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  • Jay Shetty on Life, Love, and the Business of Podcasting

    AI transcript
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    0:01:43 >> Episode 337, 337 is Erica covering Southwestern Louisiana in 1937.
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    0:02:01 [MUSIC]
    0:02:05 >> Okay, what’s going on?
    0:02:07 I am on vacation for the week.
    0:02:09 I am in Zermatt.
    0:02:10 Why am I in Zermatt?
    0:02:11 Because I can be.
    0:02:16 And that light at the end of the tunnel where my kids are no longer gonna be.
    0:02:20 I’m so freaked out about all this data around 90% of the time you’re gonna spend
    0:02:23 with your kids is before they’re 18 and my kids are barreling towards 18.
    0:02:30 So I’m spending most of my disposable time and money on spending time with them.
    0:02:32 Anyways, in place of our regular scheduled programming,
    0:02:34 we’re sharing a conversation with Jay Shetty,
    0:02:39 the host of the world’s number one mental health podcast on purpose.
    0:02:44 I found Jay to be really nice and soulful in what you would expect from someone who
    0:02:46 has the number one podcast on mental health.
    0:02:49 We discussed with Jay his journey from monk to media mogul.
    0:02:53 The business of podcasting and the key to personal growth and success.
    0:02:57 So with that, here’s our conversation with Jay Shetty.
    0:02:59 [MUSIC]
    0:03:01 Jay, where does this podcast find you?
    0:03:04 >> I’m at my home studio in LA.
    0:03:06 >> That’s right, I have been there.
    0:03:09 It’s like a little bird’s nest overlooking all of LA.
    0:03:14 Something that people consistently ask me in an age of AI and digital is,
    0:03:19 what is the key competence should young people be studying to find success in
    0:03:20 economic security?
    0:03:24 In my view, the only enduring skill is storytelling.
    0:03:27 And I think of you as someone who has mastered storytelling.
    0:03:31 I’d love to hear a little bit of the origin story around how you
    0:03:33 developed your skills as a storyteller.
    0:03:38 >> Wow, I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that before, I love that.
    0:03:39 So I don’t disagree with you.
    0:03:45 I think storytelling is such a powerful skill and such a powerful tool.
    0:03:51 My origins of storytelling, I’d have to go back to,
    0:03:54 wow, I’m really having to look for that.
    0:03:57 >> I’ll help, you were a consultant, right?
    0:03:59 >> Yeah, but it was long before that.
    0:04:02 I think, yeah, I found it, I found it, I found it.
    0:04:04 Thank you for that prompt, I found it.
    0:04:09 I was fascinated by autobiographies growing up.
    0:04:14 So I spent my teens in the pages of Martin Luther King,
    0:04:19 Malcolm X all the way through to David Beckham and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
    0:04:24 And I found myself just completely captivated by the real life stories,
    0:04:29 not just the medals, the awards, the successes, but the depression,
    0:04:33 the doubts, the fears, the pain that people had gone through.
    0:04:36 And to me, those stories moved me, they stayed with me.
    0:04:41 I, even till this day, if someone tells me something’s based on a true story,
    0:04:42 I want to watch it immediately.
    0:04:46 And so to me, my love for storytelling and my love for stories
    0:04:50 came from studying real life stories, true stories.
    0:04:54 I was never attracted to fiction as I was to non-fiction.
    0:04:59 I don’t, haven’t read much fiction in my life up until this point,
    0:05:00 unless someone really recommends something.
    0:05:05 And so my love for storytelling comes from hearing about the pains and
    0:05:06 challenges people went through.
    0:05:09 And there’s a famous quote that says,
    0:05:13 I’ve never seen a strong person with an easy past.
    0:05:19 And I really, truly believe that when we study the difficult, tumultuous,
    0:05:23 challenging pasts of people we admire,
    0:05:27 we in turn get the ability to build the strength, the resilience,
    0:05:31 and the confidence through their journey.
    0:05:34 You actually get to ask yourself, what would it look like?
    0:05:38 What does life look like for someone who’s aspiring towards great things?
    0:05:41 And going back to your point on what people are challenged by today,
    0:05:44 I think we don’t study the stories of the greats anymore.
    0:05:49 I don’t believe we dive into the pages of people who’ve come before us.
    0:05:55 We’re looking at what everyone is doing today right now in the moment on social media.
    0:06:01 We’re not looking at what they did 10, 20 years ago in their childhood bedroom,
    0:06:06 or in an interaction with a family member or whatever it may have been
    0:06:08 that is their defining moment.
    0:06:12 So I think we get lost, enamored by where they are today,
    0:06:14 where they live, what they drive, what they do.
    0:06:18 But you don’t see the foundations of how they got there.
    0:06:22 Was there a moment, an aha moment when you realized that you were good at it
    0:06:25 and that you might be able to make a living at it?
    0:06:31 I enjoyed it when I started speaking at colleges
    0:06:35 and speaking to small groups in London.
    0:06:37 I realized that I really enjoyed it.
    0:06:40 I really was fulfilled by it.
    0:06:43 But to me, it felt like something I would have to do on the weekends and evenings
    0:06:50 because I didn’t know anyone in the world who could make a living off of it personally.
    0:06:53 So I really believed that I would have to work a real day job,
    0:06:55 being a consultant at the time.
    0:06:58 And on top of that, I would do this on the evenings and weekends
    0:07:00 because it’s what fulfilled me,
    0:07:03 especially because what I would talk about was eastern wisdom,
    0:07:07 which at the time especially was extremely niche, very small.
    0:07:11 Even till this day, I think it’s still making its waves into the mainstream.
    0:07:16 But eastern wisdom was something that was not high demand.
    0:07:20 And so I was very much ready and set for the life
    0:07:24 that I would work my day job that paid the bills.
    0:07:27 And on the evenings and weekends, I would do something that was meaningful to me.
    0:07:32 It was only when I made my first set of videos.
    0:07:38 And my hope was I was doing events where maybe 5, 10, 20 people would show up.
    0:07:43 And I was thinking, “Wow, if I did this video and maybe 100 people would be affected by it,
    0:07:45 how amazing would that be?”
    0:07:49 And it was only when my first four videos, when shared by The Huffington Post,
    0:07:54 did something like 250 million views across platforms,
    0:07:57 did I really believe that there was some momentum behind the message?
    0:08:01 But at one point in my life, I had roughly 250 million views
    0:08:03 and I was four months away from being broke.
    0:08:07 So it took me a long time to realize that there was something real here.
    0:08:10 And I think a big part of that is because I just never knew anyone
    0:08:17 who had built a career out of sharing wisdom, telling stories and sharing insights.
    0:08:20 I didn’t know anyone in my personal life.
    0:08:22 And what was the first medium where you monetized it?
    0:08:24 Was it books, videos, podcasts?
    0:08:27 Like, give us the universe of Shetty.
    0:08:32 Like, how have you figured out how you built a small, what feels like a small media empire?
    0:08:34 Like, where, what is the flywheel here?
    0:08:36 What do you do for awareness?
    0:08:42 What do you do for, you know, academic heft or intellectual heft?
    0:08:43 And how do you monetize it all?
    0:08:48 Yeah, so I made videos for two years before I could actually monetize them online
    0:08:52 because I started primarily on Facebook.
    0:08:56 My videos were posted to YouTube at the time, but we didn’t have ads turned on.
    0:08:58 And then I was working for the Huffington Post.
    0:09:02 So I was a salary employee while making content for their platforms.
    0:09:06 And then when I left and I was making content for my own platforms,
    0:09:09 Facebook didn’t allow you to monetize until 2018.
    0:09:12 And I started making videos in 2016 or something like that.
    0:09:18 And so those first two years, I was just making videos because it was what I loved doing.
    0:09:21 It’s what I enjoyed. It’s what was so meaningful.
    0:09:26 And 2018, that shifted when Facebook was able to build their monetization.
    0:09:31 And so that became a very early form of monetization, of storytelling.
    0:09:34 And that was videos I was creating anyway.
    0:09:38 It was amazing. We were making videos that were getting hundreds of millions of views at the time.
    0:09:42 It’s really, really a special time in connecting with so many people.
    0:09:47 At the same time, I was learning from my audience what they wanted from me.
    0:09:52 And what I found was that a lot of people wanted coaching and meditations and insights.
    0:09:56 And they wanted to learn these practices.
    0:09:57 And so two things came from that.
    0:10:01 One was we launched my Genius app and my Genius community,
    0:10:05 which was a membership platform, a membership platform that exists today,
    0:10:08 seven years on since we launched it,
    0:10:15 where every single week I’m live wherever I am in the world for 40 minutes teaching a workshop.
    0:10:18 So I was just in Mexico for a friend’s weekend this weekend.
    0:10:20 And I’m live on the channel.
    0:10:24 And this week I’ll be in LA and I’m live on the channel, wherever I’m in the world.
    0:10:27 I’ll be live 52 weeks a year.
    0:10:31 And we found that to just build an amazing connection with my community.
    0:10:35 And it was built on the three practices that I believe are needed for transformation.
    0:10:39 So there’s coaching, consistency and community.
    0:10:43 I believe that if you want to change an area of your life, you need all three.
    0:10:46 And most of us are trying to change our life with just one.
    0:10:49 So if you have coaching, it means you know what to do.
    0:10:52 But if you don’t have consistency, you don’t know how to repeat it.
    0:10:57 And if you don’t have community, you won’t be inspired and motivated to keep going.
    0:11:01 If you only have community, you have lots of people around you that want to get there.
    0:11:04 But you don’t have coaching, you don’t know where you’re going.
    0:11:07 And if you don’t have consistency, you don’t have the habit building.
    0:11:12 And so Genius, my app was built around coaching, consistency and community.
    0:11:16 And we’ve had thousands of members from over 140 countries in the world
    0:11:19 that are members of that platform.
    0:11:20 And then I saw the value in meditation.
    0:11:25 And I was getting a lot of mentions from a lot of friends of mine
    0:11:29 that at the same time, 2016, 2018, around those times,
    0:11:31 there was this app that was having this massive impact.
    0:11:33 It was called Calm.
    0:11:35 Of course, everyone knows it now.
    0:11:38 And a lot of my friends were telling me about Calm.
    0:11:42 And a lot of other people were telling the founders of Calm about me and my work.
    0:11:44 And everyone kept telling us we should meet.
    0:11:46 So I met with the founders of Calm.
    0:11:50 I think probably the first time in 2018, somewhere like that,
    0:11:54 with Michael and Alex, who went on to become very good friends.
    0:12:00 And I love their vision of making meditation and mindfulness
    0:12:03 available in the most accessible, relevant, practical ways.
    0:12:06 So they have meditation stories read by Matthew McConaughey
    0:12:10 or meditation series by LeBron James.
    0:12:14 And so we built together something that they wanted to call the Daily J,
    0:12:20 which is where people can listen to me for seven minutes every single day,
    0:12:22 five days a week for the last three years.
    0:12:27 And that program was around, you know, $42 a year for the subscription.
    0:12:30 So that became an amazing, amazing investment in my time and energy,
    0:12:35 where we scripted a unique meditation that last seven minutes was seven minutes
    0:12:39 because we wanted to create something that you could do while washing the dishes,
    0:12:42 doing the laundry, drying your clothes.
    0:12:46 You could do it while packing your breakfast in the morning, whatever it was.
    0:12:50 We wanted to create a meditation that you could practice on top of your already busy life.
    0:12:54 And that’s had tens of millions of downloads now, that meditation series.
    0:12:59 So I found myself partnering with amazing brands that I was proud to be a part of.
    0:13:02 I found myself creating ventures like Genius.
    0:13:07 And then, of course, as we went and built the podcast, which we launched in 2019,
    0:13:09 that’s an interesting story in and of itself,
    0:13:14 because I invested everything I had in 2018 to launch the podcast in 2019,
    0:13:21 put all the money I had into production, you know, editing, all of that kind of stuff.
    0:13:24 And for anyone who’s launched a podcast, you know,
    0:13:27 you can’t monetize for the first six to 12 months
    0:13:32 because you have to have a consistent record of downloads and data.
    0:13:37 And so we didn’t start monetizing the podcast probably until late 2019, early 2020.
    0:13:40 But that turned out to be one of the best investments in my life
    0:13:42 because of the success of the podcast that we’ve had now.
    0:13:48 So I looked at everything from partnerships, platforms, and all of it came from a place of passion.
    0:13:54 I did the podcast because I had people in my life that I was coaching clients or friends
    0:13:57 that I was having these amazing offline conversations with.
    0:14:00 And I thought, how amazing would it be to have them online?
    0:14:03 The CarMap was because I loved what they were building.
    0:14:06 And I’m so grateful to be the Chief Purpose Officer of CarM.
    0:14:08 And then Genius was a need.
    0:14:10 Our audience was saying, Jay, I want you to coach me.
    0:14:12 I want your insight in my life.
    0:14:14 And so all of it was built around passions.
    0:14:19 We got so many other offers for me to build everything from apps
    0:14:23 that I didn’t want to build through to this field and that industry.
    0:14:26 We said no to so many things because they weren’t things we were passionate about.
    0:14:29 I think there were plenty more opportunities that we’ve said no to
    0:14:31 than the ones we said yes to.
    0:14:35 So you’re both in subscription and ad supported.
    0:14:37 Do you have any advice?
    0:14:41 I mean, we are constantly, it feels like every three or six months,
    0:14:45 we toy with the idea of putting some, some or all of our content behind a paywall.
    0:14:48 Because sometimes you read an ad and you think, I mean,
    0:14:51 for example, we no longer do crypto ads because I read this ad.
    0:14:54 And I think I don’t have the time to do diligence on this.
    0:14:56 And I just don’t, it just doesn’t feel right.
    0:15:01 And I actually enjoy some of the ad reads, but we always toy with the idea.
    0:15:04 Wouldn’t it be nice to kind of go more artisanal?
    0:15:06 I have a lot of respect for Sam Harris.
    0:15:08 I know you’ve built a big subscription business.
    0:15:13 Break down the pluses and the minuses in your view of kind of the ad supported model
    0:15:14 and the subscription model.
    0:15:16 And do you have a preference for one or the other?
    0:15:22 I’d say that to me, when I look at anything, I have a three step checking system.
    0:15:25 So whether we’re choosing an ad partner to come on our platform,
    0:15:27 whether we’re looking at a partnership.
    0:15:31 And it’s always been called ESM and the E stands for energy.
    0:15:35 The first thing I look at is, do I think we’re energetically matched?
    0:15:38 So when I met Michael Acton Smith and Alex, who founded calm,
    0:15:40 I really liked those guys.
    0:15:40 They’re great people.
    0:15:43 And so if I can, I’m always trying to sense energy.
    0:15:45 I loved it when you came into the studio.
    0:15:46 I thought we hit it off.
    0:15:48 I hope we can do lots more together.
    0:15:51 I’m someone who likes to live in an energetic space.
    0:15:53 The second is strategy.
    0:15:57 Do I really believe now that we’ve passed through the gate of energy,
    0:16:04 do I really believe that strategically this partner, this brand, this idea
    0:16:06 whether it be a venture, is it strategically accurate?
    0:16:08 Do we actually believe this has a plan?
    0:16:10 Does it strategically make sense?
    0:16:13 Does it have, do we understand the market?
    0:16:14 Do we understand demand?
    0:16:16 And I always do that second.
    0:16:19 And that’s an important second gate for it to pass through.
    0:16:21 And the M stands for money.
    0:16:25 Finally, financially, does this stack up in terms of my investment in time,
    0:16:29 in terms of what I believe our value is, that person’s value is,
    0:16:31 are we aligned financially?
    0:16:33 And so to me, ESM has always been my model.
    0:16:37 And because I think in initial times, the energy would be great
    0:16:39 and you just rush into a relationship.
    0:16:42 And it’s almost like bad dating where like,
    0:16:43 you’re like, oh, we energetically get along.
    0:16:45 We should build something together.
    0:16:47 And then, you know, three months down the line,
    0:16:48 you realize it wasn’t a good fit.
    0:16:53 And so ESM has protected me and helped me make better decisions,
    0:16:54 not that I’ve made perfect decisions,
    0:16:56 but it’s definitely been a supportive technique.
    0:17:00 When I look at both of the methods you’ve talked about,
    0:17:05 I love the fact that 99% of what I create is free.
    0:17:07 So the podcast is free.
    0:17:11 We post to Instagram every day for free.
    0:17:14 We post to YouTube every week for free.
    0:17:20 We, 99% of what we create on a yearly basis is absolutely free.
    0:17:22 Now, like you said, there’s an ads space there.
    0:17:24 Like we have ads on our podcast, of course,
    0:17:28 but they’re brands that we choose very intentionally
    0:17:31 and carefully through our research and the best we can.
    0:17:35 And that to me, I love because my goal
    0:17:37 was always making wisdom go viral.
    0:17:42 How can we make wisdom accessible, relevant,
    0:17:43 and practical to everyone?
    0:17:44 That’s where my true heart is.
    0:17:50 That’s what my joy is in knowing that someone in the middle
    0:17:54 of a country that I’ve never visited can watch my video
    0:17:55 and it can help them.
    0:17:56 That makes my day.
    0:17:57 Like that really fuels me.
    0:18:00 At the same time, what I found is that there were people
    0:18:04 who wanted to go deeper, who wanted to learn more,
    0:18:05 who wanted more commitment,
    0:18:08 the Genius app being a great membership platform.
    0:18:12 We found that those were people who wanted to commit
    0:18:15 an hour, two hours, three hours a week to do the work.
    0:18:18 Now, in order to give them something that’s of value,
    0:18:22 I also needed to put in more effort.
    0:18:24 I also needed to be able to build a platform.
    0:18:26 We have teams that are running all the behind the scenes.
    0:18:29 So if you ask me which one I prefer,
    0:18:31 the truth is I like both models.
    0:18:35 I think entrepreneurs should be open to both models
    0:18:38 because I think free is a great way to scale
    0:18:41 and membership is a great way for depth.
    0:18:43 And I value both scale and depth
    0:18:45 because scale allows me to reach someone
    0:18:47 who may never have a thought about wellness
    0:18:52 and depth allows me to reach people as deeply as I want to take them.
    0:18:55 And so to me, as someone who’s fascinated by both scale and depth,
    0:18:59 I’m not excited about the fact that someone listens to one episode
    0:19:00 and then never changes their life
    0:19:04 because I don’t believe that you’re going to transform your whole life
    0:19:06 without habits and community.
    0:19:09 At the same time, I’m not someone who’s just inspired
    0:19:11 by taking people on a long journey
    0:19:14 and not reaching people in the corners of the world.
    0:19:16 So my values are both scale and depth.
    0:19:19 And I believe there was a TED talk a few years ago
    0:19:21 that called it, I can’t remember who it was by,
    0:19:23 but it was called mass intimacy.
    0:19:26 So this idea of how do you scale an idea
    0:19:29 but then have really intimate experiences with people?
    0:19:31 So membership to me is intimacy
    0:19:33 and social media and podcasting is scale.
    0:19:36 And when you break that down further,
    0:19:41 what we realized after running genius for what was it at that time,
    0:19:45 probably like we were running genius for two to three years
    0:19:49 and we found that people needed to become leaders.
    0:19:52 So we launched my certification school
    0:19:56 because we found that now people who’d been through the program,
    0:19:57 they were saying, Jay, I want to be a part of this mission.
    0:19:59 I want to help others.
    0:20:00 I want to serve. I want to give back.
    0:20:01 I want to be involved.
    0:20:03 I don’t just want to be a student.
    0:20:05 I want to be a teacher and a leader.
    0:20:07 And so we built our certification platform
    0:20:09 to help people actually develop the skills.
    0:20:11 It’s a full 100 hour program.
    0:20:14 So a lot of our development of products and services
    0:20:17 has been based on listening to our community.
    0:20:19 And I think that’s what I would be doing
    0:20:21 when you’re making your decision
    0:20:24 is if you’re hearing people say, Scott,
    0:20:25 I really want a membership.
    0:20:26 Like I want to learn more from you.
    0:20:28 I want to have more access to you.
    0:20:30 I don’t just want you talking to all of us.
    0:20:33 I want you talking to a small group of us.
    0:20:36 I think it’s listening to your audience and community
    0:20:38 that makes us make amazing shifts.
    0:20:40 So for us, everything we’ve developed
    0:20:43 has been constantly, consciously listening intently
    0:20:46 to what our audience wants, what they need,
    0:20:47 how we can make it better.
    0:20:50 And I think that’s the fun of being a creator there.
    0:20:51 You’re not just building your vision.
    0:20:53 You’re building the vision that your audience wants.
    0:20:56 You’re also, I mean, you’re definitely,
    0:20:57 you’re going, in my sense, or what I’ve read
    0:20:58 is you’re going multi-channel.
    0:21:00 That you’re actually taking your podcast on tour.
    0:21:01 Is that correct?
    0:21:03 That’s right. Yeah. I’m so excited.
    0:21:06 It’s the first time we’ve ever taken the podcast on tour.
    0:21:12 So two years ago, I went on a nearly 40 city world tour,
    0:21:14 which was a one-man show led by myself.
    0:21:17 But this time, I’m actually going to interview guests on stage.
    0:21:21 And I just felt that the podcast is now, what, six years old?
    0:21:25 And it felt like the right time to go out there.
    0:21:26 And I was thinking, all these people are trusting us
    0:21:28 with their ears every day.
    0:21:30 And I was like, I want to meet the people
    0:21:31 who make on purpose what it is.
    0:21:33 I always say on my podcast,
    0:21:35 “Hey, if you see me on the streets, come and say hi.
    0:21:36 If you listen on purpose,
    0:21:38 tell me that you listen to the podcast.”
    0:21:39 And I get lots of people coming.
    0:21:40 It’s nice, isn’t it?
    0:21:41 Yeah, I get lots of people coming up to me.
    0:21:43 So I thought, how awesome would it be
    0:21:45 to actually travel, bring out guests
    0:21:48 that people also are excited to see in the flesh?
    0:21:50 I hope maybe you’ll come out to one of them
    0:21:51 and be a guest for us.
    0:21:52 That would be amazing.
    0:21:55 And I think also giving people the opportunity
    0:21:57 to ask me questions, ask the guest questions,
    0:22:00 I think it’s a dynamic experience
    0:22:02 that you don’t get to do on a podcast.
    0:22:03 So I’m excited to take it on tour.
    0:22:05 So we’re starting with North America,
    0:22:07 and then hopefully we’ll take it across
    0:22:08 different parts of the world as well.
    0:22:11 It feels to me like podcasts saying,
    0:22:12 I mean, the original guys,
    0:22:14 the Mark Marins, the Alec Baldwin’s,
    0:22:18 there were some kind of initial people in podcasting,
    0:22:19 and Joe Rogan is endured,
    0:22:22 but there’s a constant reshuffling.
    0:22:23 I have noticed, for example,
    0:22:26 I think Joe Rogan is about to be displaced,
    0:22:30 either by Mel Robbins or a kid here named Stephen Bartlett.
    0:22:32 There’s just a constant disruption
    0:22:33 in the podcasting space.
    0:22:36 And because I’m obsessed with affirmation of other people,
    0:22:38 and I’m always feeling economically insecure,
    0:22:40 I check the rankings every day,
    0:22:43 and I can’t get over just how dynamic
    0:22:44 the rankings are right now,
    0:22:48 meaning that I would bet in the top 100 podcasts,
    0:22:49 30 of them, and it feels like 50,
    0:22:51 weren’t there six months ago,
    0:22:53 which means 30 or 50 that were in the top 100
    0:22:54 and are no longer there.
    0:22:55 What are your observations?
    0:22:57 I mean, I think people think of you
    0:22:59 as a very spiritual guy on a podcast,
    0:23:00 but you’re also a business person.
    0:23:02 When you sit down with your team
    0:23:03 and you think about the dynamics
    0:23:04 of the business right now,
    0:23:06 what do you see out there?
    0:23:07 What do you think is shaking up the industry?
    0:23:11 So, yeah, it’s a really interesting question,
    0:23:12 and I love talking about these things,
    0:23:17 and I really believe that talking just suddenly
    0:23:18 to the point that you mentioned
    0:23:20 about spirituality and business,
    0:23:23 one of my favorite thoughts from Martin Luther King is,
    0:23:27 those who love peace need to learn to organize themselves
    0:23:28 as well as those who love war.
    0:23:31 And so when I look at my strategic mind
    0:23:32 and when I look at my business mind,
    0:23:36 I’ve become extremely organized about spreading wisdom
    0:23:38 because I believe that if I’m not,
    0:23:40 this wouldn’t even exist.
    0:23:41 I wouldn’t even be around today.
    0:23:44 I started creating content nine years ago,
    0:23:46 and the fact that we still exist
    0:23:49 is only because we’ve had to be thoughtful
    0:23:50 and mindful about how we build,
    0:23:53 and I think mindfulness and strategy
    0:23:55 are more aligned than people may think.
    0:23:59 So, anyway, to answer your question more directly,
    0:24:01 there’s a couple of things.
    0:24:05 The first thing is when a lot of us started out,
    0:24:06 I mean, I can’t speak to Joe Rogan
    0:24:08 because there’s so many more years before me,
    0:24:11 but when you look at my content journey on social media,
    0:24:14 whether it’s Facebook where we have 30 million followers,
    0:24:16 Instagram where we have 16 million followers,
    0:24:18 TikTok where we have four and a half million followers,
    0:24:22 the podcast where we do 100 million downloads,
    0:24:25 hundreds of millions of downloads every year,
    0:24:30 the differences is that it was all organic.
    0:24:34 And what I mean by that is we never did any paid advertising.
    0:24:37 And what I’ve noticed in the last six to 12 months
    0:24:40 is a lot of the rise has come from paid models,
    0:24:42 more strategic models,
    0:24:45 the industry getting smarter and sharper,
    0:24:47 giving people the ability to pay to play.
    0:24:51 And so I’m noticing that a lot of the charts,
    0:24:53 and for those of us that understand that well,
    0:24:55 a lot of the charts aren’t necessarily accurate,
    0:24:57 a lot of it’s become paid to play.
    0:25:00 And so the charts are accurate and inaccurate
    0:25:02 in that they’re incomplete
    0:25:04 because there’s so much more to it behind the scenes.
    0:25:08 So there are platforms now where you can pay money
    0:25:11 based on however many episodes that you want to launch
    0:25:12 that will boost your subscribers,
    0:25:14 not artificially, they’re real people,
    0:25:16 but it will boost you in the charts
    0:25:18 because you just got more subscribers that week.
    0:25:21 That doesn’t mean you actually got more listens than Joe Rogan,
    0:25:22 just to give an example.
    0:25:24 And so I think we have to be very careful
    0:25:28 as creators when we’re watching those things.
    0:25:31 And to me, the pay to play has changed the industry of podcasting.
    0:25:35 I think the exclusive deals that now have gone
    0:25:37 non-exclusive have changed the deal.
    0:25:40 So none of the big platforms right now, Spotify, et cetera,
    0:25:42 want to do exclusive deals again.
    0:25:44 So they don’t want to do that either.
    0:25:45 So that’s changed the market.
    0:25:48 And the third thing that’s changed the market
    0:25:52 is the incorporation of YouTube and video views.
    0:25:56 So audio as an industry has only ever valued.
    0:25:58 So when I came into podcasting,
    0:26:00 we worked really hard on downloads
    0:26:02 because that’s where the value was financially
    0:26:04 from a business point of view.
    0:26:06 But today, the shift is happening slowly.
    0:26:08 It’s not happened yet.
    0:26:10 But in the next 12 months, you’re going to see video views
    0:26:13 being married to audio downloads
    0:26:16 as part of valuing the strength of a podcast.
    0:26:18 Hence, when you look at the success of Stephen,
    0:26:21 who’s a friend and coming over for dinner tonight,
    0:26:23 or Mel, who’s also a friend who’s been on the show,
    0:26:27 like when you look at the success Stephen’s had on YouTube,
    0:26:30 that value hasn’t even been accounted for yet.
    0:26:33 And in the next 12 months, you’re going to see that
    0:26:36 be accounted for in a really valuable way
    0:26:38 from a financial business point of view.
    0:26:39 So I think those are the three things,
    0:26:42 pay to play, non-exclusivity,
    0:26:46 which is really helpful for people to be on every platform
    0:26:49 and gain the distribution that platforms weren’t allowing.
    0:26:52 And then the third thing is the valuing of YouTube
    0:26:55 as a big, big, big player.
    0:26:57 And if I’m not mistaken,
    0:27:00 the biggest consumption of podcasting happens on YouTube.
    0:27:04 And so I think those three things have really shifted
    0:27:06 up the industry where back in the day,
    0:27:06 you didn’t have pay to play.
    0:27:08 It was purely organic.
    0:27:09 Platforms were exclusive.
    0:27:13 So you had podcasts that weren’t competing for their rankings.
    0:27:16 And thirdly, YouTube wasn’t included.
    0:27:19 Not that it’s included in Apple or Spotify rankings,
    0:27:21 but it wasn’t included from a business point of view.
    0:27:22 We’ll be right back.
    0:27:30 Support for the show comes from the FunRise Innovation Fund.
    0:27:32 Think of the five biggest names in AI today.
    0:27:34 How many of these companies do you own shares of?
    0:27:35 Probably not many.
    0:27:38 Maybe one, maybe two.
    0:27:38 Why is that?
    0:27:40 Because the open AI’s and anthropics of the world
    0:27:41 are still private.
    0:27:45 That means unless you’re an employee or a VC, you’re out of luck.
    0:27:47 So it isn’t hard to see why venture capital
    0:27:49 has been one of the most prized asset classes in the world.
    0:27:51 But unless you’re worth eight or nine figures,
    0:27:53 you likely don’t have access to these funds.
    0:27:55 The FunRise Innovation Fund is different.
    0:27:57 It’s already raised more than $150 million.
    0:28:00 It holds a portfolio of pre-IPO tech companies
    0:28:03 that are valued at tens or even hundreds of billions of dollars.
    0:28:06 And most importantly, it’s open to investors of all sizes.
    0:28:08 Visit fundrise.com/proppg to check out
    0:28:11 the Innovation Fund’s portfolio and start investing today.
    0:28:14 Relevant disclaimers can be found at the end of the show
    0:28:16 and at fundrise.com/innovation.
    0:28:21 Support for the show comes from Skims.
    0:28:23 This is for the men listening right now.
    0:28:25 There are endless products promising self-improvement,
    0:28:28 but when was the last time you updated your underwear drawer?
    0:28:30 Though the first thing you put on in the morning,
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    0:28:51 I’ve tried Skims myself.
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    0:29:20 (upbeat music)
    0:29:25 Support for PropG comes from the NPR podcast Up First.
    0:29:27 Compulsively reading, depressing, upsetting
    0:29:30 and enraging news all day long does not feel good.
    0:29:32 You don’t need to tell me that.
    0:29:35 Oh my God, help me, Cal God take me away,
    0:29:37 but it can be hard to find the right balance.
    0:29:41 Between protecting your mental health and staying informed,
    0:29:44 that’s where NPR’s podcast Up First comes in.
    0:29:46 Up First covers the three most important stories
    0:29:48 of the day in just 15 minutes so you can learn
    0:29:50 what you need to know and then move on with your day.
    0:29:53 From the current administration to business and the economy,
    0:29:54 all the way to immigration policies.
    0:29:57 Up First is the go-to daily habit for the news consumer
    0:30:01 who wants to stay informed but is forever strapped for a time.
    0:30:03 And every episode gives you what you need to be informed
    0:30:05 without compromising your sanity.
    0:30:08 I listened to a recent episode and I found it really crisp
    0:30:10 and kind of gave me sort of an overview
    0:30:12 or the cliff notes of the day.
    0:30:15 And by the way, NPR, they just do a fantastic job
    0:30:16 at almost everything they do.
    0:30:19 The production quality is really top notch.
    0:30:21 If you’re looking for more news and less noise,
    0:30:25 you can listen to the Up First podcast from NPR today.
    0:30:36 I want to kind of move more towards your domain expertise
    0:30:37 and I’m going to start out,
    0:30:38 I want to talk about a couple things.
    0:30:40 I want to talk about anxiety and I want to talk about finding love.
    0:30:43 And I’m going to, so just so you know,
    0:30:44 my guests are nothing but a vehicle for me
    0:30:46 to talk about myself.
    0:30:47 So this is that part of the program.
    0:30:51 I struggle with anger and depression.
    0:30:53 I’ve been able to manage it without pharmaceuticals.
    0:30:57 I do it through exercise, time with my boys, trying to eat clean.
    0:31:01 I have a bunch of tricks to try and, you know,
    0:31:04 or practices to keep me sort of even killed
    0:31:06 and hating my life less and less every day.
    0:31:09 But things will trigger me and I’ll go down a rabbit hole.
    0:31:11 And that’s happened to me recently
    0:31:13 since the election or since the inauguration.
    0:31:16 And whether that those feelings are justified
    0:31:18 or there’s something deeper,
    0:31:22 I’ve really struggled with trying to disassociate or separate
    0:31:23 or maintain some perspective
    0:31:27 around what’s happened recently in the US.
    0:31:29 And this isn’t a political statement.
    0:31:31 I’m not saying that my anxiety is warranted
    0:31:36 or in any way justifies or indicts what’s happening.
    0:31:42 But I would, what advice would you give to me to say, okay, Scott?
    0:31:44 And for me, meditation is like flossing.
    0:31:45 I lie about it.
    0:31:48 And that is when my hygienist says, do you floss?
    0:31:50 I lie and I say yes.
    0:31:51 I very rarely floss.
    0:31:54 And when people ask me if I meditate, I lie and I say yes.
    0:31:55 And the reality is I don’t.
    0:31:57 I really don’t do a lot of meditation.
    0:31:59 So given that I’m a newbie,
    0:32:02 given that I’m struggling a little bit with anxiety,
    0:32:05 given the state of the world, give me your best shot.
    0:32:08 Like give me your download on, all right, Scott,
    0:32:11 these are some best practices, some initial steps.
    0:32:15 You should be taking to manage your anxiety.
    0:32:21 First of all, Scott, I want to validate your anxiety by saying that
    0:32:28 I’m not surprised that you feel the anxiety that you feel.
    0:32:30 I think we’re living at a time.
    0:32:32 I was reading an article that said,
    0:32:40 we digest or consume more tragedy in 24 hours
    0:32:43 than we used to do in our whole lifetime 25 years ago.
    0:32:46 And if you think about that for a second,
    0:32:51 the amount of news, information, negativity, noise,
    0:32:54 notifications that a human consumes today
    0:32:57 is not something we’ve upgraded to yet.
    0:33:00 It’s not something that we’ve figured out yet.
    0:33:02 And so anyone who’s listening right now,
    0:33:04 which I think will be all of your audience
    0:33:07 that feels anxiety about something in their life,
    0:33:09 it’s because we’re so overexposed.
    0:33:12 Me, you, and everyone, we’re all overexposed.
    0:33:15 You know what’s happening halfway across the world
    0:33:18 before maybe even someone who’s in that area,
    0:33:21 in that vicinity, if you’re logged in and tuned in.
    0:33:24 And so I think the challenge we’re having is
    0:33:26 we are exposed to more negativity,
    0:33:31 noise, news, notifications than we ever have in our lifetime.
    0:33:33 Now, accepting that, and we have to accept that,
    0:33:35 because I think if we don’t accept that,
    0:33:36 we can get very judgmental.
    0:33:39 We can get very harsh with ourselves.
    0:33:40 We can get very critical with ourselves.
    0:33:43 If we just think I’m weak, I’m not strong enough.
    0:33:45 I’m not, you know, maybe there’s something wrong with me.
    0:33:48 It’s like, no, no, no, some things have changed.
    0:33:50 Things have shifted and they’ve shifted fast.
    0:33:51 And you might even have missed it.
    0:33:53 So what do we do with that?
    0:33:54 I think it’s really important.
    0:33:58 The first thing I’d say is before we even get into meditation
    0:34:02 is we’ve got to be really careful with our digital diet.
    0:34:07 If your digital diet means in every gap of your day,
    0:34:11 you take out your phone and you scroll on TikTok or Instagram
    0:34:13 and you allow yourself to discover
    0:34:17 the latest piece of news around the world,
    0:34:20 it’s literally like going to your refrigerator
    0:34:23 or your snack cupboard and picking out a bag of chips
    0:34:26 every single part of the day where you have a break.
    0:34:28 Now, if you did that, if every single break you had,
    0:34:31 you went and grabbed a fizzy soda, a Coke,
    0:34:34 you went and grabbed a bag of chips.
    0:34:37 If you went and grabbed an unhealthy snack, no wonder.
    0:34:39 Your diet would be terrible.
    0:34:42 You’d be highly inflamed and you’d have massive health issues.
    0:34:44 But that’s what we’re doing to our mind.
    0:34:48 And so the first step for me is being really clear about
    0:34:51 where you get your news, how you get your news
    0:34:53 and how often you get it.
    0:34:55 That to me will solve half of our issues.
    0:34:58 I don’t think people are curating
    0:35:02 how they consume difficult information.
    0:35:04 If you think about it, like if you were diagnosed,
    0:35:09 one of my friends recently sadly had diagnosis of cancer,
    0:35:12 when his doctor was telling him he had cancer,
    0:35:15 the doctor would say to you, “Take a seat.
    0:35:16 “I’ve got something to share with you.
    0:35:17 “Do you mind coming in?”
    0:35:20 They might even call you and say, “Hey, do you mind coming in?
    0:35:21 “Take a seat.
    0:35:23 “Hey, this is what’s going on.”
    0:35:27 That would be the environment in which you consume
    0:35:29 difficult information.
    0:35:31 Now, not that all the information we consume
    0:35:33 on a daily basis is about us.
    0:35:35 But if you’re going, “Oh my gosh, I just heard
    0:35:36 “that someone got shot down the road.”
    0:35:40 And, “Oh my god, I just opened up the ring app
    0:35:41 “and I know that someone got burgled
    0:35:42 “like a mile away from me.”
    0:35:45 And then, “Oh my gosh, there’s fires happening over here.”
    0:35:47 And it’s, all of a sudden, you’re not informed.
    0:35:48 You’re overwhelmed.
    0:35:52 And so I would really ask people to differentiate
    0:35:56 between what is your definition of being informed
    0:35:58 and what are the newsletters you follow,
    0:35:59 what are the news accounts you follow,
    0:36:01 how often do you look at it,
    0:36:04 and that digital diet has to become everything.
    0:36:06 Because otherwise, your anxiety is going to be
    0:36:07 constantly triggered because, by the way,
    0:36:10 these platforms are told to do that.
    0:36:12 They know that they’ve got to have breaking news
    0:36:13 every moment.
    0:36:16 And I know so many people who just have a news channel on
    0:36:18 in the background of living their day.
    0:36:21 No wonder you’ve got all of this anxiety
    0:36:23 just seeping in moment to moment.
    0:36:27 Studies show we have 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day.
    0:36:32 And 80% of those are negative
    0:36:34 and 80% of those are repetitive.
    0:36:38 So you’re not just having lots of different negative thoughts.
    0:36:41 You’re having the same negative thought again
    0:36:43 and again and again,
    0:36:45 which means you can disrupt that pattern,
    0:36:47 which means you can change it.
    0:36:48 So how do we do it?
    0:36:51 You were saying you struggle with meditation,
    0:36:54 and I could give you loads of great meditation advice,
    0:36:55 and here’s the thing, Scott,
    0:36:57 until I lived with you for seven days,
    0:36:58 maybe 30,
    0:37:00 and sat next to you every single day
    0:37:02 and meditated with you,
    0:37:04 chances are it would be hard
    0:37:06 for you to truly internalize it.
    0:37:07 Because that’s the kind of pattern shift
    0:37:09 that your life would require.
    0:37:12 So, or anyone’s life would require.
    0:37:14 So what I’m going to say is this,
    0:37:17 you can’t control 60 to 80,000 thoughts per day.
    0:37:18 You might not even be able to meditate
    0:37:19 for 10 minutes a day,
    0:37:21 but here’s what I want you to do.
    0:37:24 I want you to master the first thought
    0:37:28 and the last thought of every day,
    0:37:30 because usually what happens
    0:37:32 is our first thought is repetitive
    0:37:33 and our last thought is repetitive.
    0:37:34 Think about it.
    0:37:36 You go to sleep and you say to yourself,
    0:37:38 “I’m so tired.”
    0:37:39 You wake up in the morning
    0:37:40 and the first thing you say to yourself is,
    0:37:42 “I’m so tired.”
    0:37:44 You somehow make it through to 9 a.m.
    0:37:45 to get your morning coffee
    0:37:47 and you’re thinking, “I’m exhausted.”
    0:37:48 Then you get to 12 noon
    0:37:49 and you’re thinking,
    0:37:50 “Well, lunch is going to be a bit late.
    0:37:51 I’ve got a couple of meetings.
    0:37:53 I’m exhausted.”
    0:37:55 And now it makes it at 6 p.m.
    0:37:56 You’re like, “I’m so tired,
    0:37:57 but I’ve got to work a bit.”
    0:38:00 And somehow at 10.37 p.m.,
    0:38:02 you get the courage to click next episode
    0:38:03 and watch another three hours
    0:38:04 of your favorite show
    0:38:05 and the cycle goes again.
    0:38:08 So we’re used to repeating the thought,
    0:38:10 “I’m so tired.”
    0:38:11 And that thought’s useless.
    0:38:14 It doesn’t help because we’re not making it useful.
    0:38:17 So how do we master the first and last thought of the day?
    0:38:19 You set an alarm at night
    0:38:21 to wake up in the morning.
    0:38:23 You don’t set an alarm in the morning.
    0:38:24 Right? You don’t say,
    0:38:25 “I’m going to wake up at 7.30.”
    0:38:27 And when I wake up at 7.30 in the morning,
    0:38:28 I have it on my alarm.
    0:38:29 You go the night before,
    0:38:31 “I want to wake up at 6 a.m. tomorrow.
    0:38:32 Let me set my alarm.”
    0:38:35 Let me set the mindset
    0:38:37 I want to wake up with tonight.
    0:38:39 What is the coding
    0:38:41 that I’m going to put into my brain,
    0:38:42 into my mind?
    0:38:44 I am going to wake up
    0:38:47 rejuvenated, rested, and fueled.
    0:38:51 I am waking up feeling rested,
    0:38:52 feeling calm,
    0:38:56 and not being distracted from my phone.
    0:38:59 What is it that you want to program yourself to do?
    0:39:01 You’ll find that if you do that intentionally,
    0:39:04 of course, if you ideally sleep at a decent time,
    0:39:05 you’ll wake up in the morning,
    0:39:08 and you’ll find that if you plan to that thought deep enough,
    0:39:09 it will be the first thought of the day.
    0:39:10 And all of a sudden,
    0:39:12 you won’t retrieve your phone
    0:39:13 and allow the news, negativity,
    0:39:15 and notifications, and the noise to come in.
    0:39:16 And you’ll say, “You know what?
    0:39:17 I’m going to go on a little walk,
    0:39:19 get some sunlight,
    0:39:21 go and take my morning coffee,
    0:39:23 what morning tea, whatever it is for you.
    0:39:25 And yeah, in 30 minutes, I’ll look at my phone.
    0:39:26 And by the way, I won’t just look at my phone.
    0:39:29 I know the newsletter I’m going to look at
    0:39:30 or the page I’m going to look at.
    0:39:33 So I would encourage you
    0:39:35 to master your first and last thought of the day
    0:39:38 as a preliminary practice to meditation,
    0:39:40 because to me,
    0:39:43 those thoughts are the ones that are repeated
    0:39:46 and meditation ultimately is a repeated thought.
    0:39:47 And so that’s where I would start.
    0:39:50 And I would have never gotten there on my own.
    0:39:51 This is virtue signaling,
    0:39:52 but I’ll do it anyways.
    0:39:54 I’m finally, I’m older than you.
    0:39:54 I’m at a point in my life
    0:39:57 where I want to catch up from all that I’ve taken
    0:39:59 and I’m starting to give away my money.
    0:40:01 And it’s something I find really rewarding,
    0:40:04 but I want to be intentional and purposeful about it.
    0:40:06 And I met with someone who was so insightful around giving,
    0:40:08 and they said, “What are you passionate about?”
    0:40:11 And my passion is helping struggling young men.
    0:40:13 Like, well, what would you do for them if you could do,
    0:40:15 if you had a group of young men
    0:40:17 and you wanted to do something for them,
    0:40:18 what would you do?
    0:40:18 What would you do?
    0:40:20 And I said, “Well, number three in reverse order,
    0:40:23 I’d want more male involvement in their life.”
    0:40:25 And that’s, you know, you can solve that.
    0:40:28 Big brothers, there’s some stuff that’s more complicated,
    0:40:32 ranging from family court or different types of legislation.
    0:40:35 Number two, more economic opportunities.
    0:40:36 So you can think of things.
    0:40:38 You can think of legislation or vocational programming.
    0:40:41 But the thing I would want to do for young men,
    0:40:42 and my question to you,
    0:40:46 is if I could give anything to a lot of young men,
    0:40:50 it’s that one in three young men are in a relationship,
    0:40:53 and two in three women under the age of 30 in a relationship.
    0:40:55 And you think, “Well, that’s mathematically impossible.”
    0:40:57 It’s because women are dating older,
    0:41:02 because they want more economically and emotionally viable men.
    0:41:05 And when I look back at the most important things in my life
    0:41:08 as a young man, it was having the joy,
    0:41:10 the love, the camaraderie, and quite frankly,
    0:41:13 the guardrails of a romantic relationship.
    0:41:16 It was just so important, you know,
    0:41:18 to have someone who was crazy about me
    0:41:21 and then not crazy about me to get my heart broken,
    0:41:23 to learn resilience.
    0:41:26 It’s just that partnership, saving for a house.
    0:41:30 It was just so, more I think than money,
    0:41:33 more than anything, it just shaped me as a man.
    0:41:38 And so few men are finding this.
    0:41:38 At a young age.
    0:41:41 And you’ve written a lot about this,
    0:41:47 but how could you advise a young man to be more successful
    0:41:50 with respect to romantic relationships and finding love?
    0:41:52 And I know that’s a really big,
    0:41:54 I know we’re gonna need a bigger boat,
    0:41:58 but are there any practices for a young man who thinks,
    0:42:01 “I remember thinking, I didn’t have a girlfriend
    0:42:03 ’til I was well into college.
    0:42:05 I remember thinking I’d be the best boyfriend
    0:42:07 if someone would just give me a shot.”
    0:42:07 Right?
    0:42:10 And I think there are literally millions of men out there
    0:42:12 who are thinking the same thing.
    0:42:13 Anyways, your thoughts.
    0:42:16 That’s, yeah, it’s a huge question.
    0:42:19 And I’m so glad that you’ve focused your life on this.
    0:42:22 I was very fortunate enough in my younger years
    0:42:26 to mentor a group of 20 young men in my spiritual community
    0:42:28 who I’ve seen grow up,
    0:42:33 probably mentor them for around 15 years now at this point.
    0:42:36 And it’s been an incredible journey watching them,
    0:42:40 become phenomenal young men, find love, settle down.
    0:42:43 Some of them have started to have children now.
    0:42:46 It’s been one of the most meaningful investments in my life
    0:42:49 that I probably didn’t realize how deep it was gonna be then.
    0:42:52 And these men are my younger brothers.
    0:42:54 They’ve become very, very close friends.
    0:42:56 So it’s something very close to my heart.
    0:43:00 The first thing I’ll say when it comes to love and for young men,
    0:43:03 which is probably counterintuitive
    0:43:05 and probably one of the hardest things to train,
    0:43:09 but I do believe it’s so valuable, is sense control.
    0:43:11 Because sense control,
    0:43:14 and this is what I was fortunate enough to learn in the monastery,
    0:43:21 sense control is the greatest confidence booster and builder
    0:43:24 that you’ll ever, ever have.
    0:43:30 You can’t be a master of your senses and not be confident.
    0:43:34 It’s just not possible because you’ve conquered the hardest thing.
    0:43:38 You’ve built a relationship with the part of you
    0:43:41 that pushes you and pulls you whenever it feels like it.
    0:43:44 So how does a young man do that in today’s world
    0:43:50 that’s bombarded by porn, bombarded by exposure to too many things,
    0:43:54 too many sensory images, sounds, everything else?
    0:43:55 How do you do that?
    0:44:02 I think it’s really powerful when men can build up a healthy relationship
    0:44:06 with spending time alone by themselves.
    0:44:08 And I think that comes through doing something hard.
    0:44:10 It’s not sitting alone with your thoughts.
    0:44:12 It’s not sitting around where you are.
    0:44:17 It’s picking up a sport, a habit, a practice, a workout regime,
    0:44:19 whatever it is that you’re passionate about,
    0:44:25 reading, going there and building a strength and commitment
    0:44:27 by focusing on doing something hard.
    0:44:28 When I say sense control,
    0:44:31 I don’t mean every single sense of yours is mastered
    0:44:32 and you never feel any urge.
    0:44:35 I mean, how can you do something that’s truly hard?
    0:44:38 How can you do something that’s truly challenging?
    0:44:40 And how can you do something that’s measured?
    0:44:42 How can you do something where it’s like,
    0:44:43 “Okay, I’m black belt now.
    0:44:44 I’m blue belt now.
    0:44:45 I’m yellow belt now.”
    0:44:46 How can you do something where it’s like,
    0:44:49 “Okay, I’m able to play this pace of tennis.
    0:44:52 I’m an amateur, I’m semi-pro, whatever it may be.”
    0:44:57 I think taking on a challenge that can be measured is critical.
    0:45:00 And I think taking on something younger is ideal.
    0:45:02 I was very fortunate.
    0:45:05 My parents were so scared that I was going to be so shy
    0:45:07 and insecure growing up,
    0:45:09 they forced me to go to public speaking school.
    0:45:12 And so from the ages of 11 to 18 for seven years,
    0:45:15 I took exams in public speaking.
    0:45:17 I went to nine hours a week in public speaking training.
    0:45:18 I went to drama school.
    0:45:21 I did a ton of training at that time and it was hard.
    0:45:22 I was terrible.
    0:45:23 My friends would laugh at me.
    0:45:24 It wasn’t cool to go to that.
    0:45:26 And when I look at any success I have today,
    0:45:29 it’s because of those seven years of working,
    0:45:31 working really, really hard on a skill set
    0:45:33 that I didn’t even know how I was going to use.
    0:45:35 I didn’t know podcasting didn’t exist,
    0:45:36 social media didn’t exist.
    0:45:38 It wasn’t like it was a strategic investment.
    0:45:40 It was just the idea that there was something
    0:45:41 that I could do that was hard.
    0:45:42 I didn’t enjoy going.
    0:45:43 I was forced to go.
    0:45:44 But there’s power in that.
    0:45:46 So don’t resist something that’s forced.
    0:45:47 That would be step one.
    0:45:51 The second thing men can do for romantic love is
    0:45:57 be really aware whether you like someone
    0:46:00 because you just want to be liked.
    0:46:02 I think a lot of young men, like you say,
    0:46:03 they say they’re going to be a great boyfriend.
    0:46:06 But it’s because they want to be a great boyfriend.
    0:46:10 They want to be known as being a great boyfriend,
    0:46:11 not being a great partner.
    0:46:13 And I think that’s a big, big, big challenge
    0:46:16 as to why young love is so hard.
    0:46:20 Because we’re doing the right thing not to be a good person,
    0:46:21 but because we want to be as seen
    0:46:22 as the person who’s doing the right thing.
    0:46:25 We want to be seen as the guy who does all the right stuff.
    0:46:27 And you may realize three months from now,
    0:46:29 you don’t even like that person that much.
    0:46:31 And so I’d be really, really clear on,
    0:46:35 am I doing this to be liked or do I actually like this person?
    0:46:37 If I like this person, let me really invest in this.
    0:46:39 Let me really be building something powerful here.
    0:46:44 But let me not do this because I’m building my self-worth
    0:46:47 off of someone else’s praise of me doing the gimmicky thing
    0:46:49 because I think it’s going to make them like me.
    0:46:52 That’s going to end up messing their life up
    0:46:53 and messing my life up.
    0:46:56 And the third thing I’d say in love is
    0:47:10 be really conscious of how your past pain creates present problems.
    0:47:15 And so reflect on where you’re hoping your partner,
    0:47:17 I call it the gifts and gaps.
    0:47:22 We’re often wanting our partner to fill the gaps our parent left.
    0:47:26 Or to repeat the gifts that our parents gave.
    0:47:28 Be really aware of those.
    0:47:32 I’m not saying either is right or wrong or they can go either way.
    0:47:36 But to be really, really conscious and aware of where they’re coming from
    0:47:40 because what often ends up happening is we’ve ruined something great
    0:47:42 because of something terrible in the past.
    0:47:46 And it’s because we’re so unaware of what triggers we’re taking forward with us.
    0:47:49 I mean, I could talk about this for hours, but those are three things I think about.
    0:47:57 We’ll be right back.
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    0:50:50 We’re back with more from Jay Shetty.
    0:50:53 I love the way you think.
    0:50:56 You kind of, you think in threes very much like a consultant
    0:51:02 and give us your top-line thoughts on what you’ve learned with your partner
    0:51:06 and the relationship advice you would provide or give to more men
    0:51:12 who are in a relationship, a monogamous relationship.
    0:51:16 One of the things that was really hard for me to get over, Scott, was
    0:51:22 as someone who’s a, you know, someone who’s on stage, a public personality,
    0:51:27 and I think men have this regardless of whether you have a public profile or not.
    0:51:32 I think men, we want to be admired.
    0:51:33 We want to be appreciated.
    0:51:36 We want to be respected, especially by our partners.
    0:51:40 And some men I know want to be celebrated, want to be adored,
    0:51:43 want to be fanned over to some degree.
    0:51:47 And I was really fortunate because
    0:51:54 my wife, by her own admission, I would say isn’t my,
    0:52:00 isn’t the number one fan of my success, but she is the number one fan of me.
    0:52:02 And I think this is a really important point.
    0:52:09 I had to learn through my wife to value myself based on who I was
    0:52:14 and how I behaved, not what I achieved and what I killed and what I created.
    0:52:18 And I think if it wasn’t for the way she loved me for that,
    0:52:21 I think I would have been someone who measured my value
    0:52:28 based on simply my success, my wins, and my accolades.
    0:52:33 And so I would encourage people to say, is your partner here for you?
    0:52:39 Because chances are they are, but we’re so wrapped up in wanting them to love us
    0:52:40 for what we achieve and what we do.
    0:52:42 I’ve had so many friends who are like, oh my God,
    0:52:46 like I just don’t feel valued for what I’m building and what I’m creating.
    0:52:50 I’m like, that may be the case, but what if you lost it all?
    0:52:52 Would that mean you wouldn’t be valued now?
    0:52:54 Is that how you want to be loved?
    0:52:56 Do you want to be loved for that and unloved for not having that?
    0:52:59 Or do you want to be valued for the qualities you have,
    0:53:02 the characteristics you have, the values you live by?
    0:53:06 So that was a big, big, big lesson for me that I learned through my wife,
    0:53:09 not that she doesn’t love the podcast and the books and whatever.
    0:53:15 She appreciates all of it, but it pales into insignificance and irrelevance
    0:53:20 compared to the love and appreciation she has for me as the man I show up as.
    0:53:24 And I think that’s made me value myself more highly and better than I would have before.
    0:53:25 So that’s been huge.
    0:53:34 Another thing that comes to mind as you ask that is if your partner is trying to change you,
    0:53:40 help them understand how unlikely that is.
    0:53:43 I find that a lot of men deal with this problem the most,
    0:53:45 where their partner’s trying to change them.
    0:53:49 And I’ll often get women in my audience that will say to me,
    0:53:52 “I really want my husband to get into self-development and personal growth.
    0:53:54 And I just don’t get out and get him into it.
    0:53:55 And he won’t listen to me.
    0:53:57 And I’m giving him all the books.
    0:53:58 And J.I. sent him your podcast.
    0:53:59 I’m like, “Oh, please don’t.
    0:54:00 Please don’t send him my stuff.
    0:54:02 I don’t want him to hate me for the rest of my life.”
    0:54:05 And I get a lot of those questions of how do I do it?
    0:54:09 And when I’m speaking to the women, I’ll always say to them, “Don’t do it.
    0:54:11 Like, let him find its way to it.
    0:54:13 Let him find something that’s natural to it.
    0:54:16 Don’t send him my interview with the person you’re inspired by.
    0:54:18 Send him my interview with the person he’s inspired by.
    0:54:19 Maybe he loves athletes.
    0:54:21 Maybe he loves musicians.
    0:54:22 Maybe he loves Scott.
    0:54:26 Like, that’s the conversation he needs to listen to, not X, Y, and Z that you love.
    0:54:28 Stop trying to make him the version of you.
    0:54:34 And I think for a lot of men, either we pretend to change or we promise to change.
    0:54:37 Or we say, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, we go along with it.”
    0:54:39 Rather than saying, “You know what? This is who I am.
    0:54:42 I’m really going to struggle to be that version that you want me to be.”
    0:54:45 The amount of times when I met my wife, I was so clear.
    0:54:46 I was like, “This is who I am.
    0:54:47 This is who I’m going to be.
    0:54:48 This is what I value.
    0:54:50 This is my purpose.
    0:54:51 This is the guy I am.
    0:54:54 I’m not the guy who wants to go to the movie theater every week.
    0:54:56 I’m not the guy who wants to do X, Y, Z.
    0:54:57 Like, this is who I am.”
    0:55:00 And communicating that.
    0:55:02 And then also hearing from her, who is she?
    0:55:03 What does she want?
    0:55:08 And then we learn this art where we’ve overused the word respect,
    0:55:10 but we’ve actually undervalued what it means.
    0:55:16 Respect means I don’t need you to value what I value,
    0:55:18 but you respect what I value.
    0:55:22 You allow me to live life the way I want to live it.
    0:55:25 And I allow you to live life the way you want to live it,
    0:55:28 because I respect your value.
    0:55:30 But I don’t need you to change to be who I am.
    0:55:33 So I think being really careful about being open about,
    0:55:33 “This is who I am.
    0:55:36 This is what I can realistically do.”
    0:55:40 I’m not going to pretend and promise and overshare on this potential of,
    0:55:41 “I’ll be there someday.”
    0:55:42 “Oh, I’m getting there.”
    0:55:43 “Oh, yeah, yeah, I’m reading it.”
    0:55:45 It’s kind of like what you said about meditation.
    0:55:47 Like, what’s the point of lying?
    0:55:48 What’s the point of pretending?
    0:55:50 And as you said, I like threes,
    0:55:53 and so I’ll give you one more, because why not?
    0:56:05 My favorite one probably is letting my wife change.
    0:56:09 I married, my wife and I met in our early 20s.
    0:56:10 I was in my mid-20s.
    0:56:12 You know, we’ve been married.
    0:56:14 We’ve been together for 12 years, married for nine.
    0:56:20 And I’ve been pretty much the same human through most of it.
    0:56:21 I don’t think I’ve changed that much.
    0:56:24 The scale of my life has changed and things like that.
    0:56:28 But my priorities and the way I work, I’m pretty much very, very similar.
    0:56:32 My wife has changed and lived so many different lives in the last 12 years.
    0:56:39 And I feel like that’s the mistake a lot of us make
    0:56:41 where we go, “Well, you didn’t care about this three years ago.
    0:56:42 Why do you care about it now?
    0:56:45 You didn’t want this seven years ago.
    0:56:46 Why do you want it now?
    0:56:48 You weren’t this person nine years ago.
    0:56:50 How are you that person now?”
    0:56:55 And I think the realization that, “Hey, the person you marry on your wedding day
    0:56:59 is not the person that’s there at your 50th birthday.
    0:57:02 And it’s not the person who’s there when you’re sick in hospital.
    0:57:03 That person changes.”
    0:57:04 And you probably will too.
    0:57:09 So recognizing that they’re going to change, I’m going to change,
    0:57:11 and I’m going to allow space for that.
    0:57:12 Because guess what?
    0:57:15 That’s what makes the relationship joyful.
    0:57:16 That’s exciting.
    0:57:18 And by the way, if I don’t find that exciting,
    0:57:20 and I want to find someone that’s going to be the same,
    0:57:23 I’m going to find someone who can probably be the same for seven years.
    0:57:24 Right?
    0:57:26 Divorce happens between the first five to seven years of marriage
    0:57:28 and cycles every seven years.
    0:57:31 Maybe someone can stay the same for five to seven years.
    0:57:34 But even the cells in our body are changing during that time.
    0:57:37 So maybe someone’s going to be a new person every seven years.
    0:57:39 So maybe you’re going to leave that person, find another person.
    0:57:42 Maybe you’ll find someone who stays the same for five to seven years.
    0:57:44 But that person’s also going to become a new person.
    0:57:46 So start getting real about the fact that
    0:57:52 there is no consistency and stagnancy and remaining the same.
    0:57:56 What remains the same is that you’ve lived that much life together.
    0:57:59 My wife’s a different person today, but she’s the only person in the world
    0:58:02 who’s experienced my trajectory with me as intimately.
    0:58:06 That’s what I value so deeply about that consistency.
    0:58:11 Kind of invokes that old adage that women want men to change
    0:58:13 and men want women to stay the same.
    0:58:21 Anyways, I have found that with a partner that they are forced to go through
    0:58:24 to change their complexion and approach to life
    0:58:28 because they take sometimes a disproportionate
    0:58:31 unfair amount of responsibility around the kids.
    0:58:32 But you’ve been very dense with your time.
    0:58:34 I just have one more question.
    0:58:35 You have a very public profile.
    0:58:39 It’s impossible to have your profile and put yourself out there
    0:58:44 is openly and is provocatively on issues this important
    0:58:48 and without getting a lot of criticism.
    0:58:50 How do you deal with criticism?
    0:58:54 And what advice would you be in terms of a practice for how to handle?
    0:58:56 Be thoughtful, right?
    0:59:00 Anyone who is immune to criticism, I wouldn’t trust.
    0:59:03 I’d be like, okay, I think that makes you a sociopath.
    0:59:06 So how do you deal with criticism?
    0:59:11 One thing I’ve learned just by observing and having the fortune
    0:59:16 of coaching people who are far more successful, famous, and accomplished than I am
    0:59:20 is that the closer you get to the top 1%,
    0:59:23 the more likely you are to have 50% of people disagree with you.
    0:59:27 So if you look at the most prominent positions in society,
    0:59:33 you take the president, chances are close to 50% of the country disagrees with you, right?
    0:59:36 So you look at the more someone gets into the top 1% athletes,
    0:59:39 you look at athletes.
    0:59:42 It’s like you look at Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi.
    0:59:44 You get 50% on either side.
    0:59:46 You get Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
    0:59:48 You get 50% on either side.
    0:59:52 Like it’s very hard to be the 1% of your industry
    0:59:56 or the world in case of these people that I’m talking about
    0:59:58 and not have 50% of people disagree with you.
    1:00:03 So I think the first step is recognizing that the closer you get to the 1%,
    1:00:06 the more chance it is that 50% of people are going to have an issue with you.
    1:00:10 So I think everyone remembers as an early stage creator
    1:00:12 when you kind of had 100,000 followers
    1:00:15 and your comment section was La La Land, right?
    1:00:18 You lived in this little bubble where everyone loved you.
    1:00:19 Everyone said wonderful things.
    1:00:22 Things were beautiful and then you got to a million followers
    1:00:24 and then that changed proportionately
    1:00:27 and then you got to 10 million and it changed and whatever else it may be.
    1:00:28 So that’s the first thing.
    1:00:31 We have to look at it realistically, statistically
    1:00:35 and realize it’s not personal, it’s math.
    1:00:36 That’s the first step.
    1:00:42 The second thing is how can I take feedback without the sting?
    1:00:49 And this is an art that I was really grateful to learn in the monastery
    1:00:51 which was this, the quality of humility.
    1:00:52 What does humility really mean?
    1:00:57 Humility doesn’t mean I’m weak and I’m not good enough
    1:00:58 and that’s low self-esteem.
    1:01:06 Humility means I have the ability to extract that which is beneficial for me
    1:01:10 and leave that which is hurtful and poisonous.
    1:01:14 Can I actually have the ability to listen to something,
    1:01:18 to consume something that may be really hurtful
    1:01:24 but extract the minimal truth in it that may inspire me, that may make me better
    1:01:29 and leave behind the part that was venomous or poisonous.
    1:01:34 And I try and do that as much as I can when I see anything.
    1:01:37 I’m always like where is the truth in that?
    1:01:39 What can I take from that?
    1:01:42 What is there about that that can actually improve my character from?
    1:01:48 And let me leave behind the negativity, the venom, the envy.
    1:01:52 Sure, I’m sure it’s covered in envy, ego, competition.
    1:01:55 I’m sure it’s covered in all these things but the skill of humility
    1:02:00 is the ability to leave all that stuff behind and extract and see if I can work on myself.
    1:02:04 And the third thing is to
    1:02:15 be really careful about having a group of people who truly know you,
    1:02:19 who deeply know you, who intimately know you,
    1:02:21 making sure that you’re not lonely at the top.
    1:02:28 I’ve seen that for so many people, the cliche is true, people are lonely at the top
    1:02:32 because they don’t make friends with people that go through similar things.
    1:02:37 Most people who are at the top will make friends only with their childhood friends,
    1:02:38 which is great, I love my childhood friends.
    1:02:44 But my childhood friends can’t relate to what I go through at this stage in my life.
    1:02:48 So I have to have friends in the similar industry in a similar space
    1:02:52 to actually be able to share what we’re going through.
    1:02:54 And if those people know me intimately,
    1:02:59 those are also the people who can remind me of who I truly am, why I started, why I’m here.
    1:03:03 And to me, that is the most powerful investment you can make.
    1:03:06 The biggest mistake you can make is to think because you’re number one,
    1:03:09 you don’t need anyone else around you.
    1:03:13 And by the way, back in the day, 25 years ago,
    1:03:14 people were pit against each other.
    1:03:18 They were told, you can be the only successful black man in Hollywood.
    1:03:21 You can be the only successful woman in this field.
    1:03:22 People were told things like that.
    1:03:30 And I think that naturally made people disconnect and not build friendships in their zone of genius.
    1:03:35 So I would encourage people to make friends in their zone of genius and deep intimate friends
    1:03:39 because chances are that’s the only person who knows what it feels like.
    1:03:44 And so that’s how I think about it in those three areas again.
    1:03:48 And by the way, my biggest takeaway on all of that is,
    1:03:56 it’s so wonderful to be detached through criticism,
    1:03:59 to praise and ego and your own height.
    1:04:02 If it doesn’t offer any other value,
    1:04:08 it offers the value to remind you that you do this only for the reason you do it for.
    1:04:10 You get joy from the fact that you’re doing it because you believe in it.
    1:04:14 And that from a very spiritual perspective,
    1:04:17 you don’t get to take your fame with you.
    1:04:18 You don’t get to take the money with you.
    1:04:22 You don’t get to take the accolades with you.
    1:04:24 And no one’s even going to remember any of that.
    1:04:27 So the universe is just preparing you to be detached from things
    1:04:29 that are going to be taken from you anyway.
    1:04:32 So why not learn to be detached while they’re still here?
    1:04:35 Rather than wait till the moment they’re all snatched away
    1:04:40 and then try and grab a hold of them and scrap with them.
    1:04:42 Why not embrace your own insignificance
    1:04:45 before you truly become insignificant and irrelevant?
    1:04:46 And so it gives you a glimpse of that.
    1:04:50 It gives you a really beautiful spiritual ego death and glimpse of that,
    1:04:53 which materially is the worst thing to go through
    1:04:56 and spiritually is the most beautiful, fulfilling thing to go through.
    1:04:58 Yeah, I like that.
    1:05:00 Embrace your insignificance in a healthy way.
    1:05:03 Jay Shetty is a global best-selling author, entrepreneur,
    1:05:06 and the host of the world’s number one mental health podcast on purpose.
    1:05:09 Born in London, Jay embarked on a transformative journey
    1:05:12 as a Hindu monk before merging ancient wisdom with the digital world.
    1:05:15 His podcast on purpose with Jay Shetty chops the charts
    1:05:17 as one of the world’s leading podcasts
    1:05:19 with over 35 million monthly downloads and features.
    1:05:24 Influential gas, basically, you name it.
    1:05:25 I won’t even go through all of these.
    1:05:29 And he also has several best-selling books.
    1:05:32 He joins us from his home in Los Angeles.
    1:05:33 Jay, I really enjoyed this.
    1:05:38 You’re sort of like entering into this dream-like state
    1:05:39 when I listen to you.
    1:05:42 I’m listening, but I just find a sense of calm
    1:05:45 about the rhythm and the cadence.
    1:05:47 You’re really a joy to listen to.
    1:05:51 I appreciate your time and am really happy for all your success
    1:05:53 and thank you, I think you deserve it.
    1:05:56 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
    1:05:58 Our intern is Dan Shalon.
    1:06:00 Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
    1:06:02 Thank you for listening to the PropG Pod
    1:06:04 from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    1:06:07 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercenome Mouse,
    1:06:08 as read by George Hahn.
    1:06:10 And please follow our PropG Markets Pod
    1:06:12 wherever you get your pods
    1:06:14 for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.
    1:06:17 (upbeat music)
    1:06:26 [BLANK_AUDIO]

    Jay Shetty, a #1 New York Times bestselling author, award-winning podcast host of On Purpose, Chief Purpose Officer of Calm, and purpose-driven entrepreneur, joins Scott to discuss his journey from monk to media mogul, the business of podcasting, and the key to successful relationships.

    Follow Jay on Instagram, subscribe to his podcast On Purpose, and sign-up for his newsletter.

    Subscribe to No Mercy / No Malice

    Buy “The Algebra of Wealth,” out now.

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  • MrBeast: If You Want To Be Liked, Don’t Help People! I Lost Tens Of Millions On Beast Games… But I’m Worth $1 Billion!

