Watch These 40 Minutes To Unf*ck Your Life

So the quote is this, it says, most of us have two lives: the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands the resistance, more powerful than a locomotive and harder to kick than a crack cocaine habit. And here's the biggest bitch, we don't even know what hit us. All right, Sam, I gotta ask you about this. So I was watching that Lehman Brothers play. I don't know if you remember, I was telling you, I went and saw the Lehman Brothers play and there's a line in there. There's a part that stuck with me. The point of the play is it's talking about the generations of the Lehman Brothers from the great-grandfather to the grandfather. And I don't know if you know this story, but basically they started out, they're German immigrants. They come to America, they land somehow in Alabama and they open up a small little store selling fabrics. Okay. So somehow they went from German immigrants who had nothing selling fabrics in Alabama to the 4th or 5th biggest investment bank in New York in like a couple hundred years. So how did that happen? The story is, how did that happen? And the transition goes, they're selling fabrics for, you know, for clothing in their store in Alabama. And then they realize they could just buy the raw cotton. So then they start going to plantations and buying the raw cotton and selling it to the guy who makes fabrics out of it. So then they become the largest buyer and seller of, they become a middleman and they kind of like, they, in the play, they say they invent the idea of middleman. I don't think so, but like, they really popularized the idea of being a middleman where they weren't making the cotton, nor were they making the fabrics. They were just in between brokering the deals. And so then somehow that, that ladders up and eventually they become a bank. And so it's like generation 2 or 3. So what they show is it's realistic. Like one of the kids that took over was really smart, had new ideas. He's the one who turned it into a bank. But there's other kids who was like maybe a little bit more of a gambler and a bit reckless. And that put them in positions that, you know, maybe they shouldn't have been in. They got a little too greedy, a little too aggressive, which ultimately in 2008 Lehman Brothers falls and it's the biggest bank collapse in the history of the country. It's because of, you know, some decisions that were made along the way, the seeds that were planted by, you know, the heirs, heirs to the throne. So in one of the scenes, it's the kind of the older generation and then the younger generation. They're both in the boardroom. And at this point, the older generation is kind of the figurehead. He sits there in the boardroom. But he's not the guy. He's not the guy making the decisions. His son is the guy making decisions. And so I forgot who it is. Somebody asked them, some bank or someone else comes and asks them. They say, what is your secret recipe? What are the ingredients that let you do what you do? And they think long and hard and I forgot what answer they give, but it's something like it's the people or it's the trust that we have. That's what, that's the special ingredient. And then the son comes up and he goes, in our, you know, when we're baking, our flour is money. Some people use money to buy things. We use money to make money. Our flour is money. And like, that was like one of the big transitions where they became a bank versus becoming, before they were merchants who were like buying and selling products, buying and selling commodities. And it shows that like once they have that realization, like They never go back. Maybe they just get more financialized, more financialized, more financialized, where they're trading on computer screens and they're trading these subprime mortgages and they're never, they're never issuing the mortgage. They're not living in the house. They're not, they're just, it's numbers in a spreadsheet from there on out, basically. And, um, we've talked about this idea of like, what is it that you sell? And it kind of comes down to like, the way I think about this is there's many moments in my life where I'm choosing between two paths, the path that's opportunistic, meaning I see green on the other side, I see money on the other side. And then maybe the path that's more interesting or fulfilling.

Yeah. Art versus money.

That's a good way of putting it. But for others, it might be— others might be impact. It might be like making a difference in the world, right? That might be the fulfilling path for them. So, and as much as I could hear the advice, like, you know, the answer, the answer is go do the fulfilling thing. However, me and many people like me out there, are just way too— let me just make a quick pit stop over here. And those pit stops add up. You got one pit stop after another where you choose the opportunistic thing. After, after I make this money, then I'll go do the thing. Or, well, this is too good to pass up, right? And I do that many, many times. In fact, I am still doing it today, even as I am ashamed to admit it. I do that all the time. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about people who choose one path or the other, yourself, people you know well, and see if I can get a little bit of wisdom on this. So do you have any stories on this, or I can share maybe something I'm reading right now that really stood out to me, but where do you want to start?

I want to hear the story because I think you're reading a book that I've always wanted to read, but I've refused to read it so far because I know what it's going to tell me. And I don't like that answer because it's hard. It's a hard thing. So you're reading, is it The War on Art by Steven Pressfield?

Yeah, The War of Art. So it's like the opposite of The Art of War, Sun Tzu book. So it's The War of Art. And I wasn't going to read this book. And then yesterday I asked Diego, my guy, I was like, Diego, you read books? He goes, not really, but I'm reading this one book right now. Pretty good. Called The War of Art. And I said, give me the, what's like one thing that stood out to you? And he just screenshot out of this passage that then I went and ran and tweeted out.

Wait, hold on. So you're not actually reading the book. You've just been inspired by one excerpt.

This is the trigger. I'm just giving you the whole story here. So I got the excerpt first, which is actually a great way to decide to read a book. Then I read half the book last night. So it's a very fast read.

All right.

So the, so the quote is this. It says, most of us have two lives, the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands the resistance. Just like every sun casts a shadow, a genius's shadow is resistance. Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and harder to kick than a crack cocaine habit. And here's the biggest bitch. We don't even know what hit us. I never did. From the ages of 24 to 32, the resistance kicked my ass from the East Coast to the West Coast, back 13 times again, and I never even knew it existed. I looked everywhere for the enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face.

