually tried to kill himself like two or three times before

he became president.

Churchill Churchill was like, I've thought about killing myself a ton, but I'm just too

big of a sissy in order to do it.

And so he was an alcoholic.

And so like they basically just talk about how the great, great leaders during troubled

periods, majority of them have mental illness.

Yeah.

And this is something again, to go back to Mr. Beast that I actually don't know if I,

I'll just say this and we'll see if I should cut it or not.

But I was talking with him and he was like, yeah, I can't really gamble because I'm kind

of a gambling addict.

And he talked about like, I don't know what to say to the name of the game, highly addicting

crypto gambling site that he would be wagering like tens of thousands of dollars on.

Yeah, man.

I, well, that's no secret though, like people who are, who get there, they are, and that's

what I realized is that for, for him, YouTube is another form of gambling, right?

Because like you put out the video and who knows how it's going to do.

And then you get that dopamine hit of like, oh, this got 50 million views.

Like it's very similar, that variability, the way that the algorithm can pick it up,

make anything go viral.

It's just, it's just his gambling addiction put into something positive, right?

And so I think that's very much exactly what you're saying that for a lot of these people

in normal circumstances, they can't just chill and be happy and be normal.

They have to be like running at such a high level, they have to be running at a 10 at

all times.

And that's good in extreme circumstances, but not in normal circumstances.

I remember at like 11 p.m. at night, someone mentioned basketball and how excited he was

to play basketball.

And Jimmy, he goes, let's just go right now.

And we were like, what, dude, it's like 11 o'clock, no one, he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah,

let's figure it out.

And as he said that, his assistants were calling high school gyms trying to wake up like the

principals and being like, Hey, I'll give you five grand if we can come play basketball

right now.

And I was like, what, no, dude, I don't want to do that.

It sounds like hell.

But, but he was serious.

He wanted to go do it.

Yeah.

It was crazy.

Who, who have you met besides him that you'd put in that category of these like obsessed,

like almost conqueror types, whatever, whatever we're calling this, this personality type,

who have you met that kind of has that gene other than him?

You, I think you kind of have a screw loose in that way, like look at the way you approach

fitness.

Like you have trouble dipping your toes into things.

Yeah, that's for sure.

And you've talked about your, you have an addictive personality as well.

I do.

But yeah, I think I definitely am crazy.

I think though that I don't have the drive.

Like I am a little bit more self-aware where I'm like, no, I don't want to do that.

That sounds too hard.

But yeah, I'm definitely crazy in that obsession regard.

Yeah.

Do you know who Tucker Max is?

Yeah.

So Tucker Max is this author.

He's my friend.

I haven't talked to him in a while, but I used to be buddies with him and he's an author.

He wrote a, I hope they serve beer and hell.

Now he has a company.

And lately he's taking kind of like a fairly right turn or I don't know what you wanted

to call it where he like writes these articles predicting that the world's going to end.

And I don't agree with anything that he says about that type of thing.

I mean, I agree that like, okay, cool, prepare and be like self-sufficient, but I don't think

the world's going to end.

And I disagree with so many of his point of views, but whenever I hang out with him and

I hear him talk in my head, I'm like, I think you are wrong.

I think you're wrong.

I think you're wrong.

And yet I find myself by like, like fighting myself from buying into what you are saying,

even though logically I'm like, no, that's, I don't believe that that's true for these

following reasons.

But when I get around them, I'm like, dude, you like are so confident.

You are such a good storyteller.

You have such strong energy driving you into one direction.

It's sucking me in.

And so I would find myself having to like pinch myself to him and like, dude, you gotta snap

out of it.

And Tucker Max has that hardcore.

And if you read his writing, even it comes through on his writing, you'll read something

and you'll say, oh, this guy's totally right.

And then I've got to go and like read something that's the opposite, like, oh, well, there

are counterpoints.

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Yeah.

Yeah.

I, so I just thought of one that's a little like, I guess off the wall, his name is Dallon

H. Oaks.

He was on Circuit Court of Appeal, he was one of the highest judges in the United States,

was on the shortlist to be on the Supreme Court for Reagan, but then didn't become a

Supreme Court justice, ended up becoming an apostle for the Church of Jesus Christ,

the Lord of the Saints, is now the number two person in the church is set to take over

the church probably in a few years.

What I found interesting is, I think that was the first time I met him when I was like

16, that I encountered true charisma and it felt different than I thought it would feel

because when I talked to him, he talked to me for like 10 minutes, unbelievably charmed

me.

Like I couldn't believe it, but the impression I had coming away was, wow, I'm so smart because

he was so good at, I don't want to say manipulating, but like at playing on my feelings and just

being like, wow, that's really interesting, what, you know, and just kind of like getting

me to feel comfortable and divulge information about myself and like focusing all his attention

on me that I came away and I was like, man, I'm super special.