    中文
    Tiếng Việt
    AI transcript
    0:00:03 There’s a reason no one makes videos like me because no one wants to live the life
    0:00:06 I live or be my head there. They would be miserable. Are you happy I?
    0:00:17 I’m gonna be honest so far more unhappy than happy well has it ever crossed your mind to quit YouTube as a whole
    0:00:21 Oh, yeah, of course really yeah, are you oh boy?
    0:00:31 Mr. Beast mr. Beast mr. Beast he is the biggest youtuber on the planet and he’s building empires
    0:00:36 I mean is there anything this man can’t do your business empire is much bigger than most people realize
    0:00:40 Yeah, I mean I’m only 26 and we have the largest YouTube channel in the world and beast games
    0:00:43 It’s gonna have shatter some pretty crazy records and we do nine figures of these schools
    0:00:48 But a lot of that stems from being a very confused child that’s not fitting in that feels like a freak
    0:00:51 Plus I really wanted to take care of my mom because when I was 11
    0:00:58 We literally went bankrupt and lost everything. Luckily it worked out and it’s because I’m really good at obsessing over one thing
    0:01:01 More than anyone else on the planet like us tens of millions of dollars on these games
    0:01:05 But it’s about making season one as good as possible and I just really love solving complex problems
    0:01:08 Like how many kids do you think are in child labor in West Africa just on cocoa farms?
    0:01:11 It’s 1.5 million and so with feastables
    0:01:13 We’re trying to get over a million kids out of child labor
    0:01:19 But the ironic part is the more I help people the more I get like I’ve read over 5,000 messages telling me to kill myself
    0:01:22 I mean, there’s definitely times where I would cry
    0:01:25 But if my mental health was a priority, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am
    0:01:26 This is the price you have to pay
    0:01:27 But when is enough enough?
    0:01:29 Honestly
    0:01:36 I find it incredibly fascinating that when we look at the back end of Spotify and Apple and our audio channels
    0:01:42 The majority of people that watch this podcast haven’t yet hit the follow button or the subscribe button
    0:01:43 Wherever you’re listening to this
    0:01:44 I would like to make a deal with you
    0:01:47 If you could do me a huge favor and hit that subscribe button
    0:01:52 I will work tirelessly from now until forever to make the show better and better and better and better
    0:01:55 I can’t tell you how much it helps when you hit that subscribe button
    0:01:57 The show gets bigger which means we can expand the production
    0:02:01 Bring in all the guests you want to see and continue to do in this thing we love
    0:02:03 If you could do me that small favor and hit the follow button
    0:02:05 Wherever you’re listening to this, that would mean the world to me
    0:02:08 That is the only favor I will ever ask you
    0:02:09 Thank you so much for your time
    0:02:10 Back to this episode
    0:02:19 Jimmy we’ve really just only met and you are already to me a bit of a Rubik’s cube
    0:02:19 Okay
    0:02:24 In so many ways and I’ve been trying to piece the pieces together to understand
    0:02:30 The the uniqueness of you because you’re so unbelievably unique
    0:02:34 We just drove over here in the car and hearing you speak about the way that you view life and
    0:02:36 Speaking to you yesterday on the phone
    0:02:41 I’ve I’ve interviewed hundreds and hundreds of people and I’ve never ever met someone who has
    0:02:43 The perspective on life that you have you are truly unique
    0:02:50 What do I need to understand about your earliest years to understand who you are
    0:02:55 Oh boy um yeah my earliest years I
    0:02:59 I’m just stubborn man I just never give up
    0:03:03 I mean there was there’s no world where I ever would have quit
    0:03:06 I just I mean if we’re just jumping right into it
    0:03:08 It’s a great no intro or anything just boom
    0:03:12 This is how you hold people um when I was 11 I just said I’m gonna be a youtuber
    0:03:17 I’m gonna die trying and I meant it and there was like even if no one still watched my videos to this day
    0:03:19 I would still be going um and so people hate it
    0:03:23 But I’m just the most competitive stubborn person you’ll ever meet and I just never give up
    0:03:24 And where did that come from?
    0:03:30 I have no idea to be honest I honestly it feels like it was just in my DNA in my bloodstream
    0:03:34 My mom hated it growing up. We’d always argue and like you know
    0:03:37 She she has this thing where like once Jimmy sets his mind to something
    0:03:40 He just never stops and it would always piss her off because when it was youtube
    0:03:43 And she wanted me to be studying or things like that
    0:03:45 But I really don’t know it’s it’s just always been how I am
    0:03:50 And I think a lot of people have these weird tendencies and they tend to like try to like
    0:03:55 Unlearn them and like I had phases in my life where I was like am I too extreme
    0:03:59 Like people are very intimidated by me because I just I’m so obsessed with work
    0:04:02 And I’m so all in and like is this like unhealthy?
    0:04:06 Should I try to be more like a normal human especially when I was a teenager it’s a lot easier
    0:04:11 It’s funny when when you’re making lots of money. It’s like admirable. It’s respectable
    0:04:15 It’s like look those are traits we want but when you’re not successful
    0:04:21 You know you’re a lunatic when you have all these traits and so back then I’d occasionally be like man
    0:04:25 Like should I try to be more normal? But I just could never do it anytime I tried to
    0:04:28 I mean I’ve mentioned this before but one of the like
    0:04:34 Things that like I have a memory of that like really is burning my brain is like people one time
    0:04:37 Like a high schooler told me when I was in middle school like all you do is talk about youtube like
    0:04:43 Do like know how to do anything else like you’re just like a freak and I tried to like watch South Park
    0:04:47 You know because that’s what a lot of people in my school watch to fit in and I just couldn’t I was like
    0:04:49 This is such a wasted time
    0:04:51 I don’t like I could be working right now
    0:04:57 And I tried to do all these things to like fit in and I eventually just like stop talking because I just didn’t relate to anyone and
    0:05:02 Um people used to call me mute like one of my teachers literally asked like
    0:05:06 If I was mute like because that’s how little I spoke because no one in the school
    0:05:12 I went to was entrepreneurial or wanted to build businesses and I just didn’t want to do anything else and um
    0:05:15 Yeah, eventually I started to succeed found other lunatics and now life’s great
    0:05:21 But you know I like to tell this story when I’m on podcast because if you have a younger viewer who’s in that same spot
    0:05:26 You’re not the problem. It’s your environment and you just got to put yourself in a better environment
    0:05:30 What about your parents mum and dad you talk about your mother a lot? Yeah, um
    0:05:33 No, I I don’t
    0:05:36 I didn’t get it from them. What what influence did they both have on you?
    0:05:43 Um, well, I don’t really talk about my dad much. That’s you know, a long story. I don’t need to get into it
    0:05:45 but my mom honestly
    0:05:49 It was it wasn’t it’s great now me and my mom have a phenomenal relationship
    0:05:54 But on the come up it was it was pretty rough because in 2008 they were over leveraged
    0:06:00 So we literally went bankrupt and so they they you know had properties that they used to get other properties
    0:06:05 And then when everything collapsed they lost basically everything and so my mom was working two jobs and
    0:06:10 You know barely getting by and so we like I I didn’t see her that much because when I was coming home from school
    0:06:12 She was doing her second job
    0:06:19 So it was a lot because she was the single mom raising us. She’s working all the time, you know, um my
    0:06:25 I don’t talk about a lot of this, you know, I’ve Crohn’s disease. So I was very sick growing up
    0:06:30 My brother also had issues as well. And so, you know, we’re not the healthiest kids in our teenage year
    0:06:34 She’s just trying to get by and take care of us and then, you know
    0:06:37 She comes home and she just has this brat that’s being annoying and like
    0:06:40 I want to be a youtuber and she’s just begging me sometimes
    0:06:44 She would literally cry and beg me to do homework and I mean I was
    0:06:47 I was I was like I didn’t
    0:06:50 I didn’t mean it in a mean way, but I mean I even one time
    0:06:53 I literally told her if you want my my homework done so bad
    0:06:55 Why don’t you just do it, you know, like that’s that’s what I told my mom
    0:07:00 What am I doing? I don’t know like I was just like I don’t I don’t care
    0:07:05 Like I I just want to be successful. I want to build businesses and so it was like bless her heart. Luckily it worked out
    0:07:09 So now I spoiled her. She’s great. She has her second home anything
    0:07:13 She could ever want she has and so the first uh thing I did was to take
    0:07:18 You know start paying my mom take care of her once I started making money because she gave everything
    0:07:20 To like get me where I am and I wouldn’t be where I am now
    0:07:24 But it was like it was like me and her spoke different languages when I was younger, you know
    0:07:30 She she didn’t want me to end up like them, you know and you know get screwed and not have much money
    0:07:33 And like the path I was going down was just basically like oh
    0:07:37 I’m gonna be a homeless drug addict and like her brain couldn’t compute the world
    0:07:41 I saw and my brain couldn’t compute the world she saw and it was a constant friction
    0:07:45 Who was looking after you then if she was busy working and you were at home and your dad’s not around
    0:07:48 Who takes care of you?
    0:07:52 I just me and my brother we’re just there. I was just making videos
    0:07:58 You’re making videos. Yeah, what age did that start the videos? I started at 11 11. Yeah, so I I’m 26 now
    0:08:00 I can’t really remember
    0:08:02 life before youtube like my
    0:08:09 earliest memories are basically when I started making videos you said earlier um, you don’t talk about your dad much. Yeah
    0:08:14 You don’t have to talk tell me about it, but why don’t you talk about your father?
    0:08:21 Much. Yeah, don’t worry about it. I know your mum has spoken about him before. Yeah, and it was a bit of a tumultuous relationship
    0:08:26 Yeah, exactly. They didn’t have the best relationship. I mean, that’s a topic for another day. Honestly
    0:08:29 Kind of a sour way to start it off. But yeah, it’s
    0:08:32 My mom is great. I love my mom
    0:08:35 She used to cry asking you to do your homework
    0:08:41 A lot of things she she would cry because I wouldn’t put money away when we started making money
    0:08:44 She would she thought it was too risky and I mean the thing is
    0:08:47 Nothing she
    0:08:51 Would say it was unreasonable right looking back at it. She was perfectly reasonable in what she was doing
    0:08:56 I’m just a deranged lunatic and was way too obsessed with building the business and way too all in
    0:08:58 um
    0:09:03 Like it’s very cute one time. She like when we had I don’t remember like some month or made like a hundred grand
    0:09:05 And I’m like, okay, perfect now
    0:09:10 I can spend a hundred grand this next month on videos and she like took like five thousand of it and put it away for me
    0:09:14 In my own bank account without telling me but in case, you know, I ever went, you know
    0:09:19 Was over leveraged or went bankrupt like they did and um, I found out about it
    0:09:25 And uh, she’s like, please don’t take this money. Just let me set aside anything stop spending everything on videos
    0:09:30 And I was like no, this is perfect now. I can spend more like this is awesome. Thank you mom and like but to me
    0:09:37 I don’t I don’t really feel risk like if anything it like risks excites me and like I I’m very high threshold for it
    0:09:39 um, so
    0:09:42 Yeah, we just we literally weren’t communicating the same language
    0:09:45 But I don’t remember what age it was but eventually after I took enough risks and figured it out
    0:09:47 My mom just said to me, you know what?
    0:09:53 I’m gonna trust you like I have faith and everything got so much better after that point when like she stopped staying up all night
    0:09:57 Worrying about me and wearing the weather and I was making the right decision when she’s just like jimmy
    0:10:00 I trust you. I know this you think about this all day
    0:10:03 Like I’m gonna just follow your lead and our relationship has been
    0:10:07 You know perfect ever since that if I’d asked a 10 year old jimmy
    0:10:09 How are you doing?
    0:10:11 What would what would he have said?
    0:10:17 Uh 10 I don’t know, but if you asked me at like 12 or 13, I probably would have been like fuck like no one watches my videos
    0:10:19 I just really want to be a youtuber. I
    0:10:21 um
    0:10:23 I gotta I gotta make this work
    0:10:26 Why did you want to really be a youtuber?
    0:10:31 Because kids say that but the extent to which you said it and the
    0:10:34 focus that you had on that particular goal
    0:10:39 Of being a youtuber because there’s many things you could have focused on you could have been a video game player
    0:10:46 Whatever, but youtube is a particularly interesting thing because you’re on camera. People are seeing it. There’s a metric which decides how successful you are
    0:10:51 um, was there any element of the on camera part that was
    0:10:57 Helping to solve for like the feeling of isolation that you you seem to have at that time
    0:11:03 No, I community. Yeah, I think it’s more to do with just I I found out that when I was at a young age
    0:11:08 Probably around 11 that there were youtubers that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
    0:11:10 And I was just like oh, that’s it like system money
    0:11:16 Yeah, of course because back back then we didn’t have money and I really wanted to take care of my mom and and just my family in general
    0:11:19 So it was like everything. It was like this is what I love doing
    0:11:24 I I’ve never had as much joy doing something as I do this plus I could see a path where I could actually
    0:11:31 Retire my mom take care of her pay her back for you know all the night. She worked so long so we could um
    0:11:37 Live comfortably and things like that. So it’s just kind of the thing is I’ve
    0:11:42 One thing that irks me is when people try to like put someone’s motivation into like one little bucket
    0:11:45 Like we’re very complex creatures and like, you know, you have a girlfriend
    0:11:49 I I I would never say oh, you just like her because she’s pretty
    0:11:52 But you like her because she’s pretty but you probably also like her because she’s smart
    0:11:54 You probably also
    0:11:57 Like her because you know, she’s fun to be around she likes similar shows blah blah you probably
    0:12:01 If we sat here for 10 hours, you could probably give me a thousand reasons why you like your girlfriend
    0:12:09 So it’s like it’s very annoying when people try to put why you like doing a certain job or building a certain business
    0:12:11 Into one bucket. Oh, you just do it because of money
    0:12:15 What if I do it because I like money and I enjoy it and it’s a way to do this
    0:12:19 And it’s a way to communicate with people and community and these other things, you know
    0:12:23 I mean, and I think that’s a common flaw we try to do. It’s like it’s not that simple
    0:12:26 I think it’s a lot of people can’t understand someone being so
    0:12:32 Relentlessly focused on something with the level of like commitment and sustained commitment that you’ve shown
    0:12:34 Yeah, and so and I don’t know how
    0:12:38 I I agree because it’s very weird like how
    0:12:41 like I have
    0:12:45 Extreme obsession to the point where like I just think about stuff the same like for me
    0:12:50 It’s much easier to think about something 16 hours a day for seven days straight than it is like to like gear shift constantly
    0:12:54 I’m like really good at just obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet
    0:12:57 If I were to say what’s my superpower? It’s that I can just
    0:13:02 Obsess endlessly about something and I can just have the same thoughts over and over and over and over again
    0:13:03 It’s it’s very weird
    0:13:08 Like it’s it was it wasn’t like it was work for me grinding youtube for those 10 years or whatever
    0:13:12 Where no one was really watching it and it’s just like kind of who I am
    0:13:18 It would have had to have been a deep obsession because you were doing it when no one was really watching or paying attention
    0:13:21 Or really when the platform was there was literally a day when I was uh
    0:13:27 19 or 20 where I got I woke up joined a skype call with my friends
    0:13:31 And where we like reverse engineering, you know why certain videos do well or whatever
    0:13:37 And I remember that call being over 18 hours long and then I hung up went to bed
    0:13:41 Woke back up the next day and instantly got back on the call and picked back like that was the level of like
    0:13:45 Hours we were putting in. I mean, I didn’t know anything besides just
    0:13:49 Trying to make it happen. Was there anything else that you showed that level of obsession to?
    0:13:53 So at that age no from I would say from 11 to
    0:13:57 Well 11 to 15 it was a mix of youtube and baseball
    0:14:02 But when I turned 15 I got Crohn’s and I went from like 190 pounds down to 139
    0:14:07 I lost all muscle I had and so I was like, all right. I’m not playing baseball in college anymore
    0:14:12 So then I was like fuck it. That’s just all in on uh youtube and um
    0:14:17 And then up until really festivals. It was basically just youtube versus whatever
    0:14:19 I never thought I would find like this kind of love for
    0:14:24 Build like I thought it was specifically video making but I have found over like the last two or three years
    0:14:28 Just in general I just enjoy entrepreneurship and I’ve been really deeply
    0:14:32 Loving getting like obsessed with festivals and other things and so which was very weird
    0:14:36 Like when I first started a chocolate company, it was like kind of a side thing
    0:14:37 But the more I started to work on it
    0:14:42 I got a lot of the same highs I got when I was making videos just in different ways and so now I’m like
    0:14:47 I know way too much about the chocolate industry. I’m like it’s pretty crazy
    0:14:51 I never imagined I would have put the thousands of hours I’ve poured into building festivals
    0:14:54 And so I think just in general it’s just I just really love solving
    0:15:01 Consistent complex hard problems. I think that’s like what gets me out of bed and like the harder the problems the more exciting it is
    0:15:05 Consistent hard problems. I want to talk about that and also festivals, but you mentioned Crohn’s disease there
    0:15:09 Yeah, a lot of people don’t know what that is and the impact it has on someone’s life
    0:15:16 Are you aware of it? I am because I had a team member that had it so um in order to help support them at certain times
    0:15:21 When they had to leave and stuff like that I got a little bit more aware of what it means and how it impacts you
    0:15:27 But could you give me your perspective on that? Yeah, so Crohn’s disease is when your immune system attacks itself
    0:15:32 So, uh, yeah when I was 15, I just started going to the bathroom eight nine ten times a day
    0:15:38 Not digesting any food because my gi track is like literally just attacking itself
    0:15:44 It’s very weird your immune system and your gut thinks your gut is a foreign invader and so it just starts attacking itself
    0:15:48 Which if you’re just using the bathroom ten times a day not digesting food
    0:15:52 It’s why you drop weight rapidly and it hurts like crazy because it gets very inflamed
    0:15:56 And it feels like someone’s stabbing you in the gut with like a knife constantly when it’s really really bad
    0:16:01 Which is what I had so I lost 50 pounds, which is crazy because I was already relatively lanky
    0:16:07 Um, and we were just trying different medicine and then eventually I’m on a pretty extreme medicine called remicade
    0:16:12 We’re just basically you nuke your immune system, which is why my voice sounds a little off right now
    0:16:15 Because I just got the flu. I got cove it six times
    0:16:18 I got shingles like I get sick all the time because for me to
    0:16:23 Have my gi track stop attack itself. We basically have to shut down my immune system
    0:16:27 So I have like a really weak immune system. So I just get sick all the time
    0:16:29 Like so I have like random rashes and things like that
    0:16:34 So it’s like it was pretty pretty brutal to be honest
    0:16:38 And then it randomly flares up sometimes and just makes you very sick very tired
    0:16:44 Like I just live life on hard mode to be honest like if someone like if you wake up and you have energy
    0:16:50 Like you’re already leaps and bounds ahead of me. Like I you know, it’s it’s makes things way more difficult
    0:16:55 And so you still wake up with some days where you don’t have energy, of course, which is really hard to believe for someone who’s
    0:17:01 So productive for everybody looking on. Yeah, it’s you just got to really love what you do
    0:17:02 I mean and push through it
    0:17:06 It’s uh, it’s pretty brutal because then you compound that with always being sick and I mean
    0:17:11 Yeah, I like I just spent four days in a hospital in South Africa because I got the flu and it just takes me a lot longer to
    0:17:14 recover from certain things so
    0:17:17 It’s brutal and that’s where like if I didn’t work so much
    0:17:21 I would spend more time researching Crohn’s because surely there’s a better way to
    0:17:28 Stop it than just destroying my immune system and ideally I don’t do that deep into my 30s and 40s
    0:17:33 So I see it as a little bit of a band-aid, but um, you know, I’ve met with the top Crohn’s doctors in the world
    0:17:38 And so far they’re like, this is just the answer and you’re just lucky. You’re you know, gut isn’t attacking yourself
    0:17:45 Um, so but I don’t know. I I feel like the medicine to give people Crohn’s is kind of silly and there’s got to be a better way
    0:17:49 To treat it. I mean the ultimate solution is they just cut me open and cut out a large part of my gi track
    0:17:52 And then there you go, but you know
    0:17:58 It’s I observed in the team member that I had that had Crohn’s just a bit of a mental roller coaster as well because
    0:18:01 There’s a certain unpredictability to it
    0:18:03 Exactly, which makes life
    0:18:08 Oh, it’s even worse when you’re filming because you got this huge multi-million dollar set and 200 people waiting on you
    0:18:11 And you know, sometimes you don’t know if you’re gonna have a flare, but you just got to go fuck it and
    0:18:16 Just down some caffeine and crank it out. I got diagnosed with ADHD
    0:18:21 You didn’t yeah, I got diagnosed with ADHD and it made me think a lot about myself and the way that I am
    0:18:25 It’s not unless I’m not the type of person to like embody the label or think it really means much
    0:18:29 I am just who I am. Have you um, are you in any way neurodivergent?
    0:18:36 Uh, I’ve been told yeah, but I have ADHD. I mean, I’m not surprised because I just sit and obsess over things constantly, but I think um
    0:18:41 I’m happy with however. My brain is wired. I don’t really care to change it
    0:18:42 um, I
    0:18:48 I like I said, I think one of my greatest superpowers is my obsession and I think some people would view that as a weakness
    0:18:53 But I just like if you just think about solving problems three times more than everyone else
    0:18:57 Like you’re bound to come up with different solutions. That’s one of the things you mentioned earlier
    0:19:03 You like solving hard problems consistently when you think back over the last 10 years of your life and that
    0:19:09 The success you’ve had solving some of these hard problems if you were to like break it down into some cool components of
    0:19:15 Um that you’ve learned one of them is obsession that you’ve said. Yeah, what are the others?
    0:19:18 I mean
    0:19:22 It’s all the typical stuff like you are obviously who you surround yourself with and
    0:19:30 Um, luckily I just got around the right people in my later teenage years because I I feed off the energy of the people
    0:19:36 Probably around me. It’s so obvious like I start to talk like them. I become interested in the things they’re interested in
    0:19:40 I mean, this is all obvious stuff. I’m sure you’ve heard of bajillion times. So but
    0:19:47 You know, just gotta I always have to be protective of the people I’m around because whatever they say is what I start thinking on
    0:19:49 and that’s what I start obsessing over and
    0:19:55 You know, um, one of the best things that happened with festivals is I just reached out to all the fastest growing chocolate companies
    0:19:58 All the fastest growing snack businesses and everything and just became friends with a lot of the founders
    0:20:02 And you know, that’s what would have probably taken me eight nine years to like solve
    0:20:04 You know after 18 months
    0:20:09 It was probably one of the top 10 people in the world when it comes to running a chocolate company and understanding it deeply
    0:20:13 Just because it’s just cheat codes. Um, what about detail?
    0:20:15 sweating the small stuff
    0:20:19 One of the things that I saw I was reading the fist that handbook that was
    0:20:23 Lived on the internet and one of the things I saw throughout that was this real obsession with
    0:20:27 The one percents. Yeah, that’s more stuff. How do you feel about this by the way? And all of that stuff
    0:20:31 I wrote that uh, with with some of my employees when I was probably
    0:20:35 22 so there are some things that I’m like I read I’m like, oh, wow
    0:20:41 I was an idiot but for the most part most of it still stands the test of time. Um, and I I do think it’s very helpful
    0:20:42 You know, it’s funny a lot of
    0:20:45 CEOs have actually told me that they make their employees read this
    0:20:50 It went around all of our slack channels. We we all read it. That’s which is funny because I’m like damn
    0:20:57 I should make an updated version of it. So everyone uh, but yeah, the thing is it’s the the core crux of it is like
    0:21:03 Extreme ownership and don’t make excuses and you know, um people always
    0:21:07 Yeah, I mean the damn I’m getting a lot of deja vu from when I was writing that
    0:21:12 It was just a different time back then too because I just I had no idea what I was doing when I was 21 22
    0:21:18 And I just found that I was constantly telling like teaching the same or teaching people the same things over and over again
    0:21:22 And it was always just like take extreme ownership take accountability like
    0:21:25 Sure, I guess it was out of your control
    0:21:28 But it could have been in your control if you just thought through it more if you just really cared
    0:21:30 And that’s what I was just trying to convey in it
    0:21:35 And the other thing that comes through in this but also all of your work is just this idea something that I’ve learned from you
    0:21:39 Just from speaking to you on the phone yesterday that nothing is impossible. Yeah, exactly watching
    0:21:44 Beast games over the last couple of weeks, but also speaking to some of your team
    0:21:49 There’s clearly this through line with everything that you do of like extreme what appears to me to be extreme ambition
    0:21:55 And it doesn’t appear to be extreme ambition to you in the same way that it appears to be extreme ambition to me
    0:21:57 Yeah, I mean, it’s just
    0:21:58 I mean
    0:22:03 Is does physics allow it? Then yes, it’s possible. It just is it do we want to put the time in?
    0:22:07 I mean, it’s I feel like people over complicate a lot of things. Um
    0:22:12 And is that something you’ve trained over time or have you always thought that I think I’ve just
    0:22:17 Uh, it’s a good question. I’ve never I don’t know why but when people tell me I can’t do something
    0:22:19 I I don’t know where this came from
    0:22:23 It makes me just want to do it more to be honest if you tell me I shouldn’t do something
    0:22:23 That’s fine
    0:22:29 But if you tell me I can’t then I just it’s everything in my body just wants to go fuck you I obviously can
    0:22:33 I just I don’t know if I should but I can and then I I don’t know
    0:22:37 It’s like the the the thing is like to go viral. You have to do something that’s never been done before
    0:22:42 I’ve told this story before of like, you know, if you’re driving down the road and you see a cow
    0:22:45 Who cares? It’s a fucking cow
    0:22:47 But if you’re driving down the road and you see a purple cow
    0:22:51 You’re like you’ve never seen that before and it’s something you weren’t expecting
    0:22:53 You’re gonna go play shit and you’re gonna go tell your friends about it
    0:22:57 You’re gonna remember that you’ll probably even think about it randomly once every couple years
    0:22:59 Why the fuck was there a purple cow and it’s like
    0:23:04 It’s the same thing just one was a little purple and it like you can apply that same like
    0:23:09 Analogy to ideas like when you’re scrolling through social media to find a video to watch
    0:23:12 There’s things that you know have been done before you’ve seen
    0:23:15 It’s you know, roughly similar to stuff before you’re just going to scroll past it
    0:23:16 You’ll never think about it again
    0:23:18 Just like you’ll never think about a fucking cow on the side of the road
    0:23:20 And then there are ideas that are like the purple cow idea
    0:23:24 Which is what I try to do which are things that make you go. What the fuck?
    0:23:29 I’ve never seen that like I I have to click this or I’m not gonna be able to sleep tonight because like
    0:23:31 Why is this video?
    0:23:33 No way they did this, right?
    0:23:37 But those typically are very hard and usually to get that purple cow effect
    0:23:41 They’ve never been done before and if something’s never been done before there’s usually a reason because it’s very fucking hard
    0:23:47 So you just kind of have to train yourself to like not resent very difficult complex hard original
    0:23:51 Problems and actually run towards them because those are the ones that you know
    0:23:55 tend to have more of the purple cow effect where people have to watch it if your ship’s very exponential
    0:24:01 It’s way easier to get 50 million views on one video than it is to get a million views on 50 videos, right?
    0:24:06 And so um and because it like kind of goes exponentially and it’s like, you know
    0:24:12 Pretty winter take all in the top videos like you just really have to lean into that purple cow effect if that makes sense
    0:24:14 Makes perfect sense
    0:24:17 If you if you were to distill then say we were coming up with a new
    0:24:20 How to succeed in mr. B’s production handbook now
    0:24:24 What would be the the top five if I was applying for a job with you?
    0:24:28 What five characteristics would I need to demonstrate to be successful?
    0:24:32 You got to be very coachable because whatever I teach you today is going to change
    0:24:36 You know a year or two from now always learning always improving coachable
    0:24:38 um
    0:24:44 A big thing for me is you got to see the value in working here like you really I just I don’t this isn’t like a job
    0:24:50 This is a career like if you don’t you know, realistically see a world where you’re working for me in 10 years
    0:24:54 Then um, it’s pretty hard for me to invest into you at the level I want like I’m not
    0:24:57 I don’t like training someone for six months
    0:24:58 They work here for a year
    0:25:01 And then I lose them what I like is I train someone for a year
    0:25:05 And then I get nine years of dividends on the back end where they crush at their job
    0:25:07 And I’m constantly paying them more because they’re becoming more valuable with time
    0:25:14 Like that is like the eighth wonder of the world is investing heavily in an employee and then they stick around for a decade
    0:25:15 You know what I mean?
    0:25:20 It’s like there are some of my top guys that I spent three or four years in the trenches with training and working with
    0:25:24 You know, they’re like uh, tyler who writes a lot of my videos and directs them
    0:25:27 I you know probably talk to him five six hours a day every day for four
    0:25:31 Yeah around four years and now because I can’t spend
    0:25:36 He spends a hundred percent of his time writing the videos directing the videos obsessed over that
    0:25:39 Whereas I could theoretically max spend five percent of my time
    0:25:42 So he’s gonna naturally just shit on me on it because he can spend way more time on it
    0:25:45 And it’s like so, you know, I have full faith in him
    0:25:50 But the dividends that I get off of him after all those years of pouring all that time and effort into him
    0:25:54 And now he knows exactly how I think what I value that I don’t even really have to communicate with him
    0:25:57 Sometimes I can just show up to film and like I just trust that it’s good
    0:26:01 You know, and I have a bunch of people across all my businesses like that
    0:26:02 That it’s like great
    0:26:05 And if you know in a world where tyler’s still working here 10 years from now
    0:26:07 I mean the amount of value out of someone like that is
    0:26:13 Unfathomable it is quite literally the eighth wonder of the world for business and it’s like that’s what I want
    0:26:15 But you only get those kinds of people they see the value for
    0:26:20 You know working for you and so they have to like deeply believe like the more valuable
    0:26:24 I become to this company the more I’ll be rewarded and they like actually want to
    0:26:25 Dedicate their life to the business
    0:26:28 So that’s very important because if I really don’t get that vibe
    0:26:31 Then it’s not fair to both of us because I’m not gonna invest in you like I should
    0:26:35 Because I don’t think you’re gonna be here in 10 years and then you’re gonna feel that and it creates so
    0:26:44 Uh coachable uh sees the value. Um, obviously obsessed. I I don’t I just don’t like working with mediocre people
    0:26:47 I I mean, I really just can’t stand it. It’s the fastest way to make me depressed
    0:26:52 Um, is if I have to work with someone who’s just not all in and just loves what they do
    0:26:54 Um
    0:26:59 It’s just a lot of you know stuff like that that I’m sure if you listen to like a steve jobs interview or something that he talks about
    0:27:05 It’s just the the typical traits obsessed coachable all in sees the value. And what is the single worst traits?
    0:27:10 Mediocrity, I mean it’s just like because they’re not bad enough where you fire them
    0:27:16 But not good the problem is like I mean and you see it in full effect great people just love working with great people
    0:27:18 They do and there’s something about being around great people that
    0:27:22 Pools some kind of animal out of you that just makes you want to
    0:27:25 Do more and push more and believe things aren’t possible
    0:27:29 And I don’t know when you put me around a bunch of other successful entrepreneurs
    0:27:31 I just turn into a different human then if you put me around
    0:27:36 I don’t know a bunch of people who are just running small businesses and don’t really care and don’t really have much ambition
    0:27:40 I’m like two completely different humans and you see that same thing in full effect
    0:27:43 You put a bunch of a players around more a players
    0:27:45 They just build off of each other
    0:27:49 But you like put two or three c players amongst a bunch of great people and they’ll start pulling them down
    0:27:52 They’ll start making them not want to work as much and make work not as fun
    0:27:57 And so everyone knows get rid of the c players, right? Obviously get rid of people who aren’t all in blah blah
    0:28:01 It’s the ones that are like they’re not an a player, but they’re not a c player
    0:28:05 So it’s kind of hard because you still feed off the energy and if you get enough of them
    0:28:08 It just drags the overall culture down. So those are like the worst
    0:28:13 Um, I mean not everyone can be these like world-ending monsters
    0:28:18 You know, there are a lot of mundane things like, you know, I mean the book controller and accounting
    0:28:20 I mean probably doesn’t have to be the best in the world
    0:28:24 But you know when it comes to like the mission critical things like making videos and things like that
    0:28:29 You like just the great people got to be surrounded like that’s one of your number one jobs as leaders
    0:28:33 Just to make sure your great people are working with other great people because that’s like that’s like the number one
    0:28:37 Reason why people leave jobs isn’t money. You know, I mean, it’s that’s like number four on the list
    0:28:42 Don’t ask me to list them all. I don’t remember. I just know the number one thing is do they enjoy who they’re working with
    0:28:44 And people will leave
    0:28:48 Their job because they hate working with people way before they’ll ever leave because of money
    0:28:50 Have you ever been frustrated that
    0:28:53 The people you’ve hired don’t match your level of obsession
    0:28:59 No, because I just find the people I do. Are there people that do? Oh, yeah, I’ve there’s so many people in my
    0:29:04 Uh, business, um, I mean, obviously you have to take care of them. Hey, I’m well, like they’re they’re not the kind of people
    0:29:09 I’ll just make the standard rate. But um, yeah, like people like Tyler Klitzner
    0:29:11 Russ and you know people on our editing team
    0:29:16 I mean they’re putting in most weeks same hour same amount of hours as me and they’re all in see the vision
    0:29:19 It’s like it’s hard to find those kinds of people
    0:29:24 But um, you know when you do you got to treasure them and recognize that they’re unicorns
    0:29:26 And you have almost 500 roughly 500 people
    0:29:32 Probably, uh, I think the production company were around 300 feastables around a hundred and then probably another
    0:29:36 40 50 scattered months and everything else most founders that I speak to describe
    0:29:43 Scaling headcounts is the kind of worst past part of the job more people more problems, right? Yeah, that’s uh, that’s an understanding
    0:29:48 Yeah, especially as someone like you who’s a creative at heart and who is very focused and obsessed on
    0:29:54 I guess the show and producing as you say often the I want to produce the best videos we possibly can
    0:29:58 Of course, and then all this other shit comes with it. Yeah, which is like HR
    0:30:06 Which every founder I speak do hates. I mean, yeah, I the the worst part is I just have this very once in a
    0:30:11 Um, I just very rare opportunity where I have so much attention and so many people watch my content
    0:30:14 And and I wish I had I just wish I had more experience building businesses
    0:30:17 You know, I’m only 26 and this is my first
    0:30:24 Real business of every every employee milestone we hit it’s my first time hitting that right like when I hit 100 employees
    0:30:26 That was my first time getting there
    0:30:30 And this this was my first time going from 100 to 200 200 300 and like with what I know now
    0:30:35 I could have done it so much faster obviously and it’s just, you know, it’s a little brutal because like
    0:30:38 like scaling festivals from, you know
    0:30:43 Zero to 100 was way easier than doing my production company because I had been through the ringer before and I learned a bunch
    0:30:48 And I get better with time and I it’s just the most honestly the most annoying part is just ignorance, right?
    0:30:51 Like because a lot of things mistakes I make I look back and I’m like, oh
    0:30:56 Yeah, I probably should have brought in people with more experience working at a larger company earlier here
    0:30:58 I waited a little too long here
    0:31:02 I probably should and it’s just like brutal because if I had known these things I’d be way further along
    0:31:07 But I mean that’s just how you learn you just got to make 10 000 mistakes every finder says the same
    0:31:10 Every founder of spooked he says the same that unknown unknowns
    0:31:13 Exactly, you know, and it’s just like so that’s where
    0:31:17 I mean my big thing recently has just been trying to find people who have
    0:31:22 Successfully skilled businesses and like bring them into my organization and learn from them because I’m just so
    0:31:25 Tired of like being like fuck. I should have known better
    0:31:29 But I didn’t because I’ve never done this before and so I’m trying to find a lot of great people who have been through it
    0:31:33 So they can like kind of mentor me along the way. So I make less mistakes, which has been really good
    0:31:36 We brought in a new c-suite recently
    0:31:40 Um, I it’s like always a hard balance because I try not to in the past I
    0:31:44 I have like, you know decisions are kind of like pendulums and I have a
    0:31:49 Uh a problem where I like I’ll identify something and I’ll over correct the pendulum one way
    0:31:53 And I’m like, uh, no, I should have just stopped in the middle and like my over correction in the past was like
    0:31:57 Corporate people try to build too many systems and they kill innovation
    0:31:58 And so I was very
    0:32:02 Anti like people with too much corporate experience because they’re going to just destroy all the creativity
    0:32:09 But you know, that’s why we’re making so many organizational fuck ups because we don’t have anyone who’s actually built the business at this size
    0:32:13 And so, you know, the pendulum was on the right and I swung it all the way to the left of no corporate
    0:32:18 And now I think we’re in the healthy medium where you know, obviously the people in our c-suite and the leaders
    0:32:21 Should have lots of experience managing people at this size and scale
    0:32:26 But it’s just finding the right people who can do it and build systems in a way where it doesn’t crush creativity
    0:32:29 And they actually value the product over ease
    0:32:35 Did I ever see in my I’m on the tv show called dragons in the uk and um, my
    0:32:38 Stuff is significantly smaller. It’s like a percentage of your your viewership
    0:32:46 But even I am slightly terrified with hiring people because it’s quite clear to me that there’s a huge incentive for anyone
    0:32:51 That I work with to say that I did something bad and in the early days of my first business
    0:32:54 Um, what happens is the journalists go to everyone that works there. Yep
    0:32:57 And they ask them what was he like you you have the same problem
    0:33:01 You have the same conundrum where anyone has an incentive that works for you
    0:33:04 When they leave so many different incentives
    0:33:10 To throw an arrow at you on the way out the door. How how do you contend with this?
    0:33:14 Yeah, I mean you hit it on the head of uh, you know, I have four or five hundred people right now
    0:33:19 But we’ve also worked with thousands of people in the past and so I think it’s just what comes with it
    0:33:22 But at the end of the day, you know, as long as what we’re doing is moral and ethical
    0:33:27 Like like you said, they’re gonna throw arrows, but you know, I I’m just a problem solver
    0:33:30 It’s like whenever I see the metaphorical arrow. I just go
    0:33:34 You know, what’s the problem and if we did something wrong, how do we fix it?
    0:33:38 Or if it’s not an actual problem, it’s just rumors. I mean it is what it is and so
    0:33:43 Yeah, I think it just comes with part of it. Um, I mean it sucks and it’s unfortunate
    0:33:46 But you also think like most people don’t like their jobs too
    0:33:49 And so it’s not like this is even specific to our industry
    0:33:53 Like, you know, just go ask a hundred random americans of of all the jobs that worked in their life
    0:33:58 How many did they deeply enjoy and would they have nothing negative to say? So I think it’s just part of it
    0:34:03 You know, um, it’s almost like a pastime for a lot of people just to like trash talk their old jobs or whatever
    0:34:11 Has any of that stuff ever got to you any criticism? Oh, of course. Yeah, I mean all criticism all the time does but
    0:34:14 I mean the thing is independent of that kind of stuff. It’s just like
    0:34:17 I mean for
    0:34:25 We are averaging like 200 million views of video like, you know, like uh, most of it unique viewers like we’re talking like two plus percent
    0:34:30 Um, sometimes three percent of humans alive watch every piece of content
    0:34:35 I put out, you know, depending on how well the channel’s doing and so like that means like you could I could upload a video
    0:34:42 And then with 365 days later, you could grab 33 random humans anywhere on the planet, especially because we do doves
    0:34:45 You know, what’s even crazier is our, you know, youtube’s not in china
    0:34:49 So that’s like two to three percent of humans alive excluding china
    0:34:55 Um, or china’s mixed in there, but if you just take people excluding china, it’d be more like three to four percent
    0:35:02 Um, but you could just grab 33 random people on the planet and one of them on average would have seen that video because the views are so
    0:35:07 Fucking high. So yeah, I mean there’s a lot of criticism that’s thrown at me and the thing is, you know
    0:35:13 Since there are stuff so global sometimes, you know, trans since culture and not everyone views everything and so everyone has different opinions and stuff
    0:35:15 of that which is why
    0:35:21 It will drive you crazy at our scale if you try to make people happy because even if 99 percent of people are
    0:35:24 Deeply happy, which is an insane hit rate
    0:35:28 Like if you make a piece of content 99 percent of people that watch it love it that is wild
    0:35:32 Which that kind of stuff doesn’t happen, but in our case if just one percent’s unhappy
    0:35:37 That’s two million people which is more than anyone else even gets on video views on video
    0:35:42 So which will feel like an insurmountable amount of criticism and feedback and it’s very easy to like
    0:35:47 Trick your mind into thinking damn everyone hates me because you just you know focus on the 1 percent standard 99
    0:35:52 So I just came to the point where, you know, I just have to have my own internal
    0:35:57 Guidelines of like do I think what I’m doing is good do what I think, you know, is moral ethical do do
    0:36:02 I believe in what I’m doing if so fuck it like I’m never gonna be able to make everyone happy
    0:36:06 So I and if you just you let the whims of the internet kind of decide
    0:36:13 What is okay and what’s acceptable and and when you’re being bad or good then you you don’t have a spine
    0:36:17 You don’t have a backbone you stand for nothing and and it it will just destroy you mentally
    0:36:21 Um and so I mean, I don’t know what age I was when I kind of got in that mindset
    0:36:25 But I just was like I’m gonna decide and I’m not gonna let the internet decide, you know
    0:36:29 What is okay when it’s not and then ever since I got to that point, you know
    0:36:34 People criticized me for something and I’m like, I don’t agree. Then I have like it’s easy for me to just go
    0:36:39 Oh, I don’t agree. Not gonna make everyone happy. I believe what I’m doing is right and um
    0:36:45 Just move on the brain isn’t isn’t designed for for this though. No, it’s this is what I’ve come to learn
    0:36:47 So do the podcast it goes well
    0:36:50 I’m it feels like at the start everyone loves me
    0:36:53 Yeah, and then I get further down the line and it feels like everyone fucking hates me
    0:36:58 Yep, because they are you get attacked from you can never do anything right, especially I’ve probably read
    0:37:04 Mess like comments or tweets or I’ve probably in my lifetime read over 5 000
    0:37:09 Messages or comments or something telling me to kill myself. I mean, you know, I mean, you know, just like
    0:37:15 And what would possess someone to tell you to like leave a comment where it’s like fucking kill yourself
    0:37:20 You know, I mean, so I agree like you’re we were not meant to receive this kind of feedback from basically anyone anywhere in the world
    0:37:25 You know, I mean just all you know consistently day in and day out for
    0:37:30 For my in my case now over a decade. Has it ever really got to you? Oh, yeah, of course
    0:37:33 I mean it does all the time or it used to all the time
    0:37:38 I’d like to say what does that mean in reality if I’m a fly on a wall in one of those moments where you can recall
    0:37:40 it really getting to you
    0:37:42 I mean back in the day
    0:37:47 But I wasn’t as confident in my ability to to be successful and you know when you’re
    0:37:53 Probably 20 and you’re hiring all these people. You’re you know, I have high risk tolerance
    0:37:57 But I’m reinvesting every dollar I make I you know, I’m hiring my friends from school
    0:38:01 I’ve hired my mom like these people I really care about are depending on me and then you know
    0:38:04 I upload a video that does bad and then people, you know
    0:38:06 I pour all my time and effort into it
    0:38:10 But you know, maybe it doesn’t come across as well like the video and you know
    0:38:15 Some people might have interpreted as lazy and you read a comment being like wow, what a fucking lazy
    0:38:21 Like I thought you made great videos or this this video sucked in and you read that and the video’s underperforming and you’re like
    0:38:27 Fuck, maybe I am being too reckless and you know, I mean there’s definitely times where I would cry
    0:38:31 You know just because I would just be like fuck am I like not doing this, right?
    0:38:35 Or like they don’t understand I put a lot of time into this or or whatever why why
    0:38:40 Sometimes you’re like fuck does the algorithm hate me am I being suppressed or whatever back in the day?
    0:38:41 um
    0:38:43 When was the last time that happened that feeling of
    0:38:46 um
    0:38:48 Yeah
    0:38:54 probably there was like a a month probably last year where I felt a little bit of that just because
    0:38:55 um
    0:38:59 You know just sometimes occasionally the rumor and drama mill gets spun up
    0:39:03 But you just got to snap out of it and like I said just go do I believe in what I’m doing?
    0:39:09 Do I it’s like it’s hard because you know anytime I do anything good. It’s you know people are always
    0:39:11 like
    0:39:15 They try to we’re like conditioned in America now when someone does something good
    0:39:20 There’s always some ulterior motive and I’ve I’ve always been straightforward and just said a world where I help people
    0:39:24 It’s just better than a world where I don’t like I don’t try to come up with this crazy like
    0:39:27 story of of how you know
    0:39:30 Someone helped me when I was younger and now I I just want to give back and cry
    0:39:31 I’m just like yeah
    0:39:35 I can make viral videos and I think a world where I do viral videos that help people are better when I don’t
    0:39:38 You know, I just kind of that’s my answer
    0:39:42 Um, but it always does suck when people try to just like I don’t know
    0:39:47 It’s funny. The more good you do the more people think you’re secretly evil and it’s like
    0:39:49 Why can’t I just help people because it’s fun, you know
    0:39:55 So occasionally those will get to me and I’ll just be like guys. You don’t even know me like and like
    0:40:01 You would think sometimes you’d read like when I build wells in Africa or help blind people see or things like that
    0:40:04 You you’d read some of these things online. You would think I’m hitler
    0:40:08 I mean, it’s crazy like how people portray it and I just I don’t know
    0:40:09 I wish people just understand like
    0:40:13 In my opinion a world where I help people is just more fun than a world where I don’t and
    0:40:16 It’s really not that deep the people around you. How does it impact them?
    0:40:21 Oh, how does the drama and that kind of stuff impact them? Um, to be honest in my case
    0:40:27 I don’t think it hits them that hard because most things usually fall on me and people want to go after me because I’m the
    0:40:34 Guy that does good the quote-unquote philanthropist. So usually I’m like the one that gets thrown under the bus quite a bit
    0:40:38 Hmm. It’s funny because I everyone that knows you knows you
    0:40:39 Yeah
    0:40:44 Whether they’re really successful people or people that you work with that I’ve spoken to everybody that knows you knows who you are
    0:40:48 and it’s it’s remarkable to me that um
    0:40:52 Someone who has done so much good in the world. I’ve looked at your philanthropy
    0:40:56 I know what you’re doing with feastables and the ethical sourcing of that
    0:41:00 When I see someone that’s done so much good in the world still be misunderstood
    0:41:05 It almost makes it almost makes me realize that I should never fight it
    0:41:09 Yeah, I mean the ironic part is the more I help people the more
    0:41:16 Shit I get to be honest like it’s it’s so funny because you know like the same day. I’ll uh drop a video where I’ll
    0:41:25 Uh, uh, you know, uh help a thousand blind people see some other youtuber will drop a video where they just bought a new mansion
    0:41:28 And it’s like everyone’s like yes, you know get that mansion
    0:41:32 Good job, and then they’ll be like fuck you for curing blind people jimmy
    0:41:37 Fuck you you’re using them and i’m like no, I just want to inspire people to do good
    0:41:39 I mean I can buy a mansion if you really want me to
    0:41:43 Um, so it is funny. I if you’re trying
    0:41:49 This is a weird sentence, but if you’re trying to be like I actually don’t recommend you like help people
    0:41:54 Like I actually think helping people will make the internet like you less than if you just like
    0:41:59 Buy nice cars and do like the the typical influencer path
    0:42:04 It’s because they we’re just so conditioned in america to see it as like a shield and like no one
    0:42:11 Actually does good because they just find it fun apparently. Um, but I mean, I don’t care
    0:42:14 I like I said it’s just more fun than if I didn’t so I mean people can shit on me for helping people
    0:42:21 I don’t I don’t doesn’t bother me anymore. Um, but I wouldn’t recommend you get into it if you want to be liked because I think it’s negatively correlated now
    0:42:25 Interesting it is so fascinating. It is I swear to god, man. Like
    0:42:29 It’s it’s uh, there
    0:42:32 I could just uh, I don’t know do these like uh
    0:42:37 $1 versus videos where I compare like a $1 boat to a billion dollar boat and all these other things and not help people
    0:42:39 And I would just get way less shit
    0:42:45 And it’s it’s so funny because no one bats an eye when I post that but when I give hundreds of thousands of people in african clean drinking water
    0:42:49 It’s like all hell breaks loose and like guys. I’m just trying to bring attention to a cause
    0:42:55 I don’t really but the thing is I’m just gonna keep doing it and I mean I think in my case most people have realized
    0:42:57 I’m not gonna stop so they’re just kind of
    0:43:01 Over you know getting mad at me and they’re just like all right jimmy’s just being jimmy
    0:43:02 I think when the wind blows as well
    0:43:06 What it does is it helps you to really understand why you’re doing what you’re doing and understand yourself
    0:43:11 And so when I’ve been attacked for like the people I interview or whatever it might be
    0:43:17 It’s actually made me refocus on what my principles are. Yeah, because you have to be really anchored to them
    0:43:22 It’s like I said you you have to know where your line is and as long as you’re on the right side of your line
    0:43:25 Then it is what it is people on twitter can say whatever they want
    0:43:31 And I think like that’s the only way to really survive at this scale without going crazy is you you have to determine where the line is
    0:43:33 Not let the internet
    0:43:35 Workaholism
    0:43:39 Yes, can you give me a window into the last seven days of your life? Just give me paint me a picture
    0:43:42 Oh, yes, uh, let me uh drink some water because my flu
    0:43:48 Well, the I don’t know about the last seven days, but in general we uh
    0:43:53 So we’re filming a video where we’re doing the I’m visiting the five most deadliest places on earth
    0:43:58 So one of the places was a safari in South Africa. So I flew to South Africa
    0:44:03 Um to spend time in a cage surrounded by lines sick content. It was really good
    0:44:09 Um, which that was a bitch to get to and then I got the flu and so spent a couple days in the hospital there
    0:44:14 Um, and then we were going to go to snake island to spend time there then the
    0:44:17 World’s deadliest road and then we have a couple other places
    0:44:23 But I that got postponed. So instead got out of the hospital went to florida filmed with Aaron judge
    0:44:26 Then I went to or no went to North Carolina
    0:44:31 We have this guy where I built a gym and I told him if he loses a hundred pounds before he leaves the gym
    0:44:34 It has a big red circle around it. I’ll give him a bunch of money
    0:44:37 So I filmed with him then worked on the coming up videos
    0:44:42 That it’s a lot and then flew to florida filmed with Aaron judge