That makes you sad, right?

Well, that's one reaction to it. I felt the other way. I felt like an inspired rage. I was like, no, I'm not going to have the unlived life within. So I pick up this book and I start reading, and there are a ton of just like banger passages that are, uh, they're just so good that I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, talk a little bit about with you.

Keep reading a few more. What are the other good ones?

All right. So The premise of the book, if you didn't get it from that, that is basically we have the thing that's our calling that we kind of know that we should do, or the direction we know we should go. And then there's us not doing it. And that's maybe choosing what to work on, but then there's just a day-to-day. So he'll point out like, you know, hey, you got that diet that you haven't stuck to. You got that, that book that you haven't written. You got that, uh, that, that startup you want to go start, you know, of course you'll start it after you, you know, just save up a little more money. And he goes, you know, fast forward the clock, you're 40, 50, 60 years old, and you're that great author that never wrote a book.

And he gives tips as well. So he was like, if you're going to be a writer, you must write every day. You don't not write because you don't feel good. Just like you don't do this other thing because like, if you are just like feeling bummed, you still got to go to work.

He calls it the difference between an amateur and a pro. He goes, an amateur, they do it because they love it. That's what people think. He's like, oh, they love it so much that they only do it once every month. They love it so much that they never stick with it. He goes, you know who loves it? The pro. The pro who wakes up and shows up to work like it's a job, like treats it like it's a job. You don't not show up to your job. You do it every single day and you do it whether you feel like it or not. You don't just wake up and decide, am I going to do the thing or not today? And so he talks about being a pro and how the pro sits down and quote unquote does the work. And the work is, he's like, I don't care what it takes. You know, you basically, you sit down. And it, you know, it doesn't matter how long you sit there. It doesn't matter if you wrote 3 lines. It doesn't matter if those 3 lines suck. You did the work today. And that's, uh, soon enough, if you just do the work often enough, those 3 lines turn into 30 lines, turn into 30 pages, and those 30 pages turn into, you know, terrible, just mindless drivel to, you know, your best work. And the only way it gets there is by actually sitting down day by day and doing the work.

All right. Look, the question that Sean and I get asked constantly is what skillset did we develop early on in our careers that kind of changed our business career, and that's an easy answer. It's copywriting. We've talked about copywriting and how it's changed our lives constantly on this podcast, and we give a ton of tips, a ton of techniques, a ton of frameworks. And throughout all the podcasts, well, we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document so you can read all of it. You can see how we've learned copywriting, but you can see the resources that we turn to on a daily basis. You can see the frameworks, the techniques we use. It's in a simple document. You can check it out in the link below. All right, now back to the show. Do you follow Jerry Seinfeld at all? Because he's, he talks about the, about this topic all the time. He's one of the few comedians and actors and, uh, whatever you would describe him as that actually gets into the tactical stuff, uh, of like what it goes through day to day. And he's like, I have a, a big pen and a yellow notebook and I, and I write jokes like all day. Uh, not all day. He said, I'll do like an hour a day, but I try to get it done just a little bit every day. And he goes, most of the time it's garbage. And then he talks about when he was writing Seinfeld, he was like, I would go into the office. I, I would go to my office and I would sit down and I would actually write things out. And then I had a process and he's like, a lot of times I didn't want to do that, but I just did it anyway because that's my job and I want to, and I need to be great. And so anyway, he's a really good guy to follow because he gets really specific about the tactics, uh, behind this stuff, which people rarely discuss.

Have you ever seen this clip of him at a comedy club talking to a struggling comedian who's like asking, he just caught Jerry backstage and asked him for some advice about how to make it?

Yeah. What's he say?

It's just like, you get to a point, you're like, how much longer can I take it? What, what, what, is time running out?

You out of time?

I'm getting older. Please. We're getting older. It's not— you can listen. I'm 29. I feel like I've sacrificed so much of my life the last 30 years. You got something else you would rather have been doing? Uh, not the other appointments or other places you got to be? Not necessarily. No, not necessarily. I see all my friends who are making a lot of money, a lot of money on Wall Street. I see, like, you know what, I just see that, like, my friends are You know, they're moving up and I don't— I'm worried.

They're moving up. They're moving up. Are you out of your mind?

No, I'm not out of my mind. I just, uh— This has nothing to do with your friends. I'm upset.

No, no, it's a special night.

This has nothing to do with making it or— Did you ever stop and compare your life and go, okay, I'm 29, my friends are all married, all having kids, they all have houses. They have some sort of sense of normality. What do you tell your parents? What do you, you know, how do you deal with that? They're racial— your parents? Yes. Oh, I can't—

your parents.

Let me tell you a story about, uh, this is my favorite story about showbiz. Glenn Miller's Orchestra, they were doing some gig somewhere. They can't land where they're supposed to land, but it's winter, snowy night, so they have to land like in this field and walk to the gig. And they're dressed in their suits, they're ready to play, they're carrying their instruments. So they're walking through the snow and it's wet and it's slushy. And in the distance they see this little house and there's lights on in the inside and there's a curl of smoke coming out of the chimney. They go up to the house and they look in the window and in the window they see this family. There's a guy and his wife, she's beautiful, and there's two kids, and they're all sitting around the table and they're smiling, they're laughing, they're eating, and there's a fire in the fireplace. And these guys are standing there in their suits and they're wet and they're shivering, they're holding their intimates, and they're watching this incredible Norman Rockwell scene. One guy turns to the other guy and goes, "How do people live like that?" That's what it's about.