And I think that's what truly charismatic people do.

People think that it's like inward magnetism, but it almost goes the opposite direction

of like somehow they're able to make you feel like you're the special one.

And then you like get like drunk on that almost.

Totally.

I've been, I used to work for this guy named John Cobbs.

John ran this company called apartmentless.

They bought my other business and I don't know how big they are now.

Maybe it's like a hundred, they've raised maybe one or $200 million of funding and like

they're probably going to go public or I meant that's what they have to do.

And this guy, I was only 22 when I worked there and he would give these talks at the

office and I'm like, oh my gosh, I believe that I am, and we weren't even doing anything

interesting.

It was just like a Zillow competitor, which was like not exactly the most sexy thing.

We're not saving the earth.

We're not going to the moon.

Like there's nothing like, it's just a cool money making scheme and a slightly better

way to maybe find an apartment in some cities.

And I remember like hearing him talk and I'm like, I am so, we are, we are democratizing

housing and like we are like, I am so on board with this.

We are making people's lives so much better and like we owe it to the world to do this.

And he has just shown me that it is possible and you begin to think that rules don't apply

to you.

And you say it's us versus everyone, which is a common tactic and a cult and you should

always do this in a good company, which is you have you and then you have the enemy and

everyone's out to, to, on the enemy's side and it's us versus them.

And you have to create that dynamic.

And also I felt with him whenever he would give these talks on a Friday, we used to have

this thing where Friday at four, he would give a talk.

And I remember thinking like rules don't apply to us.

And I've heard stories about Travis Kalanick at Uber.

And I remember the people, it was like the same thing.

They were like breaking laws and they're like, it wasn't these laws, we shouldn't be breaking

them.

The laws shouldn't exist and they are wrong and we need to prove to them that they are

wrong.

You know what I mean?

And I remember hearing that and you just get intoxicated with it.

Yeah.

You know who's, who's pretty good at this.

I found from camp MFM is Suley, your friend.

You think so?

Yeah.

Just like when I was talking to him, I think he kind of brain raped me a little bit.

Like why?

At the end, I don't know.

I just, at the end, he just was like so interested in me.

And then I was just like, did I just tell Suley like everything about my life and like

everything?

He does that.

Like, and he won't tell you a thing about his.

No.

Yeah.

I was like, how is it that like you're the multimillionaire, like you have the successful

business that you sold.

Like you've done all this impressive stuff and like we just spent 20 minutes talking

about me and like, you know everything about me and I don't know anything about you at

the end of this.

How did this happen?

He's so good at it.

I don't know.

Yeah.

He's good at it.

So is Ben Levy, Sean's partner.

Sean, he's really good at that, man.

Ben, I always call Ben a shark, but he's not actually a shark because he doesn't mean

he's not going to like harm you probably.

Well, maybe.

I don't know.

Yeah.

Like he's so good.

We're all have to stop myself.

I'm like, dude, shut the fuck up.

I don't.

You don't need to tell this guy all this shit.

Like it's good to be privates about some stuff and he's so good at getting stuff out

of getting stuff out of you.

He's really good at that.

Yeah.

So yeah, those people, they are good at that.

Another guy who I find myself getting like intoxicated with.

There's a couple of people, Sam Bankman Freed, you know, the guy from what's his company

called?

FTX.

FTX.

And he has another one, I think.

Anyway, FTX.

When I hear him talk, I just think like, oh, you're right about everything.

I don't want to.

Like I can't have and it's hard for me to understand anything than other than what you believe

because you've just logically shown to me that this is all true.

Even though I'm like, you have to remind I have to remind myself like this guy's just

a 29 year old smart guy, which is cool and all, but like, he's just a guy.

He's just a dude.

He's still figuring out just like I am.

But I will hear him talk and I'm buying to everything he's saying.

And another good person is Malcolm Gladwell.

If you ever read a Malcolm Gladwell book, you'll think, oh, everything you're saying

is facts.

In reality, a lot of it's just theories.

And he'll say, this is just my, this is just a theory based off of the data that who knows

if I'm right or wrong.

This is just an idea, but I'll read his stuff and I think, oh, this is, this is just how

the world is.

And my takeaway from that is storytelling is so important.

It's so important.

I think that Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap.

Most of his stuff is of little to no value.

Anyone who asks me how to do storytelling, I'm like, just go listen to Malcolm Gladwell's

podcast and analyze every single sentence.

Like it doesn't matter what you think of what he has to say.

I think he's this generation's most gifted storyteller and it's like not close.

Dude, he's so good.

He's so good.

He's unbelievable.

He's unbelievable.

He gets you intoxicated is what he does.

You feel like this intoxication and you feel like, of course, this is the answer.

What you were saying is true.