    0:44:46 Flew here just landed filmed with the reunion that you were at with the contestants for beast games
    0:44:52 We’re doing this podcast. What time is it like 1 a.m. Just off to 1 a.m. Yeah 1 a.m. The latest podcast. He’s ever done
    0:44:58 Lightweight I always do my podcast at 1 a.m. Um, my last podcast before this is like 4 a.m. Um
    0:45:04 Like like a couple weeks ago and then uh, we’re flying to sand friend to film with stef then we’re stef curry
    0:45:09 Yeah, stef curry, then I think I’m going to snake island then the deadliest road
    0:45:15 Um, and then I I won’t I’ll basically I don’t think I’ll be home for another 16 days
    0:45:18 So I’m just traveling around filming for the next 16 days and then um
    0:45:22 Yeah, I guess then I’ll get home and then they’ll make me
    0:45:23 Fill my home
    0:45:27 How does everything else in your life fit into that in terms of like the gym? I know you’ve been working out
    0:45:33 It’s been brutal. It’s gone to shit the last couple months. It’s it’s it’s really killing me to be honest. It’s it was like
    0:45:37 So much easier when you’re bro. If you don’t travel
    0:45:39 Personally
    0:45:43 Life is so easy when you just wake up in your own bed and like
    0:45:47 Waking up in your own bed and working 15 hours and you know your office or whatever
    0:45:53 So easy compared to like all this fucking bullshit where I’m like, I don’t know the time zone
    0:45:56 I’m in I don’t know what place I’m in. I don’t know where I’m going in two days. It’s like
    0:46:02 Like I mean some days I’m going to bed at 10 a.m. Other days I’m going to bed at 5 p.m. And it’s like it’s a mess
    0:46:09 It’s really and I I used to put up with it and and it just like and figure out how to do the training
    0:46:12 But it’s just I don’t I don’t I don’t know I need to
    0:46:14 Truthfully, whatever’s the priority you’ll get done
    0:46:17 I just need to make it a priority again because I really do miss it
    0:46:23 It’s just this the hard part is putting putting beast games in the mix because I was already like
    0:46:26 Basically working, you know, whatever every hour my eyes were away
    0:46:30 But then beast games is such a monster of a project and I have to maintain the same
    0:46:34 YouTube upload schedule and then I do a lot on feastables now and then I have a couple other businesses. So I
    0:46:36 I just
    0:46:39 Honestly, something had to give and sadly it was working out but it’s fucking stupid
    0:46:40 So I need to like
    0:46:44 Reparitize my life where I can get I mean it just only needs to be 45 minutes five days a week
    0:46:46 It doesn’t doesn’t need to be hard
    0:46:50 But the bigger problem is I’m just not sleeping like I used to because we got so much going on
    0:46:52 And so when I hit it hard in the gym and then I don’t get enough sleep
    0:46:58 Then that causes pretty extreme fatigue the next day. So it’s like I got to fix the sleep first before that but
    0:47:00 Yeah, it’s uh
    0:47:02 Got a lot going on to be honest. I’m dying
    0:47:04 How are you feeling?
    0:47:07 Uh, right now honestly fine. I’m jacked up on all that caffeine
    0:47:15 But I mean just in in this feast, you know, the flu is not helping it’s it’s making everything like 30 harder. So, you know, it’s like
    0:47:19 Lives like a roller coaster. There are going to be moments where like right now
    0:47:20 I’m going to answer this negatively
    0:47:24 But I don’t want someone to think that’s indicative of like oh every and every time you ask me this
    0:47:28 It’s going to be up but because of the flu and the lack of sleep. I mean, I’m struggling at the moment
    0:47:30 Just a lot of grinding
    0:47:33 A little happy because we just dropped the ending of beast game
    0:47:38 So it’s like a little bit of emotional high, but after this I’m probably going to go crash be tired as fuck in the morning tomorrow
    0:47:40 which I hate um
    0:47:46 But yeah, I would say I’m on like the lower end. I could use a couple good days to bring the energy back up
    0:47:49 Quick one. I want to talk about something we all need to take seriously
    0:47:55 Which is cyber security whether you’re a first time founder facing your very first audit or a seasoned professional
    0:47:59 Who’s been through it all staying compliant is getting more critical than ever and more complicated
    0:48:03 I have to say and that is where vanta comes in who is a sponsor of this podcast
    0:48:06 Vanta takes the pain out of security compliance
    0:48:13 Automating the tedious but essential process of proving your business is secure across over 35 frameworks like sock 2
    0:48:15 ISO 27001
    0:48:22 Centralize your workflows answer security questions up to five times faster and protect your business without losing focus on growth
    0:48:29 And this is really a critical part of this a new idc white paper found that companies using van to save over
    0:48:33 $535,000 a year
    0:48:40 And it pays for itself in just three months for a limited time at my community gets $1,000 off van to at vanta.com/steven
    0:48:48 That’s vanta.com/steven for $1,000 off. How do you think about mental health? I’ve heard you speak about your mental health before
    0:48:52 Yeah, I don’t well the thing is here’s the problem like
    0:48:57 It’s uh, if my mental health was a priority, I wouldn’t be as successful as I am
    0:49:02 I mean, and that’s just like a sad fact. Um, like I obviously never would have buried myself alive for seven days seven days
    0:49:07 A solitary seven days on a deserted island seven days blah blah. Um, it’s like
    0:49:12 you know being consistently uncomfortable and like
    0:49:17 Being able to consistently suffer over a long periods is like arguably one of the deepest modes
    0:49:21 Like there’s a reason no one makes videos like me like not even close because no one wants to live the life
    0:49:24 I live I mean there there are months where I’m you know, I think there was one year
    0:49:27 I was flying like 200 days like I was on a plane
    0:49:32 I mean it was it was a fuck pass but you know to get these videos done and and I do everything and it’s like
    0:49:37 You know when I when I wake up tomorrow, and I’m gonna be pretty fucking tired and feel like shit
    0:49:38 I’m gonna go
    0:49:41 You know I something I always tell myself is how you feel right now
    0:49:46 Is why no one else does what you want to do or does what you do and if you push through this
    0:49:49 That’s just even you know more of a reason why no one will ever be who you are
    0:49:52 and so it’s like I think being able to
    0:49:59 Push through unhappiness and do things you don’t want to do consistently year after year over the course of a decade
    0:50:04 Is like the ultimate advantage like I mean I I think we’ll hit a billion subscribers
    0:50:09 And uh, I don’t think anyone will be anywhere near close because like once you make a couple million dollars
    0:50:12 Why would you live the life I live like why why would you not take weekends off?
    0:50:16 Why would you not just film locally even if it means less views so you can be on the right time schedule?
    0:50:22 Why would you not you know prioritize your sanity and that kind of stuff it makes no sense, but that’s why no one else does it
    0:50:26 You spoke to Colin and Samir two guys that I met recently
    0:50:30 Yeah, they’re great and they’re great great guys. Um, you said to them. I’m miserable a lot of times
    0:50:33 I have mental breakdowns every other week
    0:50:39 Yeah, I know those I’ve gotten a little better mental breakdown sounds extreme. It’s more I’m like fuck
    0:50:46 Why am I doing this? This is so fucking hard. Um, because it’s just a lot man. You’re just going constantly
    0:50:47 it’s like
    0:50:52 Because what’s funny is I think I said that years ago, but that was back when all I was really was doing youtube now
    0:50:56 I run the chocolate company and we have the show and we have a couple other stuff. So
    0:51:01 I think the the hardest part really is gear shifting like and so I try to
    0:51:04 Bucket these things correct like if if I’m on set, you know
    0:51:08 And I have a 15 hour film day like ideally the things I’m doing in between filming or like
    0:51:13 Related to main channel because I’m in the frame of mind of that and that’s one thing that’s really helped me
    0:51:16 Not feel like my head’s going to explode like if I’m
    0:51:21 In Chicago at the feastables office and we’re going through feastables marketing
    0:51:22 Like and then you come in and you go
    0:51:25 What do you think about this bit for this coming up main channel video?
    0:51:29 Then I have to like shift my frame of mind and then like that constant gear shifting
    0:51:33 Yeah, I it like it’ll make my fucking head hurt if I’m like bouncing around too much
    0:51:39 I and it’s also just very not quarter who I am. I love obsessing over certain things and I find
    0:51:44 You know obsessing over things within a business isn’t like switching back and forth between marketing and product
    0:51:49 In a same business is pretty easy. There’s a long way of saying like one thing that’s helped with that is like just really
    0:51:54 Organizing my schedule in a way where it allows my natural
    0:51:59 State of mind to like obsess over a certain business finish that then move on to the next one
    0:52:03 Whereas before it used to be like 30 gear switches to the day and that that’s just miserable
    0:52:08 It’s just not even fun to be honest. I heard um Elon Musk who I know someone you you spoke about
    0:52:11 Quite often also someone that I speak about quite often
    0:52:14 I heard him say when he was on Joe Rogan that you wouldn’t want to be in my head
    0:52:17 And I think Joe Rogan asked him if he was happy or something and
    0:52:20 He doesn’t even like consider the question to be important. Yeah
    0:52:25 So two questions there. Do you think the average person would like to be in your head and secondly
    0:52:28 Are you happy?
    0:52:31 Uh, well, no the average person does not want to live the life
    0:52:34 I live or be in my head there they would be miserable because
    0:52:39 You’re just working all the time and they they would probably just ask themselves. Why am I working all the time?
    0:52:44 Why don’t I why don’t I do literally anything else? I mean because they’re I mean, obviously I’m not a robot
    0:52:46 There are times where I’m like, fuck. I really want to play the strategy board game
    0:52:49 I want to do this thing and I’m I look at the schedule. I’m like, oh
    0:52:54 Maybe I could do that in four days and you you know, and the the hard thing is
    0:53:00 It’s you really have to like be delicate with the framing of your mind because it’s very easy in moments like that to go
    0:53:06 Fuck I’m like a zoo animal. Like I don’t I don’t have free will I’m like a little robot to my businesses and like
    0:53:13 Um, and so you have to like be very careful and sometimes those emotions take over and especially because I’m a very
    0:53:16 Defiant kind of guy and I’m like, but I really want to do this thing
    0:53:20 But I can’t because I got to go film this video and I got to do this and I got to speak at this conference
    0:53:22 and I got to do this networking thing and blah blah and so
    0:53:25 um, yeah, I think most people when that
    0:53:28 feeling comes up of like
    0:53:34 Am I just a fucking animal like do I have any free will they would probably get very depressed and but I’ve been able to like
    0:53:37 Work through those and and just I always try to
    0:53:41 You know your brain you just it’s you just got to control your thoughts and be like, well, this is the life
    0:53:43 I chose this is you want success you want to
    0:53:46 Change the world you want to do this and this is the price you have to pay
    0:53:51 You should actually see this is a good thing because this is why which is why I’m very, uh
    0:53:57 Diligent about how I frame things in my mind like this is why no one else will do what you will do and this is a good thing
    0:53:59 This is what you are feeling right now is your moe
    0:54:03 It’s you’re lucky. It’s hard push through it and you’ll be happy you did, you know
    0:54:05 and so that’s kind of how I
    0:54:07 try to
    0:54:13 View it, um, but no, I don’t think most people be happy living my life. They would be like, oh, let’s just grab a couple million dollars and
    0:54:16 Be happy. Yeah. Are you happy?
    0:54:20 Uh, it depends what day you ask me right now. I’m having a good time. Um other
    0:54:24 You know when I was had the flu in Africa sitting in a cage of lines. Fuck no
    0:54:27 So what’s your baseline? How would you describe your base?
    0:54:32 probably uh this year probably so far more unhappy than happy and
    0:54:36 It’s just there’s just things you got to do that just aren’t fun. You know, but I I think
    0:54:43 I I really deeply enjoy working on festivals and I’m trying to spend more of my time building it the problem is it’s just
    0:54:49 I uh, it’s just opportunity cost because I’m the only one who can be in front of the camera and film and that’s what’s like
    0:54:55 brutal especially with beast games is I’m just filming so much it added so much shit to
    0:55:01 My yearly filming like doing this giant show on top of already having the largest youtube channel
    0:55:06 The one I was already filming some months 25 days a month. So I’m just like that’s just the rough part
    0:55:08 It’s because it’s like
    0:55:09 It just all rests on my shoulders
    0:55:14 And if I don’t film there is no content like the channel just literally ceases like if I stop filming and so
    0:55:19 You know, I I have found more and more that I’m finding more joy and entrepreneurial things and building businesses
    0:55:23 And I I I do think I’d be happier if I could spend more time doing that
    0:55:27 But it’s just like weird because I could literally hire anyone in the world to do that
    0:55:30 Whereas I can’t hire anyone to replace me on camera
    0:55:36 I always wondered was someone who is doing so well on a platform like youtube where the algorithm is always changing
    0:55:40 So many youtubers I speak to say that they get burnout eventually
    0:55:43 They get like creative burnout and they and they just like delete their channel
    0:55:47 You’ve seen a lot of it recently of the last couple years where youtubers hit 10 million and they just stop yep
    0:55:53 Has that ever crossed your mind to stop? Oh, of course all the time seriously. Yeah, but I
    0:55:58 I mean, I think I feel like that’s what half this podcast has been about about how I don’t want to do things
    0:56:00 But I push through and do it. I think
    0:56:01 They’re just reasonable humans
    0:56:07 Like they, you know, a lot of them are chasing a goal of like, oh, I just want this money so I can take care of these things
    0:56:10 You know, it could be noble things like retire my mom or just not have to worry about money
    0:56:15 And then they go, well, why would I suffer now? I’m good. When was the closest you came to quitting?
    0:56:18 Oh, I’m probably countless times. I mean all
    0:56:24 When I was in solitary confinement for seven days. I mean that was fucking miserable. I mean, I did quit a video
    0:56:27 I’ve quit a lot of videos like no, I mean as a as a creator
    0:56:31 Um, I mean, I guess I never truly would have quit. I mean my biggest thing would be
    0:56:35 I just would have quit for like a week and been like fuck. Let me sleep nine hours a night and like
    0:56:40 Um, but like I spent the first we we did a video where we spent seven days on a deserted island
    0:56:47 First time we filmed it on day two. I woke up on the beach and I had literally I didn’t know sand fleas were a thing
    0:56:49 I had like
    0:56:53 700 bug bites up and down my legs all over my body. I was sunburn
    0:56:57 I was like a little bit of me was like, damn, I’m gonna die. Like this is crazy
    0:57:04 How much like bug bites are everywhere and my skin was so red and I like couldn’t see straight and so I ended up quitting on day two
    0:57:09 Um, which is brutal because you spend all this time and money and you have the crew out there and you flew out there and
    0:57:12 You know, it’s it’s opportunity costs. It’s like that’s a seven day window
    0:57:14 We could have got a video and uploaded it and now we don’t like it’s
    0:57:19 You know, cancel any video like that is literally the worst thing that could happen from an opportunity cost perspective
    0:57:23 And that was like, you know, and you have moments like those and it’s like fuck like this isn’t even fun
    0:57:28 Fuck this shit, you know, but but what about youtube as a whole because
    0:57:31 I feel like youtube is like throwing coal into a train
    0:57:34 Then you just have to keep throwing it in there once you’ve started you just can never stop throwing it
    0:57:37 No, you’re running on a treadmill cranked up to the max
    0:57:41 Especially if you want to be a top tier creator like me and it’s just like who who can stay on the treadmill the longest
    0:57:45 Because it never slows down if anything you’re making it faster
    0:57:49 Um, but no, I mean, I don’t think there’s ever an ironically time where I actually would have quit
    0:57:52 It just breaks probably would have been nice
    0:57:58 And when you think forward at that treadmill, can you see yourself doing it for the next two, three, four decades or?
    0:58:02 Oh, yeah, of course. I don’t have any intention of ever stopping. Okay. Um, love
    0:58:04 Something that came into
    0:58:09 My life a couple of years ago. You announced I think over christmas time that you had proposed
    0:58:13 I think it was like boxing day or New Year’s Eve. Yeah, it was on christmas day
    0:58:16 Oh christmas day because her family was in town. So I proposed yeah, okay
    0:58:18 How does that fit into this craziness?
    0:58:23 She’s literally I you could probably count on your hands the amount of
    0:58:28 People on the planet that actually would make a good partner for me and she’s just she’s one of them
    0:58:34 She really understands that work is what you know is what I live for what keeps me going and she
    0:58:42 Supports me and she understands how important it is and it’s the big thing is hanging out with tia my fiance’s
    0:58:46 It’s so frictionless. We play the same video games. We watch the same shows. We’re very interested in the same things
    0:58:52 She loves learning like I do. So, um, you know, it’s exciting to see what you know
    0:58:58 Lecture she listened to online that day or like whatever weird book she’s reading and she’s just like
    0:59:04 Everything about being around her is very frictionless, which is great because like obviously I don’t have much time at the house
    0:59:08 And so like the last thing that I need is to come home from work and there be friction
    0:59:14 And so we don’t we don’t fight. It’s I you know, I sometimes I’m like, wow, this is like my best friend
    0:59:20 And she’s hot. This is great. You know, uh, and so it’s like it feels weird sometimes
    0:59:23 people
    0:59:24 I mean anyone in a
    0:59:28 Listening now that’s in a relationship. I guess the question they’d be thinking is like when do you spend time together?
    0:59:37 mostly at nights, um, and uh that but the beauty is she gears her schedule around mine. So like she’s she’ll work when
    0:59:42 I’m working and then she’ll just travel with me. And so honestly, a lot of it is on planes
    0:59:47 A lot of it’s in car rides or you know an hour before bed or in the morning that kind of stuff
    0:59:55 But it’s like because there are pockets of brakes on set and things like that. So it’s just you know, having it’s it’s really hard to find someone who
    1:00:00 Is intelligent actually has their own hobbies things going for them independent
    1:00:07 That’s also willing to mold their life around mine and not see it as a demeaning thing because like yeah, if she was just like
    1:00:10 Well, I have this thing going on and I have to prioritize my life
    1:00:13 I would never see her but because she’s willing to you know
    1:00:16 Mold her life around mine and my work schedule
    1:00:20 That that you know is that’s everything. Um
    1:00:24 And it’s rare that someone’s willing to do that while you know being as in my opinion
    1:00:27 At least from what I’ve seen as intelligent and independent as she is
    1:00:30 Parents always message me and say steve waits till you have kids. Oh, yeah
    1:00:34 That’s I’m and that’s the thing like my lifestyle right now is would not work for kids
    1:00:39 So I want to wait I want kids but I want to wait as long as possible because if I’m going to have kids
    1:00:43 I got to be a great dad. Like I really I really really enjoy mentoring people
    1:00:47 I love mentoring, you know younger entrepreneurs and like help like I’ve told this
    1:00:49 I think I told this story on Joe Rogan
    1:00:55 I helped one of my friends go from like 40k a month in revenue to 400k on youtube and I do kind of stuff like that all the time
    1:00:57 I just like one of my other friends has a
    1:01:02 Um snack cpg brand and I helped them grow to eight figures in revenue just for fun
    1:01:07 I would just call him a couple times a month and it’s like there’s something so satisfying about helping other people succeed
    1:01:12 And so I would love to have a couple kids and just like really mentor them into like, you know being badasses
    1:01:18 But yeah, not anytime soon. Like I would be so absent if we had kids. So just got to like find that right
    1:01:22 Time in the venn diagram where I could actually be present in their life
    1:01:25 And your business empire I think is much bigger than most people realize
    1:01:30 I imagine the majority of people probably don’t really understand the context of business
    1:01:33 So they don’t really get it. They might see you as a youtuber or a creator
    1:01:36 But from the research that I’ve done you run a
    1:01:44 Very very large business. Yeah, I mean, well, we do nine figures of festivals. I mean, we could say that. Yeah nine figures in feastable. So
    1:01:48 The business must be worth several billions of dollars
    1:01:53 Uh overall, I mean you could do something like that. Yeah, I’m not going to get you to try and hazard a guess
    1:01:55 I’m sure you know, but I’m not going to get ask you to
    1:01:58 predict the but but
    1:02:01 The business would be worth a lot of money. Are you a billionaire?
    1:02:06 Uh on paper. Yeah, but I mean in my actual bank account, I’ve less than a million dollars. So
    1:02:12 Do you pay yourself at all a little bit? But I also like I have some assistance and things like that
    1:02:18 So it’s like I try to just pay myself what I spend, you know, personally a month just to like stay even
    1:02:20 How do you
    1:02:22 How do you think about money and all of this because
    1:02:26 Most most people in their lives are pursuing money so that they can chill out and retire
    1:02:31 But you seem to be pursuing it purely for the sake of reinvesting it back into the system
    1:02:33 Money is fuel to grow business
    1:02:36 And then you make money from the business and then to keep growing
    1:02:42 Yeah, and then you you find a business that you enjoy that, you know, it’s better for mother nature or earth or people
    1:02:46 And there you go. You have a fulfilled life. That’s my theory. I just don’t when I’m 70
    1:02:48 I don’t want to look back and have regrets, you know
    1:02:54 When is enough enough such a cliche question that I’m asked enough like building the business never
    1:02:57 I mean, I just want to keep like building a business is like a video game
    1:03:01 It’s it’s just fun, you know, like with feastables right now
    1:03:04 You know, we’re the largest ethically sourced chocolate company in america
    1:03:09 And like it’s just fun to like look at something that’s been done the same way for a hundred years
    1:03:13 And go, how do we just flip this on its head and fuck up this industry? And you know, how can we
    1:03:17 Pay our farmers a living income, you know, not use child labor, etc.
    1:03:24 And so it’s like, you know, I think if I was just doing mundane things like everyone else probably I probably would be bored as fuck
    1:03:29 If I would just sold chocolate like everyone else made the same repetitive youtube videos like everyone else
    1:03:31 I probably would be like, all right, give me out of this. I want to retire
    1:03:35 But it’s not what we’re doing. Like we’re changing industries. We’re impacting the world
    1:03:37 Like this this is the point of life in my opinion
    1:03:41 You could do so much with the gazillion people that listen listen and watch your videos
    1:03:44 You could like start almost any business and it be successful
    1:03:50 You could have almost any social impact and it be profound and savor gazillion people’s lives
    1:03:52 Do you do you struggle with focus?
    1:03:59 No, I mean, I do wonder, you know, sometimes should we be doing more?
    1:04:04 But I I’ve really found a good groove with feastables. I’m very I keep looking over there because the feastable is sitting over there
    1:04:11 I do feel like uh, I’ve hit a good groove with that. Um, and uh, the ethical sourcing on it and uh
    1:04:15 No, I mean, yeah, obviously I get a bajillion opportunities, but
    1:04:16 just
    1:04:19 You know right now this like I think I said earlier
    1:04:24 This is one of the few things in life that I’ve I’ve it’s scratched the same itch as youtube where
    1:04:28 Building feastables is equally as fun as making videos for me
    1:04:31 It is so delicious. Thank you. It’s so delicious
    1:04:35 I’d really love to just spend a moment talking about the ethical sourcing piece because I don’t think that’s something
    1:04:38 I didn’t understand until I did some research on you. Yeah, um
    1:04:43 Why why does that matter so much and what when you say ethical sourcing?
    1:04:47 What’s the difference between what you do and what normal chocolate chocolate in america?
    1:04:55 Well, the big thing is when I got into chocolate, I didn’t I didn’t know any of these things. Um, we we used to source our cocoa from peru kakao
    1:04:58 Um, which you know, ethical sourcing is not really an issue there
    1:05:03 But the problem is majority of the world’s cocoa comes from west africa and so as we got bigger
    1:05:08 You know, everyone’s like, hey, you need to switch your supply chain to west africa. I’m like cool
    1:05:12 um, and so then I started studying and reading up about it and I um
    1:05:17 And I noticed that 46 percent of labor in west africa on cocoa farms. It’s child labor and I was like
    1:05:23 That’s not that can’t be accurate and then I started digging deeper and deeper and I was like holy shit
    1:05:25 it’s just
    1:05:29 Almost half a labor it’s child labor and so I started talking to all the big chocolate companies or not all of them
    1:05:32 but as many as I could get a hold of and I was like, so
    1:05:37 What do you guys do about this whole child labor thing and they they’re constantly just telling me like it just is what it is
    1:05:39 That’s how chocolate always has been. I was like, whoa
    1:05:43 You guys make like a billion dollars a year in profit. You don’t
    1:05:48 You don’t see an issue with that being on the back of little kids and they’re like, no
    1:05:50 and then I you know, I
    1:05:56 I had this crazy clip on kind of a documentary guy. I think you saw him. Jeff who follows me around crazy clip
    1:05:58 where I’m meeting with like a big
    1:06:00 um
    1:06:02 I gotta be as big as possible because they’re gonna murder me
    1:06:08 We got tied back to him but like a big supplier will just leave it big like that and I asked them
    1:06:15 I was like, so do you have any way I can pay extra to not use child labor or anything like that or any options and they were just like
    1:06:16 no
    1:06:19 And I was and I my little documentary guys
    1:06:22 It’s like filming and I’m in like this big boardroom and I look at the camera
    1:06:27 I’m like, holy shit. They just said that on camera and uh and so I did all this research and it was just like
    1:06:32 Yeah, no and especially in America like there there’s some European chocolate brands that you know try
    1:06:35 But uh in America like really no one really cared
    1:06:39 I mean, there’s plenty of options and plenty of time to fix it plenty of money to fix it
    1:06:45 So that just kind of honestly pissed me off and like that so then I just was like, how do we solve this and
    1:06:47 So then it sent me down the rabbit hole
    1:06:52 If everything points back to like, you know to the reason chocolate in America is so cheap is because they just don’t
    1:06:56 You know not the reason one of the reasons they just pay the farmers a little like farmers make less than a dollar a day
    1:06:57 um
    1:07:02 So like because of that they’re forced to use child labor because I mean they literally just don’t even have money to pay
    1:07:06 Someone who’s not a child. How many kids do you think are in child labor in west africa? Just on cocoa farms?
    1:07:08 uh
    1:07:13 You might have sold in that 5000. No, it’s 1.5 million. You’re joking. Yeah, it’s over a million. It’s crazy
    1:07:18 So what we need to do is we need to in my head get to a billion dollars a year in revenue as fast as possible
    1:07:24 While being ethically sourced and being profitable a big part of it is we have to be profitable while doing it
    1:07:26 Because then I can point and go look
    1:07:30 We achieve scale ethically and we’re making money. It’s not that you can’t do it
    1:07:34 You just don’t want to and then um, and maybe
    1:07:36 Maybe we give them the benefit of it out
    1:07:41 Maybe they just truly don’t know how to do it at scale and maybe it’ll open their eyes and they’ll be like
    1:07:46 Oh, I guess it is possible and they’ll start to change the ways more than likely they won’t and I but over time
    1:07:52 I hope we can just shine a light on it using my platform and you know, um, just show the model works and then
    1:07:56 I don’t know something I would love to do in the long run is like, you know
    1:07:57 How there’s like the fair trade logo
    1:08:02 Maybe I make my own version of it and I help other chocolate companies source their cacao ethically and
    1:08:06 Uh or something and you know and I just educate people on like if it doesn’t have the symbol
    1:08:09 It’s probably using child labor and something I there’s some way
    1:08:13 I where I could play my cards over the next 10 years where we get over a million kids out of child labor
    1:08:18 Uh on cocoa farms and so I just got to connect the dots and figure out the correct way to do it
    1:08:23 This might sound like a really obvious question, but it’s it won’t be to everybody. Why don’t you care so much?
    1:08:29 Bro, I just like I’ve been on these farms. I don’t want to get rich on the back of little kids. I mean, it’s just kind of
    1:08:33 I feel like it’s kind of obvious, you know
    1:08:38 I maybe to other people in chocolate. They don’t care, but I the first thing when I heard about I was like, why?
    1:08:40 Why is this a thing?
    1:08:43 It reminds me of somewhat of again of Elon Musk and what his mission was with tesla
    1:08:46 He kind of knew that if he was able to prove that you can have fast
    1:08:52 Um, nice electric cars then the rest of the industry could give up their excuses that it’s not possible
    1:08:58 Exactly. Um, what if someone comes along though and they say, okay, Jimmy, we’ll give you five billion
    1:09:01 For feastable hell. No, I ain’t selling that shit. You’re never selling it
    1:09:05 No, because the first thing they would do to up the margins is they just drop the ethical sourcing
    1:09:08 You have people come along and offered to buy your youtube channel
    1:09:14 Uh, I mean, yeah, I’ve been offered a billion dollars here or crazy amounts of money there, but I mean
    1:09:17 It’s you know, what’s funny is
    1:09:22 Zuck got that famous billion dollar offer for facebook and he said, what was it? He was like
    1:09:24 Why would I sell the social media platform?
    1:09:28 I would just take the money and start a new one and I kind of like the one I have
    1:09:32 So why don’t I just keep it and I I every time I get which I haven’t in a while
    1:09:36 But you know back in the day, I used to like jokingly poke around just to see what people would offer me
    1:09:40 Um, and I would get those offers and then I would always just be like, yeah
    1:09:42 I mean, I would just do the same thing I’m doing now
    1:09:46 So I might as well just keep doing what I’m doing now, you know, the money won’t really change anything
    1:09:47 Well done
    1:09:51 And I don’t think you you’ve yet to get the credit you deserve for the the lengths you’ve gone to
    1:09:55 It’s with feastables. No, but I think it’s really important. I know you’re not doing it for credit at all
    1:09:59 I know that you’re doing it to get the message out there so that the industry changes
    1:10:02 But I think someone like you with a platform that you have that’s able to produce chocolate
    1:10:06 That is fucking delicious. They sent me a box of it about six months ago. And I
    1:10:13 I’m thinking of updating. Yeah, I mean if you hand them to me like hand me a couple bars
    1:10:19 There’s a a lot of stuff that uh, the problem is like if you look at this and this, you know from a distance
    1:10:24 You can’t tell really the difference between the flavors like this is dark sea salt. This is just dark chocolate
    1:10:28 So I’m about to update the wrappers where we’re going to put like colored tips here
    1:10:35 So you can tell the flavors from far away. I think that’s very important. Um, another thing too that uh, I
    1:10:38 there’s just
    1:10:40 You made a mistake. You put these in front of me now
    1:10:47 The other thing I want to um, I want to I’ve been experimenting and the newer renders are looking good with putting like right here
    1:10:55 Every bite helps uh, get kids out of child labor putting that on the front and then I I’m you know, we’re messing around with different machinery
    1:10:58 I feel like the images of the chocolate on the front could be a little higher quality
    1:11:03 The back is pretty ass. Um, I want to you know, put some more messaging on the back of it
    1:11:08 There’s a lot that needs to be like the the white tips here. It just makes it so obvious from far away
    1:11:11 What this flavor is whereas all these blend in and so yeah
    1:11:14 Brutal gotta fix it
    1:11:19 You talked about your friends calling you and asking you for a business advice and you helping them drive their businesses up
    1:11:21 but just watching you there
    1:11:26 Pick apart your own business made me think that there’s a lot of entrepreneurs that watch our show that are early in their own businesses
    1:11:28 and
    1:11:33 Many of them will be you’re gonna fail. You’re gonna fail a ton. I mean when I first started chocolate
    1:11:37 I mean it was it was hilarious how bad I fucked up our original
    1:11:43 Bars were like very thin. There’s a reason why like chocolate bars have these like break points here where they like break easily
    1:11:47 I didn’t know that um, and so mine was just one solid sheet of chocolate
    1:11:53 But that’s almost like a piece of glass whereas if you drop it it just shatters into like a bunch of little pieces
    1:11:57 And um, and I also didn’t know that there’s a thing called a package engineer
    1:12:03 And so can you have me a box of feastables? Uh my original chocolate box when you pop these open
    1:12:07 And put it on a shelf this obviously the problem’s fixed
    1:12:11 But if if this was sitting on a shelf when you grab this one
    1:12:14 These would all slide forward and then they would fall out of the box
    1:12:19 And or the box would fall off the shelf because of the weight because there wasn’t right balance at the bottom
    1:12:23 And the lips here this this didn’t used to be a thing. So these were open and there’s just a bottom lip here
    1:12:26 And so they would fall out like that
    1:12:30 Um, and then the bars because we didn’t have the natural break points would shatter like glass
    1:12:32 Who noticed that uh, well
    1:12:36 Me and the thing is I I this is an old team in feastables
    1:12:39 I would tell them like there’s too many broken bars when I go into walmart
    1:12:43 I’m seeing too many that are broken. They told me like, ah, you’re worrying about this too much
    1:12:47 It’s not that big of an issue. It happens to everyone and I got to the point where it was just
    1:12:54 Fucking pissing me off because I hated like grabbing a bar off the ground or seeing on the shelf all these like shattered chocolate bars that I
    1:12:58 I put like, uh, I paid people to put go pros in like, uh,
    1:13:03 Like a bag of lace ships pointed at because I couldn’t get I tried to get walmart to give me the security camera footage
    1:13:06 And they wouldn’t so I put hidden go pros and a bunch of random walmart
    1:13:10 Just to point it at the feastable bars just to see why are they fucking breaking so much
    1:13:13 There’s so many shots of like, you know, like a mom grabbing a bar
    1:13:17 And then she’d be looking at it literally like this and then you just see the box just go
    1:13:22 And she go and they just fall off the shelf and then they just put it up and you you know
    1:13:26 Some of the bars would be broken and it would just happen over and over and over again because we didn’t engineer the boxes correctly
    1:13:28 They didn’t do anything wrong
    1:13:31 Do you know how atypical that is what you’ve just said that you put go pros?
    1:13:34 Yeah, people told me I was crazy the amount of people who tried to tell me that was illegal. I was like, bro
    1:13:37 I don’t fucking care. I just need to know where my bars are breaking like all the leads are footage
    1:13:46 Oh, and so I that and uh, you know, I did a bunch of just data and I actually so there’s a company called a costa
    1:13:51 Where you can pay people to go into walmart. So then I I started paying where every week
    1:13:56 I would send someone into every single walmart in america to buy all the broken bars fix up the boxes
    1:13:59 It’s pretty expensive. I think um, you know, it’s like a hundred thousand dollars
    1:14:04 Just to send someone into every single walmart to clean them up twenty eight dollars a pop times five thousand um
    1:14:07 walmarts and
    1:14:11 Yeah, so I was sending people into walmart to clean up the broken bars and that but I was paying so much money
    1:14:15 It was a hundred thousand dollars a week just to send people in and then I was buying all these broken bars
    1:14:19 Because I just really didn’t want people to go into a walmart and to buy a broken feasible bar
    1:14:24 Like that is literally the worst, you know, consumer experience you can have um, and yeah
    1:14:27 And then I’ve learned what a packaged engineer is and I was like, holy shit
    1:14:31 This is your full-time job to make it where my boxes don’t fucking fall over. Where have you been?
    1:14:36 But on the point that I was saying your obsession with the detail of a product
    1:14:43 Is it’s completely atypical if I was to compare this to a normal youtuber and their e-commerce brand. Oh, they wouldn’t give a fuck
    1:14:47 Yeah, I was I probably spent thousands of hours obsessing over this product
    1:14:49 I mean, I know it doesn’t feel like it because it’s just chocolate
    1:14:53 But yeah, I mean it’s it’s a problem from the ethical sourcing to every little thing about it
    1:14:59 Like I don’t I don’t do anything half-assed and didn’t you drive to a ton of walmarts, don’t you? Oh all the time
    1:15:01 That’s what I do every day. Oh, fuck
    1:15:04 We should go hit a walmart. We didn’t even go. Ah, he’s kind of playing he’s got a catch
    1:15:10 Yeah, it’s my favorite thing to do is like sometimes I’ll spend all night on walmart just uh scanning products and looking at the daily velocities and sales
    1:15:12 it’s it’s like, uh
    1:15:16 I had a layover in DC. I live in north Carolina
    1:15:17 Then I was like, wait a minute
    1:15:21 I could just rent a car and hit like 30 walmarts on the way home and just drive home
    1:15:28 And so then I drove home from DC to north Carolina visited every walmart on the east coast in like the middle of america
    1:15:31 Just to like go look at the chocolate aisle and see all the statistics and things like that
    1:15:37 I asked you earlier on if you struggled. Fuck. I wish we could go visit a walmart. You know how fun that would be
    1:15:42 It’s like I would love to educate you on the chocolate. Oh one month still open now
    1:15:47 Uh, no, they’re not okay. We can do it another time. Well, I usually what I do is I just bang on the door and they let me in
    1:15:48 Of course
    1:15:52 Yeah, but what you’ve just said there, um, I feel like I’m getting at something here because
    1:15:58 99.99999% of entrepreneurs that I know that just have one thing to do just to run their business
    1:16:01 Don’t give that many fucks about the detail
    1:16:07 And you have a good thing to do an amazon show which is like the highest future of whatever of all time or whatever
    1:16:10 And you have this massive channel. You have your philanthropy
    1:16:15 You have all of this stuff 100 million followers on tick tock 100 gazillion followers here a gazillion followers the numbers are just
    1:16:21 Unfathomable and you’re still driving to 31 walmarts to check if your chocolate is breaking
    1:16:22 Yeah
    1:16:27 Well, and I go in the back when I’m there if it’s not on the shelf and I’ll go scan it in and help the employees and
    1:16:29 And is that is that the difference?
    1:16:35 Well, you just got to know everything going on. It’s I mean, it’s just first principles every if like I
    1:16:39 I hate when someone in my business is like tells me something
    1:16:45 That I don’t agree with but I’m too ignorant to be able to challenge them because then it’s like well, who am I to
    1:16:47 You know, I guess I got to just take them on the word
    1:16:51 But most people tend to pick the easiest route or conform to the status quo
    1:16:55 And I want to if I want to leave real innovation and like change the industry
    1:16:59 Then I got to know every little facet of everything and so I mean at the end of the day, you know
    1:17:06 The shelf is where people buy it. So I got to intricately know everything going on at the touch point of the consumer
    1:17:09 And you know how it gets there how it’s being stored at the
    1:17:14 Distribution centers and then the retailer and then on the shelf and what what does it look like?
    1:17:19 What’s the experience and everything because all these little things add up. Do you not feel like you spend your whole life fighting
    1:17:26 People to raise their standards to your standards because you don’t exist in a world of mr. Beasts
    1:17:31 Well, that that’s the thing I used to think which I’ve said a couple times it was just content
    1:17:34 But I realized it’s just everything I do like I just want to be the best at it
    1:17:40 And that’s it’s weird man because you just look at this chocolate bar and you wouldn’t you’d be like who the fuck cares
    1:17:43 But that’s the thing that’s that’s what I’ve really enjoyed the last two years
    1:17:48 Is I’ve gone as in depth on this as I have youtube and it’s been every bit as fun
    1:17:53 I mean, it’s very very fucking difficult and and hard especially the ethical sourcing and like I recently spent a week in
    1:18:00 West Africa and I I went from the bean all the way to the bar and like you worked on the farm and followed the entire
    1:18:05 Qc supply chain and everything and it’s not it’s like it’s equally as hard as my youtube channel
    1:18:11 But it’s also equally as fun and I that was just that was a big eye-opener for me because I never thought I would enjoy something as much
    1:18:12 as
    1:18:14 My youtube channel and that’s what I was saying earlier
    1:18:18 I’ve come to realize I deeply enjoy building businesses and solving hard complex problems
    1:18:20 Even though I know this is just chocolate
    1:18:22 But I get the complex thing from the ethical sourcing side
    1:18:29 Just on a daily basis like that that’s fun with beast beast games with this with all the other things going on
    1:18:31 Your main channel
    1:18:35 Which is I guess you probably still see as your baby to some degree. It’s the like the mothership right because it’s the source
    1:18:39 It’s what allows us to do everything like most people buying this aren’t buying it because of beast games
    1:18:41 Do you ever get paranoia when the views go down?
    1:18:45 They haven’t gone down yet. They’ve gone up every year for 14 years
    1:18:49 But do you still get that that do you still watch the video go live and look at the back end?
    1:18:52 No, I don’t no. I mean because it’s like
    1:18:54 we uh
    1:18:57 I don’t know I just upload a video and then in the next day
    1:19:00 I look at the retention and the CTR and if we fucked up I just you know
    1:19:05 Well, what we do is we call them after action reports. So I get all the smartest people in my company like uh
    1:19:09 Well, like we actually just did when I wish I had my padded on me
    1:19:14 But like we I have I pay this guy to just do a very in-depth breakdown of like here’s the retention chart
    1:19:17 Here’s every time someone clicked away. Here’s where it was the flattest. Here’s where it was the worst
    1:19:20 You know, we’ll take like so if I upload a video that’s 20 minutes
    1:19:23 We’ll take our last 10 20 minute videos and we’ll go, you know
    1:19:27 The median retention on the last 10 20 minute videos was 10 minutes and
    1:19:33 Six or 55 seconds is the median. So if the retention on this new video is 11 minutes or above
    1:19:34 We did a good job
    1:19:40 If it’s below that then we did below average and blah blah blah and and he just does like a giant like presentation
    1:19:44 And so usually after two weeks after we upload we’ll we’ll look at that with all my top people
    1:19:47 And then we’ll just be like, what do we fuck up? What do we do? Well, cool move on
    1:19:51 And has there ever been a moment in real recent times where you go
    1:19:54 I think I need to spend more time on it again and get back in there and
    1:19:59 Because all the time, you know, but a lot of that stems from insecurity
    1:20:05 I mean because the thing is of course we we had a video recently every minute someone is eliminated and it didn’t perform the best
    1:20:10 Um, you know, and there like our intro was a little repetitive. It was a little dark
    1:20:11 it um
    1:20:16 It we had we brought back like losers from beast games to compete in a main channel video
    1:20:19 But the problem is some people thought it was beast games and like oh, I’ve already seen this
    1:20:22 Well, there’s just a lot of rookie mistakes there and it’s very easy for me to like
    1:20:26 You know get insecure and and like be like fuck. This is why I need to be in the weeds
    1:20:30 But the other day it’s like it’s not like when I was calling all the shots. I was perfect either
    1:20:33 So as long as it’s like as long as when people make mistakes, they learn from them
    1:20:38 I have a saying like that I tell people all the time like like whenever our new creatives fuck up
    1:20:43 I’ll look at Tyler. I’ll go Tyler’s literally cost me tens of millions of dollars in bad decisions
    1:20:46 Like this isn’t going to be the first time you fuck us out of a million dollars as long as you learn from it
    1:20:53 It’s fine. Um, and so as long as like that’s where these after-action reports are important because as long as we when we mess up
    1:20:55 We articulate why and it doesn’t happen again
    1:20:56 Then it’s just part of it
    1:21:00 But yeah, I mean if the same thing was happening over and over and over again that I’d be like fuck
    1:21:01 I need to get stepped in but
    1:21:04 My my guys are just good like they don’t make the same mistake twice
    1:21:10 Tell me about experimentation and testing because people look to you as the the real king of like testing
    1:21:14 And experimentation how central is this to the success of everything that you do very much?
    1:21:17 And that’s the thing like that every minute video like it flopped, you know
    1:21:23 And that was your your highest chance of flopping is when you do something new like really really new
    1:21:27 One of our bigger flops before that too is we did this video where it was like 10 minutes
    1:21:31 This room will explode we built this giant tower had a guy start at the top
    1:21:33 He had to make it it was a real-time shoot down press a button
    1:21:37 Yeah, it was just didn’t perform that well people didn’t really like it
    1:21:43 Is kind of complicated blah blah and it’s like you have to be careful because you know, um
    1:21:48 I want I want a culture where people feel comfortable experimenting and trying and feel fine failing and so
    1:21:51 You know when that video failed or when you know the every minute
    1:21:56 Someone’s eliminated like you know, I don’t go and yell at people or call mediates or anything like that
    1:21:58 I just I’m like what did we do wrong?
    1:22:00 All right, here’s all the facts
    1:22:04 Just make sure it doesn’t happen again. Now. I can be the first time you cost me a bunch of money
    1:22:08 It’s all good. You know, I see this as investing in you guys and let’s just learn from it
    1:22:14 I was gonna say because um or else if if there was a culture of that then people would just make the same videos again
    1:22:17 And a lot of youtubers just turn out the same format. I’m okay with my people failing
    1:22:22 I’m okay with the video being 10 out of 10 like as long as we actually took an honest good
    1:22:29 Um try at it, you know and and as long as we failed because we made the wrong shot call
    1:22:32 Not because we were lazy not because we didn’t put the effort in etc
    1:22:37 As long as if as long as it’s just like we made an educated decision to test something or try something
    1:22:42 And it just didn’t work. I’m cool with that. We can do that all day and like they know that and I don’t yell at people
    1:22:44 um
    1:22:47 You know or get mad at them when they um actually mess up like that
    1:22:52 I’ve invested more than a million pounds into this company perfected and they’re also a sponsor of this podcast
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    1:23:04 They have the matcha powders. They have the matcha drinks. They have the pods and all of this keeps me focused throughout a very very long recording day
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    1:23:14 So when people say to me that they don’t like the taste of matcha
    1:23:19 I’m guessing that they haven’t tried perfected unlike low quality matcha that has a bitter grassy taste
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    1:23:58 It’s also a company that I have invested in and it’s one that you guys ask me about a lot
    1:24:02 The biggest question I get asked is why I use whoop over other wearable technology options
    1:24:07 And there is a bunch of reasons but I think it really comes down to the most overlooked yet crucial feature
    1:24:12 It’s non-invasive nature when everything in life seems to be competing for my attention
    1:24:18 I turn to whoop because it doesn’t have a screen and will armored the ceo who came on this podcast
    1:24:20 Told me the reason that there’s no screen
    1:24:22 Because screens equal distraction
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    1:24:49 Let me know how you get on. You’ve just concluded today the
    1:24:55 biggest competition show I think of all time. Well it is of all time, but I think you’ve got 50 guineas
    1:25:01 Well, you have the largest sets in history, most world records in history, the largest catch fries in history, most winners in history, most contestants in history, most cameras, yeah
    1:25:04 And what 50 guineas world records?
    1:25:10 That we know of. There’s probably way more, but yeah, you said something on stage which I found quite interesting. You said I kind of feel a bit sad
    1:25:13 Yeah, I know because every thursday
    1:25:16 I got to look forward to like seeing the internet’s reaction to beast games and now
    1:25:18 I’m gonna wake up next thursday and
    1:25:21 I don’t I don’t get to see what people think it’s over
    1:25:29 They they describe them this in the olympics as gold medal depression. Really? Yeah, they say I think it’s I might butcher these numbers but
    1:25:32 70% of people after the olympics, even if they want a gold medal
    1:25:38 Experience depression afterwards because they’ve lost their north star that was giving them meaning in june. Yeah
    1:25:43 No, I mean, I’m not I I mean, I I guess I’m playfully sad, but I don’t it’s fine
    1:25:48 I got I have so much shit going on. I don’t even really get to think about that kind of stuff and you’re on to the next one
    1:25:50 uh, yeah, so we’ll
    1:25:51 well
    1:25:52 amazon
    1:25:57 Let’s get season two in the books already. Come on. Let’s sign a contract. I can’t really talk about it is the most
    1:26:02 Me and jack were talking about it early on it is the most incredible thing that I think I’ve seen on tv and
    1:26:05 I just think I just I think I said to you on the phone the other day
    1:26:10 I watch it knowing that unless you do another one, I will never see something on this magnitude and scale
    1:26:13 Yeah, no one wants to do something like that because it’s fucking hard, man
    1:26:19 at those sets and the the thing is the reason why a lot of reality tv doesn’t feel that way
    1:26:23 um, and we could have obviously done much better storytelling and we will when we do future iterations, but the
    1:26:30 the at its crux like what people don’t see is like to have a thousand cameras recording the amount of
    1:26:37 like we broke a world record for most camera cables ran like the like the most miles of camera cables and like
    1:26:44 And the millions of dollars we had to spend on storage and millions of dollars in the control room and the millions upon millions of dollars of
    1:26:50 Hardware to edit it and like having to bring in adobe to custom change the adobe software where you could actually have that many multicamps
    1:26:56 It’s like it is the the actual infrastructure to actually be able to do that is incredibly incredibly difficult
    1:27:03 And um, that’s why usually what they’ll do is they’ll be like, all right. Here’s a one hour like if you’re filming a reality show
    1:27:07 Here’s a one hour window, you know, they’ll send out story producers. They’ll put a camera on you
    1:27:10 They’ll be like, yo, can you say this line? You’re kind of our villain. This is what we’re looking for
    1:27:15 They’ll kind of tell you what to say and then they’ll write the notes down and they’ll catalog it for the editors whereas. We’re just like
    1:27:22 Fuck it. We’re gonna be filming, you know 24/7 all these cameras. You guys be yourselves
    1:27:26 We’ll just capture it because you don’t know when someone’s gonna do something weird
    1:27:28 You don’t know when someone’s gonna whisper to someone in formal lines
    1:27:33 You don’t know so you literally have to just be rolling and you need these to be acceptable angles
    1:27:37 So you need multiple an a cam and a b cam and all this coverage which creates an monumental
    1:27:43 Fuckload of footage, but that’s what allowed us. That was I mean of monks many things. That’s one of the biggest
    1:27:49 Competitive advantages we had when filming these games is we put in the effort to to set up all this infrastructure
    1:27:55 We could actually capture it and just tell the story how it is instead of having to use story producers to put words in people’s mouths
    1:27:59 But it’s a fucking nightmare man. Like I had over 150 people editing that I mean
    1:28:05 We’re combing through unfathomable amounts of footage and and everything and I mean even things from like the
    1:28:12 Computer network and our local it constantly crashing because there’s just so much footage there and like if I were to
    1:28:15 Send all the beast games footage to just one editor
    1:28:16 It would probably be like
    1:28:20 $300,000 in hard drives and you know and if you have 150 editors, it’s just impossible
    1:28:24 So you you spend millions of dollars and you build a central server room
    1:28:27 And so we have our own server racks and everything and then you have them remote in there
    1:28:33 But even then just due to the sheer volume of footage adobe and everything which is constantly crashing and it’s like it was
    1:28:35 It was a nightmare on the back end
    1:28:39 But it’s great because that’s why we were able to tell what actually happened
    1:28:43 Why it feels different because we were recording non-stop 24/7
    1:28:49 I was wondering as I was watching it if amazon are aware of the fact that you’re just going to give away the money like this
    1:28:53 Like when you like flip the coin and it adds another $5 million but that didn’t affect them
    1:28:57 I lost a ton of money filming the show so that that came out of my pocket because really yeah
    1:29:01 We were we spent way too much money on it. I lost tens of millions of dollars on that show
    1:29:08 Yeah, I’m an idiot because the headlines came out as like amazon give mr. Beast 100 million to do
    1:29:15 Yeah show so i’m thinking okay i’m doing the math i’m thinking okay, so that he spent 20 odd million on the prizes
    1:29:18 Yeah, we give away so there must be 80 million left or something
    1:29:24 I mean so episode one we spent over 15 million dollars on those towers building them all like that was the most towers ever built
    1:29:29 The most hydraulic press or whatever used I mean that that set was fucking crazy man
    1:29:32 We had to build a thousand towers that were 10 feet tall
    1:29:36 Safety tests them all put like get it where they actually work