And he just leaves the guy with this parable and the guy is just like, you know, stunned basically. But the point is like this guy says that he's doing the thing that he loves, but he's like jealous of the, of the comfortable people who are, who are not living that life basically. And like the true artists, the people who are going to make, make the great shit, the people who are going to live their sort of their most fulfilled life, they're the ones marching through the snow in the discomfort, but they're doing exactly the thing that they want to be doing. They chose this discomfort. And, um, I love that story.

I'm gonna remind you of something that we did. So in February, I think it was the Lego episode. So if you go to My First Million Lego, at the very end, you had said something of like, I forget exactly what you said, but it was something where I remember the energy being, I own this company, um, that I'm not sure if it gives me purpose, uh, and it's not really related to my main thing. And I said, uh, well, you know, the, the product that you're selling doesn't necessarily have to be, something you're passionate about. You could be passionate about creating great jobs, or you could be passionate about, uh, creating a, a, a wonderful place to work, making it so your employees can afford a car, whatever, you know, that it doesn't always have to save the world. And I think that kind of helped you a little bit. And I was reflecting on it because I talked to Brett Adcock the other day when you weren't here. It's gonna go live after this episode, I think. So Brett Adcock, uh, started, uh, Figure. It's a humanoid robot company that like, it's one of those companies that you would peg as like it's going to change the world, whatever. He did two things that were interesting. The first thing is I tried to nag him a little bit to get like some good content out of him. And I go, Brett, you know, you're doing this world-changing thing now, but before this you had a company called Vettery, which basically is just like a glorified job board. And he laughed and he knew I was just giving him a hard time. And it was a $100 million company. It was a great exit. And he explained how Figure is changing the world and how he was thinking about doing artificial meat. So meat that you grow in a lab. He was like, I was worried about these really big problems. And I go, well, veterinary was not a big problem. And he was like, he kind of laughed, but then he got serious and he goes, uh, well, the way that I thought about it was that, you know, you spend 50 hours, 40 hours a week away from your family with a company. You should be spending it on something that you really truly love and enjoy and that you get value out of. And I was like, you did it again, man. You just wove this story around something that makes it really inspirational and world-changing.

Is he saying that the job board is helping people find that? That's what he was saying. Or he was saying he got, he got that out of it.

He got that out of it. And he was like, it's not really a job board. It's significantly more complex than that. But I wanted to like, just give him a hard time to get, get, get them to come out of his shell. But he was saying like, he's like, well, no, it's not just a job board. Like we weren't just helping people get jobs. We were helping them find value in their lives and helping them find passion. And he did such a good job of telling himself a story that I also believe. I believe his story to be true. And the other thing, and anyway, it inspired me of like telling myself a story.

The Lunchables aren't just crackers with cheese. If you think about what makes a sandwich, you must ask yourself, do I need all of it? Or could I reduce it in size? Could I have, could I do more with less? What is enough? And that's what the Lunchable stands for. It's a reminder of what is enough.

That's exactly what he did. And I thought it was great. But then he's got this new thing. So his new thing, uh, it's called Cover.

So if you go to cover.ai, it says Cover is an AI security company developing concealed weapon detection systems. Cover's technology scans students' backpacks, I think, for concealed weapons in K-12 schools. Our goal is to prevent school shootings by identifying concealed weapons inside of bags and underneath clothing.

Apply to work here. Listen to this. So he had just sold one of his companies, or no, sorry, one of his companies went public. It was called Archer. It was, uh, basically, uh, an electric helicopter. Big deal. It's a big deal. And he was thinking, what am I going to work on? He had 3 ideas. Idea number 1 was meats grown in a lab, which we've talked about, which is like, it's pretty insane that you have to have all these cows in order to get ground beef. Is there a way that you can make real beef in a lab? He was really fascinated by that. And he read a bunch of research. He's like, that, that, that's on my shortlist, but that's not the one I'm going to do. The second idea that he had was robots where he was like, uh, we just can't get enough, uh, warehouse workers to fill these jobs. I wonder if a robot can fulfill this demand. That's what he ended up doing. The third one that he didn't do that he was very close to doing. He read this study. He read this study that was done, I think, or a research paper done in 2014 or 12 or something like that. And basically it was about NASA creating this technology that could use not exactly X-rays, but almost like a, like a cellular phone, like, uh, like cell phone rays. And from 50 meters away, so about 150 feet, this thing that looks like a video camera can— you, a human being can walk in front of it and you could see if they have a bomb on them. You could see if they have a weapon on them. You could see if they have anything underneath their clothes or in their backpacks. And he goes, that's amazing. I wonder what we could use that for. He saw this graph about school shootings where basically there's something like a school shooting a day. And I'm not talking necessarily school shootings where it's like predetermined where I'm going to go and I'm going to like you know, have be overly violent to 30 children. I'm talking about like kids who just have a gun in their bookbag at school and someone says something rude to them and they freak out and someone gets hurt and shot. And he was like, that's what we need to solve that. Uh, we need to solve that problem. And so he didn't end up taking, uh, and running with that idea. He did Figure. However, Figure's kind of working a little bit and he has a little bit extra money. And so he went and cold called the NASA guy who created this research report that explained the technology. And he convinced the guy to let Brett come and check the technology out. He has now since licensed it, and he's funded Cover.ai with $10 million of his own money, and he's hired a team of NASA engineers to build technology, to build this stuff out. So eventually they're going to start with going to stadiums, so you could see if someone's coming into a stadium with a weapon, and then they want to like give away that technology to schools to prevent school shootings, because schools don't exactly have money to afford this software. And he was telling me this story, and I'm like, who wouldn't want to prevent school shootings? That's like the greatest thing ever. Uh, that's a, that's a really hard thing to compete against when I'm recruiting an employee to come and join a newsletter business versus like, you're going to like literally save lives. And it got me thinking of what, what, what I was saying to you about, well, company doesn't have to be X, Y, and Z. I felt that was a cope. I felt that when I heard what Brett was doing, I felt solving big problems and going after your passion and not exactly caring about how big of an opportunity is. In some regards, in some ways, that is better than doing it the way that we, you and I tend to do it.