And I have to purposely go and seek out like other opinions to be like, oh, well, you know,

I got to remind myself this isn't necessarily true.

It might be, but maybe not.

Ogilvy has this good quote, David Ogilvy, like a very famous copywriter and advertiser

that the job of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence and job.

The second sentence is to get you to read the third sentence.

And if you read Gladwell with that framework in mind, he's such a master.

Like the first sentence of every podcast is independently, extremely engaging and interesting

and it gets you to listen to the second sentence, which is itself extremely engaged in like

every single sentence is a masterpiece that gets you to go into the next sentence.

Everyone should read it.

Everyone should read and listen to as much Gladwell as they can.

What's the name of his pod?

I forget.

It's called something history.

Revisionist history.

Yeah.

It's good, man.

And he does a really good job of voice inflections.

It doesn't sound like my voice is fairly aggressive.

His voice is like soft and welcoming and like warming.

And so his inflections aren't like when Sean and I talk and then we like get down low and

then we, and we come right back up.

It's way more subtle.

Yeah.

But in everything he says is like a kind of a whisper, but he's, but, but he like knows

how to use empty space and silence.

And then he knows how to come back in and lead you down and get you to come a little bit

more and then he'll break it to you.

You know what I mean?

Like he does these things and I like, I'm tripping.

It's called the slippery slope.

That's what I call it.

The same in the slippery slope is my name for that copyrighting concept of the first sentence

to get you to read the second, which is getting you to read a third.

That's the slippery slope.

I want to pull you down that slope because the further I pull you along, the more bought

in you get.

And if you read like a Tony Robbins book, he'll say like, I'm about to tell you about

one thing that's going to change your life and he'll spend the rest of that chapter saying,

we're, we're, we're about to get to it.

We're getting to it soon, but before we do, I need to tell you why it's important.

And then like there's a reveal at the end and oftentimes that reveals a little bit anti-climatic,

but you're so deep down the slippery slope that you just, you're, you're bought in.

And so that's what Malcolm Gladwell does wonderfully.

He gets me to go down this slope and he pulls me down and a lot of the great dictators and

CEOs and these like leaders, both good and bad, they were awesome at being orators, which

is something we don't really talk about anymore.

But like Obama was like that where I was like, I heard Obama talk and I'm like, dude, whatever

you say.

Yes.

I like this.

It's seductive almost.

Like it's seductive.

It's seductive, which the root of all this is learning how to write well and how to story

tell and then if possible, how to speak, how to speak it.

Can I talk about one more attribute that actually you and Sean have done a good job with recently

on getting me on me about is this idea of like bias to action.

So for me, my favorite story about this is Napoleon comes into command of the French

army in Italy and it's just been sitting there for months.

The reason is they don't have enough guns.

They don't have enough ammunition.

They don't have enough shoes.

They don't have enough clothes.

They're like horribly undersupplied.

The morale is low.

And so the general before Napoleon is like, we cannot go give battle to the Austrians

like this.

We're in a horrible state.

And Napoleon comes in and he's like, okay, so today I'm going to take account of everything

that's happening in this army.

You're going to give me an accounting of exactly how many shoes we have, the status of everything.

And tomorrow we're going to march to go fight the Austrians.

And they're like, this is a horrible idea.

Like you should not do this.

This army is in no shape to fight.

And he's basically like, yeah, Isaac Newton, an object at rest stays at rest, an object

in motion stays in motion.

And so like, I don't care, we're going to go attack.

And so they go out, they attack, they score a cheap, easy victory.

And then they're just rolling, right?

And then they roll through Italy and kick the crap out of the Austrians in like a matter

of weeks.

And so I've been talking to you and Sean about doing better, how to take over the world and

getting bigger.

And I'm just like, man, I have all these problems.

I need more researchers.

I need more writers because I have to do all this research.

And both of you were just kind of like, bullshit, like, no, you don't just put stuff out, like

just put out more episodes.

What's wrong with you?

Just put out more episodes.

And so that's something I've been focusing on is like, it's so easy to focus on all

the inputs on like getting everything ready on planning on preparing and this bias to

action of like, no, no, no, no, every single day, you need to be taking steps that have

measurable outcomes that advance your goals forward.

You need to be doing and you need to have a bias towards doing those things rather than

planning and preparing.

Dude, and a good example of that is only six months ago or something.

So we were fairly popular, Sean, for some reason, because he's always a little disorganized.

His microphone wasn't working and he's like, fuck it.

I'm just going to use my AirPods.

I'm like, all right, fine.

And he puts his AirPods in and only one of them worked.

And the other one didn't even work.

It was for some reason it was out of battery.

He goes, we're just like, screw it, we're going to record this shot with just your webcam

and your one AirPods.

So that AirPods is going to be your microphone and your like, how you could hear me talk.