    1:29:41 We had to literally a hard wire of them all and build like our own software where we could drop people
    1:29:46 We had to put up all the screens. I mean that was that that was that’s like arguably one of the largest sets ever built in history
    1:29:49 That was just episode one and that’s just like the construction of the set
    1:29:52 That’s not including like you said we we gave away over 20 million dollars
    1:30:00 I think over 2 million was in episode one and then episode two we have the city which that was a 14 million dollar set build and that was
    1:30:06 Um huge. I mean because that was a real city that they were living in you know, um, and then I could yeah
    1:30:12 But just between the 20 whatever 2 million we gave away plus those two sets. I mean already right there you’re
    1:30:16 Probably you’re at over 50 million dollars. How much did the whole thing cost?
    1:30:19 That I have been advised not to say because
    1:30:23 Because people will hear a big number and be like, oh, well, I could have made a good shelf
    1:30:24 I had that kind of money
    1:30:30 But the thing is they couldn’t because it’s money isn’t everything like building and managing it is is, you know
    1:30:35 Infinitely harder, but is it more than 100 million? Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course
    1:30:39 I mean, well, I just told you how we spent 50 million and that we’re only two episodes in
    1:30:44 So how out of pocket are you tens of millions? Yeah, it was not a good financial decision to make peace games
    1:30:47 I lost money. I would have more money if I didn’t fill it any regrets. No, no, it’s great
    1:30:49 I mean for for me
    1:30:54 I was it was about making season one as good as possible. You know, I can’t let the youtube community down because that
    1:30:58 You know creators don’t have a good rep when it comes to doing stuff on streaming platforms
    1:31:03 And you know, I’m getting 200 million views of video on average over the course of the first year
    1:31:09 And I’m going to talk to these streaming platforms and they’re like, yeah, we’ve been burned by creators before I’m like, bro
    1:31:17 I’m not a tiktoker that dances. I have a production company and I routinely make spectacles and even me these streaming platforms
    1:31:21 They weren’t taking serious. So I was like, fuck like if I fail, it’s over
    1:31:24 Like no one’s ever no streaming platform is ever going to touch a youtuber ever again
    1:31:28 So my big thing was just making sure this crushed and you know now the doors are opening up
    1:31:31 I mean, I’m getting calls from creators left and right and they’re like, oh
    1:31:34 Yeah, streaming platforms. They wouldn’t talk to me before now. They’re coming
    1:31:37 Like I would try to get a meeting with them and they’re like, no
    1:31:43 Now they’re like begging to like have meetings with them and I already know of two creators that have signed deals
    1:31:48 Um, just on the back end success of beast games and probably I mean hundreds of hundreds of millions of dollars
    1:31:51 Is going to flow into creators pockets just because of beast games in the next year
    1:31:56 Well, the on rotten tomatoes, which is not an an easy an easy critic to please
    1:32:01 No, you got you it was like 90 percent approval from fans, which is pretty unheard of in rotten tomatoes
    1:32:04 I know um, but also I hear through the the grapevine that
    1:32:07 It is on track to become
    1:32:09 One of amazon’s biggest shows of all time
    1:32:16 Yeah, the problem is I have to wait for them to do a press release. So okay. Yeah, well, I’m just talking about
    1:32:21 I got you. I told him I’d be a good boy and not leak things
    1:32:26 So but for a a youtuber quote unquote youtuber. Yeah, well, they did release it
    1:32:31 It was their number one unscripted show of all time and then yeah, I mean the it’s I I don’t think they’d mind me saying
    1:32:36 It’s very the show is very evergreen like usually these shows get a lot of attention and then kind of like teeter off
    1:32:41 But ours is like like over 700,000 new unique viewers are watching it every single day
    1:32:47 Like which is pretty crazy because if we maintain that like yeah, it’s going to shatter some pretty crazy records
    1:32:52 And what’s the upside for you to continue promoting it now that it’s done because I put all this effort in
    1:32:56 I want to see it. Yeah, I don’t get paid to like all the promotion I’m doing now. I’m not getting paid for
    1:33:01 Really, but I mean, but I mean, I guess the upside would be the better season one does, you know
    1:33:04 The more money I get for season two three four five, etc
    1:33:07 If I sit here with you in 10 years time jimmy. Yep
    1:33:10 And everything went to plan
    1:33:16 Um you’re 36 at the age I already know what you’re gonna ask
    1:33:18 Yeah, I mean I hate that kind of stuff because if you asked me
    1:33:21 The problem is if you asked me this like five years ago
    1:33:24 I never would have said anything about feastables or a lot of the stuff I’m doing now
    1:33:28 And so the honest answer is I don’t know. I mean, I think in what I’m doing
    1:33:32 You know, hopefully by then I have two billion subscribers on youtube
    1:33:35 You know beast games is bigger than we ever imagined
    1:33:39 Hopefully feastables has gotten over a million kids out of child labor by then
    1:33:46 And you know, I probably will have two or three other businesses that I’m very passionate about that are hopefully crushing and
    1:33:49 Yeah, I just
    1:33:51 I don’t know and personally
    1:33:56 Maybe I’ll have a kid by then. I don’t know. I mean only time will tell it’s it won’t be until I feel like
    1:33:58 I could actually have enough time to be a good dad, but
    1:34:02 I I don’t even know man. I don’t think about my personal life. I just think about
    1:34:07 Winning and gotta build some photos that I found that I loved. Oh, okay
    1:34:11 Holy shit, is this me or my brother?
    1:34:13 This one as well
    1:34:15 Where’d you get these?
    1:34:16 Um internet
    1:34:19 These are on the internet. These are like the really iconic photos that I
    1:34:24 From seeing really interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this one. Really? Yeah, I don’t
    1:34:29 Do you recognize anything in that photo? No, I don’t I was just thinking like what house am I even in?
    1:34:35 I might be at a military base potentially because when we were younger
    1:34:37 My both my parents were in the military, so they were traveling a lot
    1:34:44 So this might just be like some random house interesting. I do recognize this that this photo in the background
    1:34:49 I’m sure you thought of on screen. I think that that that was yeah, that’s on the hallway beside her bathroom
    1:34:51 I haven’t been to my mom’s house in so long
    1:34:53 um
    1:34:58 Interesting you do so much for children, but if you could whisper in that child’s ear something about by bitcoin
    1:35:05 What was it like two pennies back then no, um
    1:35:12 I know because I wouldn’t want I wouldn’t say anything if you gave me a microphone to talk to him because the problem is I’d be
    1:35:17 I’d be worried that it would change, you know the outcome of of how I became and like I’m very
    1:35:22 Even though I know earlier on I was probably sounded a little depressed because shit’s hard, but
    1:35:28 You know, I’m I am happy with the position. I am in and I would be worried that
    1:35:35 You know like this is definitely a very confused child that’s not fitting in that feels like a freaking freak not this young one
    1:35:39 I don’t know what the fuck he’s thinking, but this one right here probably is around the age where I was like
    1:35:44 Fuck I’m just a fucking weirdo. I don’t fit in with anyone. Why does no one want to build businesses and succeed?
    1:35:47 But I think going through that journey was was important and it’s uh
    1:35:53 Yeah, it just gives me a lot of conviction with things. So I probably if I wasn’t allowed to say by bitcoin
    1:35:56 I just wouldn’t say anything. What about taha?
    1:35:58 Yeah, to my mom
    1:36:00 I
    1:36:01 would
    1:36:05 I mean this was what’s funny. It’s these are these are two different photos of my mom
    1:36:12 You have like this version of my mom. I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would I mean because she’s she’s in the military and they just beat like
    1:36:20 Systems and order into your head and she this is probably right around the time where we lost everything and so this you know
    1:36:22 And she’s at a very low point in her life
    1:36:27 And so I don’t think there’s anything I could say that ever would have like convinced her that her lunatic son
    1:36:29 Is heading down the right path and um
    1:36:35 You know, but you know, you can see the difference here where it’s it’s almost indicative where she’s smiling in this photo
    1:36:40 This is when I gave her 100 grand this after we made it this after we had the whole conversation where she finally was like, okay
    1:36:42 I’ll trust you, you know
    1:36:47 There’s a the whatever 12 13 years between these two photos is a very hard journey
    1:36:51 Especially when I stopped going to college and I got straight zeros and I mean she thought
    1:36:56 His life’s fucking over. I just wasted 18 years of my life, you know
    1:37:01 So same thing. I don’t I don’t I don’t think there’s anything I could say that would have changed anything
    1:37:04 If anything, I would have just gave her a heart attack
    1:37:07 Did she do you tell her now what she means to you and oh, yeah, of course
    1:37:10 Yeah, you’re gonna. Yeah, and she’s she’s very happy and like
    1:37:17 Yeah, we’re in a really good spot now. I love my mom. I mean because obviously I wouldn’t be here without her
    1:37:20 You know, I mean if she didn’t work the multiple jobs and do all the things she did to
    1:37:24 Put me where I am. I mean even little things like, you know
    1:37:28 She uh, would give me like some months like, you know
    1:37:32 20 30 dollars and then I would take that money and use that to like buy
    1:37:36 Stuff to like help make videos or or whatever. Um
    1:37:41 And even just the fact that we had internet, you know, I mean and things like that which you know
    1:37:43 I mean pretty basic now. It wasn’t as common back then
    1:37:47 He used to get a phone call and you’re like house internet. I don’t know if you would go out
    1:37:51 Yeah, and so like, you know, um, it wasn’t the best position
    1:37:57 But she gave me all the tools I needed to succeed not, you know on purpose, but she must be so shocked
    1:38:01 Well, she’s used to it now, but yeah, I mean on the come up. I mean it was
    1:38:05 Yeah, I mean imagine being her, you know, I mean she used to
    1:38:09 When I turned 16 like she couldn’t afford to buy me a car
    1:38:15 She couldn’t she couldn’t afford like the minivan we had like it was a fucking piece of shit
    1:38:19 Like needed a repair. She couldn’t afford it like smoke was coming out the front of it
    1:38:23 But she was a an absolute mess and then she comes home and I’m just like
    1:38:32 I’m making youtube videos. Fuck math homework mom and you know, and she’s just like she I think she was making $40,000 a year because I uh
    1:38:35 We didn’t talk about finance as much when we were younger
    1:38:39 But I remember I got a $40,000 brand deal and then she told me that’s how much I’m making a year
    1:38:45 And I was like, holy shit. I didn’t at the time. I was like, I thought you made way more than $40,000 a year
    1:38:52 Um, and then I was like, why the fuck are you working? Like I’m getting paid this per video now on brand deals and so, um
    1:38:55 Yeah
    1:38:58 What an incredible woman. I know she’s great from
    1:39:03 Everything she went through to now. She she just needs to be happy. I try not to stress her out
    1:39:09 She’s been through enough stress like her her job is I’ve been making her not make I mean she wants to do it
    1:39:14 But like exercise routinely do all the like system like body health scans and you know
    1:39:18 Get on the vitamin grind and everything because like I’m not having kids anytime soon
    1:39:22 But obviously when I do have kids I really want her to be involved and she needs to be able to play with them and things like that
    1:39:25 So I’m like, you know stress is going to kill you. You’re not allowed to be stressed
    1:39:27 You need to do all these health protocols
    1:39:30 You need to be like because you know, you might be in your 70s when I have kids
    1:39:36 Like you need to be able to move around which means you might potentially be 80 when they’re like 14 or 15
    1:39:41 Like come on like what you do now is indicative will represent how active you’ll be able to be in my kids lives
    1:39:47 So like and we do have these conversations in a playful way. So she’s taking her health very serious for the future
    1:39:52 You’re not a man that seems to have many fears, but that appears to be one of them a fear that we both share
    1:39:54 Yeah, exactly. I mean
    1:39:58 Hope she’ll just never die. My mom’s gonna live forever. We’ll be fine. Brian Johnson
    1:40:05 We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest
    1:40:07 Not knowing who they’re leaving it for. Okay
    1:40:12 Do do I get hit with the question first or you get hit with a question first? Okay
    1:40:18 Would you rather die with a sound body or a sound mind sound body or sound mind?
    1:40:26 Oh, I assume if I chose body then like that would be like dementia or something on the mind. Um
    1:40:29 That’s hard die sound body or sound mind
    1:40:35 I mean, what are you if you don’t have your mind? I would say mine to be honest
    1:40:38 Amen. Yeah
    1:40:43 Jimmy, thank you. I gotta write my question now. You do. I want to say something to you though. Um, I have to give you a lot of credit because
    1:40:48 So many people like us like our teams we have stolen so much from you
    1:40:52 We’ve stolen your principles your mentality and it’s made us be better creators
    1:40:56 Which has allowed us to live the lives that we get to live and do these things that we we love the most and
    1:41:00 There’s always a cost. I think to being different and to being
    1:41:02 Weird there’s an upside
    1:41:06 But there’s also a really really really big cost and you you pay that cost the most when you’re younger
    1:41:11 And you you have to fit into the the system and you don’t get to choose who you hang around with and stuff
    1:41:14 Um, but then as an adult as you said we all then clap for the the
    1:41:19 Unicorns the weird ones and we steal from them and we aspire to be them and we learn from them
    1:41:24 And you have in a very short amount of time that I’ve been speaking to you for like a week or something
    1:41:30 Have blown my mind open. I got to see the behind the scenes of beast games and my entire mind as I sat there on the sofa
    1:41:36 I like remember where I sat when I saw the behind the scenes just exploded and you made me um in that moment
    1:41:40 Realize how much I’d limited myself as someone that I consider themselves to be really ambitious
    1:41:42 I’d limited myself
    1:41:45 And so I wanted to say thank you because you’re not just doing that for me
    1:41:49 You’re doing that for tens of millions hundreds of millions of people all at the same time
    1:41:54 And you’re giving them the the roadmap but also a blueprint and the mentality and the belief
    1:41:56 that they too
    1:41:58 don’t have to live
    1:41:59 The life that
    1:42:02 School or so the system has told them they have in the box exactly
    1:42:07 So thank you so much honestly because we need more people like you and I’m I’m your biggest fan. Thank you
    1:42:10 I really really appreciate you. Thank you. All right, let’s see if we can break into it one more
    1:42:13 You’re so funny
    1:42:18 Some of the most successful fascinating and insightful people in the world have sat across from me at this table
    1:42:23 And at the end of every conversation I asked them to leave a question behind in the famous diary of a CEO
    1:42:29 And it’s a question designed to spark the kind of conversations that matter most the kind of conversations that can change your life
    1:42:34 We then take those questions and we put them on these cards on every single card
    1:42:38 You can see the person who left the question
    1:42:44 The question they asked and on the other side if you scan that barcode you can see who answered it next
    1:42:47 Something I know a lot of you have wanted to know and the only way to find out
    1:42:53 Is by getting yourself some conversation cards which you can play at home with friends and family at work with colleagues
    1:42:55 And also with total strangers on holiday
    1:43:00 I’ll put a link to the conversation cards in the description below and you can get yours at thediary.com
    1:43:24 [Music]
    Có lý do tại sao không ai làm video giống như tôi, vì không ai muốn sống cuộc sống mà tôi đang sống hoặc có tư duy như tôi. Họ sẽ rất đau khổ. Còn bạn, bạn có hạnh phúc không?
    Tôi sẽ rất trung thực: cho đến giờ, tôi chưa hạnh phúc hơn khổ đau. Đã bao giờ bạn nghĩ đến việc từ bỏ YouTube không?
    Ôi, vâng, tất nhiên rồi. Thật ư? Ồ, trời ơi.
    Mr. Beast! Mr. Beast! Mr. Beast! Anh ấy là YouTuber lớn nhất hành tinh và đang xây dựng các đế chế.
    Ý tôi là, có điều gì mà người đàn ông này không thể làm không? Đế chế kinh doanh của anh lớn hơn hầu hết mọi người nhận ra.
    Vâng, tôi thì mới chỉ 26 tuổi và chúng tôi có kênh YouTube lớn nhất thế giới và Beast Games.
    Sẽ lập kỷ lục điên rồ và chúng tôi đạt doanh thu chín con số từ các trò chơi này.
    Nhưng nhiều điều đó bắt nguồn từ việc tôi là một đứa trẻ rất bối rối, không vừa vặn và cảm thấy như một kẻ lập dị.
    Thêm vào đó, tôi thực sự muốn chăm sóc mẹ mình, vì khi tôi 11 tuổi, chúng tôi đã phá sản và mất tất cả. May mắn thay, mọi thứ đã ổn thỏa và điều đó là vì tôi thực sự giỏi trong việc ám ảnh về một điều gì đó
    Nhiều hơn bất kỳ ai khác trên hành tinh này, như chúng tôi đã kiếm hàng chục triệu đô la từ những trò chơi này.
    Nhưng điều quan trọng là làm cho mùa đầu tiên tốt nhất có thể và tôi thực sự thích giải quyết những vấn đề phức tạp.
    Bạn nghĩ có bao nhiêu trẻ em đang làm việc lao động trẻ em ở Tây Phi chỉ trên các trang trại cacao?
    Đó là 1.5 triệu. Và với Feastables, chúng tôi đang cố gắng đưa hơn một triệu trẻ em ra khỏi lao động trẻ em.
    Nhưng phần mỉa mai là càng giúp đỡ người khác thì tôi càng nhận được nhiều như tôi đã đọc hơn 5,000 tin nhắn bảo tôi tự tử.
    Tức là, chắc chắn có những lúc tôi đã khóc.
    Nhưng nếu sức khỏe tâm thần của tôi là ưu tiên hàng đầu, tôi sẽ không thành công như hiện tại.
    Đó là cái giá bạn phải trả.
    Nhưng khi nào thì đủ là đủ?
    Thành thật mà nói, tôi thấy điều này thật thú vị rằng khi chúng ta nhìn vào phần sau của Spotify và Apple và các kênh âm thanh của chúng ta,
    Phần lớn những người xem podcast này vẫn chưa nhấn nút theo dõi hoặc nút đăng ký.
    Dù bạn đang nghe điều này ở đâu, tôi muốn làm một thỏa thuận với bạn.
    Nếu bạn có thể làm cho tôi một ân huệ lớn và nhấn nút đăng ký,
    Tôi sẽ làm việc không biết mệt mỏi từ giờ cho đến mãi mãi để làm cho chương trình ngày càng tốt hơn.
    Tôi không thể nói cho bạn biết điều đó giúp ích cho chúng tôi nhiều như thế nào khi bạn nhấn nút đăng ký.
    Chương trình càng lớn có nghĩa là chúng tôi có thể mở rộng sản xuất,
    Mời tới tất cả các khách mời mà bạn muốn gặp và tiếp tục làm điều mà chúng tôi yêu thích.
    Nếu bạn có thể làm cho tôi ân huệ nhỏ đó và nhấn nút theo dõi,
    Dù bạn đang nghe điều này ở đâu, điều đó sẽ có ý nghĩa rất lớn với tôi.
    Đó là ân huệ duy nhất mà tôi sẽ từng xin bạn.
    Cảm ơn bạn rất nhiều vì thời gian của bạn.
    Quay trở lại với tập này.
    Jimmy, chúng ta mới chỉ gặp nhau và bạn đã là một cái ô tô Rubik đối với tôi.
    Được thôi.
    Trong nhiều cách, và tôi đã cố gắng ghép các mảnh lại với nhau để hiểu
    Sự độc đáo của bạn vì bạn thật sự độc đáo.
    Chúng tôi vừa lái xe đến đây và nghe bạn nói về cách mà bạn nhìn nhận cuộc sống và
    Nói chuyện với bạn qua điện thoại hôm qua,
    Tôi đã phỏng vấn hàng trăm và hàng trăm người và tôi chưa bao giờ gặp ai có
    Quan điểm về cuộc sống giống như bạn. Bạn thật sự độc đáo.
    Tôi cần hiểu điều gì về những năm đầu đời của bạn để hiểu bạn là ai?
    Ôi trời, um, vâng, những năm đầu đời của tôi,
    Tôi chỉ là một người cứng đầu. Tôi không bao giờ từ bỏ.
    Ý tôi là, không có thế giới nào mà tôi có thể từ bỏ.
    Tôi chỉ… Ý là nếu chúng ta chỉ nhảy thẳng vào vấn đề,
    Đó là một cách tuyệt vời, không có giới thiệu hay gì cả, chỉ là bùm.
    Đây là cách bạn thu hút mọi người. Um, khi tôi 11 tuổi, tôi đã nói tôi sẽ trở thành một YouTuber.
    Tôi sẽ không ngừng cho đến khi chết và tôi đã nói thật và kể cả khi không ai xem video của tôi đến tận hôm nay,
    Tôi vẫn sẽ tiếp tục. Um, và vì vậy mọi người ghét điều đó.
    Nhưng tôi chỉ là người cạnh tranh nhất và cứng đầu nhất mà bạn từng gặp và tôi chưa bao giờ từ bỏ.
    Và điều đó đến từ đâu?
    Tôi không biết, thật lòng mà nói, tôi cảm thấy như điều đó chỉ nằm trong DNA của tôi, trong máu của tôi.
    Mẹ tôi không thích điều đó khi tôi lớn lên. Chúng tôi luôn cãi nhau và như bạn biết,
    Bà có điều này mà khi Jimmy đã quyết tâm làm điều gì,
    Anh không bao giờ ngừng lại và điều đó luôn khiến bà phát điên, vì khi đó là YouTube
    Và bà muốn tôi học hoặc những điều như vậy.
    Nhưng tôi thật sự không biết, điều đó luôn là con người của tôi.
    Và tôi nghĩ rất nhiều người có những xu hướng kỳ lạ này và họ có xu hướng như cố gắng
    Học lại và giống như tôi đã trải qua những giai đoạn trong cuộc sống mà tôi đã tự hỏi liệu mình có quá cực đoan không.
    Như là mọi người rất bị đe dọa bởi tôi vì tôi là người rất ám ảnh với công việc
    Và tôi hoàn toàn dấn thân và như liệu điều này có không lành mạnh không?
    Có phải tôi nên cố gắng trở thành một con người bình thường hơn, đặc biệt khi tôi còn là một thiếu niên, điều đó dễ dàng hơn rất nhiều.
    Thật buồn cười khi khi bạn kiếm được rất nhiều tiền. Nó gần giống như điều mà ai cũng ngưỡng mộ.
    Nó thật đáng kính.
    Nó giống như bạn biết đấy, đó là những phẩm chất mà chúng tôi muốn, nhưng khi bạn không thành công,
    Bạn biết bạn là một kẻ điên khi bạn có tất cả những phẩm chất này, và vì vậy hồi đó thỉnh thoảng tôi cũng có suy nghĩ rằng,
    Rằng có nên cố gắng trở nên bình thường hơn không? Nhưng tôi không bao giờ có thể làm được, mỗi lần tôi cố gắng thì…
    Tôi đã đề cập đến điều này trước đây, nhưng một trong những điều mà tôi nhớ rõ, điều mà thật sự ám ảnh tôi là một lần,
    Một học sinh trung học đã nói với tôi khi tôi còn ở trung học cơ sở rằng: “Cậu chỉ nói về Youtube thôi,
    Cậu có biết làm gì khác không, cậu thực sự là một kẻ lập dị.” Và tôi đã cố gắng xem South Park,
    Bạn biết đấy, vì đó là những gì nhiều người trong trường của tôi xem để hòa nhập, nhưng tôi chỉ không thể, tôi cảm thấy
    Đó là một khoảng thời gian lãng phí.
    Tôi không thích, tôi có thể đang làm việc ngay bây giờ.
    Tôi đã cố gắng làm tất cả những điều này để hòa nhập và cuối cùng tôi chỉ ngừng nói chuyện vì tôi không liên quan đến ai cả, và
    Mọi người thường gọi tôi là câm, một trong những giáo viên của tôi thực sự đã hỏi như
    Liệu tôi có phải là câm không, vì tôi ít nói đến mức mà không ai trong trường học
    Tôi học có tinh thần khởi nghiệp hoặc muốn xây dựng doanh nghiệp, và tôi chỉ không muốn làm gì khác cả.
    Cuối cùng, tôi đã bắt đầu thành công, tìm được những người đồng điên khác và giờ thì cuộc sống thật tuyệt vời.
    Nhưng bạn biết đấy, tôi thích kể câu chuyện này khi tham gia podcast vì nếu bạn có một khán giả trẻ hơn đang ở trong vị trí đó,
    Bạn không phải là vấn đề. Môi trường của bạn mới là vấn đề, và bạn chỉ cần đặt mình vào một môi trường tốt hơn.
    Còn về bố mẹ của bạn thì sao, mẹ và bố, bạn thường nói nhiều về mẹ? Vâng, um,
    Không, tôi không.
    Tôi không lấy điều đó từ họ. Họ đã có ảnh hưởng gì đến bạn?
    Um, thực ra, tôi không nói nhiều về bố mình. Đó là một câu chuyện dài. Tôi không cần phải đi sâu vào,
    Nhưng mẹ tôi thật sự,
    Mối quan hệ của chúng tôi hiện tại rất tuyệt vời.
    Nhưng trong thời gian phát triển, nó khá khó khăn vì vào năm 2008 họ bị nợ quá nhiều,
    Vì vậy chúng tôi thực sự đã phá sản và họ đã, bạn biết đấy, có những tài sản mà họ đã dùng để mua những tài sản khác
    Và khi mọi thứ sụp đổ, họ đã mất cơ bản mọi thứ, và mẹ tôi đã làm hai công việc
    Bạn biết đấy, chỉ đủ sống qua ngày, và tôi thì tôi không thấy mẹ mình nhiều vì khi tôi trở về nhà từ trường,
    Cô ấy đang làm công việc thứ hai của mình.
    Nó thật sự rất khó khăn vì bà là người mẹ đơn thân nuôi chúng tôi. Bà làm việc suốt thời gian, bạn biết không, um,
    Tôi không nói về nhiều điều này, bạn biết đấy, tôi bị bệnh Crohn, nên tôi đã rất ốm khi lớn lên.
    Em trai tôi cũng gặp vấn đề tương tự. Và bạn biết đấy,
    Chúng tôi không phải là những đứa trẻ khỏe mạnh nhất trong tuổi thiếu niên của mình.
    Bà chỉ cố gắng sống qua ngày và chăm sóc chúng tôi và rồi, bạn biết đấy,
    Bà trở về nhà và bà chỉ có một đứa trẻ phiền phức và kiểu như,
    Tôi muốn trở thành một YouTuber và đôi khi bà cầu xin tôi,
    Bà thực sự đã khóc và cầu xin tôi làm bài tập về nhà và tôi thì
    Tôi không cố ý nói theo cách xấu xa, nhưng tôi thậm chí có lần
    Tôi đã nói với bà rằng nếu bà muốn tôi làm bài tập về nhà nhiều như vậy,
    Tại sao bà không làm nó cho tôi, bạn biết không, đó là những gì tôi đã nói với mẹ mình.
    Tôi đang làm gì vậy? Tôi không biết, tôi chỉ cảm thấy không quan tâm.
    Như tôi chỉ muốn thành công. Tôi muốn xây dựng doanh nghiệp, và vì vậy thật may mắn, mọi thứ đã diễn ra tốt đẹp.
    Vì vậy bây giờ tôi đã chiều chuộng bà. Bà tuyệt vời. Bà có ngôi nhà thứ hai, bất cứ thứ gì
    Bà cần đều có, và vì vậy điều đầu tiên tôi làm là
    Bạn biết đấy, bắt đầu trả tiền cho mẹ, chăm sóc bà khi tôi bắt đầu kiếm tiền vì bà đã hy sinh mọi thứ
    Để giúp tôi đến được nơi tôi đang đứng và tôi sẽ không ở đây nếu không có bà.
    Nhưng lúc đó, chúng tôi như thể đã nói những ngôn ngữ khác nhau khi tôi còn nhỏ, bạn biết không,
    Bà không muốn tôi kết thúc như họ, bạn biết đấy và bạn biết đấy, không có nhiều tiền
    Và con đường tôi đang đi xuống chỉ đơn giản là như, ôi,
    Tôi sẽ trở thành một kẻ nghiện ma túy vô gia cư và cái đầu của bà không thể hiểu được thế giới
    Tôi thấy và cái đầu của tôi không thể hiểu được thế giới bà thấy, và đó là một sự ma sát liên tục.
    Ai đã chăm sóc bạn thì nếu bà ấy bận rộn làm việc và bạn ở nhà và bố bạn không có ở đó,
    Ai chăm sóc bạn?
    Tôi chỉ có tôi và em trai tôi ở đó. Tôi chỉ đang làm video.
    Bạn làm video. Vâng, bạn bắt đầu làm video từ khi nào? Tôi bắt đầu từ 11 tuổi. 11. Vâng, bây giờ tôi 26 tuổi.
    Tôi không thể nhớ
    cuộc sống trước Youtube, như những
    kỷ niệm đầu tiên của tôi cơ bản là khi tôi bắt đầu làm video. Bạn đã nói trước đó um, bạn không nói nhiều về bố mình. Vâng,
    Bạn không cần phải nói, nhưng tại sao bạn không nói về bố của bạn nhiều?
    Vâng. Đừng lo lắng về điều đó. Tôi biết mẹ bạn đã nói về ông trước đây. Vâng, và đó là một mối quan hệ có phần sóng gió.
    Đúng vậy, chính xác. Họ không có mối quan hệ tốt đẹp nhất. Ý tôi là, đó là một chủ đề cho một ngày khác. Thành thật mà nói,
    Nó có vẻ như một cách mở đầu chua chát. Nhưng vâng,
    Mẹ tôi thì tuyệt vời. Tôi yêu mẹ tôi.
    Bà đã từng khóc khi cầu xin bạn làm bài tập về nhà
    Nhiều điều mà bà sẽ khóc vì tôi không tiết kiệm tiền khi chúng tôi bắt đầu kiếm tiền.
    Bà đã nghĩ rằng điều đó quá rủi ro và ý tôi là điều là,
    Những gì bà nói đều không vô lý đúng không, nhìn lại điều đó. Bà hoàn toàn hợp lý trong những gì bà đang làm.
    Tôi chỉ là một kẻ điên loạn và quá cuồng tín với việc xây dựng doanh nghiệp và quá toàn tâm toàn ý.
    Như thật đáng yêu, một lần bà ấy như khi chúng tôi có, tôi không nhớ, như tháng nào đó chúng tôi kiếm được khoảng một trăm ngàn
    Và tôi nghĩ, được rồi, hoàn hảo, bây giờ
    Tôi có thể chi một trăm ngàn vào tháng tới cho các video và bà thì đã lấy khoảng năm ngàn trong số đó và gửi vào
    Tài khoản ngân hàng của tôi mà không nói cho tôi biết nhưng trong trường hợp bạn biết đấy, tôi có thể phải đối diện với tình trạng nợ nần hoặc phá sản như họ đã làm và um, tôi đã phát hiện ra điều đó
    Và uh, bà ấy nói, xin đừng lấy số tiền này. Chỉ cần để tôi dành dụm một chút và ngừng chi tiêu mọi thứ cho video
    Và tôi đã nói không, điều này thật hoàn hảo bây giờ.
    Tôi có thể tiêu tốn nhiều như thế này thật tuyệt. Cảm ơn mẹ và giống như nhưng đối với tôi, tôi không thực sự cảm thấy rủi ro, như nếu có điều gì thì những rủi ro lại khiến tôi hứng thú và tôi có ngưỡng khá cao cho việc đó.
    Ừm, vì vậy, chúng tôi đã không thực sự giao tiếp bằng cùng một ngôn ngữ. Nhưng tôi không nhớ mình đã bao nhiêu tuổi, nhưng cuối cùng thì sau khi tôi đã chấp nhận đủ rủi ro và tìm ra điều đó, mẹ tôi đã nói với tôi rằng, bạn biết không? Tôi sẽ tin tưởng bạn, tôi có niềm tin và mọi thứ đã trở nên tốt đẹp hơn rất nhiều từ thời điểm đó khi mẹ tôi ngừng thức suốt đêm lo lắng về tôi và những thời tiết như thể tôi đang đưa ra quyết định đúng đắn khi bà chỉ nói: “Jimmy, tôi tin bạn. Tôi biết bạn đã nghĩ về điều này cả ngày. Tôi sẽ chỉ đi theo sự dẫn dắt của bạn.” Và mối quan hệ của chúng tôi đã
    Bạn biết đấy, trở nên hoàn hảo từ đó. Nếu tôi hỏi một Jimmy 10 tuổi, bạn đang làm gì? Cậu ấy sẽ nói gì? Ừm, 10 tuổi tôi không biết, nhưng nếu bạn hỏi tôi lúc khoảng 12 hoặc 13, có thể tôi sẽ như là: “Chết tiệt, không ai xem video của tôi cả. Tôi chỉ thật sự muốn trở thành một youtuber. Tôi
    Ừm, tôi phải làm điều này thành công. Tại sao bạn thật sự muốn trở thành một youtuber? Bởi vì trẻ con thường nói điều đó, nhưng mức độ mà bạn đã nói và sự tập trung mà bạn có vào mục tiêu cụ thể đó của mình vì có nhiều điều mà bạn có thể tập trung vào, bạn có thể trở thành một game thủ hay gì đó, nhưng youtube là một điều thực sự thú vị vì bạn ở trên camera. Mọi người đang xem nó. Có một chỉ số quyết định mức độ thành công của bạn.
    Có điều gì trong phần camera đó có giúp giải quyết cảm giác cô đơn mà bạn dường như có vào thời điểm đó không? Không, tôi nghĩ đây là một cộng đồng. Vâng, tôi nghĩ nó liên quan nhiều đến việc tôi phát hiện rằng khi tôi còn nhỏ, có thể khoảng 11 tuổi, có những youtuber đang kiếm hàng trăm nghìn đô la mỗi năm. Và tôi chỉ như là: “Ồ, đó là tiền.” Vâng, tất nhiên, bởi vì hồi đó chúng tôi không có tiền và tôi thực sự muốn chăm sóc mẹ mình và gia đình nói chung.
    Vì vậy, nó giống như mọi thứ. Nó giống như: “Đây là điều tôi yêu thích làm.” Tôi chưa bao giờ có nhiều niềm vui khi làm điều gì đó hơn là khi làm điều này, cộng với việc tôi có thể thấy một con đường nơi tôi thực sự có thể nghỉ hưu cho mẹ, chăm sóc bà, trả lại cho bà biết bao đêm bà đã làm việc chăm chỉ để chúng tôi có thể sống thoải mái và những điều như vậy. Điều làm tôi khó chịu là khi mọi người cố gắng đặt động lực của ai đó vào một cái thùng nhỏ. Chúng ta là những sinh vật rất phức tạp và như bạn biết đấy, bạn có một cô bạn gái.
    Tôi sẽ không bao giờ nói: “Ôi, bạn chỉ thích cô ấy vì cô ấy xinh đẹp.” Nhưng bạn thích cô ấy vì cô ấy xinh đẹp, nhưng có lẽ bạn cũng thích cô ấy vì cô ấy thông minh. Bạn có lẽ cũng thích cô ấy vì cô ấy vui vẻ khi ở bên cạnh, cô ấy thích những chương trình tương tự, bla bla. Nếu chúng ta ngồi đây 10 giờ, bạn có thể đưa cho tôi hàng ngàn lý do tại sao bạn thích bạn gái của bạn.
    Vì vậy, thật khó chịu khi mọi người cố gắng đặt lý do tại sao bạn thích làm một công việc nhất định hoặc xây dựng một doanh nghiệp nhất định vào một cái thùng. “Ôi, bạn chỉ làm điều đó vì tiền.” Thế nếu tôi làm điều đó vì tôi thích tiền và tôi thích nó và đó là một cách để thực hiện điều này và đó là một cách để giao tiếp với mọi người và cộng đồng và những điều khác, bạn biết đấy.
    Tôi nghĩ đó là một sai lầm phổ biến mà chúng ta cố gắng làm. Nó không đơn giản như vậy. Tôi nghĩ nhiều người không thể hiểu rằng ai đó lại tập trung vào một điều gì đó với mức độ cam kết và sự cam kết bền vững như bạn đã thể hiện.
    Và tôi không biết sao. Tôi đồng ý vì thật lạ lùng như thế nào mà tôi có một sự ám ảnh cực đoan đến mức mà tôi chỉ nghĩ về một điều giống như với tôi, dễ hơn nhiều để nghĩ về cái gì đó 16 giờ đồng hồ mỗi ngày trong vòng bảy ngày liên tiếp hơn là phải thường xuyên chuyển đổi tâm trạng. Tôi thực sự giỏi việc chỉ ám ảnh về một điều hơn bất kỳ ai khác trên hành tinh. Nếu tôi phải nói siêu năng lực của tôi là gì, thì đó là tôi có thể ám ảnh mãi mãi về một điều gì đó và tôi có thể chỉ có những suy nghĩ giống nhau lặp đi lặp lại, lặp đi lặp lại.
    Thật kỳ lạ. Như là, nó không giống như là công việc đối với tôi khi tôi làm youtube trong suốt 10 năm hay gì đó, nơi không ai thực sự xem nó, và giống như một phần con người tôi. Phải là một sự ám ảnh sâu sắc vì bạn đã làm điều đó khi không ai thực sự xem hoặc chú ý, hoặc thực sự khi nền tảng đã. Có một ngày mà tôi đã
    19 hoặc 20 tuổi, tôi tỉnh dậy, tham gia một cuộc gọi skype với bạn bè và nơi chúng tôi như là phân tích ngược lại, bạn biết đấy, tại sao những video nhất định lại thành công hay whatever. Và tôi nhớ cuộc gọi đó kéo dài hơn 18 giờ và sau đó tôi đã gác máy đi ngủ. Dậy lại hôm sau và ngay lập tức tham gia lại cuộc gọi và quay lại, đó là mức độ giờ mà chúng tôi đã đầu tư. Tôi không biết gì ngoài việc chỉ cố gắng làm cho nó xảy ra. Có điều gì khác mà bạn thể hiện mức độ ám ảnh như vậy không?
    Vào độ tuổi đó, không, từ 11 đến, ừm, 11 đến 15, đó là sự kết hợp giữa youtube và bóng chày. Nhưng khi tôi bước sang tuổi 15, tôi mắc bệnh Crohn và tôi từ 190 pound giảm xuống còn 139. Tôi mất hết cơ bắp của mình và vì vậy tôi quyết định, “Được rồi. Tôi sẽ không chơi bóng chày ở đại học nữa.” Thế là tôi quyết định: “Chết tiệt. Tất cả vào youtube.” Và, ừm, và sau đó cho đến thực sự là các lễ hội.
    Về cơ bản, đó chỉ là youtube so với bất cứ điều gì khác. Tôi chưa bao giờ nghĩ mình sẽ tìm thấy tình yêu kiểu này cho việc xây dựng. Tôi đã nghĩ rằng nó chỉ liên quan đến việc làm video, nhưng trong hai hay ba năm qua, tôi đã nhận ra rằng tôi thật sự thích khởi nghiệp. Tôi đã yêu thích việc trở nên cuồng nhiệt với các lễ hội và những thứ khác nữa, điều này thật kỳ lạ. Khi tôi bắt đầu mở một công ty sô cô la, đó chỉ là một việc phụ. Nhưng càng làm việc nhiều hơn, tôi càng cảm nhận được nhiều cảm xúc tương tự mà tôi có khi làm video, chỉ là theo những cách khác nhau. Bây giờ, tôi biết quá nhiều về ngành công nghiệp sô cô la, điều này thật điên rồ. Tôi chưa bao giờ tưởng tượng mình sẽ dành hàng ngàn giờ để xây dựng các lễ hội. Nói chung, tôi thật sự yêu thích việc giải quyết những vấn đề phức tạp và khó khăn một cách liên tục. Tôi nghĩ đó là điều giúp tôi dậy khỏi giường, và càng những vấn đề khó khăn càng thú vị.
    Tôi muốn nói về điều đó và cả các lễ hội, nhưng bạn đã đề cập đến bệnh Crohn. Có rất nhiều người không biết đó là gì và tác động của nó lên cuộc sống của một người. Bạn có biết về nó không? Tôi biết, vì tôi đã có một thành viên trong nhóm mắc bệnh đó, vì vậy để hỗ trợ họ vào những lúc cụ thể khi họ phải rời đi, tôi đã nhận thức được nhiều hơn về nghĩa của nó và cách nó ảnh hưởng đến bạn. Bạn có thể cho tôi biết quan điểm của bạn về điều đó không? Vâng, bệnh Crohn là khi hệ miễn dịch của bạn tấn công chính nó. Khi tôi 15 tuổi, tôi bắt đầu phải đi vệ sinh từ tám đến mười lần một ngày, không tiêu hóa được thực phẩm vì hệ tiêu hóa của tôi thực sự đang tự tấn công. Điều này rất kỳ lạ, hệ miễn dịch và ruột của bạn nghĩ rằng ruột của bạn là một kẻ xâm lược nước ngoài nên nó bắt đầu tấn công chính mình. Nếu bạn chỉ đi vệ sinh mười lần một ngày mà không tiêu hóa thức ăn, đó là lý do tại sao bạn giảm cân nhanh chóng và cảm thấy đau đớn vô cùng vì ruột bị viêm rất nặng. Cảm giác như có ai đó liên tục đâm bạn ở bụng bằng một con dao khi nó thật sự tồi tệ, đó là điều tôi đã trải qua, do đó tôi đã giảm 50 pound, điều này thật điên rồ vì tôi đã khá gầy. Chúng tôi đã thử nhiều loại thuốc khác nhau và cuối cùng tôi dùng một loại thuốc khá mạnh gọi là Remicade, mà cơ bản là bạn tiêu diệt hệ miễn dịch của mình, đó là lý do giọng nói của tôi có vẻ hơi khác bây giờ vì tôi vừa bị cúm. Tôi đã bị COVID sáu lần, bị zona, tôi thường xuyên bị ốm vì để hệ tiêu hóa của tôi ngừng tấn công chính nó, chúng tôi thực sự phải làm cho hệ miễn dịch của tôi ngừng hoạt động. Vì vậy, tôi có một hệ miễn dịch rất yếu. Tôi rất thường xuyên ốm, như có những nốt phát ban ngẫu nhiên và những thứ như vậy. Thật sự rất khắc nghiệt, phải nói là vậy. Rồi đôi khi nó bùng phát một cách ngẫu nhiên và khiến tôi rất mệt mỏi, như là tôi sống cuộc sống ở chế độ khó, phải nói thật. Nếu ai đó, nếu bạn thức dậy và có năng lượng, bạn đã hơn tôi rất nhiều rồi. Tôi biết, điều đó làm mọi thứ khó khăn hơn rất nhiều.
    Và bạn vẫn thức dậy với một số ngày mà bạn không có năng lượng, dĩ nhiên, điều đó thật khó tin với ai đó cực kỳ sản xuất như bạn. Vâng, bạn thật sự phải yêu những gì bạn làm. Tôi có nghĩa là và cố gắng vượt qua nó. Thật sự khá khắc nghiệt vì sau đó bạn tích lũy điều đó với việc luôn bị ốm. Tôi chỉ vừa dành bốn ngày trong bệnh viện ở Nam Phi vì tôi bị cúm và nó khiến tôi mất nhiều thời gian hơn để hồi phục từ những thứ nhất định. Thật khắc nghiệt, và đó là lý do nếu tôi không làm việc nhiều như vậy, tôi sẽ dành nhiều thời gian hơn để nghiên cứu về bệnh Crohn, vì chắc chắn có một cách tốt hơn để ngăn chặn nó hơn là chỉ đơn giản là phá hủy hệ miễn dịch của mình. Tôi hy vọng là tôi không làm điều đó cho đến khi 30 hoặc 40 tuổi. Vì vậy, tôi xem đó như một băng dán, nhưng tôi đã gặp những bác sĩ hàng đầu về Crohn trên thế giới, và cho đến nay họ nói, đây chỉ là câu trả lời và bạn thật sự may mắn vì ruột của bạn không tấn công chính bạn. Nhưng tôi không biết. Tôi cảm thấy thuốc cho người mắc bệnh Crohn không hợp lý và phải có một cách tốt hơn để điều trị nó. Ý tôi là giải pháp cuối cùng là họ chỉ cần mở tôi ra và cắt bỏ một phần lớn của hệ tiêu hóa của tôi, và đó là điều dễ dàng, nhưng bạn biết đấy, tôi đã quan sát thấy ở thành viên trong nhóm mà tôi có mắc bệnh Crohn thì cũng có một chút như là một chiếc tàu lượn tinh thần nữa, vì có một sự không thể đoán trước nào đó trong đó. Chính xác, điều này làm cuộc sống thậm chí còn tồi tệ hơn khi bạn đang quay phim, vì bạn có một bộ phim hàng triệu đô và 200 người đang chờ đợi bạn, và đôi khi bạn không biết liệu bạn có bị bùng phát hay không, nhưng bạn cũng chỉ cần nói “kệ nó” và uống một ít caffeine và dồn sức vào. Tôi đã được chẩn đoán là mắc ADHD. Bạn không phải à? Vâng, tôi đã được chẩn đoán mắc ADHD và điều đó khiến tôi suy nghĩ rất nhiều về bản thân và cách tôi là. Tôi không phải là kiểu người để thể hiện nhãn mác hoặc nghĩ rằng nó thực sự có ý nghĩa nhiều. Tôi chỉ là chính tôi. Bạn có… bạn có phải là người đa dạng thần kinh theo một cách nào đó không? Ừ, tôi đã được nói là như vậy, vâng, tôi có ADHD. Tôi không ngạc nhiên, vì tôi chỉ ngồi và ám ảnh về những thứ liên tục, nhưng tôi nghĩ, tôi hài lòng với việc não bộ của tôi hoạt động như thế nào. Tôi không thực sự muốn thay đổi nó. Như tôi đã nói, tôi nghĩ một trong những siêu năng lực lớn nhất của tôi là sự ám ảnh của tôi, và tôi nghĩ một số người sẽ coi đó là một điểm yếu. Nhưng nếu bạn chỉ nghĩ về việc giải quyết vấn đề gấp ba lần so với những người khác, bạn chắc chắn sẽ tìm ra những giải pháp khác nhau. Đó là một trong những điều bạn đã đề cập trước đó, bạn thích giải quyết những vấn đề khó liên tục khi bạn nghĩ lại về 10 năm qua trong cuộc sống của mình và về thành công mà bạn đã có trong việc giải quyết một số vấn đề khó này nếu bạn phải chia nhỏ nó thành một số thành phần thú vị mà bạn đã học được, một trong số đó là sự ám ảnh mà bạn đã nói.
    Sure! Here’s the translation of your text into Vietnamese:
    Ừ, còn những người khác thì sao?
    Ý tôi là
    Tất cả đều là những điều thông thường như bạn rõ ràng là lấy cảm hứng từ những người mà bạn tiếp xúc và
    Hmm, may mắn thay tôi đã tìm được những người phù hợp trong những năm teen muộn của mình vì tôi nhận được năng lượng từ những người xung quanh tôi.
    Có lẽ xung quanh tôi. Thật rõ ràng, tôi bắt đầu nói như họ. Tôi trở nên quan tâm đến những điều mà họ quan tâm.
    Ý tôi là, tất cả đều là những điều hiển nhiên. Chắc chắn bạn đã nghe hàng tỷ lần rồi. Nhưng
    Bạn biết đấy, tôi luôn phải bảo vệ những người tôi quen biết vì bất cứ điều gì họ nói là điều tôi bắt đầu nghĩ đến
    và đó là điều mà tôi bắt đầu ám ảnh về.
    Bạn biết đấy, một trong những điều tốt nhất xảy ra với các lễ hội là tôi đã liên hệ với tất cả các công ty sô cô la đang phát triển nhanh nhất
    Tất cả các doanh nghiệp đồ ăn vặt đang phát triển nhanh nhất và mọi thứ và tôi đã kết bạn với nhiều người sáng lập.
    Và bạn biết đấy, điều đó có lẽ đã mất của tôi tám chín năm để giải quyết.
    Bạn biết đấy, sau 18 tháng
    Tôi đã có thể trở thành một trong mười người hàng đầu thế giới về việc điều hành một công ty sô cô la và hiểu nó một cách sâu sắc,
    Chỉ vì đó là những mã cheat. Um, còn về chi tiết?
    Lo lắng về những điều nhỏ nhặt
    Một trong những điều tôi thấy là tôi đã đọc cuốn cẩm nang fist này
    Đã sống trên internet và một trong những điều tôi thấy xuyên suốt là sự ám ảnh thực sự với
    Những phần trăm một. Ừ, đó là những thứ khác. Bạn cảm thấy thế nào về điều này? Và tất cả mọi thứ ấy
    Tôi đã viết điều đó với một số nhân viên của tôi khi tôi có lẽ
    22 tuổi, vì vậy có một số điều mà tôi nhận thấy khi đọc lại khiến tôi cảm thấy, ôi, thật ngốc nghếch
    Nhưng về phần lớn vẫn đứng vững trước thử thách của thời gian. Um, tôi thực sự nghĩ rằng điều này rất hữu ích.
    Bạn biết không, thật buồn cười khi nhiều
    CEO thực sự đã nói với tôi rằng họ buộc nhân viên của họ đọc điều này.
    Nó đã lan truyền trong tất cả các kênh slack của chúng tôi. Chúng tôi đều đã đọc nó. Thật hài hước vì tôi cảm thấy, ôi,
    Tôi nên làm một phiên bản cập nhật của nó. Để mọi người đều có thể xem. Nhưng vâng, vấn đề là phần cốt lõi của nó như là
    Sự sở hữu cực đoan và đừng biện bạch và bạn biết đấy, um, mọi người luôn
    Ừ, có nghĩa là, ôi, tôi đang cảm nhận được nhiều cảm giác deja vu từ khi tôi viết điều đó.
    Đó là một thời điểm khác ở thời điểm đó vì tôi thực sự không biết mình đang làm gì khi tôi 21 22 tuổi.
    Và tôi chỉ nhận ra rằng tôi đã liên tục dạy cùng một điều cho mọi người lặp đi lặp lại.
    Và nó luôn rất giống như là sở hữu cực đoan, chịu trách nhiệm như là
    Chắc chắn, tôi đoán điều đó vượt khỏi tầm kiểm soát của bạn.
    Nhưng nó có thể trong tầm kiểm soát của bạn nếu bạn chỉ suy nghĩ kỹ hơn nếu bạn thực sự quan tâm.
    Và đó là điều tôi đã cố gắng truyền đạt trong đó.
    Và điều khác mà tôi thấy trong điều này nhưng cũng trong tất cả các công việc của bạn là ý tưởng này, điều mà tôi đã học được từ bạn
    Chỉ từ việc nói chuyện với bạn qua điện thoại hôm qua rằng không có gì là không thể. Ừ, chính xác là xem
    Các trò chơi Beast trong vài tuần qua, nhưng cũng nói chuyện với một số thành viên trong đội của bạn
    Rõ ràng có một mối liên kết với mọi thứ bạn làm giống như tham vọng cực đoan mà tôi thấy
    Và không có vẻ như tham vọng cực đoan đối với bạn cũng giống như nó dường như là tham vọng cực đoan đối với tôi.
    Ừ, có nghĩa là
    Ý là, vật lý có cho phép điều đó không? Vậy thì có, nó có thể. Chỉ là chúng ta có muốn dành thời gian cho nó không?
    Tôi cảm thấy như mọi người làm phức tạp hóa rất nhiều thứ. Umm
    Và đó có phải là điều mà bạn đã rèn luyện theo thời gian hay bạn đã luôn nghĩ vậy? Tôi nghĩ rằng tôi đã chỉ
    Ừ, đó là một câu hỏi hay. Tôi không biết tại sao nhưng khi mọi người nói với tôi rằng tôi không thể làm điều gì đó
    Tôi không biết điều này bắt nguồn từ đâu
    Nó khiến tôi chỉ muốn làm điều đó nhiều hơn, thật lòng mà nói, nếu bạn nói với tôi rằng tôi không nên làm điều gì đó
    Điều đó ổn
    Nhưng nếu bạn nói với tôi rằng tôi không thể thì tất cả mọi thứ trong cơ thể tôi chỉ muốn nói cút đi, tôi rõ ràng có thể
    Tôi chỉ không biết liệu tôi có nên nhưng tôi có thể và rồi tôi tôi không biết
    Nó giống như điều này: để trở nên nổi tiếng, bạn phải làm điều gì đó chưa từng được thực hiện trước đây.
    Tôi đã kể câu chuyện này trước đây như là, bạn biết đấy, nếu bạn đang lái xe xuống đường và bạn thấy một con bò
    Ai quan tâm? Đó là một con bò.
    Nhưng nếu bạn đang lái xe xuống đường và bạn thấy một con bò màu tím
    Bạn sẽ như thế này: bạn chưa bao giờ thấy điều đó trước đây và đó là một điều bạn không mong đợi.
    Bạn sẽ đi chơi shit và bạn sẽ kể cho bạn bè của bạn về điều đó
    Bạn sẽ nhớ điều đó, bạn có thể thậm chí sẽ nghĩ về nó ngẫu nhiên một lần mỗi vài năm
    Tại sao mẹ nó lại có một con bò màu tím và nó giống như
    Nó cũng giống như vậy, chỉ có điều một cái thì màu tím một chút và bạn có thể áp dụng cùng một điều đó như
    Ẩn dụ cho các ý tưởng như khi bạn đang cuộn qua mạng xã hội để tìm một video để xem
    Có những điều bạn biết đã được thực hiện trước đây bạn đã thấy
    Nó biết đấy, đại khái là tương tự với những thứ trước đó bạn chỉ sẽ cuộn qua nó
    Bạn sẽ không bao giờ nghĩ về nó nữa
    Giống như bạn sẽ không bao giờ nghĩ về một con bò trên lề đường nữa
    Và sau đó có những ý tưởng như ý tưởng con bò màu tím
    Điều mà tôi cố gắng làm, đó là những thứ khiến bạn phải suy nghĩ.
    What the fuck?
    Tôi chưa bao giờ thấy điều đó! Tôi phải nhấn vào cái này không thì tôi sẽ không thể ngủ được tối nay, vì như
    Tại sao video này lại như thế?
    Không thể nào họ đã làm điều này, đúng không?
    Nhưng những thứ đó thường rất khó, và để có được hiệu ứng con bò tím ấy
    Chúng chưa từng được thực hiện trước đây, và nếu có điều gì đó chưa từng được làm trước đây thì thường có lý do, vì nó thực sự rất khó
    Vì vậy, bạn chỉ cần tự rèn luyện để không ghét những vấn đề phức tạp, khó khăn, nguyên bản
    Và thực sự chạy về phía chúng, vì đó là những thứ mà bạn biết
    có xu hướng tạo ra hiệu ứng con bò tím, nơi mọi người phải xem nó. Nếu con tàu của bạn rất phát triển
    Thì dễ dàng hơn nhiều để có 50 triệu lượt xem trên một video hơn là có một triệu lượt xem trên 50 video, đúng không?
    Vì vậy, và vì nó giống như kiểu gia tăng theo cấp số nhân và nó giống như, bạn biết đấy
    Nó thực sự như kiểu ăn cả, chỉ có bạn ở trong các video hàng đầu, vì vậy bạn thực sự phải lean vào hiệu ứng con bò tím nếu điều đó có nghĩa.
    Có nghĩa là hoàn hảo.
    Nếu bạn nếu bạn muốn tinh lọc thì nói rằng chúng ta đang nghĩ ra một cái mới
    Cách để thành công trong cẩm nang sản xuất của ông B giờ đây
    Những điều gì sẽ là năm điều hàng đầu nếu tôi xin việc với bạn?
    Năm đặc điểm nào tôi cần chứng minh để thành công?
    Bạn phải rất dễ tiếp thu, vì bất cứ điều gì tôi dạy bạn hôm nay sẽ thay đổi
    Bạn biết đấy, một hoặc hai năm sau sẽ luôn học hỏi, luôn cải thiện, dễ tiếp thu.
    Một điều lớn đối với tôi là bạn phải thấy giá trị trong việc làm việc ở đây, như bạn thực sự, tôi chỉ không, đây không phải là một công việc
    Đây là một sự nghiệp, nếu bạn không, bạn biết đấy, thực tế thấy một thế giới nơi bạn làm việc cho tôi trong 10 năm nữa
    Thì, ừ, thật khó cho tôi để đầu tư vào bạn ở mức độ mà tôi muốn, như tôi không
    Tôi không thích đào tạo ai đó trong sáu tháng
    Họ làm việc ở đây một năm
    Và rồi tôi mất họ, điều tôi thích là tôi đào tạo ai đó trong một năm
    Và sau đó tôi nhận được chín năm lợi nhuận ở phía sau, nơi họ làm tốt công việc của mình
    Và tôi luôn trả nhiều hơn cho họ vì họ trở nên có giá trị hơn theo thời gian
    Như đó là kỳ quan thứ tám của thế giới trong việc đầu tư mạnh mẽ vào một nhân viên và sau đó họ ở lại trong một thập kỷ
    Bạn biết ý tôi không?
    Giống như có một số người giỏi nhất của tôi mà tôi đã dành ba hoặc bốn năm ở tiền tuyến để đào tạo và làm việc với họ
    Bạn biết đấy, họ giống như Tyler, người viết nhiều video của tôi và đạo diễn chúng
    Tôi, bạn biết đấy, có thể nói chuyện với anh ấy năm hoặc sáu tiếng một ngày mỗi ngày trong bốn
    Ừm, khoảng bốn năm và bây giờ vì tôi không thể dành
    Anh ấy dành 100% thời gian của mình để viết các video, đạo diễn video, cuồng nhiệt về điều đó
    Trong khi tôi lý thuyết có thể chỉ dành năm phần trăm thời gian của mình
    Vì vậy, anh ấy sẽ tự nhiên hơn cả đè bẹp tôi trên đó vì anh ấy có thể dành nhiều thời gian hơn cho nó
    Và như vậy, bạn biết đấy, tôi hoàn toàn tin tưởng vào anh ấy
    Nhưng những lợi nhuận mà tôi có được từ anh ấy sau tất cả những năm tháng đổ hết thời gian và công sức vào anh ấy
    Và bây giờ anh ấy biết chính xác cách tôi nghĩ, những gì tôi coi trọng mà tôi thậm chí không phải giao tiếp với anh ấy
    Đôi khi tôi có thể chỉ xuất hiện để quay phim và như thể tôi chỉ tin rằng mọi thứ sẽ tốt
    Bạn biết đấy, và tôi có một đống người trên tất cả các doanh nghiệp của tôi như vậy
    Điều đó thật tuyệt
    Và nếu bạn biết trong một thế giới mà Tyler vẫn làm việc ở đây 10 năm từ giờ
    Tôi có nghĩa là giá trị từ một người như vậy là
    Không thể tưởng tượng nổi, nó thực sự là kỳ quan thứ tám của thế giới trong kinh doanh và đó là điều tôi muốn
    Nhưng bạn chỉ có thể có những loại người đó khi họ thấy giá trị cho
    Bạn biết đấy, làm việc cho bạn và vì vậy họ phải như thực sự tin tưởng rằng giá trị càng nhiều
    Tôi trở thành cho công ty này thì tôi sẽ càng được thưởng, và họ thực sự muốn
    Cống hiến cuộc sống của họ cho doanh nghiệp
    Vì vậy, điều đó rất quan trọng vì nếu tôi thực sự không cảm nhận được điều đó
    Thì điều đó không công bằng cho cả hai chúng tôi vì tôi sẽ không đầu tư vào bạn như tôi nên
    Vì tôi không nghĩ rằng bạn sẽ ở đây trong 10 năm nữa và sau đó bạn sẽ cảm nhận được điều đó và nó tạo ra cảm giác
    Một người dễ tiếp thu, thấy giá trị, um, tất nhiên là cuồng nhiệt. Tôi không, tôi chỉ không thích làm việc với những người tầm thường
    Tôi có nghĩa là, tôi thực sự không thể chịu đựng được. Đó là cách nhanh nhất để làm tôi chán nản
    Um, đó là nếu tôi phải làm việc với một ai đó không thực sự hết mình và không yêu thích những gì họ làm
    Um
    Chỉ là rất nhiều, bạn biết đấy, những thứ như vậy mà tôi chắc chắn nếu bạn nghe một cuộc phỏng vấn của Steve Jobs hay gì đó mà ông ấy nói về
    Đó là những đặc điểm điển hình: cuồng nhiệt, dễ tiếp thu, hết mình, thấy giá trị. Và đặc điểm tồi tệ nhất là gì?
    Sự tầm thường, tôi có nghĩa là giống như bởi vì họ không đủ tệ để bạn sa thải họ
    Nhưng không đủ tốt, vấn đề là như tôi có nghĩa là và bạn thấy nó ảnh hưởng toàn diện, những người tuyệt vời thực sự thích làm việc với những người tuyệt vời
    Họ thực sự thích, và có điều gì đó về việc ở bên cạnh những người tuyệt vời
    Khiến bạn muốn làm nhiều hơn, đẩy mạnh hơn và tin rằng mọi thứ không thể.
    Và tôi không biết khi bạn đặt tôi vào một đám các doanh nhân thành công khác
    Tôi chỉ biến thành một con người khác hơn là nếu bạn đặt tôi vào
    Tôi không biết nhiều người chỉ điều hành những doanh nghiệp nhỏ và không thực sự quan tâm và không thực sự có nhiều tham vọng
    Tôi như hai con người hoàn toàn khác nhau và bạn thấy điều đó rõ ràng
    Bạn đưa nhiều người chơi A bên cạnh những người chơi A hơn
    Họ chỉ xây dựng dựa trên nhau
    Nhưng nếu bạn đặt hai hoặc ba người chơi C giữa một đám người tuyệt vời, họ sẽ bắt đầu kéo họ xuống
    Họ sẽ bắt đầu khiến họ không muốn làm việc nhiều như vậy và khiến công việc không còn thú vị nữa
    Và vì vậy mọi người đều biết phải loại bỏ những người chơi C, đúng không? Rõ ràng là loại bỏ những người không hết mình bla bla
    Đó là những người mà họ không phải là người chơi A, nhưng họ cũng không phải là người chơi C
    Vì vậy, nó cũng khá khó khăn vì bạn vẫn nuôi dưỡng năng lượng và nếu bạn có đủ họ
    Nó chỉ kéo xuống văn hóa tổng thể.
    Dưới đây là phần dịch sang tiếng Việt:
    Đó là như những điều tồi tệ nhất
    Um, ý tôi không phải ai cũng có thể là những quái vật hủy diệt thế giới kiểu này
    Bạn biết đấy, có rất nhiều điều bình thường như, bạn biết đấy, tôi nghĩ người điều hành và kế toán
    Tôi nghĩ họ không cần phải là tốt nhất thế giới
    Nhưng bạn biết đấy, khi nói đến những điều quan trọng cho sứ mệnh như làm video và những thứ tương tự
    Bạn chỉ cần những người tuyệt vời ở xung quanh, đó là một trong những công việc hàng đầu của bạn với tư cách là người lãnh đạo
    Chỉ cần đảm bảo rằng những người tuyệt vời của bạn đang làm việc với những người tuyệt vời khác vì đó là lý do chính
    Khiến mọi người rời bỏ công việc không phải là tiền bạc. Bạn biết đấy, tôi nghĩa rằng đó chỉ là lý do thứ tư trong danh sách
    Đừng yêu cầu tôi liệt kê tất cả, tôi không nhớ. Tôi chỉ biết điều quan trọng nhất là họ có thích làm việc với những người đó hay không
    Và mọi người sẽ rời bỏ
    Công việc của họ vì họ ghét làm việc với những người trước khi họ rời bỏ chỉ vì tiền bạc
    Bạn có bao giờ cảm thấy thất vọng rằng
    Những người bạn đã thuê không phù hợp với mức độ đam mê của bạn không
    Không, vì tôi chỉ tìm những người phù hợp với tôi. Có những người như vậy à? Ôi vâng, có rất nhiều người trong
    Doanh nghiệp của tôi, um, ý tôi là, rõ ràng bạn phải chăm sóc họ. Này, tôi, họ không phải là loại người
    Chỉ làm việc với mức lương tiêu chuẩn. Nhưng um, vâng, có những người như Tyler Klitzner
    Russ và những người trong đội ngũ chỉnh sửa của chúng tôi
    Tôi có nghĩa là họ làm việc trong hầu hết các tuần với cùng số giờ và cùng số lượng giờ như tôi và họ đều nhìn thấy tầm nhìn
    Thật khó để tìm những loại người như vậy
    Nhưng um, bạn biết đấy khi bạn tìm được, bạn phải trân trọng họ và nhận ra rằng họ là những kỳ lân
    Và bạn có gần 500 người
    Có lẽ, um, tôi nghĩ công ty sản xuất có khoảng 300 người, feastables khoảng một trăm và có lẽ thêm
    40 đến 50 người phân tán ở những nơi khác và mọi thứ khác hầu hết các nhà sáng lập mà tôi nói chuyện mô tả
    Mở rộng số lượng người là phần tồi tệ nhất của công việc, nhiều người hơn nhiều vấn đề hơn, đúng không? Vâng, đó là một sự hiểu biết
    Vâng, đặc biệt là với ai đó như bạn, người sáng tạo về bản chất và rất tập trung và đam mê
    Tôi đoán là chương trình và sản xuất như bạn thường nói, tôi muốn sản xuất những video tốt nhất mà chúng tôi có thể làm
    Tất nhiên rồi, và tất cả những thứ khác đi kèm với nó. Vâng, như nhân sự
    Mà mọi nhà sáng lập tôi nói chuyện đều ghét. Ý tôi là, vâng, phần tồi tệ nhất là tôi chỉ có cái này rất một lần trong
    Um, tôi chỉ có cơ hội rất hiếm khi tôi có quá nhiều sự chú ý và quá nhiều người theo dõi nội dung của tôi
    Và tôi ước tôi có nhiều kinh nghiệm xây dựng doanh nghiệp hơn
    Bạn biết đấy, tôi mới chỉ 26 tuổi và đây là lần đầu tiên tôi
    Kinh doanh thực sự, mỗi cột mốc nhân viên mà chúng tôi đạt được là lần đầu tiên tôi đạt được điều đó đúng không, như khi tôi đạt 100 nhân viên
    Đó là lần đầu tiên tôi đến đó
    Và đây là lần đầu tiên tôi đi từ 100 đến 200, 200 đến 300 và với những gì tôi biết bây giờ
    Tôi có thể đã làm nhanh hơn rất nhiều rõ ràng và thực sự thì, bạn biết đấy, nó hơi tàn nhẫn vì như
    Mở rộng lễ hội từ, bạn biết đấy
    Từ không đến 100 dễ dàng hơn nhiều so với việc làm công ty sản xuất của tôi vì tôi đã đi qua quá trình đó và tôi đã học được nhiều
    Và tôi trở nên tốt hơn theo thời gian và thực sự phần khó chịu nhất là sự ng ignorance, đúng không?
    Bởi vì rất nhiều lỗi tôi mắc phải, tôi nhìn lại và tôi như, ôi
    Vâng, tôi có lẽ nên đưa những người có kinh nghiệm hơn trong việc làm ở một công ty lớn đến sớm hơn ở đây
    Tôi đã đợi hơi quá lâu ở đây
    Tôi có lẽ nên, và nó thật sự tàn nhẫn vì nếu tôi biết những điều này tôi đã đi xa hơn rất nhiều
    Nhưng tôi nghĩ đó chỉ là cách bạn học, bạn chỉ cần mắc 10.000 lỗi như mọi nhà sáng lập đều nói giống nhau
    Mọi nhà sáng lập đều nói rằng những điều không rõ ràng
    Chính xác, bạn biết đấy, và đó là nơi mà
    Ý tôi là, điều lớn nhất gần đây của tôi là cố gắng tìm những người đã
    Xây dựng doanh nghiệp thành công và mang họ vào tổ chức của tôi và học hỏi từ họ vì tôi thực sự rất
    Mệt mỏi với việc như là, chết tiệt, tôi nên biết rõ hơn
    Nhưng tôi không, vì tôi chưa bao giờ làm điều này trước đây và vì vậy tôi đang cố gắng tìm rất nhiều người tuyệt vời đã trải qua điều đó
    Để họ có thể như kiểu là dạy dỗ tôi trên đường đi. Để tôi mắc ít lỗi hơn, điều này thực sự rất tốt
    Chúng tôi đã đưa vào một giám đốc điều hành mới gần đây
    Um, tôi nghĩ đây luôn là một sự cân bằng khó khăn vì tôi cố gắng không, trong quá khứ tôi
    Có những quyết định như kiểu là con lắc và tôi có một
    Um, một vấn đề là tôi như kiểu là tôi sẽ xác định điều gì đó và tôi sẽ chỉnh sửa quá mức con lắc theo một hướng
    Và tôi như, uh, không, tôi lẽ ra nên dừng lại ở giữa và như kiểu sự chỉnh sửa của tôi trong quá khứ là như
    Những người công ty xây dựng quá nhiều hệ thống và họ giết chết sự đổi mới
    Và vì vậy tôi đã rất
    Chống lại như những người có quá nhiều kinh nghiệm công ty vì họ sẽ chỉ tiêu diệt tất cả sự sáng tạo
    Nhưng bạn biết đấy, đó là lý do tại sao chúng tôi đang mắc nhiều lỗi tổ chức vì chúng tôi không có ai thực sự đã xây dựng doanh nghiệp ở quy mô này
    Và vì vậy, bạn biết đấy, con lắc đã ở bên phải và tôi đã đưa nó ra bên trái là không có doanh nghiệp
    Và bây giờ tôi nghĩ chúng tôi đang ở giữa khỏe mạnh nơi mà bạn biết đấy, rõ ràng những người trong c-suite của chúng tôi và những nhà lãnh đạo
    Nên có nhiều kinh nghiệm quản lý con người ở quy mô và kích thước này
    Nhưng chỉ cần tìm đúng người có thể làm điều đó và xây dựng hệ thống theo cách không tiêu diệt sự sáng tạo
    Và họ thực sự coi trọng sản phẩm hơn sự đơn giản
    Tôi đã bao giờ nhìn thấy trong chương trình truyền hình của tôi gọi là bầy rồng ở vương quốc Anh và um, tôi
    Những gì tôi làm thì nhỏ hơn nhiều. Nó chỉ là một phần trăm trong số người xem của bạn
    Nhưng ngay cả tôi cũng hơi sợ hãi khi tuyển dụng người vì điều rõ ràng với tôi là có một động lực rất lớn cho bất kỳ ai
    Mà tôi làm việc cùng để nói rằng tôi đã làm điều gì đó sai và trong những ngày đầu của doanh nghiệp đầu tiên của tôi
    Um, chuyện gì xảy ra là các nhà báo đến tất cả những người làm việc ở đó.
    Xin chào,
    Họ đã hỏi anh ấy như thế nào, anh có cùng một vấn đề
    Anh có một câu đố tương tự khi bất kỳ ai có động lực có lợi cho anh
    Khi họ rời đi, có rất nhiều động lực khác nhau
    Để bắn một mũi tên vào anh khi họ ra cửa. Làm thế nào anh đối mặt với điều này?
    Ừ, ý anh là anh đã nói đúng, anh biết đấy, bây giờ anh có khoảng bốn hoặc năm trăm người
    Nhưng chúng tôi cũng đã làm việc với hàng nghìn người trong quá khứ và tôi nghĩ rằng đó chỉ là một phần trong đó
    Nhưng vào cuối ngày, anh biết đấy, miễn là những gì chúng tôi đang làm là hợp đạo đức và đúng đắn
    Như anh đã nói, họ sẽ bắn mũi tên, nhưng anh, tôi chỉ là một người giải quyết vấn đề
    Cứ mỗi khi tôi nhìn thấy mũi tên ẩn dụ, tôi chỉ nghĩ
    Bạn biết đấy, vấn đề là gì và nếu tôi đã làm điều gì sai, làm thế nào để khắc phục nó?
    Hoặc nếu đó không phải là một vấn đề thực sự, chỉ là tin đồn thôi. Ý tôi là nó chỉ là như vậy và vì vậy
    Ừ, tôi nghĩ nó chỉ là một phần của điều đó. Um, ý tôi là nó thật không vui và thật không may
    Nhưng anh cũng nghĩ như hầu hết mọi người đều không thích công việc của họ
    Vì vậy, đây không phải là điều gì đặc biệt cho ngành của chúng tôi
    Như, anh biết đấy, chỉ cần hỏi một trăm người Mỹ ngẫu nhiên trong tất cả công việc mà họ đã làm trong đời