Well, I think that what Brett's doing is pretty awesome here. He did it as a, you know, we talk about one-chart businesses.

That's exactly what I told him on the podcast. I go, Sean's going to love this.

Yeah, it's a one-chart business because we've talked about this before, which is some businesses, the best businesses really are so simple that you could just put up a single chart on a screen and say, That's why we're doing this. And the example we gave before was that the rise of cremation, so cremated funerals has grown from like, you know, less than 10% of the market to over 50% of the market. Now the majority of funerals, I guess, in the US are cremations, which is surprising to me still. But if you're creating a business that's around that, which we met these guys, I think After was the name of them, and like they had a whole deck and I told them, I was like, you didn't need to send the deck. Just slide 3 was enough. All you had to show me was that and say, we enable this, we make it easier to do cremation. Like, look at this rise. That's what we're doing. And so the best businesses are one chart businesses. I know a lot of people that did D2C brands. And if you ask them about their D2C brand, they'll tell you this and that about the market that they're in and about the business model, about the direct relationship with the consumer. All they needed to show was time spent on Facebook. That's all these markets were based on, was time spent on Facebook and the CPM on Facebook. That's a single chart would have told you that. Hey, there's a new way to reach customers and it's called Facebook ads and we're going to just work backwards from Facebook ads and start selling products via Facebook ads. That's really what happened in D2C over the last 15 years. And anyway, so when I asked Brett about like this idea, I was like, oh, so give me the pitch. What's the thesis around this? What are you excited about? He goes, oh, it's this Google image. And he just searched school shootings per year, pulled up the chart. He goes, and it's just a, it's like an up and to the right exponential, like it's like a What you want a startup growth curve to look like, you know, starts really small and it starts getting bigger and bigger, bigger, except it's school shootings. So you want it to go in the opposite direction. And, uh, cause I was like, dude, how do you have the time? Don't you just want to go take a nap? Like, you want to be with the kids, but like, even if you're not with the kids, fuck it, take a nap, dude. Like, why do you, why do you, you're already working doing one insane thing competing with Elon Musk. How dare you go start another hard thing? And he's like, well, I have to, I feel like compelled to.

Yeah. And when I think about like I, you know, this isn't actually realistic, but I want to think about a company trying to compete with Brett when you're recruiting someone. It makes it really hard. And I asked him, I go, uh, why do you do these big things? And he goes, well, I think big things in many ways are easier. Uh, it's easier when I have this crazy awesome mission to get employees, investors, customers. Like, it's just, it's just actually easier. And it kind of, it messed with my mind a little bit.

So my takeaway from that, by the way, is not that you have to go solve a really gnarly problem in the world to be doing something. I think that is definitely one path. And the way I think about it instead is instead of saying, what should I do? A better question is, what would I do if I wasn't afraid? Like if I wasn't afraid, what would I go work on? And usually you're afraid of failure. Usually you're afraid of it not working out. Usually you're afraid that it might be too hard. Like, so for some people it might be starting a humanoid robot company might be the answer. but you're not doing it because you're too afraid that like, it's too hard. I don't really know how to do that. It's, it'll take too much money. What if I can't raise it? What if I do this? What if I do that? I'm competing with Google and Elon and all these people. And so they wouldn't do it. And for other people, like for me, it's a creative endeavor, right? It's to say, well, what, like, I don't know. I think the thing I really want to do is go write this killer book or go make a TV show or go do something really, really interesting. And the reason I don't do it is because it might fail, right? I might spend a couple of years writing a book. And it comes out and people are like, yeah, cool book, man. And that's it. That would be disappointing and that would be the failure. And I think one of the good things about this book that I was reading, The War of Art, and some other stuff I've been consuming is you really separate the choice of what you do and the result of what you do as two different things. And you control the controllables. The thing you can control is did you spend the time doing the thing you really wanted? And did you give it your all? You cannot control the outcome. And if you go listen to Rick Rubin talk, he says the exact same thing. He goes, your job is not to make it popular. Popular is not something you do. You don't make popular. You make stuff and you make a lot of stuff and you put your best stuff out there and you do your best job doing the best stuff you can and popular. I mean, that's not even something you think about. That just happens or it doesn't happen. And it's irrelevant at that point, whether it happens or doesn't happen, because you're just going to keep making stuff and eventually. Popular starts to pay attention to the guy who's making a lot of stuff. Um, we talked about Rocky in the last episode, the story of Sylvester Stallone. So after the episode, I went and did like a deep dive on it. I went and I watched Rocky last night, and I watched all of his old interviews from the 1970s, and I really got into it. And there was so many good parts. But the one thing that he said, he's inter— he's being interviewed by this guy, and this is the movie's come out, it's been a success at this point, and he— but it's like a year in, and he says, you know, so they offered you a lot of money for this, and you needed money. We talked about how he had to sell his dog because his dog, he had a big like Mastiff, eating too much. He's like, either I'm not going to be able to feed the dog and not feed myself, or I sell this dog and then I can feed myself and hopefully the new owner will be able to feed my dog. And as much as it killed him to do it, he's like, I have no choice here. So he was like down in the dumps. And the way he says it, he goes, I had $106 in my bank account. I had a $300 a month rent and I had a pregnant wife. And he goes, the wolf was at the door.