He's like, yeah, let's do it versus waiting 20 minutes for it to get charged.

We're like, no, we can't wait.

We have to do it right now.

We have to go.

And I think that that is the way to go.

I think that the world wants you to be vanilla.

The world wants to make everyone vanilla and they want you to be safe.

And that means planning, planning.

And so so many people write on their goals for the day.

I bet you there's a lot of people listening.

They have one task today which says plan workout or plan, you know, like business, like how

I'm going to launch this business, like plan something.

It's like that's there to do.

And that's really just kind of a self masturbation.

It's a bullshit way to make you think that you actually are doing something when instead

you should just start and figure it out along the way because virtually everything, not

everything, but almost everything related to a project is reversible and so you should

always start.

And so you should always just like, just make it happen and always have a bias to action

because it also is intoxicating, right, right, dude, have you ever sold anything on the

internet?

No.

So like people talk to me about like, how do I do this?

How do I do that?

I'm like, dude, just whatever you do, build it so you can get it live tomorrow.

And so then you can get just one dollar in revenue in the first five days because the

second your phone goes because like I have this thing on Shopify that goes to Ching every

sale I get the first time you hear that, you're like, oh, I need to feel that again.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's go.

What do you hear that?

And so that's why whenever people talk to me, they're like, what platform should I use

for my new blog?

I'm like, it doesn't matter.

Just go to Substack right now and make your blog post live tomorrow.

And then the second you see traffic on the analytics, you're like, oh, I like that.

That tastes good.

I like how that feels.

I got to do it again.

I need more.

I need to take another bite.

And that's why whenever people talk about anything they want to do, I'm like, if you're

a noob, launch right away immediately.

If you're like, I have this guy named Brett Atacock who sold the company for two or three

billion dollars.

He's like a robot business and he's investing two hundred million dollars in like five years

of research.

I'm like, all right, that's cool.

You're a proven hit maker to like take your time and like perfect this thing.

But if you're like a rookie, you've got to jump right in and get that taste of dope.

I mean, immediately, otherwise it will never happen or just fades and you just aren't interested

anymore.

So it's interesting.

What you're saying reminds me a little bit of like the difference between the Greeks

and the Romans.

So the Greeks, like masters of the Mediterranean, the old Greeks in Rome and.

Okay.

Okay.

Because here's the thing, the Greeks were like much better academics than the Romans.

They knew geometry, they knew algebra, they knew like philosophy, right?

And the Romans were basically dumb jocks.

Okay.

They didn't know any of this stuff.

And it turns out that Roman construction and bridges were actually much better than

Greek ones.

Why is it?

Because the Greeks would sit down and try and figure out the geometry of the best way

to build a bridge.

The Romans did not.

The Romans just went out and built a bridge and then it kind of crumbled.

And then they're like, oh, what if we did this and then they rebuilt it and then that

didn't work out so well.

And then over the generations, they just went out and did stuff until eventually they had

like the perfect way to build a bridge that would stand forever.

Did they ever know the math behind it?

They literally never did.

They just went and tried stuff until they found the thing that worked best.

And that was what let them take over the world.

And so that just like backs up what you're saying of like, you actually don't need to

know why this stuff is working.

You don't need to know the math behind it.

You don't need to do the research.

You just literally need to try stuff until you find out what works.

All right.

We're wrapping this up.

What are we going to say?

I was going to say, I think, you know, two things I just heard was one and this is all

kind of wrapping this back up to how this applies to like podcasting.

I heard buy a store its action, which is just like go, go, go.

And I also heard like be very methodical with how you tell stories like my Malcolm Gladwell

ask.

So if you're starting a podcast today, zero to 25,000 downloads, buy a store its action

25 to 100,000, let's just say you're really dialing in the storytelling component of it.

And then, but it sounds like you're flipping back to, okay, just buy a store its action,

go, go, go.

So like, I don't know.

I think it could be helpful to go from like at this stage, you want to focus on just making

shit happen versus being more methodical with how to actually level the podcasts up,

that kind of stuff.

Can I use an example like Danny Miranda, you were on his podcast a few days ago.

That's him.

And I don't think he's figured out his niche very well.

He needs to work on that.

He hasn't figured it out yet.

But guess what?

He's in a really good position to figure it out because he just got started.

He's been doing great interviews.

He's super action oriented and he's going to figure out the data and he's got the data,

right?

And now he can pivot and he can try different stuff.

He can think about different ways to position it versus the person who is just like, no,

no, no, Danny's not doing it the right way.

I need to position my podcast perfectly.

No, just start with action.

You can figure out your niche and exactly how to position your podcast later.

Dude, it's because it's way better to execute a bad plan than it is to execute no plan because

you can change it bad plan into a good plan in most cases as you go.

You're up shit creek.

If you're doing nothing all day.

Yep.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.