    Có bao nhiêu người mà họ thực sự yêu thích và liệu họ có gì tiêu cực để nói không? Vì vậy, tôi nghĩ rằng đó chỉ là một phần của điều đó
    Bạn biết đấy, um, nó gần như là sở thích của rất nhiều người chỉ để chê bai công việc cũ của họ hay bất cứ điều gì
    Có điều gì trong những thứ đó đã tác động đến anh chưa? Có, tất nhiên rồi. Nghĩa là tất cả các chỉ trích đều tác động đến nhưng
    Ý tôi là điều đó độc lập với những thứ đó. Nó chỉ là
    Ý tôi là
    Chúng tôi đang trung bình khoảng 200 triệu lượt xem video như, anh biết đấy, đa số là người xem duy nhất như chúng tôi đang nói là hơn hai phần trăm
    Um, đôi khi ba phần trăm số người sống trên thế giới xem mọi phần nội dung
    Tôi xuất bản, anh biết đấy, tùy thuộc vào tình trạng kênh đang hoạt động và điều đó có nghĩa là anh có thể tải lên một video
    Và sau 365 ngày, anh có thể thu thập 33 người ngẫu nhiên ở bất kỳ đâu trên hành tinh, đặc biệt là vì chúng tôi làm doves
    Bạn biết điều gì điên rồ hơn nữa là, bạn biết đấy, youtube không có ở Trung Quốc
    Vì vậy, đó là hai đến ba phần trăm số người sống không tính Trung Quốc
    Um, hoặc Trung Quốc cũng được tính ở đó, nhưng nếu chỉ lấy những người không tính Trung Quốc, thì sẽ khoảng ba đến bốn phần trăm
    Um, nhưng anh có thể chỉ cần thu thập 33 người ngẫu nhiên trên hành tinh và trung bình một trong số họ đã xem video đó vì lượt xem quá
    Cao đến mức không thể tưởng tượng nổi. Vì vậy, đúng vậy, nghĩa là có rất nhiều chỉ trích ném vào tôi và điều đó là
    Bởi vì có những thứ rất toàn cầu thỉnh thoảng, bạn biết đấy, văn hóa truyền đi và không phải ai cũng xem mọi thứ và vì vậy mọi người có những ý kiến khác nhau và những thứ
    Điều đó là lý do tại sao
    Nó sẽ khiến bạn phát điên ở quy mô của chúng tôi nếu bạn cố gắng làm cho mọi người hạnh phúc vì ngay cả khi 99 phần trăm người
    Rất hạnh phúc, đó là tỷ lệ rất điên rồ
    Như nếu bạn tạo ra một tác phẩm nội dung mà 99 phần trăm người xem nó đều yêu thích, điều đó là điên rồ
    Điều đó không xảy ra, nhưng trong trường hợp chúng tôi, nếu chỉ một phần trăm không hài lòng
    Thì đó là hai triệu người, điều này nhiều hơn bất kỳ ai khác thậm chí có được trên lượt xem video
    Điều đó sẽ cảm thấy như một lượng chỉ trích và phản hồi không thể vượt qua được và rất dễ dàng để
    Đánh lừa tâm trí của bạn nghĩ rằng chả nhẽ mọi người đều ghét tôi vì bạn chỉ nhìn vào tiêu chuẩn 1 phần trăm so với 99
    Vì vậy, tôi chỉ đến điểm mà, bạn biết đấy, tôi cần phải có quy tắc nội bộ của riêng mình
    Rằng liệu tôi có nghĩ những gì tôi đang làm là tốt không, tôi nghĩ, bạn biết đấy, có đạo đức và đúng đắn không, tôi có
    Tin vào những gì tôi đang làm không, nếu có thì kệ nó, tôi sẽ không bao giờ có thể làm cho mọi người hài lòng
    Vì vậy, nếu bạn để sự thất thường của internet quyết định
    Điều gì là ok và điều gì là chấp nhận được và và khi nào bạn đang làm sai hay đúng, thì bạn không có cột sống
    Bạn không có nền tảng, bạn không đứng về phía nào cả và nó sẽ chỉ đánh gục bạn về mặt tâm lý
    Um và vì vậy ý tôi là, tôi không biết tôi bao nhiêu tuổi khi tôi có cách nghĩ đó
    Nhưng tôi chỉ nghĩ rằng tôi sẽ quyết định và tôi sẽ không để internet quyết định, bạn biết đấy
    Điều gì là ok khi nó không và kể từ khi tôi đến điểm đó, bạn biết đấy
    Mọi người đã chỉ trích tôi vì điều gì đó và tôi nói rằng, tôi không đồng ý. Vậy tôi dễ dàng chỉ cần
    Ôi, tôi không đồng ý. Chả lẽ không thể làm mọi người hài lòng. Tôi tin rằng những gì tôi đang làm là đúng và um
    Chỉ cần tiến lên, bộ não không được thiết kế cho điều này đâu. Không, đây là những gì tôi đã học được
    Vì vậy làm podcast thì diễn ra tốt
    Tôi cảm thấy như lúc đầu mọi người đều yêu tôi
    Ừ, và rồi tôi đi sâu vào, và cảm thấy như mọi người đều ghét tôi
    Ừ, vì họ tấn công bạn, bạn không bao giờ có thể làm đúng điều gì, đặc biệt là tôi có lẽ đã đọc
    Những bình luận hoặc tweet hỗn độn, hoặc tôi có lẽ trong đời tôi đã đọc hơn 5.000
    Tin nhắn hoặc bình luận hoặc gì đó bảo tôi tự tử. Ý tôi là, bạn biết đấy, tôi chỉ như
    Và điều gì sẽ khiến một người nào đó để lại một bình luận như đó là tự sát đi
    Bạn biết chứ, vì vậy tôi đồng ý rằng bạn không phải là người nhận loại phản hồi này từ bất kỳ ai ở bất kỳ đâu trên thế giới
    Bạn biết đấy, ý tôi là, chỉ cần mọi thứ liên tục ngày này qua ngày khác
    Đối với trường hợp của tôi bây giờ đã hơn một thập kỷ. Nó có bao giờ thực sự ảnh hưởng đến bạn không? Ừ, có, tất nhiên rồi
    Nghĩa là điều đó xảy ra mọi lúc hoặc trước đây thì nó xảy ra mọi lúc
    Tôi muốn nói rằng điều đó có ý nghĩa gì trong thực tế nếu tôi là một con ruồi trên tường trong một trong những khoảnh khắc đó mà bạn có thể nhớ lại
    Rằng nó thực sự ảnh hưởng đến bạn
    Ý tôi là, cách đây một thời gian
    Nhưng tôi không tự tin vào khả năng của mình để thành công và bạn biết đấy, khi bạn
    Có lẽ 20 tuổi và bạn đang thuê tất cả những người này.
    Bạn biết đấy, tôi có khả năng chấp nhận rủi ro cao. Nhưng tôi đang tái đầu tư mỗi đồng tôi kiếm được, bạn biết không, tôi đang thuê bạn bè từ trường. Tôi đã thuê cả mẹ tôi nữa, những người mà tôi thật sự quan tâm đang phụ thuộc vào tôi và sau đó, bạn biết đấy, tôi tải lên một video mà không ai thích và rồi mọi người, bạn biết đấy, tôi dồn tất cả thời gian và công sức vào nó. Nhưng có thể nó không truyền đạt tốt, như video ấy, và bạn biết đấy, có một số người có thể đã hiểu rằng tôi lười biếng. Rồi bạn đọc một bình luận như: “Wow, thật là lười biếng.” Tôi đã nghĩ rằng bạn làm video hay, mà video này lại tệ. Bạn đọc điều đó và video đang không đạt hiệu quả, và bạn tự hỏi: “Chết tiệt, có lẽ tôi đang liều lĩnh quá.” Bạn biết không, chắc chắn có những lúc tôi khóc. Bạn biết đấy, chỉ vì tôi suy nghĩ: “Chết tiệt, liệu tôi có đang làm sai không? Hoặc họ không hiểu rằng tôi đã dành rất nhiều thời gian cho cái này, hay là tại sao, tại sao?” Đôi khi, bạn tự hỏi: “Chết tiệt, liệu thuật toán có ghét tôi không? Liệu tôi có đang bị dập tắt không?” Quay lại ngày xưa, um, lần cuối cùng mà tôi cảm thấy như vậy là khi nào? Có lẽ có một tháng nào đó, có lẽ là năm ngoái, khi tôi cảm thấy một chút như vậy chỉ vì, um, bạn biết đấy, thỉnh thoảng tin đồn và drama lại bắt đầu. Nhưng bạn chỉ cần thoát ra khỏi nó và như tôi đã nói, hãy tự hỏi: “Tôi có tin tưởng vào những gì tôi đang làm không?” Rất khó vì bạn biết bất cứ khi nào tôi làm bất cứ điều gì tốt, mọi người luôn nghĩ là… Họ cố gắng, chúng ta đã được định hình ở Mỹ bây giờ khi ai đó làm điều gì tốt, luôn có một động cơ tiềm ẩn nào đó, và tôi luôn thẳng thắn và chỉ nói rằng một thế giới nơi tôi giúp đỡ mọi người thì tốt hơn là một thế giới nơi tôi không làm điều đó. Tôi không cố gắng tạo ra một câu chuyện điên rồ về việc ai đó đã giúp tôi khi tôi còn nhỏ và bây giờ tôi chỉ muốn trả lại và khóc. Tôi chỉ nghĩ rằng: “Vâng, tôi có thể tạo ra video viral và tôi nghĩ một thế giới nơi tôi làm video viral giúp đỡ mọi người sẽ tốt hơn khi tôi không làm.” Bạn biết đấy, đó chính là câu trả lời của tôi. Um, nhưng thật sự không vui khi mọi người cố gắng… Tôi không biết, điều thú vị là càng bạn làm nhiều điều tốt thì càng có nhiều người nghĩ rằng bạn thực sự ác độc và tôi cảm thấy: “Tại sao tôi không thể chỉ giúp mọi người vì đó là vui?” Đôi khi, những điều đó sẽ làm tôi buồn và tôi chỉ nói: “Này, các bạn thậm chí còn không biết tôi.” Bạn sẽ nghĩ rằng đôi khi khi tôi xây giếng ở Châu Phi hay giúp đỡ những người mù thấy, hoặc những điều như vậy, bạn sẽ đọc một số thứ này trên mạng, bạn sẽ nghĩ tôi là Hitler. Ý tôi là, thật điên rồ cách mọi người miêu tả và tôi chỉ không biết… Tôi ước mọi người hiểu rằng, theo ý kiến của tôi, một thế giới nơi tôi giúp đỡ mọi người thật sự vui hơn một thế giới nơi tôi không làm thế. Và thật sự không sâu sắc như vậy: Những người xung quanh bạn, điều đó ảnh hưởng đến họ như thế nào? Ồ, drama và những điều như vậy ảnh hưởng đến họ như thế nào? Um, thật lòng mà nói, trong trường hợp của tôi, tôi không nghĩ nó ảnh hưởng quá lớn đến họ bởi vì hầu hết mọi thứ thường rơi vào tôi và mọi người muốn nhắm vào tôi vì tôi là gã làm điều tốt, người được gọi là “nhà từ thiện”. Vì vậy thường tôi là người bị đổ lỗi nhiều nhất. Hmm. Thú vị thật, vì mọi người quen biết bạn đều biết bạn. Vâng, dù họ là những người thực sự thành công hay những người mà bạn làm việc cùng và tôi đã nói chuyện với, mọi người đều biết bạn là ai. Và điều đó thật đáng chú ý với tôi rằng um, một người đã làm rất nhiều điều tốt cho thế giới. Tôi đã nhìn vào công việc từ thiện của bạn và tôi biết bạn đang làm gì với feastables và việc khai thác nguồn nguyên liệu có đạo đức đó. Khi tôi thấy ai đó đã làm rất nhiều điều tốt cho thế giới mà vẫn bị hiểu lầm, gần như khiến tôi nhận ra rằng tôi không bao giờ nên chống lại điều đó. Vâng, phần trớ trêu là càng tôi giúp đỡ mọi người, tôi càng nhận được nhiều… Nói thật thì cảm giác thật hài hước vì bạn biết đấy, cùng một ngày, tôi phát hành một video mà tôi giúp một ngàn người mù nhìn, thì một YouTuber khác sẽ phát hành video họ vừa mua một biệt thự mới và mọi người đều như: “Vâng, bạn biết đấy, hãy nhận biệt thự đó, tốt lắm,” và sau đó họ sẽ nói: “Chết tiệt, bạn đang dùng những người mù đó, Jimmy.” Chết tiệt, bạn đang lợi dụng họ, và tôi chỉ muốn truyền cảm hứng cho những người khác làm điều tốt. Ý tôi là, tôi có thể mua một biệt thự nếu bạn muốn tôi. Um, thật sự hài hước. Nếu bạn đang cố gắng… Câu này có vẻ kỳ lạ, nhưng nếu bạn đang cố gắng nói rằng tôi thực sự không khuyên bạn giúp đỡ mọi người. Tôi thực sự nghĩ rằng giúp đỡ mọi người sẽ khiến internet ghét bạn hơn so với việc bạn chỉ đơn giản là mua xe đẹp và làm theo con đường người ảnh hưởng điển hình. Bởi vì chúng ta đã được định hình ở Mỹ để xem điều đó như một lá chắn, và không ai thực sự làm điều tốt vì họ chỉ tìm thấy điều đó thú vị. Um, nhưng tôi không quan tâm. Như tôi đã nói, điều đó chỉ thú vị hơn nếu tôi không làm điều đó. Vì vậy, mọi người có thể chỉ trích tôi vì giúp đỡ mọi người, tôi không… điều đó không làm tôi bận tâm nữa. Um, nhưng tôi sẽ không khuyên bạn nên dấn thân vào điều đó nếu bạn muốn được yêu mến, vì tôi nghĩ điều đó đang có mối tương quan tiêu cực bây giờ. Thú vị thật, thật hấp dẫn. Tôi thề với Chúa, người bạn. Như, tôi có thể chỉ cần làm những video kiểu như $1 so với… nơi tôi so sánh một chiếc thuyền $1 với một chiếc thuyền tỷ đô và tất cả những thứ khác và không giúp đỡ mọi người. Và tôi sẽ nhận được ít chỉ trích hơn nhiều, và thật hài hước vì không ai để ý đến điều đó khi tôi đăng tải nhưng khi tôi cung cấp nước uống sạch cho hàng trăm nghìn người ở Châu Phi, mọi thứ như sụp đổ và mọi người…
    Tôi chỉ đang cố gắng thu hút sự chú ý đến một vấn đề. Tôi không thực sự nhưng vấn đề là tôi sẽ tiếp tục làm điều đó và tôi nghĩ trong trường hợp của tôi, hầu hết mọi người đã nhận ra rằng tôi sẽ không dừng lại, nên họ chỉ kiểu như là đã hết giận với tôi và họ chỉ như là “Được rồi, Jimmy vẫn là Jimmy thôi.” Tôi nghĩ khi gió thổi, nó cũng giúp bạn thực sự hiểu lý do bạn đang làm những gì bạn đang làm và hiểu biết về chính mình. Vì vậy, khi tôi bị tấn công vì những người mà tôi phỏng vấn hoặc bất cứ điều gì đó, thực sự đã khiến tôi tập trung lại vào những nguyên tắc của mình. Đúng vậy, vì bạn phải thực sự bám chắc vào chúng. Như tôi đã nói, bạn phải biết đâu là giới hạn của mình và miễn là bạn ở phía bên đúng của giới hạn đó, thì tình hình là như vậy, mọi người trên Twitter có thể nói bất cứ điều gì họ muốn. Và tôi nghĩ đó là cách duy nhất để tồn tại ở quy mô này mà không bị điên là bạn phải xác định đâu là giới hạn. Không để Internet làm việc.
    Cao điểm công việc. Vâng, bạn có thể cho tôi biết về bảy ngày qua trong cuộc sống của bạn không? Chỉ cần vẽ cho tôi một bức tranh. À, vâng, để tôi uống một chút nước vì tôi đang bị cảm. Vâng, tôi không biết về bảy ngày qua như thế nào, nhưng nói chung thì chúng tôi… Chúng tôi đang quay một video mà tôi đang đến thăm năm địa điểm chết người nhất trên trái đất. Một trong những địa điểm đó là một chuyến safari ở Nam Phi. Vì vậy, tôi đã bay đến Nam Phi để dành thời gian trong một cái lồng, xung quanh là những con sư tử, nội dung thật tuyệt. Đó là một hành trình khó khăn để đến đó và rồi tôi bị cảm và đã dành vài ngày trong bệnh viện ở đó. Sau đó, chúng tôi dự định đi đến đảo rắn để dành thời gian ở đó, rồi con đường chết chóc nhất thế giới và sau đó còn một vài địa điểm khác. Nhưng điều đó đã bị hoãn lại. Thay vào đó, tôi bước ra từ bệnh viện, bay đến Florida và quay với Aaron Judge. Rồi tôi đi đến, ồ không tôi đến Bắc Carolina. Chúng tôi có một chàng trai mà tôi đã xây dựng một phòng gym cho anh ấy và tôi đã nói với anh ấy rằng nếu anh ấy giảm được một trăm pound trước khi rời khỏi phòng gym, nó có một vòng tròn đỏ lớn xung quanh nó, tôi sẽ cho anh ấy một số tiền. Vì vậy tôi đã quay với anh ấy, rồi làm việc cho các video sắp tới. Thật là nhiều công việc và sau đó bay đến Florida quay với Aaron Judge. Tôi vừa mới hạ cánh, đã quay với buổi đoàn tụ mà bạn đã tham dự với các thí sinh của Beast Games. Chúng tôi đang thực hiện podcast này. Bây giờ là mấy giờ, khoảng 1 giờ sáng. Vâng, 1 giờ sáng. Podcast gần nhất mà tôi từng làm. Nhẹ nhàng, tôi luôn làm podcast của tôi vào lúc 1 giờ sáng. Podcast cuối cùng trước đó của tôi là khoảng 4 giờ sáng. Như là cách đây vài tuần và sau đó, chúng tôi sẽ bay đến San Francisco để quay với Steph, rồi chúng tôi sẽ quay với Steph Curry. Vâng, Steph Curry, rồi tôi nghĩ tôi sẽ đến đảo rắn rồi con đường chết chóc nhất. Và sau đó, tôi không nghĩ tôi sẽ về nhà trong ít nhất 16 ngày nữa. Vì vậy, tôi sẽ chỉ đi vòng quanh để quay phim trong 16 ngày tiếp theo và rồi, vâng, tôi đoán tôi sẽ về nhà và họ sẽ bắt tôi… Làm đầy nhà tôi.
    Mọi thứ khác trong cuộc sống bạn phù hợp với điều đó như thế nào, nói về phòng gym? Tôi biết bạn đã tập luyện. Nó đã thật sự khó khăn. Nó đã trở nên tồi tệ trong vài tháng qua. Nó thật sự đang giết tôi, thành thật mà nói. Thật sự dễ dàng hơn rất nhiều khi bạn không di chuyển. Cuộc sống sẽ thật dễ dàng khi bạn chỉ thức dậy trong giường của mình và làm việc 15 giờ trong văn phòng của bạn hoặc bất cứ điều gì. Thật sự dễ dàng so với tất cả những thứ vớ vẩn này, nơi tôi không biết mình đang ở múi giờ nào, tôi không biết mình ở đâu, tôi không biết mình sẽ đi đâu trong hai ngày nữa. Nó thật sự hỗn độn. Có những ngày tôi đi ngủ lúc 10 giờ sáng, có những ngày tôi đi ngủ lúc 5 giờ chiều. Đó là một mớ bòng bong. Thật sự và tôi đã từng chịu đựng điều đó và tìm ra cách để làm việc luyện tập. Nhưng tôi không biết, tôi cần phải. Thành thật mà nói, bất cứ điều gì là ưu tiên, bạn sẽ hoàn thành. Tôi chỉ cần làm cho nó trở thành ưu tiên một lần nữa vì tôi thực sự nhớ nó. Phần khó khăn là đưa Beast Games vào vòng trộn vì tôi đã luôn kiểu làm việc, bạn biết đấy, bất cứ giờ nào mà mắt tôi không bị nhắm lại. Nhưng rồi dự án Beast Games thì là một quái vật thực sự và tôi phải duy trì cùng một lịch trình tải lên YouTube, và sau đó tôi cũng làm nhiều việc với Feastables bây giờ và rồi tôi có một vài doanh nghiệp khác. Vì vậy, tôi chỉ… Thành thật mà nói, có thứ gì đó phải thỏa hiệp và thật buồn là việc tập luyện đã bị ảnh hưởng, nhưng thật ngu ngốc. Vì vậy, tôi cần phải… Tái ưu tiên hóa cuộc sống của mình để tôi có thể, ý tôi là chỉ cần 45 phút năm ngày mỗi tuần là đủ. Nó không cần phải khó khăn. Nhưng vấn đề lớn hơn là tôi không ngủ như trước đây được nữa vì chúng tôi có quá nhiều thứ xảy ra. Và khi tôi tập luyện hết mình trong phòng gym rồi không ngủ đủ giấc, thì điều đó sẽ gây ra sự mệt mỏi cực độ vào ngày hôm sau. Vì vậy, tôi phải sửa chữa giấc ngủ trước đã trước khi việc đó xảy ra, nhưng vâng, có rất nhiều thứ đang xảy ra, thành thật mà nói. Tôi đang mệt mỏi.
    Bạn cảm thấy thế nào? À, bây giờ thật sự ổn. Tôi đang rất hưng phấn với caffeine. Nhưng ý tôi là trong thời gian này, bạn biết đấy, cảm cúm không hề giúp ích gì, nó làm mọi thứ trở nên khó khăn hơn khoảng 30%. Vì vậy, bạn biết đấy, cuộc sống giống như một chuyến tàu lượn siêu tốc. Sẽ có những khoảnh khắc như ngay bây giờ, tôi sẽ trả lời điều này một cách tiêu cực. Nhưng tôi không muốn ai nghĩ rằng điều đó phản ánh rằng “ồ, mỗi lần bạn hỏi tôi điều này, nó sẽ như vậy.” Nhưng vì cảm cúm và thiếu ngủ, tôi đang rất vật vã lúc này. Rất nhiều công việc khó nhọc. Một chút hạnh phúc vì chúng tôi vừa phát hành kết thúc của Beast Games. Vì vậy, có một chút cảm xúc lên cao, nhưng sau khi điều này kết thúc, tôi có thể sẽ đi ngủ và cực kỳ mệt mỏi vào sáng mai, điều mà tôi ghét. Nhưng vâng, tôi sẽ nói rằng tôi đang ở phần thấp, tôi cần một vài ngày tốt để hồi phục năng lượng.
    Tôi muốn nói về một điều mà tất cả chúng ta cần phải nghiêm túc xem xét: an ninh mạng. Dù bạn là một người sáng lập lần đầu đối mặt với cuộc kiểm toán đầu tiên hay một chuyên gia dày dạn kinh nghiệm đã trải qua mọi thứ, việc duy trì sự tuân thủ đang trở nên quan trọng hơn bao giờ hết và cũng phức tạp hơn.
    Và đó chính là lý do mà Vanta – nhà tài trợ của podcast này – đến với chúng ta. Vanta giúp giảm bớt những khó khăn trong việc tuân thủ an ninh, tự động hóa quy trình nhàm chán nhưng thiết yếu của việc chứng minh doanh nghiệp của bạn là an toàn theo hơn 35 khuôn khổ như SOC 2, ISO 27001.
    Tập trung hóa quy trình làm việc của bạn, trả lời các câu hỏi an ninh nhanh hơn tới năm lần và bảo vệ doanh nghiệp của bạn mà không mất đi sự tập trung vào sự phát triển. Đây thực sự là một phần quan trọng, một nghiên cứu white paper mới của IDC cho thấy các công ty sử dụng Vanta tiết kiệm hơn 535,000 USD mỗi năm. Và nó tự trả cho mình chỉ sau ba tháng. Trong thời gian giới hạn, cộng đồng của tôi sẽ được giảm giá 1,000 USD khi sử dụng Vanta tại vanta.com/steven. Đó là vanta.com/steven để được giảm giá 1,000 USD.
    Bạn nghĩ gì về sức khỏe tâm thần? Tôi đã nghe bạn nói về sức khỏe tâm thần của bạn trước đây.
    Vâng, tôi không phải là người giỏi trong việc này. Vấn đề là như thế này: nếu sức khỏe tâm thần của tôi là ưu tiên hàng đầu, có lẽ tôi đã không thành công như hiện tại. Đó là một thực tế buồn. Rõ ràng, tôi không bao giờ muốn chôn sống mình trong bảy ngày, một nơi hoang vắng. Dạo này tôi thường cảm thấy không thoải mái, và việc thường xuyên chịu đựng trong thời gian dài như vậy thực sự là một trong những cách khắc sâu nhất.
    Có lý do tại sao không ai làm video như tôi, vì không ai muốn sống cuộc sống tôi đang sống. Có những tháng mà tôi bay khoảng 200 ngày. Mọi thứ thực sự khó khăn, nhưng tôi làm để hoàn thành các video và tôi luôn phải cố gắng. Khi tôi thức dậy vào ngày mai và cảm thấy rất mệt mỏi, tôi sẽ nhắc nhở bản thân rằng cảm giác của tôi bây giờ chính là lý do tại sao không ai khác làm những gì tôi làm, và nếu tôi cố gắng vượt qua điều này, thì đó là lý do nữa để không ai có thể trở thành giống như tôi.
    Vì vậy, tôi nghĩ việc có thể vượt qua nỗi buồn và làm những điều mà bạn không muốn làm một cách liên tục trong nhiều năm qua thực sự là một lợi thế to lớn. Tôi nghĩ rằng chúng tôi sẽ đạt một tỷ người đăng ký, mà tôi không nghĩ rằng ai đó có thể gần đạt được, vì một khi bạn kiếm được vài triệu đô la, tại sao bạn lại sống cuộc sống như tôi? Tại sao bạn không nghỉ vào cuối tuần? Tại sao bạn không quay phim ở địa phương, dù điều đó có thể đồng nghĩa với việc có ít lượt xem hơn để bạn có thể giữ đúng lịch trình? Tại sao bạn không đề cao sức khỏe tâm thần của mình? Điều đó thật vô lý, nhưng đó cũng chính là lý do không ai khác làm như vậy.
    Bạn đã nói chuyện với Colin và Samir, hai người mà tôi đã gặp gần đây.
    Vâng, họ thật tuyệt vời. Bạn đã nói với họ rằng bạn thường cảm thấy khổ sở, bạn thường có những cuộc khủng hoảng tinh thần?
    Vâng, đúng vậy. Tôi đã có chút cải thiện. Câu nói “khủng hoảng tinh thần” có vẻ cực đoan, nhưng nó chỉ đơn thuần là: “Tại sao tôi lại làm điều này? Thật khó khăn quá.”
    Vì có rất nhiều thứ phải làm. Điều gì đã khiến tôi cảm thấy như vậy? Có lẽ tôi đã nói điều này nhiều năm trước, khi mà tất cả những gì tôi làm chỉ là YouTube. Bây giờ tôi điều hành công ty chocolate, có chương trình và vài thứ khác. Phần khó khăn nhất chính là việc thay đổi công việc nhanh chóng. Tôi cố gắng phân loại chúng. Nếu tôi đang ở trường quay và có một ngày quay phim 15 tiếng, những việc tôi làm giữa các cảnh quay sẽ liên quan đến kênh chính.
    Và điều đó giúp tôi không cảm thấy như đầu mình sắp nổ tung. Như khi tôi đang ở văn phòng Feastables và đang bàn về marketing, thì bạn sẽ hỏi: “Bạn nghĩ sao về đoạn này cho video chính sắp tới?” Khi đó tôi cần thay đổi tâm trạng, và việc chuyển đổi liên tục như vậy thực sự có thể khiến tôi cảm thấy rất mệt. Nó không phải là con người tôi. Tôi thích cuồng nhiệt với các điều nhất định và tôi thấy việc tập trung vào kinh doanh không giống như việc chuyển đổi giữa marketing và sản phẩm.
    Trước đây tôi thường phải thay đổi công việc liên tục hàng chục lần trong một ngày, điều đó thật sự khổ sở và không vui chút nào. Tôi đã nghe Elon Musk nói, mà tôi biết bạn cũng thường nói về ông ấy. Tôi đã nghe ông ấy nói trong một buổi phỏng vấn với Joe Rogan rằng bạn không muốn ở trong đầu ông ấy. Tôi nghĩ Joe Rogan đã hỏi xem ông ấy có hạnh phúc không và ông ấy không coi câu hỏi đó là quan trọng.
    Vì vậy, có hai câu hỏi ở đây. Bạn có nghĩ rằng người bình thường muốn ở trong đầu bạn không? Và thứ hai, bạn có hạnh phúc không?
    Chà, không, người bình thường không muốn sống cuộc sống mà tôi đang sống. Họ sẽ cảm thấy khổ sở vì họ suốt ngày làm việc và có lẽ họ sẽ tự hỏi: “Tại sao tôi lại làm việc cả thời gian như vậy? Tại sao không làm bất cứ điều gì khác?” Bởi vì rõ ràng tôi không phải là một cỗ máy. Có những lúc tôi cảm thấy, “Chết tiệt, tôi rất muốn chơi một trò chơi bàn chiến lược, tôi muốn làm việc này,” và khi nhìn vào lịch trình, tôi lại thấy không thể làm điều đó.
    Tôi như kiểu, ôi
    Có lẽ tôi có thể làm điều đó trong b four ngày và bạn biết đấy, phần khó khăn là
    Bạn thực sự phải cẩn thận với cách suy nghĩ của mình bởi vì rất dễ dàng trong những khoảnh khắc như vậy để nghĩ rằng
    Chết tiệt, tôi như một con thú trong sở thú. Như là tôi không có tự do ý chí, tôi như một chú robot cho công việc của mình và như
    Um, và vì vậy bạn phải rất cẩn thận và đôi khi những cảm xúc đó chi phối và đặc biệt là vì tôi là một người rất
    Khó khăn và tôi như kiểu, nhưng tôi thực sự muốn làm điều này
    Nhưng tôi không thể vì tôi phải đi quay video này và tôi phải làm điều này và tôi phải phát biểu tại hội nghị này
    và tôi phải tham gia vào việc kết nối và bla bla và vì vậy
    um, vâng, tôi nghĩ hầu hết mọi người khi cảm giác đó xuất hiện như
    Tôi có phải chỉ là một con thú cưng không? Liệu tôi có tự do ý chí không? Họ có thể cảm thấy rất chán nản, nhưng tôi đã có thể
    Vượt qua những cảm giác đó và và tôi luôn cố gắng
    Bạn biết đấy, não bộ của bạn, bạn chỉ cần kiểm soát những suy nghĩ của mình và nghĩ rằng, ừ, đây là cuộc sống
    Tôi đã chọn, đây là bạn muốn thành công, bạn muốn
    Thay đổi thế giới, bạn muốn làm điều này và đây là cái giá bạn phải trả
    Bạn thực sự nên nhìn điều này như một điều tốt vì đây là lý do vì sao tôi rất,
    Chăm chỉ về cách tôi định hình mọi thứ trong tâm trí mình như đây là lý do không ai khác sẽ làm những gì bạn sẽ làm và đây là một điều tốt
    Cảm giác bạn đang có ngay bây giờ là động lực của bạn
    Bạn may mắn đấy. Hãy kiên trì vượt qua nó và bạn sẽ hài lòng vì đã làm, bạn biết đấy
    và đó là cách mà tôi
    cố gắng
    Nhìn nhận điều đó, um, nhưng không, tôi không nghĩ hầu hết mọi người sẽ hạnh phúc sống cuộc sống của tôi. Họ sẽ như kiểu, ôi, cứ việc kiếm vài triệu đô la và
    Hạnh phúc đi. Vâng. Bạn có hạnh phúc không?
    Uh, tùy vào ngày bạn hỏi tôi, ngay bây giờ tôi đang có khoảng thời gian vui vẻ. Um khác
    Bạn biết đấy, khi tôi bị cúm ở châu Phi ngồi trong một chiếc lồng với những con sư tử. Chết tiệt không
    Vậy bạn có mức độ cơ bản nào? Bạn sẽ mô tả mức độ của bạn ra sao?
    có thể là uh năm nay có lẽ đến giờ thì buồn hơn vui
    và có những điều bạn phải làm mà thực sự không vui. Bạn biết đấy, nhưng tôi nghĩ
    tôi thực sự thích làm việc với các lễ hội và tôi đang cố gắng dành nhiều thời gian hơn để xây dựng nó vấn đề là chỉ là
    Tôi là người duy nhất có thể đứng trước ống kính và quay phim và đó là điều như
    thật tàn nhẫn, đặc biệt là với beast games là tôi đang quay phim rất nhiều đã thêm rất nhiều thứ vào
    Số ngày quay hàng năm của tôi như làm một chương trình khổng lồ ngoài việc đã có kênh youtube lớn nhất
    Kênh mà tôi đã quay một số tháng 25 ngày một tháng. Vì vậy, tôi chỉ như vậy đó là phần khó khăn
    Bởi vì tất cả những điều này đều nằm trên vai tôi
    Và nếu tôi không quay thì không có nội dung nào cả như kênh thực sự dừng lại như nếu tôi ngừng quay và vì vậy
    Bạn biết đấy, tôi đã thấy ngày càng nhiều rằng tôi tìm thấy nhiều niềm vui hơn từ những hoạt động khởi nghiệp và xây dựng doanh nghiệp
    Và tôi nghĩ rằng tôi sẽ hạnh phúc hơn nếu tôi có thể dành nhiều thời gian hơn để làm điều đó
    Nhưng cảm giác thật kỳ lạ vì tôi thực sự có thể thuê bất kỳ ai trên thế giới để làm điều đó
    Trong khi tôi không thể thuê ai để thay thế tôi trước ống kính
    Tôi luôn tự hỏi có người nào đang làm rất tốt trên một nền tảng như youtube nơi thuật toán luôn thay đổi
    Nhiều youtuber mà tôi nói chuyện cho biết họ cuối cùng cảm thấy kiệt sức
    Họ cảm thấy như là kiệt sức sáng tạo và họ chỉ đơn giản là xóa kênh của mình
    Bạn đã thấy rất nhiều điều đó gần đây trong vài năm qua nơi các youtuber đạt 10 triệu và họ chỉ dừng lại thôi
    Vậy điều đó có bao giờ xuất hiện trong đầu bạn? Ồ, tất nhiên, thường xuyên. Thật sự. Vâng, nhưng tôi
    Ý tôi là, tôi cảm thấy như đó là nội dung của nửa cái podcast này về việc tôi không muốn làm những điều đó
    Nhưng tôi vẫn tiếp tục và làm điều đó. Tôi nghĩ
    Họ chỉ là những con người hợp lý
    Như họ, bạn biết đấy, nhiều người trong số họ theo đuổi một mục tiêu như, ôi, tôi chỉ muốn có số tiền này để tôi có thể chăm sóc những điều này
    Bạn biết đấy, nó có thể là những điều cao quý như nghỉ hưu cho mẹ tôi hoặc chỉ không phải lo lắng về tiền bạc
    Và sau đó họ nói, vậy tại sao tôi phải chịu đựng bây giờ? Tôi ổn. Khi nào bạn gần như dừng lại nhất?
    Ồ, tôi có thể đã không đếm được lần. Ý tôi là tất cả mọi lúc
    Khi tôi bị tạm giam một mình trong bảy ngày. Ý tôi là điều đó thật khủng khiếp. Tôi đã bỏ một video
    Tôi đã bỏ rất nhiều video như không, ý tôi là với tư cách là một người sáng tạo
    Um, ý tôi là, tôi đoán là tôi sẽ không bao giờ thực sự bỏ cuộc. Ý tôi là điều lớn nhất của tôi là
    Tôi chỉ sẽ nghỉ một tuần và cảm thấy mệt mỏi. Hãy để tôi ngủ chín tiếng một đêm và như
    Um, nhưng như tôi đã dành thời gian đầu tiên, chúng tôi đã làm một video nơi chúng tôi đã dành bảy ngày trên một hòn đảo hoang vắng
    Lần đầu tiên chúng tôi quay video vào ngày thứ hai. Tôi thức dậy trên bãi biển và tôi thực sự không biết rằng bọ cát là một thứ
    Tôi đã bị khoảng
    700 vết côn trùng cắn trên chân và khắp cơ thể. Tôi đã bị cháy nắng
    Một phần trong tôi như kiểu, chết tiệt, tôi sẽ chết. Như là điên rồ
    Bao nhiêu vết côn trùng cắn khắp nơi và da tôi đỏ như tôm và tôi không thể nhìn rõ và vì vậy tôi cuối cùng đã bỏ cuộc vào ngày thứ hai
    Um, điều đó thật tàn nhẫn bởi vì bạn dành tất cả thời gian và tiền bạc và bạn có đội ngũ ở đó và bạn đã bay đến đó và
    Bạn biết đấy, đó là chi phí cơ hội.
    Nó giống như có một khoảng thời gian bảy ngày.
    Chúng tôi có thể đã quay một video và tải lên, và bây giờ thì không, thật buồn.
    Biết đấy, việc hủy bỏ bất kỳ video nào như vậy thực sự là điều tồi tệ nhất có thể xảy ra từ góc độ chi phí cơ hội.
    Và đó là những khoảnh khắc như vậy, và cảm giác thật tồi tệ, như kiểu “điều này thậm chí không còn vui nữa”.
    Chết tiệt cái này, nhưng nhưng youtube thì sao, nhìn chung thì
    Tôi cảm thấy như youtube giống như việc ném than vào một chiếc xe lửa.
    Một khi bạn đã bắt đầu, bạn chỉ cần liên tục ném vào đó, không bao giờ ngừng lại.
    Không, bạn như đang chạy trên một chiếc máy chạy bộ được tăng tốc tối đa.
    Đặc biệt nếu bạn muốn trở thành một người sáng tạo hàng đầu như tôi, thì thật sự là ai có thể ở lại trên máy chạy bộ lâu nhất?
    Bởi vì nó không bao giờ chậm lại, nếu có thì bạn đang làm cho nó nhanh hơn.
    Um, nhưng không, tôi nghĩ sẽ không bao giờ có một thời điểm nào thực sự mà tôi sẽ bỏ cuộc.
    Có lẽ một lần nghỉ ngơi sẽ tốt.
    Và khi bạn nghĩ về chiếc máy chạy bộ đó, bạn có thấy mình có thể làm việc trên đó trong hai, ba, bốn thập kỷ tới không?
    Ồ, chắc chắn rồi. Tôi không có bất kỳ ý định nào để dừng lại. Được rồi. Um, tình yêu
    Là một điều gì đó đã đến trong
    Cuộc sống của tôi cách đây vài năm. Bạn đã thông báo, tôi nghĩ là vào dịp Giáng sinh, rằng bạn đã cầu hôn.
    Tôi nghĩ đó là ngày Boxing hoặc đêm giao thừa. Đúng rồi, đó là vào ngày Giáng sinh.
    Ồ, ngày Giáng sinh, vì gia đình của cô ấy ở trong thành phố. Vì vậy, tôi đã cầu hôn. Được, được rồi.
    Điều đó liên quan như thế nào đến sự điên rồ này?
    Cô ấy thực sự, bạn có thể đếm trên tay số lượng
    Người trên hành tinh này thực sự sẽ là một người bạn đồng hành tốt cho tôi và cô ấy là một trong số đó.
    Cô ấy thực sự hiểu rằng công việc là điều mà bạn biết, là lý do tôi sống và điều giữ cho tôi tiếp tục, và cô ấy
    Hỗ trợ tôi và cô ấy hiểu tầm quan trọng của nó và điều lớn nhất là bên cạnh tia, hôn thê của tôi,
    Nó rất trôi chảy. Chúng tôi chơi cùng một trò chơi điện tử. Chúng tôi xem cùng một chương trình. Chúng tôi rất quan tâm đến những điều giống nhau.
    Cô ấy thích học hỏi như tôi vậy. Vì vậy, bạn biết đấy, thật thú vị khi thấy hôm đó cô ấy đã nghe bài giảng nào trực tuyến hoặc đọc quyển sách kỳ lạ nào.
    Và tất cả mọi thứ khi ở bên cô ấy thật trôi chảy, thật tuyệt vời vì như bạn biết đấy, tôi không có nhiều thời gian ở nhà.
    Và điều cuối cùng tôi cần là trở về nhà từ công việc và có xung đột.
    Và vì vậy chúng tôi không, chúng tôi không cãi nhau. Thật sự, đôi khi tôi cảm thấy, wow, đây giống như người bạn tốt nhất của tôi.
    Và cô ấy thật nóng bỏng. Thật tuyệt. Bạn biết đấy, và đôi khi cảm giác thật kỳ lạ.
    Mọi người
    Tôi nghĩ bất kỳ ai đang
    Nghe bây giờ và đang trong một mối quan hệ. Câu hỏi họ có thể đang nghĩ là: khi nào bạn dành thời gian bên nhau?
    Chủ yếu vào ban đêm, um, và uh cái đẹp là cô ấy sắp xếp lịch của cô ấy xung quanh của tôi. Vì vậy, cô ấy sẽ làm việc khi tôi đang làm việc và sau đó cô ấy sẽ chỉ đi du lịch cùng tôi. Và thật sự, rất nhiều điều đó diễn ra trên máy bay.
    Rất nhiều trong những chuyến đi xe ô tô hoặc bạn biết đấy, một giờ trước khi đi ngủ hoặc vào buổi sáng, những thứ như vậy.
    Nhưng cũng vì có những khoảng nghỉ trên phim trường và những thứ như vậy. Vì vậy, bạn biết đấy, thật sự rất khó để tìm một người
    Thông minh, thực sự có sở thích riêng và những thứ độc lập
    Mà cũng sẵn sàng điều chỉnh cuộc sống của họ theo của tôi và không nhìn thấy đó như một điều hạ thấp.
    Vì nếu cô ấy chỉ nói như:
    “Được rồi, tôi có điều này đang diễn ra và tôi phải ưu tiên cuộc sống của mình?”
    Tôi sẽ không bao giờ thấy cô ấy nhưng vì cô ấy sẵn sàng để bạn biết đấy,
    Điều chỉnh cuộc sống của cô ấy theo cuộc sống của tôi và lịch làm việc của tôi,
    Điều đó là tất cả. Um
    Và thật hiếm có người sẵn sàng làm điều đó trong khi bạn biết đấy, theo tôi, ít nhất từ những gì tôi nhìn thấy, thông minh và độc lập như cô ấy.
    Cha mẹ tôi luôn nhắn tin cho tôi và nói “Steve, hãy đợi đến khi bạn có con.” Ồ, vâng.
    Điều đó, và đó là điều như là lối sống của tôi bây giờ sẽ không phù hợp với trẻ con.
    Vì vậy, tôi muốn đợi, tôi muốn có con nhưng tôi muốn đợi càng lâu càng tốt vì nếu tôi có con,
    Tôi phải là một người cha tuyệt vời. Tôi thực sự, thực sự thích việc hướng dẫn người khác.
    Tôi yêu việc hướng dẫn, bạn biết đấy, những doanh nhân trẻ hơn và như kiểu giúp đỡ. Như tôi đã kể câu chuyện này
    Tôi nghĩ tôi đã kể câu chuyện này trên Joe Rogan.
    Tôi đã giúp một trong những người bạn của tôi từ như 40k doanh thu hàng tháng đến 400k trên youtube và tôi làm những thứ như vậy suốt.
    Tôi chỉ như là một trong những người bạn khác của tôi có một
    Thương hiệu thức ăn nhẹ cpg và tôi đã giúp họ phát triển lên tám con số doanh thu chỉ vì vui vẻ.
    Tôi chỉ gọi cho anh ấy vài lần một tháng và có điều gì đó rất hài lòng về việc giúp người khác thành công.
    Và vì vậy tôi rất muốn có một vài đứa con và thực sự dẫn dắt chúng trở thành, bạn biết đấy, những người tuyệt vời.
    Nhưng vâng, không phải sớm đâu. Tôi sẽ rất vắng mặt nếu chúng tôi có con. Vì vậy, chỉ cần tìm thời điểm phù hợp trong cái diagram venn nơi tôi có thể thực sự có mặt trong cuộc sống của chúng.
    Và đế chế kinh doanh của bạn tôi nghĩ lớn hơn nhiều so với hầu hết mọi người nhận ra.
    Tôi tưởng tượng phần lớn mọi người có lẽ không thực sự hiểu bối cảnh của kinh doanh.
    Vì vậy họ không thực sự hiểu. Họ có thể nhìn thấy bạn như một youtuber hoặc một người sáng tạo
    Nhưng từ những nghiên cứu tôi đã thực hiện, bạn điều hành một
    Doanh nghiệp cực kỳ lớn. Vâng, ý tôi là, chúng tôi thực hiện doanh thu chín chữ số từ các lễ hội. Ý tôi là, chúng tôi có thể nói như vậy. Vâng, chín chữ số từ feastable. Vì vậy
    Doanh nghiệp phải trị giá vài tỷ đô la.
    Uh tổng thể, ý tôi là bạn có thể làm điều gì đó như vậy. Vâng, tôi không định khiến bạn cố gắng đoán.
    Tôi chắc bạn biết nhưng tôi sẽ không yêu cầu bạn
    dự đoán nhưng mà
    Doanh nghiệp này sẽ trị giá rất nhiều tiền. Bạn có phải là một tỷ phú không?
    Uh trên giấy tờ. Vâng, nhưng ý tôi là trong tài khoản ngân hàng thực tế của tôi, tôi có ít hơn một triệu đô la.
    Dưới đây là bản dịch tiếng Việt của đoạn văn:
    Vậy
    Bạn có trả cho bản thân mình một chút nào không? Nhưng tôi cũng như có một số trợ giúp và những thứ như vậy.
    Vậy nên, tôi cố gắng chỉ trả cho bản thân những gì tôi tiêu mỗi tháng, chỉ để giữ cho mọi thứ ngang bằng.
    Bạn nghĩ về tiền bạc và tất cả những điều này như thế nào vì
    Hầu hết mọi người trong cuộc sống của họ đang theo đuổi tiền bạc để họ có thể thư giãn và nghỉ hưu.
    Nhưng có vẻ như bạn đang theo đuổi nó hoàn toàn chỉ vì mục đích tái đầu tư vào hệ thống.
    Tiền là nhiên liệu để phát triển doanh nghiệp.
    Và rồi bạn kiếm tiền từ doanh nghiệp và tiếp tục phát triển.
    Đúng vậy, và sau đó bạn tìm thấy một doanh nghiệp mà bạn thích, mà bạn biết, tốt hơn cho mẹ thiên nhiên hoặc trái đất hay con người.
    Và thế là bạn có một cuộc sống viên mãn. Đó là lý thuyết của tôi. Tôi chỉ không muốn khi tôi 70 tuổi
    Nhìn lại và có sự hối tiếc, bạn biết đấy.
    Khi nào thì đủ là đủ, một câu hỏi thật sáo rỗng mà tôi đã được hỏi đủ rồi, như xây dựng doanh nghiệp không bao giờ dừng lại.
    Ý tôi là, tôi chỉ muốn tiếp tục xây dựng doanh nghiệp, giống như một trò chơi video.
    Nó thật sự rất thú vị, bạn biết đấy, như với Feastables hiện tại.
    Bạn biết đấy, chúng tôi là công ty chocolate nguồn gốc đạo đức lớn nhất ở Mỹ.
    Và như vậy thật thú vị khi nhìn vào điều gì đó đã được làm theo cách giống nhau suốt một trăm năm.
    Và nghĩ rằng, làm thế nào chúng ta có thể xoay chuyển mọi thứ và làm rối loạn ngành công nghiệp này? Vậy bạn biết đấy, chúng ta có thể
    Trả cho nông dân một mức thu nhập đủ sống, bạn biết đấy, không sử dụng lao động trẻ em, v.v.
    Và vì vậy, bạn biết đấy, tôi nghĩ nếu tôi chỉ làm những điều tầm thường như mọi người khác thì tôi có lẽ sẽ chán chết.
    Nếu tôi chỉ bán chocolate như mọi người khác, làm những video YouTube lặp đi lặp lại như mọi người khác,
    Có lẽ tôi sẽ nói, được rồi, hãy cho tôi ra khỏi đây. Tôi muốn nghỉ hưu.
    Nhưng đó không phải là những gì chúng tôi đang làm. Chúng tôi đang thay đổi ngành công nghiệp. Chúng tôi đang tác động đến thế giới.
    Như thế này là mục đích của cuộc sống theo ý kiến của tôi.
    Bạn có thể làm rất nhiều với hàng triệu người lắng nghe và xem video của bạn.
    Bạn có thể bắt đầu gần như bất kỳ doanh nghiệp nào và khiến nó thành công.
    Bạn có thể có bất kỳ tác động xã hội nào và nó sẽ sâu sắc và làm thay đổi cuộc sống của hàng triệu người.
    Bạn có gặp khó khăn trong việc tập trung không?
    Không, ý tôi là, tôi có đôi khi tự hỏi, bạn biết đấy, liệu chúng ta có nên làm nhiều hơn không?
    Nhưng tôi thực sự đã tìm thấy một nhịp điệu tốt với Feastables. Tôi rất, tôi cứ nhìn sang đó vì Feastable đang ngồi ở đó.
    Tôi cảm thấy như mình đã tìm ra được nhịp điệu tốt với điều đó. Và vấn đề nguồn gốc đạo đức của nó và
    Không, ý tôi là, có, hiển nhiên là tôi có hàng triệu cơ hội, nhưng
    Chỉ
    Bạn biết đấy, bây giờ, như tôi đã nói earlier,
    Đây là một trong số ít điều trong đời mà tôi cảm thấy giống như cảm giác mà YouTube mang lại, nơi
    Xây dựng Feastables cũng thú vị không kém gì việc làm video với tôi.
    Nó thật sự thật tuyệt vời. Cảm ơn bạn. Nó thật sự rất tuyệt.
    Tôi rất muốn dành một chút thời gian nói về vấn đề nguồn gốc đạo đức vì tôi nghĩ rằng đó là một điều mà
    Tôi không hiểu cho đến khi tôi làm một số nghiên cứu về bạn. Vâng, um,
    Tại sao điều đó lại quan trọng như vậy và khi bạn nói về nguồn gốc đạo đức?
    Sự khác biệt giữa những gì bạn làm và chocolate thông thường ở Mỹ là gì?
    Chà, điều lớn nhất là khi tôi bắt đầu vào ngành chocolate, tôi không biết bất cứ điều gì về những điều này. Um, chúng tôi từng lấy cacao từ Peru.
    Um, mà, bạn biết đấy, nguồn gốc đạo đức không thực sự là một vấn đề ở đó.
    Nhưng vấn đề là phần lớn cacao trên thế giới đến từ Tây Phi và khi chúng tôi phát triển lớn hơn,
    Bạn biết đấy, mọi người đều nói: “Này, bạn cần phải chuyển chuỗi cung ứng của bạn sang Tây Phi.” Tôi như: “Được, tốt thôi.”
    Um, vì vậy tôi đã bắt đầu nghiên cứu và đọc về điều đó và tôi
    Và tôi nhận thấy rằng 46% lao động ở Tây Phi trên các trang trại cacao là lao động trẻ em, và tôi đã nghĩ
    Điều đó không thể chính xác và rồi tôi đã bắt đầu đào sâu hơn và tôi đã nghĩ, trời ơi,
    gần như một nửa số lao động là lao động trẻ em và vì vậy tôi đã bắt đầu nói chuyện với tất cả các công ty chocolate lớn hoặc không phải tất cả, nhưng nhiều như tôi có thể liên lạc được và tôi đã hỏi:
    Vậy, các bạn làm gì về vấn đề lao động trẻ em này và họ cứ liên tục nói với tôi như: “Nó cứ là như vậy thôi.”
    Đó là cách mà chocolate luôn diễn ra. Tôi đã nghĩ: “Ôi chao.”
    Các bạn kiếm hàng tỷ đô la mỗi năm lợi nhuận. Các bạn không thấy vấn đề gì với việc đó dựa trên lưng của những đứa trẻ nhỏ sao? Và họ trả lời: “Không.”
    Sau đó, tôi biết đấy, tôi
    Tôi có một clip điên rồ trong một chương trình tài liệu. Tôi nghĩ bạn đã thấy anh ấy. Jeff, người theo dõi tôi, có đoạn clip điên rồ
    nơi tôi gặp gỡ một nhà cung cấp lớn
    Um
    Tôi phải lớn nhất có thể vì họ sẽ giết tôi.
    Chúng tôi đã phải làm rõ với anh ta nhưng như một nhà cung cấp lớn, chỉ để bỏ vậy và tôi đã hỏi họ
    Tôi đã hỏi: “Vậy, có cách nào tôi có thể trả thêm để không sử dụng lao động trẻ em hoặc bất cứ điều gì như vậy hoặc có tùy chọn nào không?” và họ chỉ nói:
    “Không.”
    Và tôi đã và những người làm phim tài liệu của tôi
    Họ đang quay phim và tôi đang ở trong một phòng họp lớn và tôi nhìn về phía máy quay
    Tôi như: “Trời ơi. Họ vừa nói điều đó trước máy quay.” và sau đó tôi đã thực hiện tất cả những nghiên cứu này và thật sự như:
    Vâng, không, và đặc biệt là ở Mỹ, như có một số thương hiệu chocolate châu Âu mà bạn biết đấy, cố gắng
    Nhưng mà ở Mỹ, thực sự không ai thực sự quan tâm.
    Ý tôi là, có rất nhiều lựa chọn và nhiều thời gian để sửa chữa, nhiều tiền để sửa chữa.
    Vì vậy điều đó đã thực sự khiến tôi tức giận và vì vậy tôi đã nghĩ, làm thế nào chúng ta có thể giải quyết điều này và
    Vì vậy, điều đó đã đưa tôi xuống con đường
    Nếu mọi thứ đều chỉ về, bạn biết đấy, lý do chocolate ở Mỹ lại rẻ như vậy là bởi vì họ chỉ không
    Bạn biết đấy, không phải là lý do duy nhất, nhưng một trong những lý do là vì họ chỉ trả cho nông dân một ít, như nông dân kiếm chưa đến một đô la một ngày.
    Um,
    Vì vậy, vì điều đó họ bị buộc phải sử dụng lao động trẻ em vì ý tôi là, họ thực sự không có tiền để trả cho một người không phải là trẻ em. Bạn nghĩ có bao nhiêu đứa trẻ đang làm lao động trẻ em ở Tây Phi, chỉ trên các trang trại cacao?
    uh
    Bạn có thể đã nghĩ là 5000. Không, là 1,5 triệu.
    Bạn đang đùa sao? Ừ, nó đã vượt qua một triệu. Thật điên rồ!
    Điều chúng ta cần làm là trong đầu tôi cần đạt được một tỷ đô la doanh thu mỗi năm càng nhanh càng tốt.
    Trong khi nguồn nguyên liệu được khai thác một cách có đạo đức và có lợi nhuận, phần lớn trong đó là chúng ta phải có lợi nhuận trong quá trình này.
    Bởi vì sau đó tôi có thể chỉ tay và nói:
    Chúng tôi đã đạt được quy mô một cách có đạo đức và chúng tôi đang kiếm tiền. Không phải là bạn không thể làm điều đó.
    Bạn chỉ không muốn làm mà thôi. Và có thể,
    Có thể chúng tôi cho họ một cơ hội.
    Có thể họ thực sự không biết làm điều đó với quy mô lớn, và có thể điều này sẽ mở mang trí óc họ và họ sẽ nghĩ:
    Ôi, tôi đoán điều đó là có thể, và họ sẽ bắt đầu thay đổi. Hơn khả năng không thì họ sẽ không làm vậy, nhưng theo thời gian,
    Tôi hy vọng chúng tôi có thể chiếu sáng vấn đề này sử dụng nền tảng của tôi và bạn biết đấy,
    Chỉ cần cho thấy mô hình đó hoạt động và sau đó,
    Tôi không biết, một điều tôi rất muốn làm trong dài hạn là, bạn biết đấy,
    Cũng giống như có biểu tượng thương mại công bằng,
    Có thể tôi sẽ tạo ra phiên bản riêng của nó và giúp các công ty sôcôla khác khai thác cacao một cách có đạo đức,
    Hoặc cái gì đó, và bạn biết đấy, tôi chỉ muốn giáo dục mọi người rằng nếu không có biểu tượng này,
    Có thể họ đang sử dụng lao động trẻ em, và tôi có một cách nào đó
    Để trong 10 năm tới, tôi có thể san bằng số trẻ em ra khỏi lao động trẻ em
    Tại các trang trại cacao. Vì vậy, tôi chỉ cần kết nối các điểm và tìm ra cách làm đúng.
    Câu hỏi này có thể nghe có vẻ rất hiển nhiên, nhưng không phải ai cũng thấy vậy. Tại sao bạn lại không quan tâm đến điều đó?
    Thực sự, tôi đã đến những trang trại này. Tôi không muốn trở nên giàu có trên lưng của những đứa trẻ nhỏ. Ý tôi là, điều này dường như là quá rõ ràng, bạn biết không.
    Có thể với những người khác trong ngành sôcôla, họ không quan tâm, nhưng khi tôi nghe về điều này lần đầu tiên, tôi đã nghĩ, tại sao?
    Tại sao điều này lại xảy ra?
    Nó làm tôi liên tưởng đến Elon Musk và sứ mệnh của anh ấy với Tesla.
    Anh ấy biết rằng nếu anh ấy có thể chứng minh rằng có thể có những chiếc xe điện nhanh,
    Thì phần còn lại của ngành công nghiệp có thể từ bỏ các lý do của họ về việc điều đó không thể.
    Chính xác. Vậy nếu có ai đó đến và họ nói, được rồi, Jimmy, chúng tôi sẽ trả bạn năm tỷ
    Để mua Feastables, chắc chắn là không, tôi không bán cái đó đâu. Bạn không bao giờ bán nó.
    Không, bởi vì điều đầu tiên họ sẽ làm để tăng tỷ suất lợi nhuận là họ sẽ bỏ qua nguồn gốc có đạo đức.
    Bạn đã từng có người đến và đề nghị mua kênh YouTube của bạn chưa?
    Ừ, tôi đã được đề nghị một tỷ đô la ở đây hoặc những số tiền điên rồ ở đó, nhưng, bạn biết không, điều thú vị là
    Zuck đã nhận được đề nghị một tỷ đô la nổi tiếng cho Facebook và anh ấy đã nói gì nhỉ?
    Anh ấy đã nói: “Tại sao tôi lại bán nền tảng mạng xã hội này?
    Tôi chỉ cần lấy tiền và bắt đầu một cái mới và tôi khá thích cái mà tôi đang có.
    Vậy tại sao tôi không giữ nó, và mỗi khi tôi nhận được đề nghị (mà lâu rồi tôi không nhận)
    Nhưng bạn biết không, trước đây, tôi thường vui vẻ chọc ghẹo chỉ để xem mọi người sẽ đề nghị gì với tôi,
    Và tôi đã nhận được những đề nghị đó và sau đó tôi luôn nghĩ, ừ, tôi chỉ làm điều tương tự như tôi đang làm bây giờ.
    Vậy tại sao tôi không cứ tiếp tục làm những gì tôi đang làm lúc này, bạn biết mà, tiền bạc thật sự không thay đổi điều gì.
    Tốt lắm.
    Và tôi không nghĩ bạn đã nhận được công nhận mà bạn xứng đáng với những gì bạn đã đi qua.
    Điều này liên quan đến Feastables. Không, nhưng tôi nghĩ điều đó rất quan trọng. Tôi biết bạn không làm vì công nhận.
    Tôi biết bạn đang làm để truyền đạt thông điệp đó để ngành công nghiệp thay đổi.
    Nhưng tôi nghĩ rằng có một người như bạn với nền tảng mà bạn có có khả năng sản xuất sôcôla
    Thật sự rất ngon. Họ đã gửi tôi một hộp khoảng sáu tháng trước. Và tôi
    Đang nghĩ về việc làm mới lại sản phẩm. Ừ, nếu bạn đưa cho tôi một vài thanh sôcôla,
    Có rất nhiều điều mà… vấn đề là như thế này và này, bạn biết từ xa,
    Bạn không thể thực sự phân biệt được sự khác nhau giữa các hương vị như cái này là muối biển đen, cái này chỉ là sôcôla đen.
    Vì vậy, tôi sắp cập nhật bao bì để chúng tôi sẽ đặt những ngọn màu ở đây,
    Để bạn có thể phân biệt các hương vị từ xa. Tôi nghĩ điều đó rất quan trọng. Còn một điều nữa là…
    Bạn đã sai lầm khi để những thứ này trước mặt tôi bây giờ.
    Điều khác tôi muốn làm là tôi đã thử nghiệm và hình ảnh mới đang nhìn tốt với việc đặt câu như mỗi miếng ăn giúp
    Đưa trẻ em ra khỏi lao động trẻ em, đặt lên phía trước và tôi biết chúng tôi đang thử nghiệm với nhiều loại máy móc khác nhau.
    Tôi cảm thấy hình ảnh về sôcôla ở mặt trước có thể có chất lượng cao hơn một chút.
    Mặt sau thì khá tệ. Tôi muốn, bạn biết đấy, đặt thêm thông điệp ở mặt sau của nó.
    Còn rất nhiều điều cần phải sửa và cái ngọn trắng ở đây chỉ làm cho điều này trở nên rõ ràng từ xa
    Hương vị này là gì trong khi tất cả những cái này hòa vào.
    Và thế là… rất tệ, tôi phải sửa nó.
    Bạn đã nói về việc bạn bè gọi điện cho bạn và hỏi bạn về lời khuyên kinh doanh và bạn giúp họ phát triển doanh nghiệp của họ,
    Nhưng chỉ cần nhìn bạn ở đó,
    Phân tích lại doanh nghiệp của chính mình làm tôi nghĩ rằng có rất nhiều doanh nhân theo dõi chương trình của chúng tôi đang ở giai đoạn đầu của doanh nghiệp riêng.
    Và
    Nhiều người trong số họ sẽ phải thất bại. Bạn sẽ thất bại rất nhiều. Ý tôi là khi tôi mới bắt đầu với sôcôla,
    Thì thật sự là rất hài hước khi tôi đã mắc sai lầm tồi tệ như thế nào với những thanh sôcôla đầu tiên. Chúng rất mỏng.
    Có lý do tại sao những thanh sô cô la như thế này có những điểm gãy ở đây để chúng dễ dàng bị vỡ.
    Tôi không biết điều đó, và thanh của tôi chỉ là một tấm sô cô la rắn.
    Nhưng điều đó gần như giống như một mảnh thủy tinh, nếu bạn làm rơi nó, nó sẽ vỡ thành hàng trăm mảnh nhỏ.
    Và, và tôi cũng không biết rằng có một thứ gọi là kỹ sư bao bì.
    Vì vậy, bạn có thể đưa cho tôi một hộp sô cô la không? Hộp sô cô la ban đầu của tôi khi bạn mở nó ra và để lên kệ thì rõ ràng là vấn đề được giải quyết.
    Nhưng nếu cái này đang ở trên kệ và bạn lấy cái này ra thì tất cả những cái khác sẽ trượt về phía trước và sau đó sẽ rơi ra khỏi hộp.
    Và hoặc là hộp sẽ rơi khỏi kệ vì trọng lượng vì không có sự cân bằng đúng ở dưới đáy.
    Và những mép này, điều này trước đây không phải là một vấn đề. Vì vậy, chúng được mở và chỉ có một mép dưới ở đây.
    Và như vậy chúng sẽ rơi ra như thế này.
    Và sau đó, những thanh vì chúng tôi không có điểm gãy tự nhiên sẽ vỡ như thủy tinh.
    Ai đã nhận ra điều đó? À,
    Là tôi, và vấn đề là tôi là một phần của đội ngũ cũ ở Feastables.
    Tôi đã nói với họ rằng có quá nhiều thanh bị gãy khi tôi vào Walmart.
    Tôi thấy quá nhiều thanh bị gãy. Họ nói với tôi như, à, bạn lo lắng quá nhiều về điều này.
    Đó không phải là một vấn đề lớn. Nó xảy ra với mọi người và tôi đã đến mức chỉ đơn giản là
    Thật sự làm tôi bực mình vì tôi ghét việc nhặt một thanh trên mặt đất hoặc thấy trên kệ tất cả những thanh sô cô la vỡ mà tôi
    Tôi đã trả tiền cho mọi người để lắp GoPro vào như, à,
    Như trong một túi khoai tây chiên để theo dõi, vì tôi không thể lấy được video từ camera an ninh của Walmart.
    Và họ không cung cấp nên tôi đã đặt các GoPro ẩn ở nhiều Walmart ngẫu nhiên.
    Chỉ để chỉ vào các thanh Feastables để xem tại sao chúng lại vỡ nhiều như vậy.
    Có rất nhiều cảnh như, bạn biết đấy, như một người mẹ lấy một thanh sô cô la
    Và sau đó cô ấy nhìn nó thật sự như thế này và sau đó bạn chỉ thấy hộp chỉ
    Và cô ấy đi và chúng chỉ rơi khỏi kệ và sau đó họ chỉ đặt nó lại
    Và bạn biết đấy, một số thanh sẽ bị gãy và điều đó sẽ xảy ra lặp đi lặp lại vì chúng tôi không thiết kế hộp đúng cách.
    Họ không làm gì sai.
    Bạn có biết điều đó không phải là điều bình thường khi bạn nói rằng bạn đã đặt GoPro?
    Ừ, mọi người nói với tôi rằng tôi điên rồ khi số lượng người cố gắng nói với tôi rằng điều đó là bất hợp pháp. Tôi đã nói, anh bạn
    Tôi không quan tâm. Tôi chỉ cần biết tại sao những thanh của tôi bị gãy như vậy.
    Tất cả đều là video chứng minh.
    À, và vì vậy tôi đã làm rất nhiều dữ liệu và thực sự có một công ty gọi là Costa
    Nơi bạn có thể trả tiền cho người khác vào Walmart.
    Vì vậy, tôi đã bắt đầu trả tiền cho họ mỗi tuần
    Tôi gửi ai đó vào mỗi Walmart ở Mỹ để mua tất cả các thanh bị gãy và sửa chữa hộp.
    Điều đó khá tốn kém. Tôi nghĩ, bạn biết đấy, mất khoảng một trăm ngàn đô la
    Chỉ để gửi người vào mỗi Walmart để dọn dẹp, hai mươi tám đô la mỗi lần nhân với năm nghìn Walmart và
    Ừ, vì vậy tôi đã gửi người vào Walmart để dọn dẹp các thanh bị gãy và nhưng tôi đã trả rất nhiều tiền
    Đó là một trăm ngàn đô la mỗi tuần chỉ để gửi người vào và sau đó tôi đã mua tất cả những thanh bị gãy này
    Bởi vì tôi thực sự không muốn ai đó vào Walmart và mua một thanh feastable bị gãy.
    Điều đó thực sự là trải nghiệm tiêu dùng tệ nhất mà bạn có thể có, và vâng
    Và sau đó tôi đã tìm hiểu về kỹ sư bao bì và tôi đã nói, ồ không thể tin được
    Đây là công việc toàn thời gian của bạn để đảm bảo hộp của tôi không bị đổ. Bạn đã ở đâu?
    Nhưng về điểm mà tôi đã nói về sự ám ảnh của bạn với chi tiết của một sản phẩm
    Thì điều đó hoàn toàn là không điển hình so với nếu tôi so sánh điều này với một YouTuber bình thường và thương hiệu thương mại điện tử của họ. Ồ, họ sẽ không quan tâm.
    Ừ, tôi đã dành hàng ngàn giờ chỉ để ám ảnh về sản phẩm này.
    Ý tôi là, tôi biết điều đó không có vẻ như vậy vì chỉ là sô cô la
    Nhưng vâng, ý tôi là đây là một vấn đề từ nguồn cung ứng đạo đức đến từng chi tiết nhỏ về nó.
    Tôi không làm gì một cách hời hợt và bạn không lái xe đến hàng loạt Walmart sao?
    Ồ, luôn luôn.
    Đó là điều tôi làm mỗi ngày. Ồ, thật tuyệt.
    Chúng ta nên đi vào một Walmart. Chúng ta thậm chí chưa đi. À, anh ấy hơi bận, anh ấy có việc cần làm.
    Vâng, đó là điều tôi thích nhất, đôi khi tôi sẽ dành cả đêm ở Walmart chỉ để quét các sản phẩm và xem tốc độ và doanh thu hàng ngày.
    Nó giống như, à
    Tôi có một chuyến dừng tại DC. Tôi sống ở Bắc Carolina.
    Rồi tôi đã nghĩ, khoan đã
    Tôi có thể thuê một chiếc xe và ghé qua 30 Walmart trên đường về nhà và chỉ lái xe về nhà.
    Và sau đó tôi đã lái xe từ DC về Bắc Carolina, thăm từng Walmart ở bờ Đông và giữa nước Mỹ
    Chỉ để đi xem lối đi sô cô la và xem tất cả thống kê và những thứ như vậy.
    Tôi đã hỏi bạn trước đây xem bạn có gặp khó khăn không. Chết tiệt. Tôi ước gì chúng ta có thể đến thăm một Walmart. Bạn biết điều đó sẽ vui thế nào.
    Nó giống như tôi rất muốn giáo dục bạn về sô cô la. Ồ, một tháng nữa vẫn mở cửa không?
    À không, họ không mở cửa. Tốt, chúng ta có thể làm điều đó vào lần khác. Thôi nào, thường thì những gì tôi làm là chỉ gõ cửa và họ sẽ cho tôi vào.
    Tất nhiên rồi.
    Ừ, nhưng những gì bạn vừa nói, um, tôi cảm thấy như tôi đang đi đến một điều gì đó ở đây vì
    99.99999% doanh nhân mà tôi biết chỉ có một việc để làm là điều hành doanh nghiệp của họ
    Không quan tâm nhiều đến chi tiết.
    Và bạn có một điều tuyệt vời để làm chương trình trên Amazon, điều đó giống như khía cạnh cao nhất của bất kỳ thứ gì từ trước đến nay hoặc bất kỳ thứ gì đó
    Và bạn có kênh khổng lồ này.
    Here’s the translated text to Vietnamese:
    Bạn có hoạt động từ thiện của mình
    Bạn có tất cả các thứ này, 100 triệu người theo dõi trên TikTok, 100 tỉ người theo dõi ở đây, hàng tỉ người theo dõi, các con số thật không thể tin nổi và bạn vẫn chạy đến 31 Walmart để kiểm tra xem sô cô la của mình có bị vỡ không.
    Ừ
    Và tôi vào phía sau khi tôi ở đó, nếu nó không có trên kệ, tôi sẽ quét nó và giúp các nhân viên.
    Đó có phải là sự khác biệt không?
    Bạn chỉ cần biết mọi thứ diễn ra. Tôi có nghĩa là, đó là nguyên tắc cơ bản. Nếu như tôi
    Tôi ghét khi một ai đó trong công việc của tôi nói với tôi điều gì đó
    Mà tôi không đồng ý nhưng tôi quá ngu dốt để có thể thách thức họ, vì vậy thì cũng giống như, ai là tôi để
    Bạn biết đấy, tôi phải chấp nhận họ theo lời họ nói.
    Nhưng hầu hết mọi người có xu hướng chọn con đường dễ dàng nhất hoặc tuân theo quy tắc hiện hành.
    Và nếu tôi muốn để lại những đổi mới thực sự và thay đổi ngành công nghiệp,
    Thì tôi phải biết mọi khía cạnh nhỏ của mọi thứ. Cuối cùng, bạn biết đấy
    Kệ là nơi mọi người mua hàng. Vì vậy, tôi phải biết chi tiết mọi thứ diễn ra tại điểm chạm với người tiêu dùng.
    Và bạn biết cách nó đến đó, nó được lưu trữ ở
    Các trung tâm phân phối và sau đó là nhà bán lẻ và rồi trên kệ và nó trông như thế nào?
    Trải nghiệm và mọi thứ vì tất cả những điều nhỏ nhặt này cộng lại. Bạn không cảm thấy như bạn đã dành cả cuộc đời mình để chiến đấu
    Để nâng cao tiêu chuẩn của mọi người lên tiêu chuẩn của bạn vì bạn không tồn tại trong thế giới của Mr. Beast.
    Đúng vậy, đó là điều tôi từng nghĩ, mà tôi đã nói một vài lần, chỉ là nội dung.
    Nhưng tôi nhận ra rằng mọi thứ tôi làm đều như vậy, tôi chỉ muốn là tốt nhất trong đó.
    Và điều đó thật kỳ lạ, bạn biết đấy, vì bạn chỉ nhìn vào thanh sô cô la này và bạn sẽ nghĩ, ai care chứ.
    Nhưng đó chính là điều mà tôi thực sự thích trong hai năm qua.
    Tôi đã đi sâu vào điều này như tôi đã với YouTube và nó cũng thú vị như nhau.
    Ý tôi là, nó rất, rất khó khăn và đặc biệt là việc nguồn gốc có đạo đức và gần đây tôi đã dành một tuần ở
    Tây Phi và tôi đã đi từ hạt cacao đến thanh sô cô la, và tôi đã làm việc trên trang trại và theo dõi toàn bộ
    chuỗi cung ứng QC và mọi thứ, và nó không phải là dễ dàng, nó khó khăn như kênh YouTube của tôi.
    Nhưng nó cũng thú vị như nhau và đó chỉ là một trải nghiệm mở mang tầm mắt lớn đối với tôi vì tôi chưa bao giờ nghĩ rằng tôi sẽ thích một điều gì đó nhiều
    như
    Kênh YouTube của tôi và đó là điều tôi đã nói trước đây.
    Tôi đã nhận ra rằng tôi thực sự thích xây dựng doanh nghiệp và giải quyết các vấn đề phức tạp khó khăn.
    Dù tôi biết rằng đây chỉ là sô cô la.
    Nhưng tôi cũng học được điều phức tạp từ phía nguồn gốc có đạo đức.
    Chỉ trong cuộc sống hàng ngày thôi, đó thật sự thú vị với những trò chơi của Beast và với tất cả những chuyện khác đang diễn ra.
    Kênh chính của bạn
    Mà tôi đoán bạn vẫn coi là đứa con tinh thần của mình ở một mức độ nào đó. Nó giống như con tàu mẹ đúng không? Bởi vì nó là nguồn gốc.
    Nó cho phép chúng ta làm mọi thứ, hầu hết mọi người mua thứ này không phải vì các trò chơi của Beast.
    Bạn có bao giờ cảm thấy lo lắng khi số lượt xem giảm không?
    Chúng chưa bao giờ giảm. Chúng đã tăng lên mỗi năm trong 14 năm.
    Nhưng bạn vẫn có thấy lo ngại đó không? Bạn vẫn theo dõi video khi nó phát trực tiếp và nhìn vào phía sau của nó?
    Không, tôi không. Ý tôi là vì nó như là
    chúng tôi
    Tôi không biết, tôi chỉ tải lên một video và sau đó vào ngày hôm sau,
    Tôi nhìn vào tỷ lệ giữ chân và CTR và nếu chúng tôi làm sai, tôi chỉ
    Bạn biết đấy, những gì chúng tôi làm là chúng tôi gọi chúng là báo cáo sau hành động. Vì vậy, tôi tụ họp tất cả những người thông minh nhất trong công ty của tôi như
    Chà, thực sự chúng tôi đã làm như thế này, tôi ước gì tôi có bản trình bày của mình ở đây
    Nhưng như chúng tôi có, tôi trả tiền cho một người để chỉ làm một phân tích rất sâu sắc như đây là biểu đồ giữ chân.
    Đây là mỗi lần ai đó bỏ đi. Đây là nơi nó phẳng nhất. Đây là nơi tồi tệ nhất.
    Bạn biết đấy, chúng tôi sẽ lấy như vậy, nếu tôi tải lên một video dài 20 phút,
    Chúng tôi sẽ lấy 10 video dài 20 phút gần nhất và chúng tôi sẽ nói, bạn biết đấy,
    Tỷ lệ giữ chân trung bình trên 10 video 20 phút gần nhất là 10 phút
    và 6 hoặc 55 giây là trung bình. Vì vậy, nếu tỷ lệ giữ chân của video mới này là 11 phút hoặc trên,
    Chúng tôi đã làm tốt.
    Nếu nó thấp hơn thì chúng tôi đã làm dưới mức trung bình và bla bla bla và anh ấy chỉ làm như một bản trình bày lớn.
    Và vì vậy thường sau hai tuần kể từ khi chúng tôi tải lên, chúng tôi sẽ xem điều đó với tất cả những người hàng đầu của tôi
    Và sau đó chúng tôi sẽ nói, chúng tôi đã làm sai điểm gì? Chúng tôi đã làm tốt điểm gì? Tốt, tiếp tục thôi.
    Và có bao giờ có một khoảnh khắc nào trong thời gian gần đây mà bạn nghĩ
    Tôi nghĩ tôi cần dành nhiều thời gian hơn cho nó một lần nữa và quay lại với nó.
    Bởi vì luôn luôn, bạn biết đấy, nhưng nhiều điều đó xuất phát từ sự không tự tin.
    Tôi có nghĩa là điều là, tất nhiên chúng tôi đã có một video gần đây, mỗi phút có một người bị loại và nó không hoạt động tốt.
    Bạn biết đấy, và có vẻ như phần giới thiệu của chúng tôi hơi lặp đi lặp lại. Nó hơi tối tăm.
    Nó
    Chúng tôi đã đưa ra các người thua cuộc từ trò chơi của Beast để cạnh tranh trong video kênh chính.
    Nhưng vấn đề là một số người nghĩ đó là trò chơi của Beast và như, ôi, tôi đã thấy điều này rồi.
    Và có rất nhiều sai lầm của người mới ở đó và rất dễ để tôi cảm thấy
    Bạn biết đấy, trở nên bất an và giống như cảm thấy, chết tiệt, đây là lý do tôi cần có mặt ở mọi nơi.
    Nhưng hôm trước, thì không phải lúc tôi gọi mọi thứ, tôi cũng không hoàn hảo.
    Vì vậy, miễn là mọi người làm sai và họ học hỏi từ điều đó,
    Tôi có một câu nói mà tôi nói với mọi người mọi lúc như, như mỗi khi các nhà sáng tạo mới của chúng tôi làm sai,
    Tôi sẽ nhìn vào Tyler và nói, Tyler thực sự đã tốn cho tôi hàng chục triệu đô la vì những quyết định tồi.
    Giống như đây sẽ không phải là lần đầu tiên bạn khiến chúng tôi mất một triệu đô la, miễn là bạn học hỏi từ điều đó thì cũng không sao.
    Um, và vì vậy, điều quan trọng là các báo cáo sau hành động này rất cần thiết, vì miễn là khi chúng tôi mắc lỗi, chúng tôi có thể nói rõ lý do tại sao và điều đó không xảy ra lần nữa, thì đó chỉ là một phần trong quá trình. Nhưng vâng, nếu điều tương tự xảy ra lặp đi lặp lại, tôi sẽ thấy khó chịu và nói rằng “Tôi cần phải can thiệp”, nhưng đội ngũ của tôi thì rất giỏi; họ không mắc cùng một lỗi hai lần.
    Hãy nói cho tôi về việc thử nghiệm và kiểm tra, vì mọi người nhìn nhận bạn như là vua thật sự của thử nghiệm và kiểm tra. Điều này quan trọng như thế nào đối với sự thành công của mọi thứ mà bạn làm? Rất quan trọng! Và đó là điều mà mỗi video mà chúng tôi làm, có thể thất bại, bạn biết đấy. Cơ hội thất bại cao nhất của bạn là khi bạn làm điều gì đó mới, rất mới.
    Một trong những sự thất bại lớn hơn trước đó là chúng tôi đã làm một video kéo dài 10 phút, nơi mà phòng này sẽ phát nổ. Chúng tôi đã xây dựng một tháp khổng lồ và có một người bắt đầu từ đỉnh. Anh ta phải thực hiện một cảnh quay trực tiếp và nhấn nút. Thực sự nó không hoạt động tốt, mọi người không thích video đó lắm. Nó khá phức tạp, bla bla, và bạn cần phải cẩn thận bởi vì tôi muốn có một văn hóa nơi mọi người cảm thấy thoải mái với việc thử nghiệm và cố gắng và cảm thấy bình thường khi thất bại.
    Vì vậy, khi video đó thất bại hoặc khi có người bị loại ở mỗi phút, tôi không đi la mắng mọi người hay gọi hẹn điều gì đó; tôi chỉ hỏi: “Chúng ta đã làm sai điều gì?”. Được rồi, đây là tất cả các thông tin. Hãy đảm bảo rằng điều đó không xảy ra lần nữa. Lần đầu tiên có thể đã tốn của tôi một khoản tiền, nhưng không sao cả. Tôi xem điều này như là đầu tư cho các bạn và hãy cùng nhau học hỏi từ nó.
    Tôi định nói rằng nếu không có văn hóa này, mọi người sẽ chỉ làm lại những video giống nhau. Rất nhiều YouTuber chỉ phát hành cùng một định dạng. Tôi không ngại việc đội ngũ của mình thất bại. Tôi không ngại nếu video đó chỉ đạt điểm 10 trên 10, miễn là chúng tôi đã thực sự có một nỗ lực tốt và thành thật với điều đó, bạn biết đấy. Và miễn là chúng tôi thất bại vì đã đưa ra quyết định sai lầm, không phải vì chúng tôi lười biếng hay không bỏ ra nỗ lực, v.v. Chừng nào mà đó chỉ là chúng tôi đã đưa ra một quyết định có suy nghĩ để thử nghiệm cái gì đó và nó không hoạt động, tôi rất thoải mái với điều đó. Chúng tôi có thể làm điều đó cả ngày và họ biết điều đó, và tôi không la mắng mọi người khi họ thực sự mắc lỗi như vậy.