I love that phrase.

He goes, the wolf was at the door. Yeah. Why did you? Because they were like, how did you write it in 3 and a half days? The V1 of the script. He goes, the wolf was at the door. I had no choice. And they were like, but then they offered you money for this, like a lot of money for this.

He goes, yeah.

They go, how much did they offer you? He goes, well, first they offered me about $100,000 and I said no. And then they came back with $150,000. They're like, why'd you say no? He goes, well, they said, we'll take the script, but you go away. We will go get Burt Reynolds to be Rocky. We don't need you to be Rocky. We like the script. No, that's who they went to. Uh, they went to Burt Reynolds. They went to 3 or 4 guys who were big at the time. And he's like, no, I only want to give you this script if I'm going to be Rocky. And they were like, oh God, okay, forget it. And then they came back, $150,000, but you're not Rocky.

No.

Then the final offer was $265,000, but you're not Rocky. And he says no. And they go, he goes, how did you say no to $265,000 when you're $160,000?

That's like $800 grand now.

Yeah, exactly. It's like a million bucks basically. And they were like, how did you say no when you had $106 in the bank? He said a couple lines. He goes, it's not that hard to say no to money when you've never had money. You don't even know what money is. He goes, if you've never ridden in a Rolls-Royce, you don't mind bumping around in a Volkswagen.

It's all you know.

He's like, I didn't have a frame of reference for that. He goes, I did want to get out of some misery. He's like, my landlady was a a big beast of a woman. And she would show up at my door every month, and she was so large, she cast almost like a shadow at the door. He's like, and I just remember being afraid of that shadow all the time. He's like, but my goal was rent. My goal wasn't $265,000. I didn't need all that. And he goes, they go, but did you ever have any doubts? He goes, yeah. He goes, before, when I was telling them no, I was saying, are you kidding me?

Burt Reynolds?

That guy? I can outact all these people. I will kill this role. I will be so good in this role. You guys have never seen anybody act like I act. And then as soon as they finally relented and they were like, cool, you know, you can do the movie. They— what, by the way, the deal they ended up doing was $1 million of production budget, which was very little at the time. Like, the big movie at the time, King Kong, was like $25 million.

Rocky 1 only had a million dollar budget.

He produced the whole thing for $960,000. And he, like, casted his brothers and his uncles. And, like, you know, they did one take on everything. And if they couldn't get something, like there's a scene where they're supposed to be ice skating on a date, but, uh, Rocky, he didn't, Sylvester Stallone didn't know how to ice skate. They're like, you don't have time to learn. Uh, so they, they just changed the scene where he's walking and she's ice skating and they like made an, they just changed the script to why that would make sense.

And they just brought cameras to an ice rink and stuff like that.

Probably like to get his dog back. He cast that guy in the movie plus gave him money.

It was like, are you going to be in the movie?

So the guy's in the movie for like one line. Anyways, he's making this movie for less than a million bucks. They go, well, now you've made a lot of money, right? He goes, he's laughing. He goes, I've about $400 more than I had before this. They go, $400? He goes, yeah, I mean, I had a lot of bills before this and that landlady casting that shadow, she showed up for the rent and then taxes and then all this. He goes, but you know what? He goes, I basically paid myself the Stage Actors Guild minimum, the SAG minimum. So he made $600 a week. Doing the movie. And I think he owned some percentage, but it was going to be on the back end, so he didn't have the money yet. And so he goes, he goes, but you know what? The money never mattered. He goes, I would have done this whole thing for a donut and a tuna fish sandwich. The money meant nothing. It was always about the opportunity. I had to prove to myself that I wasn't a liar, that I wasn't living a life of disillusionment, because that's very difficult because I thought of myself as a creative person. and I told myself that I was a great actor, but I had never had an opportunity to go figure out, am I any good or not? And so when you ask me, should I take the money or should I take the opportunity to find out, am I living the life of a liar or not? I had to get that answer because if not, it would have eaten at me for the rest of my life. He goes, I think of myself as a creative person. I didn't want to wake up and be 50 years old and realize that I'm this creative person who's never done anything creative. That would be terrible. I'd be living a lie. It would kill me, dude.

Is, is he our new kind of crush?

Move over, Brett Adcock.

Yeah. Sylvester Stallone's my guy now and he looks great still.