    Tôi đã đầu tư hơn một triệu bảng cho công ty này Perfected và họ cũng là một nhà tài trợ cho podcast này. Tôi đã chuyển sang sử dụng matcha như là nguồn năng lượng chính của mình và đó là nơi Perfected xuất hiện. Họ có bột matcha, đồ uống matcha, các viên nang và tất cả những thứ này giúp tôi tập trung trong suốt một ngày ghi hình rất dài, không quan tâm đến việc xảy ra chuyện gì. Đội ngũ của họ rất chú trọng vào chất lượng, đó là lý do tại sao họ tìm nguồn matcha hạng nghi lễ từ Nhật Bản.
    Vì vậy, khi mọi người nói với tôi rằng họ không thích vị của matcha, tôi đoán rằng họ chưa thử Perfected, không giống như matcha chất lượng thấp có vị đắng và có mùi cỏ. Perfected mượt mà và tự nhiên ngọt ngào, và mà không biết, bạn có thể đã là khách hàng của Perfected nếu bạn lấy matcha ở những nơi như Blank Street hay Joe and The Juice. Nhưng bây giờ bạn có thể tự làm tại nhà. Hãy thử nó và chúng ta sẽ xem bạn vẫn không thích matcha.
    Vì vậy, đây là những gì tôi sẽ làm. Tôi sẽ giảm giá 40% cho matcha nếu bạn thử nó hôm nay. Hãy đến perfected.com và sử dụng mã code DIARY40 khi thanh toán. Hoặc nếu bạn ở siêu thị, bạn có thể mua nó tại Tesco hoặc Holland and Barrett hay ở Hà Lan tại Albert Heijn. Và những bạn ở Mỹ, bạn có thể mua nó trên Amazon. Như các bạn đã biết, Whoop là một trong những nhà tài trợ cho chương trình của tôi. Đó cũng là một công ty mà tôi đã đầu tư vào và là công ty mà các bạn hỏi tôi rất nhiều.
    Câu hỏi lớn nhất mà tôi thường được hỏi là tại sao tôi sử dụng Whoop hơn các lựa chọn công nghệ đeo khác. Có rất nhiều lý do nhưng tôi nghĩ rằng điều này thực sự nằm ở tính năng bị bỏ qua nhưng lại rất quan trọng: tính không xâm lấn của nó. Khi mọi thứ trong cuộc sống đều cạnh tranh cho sự chú ý của tôi, tôi quay sang Whoop vì nó không có màn hình và CEO của nó, người đã xuất hiện trên podcast này, đã nói với tôi lý do mà không có màn hình, là vì màn hình đồng nghĩa với sự phân tâm.
    Vì vậy, khi tôi đang trong các cuộc họp hoặc tôi ở phòng tập gym, Whoop của tôi không đòi hỏi sự chú ý của tôi. Nó ở đó trong nền, liên tục thu thập dữ liệu và thông tin từ cơ thể tôi, sẵn sàng khi tôi cần. Nếu bạn đang nghĩ đến việc tham gia Whoop, bạn có thể truy cập vào join.whoop.com/ceo và thử Whoop trong 30 ngày không rủi ro và không cam kết. Đó là join.whoop.com/ceo. Hãy cho tôi biết bạn đã trải qua như thế nào.
    Bạn vừa kết thúc hôm nay chương trình thi lớn nhất mà tôi nghĩ là trong lịch sử. Thực ra nó là lịch sử, nhưng tôi nghĩ bạn có 50 kỷ lục Guinness. Vâng, bạn có những set lớn nhất trong lịch sử, nhiều kỷ lục thế giới nhất trong lịch sử, những khoai tây chiên lớn nhất trong lịch sử, nhiều người chiến thắng nhất trong lịch sử, nhiều thí sinh nhất trong lịch sử, và nhiều camera nhất, đúng vậy. Còn gì về 50 kỷ lục Guinness mà chúng ta biết đến? Có thể còn nhiều hơn thế nữa, nhưng vâng, bạn đã nói điều gì đó trên sân khấu mà tôi thấy khá thú vị. Bạn đã nói rằng “Tôi có cảm giác hơi buồn.”
    Vâng, tôi biết, vì mỗi thứ năm, tôi phải mong chờ để thấy phản ứng của internet về các trò chơi beasty, và bây giờ tôi sẽ tỉnh dậy vào thứ năm tới và tôi không có cơ hội để xem mọi người nghĩ gì, kết thúc rồi. Họ mô tả điều này trong Thế vận hội như là trầm cảm sau huy chương vàng. Thật sao? Vâng, họ nói rằng tôi có thể không chính xác với con số này nhưng khoảng 70% người sau Thế vận hội, ngay cả khi họ đã giành huy chương vàng, trải qua sự trầm cảm sau đó vì họ đã mất đi ngôi sao phương Bắc cung cấp ý nghĩa cho họ vào tháng 6.
    Vâng, không, tôi nghĩa rằng tôi… Tôi có thể buồn vui đùa một chút, nhưng mà không sao cả. Tôi có rất nhiều thứ đang diễn ra.
    Tôi thậm chí còn không có cơ hội để suy nghĩ về những thứ đó và bạn lại đang chuyển sang điều tiếp theo.
    Ờ, vâng, vì vậy chúng ta…
    Ờ, amazon.
    Hãy ghi lại mùa thứ hai ngay đi. Nào, hãy ký hợp đồng nào. Tôi không thể thực sự nói về điều đó, đây là điều kỳ diệu nhất mà tôi nghĩ tôi đã thấy trên truyền hình và
    tôi chỉ nghĩ rằng tôi đã nói với bạn qua điện thoại hôm nọ.
    Tôi xem nó và biết rằng nếu bạn không làm một cái khác, tôi sẽ không bao giờ thấy một điều gì có quy mô và tầm cỡ như thế này.
    Vâng, không ai muốn làm một điều như vậy vì nó thật sự khó, bạn biết đấy.
    Ở những bối cảnh đó và thực tế là lý do tại sao nhiều chương trình truyền hình thực tế không cảm giác như vậy
    là chúng tôi rõ ràng có thể kể chuyện tốt hơn nhiều và chúng tôi sẽ làm như vậy khi chúng tôi thực hiện những phiên bản tương lai, nhưng
    về cốt lõi, những gì mọi người không thấy là việc có hàng ngàn camera ghi hình lại
    như chúng tôi đã phá kỷ lục thế giới về số lượng cáp camera đã sử dụng, như là
    và hàng triệu đô la chúng tôi đã phải chi cho việc lưu trữ và hàng triệu đô la trong phòng điều khiển và hàng triệu triệu đô la cho
    phần cứng để chỉnh sửa nó, và như là phải đưa Adobe vào để tùy chỉnh thay đổi phần mềm Adobe để bạn có thể thực sự có nhiều multicamps như vậy
    Thực sự, hạ tầng để có thể thực hiện điều đó là vô cùng vô cùng khó khăn.
    Và, um, đó là lý do tại sao thường thì họ sẽ làm như thế này, họ sẽ có, được rồi. Đây là một khoảng thời gian một giờ, như khi bạn quay một chương trình thực tế
    Đây là một khung thời gian một giờ, bạn biết đấy, họ sẽ gửi ra những nhà sản xuất câu chuyện. Họ sẽ đặt một camera vào bạn
    Họ sẽ nói, ơi, bạn có thể nói câu này không? Bạn kiểu như là kẻ phản diện của chúng tôi. Đây là những gì chúng tôi đang tìm kiếm.
    Họ sẽ cho bạn biết phải nói gì và rồi họ sẽ ghi chú lại và sắp xếp cho các biên tập viên trong khi chúng tôi chỉ như là
    Chết tiệt. Chúng tôi sẽ quay phim, bạn biết đấy, 24/7 với tất cả những camera này. Các bạn hãy là chính mình.
    Chúng tôi sẽ chỉ ghi lại vì bạn không biết khi nào ai đó sẽ làm điều gì kỳ quặc.
    Bạn không biết khi nào ai đó sẽ thì thầm với ai đó trong các dòng chính thức.
    Bạn không biết vì vậy bạn thật sự chỉ phải quay và bạn cần những góc quay này là chấp nhận được.
    Vì vậy bạn cần nhiều camera A và camera B và tất cả sự bao phủ này tạo ra một khối lượng
    Chết tiệt của video, nhưng đó là điều đã cho phép chúng tôi. Đó là, ý tôi là trong số nhiều điều, đó là một trong những
    Lợi thế cạnh tranh lớn nhất mà chúng tôi có khi quay những trò chơi này là chúng tôi đã dồn công sức để thiết lập tất cả cơ sở hạ tầng này.
    Chúng tôi có thể thực sự ghi lại nó và chỉ đơn giản là kể câu chuyện như nó là thay vì phải sử dụng các nhà sản xuất câu chuyện để đưa lời vào miệng mọi người.
    Nhưng nó là một cơn ác mộng, bạn biết đấy. Tôi đã có hơn 150 người chỉnh sửa mà tôi có nghĩa là
    Chúng tôi đang combing qua một khối lượng video không thể tưởng tượng nổi và và tất cả mọi thứ và có nghĩa là ngay cả những thứ từ như là
    mạng máy tính và hệ thống IT địa phương của chúng tôi liên tục bị sập vì có quá nhiều video ở đó và như là nếu tôi
    Gửi toàn bộ video trò chơi Beast cho chỉ một biên tập viên
    Nó sẽ có thể là
    300.000 đô la trong các ổ đĩa cứng và bạn biết đó, và nếu bạn có 150 biên tập viên, thì điều đó gần như là không thể.
    Vì vậy, bạn chi hàng triệu đô la và bạn xây dựng một phòng máy chủ trung tâm
    Và vì vậy chúng tôi có các giá máy chủ riêng của chúng tôi và mọi thứ và sau đó bạn có họ kết nối từ xa ở đó.
    Nhưng ngay cả sau đó chỉ do khối lượng video khổng lồ Adobe và mọi thứ thường xuyên bị sập và như là nó là
    Đó là một cơn ác mộng ở phía sau.
    Nhưng thật tuyệt vì điều đó đã cho phép chúng tôi kể lại những gì thực sự đã xảy ra.
    Tại sao nó có cảm giác khác biệt vì chúng tôi đã ghi hình không ngừng 24/7.
    Tôi đã tự hỏi khi tôi xem điều đó rằng amazon có nhận thức được thực tế rằng bạn chỉ sẽ tặng tiền như thế này không.
    Như khi bạn lật đồng xu và nó thêm 5 triệu đô la nhưng điều đó không ảnh hưởng đến họ.
    Tôi đã mất một số tiền lớn khi quay chương trình này vì vậy điều đó đã đến từ túi của tôi vì thật sự là vậy.
    Chúng tôi đã tiêu quá nhiều tiền cho nó. Tôi đã mất hàng chục triệu đô la trên chương trình đó.
    Vâng, tôi là một tên ngốc vì tiêu đề đã được công bố như là amazon tặng mr. Beast 100 triệu để thực hiện
    Chương trình này vì vậy tôi đang nghĩ được rồi, tôi đang tính toán, tôi đang nghĩ rằng, được rồi, vậy là anh ấy đã tiêu khoảng 20 triệu vào giải thưởng.
    Vâng, chúng tôi đã tặng đi vì vậy chắc chắn còn khoảng 80 triệu hay gì đó.
    Ý tôi nói là tập một chúng tôi đã chi hơn 15 triệu đô la cho những cái tháp ấy, xây dựng chúng như vậy, đó là số lượng tháp nhiều nhất từng được xây dựng.
    Sử dụng áp suất thủy lực hoặc bất cứ thứ gì, ý tôi là cái bộ đó thật sự điên rồ.
    Chúng tôi đã phải xây dựng một ngàn tháp cao 10 feet.
    Thực hiện tất cả các bài kiểm tra an toàn để đảm bảo rằng chúng thực sự hoạt động.
    Chúng tôi phải thực sự cắt dây cứng cho tất cả và xây dựng phần mềm riêng của chúng tôi để có thể thả người.
    Chúng tôi đã phải đặt tất cả các màn hình, ý tôi là đó, đó là một trong những set lớn nhất từng được xây dựng trong lịch sử.
    Đó chỉ là tập một và đó chỉ là phần xây dựng set.
    Đó không bao gồm như bạn đã nói chúng tôi đã tuyên bố hơn 20 triệu đô la.
    Tôi nghĩ có hơn 2 triệu trong tập một và sau đó tập hai chúng tôi có thành phố mà đó là một bộ xây dựng trị giá 14 triệu đô la và điều đó là
    Um lớn. Tôi có nghĩa là vì đó là một thành phố thật nơi họ đang sống, bạn biết đấy, um, và sau đó tôi có thể trả lời vậy.
    Nhưng chỉ giữa 20 hay khoảng 2 triệu mà chúng tôi đã tặng cộng với hai bộ đó, ý tôi là ở đó bạn đã
    Có thể bạn đã vượt quá 50 triệu đô la. Tất cả mọi thứ tốn bao nhiêu tiền?
    Điều đó tôi đã được khuyên không nói vì
    Bởi vì mọi người sẽ nghe thấy một con số lớn và sẽ nói, ồ, nếu tôi có số tiền như vậy, tôi có thể đã làm được một cái kệ tốt.
    Nhưng điều là họ không thể vì tiền không phải là tất cả, như xây dựng và quản lý nó là, bạn biết đấy,
    Khó khăn gấp nhiều lần, nhưng nó có hơn 100 triệu không? Vâng, chắc chắn rồi.
    Được chứ, tất nhiên rồi.
    Ý tôi là, tôi vừa nói với bạn về cách chúng tôi đã tiêu 50 triệu và rằng chúng tôi chỉ mới phát hành hai tập.
    Vậy bạn đã bỏ ra hàng chục triệu ra ngoài túi? Ừ, đó không phải là một quyết định tài chính tốt khi làm game hòa bình.
    Tôi đã mất tiền. Tôi đã có thêm tiền nếu tôi không làm. Có hối tiếc gì không? Không, không, điều đó thật tuyệt.
    Ý tôi là đối với tôi, việc làm cho mùa đầu tiên thật tốt là rất quan trọng. Bạn biết đấy, tôi không thể làm thất vọng cộng đồng YouTube vì điều đó.
    Bạn biết đấy, các nhà sáng tạo không có một tiếng nói tốt khi nói đến việc làm trên các nền tảng phát trực tuyến.
    Và bạn biết đấy, tôi đang nhận được trung bình 200 triệu lượt xem video trong suốt năm đầu tiên.
    Và tôi sẽ nói chuyện với các nền tảng phát trực tuyến này và họ như kiểu, ừ, chúng tôi đã bị lừa bởi các nhà sáng tạo trước đây. Tôi như kiểu, bạn ơi,
    Tôi không phải là một TikToker nhảy múa. Tôi có một công ty sản xuất và tôi thường xuyên tạo ra các sự kiện lớn và ngay cả tôi, những nền tảng phát trực tuyến này cũng không coi trọng.
    Vì vậy, tôi đã nghĩ, nếu tôi thất bại, thì mọi chuyện sẽ kết thúc.
    Như kiểu không có nền tảng phát trực tuyến nào sẽ bao giờ chạm đến một YouTuber nữa.
    Vì vậy, điều lớn lao của tôi là đảm bảo rằng điều này thắng lợi và bây giờ thì các cánh cửa đang mở ra.
    Ý tôi là, tôi nhận được những cuộc gọi từ các nhà sáng tạo trái phải và họ như kiểu, ôi,
    Ừ, các nền tảng phát trực tuyến trước đây không muốn nói chuyện với tôi, giờ họ đang tới.
    Tôi đã cố gắng để có một cuộc gặp với họ và họ kiểu, không,
    Giờ thì họ đang như kiểu cầu xin để có cuộc họp với họ và tôi đã biết đến hai nhà sáng tạo đã ký hợp đồng,
    Chỉ từ thành công ở phía sau của game Beast và có lẽ, hàng trăm triệu đô la sẽ đổ vào túi của các nhà sáng tạo chỉ nhờ vào game Beast trong năm tới.
    Về Rotten Tomatoes, đó không phải là một nhà phê bình dễ để làm vừa lòng.
    Không, bạn có được khoảng 90% sự đồng thuận từ người hâm mộ, điều đó khá hiếm gặp trên Rotten Tomatoes.
    Tôi biết, nhưng tôi cũng nghe được qua những lời đồn rằng,
    Nó đang trên đà trở thành,
    Một trong những chương trình lớn nhất của Amazon mọi thời đại.
    Vâng, vấn đề là tôi phải chờ họ làm thông cáo báo chí. Được rồi. Vâng, tôi chỉ đang nói rằng,
    Tôi đã hiểu. Tôi đã nói với họ rằng tôi sẽ là một chàng trai tốt và không tiết lộ thông tin gì.
    Vì vậy, nhưng đối với một YouTuber, nói cách khác là một YouTuber. Vâng, họ đã công bố điều đó.
    Đó là chương trình không kịch bản số một của họ mọi thời đại và vâng, ý tôi là, tôi không nghĩ rằng họ sẽ phiền nếu tôi nói.
    Chương trình đó rất bền bỉ, như thường lệ những chương trình này nhận được nhiều sự chú ý và rồi dần dần giảm dần,
    Nhưng chương trình của chúng tôi thì như vậy, có hơn 700,000 người xem độc đáo mới xem nó hàng ngày,
    Điều đó thật điên rồ vì nếu chúng tôi duy trì được điều đó, thì vâng, nó sẽ phá vỡ một số kỷ lục khá điên rồ.
    Và lợi ích cho bạn để tiếp tục quảng bá nó bây giờ đã xong là gì? Bởi vì tôi đã đặt tất cả công sức vào đây.
    Tôi muốn thấy nó. Vâng, tôi không được trả tiền cho tất cả những quảng bá mà tôi đang thực hiện bây giờ. Tôi không nhận được tiền cho điều đó.
    Thật sự, nhưng ý tôi là, tôi đoán lợi ích sẽ là mùa một càng tốt, bạn biết đấy,
    Tôi sẽ nhận được nhiều tiền hơn cho mùa hai, ba, bốn, năm, v.v.
    Nếu tôi ngồi đây với bạn trong 10 năm nữa, Jimmy. Vâng.
    Và mọi thứ diễn ra theo kế hoạch.
    Bạn 36 tuổi, tuổi mà tôi đã biết bạn sẽ hỏi gì.
    Vâng, ý tôi là, tôi ghét những kiểu câu hỏi như vậy, bởi vì nếu bạn hỏi tôi.
    Vấn đề là nếu bạn hỏi tôi điều này cách đây năm năm,
    Tôi sẽ không bao giờ nói gì về feastables hay nhiều thứ tôi đang làm bây giờ.
    Vì vậy, câu trả lời chân thành là tôi không biết. Ý tôi là, tôi nghĩ về những gì tôi đang làm,
    Bạn biết đấy, mong rằng đến lúc đó tôi có hai tỷ người đăng ký trên YouTube.
    Bạn biết đấy, game Beast còn lớn hơn những gì chúng tôi đã tưởng tượng.
    Hy vọng rằng feastables đã đưa được hơn một triệu trẻ em khỏi lao động trẻ em vào lúc đó.
    Và bạn biết đấy, có lẽ tôi sẽ có hai hoặc ba doanh nghiệp khác mà tôi rất đam mê và hy vọng sẽ phát triển mạnh.
    Và, vâng, tôi chỉ
    Tôi không biết và cá nhân
    Có thể tôi sẽ có một đứa trẻ vào lúc đó. Tôi không biết. Ý tôi là chỉ có thời gian mới trả lời được, và nó sẽ không xảy ra cho đến khi tôi cảm thấy rằng tôi có đủ thời gian để trở thành một người cha tốt, nhưng
    Tôi thậm chí không biết nữa, tôi không nghĩ về cuộc sống cá nhân của mình. Tôi chỉ nghĩ về
    Chiến thắng và tôi phải xây dựng một số bức ảnh mà tôi đã tìm thấy mà tôi yêu thích. Ôi, được rồi.
    Chết tiệt, đây có phải là tôi hay là anh trai tôi?
    Cái này cũng vậy
    Bạn lấy những bức ảnh này ở đâu?
    Um, internet.
    Những bức ảnh này đều trên internet. Đây là những bức ảnh thực sự mang tính biểu tượng mà tôi
    tôi thấy thật thú vị. Tôi không nghĩ tôi đã bao giờ thấy bức này. Thật sao? Ừ, tôi không
    Bạn có nhận ra điều gì trong bức ảnh đó không? Không, tôi không. Tôi chỉ đang nghĩ rằng mình đang ở trong nhà nào?
    Có thể tôi đang ở một căn cứ quân sự, bởi vì khi chúng tôi còn trẻ,
    Cả hai cha mẹ tôi đều trong quân đội, vì vậy họ đã di chuyển nhiều.
    Có thể đây chỉ là một ngôi nhà ngẫu nhiên thú vị. Tôi nhận ra bức ảnh này ở phía sau
    Tôi chắc chắn bạn đã nghĩ về nó trên màn hình. Tôi nghĩ rằng, đó là ở hành lang bên cạnh phòng tắm của cô ấy.
    Tôi đã không đến nhà mẹ tôi trong một thời gian dài.
    Um
    Thú vị là bạn làm rất nhiều cho trẻ em, nhưng nếu bạn có thể thì thầm vào tai đứa trẻ đó điều gì đó về bitcoin
    Thì điều gì sẽ là điều bạn nói? Hai đồng xu vào thời điểm đó? Không, um
    Tôi biết, vì tôi không muốn. Tôi sẽ không nói gì nếu bạn cho tôi một cái mic để nói với nó, vì vấn đề là tôi sẽ lo lắng rằng điều đó sẽ thay đổi, bạn biết đấy, kết quả về cách tôi trở thành và như vậy tôi rất
    Mặc dù tôi biết rằng sớm thì tôi có thể có vẻ hơi trầm cảm vì mọi thứ khó khăn, nhưng
    Bạn biết đấy, tôi hạnh phúc với vị trí của mình. Và tôi sẽ lo lắng rằng
    Bạn biết đấy, đây chắc chắn là một đứa trẻ rất bối rối, không hòa nhập, cảm thấy như một kẻ bị cô lập không phải đứa nhỏ này.
    Tôi không biết bé đang nghĩ gì, nhưng đứa trẻ này có lẽ độ tuổi mà tôi đã như,
    Chết tiệt, tôi là một kẻ lạ lùng. Tôi không hòa nhập với bất kỳ ai.
    Tại sao không ai muốn xây dựng doanh nghiệp và thành công? Nhưng tôi nghĩ rằng việc trải qua hành trình đó là rất quan trọng và nó, uh, Yeah, nó mang lại cho tôi nhiều niềm tin về mọi thứ. Vì vậy, có lẽ nếu tôi không được phép nói về bitcoin, tôi sẽ không nói gì cả. Còn Taha thì sao? Đúng, đối với mẹ tôi, tôi… tôi có nghĩa là điều này thật hài hước. Đây là hai bức ảnh khác nhau của mẹ tôi. Bạn có phiên bản này của mẹ tôi. Tôi không nghĩ có điều gì tôi có thể nói mà sẽ… ý tôi là vì bà ấy làm trong quân đội và họ ép buộc như… các hệ thống và trật tự vào đầu bạn và đây có lẽ là thời điểm mà chúng tôi đã mất tất cả, vì vậy điều này bạn biết rồi. Bà ấy đang ở một điểm rất thấp trong cuộc đời của bà. Và vì vậy tôi không nghĩ có điều gì tôi có thể nói mà có thể thuyết phục bà rằng thằng con điên rồ của bà đang đi đúng hướng và… bạn biết đấy, nhưng bạn có thể thấy sự khác biệt ở đây, nơi mà bà ấy đang cười trong bức ảnh này. Đây là khi tôi đã tặng bà 100 nghìn đô, sau khi chúng tôi đã đạt được điều đó, sau khi chúng tôi đã có cuộc trò chuyện mà cuối cùng bà ấy nói, ‘Được rồi, tôi sẽ tin tưởng bạn nhé.’ Có khoảng 12-13 năm giữa hai bức ảnh này là một hành trình rất khó khăn, đặc biệt là khi tôi quyết định không đi học đại học và tôi nhận thẳng những điểm 0. Ý tôi là bà ấy nghĩ rằng cuộc đời của tôi đã tệ hại rồi. Tôi đã lãng phí 18 năm cuộc đời của mình, bạn biết đấy. Cũng giống như vậy, tôi không nghĩ có điều gì tôi có thể nói mà có thể thay đổi điều gì cả. Nếu có, tôi chỉ làm bà ấy bị đau tim thôi. Bà ấy có phải bạn nói với bà ấy bây giờ bà ấy có ý nghĩa gì đối với bạn không? Oh, vâng, tất nhiên. Đúng, bạn cũng sẽ. Và bà ấy rất hạnh phúc và như,… Vâng, bây giờ chúng tôi đang ở một vị trí rất tốt. Tôi yêu mẹ tôi. Rõ ràng là tôi sẽ không ở đây nếu không có bà ấy. Bạn biết đấy, ý tôi là nếu bà ấy không làm nhiều công việc và làm tất cả những điều bà ấy đã làm để đưa tôi đến nơi tôi đang ở. Ý tôi là những điều nhỏ như việc bà ấy… sẽ cho tôi khoảng 20-30 đô la mỗi tháng và sau đó tôi sẽ lấy số tiền đó và dùng nó để mua những thứ như… giúp thực hiện video hoặc bất cứ điều gì. Và thậm chí chỉ việc chúng tôi có internet, bạn biết đấy, điều đó bây giờ nghe khá cơ bản nhưng không phổ biến như bây giờ. Bạn đã từng nhận được một cuộc gọi điện thoại và bạn nghĩ rằng internet trong nhà… tôi không biết bạn có bao giờ ra ngoài không nữa. Vâng, và vì vậy, bạn biết đấy, um, nó không phải là vị trí tốt nhất, nhưng bà ấy đã cho tôi mọi công cụ tôi cần để thành công không phải, bạn biết đấy, có chủ đích, nhưng chắc chắn bà ấy sẽ rất sốc. Vâng, bà ấy đã quen với điều đó bây giờ, nhưng vâng, ý tôi là trong thời kỳ khó khăn, tôi có nghĩa là nó thật khó khăn. Vâng, tôi tưởng tượng sẽ như thế nào khi là bà ấy, bạn biết đấy. Ý tôi là khi tôi 16 tuổi, bà không thể đủ tiền để mua cho tôi một chiếc xe. Bà không thể. Bà không đủ khả năng cho chiếc minivan mà chúng tôi đã có; nó thật sự là một đống rác. Nó cần sửa chữa và bà không thể đủ khả năng cho điều đó, khói bốc ra từ phía trước của nó. Nhưng bà là một mớ hỗn độn hoàn toàn và sau đó bà về nhà, tôi chỉ như… Tôi đang thực hiện video trên youtube. Bà ơi, bài tập toán! và bạn biết đấy, bà ấy chỉ như tôi nghĩ bà ấy đang kiếm 40 nghìn đô mỗi năm, bởi vì tôi… chúng tôi không nói về tài chính nhiều khi còn trẻ, nhưng tôi nhớ tôi đã ký hợp đồng hợp tác trị giá 40 nghìn đô và sau đó bà ấy nói với tôi rằng đó là số tiền bà kiếm được mỗi năm. Và tôi đã nói, ‘Chết tiệt, tôi không biết, lúc đó tôi đã nghĩ bà kiếm được nhiều hơn 40 nghìn đô một năm.’ Và sau đó tôi đã nói, ‘Tại sao bà lại làm việc? Tôi đang kiếm được số tiền này cho mỗi video bây giờ từ các hợp đồng hợp tác.’ Vậy, uh, vâng, thật là một người phụ nữ tuyệt vời. Tôi biết bà là tuyệt vời từ tất cả những gì bà đã trải qua cho đến bây giờ. Bà chỉ cần được hạnh phúc. Tôi cố gắng không làm bà ấy căng thẳng. Bà ấy đã trải qua quá đủ căng thẳng rồi; công việc của bà ấy, tôi đã khiến bà không phải làm, ý tôi là bà muốn làm điều đó nhưng cần tập thể dục thường xuyên, thực hiện tất cả các phương pháp hệ thống như kiểm tra sức khỏe cơ thể và bạn biết đấy, uống vitamin và mọi thứ, bởi vì như tôi không có ý định sinh con trong thời gian sắp tới, nhưng rõ ràng khi tôi sinh con, tôi rất muốn bà tham gia và bà cần có thể chơi cùng chúng. Vì vậy, tôi nói với bà rằng: ngoài kia sẽ thật sự làm hại bà. Bà không được phép bị căng thẳng, bà cần làm tất cả các quy trình chăm sóc sức khỏe này. Bà cần phải vì bạn biết đấy, bà có thể sẽ ở tuổi 70 khi tôi có con. Bà cần phải có thể di chuyển, điều đó có nghĩa là bà có thể sẽ 80 tuổi khi chúng 14 hoặc 15 tuổi. Như vậy, đến đi, những gì bà làm bây giờ sẽ chỉ ra và đại diện cho việc bà sẽ hoạt động tích cực như thế nào trong cuộc sống của các con tôi. Vì vậy, và chúng tôi có những cuộc trò chuyện này theo cách vui vẻ. Vì vậy, bà ấy đang rất nghiêm túc với sức khỏe của bà cho tương lai. Ông không phải là người đàn ông có nhiều nỗi sợ, nhưng đó dường như là một trong số đó, một nỗi sợ mà cả hai chúng ta đều chia sẻ. Vâng, đúng vậy. Tôi hy vọng bà ấy sẽ không bao giờ chết. Mẹ tôi sẽ sống mãi. Chúng tôi sẽ ổn thôi. Brian Johnson. Chúng tôi có một truyền thống khi kết thúc chương trình này, nơi mà vị khách cuối cùng để lại một câu hỏi cho vị khách tiếp theo mà không biết họ để lại cho ai. Được rồi, tôi sẽ bị hỏi trước câu hỏi hay bạn sẽ bị hỏi trước câu hỏi? Được rồi. Bạn thích chết với một cơ thể khỏe mạnh hay một tâm trí tỉnh táo? Cơ thể khỏe mạnh hay tâm trí tỉnh táo? Ôi, tôi cho rằng nếu tôi chọn cơ thể, thì như vậy sẽ giống như đã bị mất trí nhớ hoặc cái gì đó về tâm trí. Um, điều đó khó, chết với cơ thể khỏe mạnh hoặc tâm trí tỉnh táo. Ý tôi là bạn là gì nếu bạn không có tâm trí của mình? Tôi sẽ nói là tâm trí để thành thực. Amen. Vâng, Jimmy, cảm ơn bạn. Tôi phải viết câu hỏi của mình bây giờ. Bạn phải. Tôi muốn nói điều gì đó với bạn trước nhé. Um, tôi phải dành cho bạn rất nhiều lời khen vì rất nhiều người như chúng tôi, như các đội của chúng tôi đã lấy đi rất nhiều điều từ bạn. Chúng tôi đã lấy đi những nguyên tắc, tâm lý của bạn và điều đó đã khiến chúng tôi trở thành những người sáng tạo tốt hơn, giúp chúng tôi sống những cuộc sống mà chúng tôi được sống và làm những điều mà chúng tôi yêu thích nhất và luôn có một cái giá phải trả.
    Tôi nghĩ rằng việc khác biệt và kỳ quặc có những mặt tích cực, nhưng cũng có một cái giá rất lớn, và bạn phải trả cái giá đó nhiều nhất khi còn trẻ. Khi đó, bạn phải phù hợp với hệ thống và không được chọn ai là người bạn của mình. Tuy nhiên, khi trở thành người lớn, như bạn đã nói, chúng ta đều vỗ tay cho những con kỳ lân, những người kỳ quặc, và chúng ta học hỏi từ họ. Trong khoảng thời gian ngắn mà tôi đã nói chuyện với bạn, như khoảng một tuần gì đó, bạn đã khiến tôi mở mang tâm trí của mình. Tôi đã được thấy những điều bí mật của trò chơi quái vật, và tâm trí tôi đã bùng nổ khi tôi ngồi trên ghế sofa. Tôi nhớ tôi đã ngồi ở đâu khi nhìn thấy những điều bí mật đó. Bạn đã khiến tôi nhận ra rằng tôi đã tự giới hạn bản thân rất nhiều, mặc dù tôi tự coi mình là người rất tham vọng. Tôi đã tự giới hạn bản thân.
    Vì vậy, tôi muốn nói lời cảm ơn, bởi vì bạn không chỉ làm điều đó vì tôi. Bạn đang làm điều đó cho hàng chục triệu, hàng trăm triệu người cùng một lúc. Bạn đang đưa họ những lộ trình, cũng như một bản kế hoạch, một cách tư duy và niềm tin rằng họ cũng không cần phải sống cuộc sống mà trường học hay hệ thống đã nói với họ rằng họ phải sống trong khuôn khổ đó.
    Vì vậy, thật sự cảm ơn bạn rất nhiều, bởi vì chúng ta cần nhiều người như bạn, và tôi là người hâm mộ lớn nhất của bạn. Cảm ơn bạn. Tôi thật sự rất trân trọng bạn. Cảm ơn. Được rồi, hãy xem nếu chúng ta có thể khám phá thêm một lần nữa.
    Bạn thật hài hước. Một số người thành công, hấp dẫn và sâu sắc nhất trên thế giới đã ngồi đối diện với tôi tại bàn này. Và vào cuối mỗi cuộc trò chuyện, tôi yêu cầu họ để lại một câu hỏi trong cuốn nhật ký nổi tiếng của một Giám đốc điều hành. Đây là câu hỏi được thiết kế để khơi gợi những cuộc trò chuyện quan trọng nhất, những cuộc trò chuyện có thể thay đổi cuộc sống của bạn.
    Chúng tôi sau đó lấy những câu hỏi đó và cho chúng vào các thẻ này. Trên mỗi thẻ, bạn có thể thấy người đã để lại câu hỏi, câu hỏi họ đã hỏi và ở mặt bên kia, nếu bạn quét mã vạch đó, bạn có thể xem ai đã trả lời nó tiếp theo. Đây là điều mà tôi biết nhiều bạn đã muốn biết, và cách duy nhất để tìm hiểu là lấy cho mình một vài thẻ trò chuyện mà bạn có thể chơi ở nhà với bạn bè và gia đình, tại nơi làm việc với đồng nghiệp, và cũng với những người hoàn toàn xa lạ trong kỳ nghỉ.
    Tôi sẽ để liên kết đến các thẻ trò chuyện trong phần mô tả bên dưới và bạn có thể lấy của mình tại thediary.com. [Nhạc]
    這就是為什麼沒有人會像我這樣拍攝影片，因為沒有人想過我過的生活或想要像我一樣面對這些事情。他們會感到痛苦。你快樂嗎？我老實說，目前比起快樂，更多的是不快樂。這是否曾經讓你考慮過要完全退出YouTube？哦，當然會。真的嗎？你是哦，天啊？
    怪物先生，怪物先生，怪物先生，他是地球上最大的YouTuber，正在建立帝國。我是說，這個人有什麼是他做不了的？你的商業帝國比大多數人所認識的要大得多。是的，我才26歲，我們擁有全球最大的YouTube頻道，而怪物遊戲將打破一些非常瘋狂的紀錄，我們的收入達到了九位數。但這一切很多來自於我是一個非常困惑的孩子，總是感到不合群，覺得自己像個怪胎。另外，我真的很想照顧我的媽媽，因為當我11歲的時候，我們真的破產了，失去了一切。幸運的是，這一切都成功了，因為我真的是非常擅長專注於一件事情，超過地球上任何人，比如我們在這些遊戲上花了數千萬美元。但這是關於讓第一季變得盡可能好，我真的很喜歡解決複雜的問題。
    你認為在西非的可可農場有多少兒童勞工？答案是150萬。因此，通過Feastables，我們正在努力讓超過100萬名兒童脫離童工。但諷刺的是，我幫助越多的人，反而自己得到的也越多，我已經收到了超過5000條讓我自殺的訊息。我是說，確實有時我會哭。但如果我的心理健康是優先考慮的事情，我就不會如此成功。這就是你必須付出的代價。但何時才算夠呢？
    老實說，我發現當我們查看Spotify和Apple以及我們的音頻頻道的後台時，那些觀看這個播客的大多數人尚未按下關注或訂閱按鈕，這讓我感到無比著迷。不論你在哪裡收聽這個，我希望能跟你達成一個協議。如果你能幫我一個大忙，按下那個訂閱按鈕，我會不懈努力，從現在開始直到永遠，不斷讓這個節目變得更好、更好、更好、更好。我無法告訴你，按下那個訂閱按鈕對我來說有多大的幫助。節目變得更大，這意味著我們可以擴展製作，邀請所有你想見的嘉賓，並繼續做我們熱愛的事情。如果你能幫我這個小忙，按下那個關注按鈕，無論你在哪裡收聽，對我來說將意義重大。這是我唯一會請你幫忙的事情。非常感謝你的時間。
    回到這一集，吉米，我們剛剛認識不久，你對我來說已經有點像一個魔方了。好的，在許多方面，我一直在試圖把這些碎片拼合在一起，以理解你的獨特性，因為你實在是太獨特了。我們剛剛在車上開過來，聽你講述你對生活的看法，以及昨天在電話裡跟你交談，我已經面試過數百人，卻從未遇到過有著你這樣的人生觀的人。你真的是獨一無二的。我需要了解你最早的幾年，以便理解你是誰？
    哦，天啊，我的早年，我就是個固執的人，我從來不會放棄。我是說，沒什麼世界可以讓我放棄。我是說，如果我們直接進入這個話題，根本不需要介紹，就這樣開門見山。當我11歲時，我就說我要成為一名YouTuber，我會死也要嘗試，而我說的這些都是認真的，即使到今天，沒有人再觀看我的視頻，我仍然會繼續下去。因此，許多人討厭這一點，但我就是你一生中會碰到的最有競爭力、最固執的人，我從來不會放棄。
    這種性格從哪裡來的？我不太確定，老實說，我覺得這就像是我的DNA，流淌在我的血液裡。我媽媽在我長大過程中並不喜歡這一點。我們總是會爭論，她常常會說：一旦吉米下定決心，就永遠不會停止，而這總是讓她生氣，因為當涉及YouTube時，她希望我能學習或做其他事情，但我真的不知道，就一直是這樣。我覺得很多人都有這些奇怪的傾向，而他們試圖學習去改變它們，而我卻有過想法，想知道我是否過於極端，因為人們對我感到非常畏懼，因為我對工作如此痴迷，我全心投入，這樣是不健康的嗎？我應該試著更像一個正常人，尤其是在我青少年時期，這樣會容易得多。當你賺大錢的時候，這很有趣，這是值得讚賞的。
    這是值得尊敬的。這就像，看看，那些都是我們想要的特質，但當你不成功時，你就會知道自己是個瘋子，因為你擁有這些特質。回想起來，我偶爾會想，應該要更正常一些嗎？但我始終無法做到。每次我嘗試的時候，我的確提到過這一點，但有一件事情在我腦海中揮之不去，就是有一次高中的同學告訴我，當我在上初中的時候，他說：「你只會談論YouTube，難道你不會做其他的事情嗎？你真是個怪胎。」我試著看《南方公園》，因為那是我學校很多人看的節目，以便融入，但我就是無法做到。我心想，這真是浪費時間，我現在可以在工作啊。
    我嘗試做這些事情以融入，但最終我只是停止交談，因為我無法與任何人產生共鳴。而且，人們曾經叫我啞巴，我的一位老師甚至真的問我是否啞巴，因為我說話太少了。我就讀的學校裡，沒有人有創業精神或想創建公司，我根本不想做其他事情。最後，我開始獲得成功，找到其他瘋子，現在生活很好。但我喜歡在播客上講這個故事，因為如果你有一位年輕的觀眾正處於同樣的境地，你不是問題，問題在於你的環境，你只需要讓自己置身於更好的環境中。
    你的父母呢，媽媽和爸爸，你經常談到你的母親？是的，嗯，不，我不，我不是從他們那裡得到這些影響。他們對你有什麼影響？嗯，我不太談論我的爸爸。這是一個很長的故事，我不必深入談論，但我媽，坦白說，我和我媽的關係非常好，但在成長過程中，因為在2008年他們的負債過高，我們真的破產了。他們有一些用來獲取其他財產的房產，當一切崩潰時，他們幾乎失去了一切。所以我媽得打兩份工，勉強維持生活。因為當我放學回家時，她正在做第二份工作，所以我見到她的機會不多。她是一位單親媽媽，養活我們，她總是在忙。
    我不常談論這些。我有克羅恩病，所以在成長過程中我很病弱。我的兄弟也有問題，所以我們在青少年時期並不是最健康的孩子。她只是試著應付生活，照顧我們，然後，回到家時，她面對的是一個煩人的小孩，我想成為一名YouTuber，而她有時候只是求我做作業。她真的會哭著求我做作業，而我當時只是，我不是故意讓她不高興，但有一次我真的告訴她，如果你那麼想要我完成作業，那不如你自己做，這就是我對我媽說的。我到底在做什麼？我不知道，我只是覺得我不在乎。我只想成功，想創建公司。所以，她真的很可憐，幸運的是，最後一切都有了好結果，如今我寵著她。她也很好，擁有第二個家，任何她想要的東西都有。所以我開始賺錢的時候，第一件事就是開始照顧我媽，因為她為了把我養大付出了所有，而我不會成為現在的我。但在我小的時候，感覺我和她說著不同的語言。她不想我變得像他們那樣，沒有錢，最終走上無家可歸和吸毒這條路，而她的腦海中無法理解我所看到的世界，而我的頭腦也無法理解她所看到的世界，這之間存在著持續的摩擦。
    那麼，如果她忙於工作，而你又在家，而且你的爸爸不在，誰來照顧你？我和我的兄弟就那樣待著。我在拍影片。你在拍影片？是的，這個從幾歲開始？我11歲開始拍的。是11歲。是的，現在我26歲。我幾乎不記得YouTube之前的生活。我的最早記憶基本上都是我開始拍影片的時候。你之前說過，你不常談論你的爸爸，你不必跟我講，但為什麼你不常談論你的父親？是的，別擔心。我知道你的媽媽以前談過他。是的，他們之間的關係有點動盪。是的，正是如此。他們的關係並不好。我是說，這是以後再談的話題。老實說，這樣開始談有點酸澀，但沒關係，我的媽媽很棒，我愛我的媽媽。
    她曾經哭著求你做作業。很多時候，她會哭著，因為我不會在我們賺錢的時候存錢。她覺得這樣太冒險，而問題是，回頭看，她說的並不不合理。她在做的事情完全是合理的。我只是個瘋子，過於執著於建立事業，且投入得太多。有一次，我們不記得是什麼月份，賺了十萬美元，我心想，完美！現在我可以花十萬在接下來的視頻上，而她卻把五千美元存起來，放進我的銀行帳戶裡，沒告訴我，這是為了以防我過度負債或破產，就像他們一樣。我發現了這件事。她說，請不要花這筆錢，讓我留點錢，不要把所有的錢都花在視頻上。我當時說不，這太完美了。
    我可以這樣花更多錢，這太棒了。謝謝媽媽，但對我來說，我並不感到有風險，反而冒險讓我興奮，我對它的接受度非常高。
    嗯，所以我們實際上就是沒有在溝通同一種語言。我不記得那是什麼年紀，但最終在我冒了很多險並搞懂之後，我媽媽對我說：“你知道嗎？我會相信你，我有信心。”自那時起一切變得好多了，當她不再熬夜擔心我、擔心天氣和我是否做出正確的決定時，她就對我說：“吉米，我相信你，我知道你整天都在考慮這個。我會隨你的引領。”我們的關係自那時以來就一直很完美。
    如果我問十歲的吉米：“你過得怎麼樣？”他會怎麼回答？嗯，十歲的時候我不知道，但是如果你在我十二或十三歲的時候問我，我可能會說：“靠，沒有人看我的影片。”我真的很想當一名 YouTuber。我必須讓這一切運作起來。
    你為什麼真的想當一名 YouTuber？因為孩子們都這樣說，但你表達的程度以及你對這個特定目標的專注程度是不同的。成為一名 YouTuber，因為有很多其他事情可以專注，比如成為一名遊戲玩家，等等，但是 YouTube 特別有趣，因為你在鏡頭前，人們可以看到，有一個指標來決定你有多成功。
    嗯，有沒有什麼元素是那種在鏡頭前的部分，幫助解決你當時似乎有的孤獨感的？不，社群。是的，我認為這更像是我發現，在我年輕的時候，大約在十一歲的時候，有 YouTuber 賺著幾十萬美元一年。我心想：“哦，這就是系統性的金錢。”是的，當然，因為那時我們是沒有錢的，我真的想照顧我的媽媽，以及我的家庭。所以對我來說，一切都很重要，這就是我所愛的事情。我從來沒有像做這件事那樣快樂，此外我還可以看到一條路徑，能夠實際上讓我退休我媽媽，照顧她，報答她曾經為我們工作這麼多夜晚的付出，讓我們能夠生活得舒適，這樣的事。所以，有一件事讓我非常不悅，就是當人們試圖把某人的動機放進一個小框框裡。就像我們是非常複雜的生物，你知道，你有女朋友，我絕對不會說：“哦，你只是喜歡她因為她漂亮。”但你喜歡她是因為她漂亮，但你可能也喜歡她因為她聰明。你可能也喜歡她因為她很有趣，她喜歡類似的節目，等等。如果我們在這裡坐十個小時，你可能能給我一千個理由，為什麼你喜歡你的女朋友。
    所以當人們試圖把你喜歡做特定工作或建立特定事業的原因，簡化成一個框框時，這是非常煩人的。哦，你只是因為錢而做這些事。那如果我因為喜歡錢而做這些事，我又享受這過程，這是一種與人交流的方式，以及建立社群的其它事情，你知道的。我想這是一個普遍的缺陷，我們試圖將事情簡化，實際上並沒有那麼簡單。我認為很多人不能理解某人能如此專注於某件事情，以如此高的承諾和持久的投入程度。是的，所以我不知道如何，我同意，因為這真的很奇怪。
    像我有一種極端的執著，以至於我一直在想同樣的事情。對我來說，想一件事情每週七天，每天十六小時，遠比不斷地變換思路簡單得多。我非常擅長著迷於一件事情，超過地球上任何其他人。
    如果我說我的超能力是什麼，那就是我可以無止境地對一件事情著迷，並且可以不斷重複同樣的想法。這真的很奇怪。對我來說那不是在 YouTube 辛勤工作的事情，這十年來或多或少沒有人在真正觀看，這只是我自己的本性。
    這必須是一種深度執著，因為你在沒有人真正觀看或關注的時候還在做這件事情，或真的就是在有一個時刻，我大約19或20歲的時候，我醒來後加入了一個和朋友的 Skype 通話。我們逆向工程，分析一些視頻為什麼表現得好等等。我記得那通電話持續了超過18個小時，然後我掛掉電話去睡覺。第二天醒來後，我立刻又回到通話，繼續聊天，這就是我們投入的時間。我其實什麼都不知道，除了努力讓它發生。
    那你還有沒有對其他事情表現出這樣的執著？在那個年紀的時候，從我11歲到15歲，我會說是 YouTube 和棒球的混合。但當我15歲時，我得了克隆病，體重從190磅下降到139磅，我失去了所有的肌肉，所以我想，“好吧。我在大學不再打棒球了。”所以我就想，那我就全心投入 YouTube，直到真正參加音樂節。
    這基本上就是YouTube對抗其他東西。我從未想過我會對這種愛有如此深刻的體會。我原以為這只是與影片製作有關，但在過去的兩三年中，我意識到我其實非常享受創業這個過程，我真的開始非常熱愛並著迷於各種音樂節和其他事物，這讓我覺得有點奇怪。當我最初開始做巧克力生意時，那只是一個額外的事情，但隨著我越來越投入，獲得了許多與製作影片時一樣的快感，只是以不同的方式呈現出來。現在我對巧克力產業了解得太多了，這真的很瘋狂。我從未想過自己會投入數千小時去建立音樂節。因此總的來說，我真的很喜歡解決這些不斷複雜的難題。我認為這就是我每天起床的動力，而問題越難就越讓人興奮。
    我想談談這些不斷的難題，還有音樂節，但你提到了一種叫做克羅恩病的病症。很多人可能不知道那是什麼，對於一個人的生活有什麼影響。你了解它嗎？我知道一點，因為我有一位團隊成員患有克羅恩病，為了在他們需要請假等特殊時刻更好地支持他們，我變得更加了解這個病症的含義以及它是如何影響一個人的生活的。你能分享一下你的看法嗎？是的，克羅恩病是當你的免疫系統攻擊自己。當我15歲的時候，我開始一天上廁所八、九、十次，食物完全無法消化，因為我的腸胃道基本上就是在自我攻擊。這真的很奇怪，你的免疫系統和腸道認為腸道是一個外來入侵者，因此就開始自我攻擊。如果你每天要上十次廁所又無法消化食物，這就是為什麼你會迅速掉重的原因，因為它會非常發炎，而且在最嚴重的情況下，感覺好像有人不斷用刀子刺你的肚子，這就是我所經歷的。因此我減了50磅，這真的很瘋狂，因為我本身就已經相對瘦弱。我們嘗試了各種藥物，最終我在使用一種叫做Remicade的極端藥物，基本上就是讓你的免疫系統被摧毀，這也是為什麼我現在的聲音聽起來有點不正常，因為我剛得了流感。我得了六次COVID，還得過帶狀疱疹，我總是生病，因為為了讓我的腸胃道停止自我攻擊，我們基本上需要關閉我的免疫系統。因此我的免疫系統非常脆弱，所以我總是生病，偶爾皮膚會出現隨機的皮疹之類的。坦白說，這段經歷非常殘酷。而且突然有時又會爆發，讓你感到非常虛弱非常疲倦。坦白來說，我的生活就像是在困難模式下進行的。如果你醒來時有精力，對我來說已經超越了我。這使事情變得更加困難。當然，有些日子你也會醒來而沒有能量，這對於一個對外界生產力很高的人來說，實在令人難以置信。是的，你真的要非常愛你所做的事情，然後努力堅持下去。
    這還真的很殘酷，因為還要加上總是生病的因素。我剛在南非住了四天醫院，因為得了流感，這使我從某些病中恢復的時間大大延長。因此，真的很殘酷。如果我不那麼努力工作，我會花更多時間研究克羅恩病，因為肯定有更好的方法可以阻止它，而不僅僅是摧毀我的免疫系統，我希望在30和40歲的時候不要這樣做。因此我把這看作是一種暫時的應對方式，但如你所知，我已經見過世界上最頂尖的克羅恩病醫生，而到目前為止，他們都說：「這就是答案，你只是運氣好，你的腸道沒有攻擊自己。」但我不知道，我覺得給人們克羅恩病的藥物有點愚蠢，肯定有更好的治療方法。最終的解決方案是他們只需把我打開，切掉我腸胃道的一部分，然後就這樣了。但你知道的，我注意到讓我有克羅恩病的團隊成員也有一種心理過山車的感覺，因為它具有一定的不可預測性。正是如此，這使生活變得困難。當你拍攝的時候，這種情況會更加糟糕，因為你有這個巨大的數百萬美元的拍攝片場和200個人等著你，而你有時不知道自己是否會有癲癇發作，但你就是得「去他媽的」，然後喝點咖啡壯膽，繼續努力。我被診斷患有ADHD。你沒有聽錯。我被診斷為ADHD，這讓我對自己和我的性格有了很多的思考。除非我不是那種會體現這個標籤或認為這真的意義重大的人。我就是我自己。你有沒有在某種程度上被認為是神經多樣性？我被告知過，但我有ADHD。我並不驚訝，因為我總是坐著反覆思考事物，但我認為我對於大腦的運作方式感到滿意。我並不太在乎要改變它。我說過，我認為我最偉大的超能力之一就是我的痴迷，而我認為一些人會把它視為一種弱點，但如果你想想解決問題所花的時間是其他人的三倍，那麼你必然會想出不同的解決方案。這是你之前提到的事情之一，你喜歡不斷解決困難問題。當你回顧過去10年的生活以及你在解決這些困難問題上取得的成功時，如果你能將其分解成一些很酷的組成部分，你所學到的其中之一就是你所說的對問題的痴迷。
    是的，那其他人呢？
    我是說，
    這些都是很典型的事，比如你周圍的人對你是很明顯的影響。
    嗯，幸運的是，我在少年後期就接觸到了正確的人群，因為我會受到周圍人能量的影響。
    周圍的事情是如此明顯，我開始像他們那樣說話。我開始對他們感興趣的事物產生興趣。
    我是說，這些都是很顯而易見的東西，我相信你也聽過無數次。但是，
    你知道，我總是不得不對我身邊的人保持保護，因為他們所說的，就是我開始思考的內容，
    也是我開始著迷的東西。
    你知道，嗯，節日帶來的最好的一件事情就是我聯絡了所有增長最快的巧克力公司，
    所有增長最快的零食企業等等，並且與許多創始人成為了朋友。
    你知道，這本可能需要我花八九年的時間才能解決的事情，
    在18個月之內，
    我可能是世界上少數幾個最懂經營巧克力公司的專家之一，並且深刻理解這一行。
    這都是一些作弊的捷徑。那細節呢？
    在小事上斤斤計較。
    我在網上看了一本手冊時，看到的其中一件事情就是對
    那個百分之一的真正著迷。是的，這更令人困惑。對這些事情你怎麼看？
    我和一些員工在我大約22歲時寫過這個，所以有一些我讀到的內容，我想，哦，天哪，
    我真是個傻瓜，但大多數內容依然經得住時間的考驗。嗯，我也認為這非常有幫助。
    你知道，有趣的是許多
    CEO實際上告訴我他們會讓員工閱讀這個。
    它在我們所有的Slack頻道中傳播，我們都讀過。這很有趣，因為我想，該死，
    我應該做一個更新版本，讓每個人都知道。可是，問題是它的核心就是
    極端的擁有和不找藉口，你知道，嗯，人們總是
    是的，我是說，該死，我對我寫這些時的情況感到一種強烈的似曾相識。
    那真的是一個不同的時間，因為我在21、22歲時根本不知道自己在做什麼，
    我發現自己不斷在教別人相同的事情，反復地教學，
    而且總是就像是要極端負責、負擔責任似的。
    是的，我猜這些事情是超出你的控制，但如果你多思考一下，真的在乎，
    它本來可以在你的控制之內。
    這就是我試著在其中傳達的東西。
    還有一件事情貫穿於這本書，也在你所有的作品中，就是這個理念，這是我從你那裡學到的，
    只是通過昨天和你通話學到的，沒有什麼是不可能的。是的，正是看著
    過去幾週的野獸遊戲，還有和你的一些團隊成員的交談，
    顯然你所做的一切都有一條貫穿的線，那就是極端，對我來說似乎是極大的野心，
    而你看起來並不認為這是一種極端的野心，就像我認為的那樣。
    是的，我是說，只要物理學允許，那麼就是可能的。只是，難道我們想投入時間嗎？
    我覺得人們把很多事情複雜化了。嗯，
    這是你隨著時間訓練出來的，還是你一直都這樣想？我想我只是
    嗯，好問題。我不知道為什麼，但當人們告訴我我做不到某件事時，
    我不知道這是從哪裡來的，
    這讓我只想更想去做，老實說，如果你告訴我我不該這樣做，
    那好吧。
    但如果你告訴我我做不到，那我全身心的都想說去你媽的，我明顯可以。
    我只是，我不知道我是否該這麼做，但我能做到，然後我不知道。
    就像是，為了讓某事走紅，你必須做一些前所未有的事情。
    我之前講過這個故事，比如說，如果你在路上開車，看到一頭牛，
    誰在乎？那就是他媽的牛。
    但是如果你在路上開車時，看到一頭紫色的牛，
    你會想，你從未見過那樣的東西，這是你意想不到的。
    你會去說「這太瘋狂了」，並會去告訴你的朋友。
    你會記住那個，甚至可能每隔幾年隨機思考一次，
    「為什麼會有一頭紫色的牛？」就像是
    這是同樣的道理，只是其中一隻是紫色的，你可以將這種相似性應用在想法上，比如當你在社交媒體上滾動尋找一個視頻時，
    有些事情是你知道已經做過的，您看過的
    大致上是跟以前的東西相似，你會直接滾過去，
    你再也不會想起它。
    就好像你再也不會記得路邊的牛。
    然後還有一些想法像是紫色的牛這個概念，
    這就是我想做的，讓你去思考。
    以下是你所提供的文本的繁體中文翻譯：
    到底發生了什麼事？
    我從未見過這樣的東西，我必須點擊這個，不然今晚無法入睡，因為像是
    這個影片為什麼會存在？
    不可能他們真的這樣做了，對吧？
    不過這些通常非常困難，通常要獲得那種紫色牛的效果
    從來沒有做過，如果某事從未做過，通常是因為這非常困難。
    所以你只能訓練自己去接受那些非常困難、複雜且原創的問題，
    並且朝向它們前進，因為這些問題
    往往會有更多的紫色牛效果，人們不得不觀看它，如果你的作品非常指數級增長，
    在一個影片上獲得五千萬次觀看要比在五十個影片上獲得一百萬次觀看容易得多，對吧？
    然後因為它的增長是指數級的，這就像，您知道，
    在最頂尖的影片中，幾乎是“一切歸於”最好的影片，你真的要全力以赴地做到那種紫色牛效果，如果這樣說明的話。
    說得太對了。
    如果讓您提煉一下，假設我們正在制定一本新的
    「如何成功於Mr. B的製作手冊」，如果我應徵您那裡的工作，
    我需要展示哪五種特徵才能成功？
    你必須非常樂意接受指導，因為今天我教你的任何東西在一年或兩年後都會改變，
    永遠學習，永遠進步，樂意接受指導。
    對我來說一個重要的事情是，你必須看到在這裡工作的價值，你真的，我不希望這只是一份工作，
    這是一個職業；如果你沒有現實地看到十年後你會為我工作，
    那麼，對我來說，就很難以我想要的程度投資於你。我不想
    訓練某人六個月，他們在這裡工作一年，
    然後我失去他們。我喜歡的是，我訓練某人一年，
    然後我在後端獲得九年的收益，他們在工作中表現出色，
    我不斷給他們加薪，因為他們隨著時間變得更有價值。
    這就像是世界第八大奇蹟，重金投入於一位員工，然後他們在一個十年內堅持下來。
    你明白我的意思嗎？
    有些我最優秀的人，我花了三到四年與他們一起在戰壕中訓練和工作，
    你知道的，比如台勒，他負責我很多影片的撰寫和導演，
    我每天大約和他聊五到六個小時，這樣四年。
    而現在因為我無法全心全意投入，
    他百分之百的時間都在撰寫影片、導演影片，對此非常痴迷，
    而我理論上最多可以花五百分之一的時間。
    所以他自然會在這方面優於我，因為他能花更多時間在這上面。
    而且，你知道，我對他充滿信心，
    但是在這幾年裡我對他傾注的所有時間和精力所獲得的回報，
    現在他正確理解我的思維，我的價值觀，以至於我不需要和他溝通。
    有時我只需到片場拍攝，就能相信這一定很好。
    你知道的，我在我的所有業務中有很多這樣的人，
    事情都會很順利。
    如果你知道在一個十年後台勒仍在這裡工作的世界裡，
    我意味著像這樣的人所能帶來的價值是
    無法想像的，對商業來說幾乎是第八大奇蹟，這正是我想要的。
    但你只能吸引到這樣的人，他們看到了
    在為你工作中的價值，他們必須深信自己越是對公司有價值，得到的回報就越多，他們實際上想要
    全心投入到業務中去。
    這非常重要，因為如果我真正感受不到這種氛圍，
    那麼這對我們雙方都不公平，因為我不會像應該的那樣投資於你，
    因為我不認為你十年後還會在這裡，然後你會感受到這一點，這會產生
    呃，願意接受指導，看到價值，顯然是痴迷，我就是不喜歡與平庸的人共事。
    我的確，真的無法忍受，這是讓我抑鬱的最快方式。
    呃，如果我必須與那些並不全心投入、也不熱愛自己工作的人的合作。
    呃
    就像這樣，我確信如果你聽過史蒂夫·喬布斯的訪談或他談到的話，
    這就像是典型的特徵：痴迷、樂意接受指導、全心投入，看到價值。而且最糟糕的特徵是什麼？
    平庸，我的意思是這就像是因為他們不是糟糕到以至於你要解僱他們，
    但又不夠好，問題在於——你全然可以看到它的顯現，偉大的人就是喜歡與偉大的人共事，
    他們確實如此，而在偉大的人身邊有某種東西會激發出你內心的一種動力，使你想要
    做得更多、推得更遠，相信事物是沒有不可能的。
    我不知道，當你把我放在一群成功的企業家之中，
    我就成為了完全不同的人，但如果你把我放在
    我不知道的一群只在經營小生意且不太在乎、也沒有多大野心的人中，
    我就像兩個完全不同的人。而這一點在實際情況中也很明顯，
    你把一堆A級球員放在一起，他們就會相互激勵。
    但如果你把兩三個C級球員放在一群優秀的人中間，他們就會開始拖累其他人。
    他們會讓其他人不想工作，並使工作的樂趣降低。
    而且每個人都知道要擺脫C級球員，對吧？顯然，要擺脫那些不投入的人，等等。
    那些不是A級球員，但也不是C級球員的人會有點棘手，因為你仍然能感受到他們的能量，如果有足夠多的這樣的人，
    就會拉低整體的文化氛圍。
    所以那些都是最糟糕的地方。嗯，我的意思是，並不是每個人都能成為那些世界末日的怪物。你知道，有很多平凡的事情，比如，我的意思是書籍控制和會計。可能不必是全世界最好，但當涉及到關鍵任務，比如製作影片之類的事情時，你就必須周圍有優秀的人，這是作為領導者的首要工作之一。確保你優秀的人能和其他優秀的人一起工作，因為這就是人們離開工作的首要原因，並不是金錢。你知道，我的意思是，這在列表上大約是第四位。別要我列出來，我不記得。我只知道首要的事情是他們是否喜歡和他們一起工作的人，因為人們會因為不喜歡和某些人共事而離開工作，遠在因為金錢而離開之前。
    你有沒有對你所雇用的人不符合你的熱情程度而感到沮喪？沒有，因為我只找到了那些有這種熱情的人。那有些人確實有嗎？哦，是的，我在我的業務中遇到了很多人，顯然你必須照顧他們。嘿，我很好，他們不像只是拿標準工資的人。但是，像泰勒·克利茲納、拉斯和我們的編輯團隊的人，他們每週投入的工時和我一樣多，他們都看到了願景。這種人很難找，但當你找到時，你必須珍惜他們並認識到他們是獨角獸。
    然後你大約有500人，可能，呃，我想製作公司大約有300人，Feastables大約有100人，然後可能還有其他40到50人分散在其他地方。大多數我交談的創始人描述擴大人數是工作中最糟糕的部分——人越多，問題越多，是吧？對，這是可以理解的。尤其是像你這種本質上創意導向的人，非常專注和迷戀於，你所說的，製作最佳影片的事情。當然，然後一切其他的麻煩也隨之而來。對，像人力資源，每位我交談的創始人都討厭。我是說，最糟糕的部分就是我有一個非常罕見的機會，擁有如此多的關注和那麼多人觀看我的內容。我希望我能有更多的經驗來建立企業。你知道，我才26歲，這是我的第一個真正的業務。每一個員工里程碑我們達到的都是我第一次達到的時刻，對吧？比如當我達到100名員工時，那是我第一次到達那裡。然後這是我第一次從100人增長到200、300，像是憑藉我現在所知道的，我本可以做得更快，顯然，這有點殘酷，因為像是擴大活動，從零到100比我的製作公司要容易得多，因為我之前經歷過磨難，學到了很多東西，而我隨著時間的推移變得更好。其實最煩人的部分就是無知，對吧？因為我所犯的很多錯誤，回過頭來看，我會想，哦，我應該在這裡更早引入更有經驗的人來幫助我。
    我這邊的過程稍微苛刻，因為如果我知道這些事情，我會走得更遠，但這就是你學習的方式，你必須犯一萬個錯誤，每位創始人都會這麼說。每位創始人都會提到未知的未知。確實是這樣，你知道。所以我最近的一個大重點就是試著找到那些成功擴展商業的人，將他們帶到我的組織裡，向他們學習，因為我真的很厭倦像是“哦，我應該知道得更好，但我不知道，因為我從未這麼做過”，所以我在找很多經歷過這一切的優秀人才，這樣他們就能在過程中指導我，讓我少犯錯，這很好。
    我們最近招募了新的高層。嗯，這總是一個困難的平衡，因為我過去試著不這樣做，我有一個問題，我會識別出某些問題，然後將擺動的鐘擺一側的調整過頭，而我就會這樣想：“不，我應該在中間停止”，我過去的過度糾正就像是企業化的人嘗試建立太多系統，殺死了創新。這就是為什麼我對那些擁有太多企業經驗的人持有反對態度，因為他們會摧毀所有的創造力。但是，你知道，我們為什麼會犯這麼多組織上的錯誤，因為我們沒有真正在這麼大的規模下建立過企業的人。因此，隨著時間的推移，現在我認為我們正在健康的中間，顯然我們的C-suite和領導人應該有很多管理這麼大規模人員的經驗，但找到合適的人來做到這一點，並以不壓制創造力的方式建立系統，而是實際上重視產品而非方便性。
    我曾經在英國的電視節目《龍穴》中出現過，我的東西規模相當小，只是你觀眾的一小部分。但即使如此，我對雇人仍感到有些恐懼，因為對我來說，很明顯任何和我共事的人都有巨大的動機去說我做錯了什麼。在我的第一個企業早期，發生的情況是記者會去詢問所有在那裡工作的人。
    好的
    他們問他他是什麼樣的人，你有同樣的問題。
    你有同樣的難題，任何人都有誘因對你有利。
    當他們離開時，各種不同的誘因向你發射箭矢。你怎麼處理這種情況？
    是的，我是說，你說得對，我現在有四五百個人。
    但我們過去也與數千人合作過，所以我認為這只是附帶的東西。
    但是到最後，你知道，只要我們所做的是道德和倫理的。
    就像你說的，他們會發射箭矢，但你知道，我只是解決問題的人。
    每當我看到隱喻中的箭矢時，我就會想，問題是什麼？如果我們做錯了，我們該怎麼解決？
    或者如果它根本不是一個問題，只是謠言。我是說，事情就是這樣，所以，
    是的，我認為這只是其中的一部分。嗯，我是說，這很糟糕而且不幸。
    但你也想，大多數人也不喜歡自己的工作。
    所以這並不是特定於我們的行業。
    像你知道的，隨便去問一百個隨機的美國人，從他們一生中工作的所有工作中，
    有多少工作是他們深深喜歡的，並且他們會沒有任何負面的評論？所以我認為這只是其中的一部分。
    你知道，嗯，對很多人來說，這幾乎就像一種消遣，喜歡貶低他們的舊工作或其他什麼。
    那麼這些批評曾經觸動過你嗎？哦，當然，沒錯。我是說，所有的批評，時時刻刻都會有。
    但問題是獨立於那些事情之外。這就像，
    我們平均每段影片有兩億的觀看次數，你知道的，大部分都是獨立觀眾，我們談的是兩個百分比以上。
    有時是三個百分比的在世人類觀看我發佈的每一段內容。
    根據頻道的表現，所以這意味著，我可以上傳一段影片，
    然後在365天後，你可以隨便隨機挑選全球的33位人類，特別是因為我們做的是鴿子。
    你知道，更瘋狂的是，我們的，你知道，YouTube在中國是無法訪問的。
    所以這是排除中國的情況下，兩到三個百分比的在世人類。
    嗯，或者中國的數據也算在內，但如果你只考慮排除中國的人，那會是三到四個百分比。
    嗯，但你可以隨便抓取全球的33個隨機人，其中一個平均會看到該影片，因為觀看次數實在是
    高得驚人。所以，是的，我的確面臨了很多批評，問題是，你知道，
    由於有些事情如此全球化，有時候，文化差異，每個人并不總是會觀看所有東西，所以每個人都有不同的看法，這就是為什麼
    如果你試圖讓人們開心，在我們的規模下會讓你感到瘋狂，因為即使99%的人
    都深感快樂，這也是令人難以置信的命中率。
    像如果你製作了一段內容，99%觀看它的人都會喜歡，那是很不可思議的。
    這種情況並不存在，但在我們的案例中，如果只有1%的人不高興，
    那就是兩百萬人，這比其他任何人獲得的影片觀看次數還要多。
    所以這會讓你感覺像一種無法克服的批評和反饋，並且很容易讓你的心智誤導你認為該死的，每個人都恨我，因為你只是著重於那1%的反對而忽略99%的支持。
    所以我來到了一個地步，你知道，我必須有自己的內部準則，像我認為我在做的事情是好的，我認為，你知道，是道德的倫理的，我相信我所做的，如果是這樣，去他媽的，我永遠也不可能讓每個人都開心。
    所以如果你讓網際網路的心情決定什麼是可以的，什麼是可以接受的，以及你什麼時候在做得好或做得不好，那麼你就沒有脊梁。
    你毫無立場可言，並且這將摧毀你的精神。
    嗯，我不知道我當時幾歲進入這種心態，但我只是這樣想，我要自己決定，不會讓網際網路來決定，
    什麼是可以的，什麼是不可以的，然後自從我達到那個時點後，你知道，
    人們批評我某些事情，而我就會說，我不同意。然後我可以輕鬆地去認為，
    哦，我不同意。永遠不會讓每個人開心。我相信我所做的是對的，然後
    就繼續前進。人類的思維並不是為此設計的，不，不，這是我學到的。
    所以做這個播客，結果還不錯，
    我感覺一開始每個人都喜歡我。
    是的，然后我越往後走，感覺就像每個人他媽的都恨我。
    對，因為你，從來做錯事，尤其是我可能看過
    符合我的識讀能力的評論或推特，或者我可能一生中曾經看過超過5000條
    信息或評論，告訴我去死。我的意思是，你知道，像這樣的話。
    那麼，什麼會驅使某人告訴你像留下評論，類似“你去死吧”這種話？
    你知道，我的意思。所以我同意，你我們並不應該接受來自世界上基本上任何人的這種反饋。
    你知道，我的意思，是，從一開始就這樣每天，持續將近十年。這些事情曾經真的影響到你嗎？哦，是的，當然。
    我的意思是一切都會時不時影響我，或者之前經常影響我。
    我想說，事實上，在我回想起來，那些時刻中，如果我是牆上小飛蟲，你會回想起來，它真的影響到你嗎？
    我的意思是，在早些時候，
    但我在能夠成功的自信心上並不如從前，你知道，當你
    大約20歲的時候，你在聘請這些人。
    你知道，我的風險承受能力很高，但我正在把我賺的每一分錢都再投資進去。我也在聘請我學校的朋友，還有我雇了我媽媽，像這些我非常關心的人都依賴我。然後，你知道，我上傳一段表現不佳的視頻，人們就會說。你知道，我把所有的時間和精力都投入進去，但也許視頻表現不如預期，然後一些人可能會解讀成懶惰，你讀到一條評論說，「哇，真懶惰」，像我本以為你做得很好，但這段視頻爛透了。然後你讀了這些，視頻表現不佳，你就會想，該死，我是不是太不謹慎了？我有時候真的會哭，因為我心裡想，「該死，我是不是在做錯了什麼？」或者是「他們不明白我在這裡投入了多少時間」，或者是「為什麼，為什麼？」有時你會想，「算法是不是討厭我，我是不是被壓制了？」在以前的時候，不知道上一次這種感覺是什麼時候了。
    嗯，可能是去年大約一個月的時間，我有感受到一點這樣的情緒，因為你知道，有時候謠言和爭議會隨之而來。但你必須要擺脫它，就像我說的，問自己我是否相信我正在做的事情。這很難，因為你知道，當我做一些好的事情時，人們總是會去想一些其他的動機。我一直都是直來直去地說，我希望生活在一個我能幫助別人的世界，這總比我不去幫助別人的世界要好。我不會編造一個瘋狂的故事來講述，怎麼有人在我年輕的時候幫過我，然後我想要回報，甚至哭泣。我只想說，我可以製作病毒式視頻，我認為，製作能幫助別人的病毒視頻的世界要比不這樣做的世界要好。你知道，我就是這樣的回答。
    嗯，但當人們嘗試這樣做的時候，這總是讓人感到糟糕。不知道為什麼，這有趣的是，你越是做好事，人們就越認為你其實是秘密裡的邪惡。為什麼我不能只是因為好玩而幫助別人呢？所以，有時候這些事情真的會讓我感到影響，然後我就會想，大家，你們根本不懂我。而且，有時候你會想，當我在非洲挖水井或幫助盲人看見，這些事情讓人感到不解，你會想到一些事情，讓你覺得自己就像希特勒一樣。這真是瘋狂，人們的評價方式，我只希望人們能理解：在我看來，幫助別人的世界比不幫助的世界更有趣。其實這根本沒有那麼深，「你周圍的人」這如何影響他們呢？唔，那些爭議對他們的影響有多大？老實說，就我而言，我認為影響不會那麼強烈，因為大多數事情都是我承擔的，人們想追著我，因為我是那個做好的，所謂的慈善家。所以通常我就是那個經常被推到風口浪尖的人。
    嗯，有趣的是，每一個認識你的人都知道你。不論那些是非常成功的人還是我和你一起工作的那些人，我跟他們談過，認識你的人都知道你是誰。對我來說，這非常了不起，因為你在世界上做了這麼多好事。我關注了你的慈善事業，我知道你在進行的「美味事務」和其道德採購。當我看到一個在世界上做了這麼多好事的人卻依然被誤解時，這幾乎讓我意識到我永遠不應該對抗這種情況。
    嗯，諷刺的是，我幫助別人的越多，我得到的批評就越多，老實說，這真是太有趣了。因為你知道，就在同一天，我會上傳一段視頻，幫助一千名盲人看見，而另外一位YouTuber則會上傳一段視頻，宣佈他們剛買了一座新豪宅。然後大家就會說，「對，去買豪宅吧！做得好！」然後又會有人說，「去你媽的，為什麼要讓盲人康復，吉米！去你媽的，你只是在利用他們！」而我只是想激勵人們去做好事，我是說，如果你真的想讓我買一座豪宅，那也沒問題。
    所以這很有趣，如果你試圖……這是一句奇怪的話，但如果你想說我其實不建議你去幫助別人，像我真的認為幫助別人會讓網絡上的人更不喜歡你，還不如你去買好車，走一條典型的網紅路。因為我們在美國被調教得太過習以為常，都把這看成是一種護盾，沒有人真的去做好事，因為他們只是覺得這樣很好玩。嗯，但我不在乎，我像我之前說的，這比我不去做更有趣。所以人們可以指責我去幫助別人，我不在乎，這對我來說已經不再困擾我了。嗯，但我不建議你進入這個行業，如果你想要被喜歡，因為我覺得這是負相關的。
    很有趣，真的令人著迷。天啊，真的，像我能夠，呃，我只需做這種例如「一美元對比」的視頻，將一個一美元的船與十億美元的船進行比較，還有其他所有事物，而不去幫助別人，我會收到的批評會少得多。這真的很有趣，因為當我發佈這個時，沒有人會特別在意，但當我為成千上萬的非洲人提供乾淨的飲用水時，所有的事情似乎都會失控。
    我只是想引起對某個事業的關注。我其實不是真的，但是問題是我會繼續這樣做，而我想在我的案例中，大多數人已經意識到我不會停止，所以他們就有點對我不再生氣，他們只是覺得「吉米就是吉米」。
    我認為當風吹起的時候，它幫助你真正理解你為什麼在做你所做的事情，也幫助你理解自己。因此，當我因為我採訪的人或其他原因而受到攻擊時，這實際上使我重新聚焦於我的原則。是的，因為你必須真正堅守這些原則。就像我說的，你必須知道你的底線在哪裡，只要你站在你的底線的正確一側，那就成了那樣，推特上的人可以隨便說什麼。
    我覺得在這種規模的狀況下，真正生存下來而不變瘋狂的唯一方法就是你必須確定底線在哪裡，而不要讓網路控制你。
    至於工作狂，嗯，你能否讓我回顧一下你最近七天的生活？給我畫一幅畫。
    哦，好的，讓我喝點水，因為我感冒了。
    嗯，我不太清楚過去七天的情況，但一般來說，我們正在拍攝一段影片，主題是我將造訪地球上五個最危險的地方。其中一個地方是在南非的野生動物園。因此，我飛到南非，花時間待在一個被獅子包圍的籠子裡，這內容太棒了。那真的很難到達，然後我感冒了，於是在那裡在醫院待了幾天，然後我們打算去蛇島，然後再去世界上最危險的道路，還有其他幾個地方，但這些都被推遲了。因此，我出院後去了佛羅里達州，與亞倫·賈奇拍攝，然後我去了…不，是北卡羅來納州。那裡有一個人，我為他建了一個健身房，我告訴他如果他在離開健身房之前減掉一百磅，我會給他一大筆錢。於是我跟他拍了影片，然後工作於接下來的影片，那真是很多，然後飛往佛羅里達，與亞倫·賈奇拍攝。飛到這裡，剛降落，跟你參加的《野獸競技》中參賽者的重聚拍攝。現在我們正在錄製這個播客。現在是凌晨1點，就快1點了。這是我做過的最晚的播客，我總是凌晨1點做我的播客。我的上一期播客大約是凌晨4點，幾週前的事。然後我們要飛往聖法蘭西斯科，與斯蒂芬·庫里拍攝。然後我想我會去蛇島，再去最危險的公路。然後我基本上不會回家大約16天，所以我會在路上旅行，錄製接下來16天的內容，然後… 是的，我想我回到家後，他們會讓我回到家中。
    那麼你生活中的其它一切是如何融入這些的，像是健身？我知道你一直在鍛煉。這過程真糟糕，過去幾個月來一團糟，老實說這讓我真的很痛苦。當你不旅行的時候，生活是如此簡單，你只需在自己的床上醒來，然後在辦公室工作十五個小時，這與我現在面對的所有這些無法適應的情況相比，簡直太簡單了。我不清楚自己身處的時區、不知道自己在哪裡，也不清楚兩天後要去哪裡。有時我11點才上床，有時卻是下午5點，簡直一團糟。以前我能忍受這些，並找出怎樣繼續訓練，但是實話是，我需要… 說真的，無論什麼是優先事項，最終都會完成。
    我只需要再次把它變成優先事項，因為我真的很想念這些。厄，真正困難的是要把《野獸競技》納入日程，因為我已經幾乎投入了每一個小時，而《野獸競技》作為一個龐大的項目，我還必須保持同樣的YouTube上傳計劃，然後我現在在Feastables上也做了很多，還有幾個其他的業務。所以，老實說，必須得有一些妥協，遺憾的是，犧牲掉的是鍛煉，但這真是太愚蠢了。
    所以我需要像重新優先考慮我的生活，讓我有機會，只需每週五天，每次四十五分鐘就足夠了，不需要太難。但更大的問題是，我只是無法像以前那樣好好睡覺，因為有太多事情要處理。所以當我在健身房裡努力訓練，卻又睡得不夠好時，這會導致隔天的極度疲勞。因此，我得先解決睡眠問題。但… 是的，老實說，我有很多事情在忙，我快要受不了。
    你現在感覺怎麼樣？
    嗯，老實說還好，我喝了很多咖啡。但是在這場感冒中，你知道，這讓一切變得更難。所以生活就像過山車，有些時候像現在這樣，我要以消極的方式來回答，但我不想讓某個人覺得這代表每次你問我的時候，都是這樣的狀態。因為感冒和缺乏睡眠，我目前有些在掙扎，只是很多磨難。
    有點高興，因為我們剛剛發布了《野獸競技》的結局，所以情緒上有點高，但在這之後我可能會崩潰，因為明天早上會累得要命，我真的很討厭。不過，我會說我現在處於較低的那一端，我需要幾天的好日子來提升我的精力。
    我想談談一件我們都需要認真對待的事情，就是網絡安全。無論你是第一次創業的創始人，面對第一次審計，還是經驗豐富的專業人士，保持合規顯得比以往任何時候都更重要且複雜。我必須說，這就是Vanta的用武之地，Vanta是這個播客的贊助商。Vanta消除了安全合規的痛苦，並自動化了證明你業務安全的繁瑣但必要的流程，涵蓋超過35個框架，如SOC 2和ISO 27001。它集中你的工作流程，可以更快地回答安全問題，速度高達五倍，並在不失去專注於增長的情況下保護你的業務。而這實際上是非常關鍵的一部分，一份新的IDC白皮書發現使用Vanta的公司每年節省超過535,000美元，並在短短三個月內就能讓它自己回本。在有限的一段時間內，我的社區可以在vanta.com/steven獲得1,000美元的折扣。那是vanta.com/steven，享受1,000美元的折扣。
    你對心理健康有什麼看法？我聽過你之前談論過你的心理健康。
    是的，我不太好。問題是，如果我的心理健康是優先事項，我不會像現在這樣成功。我是說，這是一個悲傷的事實。我明顯不會在一個荒島上讓自己活埋七天，七天孤獨七天，七天，等等。這就像是，你知道的，持續不舒服，以及能夠在長時間內持續忍受痛苦，這可以說是最深刻的狀態之一。沒有理由沒有人會做像我這樣的視頻，甚至不接近，因為沒有人想過我過的生活。我是說，有些月份，我記得有一年我大約飛行了200天，幾乎都在飛機上。我是說，這是一趟艱辛的旅程，但我為了完成這些視頻，我付出了所有。當我明天醒來時，我會感到非常疲憊，覺得不太好。我會告訴自己，現在的感受是為什麼沒有人想做你想做的事或做你所做的事。如果你能抗過去，這也是一個理由，為什麼沒有人能成為你。所以，我認為能夠在不快樂中堅持下去，年復一年持續做你不想做的事，跨越十年，這是最大的優勢。我是說，我認為我們將達到十億訂閱者，我不認為任何人會接近，因為一旦你賺到幾百萬美元，為什麼要過我現在的生活呢？為什麼不休個週末？為什麼不在當地拍攝，即使這意味著觀看次數會少點，這樣你可以保持正確的時間表？為什麼不優先考慮你的精神健康，這些東西都沒有意義，但這就是為什麼沒有人這麼做。
    你曾經和Colin和Samir談過，這兩個我最近認識的人。
    是的，他們很棒，是很棒的朋友。你對他們說過：“我經常感到痛苦，我每隔一周就會情緒崩潰”。
    是的，我知道，我已經稍微好了一些，情緒崩潰聽起來很極端，實際上是“為什麼我在做這個？這真的太難了。”因為這實在是太多事情了。你一直在忙碌。
    因為有趣的是，我想我幾年前就說過這句話，但那時候我所做的只是YouTube。現在我經營著巧克力公司，我們有這個節目還有其他一些事情。所以，我認為最困難的部分真的在於切換心態。我試著把這些事情歸類，例如如果我在片場，並且有15小時的拍攝日，理想情況下，我在拍攝之間做的事情應該與主頻道相關，因為我在那樣的心態中。這真的是幫助我不會覺得我的頭要炸掉。如果我在Feastables的辦公室，我們正在進行Feastables的行銷，那麼你進來然後問我：“你覺得這個對於即將到來的主頻道視頻怎麼樣？” 那麼我就必須轉換我的心態，這樣不斷的切換也會讓我頭痛。如果我 quá多人地跳來跳去，我就是覺得不對勁。我也不符合自己。我喜歡專注於某些事情，我發現，專注於一項業務內部的事務，例如在同一個業務中在行銷和產品之間切換，還是很簡單。這是一種冗長的說法，說明幫助我的一件事就是很好地組織我的日程，讓我能夠自然的心態專注於某一項業務，完成這件事，再移到下一個。以前的日子裡，我得在一天內進行30次的切換，這真的很痛苦，老實說，根本沒有趣。
    我聽說過，Elon Musk，我知道你經常提到的人。我也經常提到他。我聽到他在Joe Rogan的節目上說，“你不想待在我的腦海裡。”
    我想Joe Rogan問他是否快樂。
    他甚至不認為這個問題重要。
    那麼，有兩個問題：你認為一般人會想進入你的腦海裡嗎？第二，你快樂嗎？
    嗯，否，一般人不想生活我現在的生活或進入我的腦海裡。他們會感到痛苦，因為你一直在工作，他們可能會問自己，為什麼我一直在工作？為什麼我不去做其他任何事情？我是說，顯然我不是一個機器人，偶爾我也會感到“真想玩個策略桌遊，我想做這件事。”然後我看著行程表。
    抱歉，我無法滿足該請求。
    這就像是一個七天的機會窗口。我們本可以拍攝一段視頻並上傳，但現在我們不想這麼做。你知道，取消任何這樣的視頻從機會成本的角度來看，簡直是最糟糕的事情。而且這就像，你會有這樣的時刻，然後就會想，該死，這甚至都不有趣。真是受夠了。但是，YouTube整體來說又怎麼樣呢？我覺得YouTube就像是往火車裡丟煤。你一旦開始，就必須不斷丟進去，永遠無法停止。你就像是在一台機器上跑步，轉速開到最大。如果你想成為像我這樣的頂級創作者，這真的是一場比賽，看看誰能在跑步機上呆得最久。因為它永遠不會變慢，反而你讓它變得更快。
    不，我的意思是，我其實從來不會有真的想要辭職的時候。只是偶爾會想，果然稍微休息一下會很好。而且當你展望未來，看看那台跑步機，你能想像自己在接下來的兩、三、四十年裡都這樣做嗎？哦，當然可以。我根本不打算停止。我對這一切充滿熱愛。
    幾年前，有一件事進入了我的生活。你在聖誕期間宣布你求婚了。我記得是聖誕節或新年前夕？對，是在聖誕節，因為她的家人剛好在城裡。所以我求婚了。
    這在這一切瘋狂中怎麼適應呢？她真的，我想，地球上能成為我好伴侶的人數可以用手指頭數過來，她就是其中一個。她非常理解工作是我生活的動力，是讓我前進的動力，她支持我，並且理解這有多重要。與我未婚妻Tia相處是非常輕鬆的。我們玩同樣的視頻遊戲，看同樣的電視節目，對很多事情都非常感興趣。她喜歡學習，就像我一樣。所以，我覺得很興奮，看到她那天在線上聽的講座，或者她正在讀的奇怪書籍。與她在一起的一切都是如此輕鬆，這很好，因為顯然我在家裡的時間不多，所以我最需要的就是下班回家沒有摩擦。我們不會吵架。我有時會想，哇，這就像是我最好的朋友，而她又很漂亮。這真棒。這讓我感覺有點奇怪。
    有聽眾的朋友們，我想聽到有些人會問，你們通常是什麼時候共度時光？大部分是在晚上，但美好之處在於，她的日程總是圍繞著我的。因此她會在我工作的時候工作，然後她會和我一起旅行。老實說，很多時間是在飛機上，很多是在開車的時候，或者在睡前一小時，或者早晨那類事情。但由於拍攝現場會有一些休息的時間，因此就這樣，擁有這樣的時間真的很難找到一個既聰明又有自己的興趣和事情要獨立發展的人，而且還願意圍繞我的工作日程來調整自己的生活，而不是把這視為貶低的事情。因為如果她只是說，我有自己的事情，我必須優先考慮自己的生活，我就永遠不會見到她。但因為她願意圍繞我的生活和工作日程來調整她的生活，那對我來說就意義重大。而且，像我看過的那樣，有人願意這樣做的這種情況真的是很少見。
    父母總是發信息給我，說史蒂夫，等你有了孩子再說吧。哦，是的，這就是重點，我現在的生活方式根本不適合有孩子。所以我想要等，我想要孩子，但我想等到盡可能長的時間。因為如果我要有孩子，我必須成為一個出色的父親。我真的非常喜歡指導別人。我喜歡指導年輕企業家，幫助他們。我曾經告訴過這個故事，或許我在喬·羅根節目中講過。我幫助一位朋友，從每月4萬美元的收入增長到Youtube上的40萬美元。我經常做這樣的事情。我還有一個朋友，他有一個小吃品牌，我幫助他們的收入達到了八位數的收入。我只是出於興趣，每月打幾次電話給他。幫助別人成功的感覺是非常讓人滿足的。所以我很想有幾個孩子，並指導他們成為出色的人。但不是很快。如果我們有孩子，我會非常缺席。因此，我需要找到在那個維恩圖中的正確時間，讓我能夠真正參與到他們的生活中。
    你的商業帝國我認為比大多數人意識到的要更龐大。我想大多數人可能並不真正理解商業的背景，所以他們並不真正明白。他們可能把你視為一位YouTuber或創作者，但根據我所做的研究，你經營著一個非常非常大的企業。是的，我們每年有九位數的音樂節，我們可以這麼說。九位數的Feastable。所以，這個企業的價值可能達到幾十億美元。總體來說，你可以這麼說，是的，我不會讓你試著猜測。我知道你心裡有數，但我不會要你預測。但這個企業的價值肯定很高。你是億萬富翁嗎？理論上是的，但實際上我帳戶裡的錢不到一百萬美元。
    抱歉，我無法處理這段文字。
    你是在開玩笑吧？是的，超過一百萬，太瘋狂了。所以我們需要做的就是，我在心裡面要儘快達到每年十億美元的收入，同時確保是道德採購並獲利，這是一部分很重要的事情，我們必須在這過程中獲利。因為這樣我才能指著說，看，我們以道德的方式達到了規模，並且賺到錢。不是說你不能這樣做，而是你就是不想這樣做。然後，也許，我們給他們一些好處，或許他們真的不知道如何做到大規模，可能這會讓他們開眼界，然後他們會想，“哦，我想這是可行的”，然後開始改變方式，但更可能的是，他們不會這樣做，但隨著時間的推移，我希望我們能夠利用我的平台，把這一點曝光，讓大家看到模型是可行的。
    然後，我不知道從長遠來看我想做的事情，就像公平貿易的標誌，也許我會創造我自己的版本，幫助其他巧克力公司道德採購他們的可可，或者其他什麼的，我只是想教育人們，如果沒有這個標誌，可能就是在使用童工，還有一些方式，我可以在未來的十年裡使用我的牌局，把超過一百萬的孩子從可可農場的童工中解放出來。我只需要把這些點連接起來，找到正確的方式來做到這一點。
    這可能聽起來是一個很明顯的問題，但對每個人來說卻不是。你為什麼不在乎這麼多？兄弟，我只是，我去過這些農場，我不想在小孩子的背上發財，我覺得這實在是太明顯了。也許對於巧克力行業的其他人來說，他們不在乎，但我第一次聽到這件事時就想，為什麼？為什麼這會是個問題？
    這讓我想起了埃隆·馬斯克以及他在特斯拉的使命。他知道如果他能證明可以有快速、優雅的電動車，那麼行業其他人就會放棄他們不可能做到的藉口。確實如此。但是，如果有人出現，對你說，“好的，吉米，我們願意出五十億購買Feastables，”你會怎麼辦？絕對不會，我不會賣這個東西。你絕對不會賣掉它。因為他們第一件要做的事情就是提高利潤率，他們只會放棄道德採購。有些人提出要購買你的YouTube頻道。
    嗯，是的，我曾經被報價十億美元或者其他瘋狂數字的金額，但我覺得有趣的是，扎克那位聞名的十億美元Facebook的報價時，他說什麼來著？他當時是說，為什麼我要賣掉這個社交媒體平台？我可以拿到錢然後開始一個新的，而我其實喜歡我現在這個。所以我為什麼不繼續保留它呢？而我每次收到這樣的提議，雖然我已經有一段時間沒有收到過了，但你知道的，過去我曾經開玩笑地探詢，看看人們會給我什麼報價，然後我會得到那些報價，我總是會說，對，我會繼續做我現在做的事情，所以也不如就繼續做我現在的事情，錢不會改變任何東西。
    做得好。我不認為你還沒有得到應得的讚譽，因為你為Feastables所付出的努力。不過，我覺得這真的很重要。我知道你並不是為了獲得榮譽而做這一切。我知道你是想讓這個訊息傳遞出去，好讓行業改變，但我認為像你這樣的人，有這樣平台的人，能生產出超級好吃的巧克力。大約六個月前他們寄給我一盒，我考慮更新一下。是的，如果你把幾塊巧克力遞給我，這裡有很多東西，問題是如果你從遠處看這些，你看不出味道的差別，這個是海鹽黑巧克力，這個只是黑巧克力。所以我正在更新包裝，我們會把顏色尖端放在這裡，這樣從遠處你就能知道味道，我覺得這很重要。還有另一件事情，我最近在嘗試，新的模型看起來不錯，想在袋子前面寫上“每一口都有助於讓孩子們脫離童工”，然後我們在嘗試不同的機器。我覺得包裝上巧克力的圖片可以高品質一些，背面的看起來還不錯。我想你知道，想在包裝背面放更多的信息，有很多地方需要改進，像這些白色尖端，從遠處看這個味道實在太明顯了，而這些的顏色相融，因此是的，這實在不能這樣。必須修正。
    你提到過你的朋友打電話給你，請求你的商業建議，以及你如何幫助他們提升他們的生意，但看著你挑剔自己的商業，讓我想到有很多企業家在看我們的節目，他們可能還在自己的事業初期，而他們中的許多人都會面對失敗。你會經歷很多失敗。我當初剛開始做巧克力的時候，我們原始的巧克力棒真的是薄得可憐，太搞笑了。
    有一個原因，為什麼巧克力棒上會有這些可以輕易折斷的分隔點。我不知道這點，所以我的巧克力是一整片的。但是，那樣幾乎就像一塊玻璃，當你把它掉下來時，會碎成很多小塊。而且，我也不知道有一種叫做包裝工程師的職業。所以你能給我一盒這種巧克力嗎？當你打開我原本的巧克力盒時，放在架子上，顯然問題就解決了。但如果這個盒子放在架子上，當你拿到這個巧克力的時候，其他巧克力會全部滑向前面，然後掉出盒子。或者盒子會因為重量掉下來，因為底部的平衡不正確。而這裡的邊緣，這本來不是這樣的。以前這些都是開放式的，只有底部的一個邊緣。所以它們會這樣掉出來。再者，因為我們沒有自然的折斷點，這些棒會像玻璃一樣碎裂。誰注意到了這點，嗯，是我，問題是我在 Feastables 的這個舊團隊裡，我跟他們說，當我進到沃爾瑪時，我看到太多的巧克力棒破損了。他們告訴我，啊，你太過於擔心這個了，這並不是什麼大問題，這是每個人都會發生的事。我到了一個地步，這真的讓我很生氣，因為我很討厭從地上撿起一根巧克力棒，或者看到架子上那些破碎的巧克力棒，我付錢讓人們把 GoPro 放在一些，像是，撲克袋裡朝向那些巧克力棒，因為我試圖去讓沃爾瑪給我監控攝像頭的畫面，但他們不肯，所以我在一些隨機的沃爾瑪裡裝了隱藏的 GoPro，只是想看到為什麼這些巧克力棒會這麼容易斷裂。有很多鏡頭顯示，有個媽媽在拿巧克力棒，她 literalmente 就這樣看著它，然後你就會看到盒子直接掉下去，她去抓，然後它們就掉出了架子，然後她就把它拿起來，你知道有些棒子會破損，而這種情況會不斷重複，因為我們沒有正確設計盒子，他們並沒有做錯任何事情。你知道你剛才說的讓 GoPro 看起來是多麼不尋常嗎？是的，人們告訴我我瘋了，很多人試圖告訴我這是非法的。我跟他們說，兄弟，我不在乎。我只想知道我的巧克力棒為什麼會斷裂，全部的情報都在畫面中。哦，所以我做了很多數據分析，實際上有一家公司叫做 Costa，你可以付錢讓人進入沃爾瑪。因此我開始每週支付讓某人進入美國的每一家沃爾瑪，去買所有破損的巧克力棒，修復盒子。這是相當昂貴的，我想，這就是十萬美元，僅僅是讓某人進入每一個沃爾瑪去清理它們，每一根二十八美元，五千個沃爾瑪就是，嗯，對，所以我花了很多錢進入沃爾瑪去清理那些破損的巧克力棒，我每周花十萬美元單單是支付給這些人，然後我還在買所有這些破損的巧克力棒，因為我真的不希望人們進入沃爾瑪並買到一根破損的巧克力棒。這真的是最糟的，你知道，消費者的體驗。而且，然後我學會了包裝工程師是什麼，我心想，天啊，這是你的全職工作，讓我的盒子不掉下來。你到底在哪裡？不過，我剛才提到的細節的執著，對比一般的YouTuber和他們的電子商務品牌，這完全是非典型的。他們根本不會在乎。是的，我可能花了數千個小時在這個產品上著迷。我是說，我知道這聽起來不覺得，因為這只是巧克力，但這是從倫理來源到每個小細節的問題。我從不半心半意，你不也是經常開車去很多沃爾瑪嗎？噢，總是。這是我每天的工作。哦，真該去逛逛沃爾瑪。我們甚至都沒有去。啊，他有點忙，他有點事。對，我最喜歡的事就是有時我會在沃爾瑪待一整晚，只是在掃描產品和查看每日的銷售速度。這就像，嗯，我在DC中途停留，我住在北卡羅來納州。然後我想到，等等，我可以租一輛車然後在回家的路上停下來去30個沃爾瑪，然後就開車回家。所以我這樣做了，從DC開車回北卡，visit了整個美國東海岸的每一個沃爾瑪，只是為了查看巧克力通道，看看所有的統計數據和這些東西。我之前問你是否有鬧矛盾。真希望我們可以去沃爾瑪，你知道那有多有趣嗎？我會很樂意教育你關於巧克力的事情。哦，還有一個月還會開放嗎？呃，不，沒有。好吧，我們可以改天再做。其實我通常的做法是敲門，他們就會讓我進去。當然可以。是的，但你剛才說的這些，我覺得我抓住了一些要點，因為我認識的99.99999%的企業家，有的只是做一件事，運營他們的業務，對細節不太在意。而你卻有一個很好的機會可以做一個亞馬遜的秀，這看起來像是有史以來的最高成就，或者什麼的。而你擁有這麼大的頻道。
    您有您的慈善事業
    您擁有這些東西——在 TikTok 上擁有一億個追隨者，這裡有一千億個追隨者，數字簡直是不可思議，您還在開車去 31 家沃爾瑪檢查您的巧克力是否破碎
    是啊
    嗯，我到那裡如果不在貨架上，我會去後面掃描一下，幫助員工
    那這算是區別嗎？
    嗯，您就是得了解所有的狀況。我是說，這一切都是基礎原則。如果像我
    我討厭當我的行業裡有人告訴我一些我不同意的事情，但我又太無知無法挑戰他們，因為那樣就像是，我算什麼呢？
    我想我只能信任他們的話
    但大多數人傾向於選擇最簡單的路徑或遵從現狀
    如果我想帶來真正的創新並改變行業
    那我就得深入了解每一個方面，所以說到最後，您知道
    貨架就是人們購買的地方。因此，我必須深入了解在接觸消費者的每個環節中發生的事情
    您知道它怎麼去那裡，怎麼在配送中心儲存，然後到零售商，再到貨架上，它看起來是什麼樣子？
    那是什麼樣的體驗等等，因為這些小事累積起來。您不會覺得您整個人生都在努力提高別人的標準以符合您的標準嗎？因為您不活在一個有 Mr. Beast 的世界裡
    嗯，這就是我過去的想法，幾次提到的只是內容
    但我意識到這是我所做的一切，我只是想在這方面做到最好
    這聽起來很奇怪，因為您只看這塊巧克力，然後會想，誰在乎呢？
    但這就是我在過去兩年中真正享受的事情
    我在這方面深入探討的程度與我對 YouTube 一樣有趣
    我意思是，這是非常難的，非常困難，尤其是在道德採購方面，我最近在西非待了一周
    我一路從豆子走到巧克力塊，進行了整個 QC 供應鏈的工作
    這不僅和我的 YouTube 頻道一樣困難
    但它同樣也很有趣，這對我來說是一次重大的啟發，因為我從來沒有想到我會像享受我的 YouTube 頻道那樣喜歡這件事情
    而這就是我早先所說的
    我逐漸意識到我非常享受創建企業和解決困難的複雜問題
    儘管我知道這只是巧克力
    但我從道德採購的角度獲得了複雜的體驗
    在日常生活中，您知道，這很有趣，有關於 Beast Games 的事情，還有其他所有正在發生的事情
    您的主要頻道
    我想，您可能依然將它視為某種程度上的寶貝，它是母艦，因為它是一切的來源
    它使我們能做所有事情，就像大多數人購買這個並不是因為 Beast Games
    您有沒有在觀看次數下降時感到偏執？
    截至目前為止，觀看次數還沒有下降，14 年來每年都在上升
    但您是否仍然會觀看視頻上線並查看後台數據？
    不，我不會。我的意思是，
    我們…我不知道我只是上傳一個視頻，然後第二天
    我查看留存率和點擊率，如果我們做錯了，我就…
    我們所做的是事後報告。我讓我公司裡最聰明的人…嗯
    好吧，就像我們實際上剛剛做的，我希望我有我的平板在我身上
    但我支付了這位先生，讓他做一個非常深入的分析，比如這裡是留存率圖
    這是每當有人點擊離開的時間。這是最平坦的時間。這是最差的地方
    您知道，我們會這樣做，所以如果我上傳了一個 20 分鐘的視頻
    我們會拿上一次的 10 個 20 分鐘視頻來對比，您知道
    最近 10 個 20 分鐘視頻的中位留存率是 10 分鐘和
    六或 55 秒的中位數。所以如果這個新視頻的留存率是 11 分鐘或以上
    我們就做得很好
    如果低於這個，那麼我們就做得不及平均水平等等。他只是做了一個大型簡報
    通常在我們上傳後兩周，我會和我所有的頂級人員一起查看，然後我們會說：我們錯過了什麼？我們做得好什麼？好的，繼續
    最近有沒有過一個時刻讓您覺得
    我想我需要重新花更多的時間在這上面，再回去一下
    因為總是會有，但很多這源於不安
    我的意思是，事情是，當然我們最近有一個視頻，每分鐘都會有人被淘汰，而它的表現並不好
    嗯，您知道，我們的片頭有些重複，稍微有些陰暗
    我們把 Beast Games 的失敗者帶回來參加一個主要頻道的視頻
    但問題是，有些人以為那是 Beast Games，然後說，哦，我已經看過了
    好吧，這裡有很多新手錯誤，對我來說很容易感到不安，然後像是說，該死，這就是為什麼我需要深入參與
    但前幾天我想到，這並不是說我在所有決策中都是完美的
    所以只要人們在犯錯時能從中學習
    我有一句話我經常告訴人們，就像每當我們的新創意失誤時
    我會看著 Tyler，告訴他，Tyler，您在糟糕的決策上讓我損失了幾千萬美元
    這不會是您第一次因為錯誤讓我們損失一百萬，只要您能從中學習，那就沒問題。
    嗯，所以這些事後報告的重要性在於，只要我們在犯錯時能清楚表達原因，並確保不會再犯，那麼這就是過程的一部分。不過是的，如果同樣的事情一次又一次發生，我就會覺得「該有人介入了」。但我的團隊真的很棒，他們不會重蹈覆轍。
    告訴我關於實驗和測試的事，因為人們視你為測試和實驗的真正王者。這對於你所做的一切成功有多重要？非常重要！這就是問題所在，每個「每分鐘」的影片都會有失敗的機會，尤其是當你做一些全新的東西時。就像我們之前的一個比較大的失敗，做了一個10分鐘的影片，標題是「這個房間將會爆炸」，我們建造了一座巨型塔，讓一個人從塔頂開始，按下按鈕，結果影片的表現並不理想，人們似乎不太喜歡，因為過於複雜等等。因此，你必須小心，因為我希望創造一種文化，人們能夠舒適地進行實驗、嘗試，並接受失敗。
    所以，當那段影片失敗，或者每分鐘有一個人被淘汰時，我不會大喊大叫或找人責備，我只是會問「我們做錯了什麼？」好了，這裡是所有的事實，確保不會再發生一次。第一次的失敗就讓我損失了一大筆錢，沒關係。我將這視為對你們的投資，讓我們從中學習。我本來要說，如果沒有這樣的文化，人們就會一直重複製作相同的影片，很多YouTuber都僅僅是生產相同的格式。我對我的團隊失敗是可以接受的，只要我們真誠地努力過，不管影片的評價是10分還是10分。
    只要我們失敗的原因是我們做了錯誤的決策，而不是因為我們懶惰或是沒有投入努力，這樣就可以了。只要是經過謹慎考量後的決定，實驗或嘗試了什麼，而結果卻不如預期，我都沒問題。我們可以這樣做一天，他們也知道我不會對他們大喊大叫，當他們真的犯錯時。
    我在這家公司投資了超過一百萬英鎊，而Perfected也是本播客的一個贊助商。我轉而使用抹茶作為我的主要能量來源，這就是Perfected的作用。他們有抹茶粉、抹茶飲料及膠囊，這些都幫助我在非常漫長的錄音日中保持專注，無論發生什麼情況，而他們的團隊對質量非常執著，所以他們從日本採購儀式級的抹茶。
    所以當人們對我說不喜歡抹茶的味道時，我猜他們可能還沒有嘗試過Perfected的抹茶。與低品質的抹茶那種苦澀的草味不同，Perfected的抹茶口感順滑，自然帶甜，你可能已經是Perfected的顧客了，只要你在像Blank Street或者Joe and the Juice這樣的地方購買你的抹茶。現在，你也可以在家自己製作。所以試試看，看看你是否仍然不喜歡抹茶。
    所以我這樣做，如果你今天嘗試的話，我會讓你享受我們的抹茶40%的折扣。前往perfected.com，在結帳時使用代碼diary 40。或者如果你在超市，你可以在Tesco、Holland and Barrett或者在荷蘭的Albert Heijn買到它。你們在美國的朋友們，可以在Amazon上購買。正如你們知道的，Whoop是我的幾個節目贊助商之一，這也是我投資的公司之一，這是你們常問我的一個問題。
    我被問到的最大問題就是我為什麼會選擇Whoop而不是其他可穿戴科技選項。原因有很多，但我認為最被忽視而實際上至關重要的特徵是它的非侵入性。當生活中的一切似乎都在競爭我的注意力時，我會轉向Whoop，因為它沒有螢幕，而且我們的CEO在這個播客中告訴我，沒有螢幕的原因是因為螢幕代表著分心。
    所以當我在開會或在健身房時，我的Whoop不會要求我去注意它。它就在背景中不斷收集數據和從我身體中提取的見解，隨時為我準備好。如果你一直在考慮加入Whoop，你可以前往join.whoop.com/ceo，試用Whoop 30天，完全無風險，沒有任何承諾。就是join.whoop.com/ceo。讓我知道你的進展如何。你剛剛結束了今天的比賽節目，我認為是史上最大的比賽節目。嗯，這確實是史上最大的，但我認為你取得了50個吉尼斯紀錄。
    你擁有歷史上最大的拍攝場景，最多的世界紀錄，最大的抓捕薯條，最多的獲勝者、最多的參賽者、最多的攝影機，是的，而我們知道的吉尼斯世界紀錄有50個。這還不包括其他很多，對吧？你在舞台上說的話我覺得很有趣，你說「我有點悲傷」。是啊，我知道，因為每個星期四，我都期待看到互聯網對《野獸遊戲》的反應，現在我下週四醒來，卻不能看到人們的想法，結束了。他們形容這種情況在奧運會上叫做金牌抑鬱，真的嗎？是的，他們說，我可能會錯誤引用這些數字，但70%的人即使在奧運會上贏得金牌後，也會經歷抑鬱，因為他們失去了原本給他們指引的北星。
    是的，我並不是說我真的悲傷，就只是有點玩笑地說悲傷，但沒關係，我還有太多事情要處理。
    我根本沒有時間去思考這種事情，而你們又已經開始下一個了。呃，對，所以我們…… 好吧，亞馬遜，讓我們快點把第二季記錄下來。來吧，簽個合同。我其實無法討論這個，但這是我在電視上看到的最不可思議的事。我和傑克在早期就談過，這是我在電視上看到的最不可思議的事。我想我前幾天在電話上對你說過，我看的時候心裡明白，除非再拍一部，否則我永遠不會看到如此規模和陣容的作品。是啊，沒有人想做那樣的事情，因為真的很難，兄弟，拍攝那樣的場景。而且，原因是許多實境電視看起來不那麼真實，呃，我們顯然可以做得更好，我們會在未來的版本中做到，但實際上人們看不到的是，為了讓千台攝影機在錄影，我們打破了世界紀錄，創下了最多攝影機電纜的里程，像這樣。而我們需要花費數百萬美元在儲存上，控制室也需要數百萬美元，還有數以千萬計的編輯硬體，並且需要讓Adobe來定制改變Adobe軟件，以便能夠實際使用那麼多的多攝影機。實際上，能夠做到這點的基礎設施是極其困難的。嗯，這就是通常他們會這麼做的原因，他們會說，好的，這是一小時，像如果你正在拍攝一個實境秀，這裡有一小時的時間窗口，你知道的，他們會派故事製片人，會給你裝上攝像機，他們會說，嘿，你能說這句話嗎？你有點是我們的反派，這是我們在找的。他們會告訴你該怎麼說，然後記下來，並且幫編輯整理好資料，而我們就像是‘去你媽的，我們要拍攝，你知道的，24/7，所有這些攝像機，你們就做你們自己就好，我們會捕捉下來，因為你不知道什麼時候會有人做出奇怪的事情。你不知道什麼時候會有人低聲對某個人耳語，所以你真的要不斷錄影，並且需要合適的角度。因此你需要多個A攝影機和B攝影機以及各種覆蓋，這會產生龐大的鏡頭量，但這就是為什麼我們能夠在拍攝這些遊戲時保持最大的競爭優勢之一，因為我們投入了努力來建立所有這些基礎設施。我們才能真正捕捉到場景的真實，而不是必須依賴故事製片人工於在人的嘴裡放話。但這真的是一場噩夢，兄弟。我有超過150個編輯在編輯，我們要處理難以想像的巨量鏡頭和一切，而我們的電腦網絡和我們當地的IT經常崩潰，因為那裡存儲了太多的鏡頭，如果我把所有的「大野狼」遊戲的素材發給一個編輯，那可能會需要大約30萬美元的硬碟。如果你有150個編輯，那實在是不可能完成的。所以你花幾百萬美元，搭建了一個中央伺服器室。我們有自己的伺服器架一切，然後讓他們遠程進入。但即便如此，僅由於作品的巨大量，Adobe和其他所有東西不斷崩潰，真的，後端是一場噩夢。但這很棒，因為這就是為什麼我們能夠講述實際發生的事情。為什麼感覺不同，因為我們不斷地24/7錄影。當我在看時，我在想亞馬遜是否意識到，你們就會這樣把錢送出去。就像當你翻轉硬幣的時候，它又增加了500萬元，但這對他們沒有影響。我在拍這個節目時損失了一大筆錢，這都是我自己的口袋出資，因為真的，我們為此花費了太多的錢。我在那個節目上損失了數千萬美元。是的，我真是個白癡，因為報導出來的標題是亞馬遜給「大野狼」1億美元去做這個節目，所以我想，好的，我在做計算，我在想，好的，那他花了2000多萬用於獎金，我們贈送了，所以還剩8000萬，我想，所以第一集我們花了超過1500萬美元來建那些塔，全部這樣建造，那是歷史上建造的最多的塔。最多的液壓壓縮機或其他什麼。我是說，那個場景真的是瘋狂，兄弟。我們不得不建造一千個高10英尺的塔。安全測試所有的塔，確保它們實際能運作。我們幾乎必須將所有的電纜硬接並建造我們自己的軟體來讓人們可以掉落。我們還必須架起所有的螢幕。我是說，那簡直可以說是歷史上建造的最大的場景之一。那只是第一集，而那只是場景的建造。那還不包括你說的，我們給出了超過2000萬美元，我想第一集就有超過200萬，然後第二集我們有整個城市，那是1400萬美元場景的建造，真的很龐大，因為那是一個他們居住的實際城市。嗯，然後我可以，但光是那2200萬加上這兩個場景，我的意思是那已經超過5000萬美元了。整個成本是多少？這我已經被建議不透露，因為人們會聽到一個大數字，就會想，哦，那我可以搞一個不錯的架子，如果我有那麼多錢。但問題是，他們無法這樣做，因為金錢不是一切，建造和管理這一切是你知道的，無數困難，但超過1億嗎？是的，當然。
    當然可以，我剛告訴你我們花了五千萬，而我們只拍了兩集。
    那你還有多少開支，是幾千萬？是的，這不是一個好的財務決策來製作《和平遊戲》。我虧了錢。如果我不這麼做，我會有更多的錢。你有任何後悔嗎？沒有，沒有，這很好。
    對我來說，第一季就是要做到最好。你知道，我不能讓YouTube社群失望，因為那樣創作者在串流平台上的聲譽不好。你知道，我在第一年平均每支影片有兩億的觀看次數。我跟這些串流平台談話，他們會說，“是的，我們過去被創作者傷過。”我說，“兄弟，我不是那種跳舞的抖音創作者。我有一間製作公司，我常常製作大型活動，但即使是這樣，這些串流平台也不把我放在心上。”所以我想，“該死，如果我失敗了，一切就結束了。”永遠不會有任何串流平台再碰YouTuber了。
    所以我的主要目標就是確保這部作品成功，現在機會正在打開。我收到許多創作者的來電，他們說，“哦，是的，這些串流平台之前不願意跟我談，現在他們來了。”我曾經努力試著與他們會面，他們會說“不”。現在他們卻求著想要與我會面，我已經知道有兩位創作者簽了合約，僅僅因為《和平遊戲》的成功，接下來可能會有數億的資金湧入創作者的口袋。
    在《爛番茄》上，這可不是容易取悅的評價。你得到了90%的粉絲認可，這在《爛番茄》上是相當罕見的。我知道，但我聽說根據小道消息，它有望成為亞馬遜歷史上最大的節目之一。
    是的，問題是我必須等他們發佈新聞稿。所以好吧，對，我只是在談這件事。我告訴他我會乖乖的，不會洩漏訊息。
    所以，對於一個“所謂”的YouTuber來說，是的，他們確實發佈了，這是他們有史以來第一名的非劇本節目。是的，我想他們不會介意我這樣說。這個節目非常常青，通常這類節目會受到很多關注然後逐漸減弱，但我們的每天都有超過70萬的新獨立觀眾在觀看，這相當瘋狂，因為如果我們能維持這個數字，將會打破一些相當驚人的紀錄。
    那麼，現在它已經完成，對你繼續推廣它的好處是什麼呢？因為我付出了所有的努力，我想看到它。是的，我現在所做的推廣並沒有獲得報酬。
    真的，但我的意思是，我想好的方面是第一季做得越好，第二季、第三季、第四季等獲得的金額就越多。
    如果十年後我和你坐在一起，吉米，是的，一切如我所計劃的進行。
    呃，你36歲，我已經知道你會問什麼。是的，我討厭這種問題，因為如果你在五年前問我，我絕對不會提到任何關於Feastables或我現在所做的事情。所以誠實的回答是我不知道。我的意思是，我希望到時候我在YouTube上有20億的訂閱者，你知道，《和平遊戲》比我們所想的還要大。希望Feastables到那時候能讓超過一百萬的孩子擺脫童工。你知道，我可能會有另外兩三個我非常熱衷的業務，希望能蒸蒸日上。
    是的，我只是，我不知道，個人來說也許到時候我會有一個孩子。我不知道，時間會告訴我們。等到我覺得我有足夠的時間去當一個好爸爸，但我甚至不知道，兄弟。我不會去想我的私生活，我只會想著贏，然後我找到了一些我喜歡的照片。
    哦，好吧，天啊，這是我還是我哥哥？這個也是。你從哪裡得到這些？
    呃，網路上。這些在網路上，這些照片是我從來沒有見過的非常經典的照片。真的嗎？是的，我不認得那張照片裡的任何東西。不，我只是想像我在哪個房子裡？我可能是在軍事基地，因為當我們年輕的時候，我的父母都在軍中，他們旅行得很頻繁，所以這可能只是某個隨便的房子。
    有趣的是，我確實認得那張背景裡的照片。我相信你曾經看到過。我覺得那是在她的浴室旁邊的走廊上。我好久沒有去我媽媽那裡了。
    嗯，有趣，你為孩子們做了這麼多，但如果你能對那個孩子耳語一些有關比特幣的事情，會是什麼呢？那時候不是兩分錢嗎？不，因為如果你給我一個麥克風讓我跟他講話，我不會說任何事情，因為問題是我擔心這會改變我成為的樣子。我很清楚，儘管我知道之前我聽起來可能有些沮喪，因為事情很難，但我對我現在的狀況感到滿意，我擔心這會改變。
    你知道，這肯定是一個非常困惑的孩子，感覺自己不融入，像個怪胎。這個年輕的孩子，我不知道他在想什麼，但這個孩子大概就是我覺得“該死，我真的是個怪胎，我和誰都不合拍”的年紀。
    為什麼沒有人想要創業和成功？
    但我認為經歷這段旅程非常重要，這讓我對許多事情更加堅定。因此，如果我不能說比特幣，我可能什麼也不會說。那塔哈呢？
    是的，我對我媽媽說。
    我覺得有趣的是，這是我媽媽的兩張不同照片。
    你可以看到我媽媽的這個版本。我想我沒有什麼可以說的會改變她的想法，因為她在軍隊服役，他們會把秩序和系統灌輸到你的腦海裡，而這很可能是我們失去一切的那段時間，她的生活正處於低谷。
    我不認為有什麼我可以說的能夠讓她相信她那個瘋狂的兒子正在走上正確的道路。
    你可以看到這裡的區別，她在這張照片裡微笑。這是我給她十萬美元的時候，那是我們成功後的事，在她最終說「好吧，我會信任你」之後的整個對話。
    這兩張照片之間的那段12到13年是非常艱難的旅程。
    特別是當我停止上學，成績全是零的時候，我想她那時候覺得我的人生完蛋了。我浪費了18年的生命，你知道嗎？
    所以我認為沒有什麼我可以說的能夠改變這一切。
    如果有的話，我只會讓她心臟病發作。
    她現在知道你對她的感覺嗎？哦，當然。
    是的，你會，嗯，她非常開心，像是
    嗯，我們現在的狀態非常好。我愛我媽媽。顯然，如果沒有她，我不會在這裡。
    你知道的，我的意思是，如果她不努力工作，做多份工作，做她所做的所有事情，把我帶到今天的地步。即使是那些小事，比如，她有時會給我20到30美元，我就用那筆錢去買
    一些東西，來幫助製作視頻或什麼的。
    甚至只是因為我們有互聯網，你知道嗎？我的意思是，這些現在看起來很基本，但在那時並不常見。
    以前接到電話時，你會想，家裡的互聯網，我不知道會不會出錯。
    所以像這樣，你知道的，嗯，這並不是最好的情況，但她給了我成功所需的所有工具，並不是故意的，但她現在一定很震驚。
    嗯，她現在已經習慣了，但在我崛起時，這真的很
    嗯，想像一下她的感受。當我16歲時，她無法負擔給我買車。
    她無法負擔我們的那輛小型貨車，那真是一堆爛貨，急需修理。她無法負擔，前面冒著煙。
    但她是一片混亂，然後她回到家，我卻在那裡
    我在製作YouTube視頻。數學作業無所謂，媽媽，你知道的，她那時候每年賺40,000美元。
    我記得那時我們年輕時沒有太多討論財務。
    但我記得我得到了一個40,000美元的品牌合作，然後她告訴我她每年賺的就是這個數字。
    我當時心想，哇，我以為你每年賺的比40,000美元多。
    然後我想，為什麼你要工作呢？我現在從品牌合作中每個視頻都能賺這麼多。
    所以，嗯，是的，
    真是一位驚人的女性。我知道她從
    她曾經經歷的一切到現在，她只需要幸福。我試著不讓她壓力過大。
    她已經經歷了足夠的壓力；她的工作讓她不得不做她想做的事情。
    但像定期鍛煉、進行身體健康檢查和
    開始補充維他命之類的，因為我不打算很快要孩子。
    但是顯然當我有孩子時，我真的希望她能參與其中，並且需要能夠和他們玩等等。
    所以我對她說，你知道，壓力會要了你的命，你不能有壓力。
    你需要遵循所有這些健康方案。
    你必須這樣，因為你知道，當我有孩子的時候，你可能已經70歲了。
    你需要能夠活動，這意味著當他們大約14或15歲時，你可能已經80歲了。
    所以，拜託，現在你所做的事情將代表著你在我孩子生活中能夠多活躍。
    這樣，我們以輕鬆的方式進行對話。她現在非常重視自己的健康，為了未來。
    你是一個似乎沒有太多恐懼的人，但這似乎是我們共同面對的恐懼之一。
    對，沒錯。我希望她永遠不會死。我媽媽會永遠活著，我們會好的，布萊恩·約翰遜。
    我們在這個播客上有一個傳統，最後一位嘉賓會為下一位嘉賓留下問題，卻不知道他們將把問題留給誰。好的
    我先問你問題，還是你先問我問題？好吧
    你寧願在身體健康還是精神健康的情況下去世？
    身體健康還是精神健康？
    哦，我假設如果我選擇身體，那麼心理上就會像是癡呆症。不過，我覺得這很難。身體健康還是心理健康？
    我的意思是，如果你失去了思想，那你是什麼？老實說，我會選擇心理健康。
    阿門。是的，吉米，謝謝你。我現在要寫我的問題了。你要。其實我有話想對你說。我必須給你很多的讚揚，因為
    像我們這樣的人，我們的團隊從你那裡偷了很多東西。
    我們偷了你的原則和心態，這使我們成為更好的創作者。
    這讓我們得以過上我們喜歡的生活，做我們最熱愛的事情。
    這背後總是有代價。
    我認為不同和怪異的存在有其積極的一面，但也有非常非常大的成本，並且你在年輕時支付這個成本最為明顯。你必須融入這個體系，而你並不能選擇你交往的人和其他事情。可是，正如你所說，當我們長大成人後，我們都會為那些獨角獸、那些怪異的人鼓掌，我們從他們那裡竊取靈感，渴望成為他們，並向他們學習。
    在我跟你談的這短短一周時間裡，你讓我的思維完全開啟。我得以見識到《獸類遊戲》的幕後過程，坐在沙發上時，我還記得自己坐的位置，那一刻我的思維徹底爆炸了。你使我意識到，作為一個自認為相當有抱負的人，我其實限制了自己。我想要感謝你，因為你不僅僅是為我做這件事，而是同時為數以千萬、上億的人們做著同樣的事情。你給予他們的是一條路線圖，也是一個藍圖，以及心態和信念，讓他們知道他們也不必過上學校或體系告訴他們必須在盒子裡生活的生活。
    所以，真的非常感謝你，因為我們需要更多像你這樣的人，而我則是你最忠實的粉絲。謝謝你，我真的非常感激你。謝謝。好吧，讓我們看看能否再深入一些。
    你真有趣。世界上最成功、最迷人和最具洞察力的人都曾在這張桌子前與我交談。每次交談結束時，我都會請他們在《CEO的日記》中留下問題。這是一個旨在激發最重要對話的問題，這種對話能改變你的生活。我們接著將那些問題放在這些卡片上，每張卡片上都有提出問題的人、他們提出的問題，而在另一面，如果你掃描那個條形碼，你可以看到下一個回答的人。
    我知道很多人都想知道的東西，而唯一的方式就是購買一些對話卡，你可以在家裡與朋友和家人、在工作中與同事，以及在假期中與陌生人一起使用。我將在下面的描述中放上對話卡的鏈接，你可以在 thediary.com 上購買屬於你的卡片。

    Inside the mind of MrBeast: from 0 to 363 million subscribers, broke to billions, and then millions lost, MrBeast reveals the reality of running YouTube’s biggest channel

    MrBeast is the world’s most successful YouTuber, media personality and businessman. He is also the host of Beast Games, the largest reality competition show where 1,000 people compete for the biggest cash prize in entertainment history: $10 million.

    In this conversation, MrBeast and Steven discuss topics such as, how MrBeast lost 10s of millions of dollars, why he has considered quitting YouTube, how the average person would be miserable in his head, and what it was really like for MrBeast growing up. 

    00:00 Intro

    02:42 What Made MrBeast the Way He Is?

    05:26 The Influence of MrBeast’s Parents

    10:05 How Was MrBeast Doing at 10 Years Old?

    10:24 Why Did MrBeast Want to Do YouTube?

    15:05 Jimmy’s Illness

    18:15 Is MrBeast Neurodivergent?

    18:56 Core Components That Made MrBeast Successful

    20:26 MrBeast’s Handbook

    21:31 Extreme Ambition

    24:16 Characteristics Needed to Be Successful

    25:34 [Missing Title]

    27:04 The Single Worst Trait in an Employee

    28:48 Do You Get Frustrated When People Can’t Match Your Obsession?

    29:41 MrBeast’s Thoughts on Hiring

    32:56 Dealing With Negativity

    37:28 Has Negativity Ever Gotten to MrBeast?

    43:33 Workaholism

    47:04 How Is MrBeast Feeling Right Now?

    47:36 Ads

    48:45 MrBeast’s Mental Health

    52:06 Is MrBeast Happy?

    55:32 Has MrBeast Ever Wanted to Stop YouTube?

    58:01 MrBeast’s Love Life

    1:00:28 Will MrBeast Have Kids?

    1:01:23 How Big Are MrBeast’s Businesses?

    1:02:49 When Is Enough, Enough?

    1:03:44 Does MrBeast Struggle With Focus?

    1:04:29 MrBeast and Ethical Sourcing for Feastables

    1:08:20 Why Does MrBeast Care So Much?

    1:08:41 Would MrBeast Sell Feastables or His YouTube Channel?

    1:11:14 MrBeast’s Advice and Focus on Details

    1:13:28 Obsession With Details

    1:17:17 Constantly Fighting to Raise Standards

    1:18:26 Does MrBeast Worry About Views?

    1:21:05 How Experimentation Helps MrBeast

    1:22:37 Ads

    1:24:36 Beast Games

    1:28:34 Giving Away So Much Money

    1:31:48 How Successful Was Beast Games?

    1:32:55 Where Will MrBeast Be in 10 Years?

    1:34:43 What Would MrBeast Say to His Younger Self?

    1:35:45 What Would MrBeast Have Told His Mom When Younger?

    1:39:50 The Guest’s Last Question

    Follow MrBeast: 

    Instagram – https://bit.ly/3Qob9dx 

    MrBeast YouTube – https://bit.ly/3D9YaZU

    Beast Philanthropy – https://bit.ly/3D6HJxt  

    Beast Games – https://amzn.to/3EJJ26a

    Watch the episodes on Youtube – https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACEpisodes 

    My new book! ‘The 33 Laws Of Business & Life’ is out now – https://g2ul0.app.link/DOACBook 

    You can purchase the The Diary Of A CEO Conversation Cards: Second Edition, here: https://g2ul0.app.link/f31dsUttKKb 

    Follow me:

    https://g2ul0.app.link/gnGqL4IsKKb

    Sponsors:

    Vanta – https://vanta.com/steven

    PerfectTed – https://www.perfectted.com with code DIARY40 for 40% off

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    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Building a Mass Market Robot

    Building a Mass Market Robot
    Building a Mass Market Robot
    AI transcript
    0:00:06 [MUSIC]
    0:00:07 Pushkin.
    0:00:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]
    0:00:14 As a general matter, I’m a fan of technological progress.
    0:00:19 But I’ll admit that humanoid robots kind of creep me out for
    0:00:23 obvious, normy, uncanny valley type reasons.
    0:00:29 And yet, there is an exchange that you’ll hear near the end of today’s show
    0:00:33 that’s the most compelling argument I’ve ever heard for humanoid robots.
    0:00:36 And it’s not just an intellectual argument.
    0:00:39 It’s an emotional argument, if that’s a phrase.
    0:00:44 It’s really a very human argument for humanoid robots.
    0:00:50 [MUSIC]
    0:00:52 I’m Jacob Goldstein, and this is What’s Your Problem,
    0:00:56 the show where I talk to people who are trying to make technological progress.
    0:00:59 My guest today is Jeff Cardenas.
    0:01:02 He’s the co-founder and CEO of Aptronic.
    0:01:04 Jeff’s problem is this.
    0:01:10 Can you make a safe, reliable humanoid robot for less than $50,000?
    0:01:15 We started our conversation talking about the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
    0:01:19 DARPA, of course, is the government agency that helped to create the internet and
    0:01:23 that gave a big push to early self-driving cars, among other things.
    0:01:27 And Jeff says, the agency’s Robotics Challenge, which happened a decade ago,
    0:01:32 happened in 2015, played a key role in launching a bunch of the companies
    0:01:34 that are now working on humanoid robots.
    0:01:41 >> The DARPA Robotics Challenge was a challenge that was created in the wake
    0:01:43 of the Fukushima disaster.
    0:01:48 Fukushima happened and there was a meltdown in the nuclear reactors.
    0:01:51 And it was unsafe for people to go in.
    0:01:56 And essentially what happened was they needed a robot to go in to sort of
    0:01:59 prevent a broader catastrophe.
    0:02:02 And as they went out to the robotics community,
    0:02:09 the idea was calling all roboticists, we need a robot to go in and to help out here.
    0:02:13 And there was no robots that could do all the different tasks that were required
    0:02:15 to actually get to the meltdown reactors.
    0:02:19 So you had to go down steps, you had to open doors, you had to do a whole range of
    0:02:24 things and in the wake of that, basically what DARPA said was,
    0:02:28 certainly there’s got to be the technology to enable us to have much more
    0:02:32 versatile robots for natural disaster relief.
    0:02:34 So this never happens again.
    0:02:38 So out of that, DARPA created something called the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
    0:02:42 And so there’s a variety of teams around the world that were put together
    0:02:47 to build these general purpose robots.
    0:02:51 And the team that we came out of was the NASA Johnson Space Center team
    0:02:54 working on a robot called Valkyrie.
    0:02:59 >> So I want to go back to this moment when the DARPA Challenge ends,
    0:03:05 there’s this big final contest and what we have from it is not some incredible
    0:03:09 breakthrough, but a blooper reel of robots, what are they doing?
    0:03:12 Falling down stairs or driving cars into walls or something?
    0:03:19 >> Pretty much, I mean, the blooper reels make it seem worse than it was.
    0:03:24 But yeah, we had, basically the realization was the technology’s not there.
    0:03:29 It’s going to take time to continue to mature till it can get to the point where
    0:03:31 it’s actually commercially viable.
    0:03:34 >> And so it’s interesting, it’s super interesting, right,
    0:03:39 that this moment is not the beginning of some humanoid robot winter,
    0:03:43 but rather the beginning of this humanoid robot industry.
    0:03:46 How does that work, how do people, whatever, start companies and
    0:03:49 get money out of this seemingly disappointing moment?
    0:03:55 >> Well, I think it actually was a winter, when we started and
    0:03:59 the company was incorporated in 2015 and we started in 2016.
    0:04:04 And for the most part, nobody wanted to talk about humanoids and
    0:04:06 nobody was really paying attention to it.
    0:04:10 There was a handful of folks that I sort of think of as the true believers
    0:04:15 that were really working on this problem and thought, we don’t care how long
    0:04:18 this is going to take, we’re just going to keep working on this no matter what.
    0:04:24 And but for the most part, the entire robotics industry was very anti-humanoids
    0:04:26 coming out of the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
    0:04:30 And in fact, there was many people that were saying they’ll never be viable.
    0:04:32 Like, why would you ever use a humanoid robot?
    0:04:36 They’re too complicated, they’re way too expensive, and
    0:04:38 you’ll always use a simpler robot.
    0:04:41 So actually, most of the people that we met when we decided to start
    0:04:46 Eptronic were doubters, and we’re saying, humanoids will never make sense.
    0:04:50 We’ll use these special purpose robots, maybe in 50 years,
    0:04:52 humanoids will make sense, but not for a long time.
    0:04:58 >> I mean, special purpose robots is a pretty compelling case, right?
    0:05:03 Like, whatever, we all have dishwashing robots and
    0:05:05 clothes cleaning robots in our houses.
    0:05:09 And wheels seem way easier than legs for lots of things.
    0:05:13 And obviously, there have been robot arms for, what, I don’t know,
    0:05:15 70 years now or something.
    0:05:18 So robots, in a way, are all around us.
    0:05:21 Why would you build a machine that looks like a dude when that’s wildly hard, right?
    0:05:26 >> Yeah, I mean, I was naive coming out of graduate school.
    0:05:28 And to me, it seemed obvious.
    0:05:32 And the way I used to think about it was you could either have thousands of robots
    0:05:35 that do one thing, or you could build one robot that could do thousands of
    0:05:37 different things.
    0:05:40 And when I would talk about this with Nick, my co-founder,
    0:05:45 Nick would say, look, you can either invest all of this engineering and
    0:05:47 each of these sort of narrow solutions.
    0:05:52 Or yes, a humanoid robot, a viable humanoid robot, could take you years.
    0:05:53 It could take you a decade.
    0:05:57 But once you invest all this time in this single platform,
    0:06:01 then you can reap the benefits of that across, you can spread.
    0:06:06 The research of that across many different applications.
    0:06:11 >> I mean, is there not a middle case where there’s some core kind of
    0:06:16 functionality that you develop that works across many different types of robots?
    0:06:20 Is that a less straw manny version of the non-humanoid robot kind of argument?
    0:06:23 >> I think there could be, but I came into robotics and
    0:06:27 basically just saw a lot of challenges with the business models.
    0:06:30 So you build this special purpose robot.
    0:06:33 You custom program the robot in the industrial space.
    0:06:39 You can spend six times the price of the robot on just systems integration.
    0:06:41 And the robot just does one thing.
    0:06:44 So this idea that you could have a much more versatile robot, to me,
    0:06:45 seemed obvious.
    0:06:47 Like if robotics is going to scale,
    0:06:50 we have to have much more versatile robots than we’ve had in the past.
    0:06:55 So if you sort of think of that as the premise is we need more versatile robots.
    0:06:57 Then the question is, well, how do you get there?
    0:06:59 And what does versatility mean?
    0:07:04 And that’s where it led me to the humanoid making a lot of sense.
    0:07:07 Because if you have to modify the environment for
    0:07:12 every new task that the robot can do, you run into the same problem that we had
    0:07:14 in sort of classical robotics.
    0:07:18 But if the robot can retrofit into the environment such that you don’t have to
    0:07:23 change or modify the environment for every new task that the robot can do,
    0:07:27 then it seemed to me that this would maybe be the key unlock for
    0:07:29 robotics to actually scale to the masses.
    0:07:32 The demand would be infinite if you had a thing that was the size and
    0:07:35 shape of a person with arms and legs.
    0:07:39 Like scale would be off the charts and presumably that’s what drives costs down.
    0:07:42 And that’s like the good flywheel, right?
    0:07:43 Yeah, exactly.
    0:07:47 So okay, so you had this big idea about humanoid robots and you started a company.
    0:07:50 But at the moment you started the humanoid robot company,
    0:07:54 the prevailing sentiment was like deeply skeptical.
    0:07:54 What happened?
    0:07:55 What did you do?
    0:07:57 Well, a handful of us kept working on it.
    0:08:00 So I didn’t know any better.
    0:08:02 Sometimes it’s better that you don’t know any better.
    0:08:07 I thought humanoids were really cool and I thought that it just seemed,
    0:08:12 it made sense to me that how are we gonna get to millions of robots that are
    0:08:16 working and with and around humans in all these environments?
    0:08:19 And to me, this seemed like the only way that that was gonna happen.
    0:08:24 And the way I looked at it was even if we failed, this was a worthy pursuit.
    0:08:27 And I would be proud that I tried to do it.
    0:08:31 And so the way that we did it was we bootstrapped the company.
    0:08:35 There was no investors that were willing to invest in humanoid robots at
    0:08:39 the time that we got started, especially for hardware,
    0:08:42 which we can talk about that as we move forward.
    0:08:45 And so we bootstrapped the company.
    0:08:49 And we basically got paid to build robots for a lot of different folks.
    0:08:54 And for the first five years of the company, we just built the company on revenue.
    0:08:58 We would get project after project and somehow never died.
    0:09:01 >> Like what kind of jobs were you taking at that time?
    0:09:02 What’s an example?
    0:09:04 >> Well, our first contract was with NASA.
    0:09:07 So we had a contract with NASA to build Valkyrie II,
    0:09:10 to take the lessons learned from the DARPA challenge and
    0:09:12 build the next iteration of Valkyrie.
    0:09:16 We were really kind of pioneering new ways of building these systems.
    0:09:20 So US Special Forces ended up coming to us about a year in and
    0:09:23 said, hey, we wanna do Ironman suits.
    0:09:27 And our view was this was kind of a humanoid robot that you wear.
    0:09:28 We worked in automotive.
    0:09:30 We helped build humanoid robots for
    0:09:37 a couple major companies that are still working on these things today.
    0:09:40 And we would help sort of pioneer new ways of building their platforms.
    0:09:44 So we’ve done 15 unique robots since we got started.
    0:09:46 And we’re now on a ninth iteration of humanoid.
    0:09:49 And I’ve only raised money in the last couple of years.
    0:09:57 >> So where did the idea to build a robot for $50,000 come from?
    0:10:03 >> The idea of where to build a robot for $50,000 was what will it take for
    0:10:06 these robots to be economic and reach mass market?
    0:10:13 So when we got started, sort of my view was what will
    0:10:16 a truly viable commercial humanoid look like?
    0:10:20 And what would the bomb cost need to be for this to make sense?
    0:10:24 And if you sort of just do that bottoms up about $50,000 for
    0:10:27 the robot, you’re in the money for mass market.
    0:10:32 You can still do some tasks in a very economic way at even 100,000 or
    0:10:36 150,000, but 50,000 was the goal.
    0:10:39 This has now been blown by by some of the new entrepreneurs that are coming out
    0:10:42 that are talking about sub $20,000.
    0:10:48 But it never made sense to me that robots were as expensive as they were at the time.
    0:10:51 If you look at a humanoid compared to a car,
    0:10:55 there’s about 4% the raw material by weight.
    0:10:59 So in one of our robots, there’s about $300 of raw aluminum,
    0:11:02 which is the base metal of the system.
    0:11:09 And so it never made sense to me that these robots would need to be any more
    0:11:11 than $50,000 as you could reach scale.
    0:11:14 And as you could start to think about new ways of building them and
    0:11:16 similar ways that we build other machines.
    0:11:21 >> So you decide you want to build a $50,000 robot.
    0:11:24 Like, what do you actually do to do that?
    0:11:31 How do you go from having an idea of building a $50,000 robot to having a $50,000 robot?
    0:11:34 >> Well, you iterate until you solve any problem.
    0:11:37 So what we would do is basically we would get a project or
    0:11:40 a contract to build a robot.
    0:11:47 And we would put a lot of different ideas into those designs.
    0:11:49 And in early days, it was all about performance.
    0:11:53 How can you get the robot to just do these tasks, to stand, and
    0:11:55 have a battery life that’s long enough.
    0:12:01 And then as we kept evolving, we started to really focus on cost in addition,
    0:12:05 and scalability, and assemblability, and robustness.
    0:12:09 And the key building block to drive cost and performance is the actuator.
    0:12:12 So I mentioned we’ve done nine iterations of humanoids, but
    0:12:15 we’ve done 60 iterations of electric actuators.
    0:12:19 >> Actuators are basically the thing that makes the robot move, right?
    0:12:20 >> Yeah, the muscles of a robot.
    0:12:23 >> So where are you now?
    0:12:24 Tell me about Apollo.
    0:12:27 >> Yeah, we’re now at an exciting point.
    0:12:30 We have about 170 employees at Aptronic.
    0:12:33 We are piloting these robots right now.
    0:12:38 So I think the entire industry is still in the pilot stage overall.
    0:12:40 There’s some commercial orders that are happening, but
    0:12:42 still early days for humanoids.
    0:12:47 We’re working with a handful of really great partners, folks like Mercedes and
    0:12:49 GXO.
    0:12:54 And we’re getting the robots out into the real world, and it’s pretty big ways.
    0:12:57 So we’ll have more announcements over this year.
    0:12:59 We have a big partnership with Google DeepMind,
    0:13:02 which is something that I always dreamed of coming out of graduate school.
    0:13:06 We had a lot of respect for the folks at Google, and
    0:13:10 they have a whole history and legacy in the humanoid space as well.
    0:13:15 And basically right now, we’re getting these robots out into the world and
    0:13:22 gearing up for real commercialization, which we expect to happen in 2026.
    0:13:24 >> What’s the robot look like?
    0:13:27 >> The robot kind of looks like a superhero, maybe.
    0:13:31 This has been kind of the idea that we’ve had from the beginning.
    0:13:33 It’s got two eyes and a face.
    0:13:39 It’s five foot eight, weighs 160 pounds, has four hour swappable batteries.
    0:13:44 Yeah, it’s got a screen on its chest and a face, and that’s about it.
    0:13:51 >> Two arms, two legs, what’s it have in the way of hands?
    0:13:53 >> So it has hands, it has five-fingered hands.
    0:13:57 There’s these debates that I think of as false debates in the humanoid space.
    0:14:01 So a lot of people, when they sort of knock humanoids and
    0:14:03 the viability of humanoids, it usually has to do with,
    0:14:06 do they need legs and do they need hands?
    0:14:08 And the answer to that question for me is no, they don’t.
    0:14:10 It’s a robot, and robots are modular.
    0:14:14 So we can put Apollo on any mobility base, we can put it on wheels,
    0:14:20 we can put it on tracks, we could stationary mount the upper torso of Apollo.
    0:14:23 And the same thing’s true for the hands or the grippers.
    0:14:27 We can use parallel grippers, or we can use five-fingered hands.
    0:14:29 >> Hands are like a whole thing, right?
    0:14:33 Like hands are, is it partly because they’re so hard?
    0:14:35 Like what’s going on with robots and hands?
    0:14:37 >> It turns out hands are a whole thing.
    0:14:41 This is another one of those things that, it’s almost better that you don’t
    0:14:45 understand the complexity before you get into it or else you might not
    0:14:47 have done it in the first place.
    0:14:53 98% of all tasks that humans do are done with our hands.
    0:14:59 So there are narrow things that humanoids can do without more dexterity.
    0:15:03 But it’s very limited relative to the whole sort of,
    0:15:05 all the different types of tasks that humans do.
    0:15:08 Most of the things we do involve our hands.
    0:15:12 And certainly in the industrial space, most of the work is done with hands.
    0:15:17 So solving the end effector or the hand problem is a big deal.
    0:15:19 There’s a lot of different debates about what you need and
    0:15:22 how you get something that can actually perform industrial work.
    0:15:27 We’ve chosen the five-finger hand route and
    0:15:32 we’re working across the space to really make some big advancements there overall.
    0:15:37 >> It’s part of the trade off like I could build whatever two,
    0:15:38 what do you call them, prongs?
    0:15:41 Like if you had two fingers basically, like a claw?
    0:15:43 Like you could do a lot of things with a claw.
    0:15:47 Presumably it would be way easier, but you couldn’t do everything.
    0:15:49 Is it kind of like what are you optimizing for and
    0:15:52 sort of how much payoff now versus how much payoff later?
    0:15:54 >> Yeah, I think that’s exactly right.
    0:16:00 It’s versatility compared to robustness and
    0:16:04 cost basically, how much complexity do you want to have on the system?
    0:16:09 And for these robots to be really viable in the long run, especially in the industrial space,
    0:16:13 they got to be able to operate two shifts a day minimum,
    0:16:16 really 22 hours a day, seven days a week.
    0:16:18 But solving that problem in a hand, so
    0:16:23 just getting the performance of the hand first, but then the robustness for
    0:16:26 them to do that type of work is the next piece and
    0:16:28 that’s a trade off of performance and complexity and cost.
    0:16:31 >> Cuz like it gets delicate, right?
    0:16:37 Presumably the fingers, so to speak, would be fragile, right?
    0:16:37 >> Yeah, they can break.
    0:16:39 >> Easy to break, yeah.
    0:16:41 >> Yeah, yeah, and you got to maintain it and
    0:16:44 you got to support those systems and fix them out in the field.
    0:16:46 And so what’s the trade off there?
    0:16:50 And that’s a whole trade space that we’ve been working on over a long time.
    0:16:53 So we’ve been talking about hardware.
    0:16:57 Let’s talk about the software side, what’s happening with that?
    0:17:00 >> A lot’s happening on that side.
    0:17:06 I think we’re really an exciting point for robotics overall.
    0:17:09 Think of the AI as really the last piece of the puzzle.
    0:17:16 So we’ve had the ability to build complex robots for a relatively long time.
    0:17:20 We’re just now really figuring out how to take the lessons from automotive and
    0:17:25 consumer electronics and build much more economic systems.
    0:17:28 And we’ve had some advancements in things like motors and batteries and
    0:17:32 compute and sensors that have all sort of built up to this moment.
    0:17:37 But the final piece of the puzzle was the AI and the intelligence.
    0:17:39 And essentially the way to think about it, and
    0:17:43 I think Jensen does a great job of explaining this, but the advance.
    0:17:45 >> Jensen Wong from NVIDIA.
    0:17:46 >> Yeah, that’s right.
    0:17:51 I feel like Jensen is not quite the Elon level of one name, household name.
    0:17:53 But sorry, go on, he’s getting there.
    0:17:55 >> Yeah, he should be.
    0:17:58 >> He should be, he should be.
    0:18:02 >> Basically the advancements in generative AI turn out to apply very well
    0:18:06 to robotics and particularly to humanoid robotics.
    0:18:08 So you can basically map human movement and
    0:18:13 trajectories from humans doing things and build big data sets and
    0:18:17 use that to train robots to do similar tasks in similar environments.
    0:18:22 And these transformer architectures that we’re using in generative AI
    0:18:24 actually apply very well to robotics.
    0:18:28 And so this has been a big sort of breakthrough moment for robotics.
    0:18:31 And so I think as an industry as a whole,
    0:18:35 everybody’s really excited right now because we’re reaching new heights and
    0:18:40 we’re able to do things that we dreamed about doing with robots only even a few
    0:18:44 years ago are now possible and we’re seeing a really rapid advancement in
    0:18:45 performance overall.
    0:18:49 >> What’s an example of a thing that you could only dream of a few years ago
    0:18:51 that robots can do now?
    0:18:53 >> I think it’s more dexterity and versatility.
    0:18:55 So just the range of things that you can do.
    0:19:00 So the challenge for robotics was that each new task,
    0:19:04 even if you build something like a humanoid robot, and this is true for us.
    0:19:09 And say you build an application to pick boxes off of a palette and
    0:19:12 place those boxes onto a conveyor.
    0:19:15 Well, you hand build that application and
    0:19:18 maybe takes you 18 months to sort of wring that out and
    0:19:21 get it to a certain amount of robustness.
    0:19:25 Well, now you want to do the reverse of that and pick off of a conveyor and
    0:19:27 palletize something.
    0:19:31 That will take you the same amount of time that it took you to build the initial
    0:19:32 application.
    0:19:35 >> You have to basically have to write a whole other piece of software.
    0:19:38 You have to start from scratch almost, yeah.
    0:19:39 >> Yeah, exactly.
    0:19:45 And so basically what is happening now is that we now have these much more
    0:19:50 sort of general models that where you can collect a lot of data at the top layer.
    0:19:54 And so each new task that you want to perform actually takes less and
    0:19:57 less incremental amount of work.
    0:20:00 So what is opening up now is more dexterous applications.
    0:20:04 [MUSIC]
    0:20:05 >> Still to come on the show,
    0:20:08 how Jeff’s grandparents inspired his work on robots.
    0:20:17 [MUSIC]
    0:20:22 So you were talking about using the transformer model that has been the
    0:20:27 breakthrough that has driven large language models in training robots,
    0:20:29 essentially.
    0:20:33 I mean, of course, a key sort of serendipitous thing that happened with
    0:20:39 language models was there is this crazy large data set of words and
    0:20:40 pictures, which is the internet.
    0:20:45 And there’s not an analogous data set for the physical world, right?
    0:20:45 >> Yeah.
    0:20:49 >> It seems like that is, is that the rate limiting step?
    0:20:54 Is that the big problem in sort of AI for robots?
    0:20:57 >> Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of work that’s still happening at the research
    0:21:02 level for how can you pull that kind of data from videos.
    0:21:06 So you can think of big data sets of humans doing things that can be really
    0:21:09 interesting to train robots in the future.
    0:21:10 >> Interesting.
    0:21:12 >> And that will come into play over time.
    0:21:17 But yeah, it’s the chicken or the egg problem and data is one of the key
    0:21:21 things that we need to enable the next wave of breakthroughs.
    0:21:26 And this is kind of the race is can you get robots out into the real world,
    0:21:32 into the field and collecting data at very high, in very high volumes.
    0:21:35 Whoever does that will have better models.
    0:21:37 This is the data flywheel.
    0:21:40 So this is kind of the race that’s on right now where you hear a lot of
    0:21:45 other humanoid CEOs talking about getting a lot of robots out into the world.
    0:21:48 Largely, those are going to be under tele-operation, collecting data and
    0:21:52 then training and building these models of the future.
    0:21:57 >> So it’s like whoever gets there first will win just because that’ll be the
    0:21:58 accelerant.
    0:22:02 Like once you have robots out in the world and you’re collecting data,
    0:22:05 then you’re immediately getting ahead of whoever has fewer robots out in the world
    0:22:07 because they’re collecting less data.
    0:22:07 >> Yeah.
    0:22:11 >> So tell me about tele-operation.
    0:22:16 >> Tele-operation is basically just remotely controlling the robot.
    0:22:18 So you’re taking over the robot.
    0:22:22 You can see through the robot’s eyes with the VR headset and
    0:22:27 then you’re controlling the robot’s arms and hands to do a particular task.
    0:22:29 It’s like a video game and you’re controlling a robot.
    0:22:33 It’s a simple idea.
    0:22:35 There’s a couple of reasons it’s important.
    0:22:38 The first thing is that it tells you what the robot’s physically capable of doing.
    0:22:44 So if I’m completely controlling the robot and I can’t do a task under tele-operation,
    0:22:46 then that means the robot’s not physically capable of doing it.
    0:22:51 So it’d be very difficult for an AI control system to control the robot to do that.
    0:22:56 So this is how we understand the physical capabilities of the robot.
    0:23:01 As these new models have come along, the simple idea is that if you can tele-operate
    0:23:06 the robot to do a task, then you should be able to automate that task on the other end.
    0:23:10 So if you can collect enough data under tele-operation,
    0:23:16 then you can automate it by running it through these similar architectures that we talked about.
    0:23:22 >> So it’s the basic idea that you use remote control to drive the robot to do a thing,
    0:23:26 whatever, a thousand times, some number of times.
    0:23:28 In doing that, you’re training the robot.
    0:23:31 You’re training the software, training the AI.
    0:23:32 >> Yeah, that’s exactly right.
    0:23:35 >> What’s an example of a thing that you’ve done that way,
    0:23:39 and how many times did you have to remote control it before the robot could do it?
    0:23:41 >> So each is picking is a good example,
    0:23:44 or you’re taking objects and you’re putting them into a box.
    0:23:47 To do that in a simple context,
    0:23:52 thousands of demonstrations is what you need.
    0:23:55 We think of this as generally hours.
    0:24:00 So how many hours of data collection have we done?
    0:24:04 And thousands of iterations can get you to,
    0:24:06 let’s say 80 percent of human rate.
    0:24:10 If you want to get to 95 percent or better of human rate,
    0:24:12 then you need more and more data.
    0:24:14 But it’s in the thousands, it’s not millions.
    0:24:18 >> Yeah, thousands makes it seem totally tractable.
    0:24:22 >> Yeah, I was actually surprised by how well these models work,
    0:24:26 and actually how little data they need to get relatively good performance.
    0:24:30 You’re seeing a lot of demonstrations of this out there today.
    0:24:33 >> Presumably, that’ll get better and better.
    0:24:37 As the software side of AI gets better and better,
    0:24:39 it’ll learn faster essentially.
    0:24:40 The other obvious thing,
    0:24:43 but I’m just going to say it is once you have done it once,
    0:24:45 then it works for every robot.
    0:24:48 Then you can make a million robots and they all know how to do the thing.
    0:24:49 >> Yeah, that’s exactly right.
    0:24:52 One of the interesting things about these models is actually
    0:24:56 the diversity of data is almost more important than task-specific data.
    0:24:59 So we want to go wide across a range of tasks.
    0:25:00 >> Interesting.
    0:25:03 >> Then you’re basically building all these skills into the robot,
    0:25:07 and then it becomes better at doing any one particular task.
    0:25:09 >> It really is like learning.
    0:25:12 It really is human-esque.
    0:25:13 >> Yeah, that’s right.
    0:25:17 >> So I know you’re in a few pilot projects with Mercedes and with,
    0:25:20 what is it, GXO, Big Logistics Company.
    0:25:23 When do you want to start selling robots for real?
    0:25:24 When do you think that might happen?
    0:25:26 >> 2026.
    0:25:27 >> Okay.
    0:25:27 >> Yeah.
    0:25:30 >> Suddenly that’s next year, almost now.
    0:25:34 >> Years of long time and these are dog years.
    0:25:38 It’s a long time in this space.
    0:25:43 >> 2026 could be almost two years for now.
    0:25:47 Who are you going to sell robots to and how much are you going to charge?
    0:25:48 What are they going to do?
    0:25:52 >> So initially in manufacturing and logistics,
    0:25:54 so folks like Mercedes and GXO,
    0:25:59 these are the initial customers of these systems.
    0:26:02 We are not announcing pricing yet,
    0:26:08 but you can think of it as take what it costs to do these tasks today,
    0:26:12 and with some discount to what it costs to do these tasks today.
    0:26:15 We have a RAS model that we use.
    0:26:18 >> Robot as a service?
    0:26:20 >> Yeah, robot as a service model,
    0:26:25 where you’re paying the robot basically by the hour
    0:26:27 effectively to do a particular task,
    0:26:31 and that’s at a discount to what it costs to do that task today.
    0:26:34 >> How far are you from the $50,000 robot?
    0:26:39 >> We’re not there yet, so not very far.
    0:26:41 So we have the architecture to be able to do this.
    0:26:45 So getting the cost down on these robots is a two-step process.
    0:26:49 So first step is new architectures.
    0:26:52 So if you still require this very high precision in the system,
    0:26:56 and you’re using bespoke components that are only used for robotics,
    0:26:59 these robots will still be expensive.
    0:27:01 The challenge of humanoid robots is they have
    0:27:03 a lot more motors than traditional robots.
    0:27:06 So a traditional robot has six or seven motors,
    0:27:10 a humanoid robot has 30 to 40 plus.
    0:27:14 >> Okay, so that means it’s expensive or you got to figure out how to
    0:27:16 get cheaper actuators.
    0:27:17 >> Yeah, so we’re there. So for us,
    0:27:23 that was a $500 actuator and we have a $500 actuator now today.
    0:27:25 So once you solve that problem,
    0:27:27 and once you solve the architecture problem,
    0:27:29 now it’s about scale and manufacturing.
    0:27:31 So a lot of where we spend,
    0:27:35 a lot of where the cost is driven at low volumes,
    0:27:37 is in just the structures of the robot,
    0:27:38 where we’re seeing and seeing,
    0:27:42 we’re milling at a big blocks of metal,
    0:27:45 parts and very small quantities.
    0:27:50 But there’s other techniques that are much more cost-effective,
    0:27:53 like casting or stamping,
    0:27:56 and these will allow these robots to be much cheaper.
    0:27:59 As I mentioned, look at automotive and look at the scale of automotive.
    0:28:01 There’s 4 percent the raw material by
    0:28:05 weight in a humanoid robot as compared to a car.
    0:28:09 So once you solve the architecture problem such that you can
    0:28:13 build a lot of these systems and they’re simpler to make,
    0:28:15 then the next piece is just applying
    0:28:18 mass manufacturing approaches to
    0:28:20 this to make them a lot cheaper as you scale.
    0:28:26 >> Well, I mean, that’s a hard leap to make, right?
    0:28:27 Like, what do you do?
    0:28:30 You get a ton of capital and just build
    0:28:33 a factory and hope there’s demand on the other end.
    0:28:36 Like, how do you go from this bespoke expensive thing to
    0:28:39 a mass produced much less expensive thing?
    0:28:40 >> Well, it’s a gradient.
    0:28:42 So like I said, step one is you have
    0:28:45 new approaches that allow you to make them
    0:28:48 cheaper just inherently on a unit-to-unit basis.
    0:28:51 So the early humanoids were like millions of dollars,
    0:28:53 and now we’re in the hundreds of
    0:28:55 thousands of dollars range for building one.
    0:28:58 >> So you just got to get one more order of magnitude out of it.
    0:29:02 >> Yes. We’ve already dropped the price by an order of magnitude.
    0:29:04 Then now as we build more,
    0:29:06 even as you add a zero,
    0:29:08 as you go from 10 to 100,
    0:29:10 the price drops pretty dramatically.
    0:29:14 So you don’t need the volume that you might think.
    0:29:15 My view is we can get to
    0:29:20 the sub $50,000 price point in the thousands of unit quantity.
    0:29:23 So without hundreds of thousands or millions of these.
    0:29:25 >> So one big buyer,
    0:29:28 one big car company or logistics company
    0:29:31 might place an order of thousands of units, right?
    0:29:34 >> Yeah. You made a comment that you said,
    0:29:35 and you hope that there’s demand.
    0:29:37 One of the things I think it’s important to
    0:29:41 note is the demand for these robots is enormous.
    0:29:45 We have demand for hundreds of thousands of units already
    0:29:48 today with the customers that we’re working with.
    0:29:51 So the demand is enormous.
    0:29:53 So we’re ramping up.
    0:29:55 We’ve got to get the robustness and
    0:29:58 the safety of the system and really bring out the design,
    0:30:02 and these are really credible,
    0:30:04 thoughtful people that are coming from
    0:30:06 other industries that are now joining us,
    0:30:08 that now see that we’ve crossed
    0:30:12 this threshold of technical viability,
    0:30:16 and now taking lessons from how you scale and
    0:30:17 manufacture other things and bringing that
    0:30:21 into the robotic space and the humanoid space overall.
    0:30:24 >> So in a year or at least next year,
    0:30:27 you want to be selling robots for real.
    0:30:31 Where do you want to be in five, say, years?
    0:30:34 >> My view is that where this evolves is it’s
    0:30:36 going to start in logistics and manufacturing,
    0:30:38 and then as we solve safety as an industry,
    0:30:40 I’m really interested in health care,
    0:30:43 and particularly in elder care over time.
    0:30:49 So how can these robots be used to improve the way we live and work?
    0:30:53 That was really the lens that I came into this on.
    0:30:55 So I think over the next five years,
    0:30:59 you’ll start to see the early stages of the next three years.
    0:31:04 You’ll start to see early applications for robots entering the home.
    0:31:06 There’s some folks that are really working hard on this.
    0:31:11 I think we’re about three years out from that being really viable,
    0:31:13 but I hope people prove me wrong.
    0:31:15 I hope it’s faster than that.
    0:31:16 >> Three years seems fast.
    0:31:21 What’s the first use case,
    0:31:23 first job you imagine a robot doing for
    0:31:26 real in somebody’s house in three years?
    0:31:28 >> Well, everybody wants laundry.
    0:31:30 If everybody I talked to says,
    0:31:32 “When is this thing going to do my laundry?”
    0:31:33 I want that as well.
    0:31:36 >> There’s literally already a machine to do your laundry.
    0:31:39 All you have to do is put it in one machine and then put it in another.
    0:31:41 The remaining work is trivial.
    0:31:42 >> Yeah. I mean, look,
    0:31:45 I’m not the person to talk about the home.
    0:31:47 I think we’re still a ways out,
    0:31:52 but there’s humanoid companies like 1X that are really focused on the home,
    0:31:55 and we’ve got a lot of respect for what they’re doing over there,
    0:31:57 and so I hope they do it.
    0:31:59 I know that they’re working hard on it,
    0:32:05 and I want a robot for the home as well.
    0:32:09 A lot of the things that are happening with these models that I talked about,
    0:32:11 these more generic models,
    0:32:12 the things that we’re learning in
    0:32:16 the industrial base can apply to the home over time as well.
    0:32:18 >> In terms of the AI models, sure.
    0:32:22 I mean, the AI models are basically teaching a robot how to deal with the physical world.
    0:32:22 >> That’s right.
    0:32:24 >> How to move around, how to pick things up,
    0:32:26 how to put things down.
    0:32:31 >> Yeah. The task in the home is tough because even a robot does your dishes,
    0:32:34 your laundry, cleans, and cooks for you.
    0:32:38 How much are you willing to pay for that on a yearly basis?
    0:32:41 >> I’m imagining the first household tasks.
    0:32:45 I would have thought you would have said people who are quadriplegic.
    0:32:47 There are a lot of people who have
    0:32:48 various kinds of mobility problems,
    0:32:50 who can’t do very basic things around
    0:32:52 the house where essentially a robot could do it for them.
    0:32:54 I would think that would be the first use case.
    0:32:56 >> I think that’s a great use case,
    0:33:00 and for me, that’s in the realm of what I say is elder care,
    0:33:04 which is like the assistive robots that help you with just base tasks.
    0:33:07 Like my granddad, one granddad went to a home,
    0:33:09 the other granddad had in-home care,
    0:33:11 and the one that had in-home care,
    0:33:12 it was very simple things.
    0:33:16 Remind you to take your medication and bring the medication over,
    0:33:17 get you a glass of water,
    0:33:21 help you to get up and out of bed to go to the bathroom,
    0:33:24 just help you stabilize to go to the bathroom.
    0:33:28 That’s not something that we’re largely paying
    0:33:32 attention to industrial applications right now,
    0:33:34 but that is the dream long-term,
    0:33:36 so I’ll be excited to see how it shakes out.
    0:33:40 >> Yeah. Rationally, what you were saying is it makes sense.
    0:33:42 I understand most people would rather stay at home.
    0:33:44 I understand that in-home care,
    0:33:48 it’s impossibly expensive for most people.
    0:33:52 At the same time, my emotional response to a robot taking care of,
    0:33:55 say, my parents, it makes me feel sad.
    0:33:57 I recognize that that’s perhaps irrational,
    0:33:59 but that is at some level my emotional response,
    0:34:02 but the happy thing is I should take care of them,
    0:34:05 but that’s hard and it’s probably not going to happen
    0:34:07 and it’s for its own set of reasons, right?
    0:34:10 It’s more than we bargained for in this conversation.
    0:34:12 I don’t know. There is something though.
    0:34:16 A humanoid robot starts to get to some weird places in that way, right?
    0:34:18 >> Yeah. I’ve thought a lot about this,
    0:34:21 and I think it’s a great place to go to.
    0:34:22 I’m happy to talk about it.
    0:34:26 I think what we want is we want humans taking care of other humans.
    0:34:28 That’s what we want, right?
    0:34:30 But we don’t have that today,
    0:34:33 where look at the way that we age.
    0:34:36 For me, I was very close to both of my grand-dads.
    0:34:42 They both lived into their 90s and outlived my grandmothers oddly enough.
    0:34:46 So I watched them age through their lens,
    0:34:48 and that was a big driver of doing this,
    0:34:52 and these are people that both of them were war heroes.
    0:34:53 They contributed to society.
    0:34:55 They did all these amazing things,
    0:34:57 and then at the end of their life,
    0:35:00 they felt like they were a burden to their family.
    0:35:04 They had this feeling like they never had to rely on anyone for anything,
    0:35:09 and now they’re completely reliant on people for everything.
    0:35:15 What I saw them do as they age was they lost their dignity.
    0:35:21 For me, this idea that you could have a machine that carries your secrets,
    0:35:25 that is your machine that does things for you,
    0:35:30 allows you to keep your dignity such that then you as a human that’s aging,
    0:35:31 you’re fresher.
    0:35:34 You don’t have to rely on your son or your daughter or
    0:35:39 your spouse to get you a glass of water or to do things for you.
    0:35:44 You still have your own agency and your own autonomy through a machine,
    0:35:48 and that then helps your family to be much fresher because they don’t have
    0:35:51 the burden of having to do all these things to support you,
    0:35:53 where then they can be fresher.
    0:35:58 My hope is that this is not designed to replace what humans do for each other.
    0:36:01 This is designed to augment and enhance that.
    0:36:05 Remember just like my granddad as he was getting older,
    0:36:11 I was working and I was busy and I would try to go over as many days as I could,
    0:36:14 but it was always really tough and I didn’t want to be alone.
    0:36:17 It was this whole battle that I think everybody goes through,
    0:36:19 and my hope for the future,
    0:36:22 I actually think it’s a much more optimistic version is that hopefully my
    0:36:28 parents have a robot and that robot is basically programmed for their happiness.
    0:36:33 It’s designed to remind them when they’re down of their favorite song and play it.
    0:36:39 Remind them that of the movies that they like watching or whatever it might be.
    0:36:42 I think that’s more optimistic.
    0:36:46 I think that’s exciting and that makes me hopeful about the future.
    0:36:49 I think that’s the worst part of the human experience is the way that we age.
    0:36:52 I think that these robots and AI,
    0:36:57 embodied AI and AI in general can hopefully allow us to take better care of each other.
    0:37:02 I don’t think it is creepy.
    0:37:05 I think it can actually be pretty beautiful if properly done.
    0:37:08 That’s what you asked at the beginning,
    0:37:12 how is Eptronic different and what are we focused on?
    0:37:15 For me, I say human-centered robotics.
    0:37:21 What that means is that we want this to be an optimistic future for humanity.
    0:37:29 We are tool makers and we want to build tools for humans to enable us to live in better ways.
    0:37:32 I think that if we really focus on that,
    0:37:36 I think that there can be really amazing ways of doing this.
    0:37:41 I think elder care is a great example of how this can be used in that way.
    0:37:47 We’ll be back in a minute with the Lightning Round.
    0:38:00 Now we are back as promised with the Lightning Round.
    0:38:05 What’s the biggest difference between Austin today and Austin 10 years ago?
    0:38:09 Oh man, it’s changed quite a bit.
    0:38:15 One of the things that made Austin really a great place to live and work
    0:38:18 was just how small it was and how accessible everybody was.
    0:38:22 We used to have these house parties and somebody would bring a violin,
    0:38:26 and someone would bring a sitar and these world instruments,
    0:38:31 and you’d have just all sorts of eclectic creative people doing really interesting things.
    0:38:40 I think one of the things that I am worried about is that was what made Austin special.
    0:38:42 The things that make you special,
    0:38:49 people want to commercialize and they want to take this and they want to scale it.
    0:38:52 It’s almost special because it’s not commercialized,
    0:38:54 it’s just this raw organic thing.
    0:38:58 How does that as more tech and more money comes into Austin,
    0:39:03 how does what made Austin great,
    0:39:06 how does that continue to evolve?
    0:39:09 So I think though I welcome it,
    0:39:14 I’d rather be in the place where everybody’s coming and everyone wants to build the future.
    0:39:18 So I’m not one of those that is resisting the changes.
    0:39:22 I think it’s really exciting and I think more people with
    0:39:27 new ideas about the future and the world and a free place to do it.
    0:39:33 There’s a real ability here in Texas and in Austin to do what you want,
    0:39:39 and there’s a real culture around the freedom to do the things that you want to do.
    0:39:44 So it’s a unique place where all that’s coming to the creativity,
    0:39:49 and the capitalism, and all that’s all coming together.
    0:39:51 Is Austin still weird?
    0:39:53 Still, there’s pockets of weird.
    0:39:56 Yeah, certainly there’s still weird Austin is still there.
    0:39:59 It’s all growing up, but yeah, certainly.
    0:40:06 What’s your favorite humanoid robot in fiction, in books, in movies?
    0:40:08 C-3PO for sure.
    0:40:10 Okay, you were ready with that one.
    0:40:12 You had that one on deck.
    0:40:15 Yeah, I want to make C-3PO, the human helper, right?
    0:40:22 What’s one thing that you’ve learned about the human body from building robots?
    0:40:28 Oh man, at a high level, what I’ve learned is how amazing the human body really is.
    0:40:37 I think there’s this fear from humans that as we continue down this pursuit of replicating
    0:40:42 humans and building machines that can do what humans do, that that diminishes what it means
    0:40:44 to be humans.
    0:40:48 But what it’s actually done for me and most of the people working on this is it just makes
    0:40:52 you appreciate even more how amazing humans are.
    0:40:55 So the hand is something that you think a lot about.
    0:41:01 You just do all these things and you don’t appreciate how incredible your hands are.
    0:41:10 And when you start to try to build a hand for a robot, you just appreciate all the limitations.
    0:41:14 How we walk, how we move, the fact that we can-
    0:41:15 It’s so hard, right?
    0:41:20 All the things we do, just like pick up an egg or open a door, like that’s wildly difficult.
    0:41:21 It’s amazing.
    0:41:24 Or you eat that egg and it powers you for a day.
    0:41:30 It powers this neural network, your brain, billions of parameters, right?
    0:41:33 I mean, the humans are amazing.
    0:41:38 And I think as we continue to learn more about what it means to be human, what does it mean
    0:41:43 to be conscious, all of these kind of big ideas, I think we’ll only grow to appreciate
    0:41:46 what we actually have here.
    0:41:49 Last one, tell me about your grandfather.
    0:41:53 Oh, man.
    0:42:00 So two grandfathers, one Gilberto Cardenas, the other one George Smith.
    0:42:04 Both of them were great.
    0:42:09 My granddad, Gilberto Cardenas, came from Puerto Rico when he was 17.
    0:42:13 He joined the army and fought in the Korean War.
    0:42:14 He spoke five languages.
    0:42:22 He was self-educated and he had the American dream and dreamed of what he could do.
    0:42:23 He was in the army.
    0:42:27 He was actually a field medic, but became a hospital administrator.
    0:42:35 And he’s a big sort of driving force in our family and I watched him age and watched all
    0:42:36 the things he went through.
    0:42:38 He actually fell and lost his vision.
    0:42:44 So his brain was still intact in his body largely, but he couldn’t see.
    0:42:49 And so he had to have around the clock care when he was in his 90s and in the home.
    0:42:55 And he wasn’t wealthy by any stretch, but he had done okay and it saved his money and
    0:43:00 it was $17,000 a month for in-home care.
    0:43:07 And it was like this revolving door of people that would rather be doing anything else than
    0:43:10 sitting in a room with my granddad and taking care of him.
    0:43:18 And so for me, I admired my granddad so much and just seeing sort of that as the end of
    0:43:25 his life sitting in a room, counting the days down, I just thought there’s got to be a better
    0:43:26 way than this.
    0:43:30 And that was a big driver for me doing all this.
    0:43:34 My other granddad actually ended up getting George Smith.
    0:43:40 He had to go to a home, he had colon cancer and his brain still functioned.
    0:43:45 He had a great sense of humor and he lost control of his bowels.
    0:43:51 And so you can imagine how humiliating that is as you age to be fully aware of what’s
    0:43:56 going on, never rely on anybody, but not be able to control your bowels.
    0:44:03 And so he had to get multiple showers a day and every time I would go see him, it was
    0:44:05 a humiliating experience.
    0:44:10 And so these are the things that are just my story, but everybody has their own story
    0:44:17 of taking care of an aging parent or grandparent and just what that looks like.
    0:44:22 And my hope is that as humans, as tool makers, I think we can do better than that.
    0:44:28 And I think that these machines we can create will allow us to take better care of each
    0:44:29 other.
    0:44:36 My parents are already naming their robots, they can’t wait to get them, they’re almost
    0:44:44 70 now and they’ve got to have these ready for whenever our time is there so that we
    0:44:53 can age more gracefully than our parents did.
    0:44:57 Jeff Cardenas is the co-founder and CEO of Aptronic.
    0:45:03 Today’s show was produced by Gabriel Hunter-Chang, it was edited by Lydia Jean-Cott and engineered
    0:45:05 by Sarah Brugger.
    0:45:09 You can email us at problem@pushkin.fm.
    0:45:12 I’m Jacob Goldstein and we’ll be back next week with another episode of What’s Your Problem?
    0:45:20 [Music]
    0:45:22 you
    0:45:32 [BLANK_AUDIO]

    Jeff Cardenas is the co-founder and CEO of Apptronik. Jeff’s problem is this: Can you make a safe, reliable humanoid robot – for less than $50,000?