He's still amazing. Uh, dude, these interviews are so good. Like I'm going to make a separate YouTube video just as like a homage to Sly because he's got so much swag, which I didn't realize. He's very funny. And by the way, this is another thing I love about the guy. He not only did all this stuff, but he kind of overcame the adversity, right? So the reason he wasn't getting cast is because he talks funny. Well, why does he talk funny? Do you know the story?

Didn't, when he was born, or no, didn't he hit, he hit his face or he was born with like no nerves on one side of his face, right?

When he was born, they used forceps to get him out.

Yeah.

Forceps damaged the nerve and it's the nerve in your mouth that, uh, when you go for a dental procedure, they numb you and you know, you like, your tongue doesn't move right. You can't talk right. Imagine that for your whole life. That was his whole life. And so because he was really jacked and because he talked with kind of a slur and like a sort of his mouth, part of his face, part of his mouth is paralyzed. People assumed he was dumb. This guy was incredibly intelligent. He was very well read. He wrote the script for this. He is a very creative, eloquent person. He's a great writer. And people just thought of him as this action hero, like this, like, you know, like an action figure, basically. Oh, you got abs and muscles and that's why you're doing these roles.

But that's not it at all.

This guy was a very deep, an interesting person, but he was sort of masked by this.

Maybe my doctor used forceps and shit because I slur everything and I have abs as well and I'm kind of smart. Yo, Adrian.

Yo, Adrian.

That was pretty good. I think my doctor also must use that same tool. Was I born in New Jersey as well? I want to tell you a story about an interesting person I hung out with, but before I get to that, This is kind of the inspiration episode, it seems. And we've talked, you feel inspired, you know, but it's sometimes it's hard to feel inspired when it's 105 degrees and I'm sitting in Austin, Texas, sweating my ass off. What would you do, Shawn, if you wanted to feel inspired? Maybe write a book, maybe get away from it all. What would you do?

I don't know. Writing a book seems hard. I'd get away, but, but where would I go?

I think. I would wander. Today's sponsor is wander.com. We like wander. So go to wander. Am I even saying that funny, by the way?

Do I—

am I saying that with a weird accent?

You didn't Stallone it. You're good.

So wander.com. It's a really cool website where they operate really luxurious, high-end properties. They're awesome. If you go to their website, you'll see every photo they take is inspiring. Like all these beautiful beaches, like a cabin in the mountains. It's just like high-end stuff and they've got gyms and work.

Sometimes I don't even take the trip. I just go to wander.com and just look at places and I get like 10% of what it would feel like to go on vacation right now. And it's like, okay, well that just took me 10 minutes. That was great.

Yeah. My wife wanted to go to Greece and I was like, hey, let's just look at Google Earth and look at the park. And I'm like, pretty dope, right? Uh, did that do it for you? Yeah, that, that's what I do with, uh, with wander.com. So check it out. They're today's sponsor. They're an awesome company. Um, I want to tell you a quick story about what I did the other day. So I get this text, this guy, Michael, just joined Hampton and I become friendly with him. And he's like, hey, are you free on Tuesday at 6 o'clock? I was like, yeah, sure. What's up? He goes, do you want to go fishing? I was like, yeah, okay, whatever. I like, I'm currently right outside of New York City. So I'm like, where do we get, like, do we fish? Like, is it going to be like sewage water? Where do you fish? I don't know. So I go to this guy's house. It looks like I'm at like a high school or an art museum. He's got this massive, beautiful home that's built like on a peninsula and the boat to get into the, the Long Island Sound, which is like a body of water right here. He, it's like right on his front porch and we're basically 30 minutes outside of New York City. It was one of the most spectacular things that I've ever heard of. And so we go out fishing and I get to know him a little bit and I had to tell you about this guy. So he's really fascinating because he's one of those guys who you would know his products. But you may not have ever heard of him. So have you ever heard of Fog Creek Software? They launched in 2010 as like— so Fog Creek Software launched in 2000 and it was sort of like an agency where the internet was just getting started and these guys were like the early nerds amongst the nerds. So if you wanted like some development work, they were the guys. Their mission early on was like, you know, we want to work with programmers and we want to create a great place to work for programmers. And they start this little agency or consultancy. But like a lot of consultants, they're like, just doing service work kind of sucks. Let's create some products. And so they create a handful of products, the first one being FogBugs. So FogBugs was like a, a bug tracking software. And after 10 years, it does all right. It's like, you know, in the 8 figures, so $10 million plus in revenue. It's doing pretty good, but it's kind of stagnates a little bit. And they go, let's like spin off some more stuff. That we've been working on. So I believe, I don't remember which order it was, but let's just say the first one was Trello. So they spin off Trello and they fund it with a little bit of money. So Trello, uh, it's an Asana competitor. It's a, uh, task management software. They grow this business. They raise only $10 million. Uh, it gets started and they, and they grow it a little bit. Then they raise $10 million. They grow this business and they eventually sell it to Atlassian Software for $450 million, I believe. And if you look at Atlassian Software stock, I think when they sold, the stock was $17. And when it eventually peaked, uh, like last year or 2 years ago, when everything, when everyone went crazy, it was like 20x that. And so they got a combination of stock and cash for this deal. So huge hit. This guy has just made it. Well, it turns out they spun off another company as well. And that other company was called Stack Overflow. So Stack Overflow was basically like, it still exists. It's kind of like a message board, but originally for developers. And eventually you can make one of these message boards for a variety of topics. It's huge. Did you know that that company sold? This wasn't in the news too often, but did you know that company sold for $1.8 billion?

Who bought it?

Uh, uh, a European publishing company, uh, Pro— Pro— Process— Process— Process— I don't know. Are you— you have it up?

No, I don't have it here, but that's okay. Just some huge traffic, by the way. They get almost like 200 million monthly visitors, a huge site.

And so I was talking to this guy and he was like, yeah, and then we also sold, sold Fall Creek Software and I made a little money there. So he's like, I've had a hat trick. And so this guy has done all these amazing things. And so just like learning about his story, how he's pretty low key in the sense that like he doesn't have Twitter, he doesn't really use social media. And he's like giving me all this like interesting intel on growing their companies and making them huge. It's called Process. According to Ari, and he's like, yeah, I sold that one. We sold that one for $1.8 million. We sold this one for, you know, $400,000 and something, but the stock like appreciated a ton. So who knows what the actual price was. And I was like, what are you doing now? And he's like, just fishing, just thinking. And so he goes fishing on this boat like every day during work hours. And he's like showing me a tour of his home and he's like, yeah, this is where my office was, but I don't really open up a laptop anymore.

Did you know this guy or why is he inviting you fishing?

I met him in Hampton and we just started talking and he just was like, do you want to, do you want to come over? And I guess this is, look, when you're—

He's like, you look like a guy who likes to fish. Like, spotted.

I thought, here's why this guy was cool to me. He's like an outdoorsman in basically New York City. And he's like living a very unique life. Uh, and he, he just, but he's very Zen-like. He's super Zen. And he was telling me stories about how he like overcame certain things at the company. The whole time he's like telling you stories, he sounds very Zen and calm and low-key. And I thought that this, this guy was one of these people who deserves a little bit of love because super under the radar, as successful as anyone we've talked on this podcast, but does not have a big mouth. So I'm kind of, uh, blowing up his spot a little bit, but I asked him if it was all right that I said all this and super interesting guy that you should look into. Michael Pryor is his name. He's awesome.

What was, um, anything cool from your conversation? Anything you learned or an insight or an observation you had that Made you think?

Yeah. So he was a, I just liked how low-key he was about everything. So he was basically the CFO of Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow, I don't know what their revenue was, but they sold for $2 billion. And I was like, did you, are you like an accountant? Did you, were you a CFO? He's like, no, I barely knew how to do any of this stuff. But the company needed a CFO when we started. He's like, I was a programmer. He's like, I haven't programmed in forever, but I just kind of learned like how to pay taxes and I just had to learn how to pay taxes and I had to learn how to do payroll. And he just like rolled with the punches. And I think that, uh, I was like, were you intense? He's like, no, I'm not intense at all. And we hear stories about how people are doing, what does Elon Musk say? Hardcore, hardcore mode or hardcore. And this guy, he was like, I'm not, I wasn't really hardcore. He's like, we are smart and we worked pretty hard, but like, I would not describe what we did as intense. And we just kind of rolled with the punches. It was really cool to hear. Something that differs from the loudest people who are incredibly successful of being intense. You gotta grind, you gotta do this. That wasn't the vibe that I got from Michael in like the early founding of these companies. And I thought it was really inspiring. I thought it was awesome. I also think, and this is for anyone who wants to build a company, you have to look up his partner. His partner's the louder one. His partner is called, uh, uh, his name Joel.

Joel.

And he's got this amazing blog that I've read for years. It's basically like Paul Graham, but more a little bit, uh, A little bit more hotheaded, a little. Yeah, well it is, it's very tactical, but he also writes like he, he is a little bit more jokey and it's a little bit more brash, which I appreciate is, and it's called Joel on Software. I think it's one of the best entrepreneur blogs out there. I don't even think he updates it anymore, but he has probably 1,000 articles. And so it was awesome just like hearing little bits of like intel from these guys. And so I wanted to shine a light on this guy. It was really fascinating.

Yeah, that's amazing. Uh, that's cool. How's your fishing game?

Dude, it was like on easy mode. Like the poles were like attached to the boat and it was like, once you, once you hear like a bell ring, you just go and grab, like, you like grab the thing and just like barely crank it in.

It's like the DoorDash of fishing.

Yeah. Like his boat like told me where the fish was. Like it gives you like a little alert. So I was like, fish here. And you just like sit there. I'm just like sitting, drinking water and it's like, oh, we got a fish, I guess. And so, oh, did you see the picture of it? It was 3-foot long. This fucking fish.

I saw that thing and I was like, how the hell did you catch this? What is going on? That was like a record. That was like a record-setting fish.

It was just like the fishing rod was just like in one of the holes on the boat and you just like barely touched the reel and it came up. I mean, it really— there was really no glory in it.

It's like AI for fishing. It's like, wait a minute. Yeah.

Like, like the boat. These— I don't know anything about boats. A lot of people look at me and they think that I'm like an outdoorsman. I don't know shit about this stuff. And like, it like has these sensors that tell you where the fucking fish are. Like there was no work involved. So like this fishing shit's easy. I don't know why people are impressed by this.

Let me ask you one more question. I'm always interested in what other people, what other interesting people are interested in. What was this guy interested in when he was talking to you? What kind of questions did he ask you?

We talked about being popular. So basically, like, a lot of people who are—

Why'd he ask you?

Good question. I think I was like the tallest midget here, like where I was just, I was like the only one that he could like talk to whoever who has even a slight popularity. We were talking. So I found it odd that, and I don't think he actually envied me at all, nor does he want this type of thing, but a lot of like rich and successful people who are low key. Are curious what it's like to have an audience. And what I tell them all the time, and I don't know if you feel this way, I go, hey, I will trade you my audience for your net worth any day of the week. I'll gladly make that trade. And of course, none of them would ever actually want to do that. But I think it's funny. And I'm not talking about him, but people in general, that they're into what it's like to have like an audience and be internet popular or something like that. And I always remind them, I'm like, it's really just like me in my bedroom just, or on my toilet, just typing out stupid tweets. And like, there's like not that much joy in it. And I would, I would much rather have a $2 billion company. And so don't get like, don't actually envy this or think that it's awesome. And so a lot of these people are curious what it's like to be like a popular internet person.

Let me ask you a question, hypothetical. How much would somebody have to pay you to never create content again, delete everything on this podcast, delete your blog, and never, you never get to publish again. No Twitter, no social media, no nothing. How much would you have to get paid?

$30 million. What about you?

A really specific number. Very quick and specific number.

Well, I had to think about it. I had to think about what it's worth for half a second. Well, I had to think about what, you know, what it's worth. What would you, what would your number be?

I think $100,000. No, I think more than $100,000. I think it would have to be like, yeah, I think it would have to be more than $100,000.

That is so, dude, you are not Sylvester Stallone. You are not Sylvester Stallone. You, you, you don't have the landlord's not here. Like you've tasted the nice life. You want more of it. You would do it for much less.

No, no, I really wouldn't.

So your official number is $250,000?

$250,000.

That's insane to me. I do not believe— dude, that's like— you'd be— no, no, no, no, no, no. I think you're— I think you are full of shit. I think you are absolutely full of shit.

Should you just take power of attorney and change my decision for me?

I just don't—

like, sorry, my friend's an idiot. Uh, I'm going to change that number.

Why? Why, why, why?

Because I think I'm going to end up at 100 to 200 anyways doing what I'm doing, and I like doing it. So it's basically, if I think I'm going to make that anyways doing this, And I like doing it. So then you have to pay me a premium on top of to make me stop doing a thing I like doing. And then there's the additional like time value of money that I get it all upfront right now, guaranteed. Right. So, so, you know, I'm just kind of factoring that in and I would just rather err on the side of what's a number I would not, I would not regret, like what's a number you could pay me that I'd, okay, I'll go figure out some other hobbies.

Well, would you still be allowed to do anything anonymously, like under a pen name?

No, no, no. Your, your hands are taped. You can't, you can't type, can't, can't do any of that stuff.

Yeah, maybe it would be higher then. Like if I could, if I could do something anonymously, I would do that. I think that, um, I think the anonymous thing is actually pretty cool.

It might be better anyways.

I think it's better anyway. I think the anonymous thing is cool. I'm really fascinated by these authors who use pen names. So we had, uh, Jack Carr on the podcast. That's a pen name.

Um, but it like, but was it a pen name because it's a stage name or was a pen name because he wants to be anonymous in real life?

I imagine the second one. Of course he's not anonymous because like we see his face, but yeah, I think it's just a stage name, uh, which is different. I don't know what you call it. Uh, yeah, I don't know, but I just know that's not his birth.

Jack Carr just sounds cooler. You know, I remember I was in a movie once.

Dude, my name rhymes with that. Why does his name sound so much cooler?

It's the C. It's the K sound, right? K is the coolest letter. Everybody knows that. I was in a movie once and the main actor was Kal Penn. And I was like, oh man, Kal Penn, what a guy. Kal Penn, what a name. Sounds like a hero. Sounds like a Hollywood star.

Kal Penn, dude, that guy's not—

do you know what his real name is? His name is like Kalpan Suresh Modi. That's his real name. He couldn't get auditions, and so they changed— instead of his first name being Culpen, they changed it to Cal Penn. And then all of a sudden he started getting auditions and he was telling me this, like, he was like embarrassed, like not embarrassed by it, but he was like, it's fucked up, but this is what we had to do. He's like, I didn't want to change my name. I just wanted to act. And the price of having to act was to change my name. And this is super common. Like Mindy Kaling, her name is not actually Mindy Kaling. Uh, like a bunch of Asian actors, same thing. Like they all change, they all change their name to sound cooler and more, uh, you know, whatever. In fact, Leonardo DiCaprio, they tried to get him to change his last name. They wanted him to be like Lenny Williams was what they wanted his name to be, and he refused. And so we were almost robbed of Leonardo DiCaprio. He was about to be fucking Lenny Williams if he had listened to the suits.

Lenny Williams would've been so much worse for him because Lenny Williams sounds like a 50-year-old who dates a 19-year-old. Leonardo DiCaprio is a 50-year-old who dates a 19-year-old. At least there's some Suave or whatever, you know, like for some reason.

Wait, is that illegal? No, he's kind of Italian, I think, so it's okay. Yeah, yeah, last name is different, so I guess it's normal and disrespectful if we question it.

Lenny Williams sounds like a 50-year-old guy who watches softball on TV, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, he did the right thing. Leonardo DiCaprio, he pulled it off. Good job for him. Do we end here on this rambling, wandering podcast?

I think so. I think that's it.

All right. That's the pod.