    In the short term, Apptronik’s robots will work in factories. But Jeff’s long-term goal – based on the experience of his own grandparents – is to build robots that can help care for the elderly.

    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

  • The Show That Never Happened

    The Show That Never Happened
    The Show That Never Happened
    AI transcript
    0:00:05 [Music]
    0:00:12 Life is funny. I think we all know that. And it’s unpredictable, but just how unpredictable?
    0:00:17 Once in a while, something happens that is so outlandish that you never even considered it
    0:00:23 possible. Nasim Talib calls this a black swan event. In my case, I’m going to call it,
    0:00:29 actually, I don’t know what to call it yet. Maybe you can help me name it. Let me explain.
    0:00:35 Last Thursday, on February 13th, we were scheduled to do a live Freakonomics radio show
    0:00:42 at the Wilshire E. Bell Theater in Los Angeles. Now, a live show for us is both rare and atypical,
    0:00:48 because the episodes we put out here every week are very much not live. They are the product of
    0:00:53 many hours of research and recorded interviews and editing and mixing and so on. And that’s the way
    0:00:58 we like it. That’s the kind of show I like to make. But every now and again, we decide to put on a
    0:01:04 live show in a theater with an audience and we record that show to make a podcast episode for
    0:01:09 later. It’s not going to have the depth or the flow of a regular episode, but there is something
    0:01:14 thrilling about the live setting. The interviews that you’re not really sure where they’re going to go,
    0:01:20 the response from the audience that you can’t predict, and of course, any number of strange
    0:01:24 things that might happen when you try to do something that resembles show business.
    0:01:29 Coming into this LA show, we felt pretty good. We had two excellent guests lined up,
    0:01:35 Ari Emanuel, the Super Agent and CEO of Endeavor, who was also the model for Ari Gold from the TV
    0:01:41 show Entourage. And we had the award-winning filmmaker, RJ Cutler, who got his start on the
    0:01:45 Clinton campaign documentary, The War Room, and who’s been making excellent documentaries ever
    0:01:51 since, including a recent one about Martha Stewart. We also had Luis Guerra, who composes and performs
    0:01:56 a lot of the music you hear on this show. He had put together a live band for the evening,
    0:02:02 which I was definitely looking forward to. I love Luis and his music, and he has a network of
    0:02:09 musicians that is amazing. Now, I’m not going to say the mood before the show was buoyant exactly.
    0:02:15 Los Angeles had, of course, been hit by those terrible fatal wildfires, and now it was cold
    0:02:21 and raining hard. When I got to the theater around 4 p.m. for soundcheck, the wind was whipping.
    0:02:28 It felt like a monsoon outside. Plus, there are jitters, always, with a live show. But we were
    0:02:34 excited, and we were excited to have a sellout crowd. The soundcheck went fine, and then I rehearsed
    0:02:42 some cues with the band. They sounded great, no problems whatsoever. I started my final prep,
    0:02:47 which mostly consists of sitting somewhere alone, going over my notes. For a show like this,
    0:02:53 I write a short monologue. In this case, it was about how LA and New York may look like such
    0:02:58 different places, but how they have a lot in common. They’re both places where people come to
    0:03:03 invent themselves or reinvent themselves. I always think the great line from E.B. White,
    0:03:08 “No one should come to New York to live unless he is willing to be lucky.” I would argue the
    0:03:15 same is very much true for Los Angeles. I’m going over my monologue notes, going over my notes for
    0:03:22 the Ari and RJ interviews, and then Ari arrives early. He is always early. I recently heard a
    0:03:26 story about a Zoom meeting that someone had with him that was supposed to start at 2.30.
    0:03:34 By the time they joined at 2.30, Ari had come and gone. The meeting was over. For tonight,
    0:03:39 he had promised us 40 minutes on stage, but with a heart out, he had a plane waiting to
    0:03:44 take him to New York for the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary celebrations. So anyway,
    0:03:50 Ari gets to the theater early. He’s backstage. He is incredibly fun and interesting to talk to,
    0:03:56 a total live wire. It is true that some people are intimidated by him. He was recently voted the
    0:04:04 most feared agent in Hollywood. Big surprise. Anyway, then RJ Cutler shows up. Totally different
    0:04:10 energy from Ari, less ratatap, but obviously lovely. The two of them are getting along nicely,
    0:04:18 which is not a bad thing for me. So I’m feeling good. Then I notice something strange. The theater
    0:04:23 is quiet. By now, the doors should be open. The audience should be settling in.
    0:04:28 Our pre-show playlist should be playing. I’d put this one together myself. There was some
    0:04:34 Thelonious Monks and Arcade Fire, a piece from Handel’s Messiah, long story,
    0:04:41 and also some music specific to tonight’s guests. For RJ, we’re playing Young Gravies Martha Stewart
    0:04:47 and Ocean Eyes by Billy Eilish. RJ made a great film about Billy called The World a Little Blurry.
    0:04:53 And for Ari, we’re playing Superhero by Jane’s Addiction. That was the theme song from Entourage.
    0:04:59 At least we’re supposed to be playing all those songs. Instead, there is no sound coming out of
    0:05:03 the speakers. And then when I look out from behind the curtain, I see there are no people in the
    0:05:11 seats either. So what’s happening? It turns out that the theater’s PA system had crashed. We had
    0:05:17 been told earlier that it was a new system, state of the art, but, well, I don’t know what happened.
    0:05:22 The next hour was pretty chaotic. The microphones aren’t working, speakers aren’t working,
    0:05:28 keyboard player can’t get any sound out of his keyboard setup. There’s a grand piano backstage.
    0:05:32 We start trying to wheel it out onto the stage, but it’s missing a wheel, so that doesn’t work.
    0:05:39 Meanwhile, Ari Emanuel, the most famous agent in show business, is waiting backstage.
    0:05:44 What the f*** are these people doing? He’s saying. We’re getting close to showtime.
    0:05:49 The theater is still empty. It turns out they didn’t want to let anyone in while they’re trying
    0:05:55 to fix the PA system. As I later learned, some ticket holders were left standing outside
    0:06:02 in the cold rain. Finally, they opened the doors, and people started filling the seats.
    0:06:08 We still didn’t have a PA system. At some point, I take the stage to speak with the crowd, and
    0:06:13 people see me. They start clapping. They think the show is starting, and I announce as loudly as
    0:06:19 I can that no, the show is not starting yet. We don’t have a sound system. And then I ask people
    0:06:24 in the back rows of the balcony, if they can hear me without mics, and they shout, “Yes,
    0:06:30 they can.” So that’s a good sign. I mean, these old theaters were built before amplification,
    0:06:36 so maybe we can pull it off without mics. Ari, meanwhile, is getting even ansier backstage.
    0:06:39 He says, “Let’s just f***ing do it without mics. I can f***ing shout.”
    0:06:46 So that’s the new plan. We’re going to do the show as best as we can without a PA system.
    0:06:53 The band is getting ready, still no mics, still no keyboards, and I have no idea if the video clips
    0:06:58 we had planned to play during the show were going to work. And then suddenly, the system
    0:07:05 starts working again, at least partially. By now, it’s way past the scheduled start time. So
    0:07:12 we hustle up, we wish each other good luck, and we start the show. The monologue goes pretty well.
    0:07:18 And then I introduce Ari. He comes out, and we have a pretty sassy conversation. Covers everything
    0:07:27 from Donald Trump to Elon Musk to open AI to the Blake Lively Justin Baldoni mess and a lot more.
    0:07:35 He stays for nearly an hour. He’s a real pro and a good sport. And then I do a quick AMA and ask
    0:07:40 me anything with a member of the audience named Christina. She asks me how I came up with the
    0:07:48 sign off for this show. Take care of yourself and if you can, someone else too. It is a question I
    0:07:54 wasn’t expecting, and I tear up as I tell the story because I started using that sign off pretty
    0:08:00 early in the pandemic. My wife had been very sick with COVID, and we hadn’t been sure that she would
    0:08:06 recover. But she did, and that line just came to me like when you’re writing a line to a song,
    0:08:14 and it stuck. After the AMA, we bring out RJ Cutler, and he’s just great thoughtful and
    0:08:19 personal. He’s telling great stories about himself and all the people he is embedded himself with
    0:08:26 over the years. We play some clips from his films, and even that works out okay. So I finish up with
    0:08:32 RJ. We say some thank yous, and then we say good night. The audience claps. They seem to enjoy it,
    0:08:36 although I couldn’t really tell how good the show was. Live shows are always a bit of a blur,
    0:08:42 but this one even more so because of the circumstances. It struck me as a bit of a miracle
    0:08:47 that the show ended up happening at all. So we hang out for a little bit more at the theater,
    0:08:53 and then we go to a little after party. Mostly friends and family, maybe 40, 50 folks,
    0:09:00 including my daughter who just moved to LA last year after college. Honestly, she was a big reason
    0:09:05 I wanted to do a show out here in the first place. So we’re eating, we’re drinking, we’re
    0:09:12 laughing now about how close we came to having no show at all. And that’s when our excellent
    0:09:17 editor, Ellen Frankman, comes up to me with a look on her face that I couldn’t quite figure out.
    0:09:24 In retrospect, she looked really ill. She was shaky, her face was pale. So I ask her what’s wrong,
    0:09:31 and she tells me that in addition to the audio failures we had earlier, there was
    0:09:40 another even bigger failure. The show had not been recorded. She says, and I didn’t understand. I
    0:09:47 asked her to repeat herself. She said they didn’t record the show. And I still didn’t quite understand.
    0:09:54 I mean, I’ve been recording stuff for many years now. I was a musician and I used to work in all
    0:10:00 kinds of studios. I was a reporter and used to record all kinds of interviews. I’ve been doing
    0:10:06 this show now for 15 years. We’ve recorded thousands of studio and live interviews,
    0:10:12 many other things. And not once have the people responsible for recording just failed to record it.
    0:10:19 But tonight, that’s apparently what happened. I am pretty sure we did do a live show with Ari
    0:10:24 Manuel and RJ Cutler and Luis Guerra’s band and Christina from the audience. But there’s no
    0:10:32 recording of it. So I’m not really sure. The next several hours were even more of a blur than the
    0:10:37 hour before the show. We thought about trying to partner with RJ Cutler to make a forensic
    0:10:44 documentary of the show, trying to recreate it as best as we could. Some friends who had been in
    0:10:49 the audience had already started sending in bits of video and audio they had recorded. At least
    0:10:56 one journalist had recorded the entire Ari Emmanuel interview, but it’s iPhone on the lap
    0:11:05 quality, not radio quality. So we ditched that recreation idea. For some reason, I wasn’t angry.
    0:11:12 I was just flabbergasted. It was a new feeling, a new experience. I woke up the next morning,
    0:11:18 still more confused than anything. I went out to Brentwood to have breakfast with my daughter.
    0:11:26 We saw Don Cheadle, whom I recognized, and Tom Holland, whom I didn’t. A friend dropped by,
    0:11:31 a college friend of my daughter. He grew up in LA and he still lives there. He’s one of the people
    0:11:38 who had sent us some audio files when he heard about our recording catastrophe. He’s a really
    0:11:44 nice kid and the three of us had a nice breakfast. I asked him how his work was going and also where
    0:11:50 he’s living now. He grew up in Pacific Palisades and his family’s house burned to the ground last
    0:11:56 month. When we said goodbye to him after breakfast, he was shivering outside in a t-shirt. He hadn’t
    0:12:03 even been able to get a new coat yet. As a writer, I’ve always been petrified about losing
    0:12:09 anything I’ve written. I panic if the computer glitches and I lose even a sentence or two.
    0:12:17 And now here, we had lost an entire show. But how does losing a show compare to losing your
    0:12:24 childhood home? Thousands of homes burned to the ground during those LA fires. At least 29 people
    0:12:30 died. It’ll cost billions of dollars to replace what can be replaced and a lot of it can’t. So
    0:12:38 I guess I’m the lucky one. I thought back to this passage from a book called Genius and Anxiety,
    0:12:45 How Jews Changed the World, 1847 and 1947 by Norman Lebrecht. The passage goes like this.
    0:12:54 Moses said the law is everything. Jesus said love is everything. Marx said money is everything.
    0:13:04 Freud said sex is everything. And Einstein said everything is relative. To the 900 people who
    0:13:10 came out to our show that rainy night, thank you. It’s nice to know there were some witnesses.
    0:13:16 And to everyone else who will never hear the show that never happened, well,
    0:13:28 take care of yourself and, if you can, someone else too.
    0:13:40 The Freakonomics Radio Network. The hidden side of everything.
    0:13:45 Stitcher.
    0:13:48 [MUSIC PLAYING]

    A brief meditation on loss, relativity, and the vagaries of show business.

     

  • Can the president override Congress on spending?

    Can the president override Congress on spending?
    Can the president override Congress on spending?

    So the president can’t spend more money than Congress has agreed and voted to spend. But can the president spend less money than Congress wants?

    It all comes down to something called “impoundment” and the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which controls when and how a president can take away money Congress has appropriated.

    President Trump followed the Impoundment Control Act rules back in 2018. But now, in his second term, he’s saying he thinks that law is unconstitutional.

    On this episode: the history of impoundment, from Thomas Jefferson to Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. And what constitutional scholars and judges are saying after Trump attempted to dismantle a federal agency and freeze trillions in federal funding that goes to states for everything from new school buses to public health research.

    We’ve got more about impoundment in the latest Planet Money newsletter.

    Check out The Indicator’s episodes on the gutting of USAID and how American farmers are affected in USAID cuts. And, our previous episode on the big government money pipe that’s being closely watched right now.

    Find more Planet Money: Facebook / Instagram / TikTok / Our weekly Newsletter.

    Listen free at these links: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, the NPR app or anywhere you get podcasts.

    Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney.

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  • Silicon Valley OG shares crazy stories from Zynga early days + 3 business ideas

    AI transcript
    0:00:03 and they said, “Well, you shouldn’t confuse revenue for success.”
    0:00:06 So I said, “Well, you guys shouldn’t confuse a lack of revenue for success either.”
    0:00:08 And then they got kind of upset.
    0:00:13 Dude, that’s meaning it goes in the Silicon Valley Autistic Hall of Fame.
    0:00:25 What’s up? We got our friend, Siki here, founder of Runway.
    0:00:28 Back in the day, built a company, sold it to Zynga,
    0:00:32 built another company, sold it to Postmates, has gone viral many times.
    0:00:35 And there’s a lot of people in Silicon Valley who you almost…
    0:00:36 It’s like a film director.
    0:00:38 It’s like, “Oh, they’re working on a new project.
    0:00:40 You really want to know what they’re doing?”
    0:00:42 That’s you because you do things with taste.
    0:00:44 So excited to have you here.
    0:00:47 Do you have any good stories from early days of Zynga?
    0:00:48 Because you sold a company to Zynga.
    0:00:50 Backman Zynga was the shit.
    0:00:52 Did you work with Mark Pincus?
    0:00:52 What’s he like?
    0:00:54 Give me a good Zynga story.
    0:00:57 Okay. I have a great story, actually.
    0:01:00 How I came to report to Mark Pincus is, actually, it’s not a great story.
    0:01:01 I have so many good Mark Pincus stories.
    0:01:04 So, yeah, Zynga bought my second company, my first company,
    0:01:06 and I joined as a director product under the studio.
    0:01:08 Wait, can you give the background up, Mark?
    0:01:10 So, Mark’s like a Silicon Valley OG.
    0:01:12 Did he help fund Facebook to get off the ground?
    0:01:13 Was that his first big hit?
    0:01:14 He did.
    0:01:18 So, he and Reid Hoffman co-owned,
    0:01:21 bought the Six Degrees of Separation Patent from a company of Six Degrees.
    0:01:26 And he angel invested in Facebook and but also licensed a patent,
    0:01:28 I believe, for more stock into Facebook.
    0:01:33 That patent was basically the kind of the social networking patent, right?
    0:01:38 Like how we’re connected, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon away from each other.
    0:01:41 And I think Reid, there’s some story where Reid and him
    0:01:45 realized that if this patent got in the hands of Microsoft or some big company,
    0:01:48 that they would be able to squish innovation by a startup,
    0:01:50 by like holding this patent over their head.
    0:01:52 So, they bought the patent, I believe,
    0:01:56 and just decided we’re not going to use it to stop anybody.
    0:01:59 And then they, I think, parlayed it into getting extra shares in Facebook.
    0:02:01 Which is amazing.
    0:02:02 I think that’s what happened, yeah.
    0:02:05 So, when I joined, I was a director of products.
    0:02:09 And my girlfriend and my wife, who I recently met,
    0:02:11 moved to China for some job work thing.
    0:02:14 And I was like three months into Zynga.
    0:02:16 And I was like, “Oh, I’m not really feeling it.
    0:02:17 It’s not that fun.”
    0:02:20 So, I told them I was going to resign and move to China.
    0:02:23 And they said, “Hey, why don’t we just give you this new job?
    0:02:27 You can report to Eric Schreimer when you’re co-founders
    0:02:30 and basically be head of product for the company.”
    0:02:32 I said, “No, that sounds fun. That sounds great.”
    0:02:33 So, I did that.
    0:02:34 So, I reported to Eric Schreimer.
    0:02:35 He was a co-founder of Zynga.
    0:02:39 And what happened is, a month into the job,
    0:02:41 Eric Schreimer stopped showing up to work.
    0:02:43 Like, wouldn’t start on emails, wouldn’t go to work.
    0:02:46 And I was like, “What?”
    0:02:50 And basically, that’s when I reported to Mark.
    0:02:53 And I was the head of products.
    0:02:55 And later, the punchline of the story is,
    0:02:59 what I, the reason why he stopped showing up to work
    0:03:01 is I later found out that he decided to become a ninja.
    0:03:04 That’s a pretty good reason.
    0:03:06 That’s not what I thought was going to happen.
    0:03:09 He literally, he was like,
    0:03:10 he wanted to start a ninja, Dojo.
    0:03:12 And he wanted to undergo a ninja training.
    0:03:14 And so, when I…
    0:03:17 What in the Napoleon Dynamite is this story?
    0:03:18 How’s his ninja career now?
    0:03:22 I think he started another social games company.
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    0:04:01 So, give us at the time, what was Zynga like?
    0:04:03 Was it like, was it King of the World at the time?
    0:04:05 Or was it on the down spring?
    0:04:07 Yeah, I mean, what’s interesting on Zynga is they
    0:04:11 hired a bunch of people who used to be investment makers
    0:04:12 to be product managers there.
    0:04:15 Because it was just all about the numbers going up.
    0:04:17 It was Heidi Analytical.
    0:04:20 So, I went in and just the amount of like knowledge they had
    0:04:22 about growth.
    0:04:24 One of the things that really blew my mind to think about a lot
    0:04:27 is when I first had a commerce with Mark Pincus
    0:04:30 early on, I think maybe during the acquisition,
    0:04:33 I asked him, hey, what do you think about this like industry?
    0:04:35 It just seems really low moat.
    0:04:38 It’s hard to have a competitive moat here
    0:04:41 because it’s just so easy to enter or you build a new game
    0:04:42 and for it to expand.
    0:04:44 And how defensible is it?
    0:04:46 And I think about his answer quite a bit
    0:04:47 because his, I was like, no, this is great.
    0:04:50 I wonder to be more new entrants.
    0:04:54 Into the space because it’s free R&D for me.
    0:04:58 And I just like, okay, that is, that blows my mind.
    0:05:00 That is next level because he was just so confident
    0:05:03 in his ability to execute that like anyone who’s kind of
    0:05:06 come in with some new idea, they can just like fast follow it
    0:05:08 and do a much better job of growing it,
    0:05:09 which is like what they did, right?
    0:05:11 Formula was in the first fun game.
    0:05:12 Poker was the first poker game.
    0:05:15 And that they work really, really well,
    0:05:16 at least during a Facebook era.
    0:05:19 Wait, did he have like Genghis Khan energy
    0:05:21 where he was like, is he a conqueror?
    0:05:23 Yeah, he did, he did.
    0:05:24 I love that.
    0:05:28 You know, we were working like 80, 90, 100 hours a week
    0:05:31 at Zynga and that was kind of the norm.
    0:05:33 It sort of seems like a waste of talent though
    0:05:34 to have that conqueror energy
    0:05:36 and do it in the lamest way possible.
    0:05:37 The Farmville.
    0:05:38 Yeah, like Farmville.
    0:05:40 Like that’s what he’s like trying to do this on.
    0:05:43 Like a few billion dollars, a few billion dollars.
    0:05:46 There’s a quote by Max Levchin at the time.
    0:05:49 Max Levchin who created PayPal is by all accounts
    0:05:52 like a genius computer engineer single-handedly
    0:05:55 was like fighting fraud at PayPal and like with,
    0:05:58 as a one-man army, like withstood, you know,
    0:06:00 the attacks of all of these sort of financial scammers
    0:06:01 around the world.
    0:06:02 The guy’s brilliant.
    0:06:05 And then his next startup I think was Slide.
    0:06:08 And it was making like widgets for MySpace and Facebook
    0:06:10 where you’d be like slide shows or Superpoke
    0:06:12 where you throw like chickens at your friends
    0:06:15 when you wake up, you know, by pushing a button
    0:06:17 and it just slaps a friend with a chicken
    0:06:18 or something like that.
    0:06:21 And they go, what was your takeaway from Slide?
    0:06:23 Because Slide ultimately didn’t fully work out,
    0:06:25 sold to Google I think for a little bit.
    0:06:29 But he goes, be really careful what you choose to work on
    0:06:32 because everything can be optimized endlessly.
    0:06:33 So he’s like, once we got in that,
    0:06:35 we could just sit there and optimize
    0:06:38 and just get the number of chicken slap per day up.
    0:06:39 So, you know, choose wisely.
    0:06:41 Should I be optimizing this chicken slapping
    0:06:42 or should I be doing something else?
    0:06:44 And I’ve always thought about that
    0:06:46 because I found myself falling into the same trap.
    0:06:48 No matter what I’m doing, if I’m selling little widgets,
    0:06:51 my life becomes about selling widgets
    0:06:53 and I can optimize that to infinity.
    0:06:55 And people do, if you go look at how any company works,
    0:06:56 that’s what they’ve done.
    0:06:58 They’ve optimized it to infinity.
    0:07:00 Dude, when my wife worked at Facebook years and years ago,
    0:07:03 I remember like I was talking to all of her coworkers
    0:07:05 at a party and I was like, oh, you guys are amazing.
    0:07:06 You guys are so smart.
    0:07:07 What are you working on?
    0:07:09 And they explained it to me, but it boiled down to,
    0:07:11 they’re trying to convince Brazilians
    0:07:14 to put more stickers on their photos.
    0:07:17 Like the, there was like one dog that had a long tongue.
    0:07:18 Do you guys remember that fucking dog?
    0:07:18 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    0:07:21 Like they’re trying to convince that fucking dog sticker
    0:07:22 to put, or the Brazilians.
    0:07:23 It was like the face,
    0:07:25 it was like the face filter thing when Snapchat came out
    0:07:27 and then if you opened up your mouth,
    0:07:28 a giant tongue would come out.
    0:07:30 Dude, I felt like, and they explained that to,
    0:07:32 like I kind of, I was like, wait, so you’re just trying
    0:07:34 to get like Brazilians to use more stickers
    0:07:34 because they share more photos.
    0:07:35 I felt like a cartoon.
    0:07:37 It was like, I was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
    0:07:39 What? Like, you know what I mean?
    0:07:40 I was like, what are you guys doing?
    0:07:44 I also have a Max Levchin and Slides story.
    0:07:45 This goes back 17 years,
    0:07:47 so I don’t think I’ll mind anymore.
    0:07:50 But when I, this is when I first moved to the city
    0:07:53 and I had this app on Facebook that was blowing up.
    0:07:56 And so some guy who worked with Keith’s Reboy,
    0:07:58 Keith’s Reboy was I think the CEO of Slides at the time.
    0:08:00 I said, hey, we like your app.
    0:08:02 You want to meet, you know, the team.
    0:08:03 I said, oh my God, this is amazing.
    0:08:04 I mean, you’re out of college.
    0:08:05 You can even have Max Levchin.
    0:08:09 So I go in and we had a meeting at noon
    0:08:10 and I will go to the Slides office and no one was there.
    0:08:12 Everyone’s out for lunch.
    0:08:13 And I talked to receptionist.
    0:08:15 I said, hey, I’m here to meet Max and Keith.
    0:08:16 And they’ll like, oh, they’re out of lunch.
    0:08:17 They’ll be back in half an hour.
    0:08:19 I said, okay, so we slipped there for half an hour.
    0:08:20 And then they walk in.
    0:08:23 And they act like they kind of forgot there was a meeting.
    0:08:27 But we go to a meeting room and we just start talking
    0:08:30 about what I wanted to do with this app by build,
    0:08:31 whether I wanted to build a dependently
    0:08:33 or maybe like join slide.
    0:08:36 And they asked me how much I wanted for it.
    0:08:37 I said, well, I have a co-founder.
    0:08:39 So $2 million, I will probably do it.
    0:08:41 The million dollars each, I kind of lasted the number.
    0:08:42 I’m like, what?
    0:08:45 Like I look for the valuation app data
    0:08:46 and like the money we’re generating.
    0:08:48 It’s not a huge ass, but it’s fine.
    0:08:49 It’s too much.
    0:08:53 My friend at Heel built Superpoke, which I recently bought.
    0:08:56 And they said verbatim, you know, we bought Superpoke
    0:08:58 and he’s easily the 18th or 19th most important person
    0:09:01 company now out of a company of like 60 people.
    0:09:05 I said, okay, that’s a compelling offer.
    0:09:07 And then I said, and I said, yeah,
    0:09:10 this is probably not going to happen.
    0:09:12 And I said, you know, we’re profitable.
    0:09:14 We were making a bunch of money from ads.
    0:09:16 So it’s cool if you don’t want to buy it.
    0:09:21 And they said, well, you shouldn’t confuse revenue for success.
    0:09:23 And at this point, I was just like really upset.
    0:09:24 So I said, well, you guys shouldn’t confuse
    0:09:26 the lack of revenue for success either.
    0:09:29 And then they got like kind of upset.
    0:09:35 So then, so then it got really weird.
    0:09:36 Oh, I forgot to mention like,
    0:09:37 at the start of the meeting,
    0:09:40 they said something like, hey, you know,
    0:09:42 there’s a recession coming up to each other.
    0:09:44 And they’re like, yeah, there’s a recession coming up.
    0:09:45 And then he said, I can’t wait to buy all these
    0:09:46 shitty companies for cheap.
    0:09:47 Like, we’re in the room.
    0:09:50 And we’re like, what the hell?
    0:09:52 Dude, this meeting, it goes in like
    0:09:54 the Silicon Valley Autistic Hall of Fame.
    0:09:59 At the end, Keith was like, hey, Keith.
    0:10:01 Hey, Max, what was your body fat percentage
    0:10:03 in the PayPal days?
    0:10:04 And Max was like 8%.
    0:10:05 And I was like, yeah.
    0:10:08 And I’m like, look, I’m not the fittest person,
    0:10:10 but I’m not selling you my company
    0:10:11 because he’s like, you’re fitter than me.
    0:10:13 Like, what’s happening?
    0:10:15 So that was like meeting with them.
    0:10:17 But the thing that made it all make sense,
    0:10:19 made sense is the next week,
    0:10:21 I was talking to one of my friends,
    0:10:23 John, who also had a company building out.
    0:10:26 And he comes to me at some party.
    0:10:28 He goes, Seeky, man, like,
    0:10:28 you won’t believe this.
    0:10:30 So I just had a meeting with Sly last week.
    0:10:31 I’m like, really?
    0:10:32 He’s like, yeah, it was so weird
    0:10:33 because he started a meeting talking
    0:10:35 about how there’s a recession coming up.
    0:10:36 And all these companies are cheap.
    0:10:38 I was like, oh my God, it’s a script.
    0:10:40 It was.
    0:10:42 In episode one of this podcast,
    0:10:45 I think my buddy, Sully, told almost the same story.
    0:10:47 He goes, he gets invited to slide.
    0:10:48 He says to Max and Keith.
    0:10:50 And what they said was they were like,
    0:10:51 you should, we want to hire you.
    0:10:53 And he’s like, I don’t really want a job.
    0:10:54 Like I have my apps, good.
    0:10:56 I thought you wanted to like maybe buy it or something.
    0:10:58 And then he opened the door and he goes,
    0:11:00 you see all those guys out there?
    0:11:03 They’re going to build your app in like six days
    0:11:04 if you don’t take this offer.
    0:11:07 And he was like, okay, I’m not interested
    0:11:08 in this even more now.
    0:11:10 This is horrible.
    0:11:11 My app is stupid.
    0:11:13 What he said, he goes, his app at the time
    0:11:14 was called Superlatives.
    0:11:15 It was like, you would name your friend
    0:11:18 like most likely to go to jail or something.
    0:11:20 He’s like, you’re threatening me
    0:11:21 that you’re going to take my app?
    0:11:22 I think my app is stupid.
    0:11:24 The fact that you think my app is cool
    0:11:26 makes me think you’re stupid.
    0:11:27 That’s what he thought in his head.
    0:11:31 Siki, who did you meet?
    0:11:34 I love talking to people who have been
    0:11:35 around a bunch of these folks
    0:11:37 before they kind of quote made it.
    0:11:40 Who is a tycoon or a big shot now
    0:11:43 that you’re shocked by because of when you knew them
    0:11:44 when you guys were both younger,
    0:11:47 you’re like, oh, I can’t believe they actually developed
    0:11:50 into such an amazing business person.
    0:11:53 I don’t know that I met a lot of people
    0:11:55 who weren’t great other than I think were great
    0:11:57 that were huge later.
    0:12:00 Who’s someone you met that wasn’t huge then
    0:12:03 but you knew and why did you know?
    0:12:06 Oh, yeah. I mean, Drew Houston.
    0:12:07 When did you meet him?
    0:12:08 He started Dropbox.
    0:12:08 10 people.
    0:12:12 It was late 2007 or early 2008.
    0:12:14 And we were just talking about growth.
    0:12:17 So like they had this like college referral plan.
    0:12:19 So Drew Houston, I mean,
    0:12:21 Anish who’s General Permanent Andreessen,
    0:12:26 like he was just a founder building apps on mobile phones,
    0:12:26 right?
    0:12:28 And he would come to my office and we’d talk about it.
    0:12:32 Oh, probably the best one is Chris Wonstrasth.
    0:12:33 Who’s that?
    0:12:35 He’s co-founder of CIO GitHub.
    0:12:37 And he was a contractor at Powerset,
    0:12:39 which was like this job I took when I first moved to the city.
    0:12:42 But he was actually a contractor for my first company,
    0:12:43 Sirius Business.
    0:12:46 He, I had him build this translation layer
    0:12:48 between Facebook Markup Language
    0:12:49 and MySpace Markup Language.
    0:12:51 Just like after and he was really good at it.
    0:12:57 And I distinctly remember that we were at 21st Amendment.
    0:13:00 Yeah, or actually a brewery doesn’t matter.
    0:13:03 But I gave him a full-time employee planning offer
    0:13:07 in early 2008.
    0:13:08 And he was considering it.
    0:13:12 And the same night, when we’re talking about it,
    0:13:15 he said, you know, DHH just put rails on GitHub.
    0:13:18 And so I think I might work on GitHub full-time.
    0:13:20 And I was thinking in my head and I was like,
    0:13:23 the smart thing for me to do is actually shut down my
    0:13:25 Facebook Games business and go work for you.
    0:13:26 But I didn’t say that.
    0:13:31 Have you had any massive angel investment wins
    0:13:34 because you’re around the hoop for so long?
    0:13:35 And so in early?
    0:13:36 Yeah.
    0:13:40 I mean, the best one by far is Amplitude.
    0:13:43 And that one was, I was introduced through actually,
    0:13:45 yeah, someone at Zynga, Matt Akka,
    0:13:47 who runs Data Collective now.
    0:13:49 And he introduced me a very first angel investment
    0:13:50 after I sold to Zynga.
    0:13:53 And that like 10X in like 12 months.
    0:13:55 And so I was playing with PlayMoney up after that.
    0:13:59 And he introduced to his team that we ended up
    0:14:02 being the fourth customer for analytics platform.
    0:14:03 It’s now Amplitude.
    0:14:05 And we used it.
    0:14:06 We thought this is great.
    0:14:07 This is the best thing we thought we’ve seen
    0:14:09 since the Zynga internal tools.
    0:14:13 And I managed to get into the seed round and that IPO
    0:14:17 that, you know, we ended up being a 400X return on that,
    0:14:19 which is pretty great.
    0:14:19 Amazing.
    0:14:22 Let’s jump in with ideas, opportunities.
    0:14:23 You’re an idea guy.
    0:14:26 What do you think are some cool ideas or opportunities
    0:14:28 that you would want to be working on right now?
    0:14:34 So I built a Zapier and it’s basically categorizes my emails
    0:14:36 with GPD4 into different labels.
    0:14:39 So I have this very long prompt and automation.
    0:14:42 And I also use a protocol same box,
    0:14:44 which also does something similar to filters by emails.
    0:14:49 But there’s been no good version of email manager software
    0:14:51 that I’m able to customize the prompt and train it.
    0:14:55 So I want to say, hey, here’s the things related to my kids.
    0:14:58 And there’s no keywords necessarily.
    0:15:00 You can, you know, have to kind of read it.
    0:15:04 It’s like some email to my babysitter or an email from the school.
    0:15:06 And if it’s related to my kids, I want you to put it in this folder.
    0:15:10 And the idea is I want an inbox for like these different contexts.
    0:15:14 And so people are doing different kinds of email categorization.
    0:15:15 What’s missing is there’s no way to train it.
    0:15:20 So I think building some way for you to, for a product
    0:15:22 to understand all of the content about your life
    0:15:25 and organize your stuff starting with inbox
    0:15:26 will be really handy for me.
    0:15:28 And I’ve seen at least 12 companies do this
    0:15:30 and no one has done a really great job of it.
    0:15:32 I just tested this product.
    0:15:33 Have you guys heard of this?
    0:15:35 I can’t think of the name right now.
    0:15:38 But it was this thing where I, it sounds insane
    0:15:42 where it recorded my screen for weeks at a time
    0:15:45 and it would see how I’m typing what I’m saying to people.
    0:15:48 And it would give me feedback on the productivity of my day
    0:15:49 and how I can improve it.
    0:15:50 Have you guys seen this?
    0:15:51 It started with an R, I think.
    0:15:51 Is it called a?
    0:15:53 Elect or something?
    0:15:55 Isn’t it rescue time?
    0:15:58 No, go Sean, you’re right.
    0:16:00 It’s sort of, the guy who started it’s like a,
    0:16:01 he’s like a guy.
    0:16:02 He’s like been around.
    0:16:02 Yeah.
    0:16:05 He was doing like a pendant or something, right?
    0:16:07 At one point and then now it’s a.
    0:16:08 Oh, rewind then.
    0:16:08 Rewind.
    0:16:09 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
    0:16:11 Rewind.ai, is that it?
    0:16:13 Yeah, they stopped working on it.
    0:16:16 Now it’s called limit listeners working on the pendant now.
    0:16:18 Yes, I was tinkering with Rewind
    0:16:21 and the promise, it’s not there yet.
    0:16:24 But the promise of this is, was amazing.
    0:16:26 I was like so into this.
    0:16:29 And it’s kind of describing what you’re just explaining
    0:16:31 because we’re having to use Zapier and OpenAI
    0:16:34 or CHBT to like kind of duct tape this all together.
    0:16:36 Their premise was amazing.
    0:16:37 And that is exactly what I’m looking for.
    0:16:40 I got a third one, which is like a lot spicier.
    0:16:43 But you know, like this is not a ventrubacable thing,
    0:16:46 but you know, just character AI and Chai
    0:16:47 and all of these like chatbots.
    0:16:50 The really people are using for sexy chats.
    0:16:52 I think like someone could,
    0:16:54 and these things print money by the way,
    0:16:56 like they immediately generate millions of dollars a month.
    0:17:01 I thought if I were just in it just to like print money,
    0:17:04 the thing I would make is something that is kind of like tender.
    0:17:06 But basically everything is AI generated.
    0:17:08 So it’s not like, oh, you’re creating a robot,
    0:17:11 but it’s a fake dating app where everyone is attractive
    0:17:12 and is super into you.
    0:17:17 And then you can like then you can go off of your Tinder app
    0:17:20 and go on Instagram and there have an Instagram account
    0:17:23 on actual Instagram is owned by the,
    0:17:26 the person that you met on your fake Tinder app.
    0:17:28 Siky, do you know who Tai Lopez is?
    0:17:30 He’s like the guy who had the infomercial
    0:17:31 that was like here in my garage.
    0:17:33 I do know who he is, yeah.
    0:17:38 So Tai one accused, he came on MFM years ago
    0:17:40 and an accusation that I learned about him
    0:17:42 based off of the comments on YouTube
    0:17:45 is that years and years before he was whatever
    0:17:48 he was famous for, he owned dating apps.
    0:17:53 And the accusation was that all of the users were completely fake
    0:17:56 and that it was guys in the Philippines like running it
    0:17:59 and doing exactly what you’re describing.
    0:18:01 That’s true of the majority of dating apps.
    0:18:02 What do you mean?
    0:18:05 That’s just like standard offer day procedure.
    0:18:11 Like plenty of fish, you know, like a seeking arrangement.
    0:18:13 Like that is their business model.
    0:18:19 They’re like outsourced men acting as women.
    0:18:21 Yeah, there’s also like the webcam industry.
    0:18:24 Like they up until open AI,
    0:18:28 the companies with the most advanced AI technology
    0:18:30 is going to be one of these companies
    0:18:32 because they are better at creating chatbots than anyone.
    0:18:33 They have the most advanced technology.
    0:18:34 I’m not kidding.
    0:18:37 Like I know people who work there or run it.
    0:18:40 They’ve just developed better chatbot technology than anyone
    0:18:41 in GBT.
    0:18:43 That’d be so funny if that’s where AGI starts actually.
    0:18:44 It’s not open AI.
    0:18:46 It’s none of these labs.
    0:18:47 It’s like whatever.
    0:18:49 Some of these like webcam sites.
    0:18:52 That’s not a crazy idea.
    0:18:54 I mean, isn’t that how it typically has been
    0:18:56 where a lot of the like the vice industries
    0:18:57 are the ones pushing the envelope?
    0:18:58 Yeah.
    0:18:58 Yeah.
    0:19:00 Yeah, it’s transformative for only fans, right?
    0:19:02 Like I don’t know if you read, but like there’s,
    0:19:04 you know, you’re a big influencer on only fans
    0:19:07 and you have an army of a hundred people
    0:19:10 who are like typers or chatters, right?
    0:19:12 And the funny thing about them is they’re not just chatters
    0:19:13 that are flirting.
    0:19:15 They’re also basically salesmen.
    0:19:16 So what they’re doing is they’re chatting
    0:19:19 to try to upsell you until they get by this video,
    0:19:20 by this photo.
    0:19:20 I don’t know exactly.
    0:19:22 By the subscription, whatever the thing is,
    0:19:25 but they’re not just customer support.
    0:19:27 They’re actually sales, but they need to come across
    0:19:31 like they’re the original person, which is just hilarious.
    0:19:34 What do you think that office environment is like?
    0:19:41 So I know someone who works in that and it’s just normal.
    0:19:43 It is like the most boring, cubicle,
    0:19:44 normal office environment that you’ve ever seen.
    0:19:49 That’s almost better than if it was weird.
    0:19:52 The other thing with the dating apps,
    0:19:55 I think that they did was I remember seeing the study
    0:19:55 about match.com.
    0:19:57 Because if you were a guy on match.com,
    0:20:00 you would basically send out, you know, 30 messages
    0:20:02 and you’d get, you know, one back or whatever.
    0:20:04 And what they would do is they realized that
    0:20:06 a lot of guys’ accounts would go inactive
    0:20:08 because they’re not getting replies.
    0:20:11 And so what they would do is they would basically send,
    0:20:15 they would show an active person, 30 inactive profiles,
    0:20:18 knowing that that inactive person is not there to reply,
    0:20:21 but that that will be the notification for that person
    0:20:24 to come back and reactivate their subscription.
    0:20:26 They have to pay to go read their inbox and to be able to reply.
    0:20:29 And so it’s almost intentionally a horrible experience
    0:20:32 for the person who’s there trying to find somebody
    0:20:35 in order to reactivate all the churned members.
    0:20:36 And they would do, they would basically,
    0:20:38 in a, the first hundred matches that they would show you,
    0:20:41 you know, something like 50, 60, 70% of those matches
    0:20:42 were all just inactive people.
    0:20:44 They wanted you to send a notification to,
    0:20:45 to make them come back.
    0:20:47 That sounds like a Zynga train PM.
    0:20:52 Dude, I went to the Zynga office once back in the like Heyday.
    0:20:55 It was the craziest office I’ve ever seen.
    0:20:56 Sam, did you ever go to this thing?
    0:20:57 Yes.
    0:20:59 It was right, it was like, it shared a building
    0:21:02 or it was next door to Airbnb and it had a huge bulldog
    0:21:03 in the front, right?
    0:21:06 And I think at one point, I think they owned the building
    0:21:08 and I think the building was worth at one point
    0:21:11 more than the company, like, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.
    0:21:14 Why, what did you think of the office, Sean?
    0:21:16 Well, you would go in, there’s a giant tunnel,
    0:21:19 like an LED tunnel you would walk through just to enter.
    0:21:22 And then when you’re there, first of all, there was dogs everywhere.
    0:21:24 And it was like everybody, it was bring your dog to work.
    0:21:27 There was just like herds of dogs running around.
    0:21:28 It was insane.
    0:21:34 And we met the chef and the chef, like the food operation was more sophisticated.
    0:21:37 Just the cafeteria was more sophisticated than any company
    0:21:39 that I’d ever been a part of.
    0:21:41 Like just the food part was better than my actual company.
    0:21:45 So like they had a staff of 60 people on the culinary team.
    0:21:49 They had a roof on the top where they were growing all the vegetables.
    0:21:52 He had like a giant fridge that was like the size of like a swimming pool
    0:21:54 you’d walk in and there was cows hanging upside down
    0:21:56 because they had their own butcher process.
    0:21:58 They didn’t serve soda.
    0:22:00 They only brewed their own sodas.
    0:22:03 Like everything was soup to nuts custom.
    0:22:08 And like just so insanely sophisticated for a cafeteria program.
    0:22:10 I was like, man, if the food is like this,
    0:22:14 I don’t even want to know what the actual teams that do the work are.
    0:22:16 And I walked into one PM thing and it was like a stock market.
    0:22:21 Dude, his screen had so many metrics fine-tuned in real time
    0:22:23 where they were running so many tests at a time.
    0:22:26 And it was like you said, Siki, like it looked to me from the outside,
    0:22:30 like the most data-driven operation I had ever really seen.
    0:22:32 You know, I knew about what we did,
    0:22:36 but what we did looked like caveman compared to what they were doing
    0:22:38 in terms of sophistication of data.
    0:22:40 The food thing reminds me like I was the person
    0:22:42 who did the dishes for us to serve real bacon.
    0:22:44 And after a few months, we finally started to serve real bacon
    0:22:45 because we never had real bacon.
    0:22:48 It was only turkey bacon because, you know,
    0:22:50 Mark Pincus didn’t like to kill pigs.
    0:22:53 But yeah, like one of the things that people did at Zynga
    0:22:55 in the product organs, we had PM on call.
    0:22:57 And I’ve never seen this on any other organization.
    0:23:01 The PM on call for every game would daily send an analysis
    0:23:03 of what changed day over day.
    0:23:06 And so if there’s a drop, then you would segment it.
    0:23:11 And so, oh my god, there’s like an anonymous 50% drop in Mexico for Farmville.
    0:23:14 And we are not sure why because usually on Wednesdays at two,
    0:23:15 it shouldn’t be like this.
    0:23:16 And it lasts three hours long.
    0:23:18 And they would have to explain,
    0:23:19 oh, it’s because a World Cup is happening.
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    0:24:07 All right, back to the episode.
    0:24:11 What comes first?
    0:24:13 We are with Mr. Beast a few weeks ago.
    0:24:14 And I had the same question,
    0:24:16 but he wasn’t able to articulate or answer it.
    0:24:19 What comes first when you’re that data or analytic oriented?
    0:24:24 Are you that way and scale comes because of that?
    0:24:27 Or can you only behave that way because you have scale?
    0:24:30 So it depends on the environment.
    0:24:34 If it’s a data-friendly environment like Facebook is,
    0:24:36 then like Facebook platform is,
    0:24:39 where virality lets you grow from zero to a billion,
    0:24:41 then data is all that matters.
    0:24:44 But you could see in the experience of Zynga
    0:24:47 that that didn’t translate to the mobile industry.
    0:24:48 Mobile was less about virality.
    0:24:50 It was just difficult to do your distribution.
    0:24:51 A lot more about creativity.
    0:24:53 And that’s why Supercell had such a creative advantage
    0:24:56 because they actually built very fun new games.
    0:24:59 So I think it’s the completely dependent environment.
    0:25:01 If it’s hard to get early distribution,
    0:25:04 then scale makes data more important.
    0:25:07 But if it’s quite difficult to get early distribution,
    0:25:09 then you want to be creative and innovative and brand
    0:25:11 and creativity that matters a lot more.
    0:25:14 Do you remember any like random game change,
    0:25:17 like color red to blue or flashing lights or whatever
    0:25:19 that just generated like $10 million overnight?
    0:25:22 I always remember thinking that like the best way
    0:25:25 to generate $30 million overnight is just to like say,
    0:25:28 hey, it’s going to take you $10 just to unlock the game today.
    0:25:32 Like we could just like make it not payable and people would pay.
    0:25:36 One of the more interesting ideas is this idea of crew.
    0:25:40 So we had this idea of collecting materials
    0:25:42 and you ask people materials.
    0:25:44 One of the mechanics that we invented as Zynga
    0:25:46 is this idea of crew where you,
    0:25:47 for whatever thing you want to unlock,
    0:25:50 you have to get at least like 20 people to help you,
    0:25:53 unique people, because what that did is,
    0:25:55 what we saw in the data is that when you do materials,
    0:25:58 you ask the same two people over and over again.
    0:26:00 But if we have a unique spread,
    0:26:02 then that increases the distribution.
    0:26:06 And that ended up being like a pretty large boost in the AUs.
    0:26:10 Another thing that we saw is like just the power of segmentation.
    0:26:15 And so there was this one day where our numbers went down
    0:26:17 anonymously and I had to figure out,
    0:26:19 well, is it like this channel or that channel?
    0:26:22 It turns out there was one particular typo bug
    0:26:25 in the drop rate of this particular treasure
    0:26:27 that was creating a lot of opportunities for people to share.
    0:26:31 And so you just spend all day doing things like that.
    0:26:35 And so it’s rarely something like huge,
    0:26:37 but it’s all the details added together
    0:26:38 that makes a difference in Zynga.
    0:26:41 What were the other business ideas or opportunities
    0:26:42 that you think are exciting right now?
    0:26:47 Yeah, I mean, I actually asked Sam Altman to make this,
    0:26:49 but I don’t know how long they’re going to take,
    0:26:52 but I’m doing a lot of medical research.
    0:26:53 Wait, what?
    0:26:53 What did you say?
    0:26:56 Yes, Sam Altman to make this product, he said.
    0:26:57 Oh, I thought you were like,
    0:27:00 “Oh, you had Sam Altman make a list for you to talk about.”
    0:27:01 I was like, “That’s it.”
    0:27:02 No, oh, no, no.
    0:27:04 We’re not that tight.
    0:27:09 But no, I was doing a bunch of medical research
    0:27:14 and I noticed that you can’t access paywall articles.
    0:27:17 And so I really wish someone would make a version
    0:27:18 of deep research that lets you
    0:27:21 enter your paywall credentials.
    0:27:22 So you can get full access.
    0:27:24 And this goes further, I think.
    0:27:27 There’s just so much data behind
    0:27:31 offwalls, paywalls that you can’t get to
    0:27:33 and you can only search on the open web.
    0:27:35 And the more private data you can get access to,
    0:27:37 the more useful these ages become.
    0:27:39 So that’s probably the number one thing
    0:27:40 I’ve been thinking about recently.
    0:27:43 What’s the name of the company that starts with an R?
    0:27:44 It’s based in England.
    0:27:46 Sean, we’ve talked to him a bunch.
    0:27:47 It’s like an acronym.
    0:27:51 Anyway, it’s an academic publishing company in England.
    0:27:53 And it’s really controversial
    0:27:56 because I think it has the second highest profit margin
    0:27:58 of all publicly traded companies in the world
    0:28:00 behind public storage.
    0:28:03 And the shtick behind it and why everyone hates it
    0:28:06 is because researchers at universities
    0:28:07 don’t get paid anything for this.
    0:28:09 In fact, oftentimes they have to pay tuition
    0:28:11 in order to even go to these places.
    0:28:14 But they take your research and they put it behind
    0:28:15 like a $30,000 a year paywall.
    0:28:19 And so it’s a very frustrating industry.
    0:28:21 Yeah, that’s the whole industry, right?
    0:28:23 Elsevier, I think, is the biggest one.
    0:28:26 And there’s a bunch of controversy around that.
    0:28:28 And yeah, all of these are extremely hard.
    0:28:31 Our margin businesses, they charge an arm and a leg for access.
    0:28:33 The researchers get paid nothing.
    0:28:34 The peer reviewers get paid nothing.
    0:28:37 All they’re doing is just like taking the text
    0:28:39 and copy and pasted it and putting it somewhere
    0:28:41 and maybe printing it into a journal.
    0:28:43 So how would this work?
    0:28:46 You’re talking about like you told Sam Altman to say,
    0:28:49 “Hey, can I just give ChatGPT my credentials
    0:28:51 and then it can go log in for me
    0:28:54 and use that information when I ask it questions.”
    0:28:55 So that’s it.
    0:28:56 ChatGPT would have to do it.
    0:28:58 How could a founder–
    0:28:59 Well, how would a founder get around that?
    0:29:00 Or how would they do this?
    0:29:03 Yeah, I mean, you wouldn’t need access to O3,
    0:29:05 the full model first, because that’s what OpenReach search
    0:29:06 is based on.
    0:29:09 But I mean, it’s not terribly difficult
    0:29:10 to create something like a deep research.
    0:29:12 There was a company called–
    0:29:13 There is a company called GenSpark.
    0:29:15 So I’m friends with the founder, GenSpark.
    0:29:17 He’s through the VP of Search at Baidu,
    0:29:19 which is the Google of China.
    0:29:22 And they made a version of Deep Research
    0:29:23 just using a different model.
    0:29:26 And so that’s relatively easy to build.
    0:29:29 I think the storage of the credentials and logging in
    0:29:31 is a little bit more tricky.
    0:29:32 Right.
    0:29:34 It also just seems like somebody could just create
    0:29:35 like SciencePowl or something like that.
    0:29:37 It’s specifically for researchers.
    0:29:40 And it’s a ChatGPT-like interface,
    0:29:43 but it’s specifically trained on or going
    0:29:45 to access all of the journals,
    0:29:48 all of the academic research out there for you,
    0:29:49 and just do a vertical thing.
    0:29:51 Isn’t there a Google for doctors that’s like this,
    0:29:52 like Lumos or something like that?
    0:29:53 There is.
    0:29:55 So I’m deep in the space.
    0:29:57 There is a company called Ellicit.
    0:29:59 There’s a company called SciSpace.
    0:30:01 And what they allow you to do is they let you
    0:30:03 search abstracts where available.
    0:30:06 And also you can upload individual PDFs too,
    0:30:08 which also ChatGPT allows you to do.
    0:30:11 But there’s nothing I’ve seen that’s indexed
    0:30:15 as the full text of all these journals with your credentials.
    0:30:17 And why are you so interested in,
    0:30:18 what’s all this research for?
    0:30:21 Is it your daughter?
    0:30:22 And if it is, what’s the story behind that?
    0:30:24 Yeah, so my daughter was diagnosed
    0:30:26 with a rare brain tumor last September.
    0:30:31 And we’ve been doing everything we can
    0:30:33 to find new treatments for this because it’s so rare.
    0:30:38 And you really get deep insight into the sentence
    0:30:41 and the structure of the medical community.
    0:30:44 And one of the big learnings is that what is available
    0:30:47 as standard of care, meaning that’s what’s available
    0:30:49 if you go to a hospital or you talk to a doctor,
    0:30:51 and what is available at the frontier,
    0:30:53 there’s a huge gap already.
    0:30:55 And then further, when you have a rare disease,
    0:30:59 just amount of research and data and treatments available
    0:31:00 is also just thin.
    0:31:03 Because you need to have enough critical mass
    0:31:05 for the research to be worth it
    0:31:07 so they can recoup the research costs.
    0:31:11 And the other interesting thing that we’ve learned
    0:31:14 is that the IP issues are really weird.
    0:31:17 So for example, there’s this drug
    0:31:20 that is FDA-approved, non-prescription,
    0:31:22 has been out since the ’70s, treat pedwarns.
    0:31:25 And over the past 20 years,
    0:31:26 there’s a huge amount of compelling data
    0:31:29 that this might be a pretty good treatment
    0:31:30 for different kinds of cancer.
    0:31:33 And there’s been no clinical trials for it
    0:31:35 because there is no money for it
    0:31:38 because you can’t patent a pinworm drug.
    0:31:40 And so all of the money, hundreds of millions,
    0:31:43 billions of dollars are going to new molecules
    0:31:45 that are patentable, even if things are already available.
    0:31:47 And so once you get into this, you’re like,
    0:31:49 “Wow, this is super, super broken.”
    0:31:52 And so, yeah, I’m doing a lot of primary research
    0:31:55 in order to find repurposed drugs that might already exist
    0:31:57 that could treat this fairly rare brain tumor.
    0:32:01 It’s… Obviously, this is super serious
    0:32:02 and I’m sorry you’re going through everything.
    0:32:06 But also, there’s an interesting logistical thing of like,
    0:32:10 “Wait, so you are able just to research potential cures
    0:32:13 or ways to help your daughter on your own
    0:32:14 and come up with a solution?
    0:32:17 I mean, is that what you hope the outcome is?”
    0:32:20 Yeah, I mean, so there’s…
    0:32:23 I’m not the first founder type who’s been in the situation.
    0:32:26 So the co-founder of Clubhouse, Rohan,
    0:32:29 his daughter has a reintroducted disease.
    0:32:32 Her name’s Lydia and he runs the Lydia Foundation.
    0:32:36 And he’s going so far as manufacturing his own drugs, right?
    0:32:38 For very rare diseases, you can do a lot.
    0:32:41 There is other people have met with that somewhere things,
    0:32:43 like end-of-one cures exist.
    0:32:45 And so you can go…
    0:32:47 This is what I mean, like, if you’re sufficiently motivated
    0:32:51 and there’s no one more motivated than a dad with a sick kid,
    0:32:53 you can go so much further
    0:32:55 than what is available as standard of care.
    0:33:01 And so even the last time we met with our primary care team,
    0:33:03 they were proposing two particular paths,
    0:33:07 one involving pretty aggressive surgery and radiation,
    0:33:09 another involving this drug.
    0:33:12 I proposed a third path and they were discussing it.
    0:33:15 And this is like, neurosurgeons and clinicians,
    0:33:16 they came back a week later as like,
    0:33:17 “Actually, your path thinks more sets.”
    0:33:22 And the reason I was able to do that is because this disease is so rare,
    0:33:26 I am more knowledgeable about disease than anyone in the room
    0:33:29 because they have to like study 50 different cancers, right?
    0:33:31 Wow, that’s pretty incredible.
    0:33:34 Also, my experience has been that the doctors,
    0:33:37 once you get off of the kind of standard of care,
    0:33:40 and this is maybe, I’m projecting just from like,
    0:33:43 and I just had a knee injury and I was asking the doctor,
    0:33:46 I was like, “Hey, like, would PRP or stem cells?
    0:33:47 Like, is there anything, should I take…
    0:33:48 What’s a peptide?
    0:33:50 Can I put a peptide in there?”
    0:33:52 And he’s like, “You know, there’s not a lot of evidence,
    0:33:55 you know, that’s not part of the protocol.”
    0:33:56 Right.
    0:33:57 “You don’t have great evidence.”
    0:33:59 And he was sort of like, “My hands are tied.”
    0:34:00 He’s an orthopedic surgeon.
    0:34:01 He’s just like, “You know, my hands are…
    0:34:04 I can only recommend what I can recommend.
    0:34:05 You could do those things.”
    0:34:07 I don’t know.
    0:34:09 And so then I felt like, you know, I’m on my own here.
    0:34:11 Have you, once you do this path,
    0:34:14 are you just outside of the medical system?
    0:34:17 Basically, are you outside of your standard chain of command
    0:34:19 with your doctors and you have to get your own system set up?
    0:34:21 That’s a great question.
    0:34:23 And I’ve had an almost similar conversation
    0:34:25 in the last meeting I was just describing.
    0:34:27 And so I thought I’d play out in real time.
    0:34:30 So the neurosurgeon said, “Hey, when we did this operation,
    0:34:32 when we did it for this reason,
    0:34:33 do it for some other reason.
    0:34:34 It’s not part of the standard care.”
    0:34:38 But our primary clinician, she is like, she runs…
    0:34:41 He’s a principal investigator, one of the clinical trials.
    0:34:44 The only one of two that treats the disease.
    0:34:46 And she was like, “Yeah, you’re right.
    0:34:48 We don’t have a lot of evidence because
    0:34:50 there hasn’t been a lot of research into the tumor.”
    0:34:53 And so sometimes you have to argue for first principles.
    0:34:55 And if it’s a fairly rare disease,
    0:34:58 they’re more open to being more creative.
    0:35:00 And in our case, our clinician was able to convince
    0:35:02 the neurosurgeon this was the right path,
    0:35:04 or at least it’s worth trying.
    0:35:06 And she told us she was excited to have a partner
    0:35:09 who seems well-informed and is willing to think outside of the box.
    0:35:12 And I straight up said, “I do not care what the standard of care is.
    0:35:14 I think the standard of care is crap.”
    0:35:17 And she basically said, “Yeah, I think so too.
    0:35:18 I just can’t say that.”
    0:35:19 Right.
    0:35:22 Dude, and that’s pretty cool that you’re in San Francisco too,
    0:35:26 where hopefully you think that the early adopter mindset
    0:35:30 even trickles out to the doctors and things like that.
    0:35:31 That’s pretty cool that you’re around a doctor
    0:35:33 who’s willing to try some crazy stuff
    0:35:35 or would seem crazy to a lot of people.
    0:35:38 So to answer Sean’s question, if you do find your own drug,
    0:35:40 you do have to show enough research
    0:35:42 and be well-informed enough
    0:35:45 that someone is willing to prescribe it off-label
    0:35:46 on a compassionate use basis.
    0:35:50 And so you just seem to convince a one doctor.
    0:35:52 And so if you can’t find one, you can find others
    0:35:55 who’s willing to do that and then you’re in the clear.
    0:35:57 And it’s a lot easier if it’s like a fairly serious rare disease.
    0:36:00 Can you tell the story about,
    0:36:03 you tweeted out about your daughter’s condition,
    0:36:07 and then this crazy crypto turn of events happened
    0:36:10 where someone created a coin and then millions,
    0:36:11 maybe tens of millions.
    0:36:13 I don’t even know how much money was raised.
    0:36:15 And then people got mad at you.
    0:36:17 People were speculating on this thing.
    0:36:18 I don’t even understand it.
    0:36:20 Can you explain what was going on?
    0:36:23 And also just explain, is this just,
    0:36:24 was there just degenerate gambling?
    0:36:27 Or did you maybe stumble upon a novel way
    0:36:29 that people might fund research in the future?
    0:36:30 I don’t know which one of the two it is.
    0:36:33 Yeah, I think I have a better idea which one it is
    0:36:34 after some reflection on it.
    0:36:36 So explain what happened.
    0:36:40 Yeah, Christmas, I was going to Japan
    0:36:43 to ski with some friends and the family.
    0:36:46 And I was on a flight and I had a plan
    0:36:48 to start to go fummy for this lab.
    0:36:51 The Hankison Lab in the University of Colorado.
    0:36:54 So we were donating money to them once this happened
    0:36:56 because they were the only lab in North America
    0:36:58 that researched this particular tumor
    0:37:00 called the craniopharyngeoma.
    0:37:02 And the treatment that we’re on, they found.
    0:37:03 So I thought, okay, for Christmas,
    0:37:05 I thought it’d be great to do a GoFundMe
    0:37:07 use my network and raise some money for this lab.
    0:37:12 So I tweeted this thread with this GoFundMe link,
    0:37:13 and that we ended up raising about a quarter million dollars
    0:37:14 for a lab, which is like,
    0:37:16 I think the biggest donation up to that point.
    0:37:20 But what happened is some people started asking about,
    0:37:22 hey, can I donate crypto?
    0:37:28 And so I said, okay, I posted my ENS, right?
    0:37:30 My Ethereum name system address.
    0:37:34 And people started donating a little bit of ETH.
    0:37:36 And then some other people said,
    0:37:39 hey, do you have a Sol address because we’re on Solana?
    0:37:40 And I didn’t have a Sol address.
    0:37:44 I was aware what Solana is, but I never touched it.
    0:37:46 And so the next day, once I landed,
    0:37:48 I created my first Solana wallet,
    0:37:50 I created this address, and I tweeted it out.
    0:37:52 And basically what happened–
    0:37:53 By the way, are you big in the crypto world?
    0:37:55 Why were all the crypto guys doing this for you
    0:37:57 just because what’s the motivation other than it’s good?
    0:38:01 So it didn’t occur to me.
    0:38:03 I thought it was people–
    0:38:05 I had like 77,000 followers at a time.
    0:38:07 And I’m not as big in the crypto world.
    0:38:10 I’ve been on and off active in crypto since 2017,
    0:38:12 but never in a major way.
    0:38:15 I’m not a crypto account that people follow.
    0:38:20 But I found out why people did this later.
    0:38:22 And this answers the question of Sean,
    0:38:24 like, is this gambling or is this something else?
    0:38:26 But anyway, I posted a Sol Sol address,
    0:38:30 and basically an hour later, I looked at my wallet,
    0:38:33 and the wallet said $400,000, and it was zero an hour before.
    0:38:38 So I’m looking at what is going on, and it turns out–
    0:38:41 So someone created a coin called unpub.fund,
    0:38:44 which is a platform where you can create a coin
    0:38:46 in literally like 30 seconds.
    0:38:49 And I was on ETH, right?
    0:38:50 And I have an active in crypto.
    0:38:51 This wasn’t a thing.
    0:38:53 Creating a new token on Ethereum was like a whole process.
    0:38:55 Now they shorten it to 30 seconds.
    0:38:57 This is called a pump.fund.
    0:38:58 Is that–
    0:39:00 Pump.fund, yeah, it’s crazy.
    0:39:01 Have you seen this business, by the way?
    0:39:02 No, that’s like–
    0:39:05 This guy’s made like $500 million a profit last year.
    0:39:07 Like more than that, I think.
    0:39:08 And more than that, yeah.
    0:39:11 And so you click a button and you make your own coin,
    0:39:12 and obviously in the name, there’s no hiding
    0:39:14 that the point of this is that it’s a pump.
    0:39:17 Scheme, pump and dump scheme, right?
    0:39:18 They made $500 million?
    0:39:21 At least, at least.
    0:39:22 That’s their take, specifically.
    0:39:23 That’s their take.
    0:39:25 This is like the majority of the traffic on Solana.
    0:39:30 And so people are basically creating these new coins
    0:39:32 and trading them, trying to write it,
    0:39:34 and it’s basically musical shares, right?
    0:39:35 Have you guys gone to this website?
    0:39:36 It’s crazy.
    0:39:37 It looks like a GeoCity website.
    0:39:39 Like there’s like flashing banners.
    0:39:40 This is insane.
    0:39:41 It’s all the time.
    0:39:42 It’s all real time.
    0:39:46 Like yesterday, during the Super Bowl, somebody created,
    0:39:48 and for Dave Poitnoy, they set a bar stool.
    0:39:49 A jail coin?
    0:39:50 Jail stool.
    0:39:51 A jail stool.
    0:39:53 And a jail stool ran up to like $100 million
    0:39:54 or something like that.
    0:39:54 $200 million.
    0:39:56 Like he said, it’s musical shares.
    0:40:00 So you’re buying, trying to catch one of these 1000X waves,
    0:40:02 but it’s going to dump, and you just got to know
    0:40:03 when you’re going to get off the train.
    0:40:04 And then if you wait too long,
    0:40:07 or you’re the one who comes in late, you lose.
    0:40:10 So it’s like being at a roulette table or whatever,
    0:40:12 where you’re just throwing chips at the table,
    0:40:13 trying to hit.
    0:40:13 Oh my God.
    0:40:15 Yeah, it’s like the Trump coin, except you can create it
    0:40:18 in like 10 seconds, 30 seconds.
    0:40:22 But anyway, that’s why people created this coin
    0:40:25 is because you’re looking for these new narratives
    0:40:27 to gamble on, right?
    0:40:29 And the more interesting, the more viral
    0:40:32 seeming a narrative is, the more valuable it becomes.
    0:40:34 And if you’re in art early, it could really pump.
    0:40:36 So anyway, it was $400,000.
    0:40:38 And I tweeted a screenshot.
    0:40:40 There’s a whole tweet sort of thread where I was like,
    0:40:41 “What is going on?”
    0:40:43 And I kept on adding this to the tweet thread
    0:40:45 with screenshots on my wallet.
    0:40:47 And so it was $400,000.
    0:40:48 I was like, “What is happening?”
    0:40:49 And people were trying to explain to someone
    0:40:51 who created this coin called Mira.
    0:40:53 And there’s a billion tokens.
    0:40:56 And they sent me, “Someone bought half the supply
    0:40:57 and just sent it to my wallet.”
    0:40:59 So I had 500 million tokens.
    0:41:03 And once I tweeted, then an eye check again.
    0:41:05 And it’s now $4 million.
    0:41:07 And I’m like, “What?”
    0:41:10 And an hour later, it’s eight.
    0:41:13 A couple hours later, it became 15.
    0:41:17 And a one point was $20 million, just like the same day.
    0:41:18 And I got like $40,000.
    0:41:20 The market cap, and the market cap of the whole thing,
    0:41:21 that means was $80 million.
    0:41:22 Correct.
    0:41:24 Okay.
    0:41:26 No, no, I think peak market cap was around $60 million.
    0:41:27 Okay.
    0:41:29 And you had $40 million of it.
    0:41:32 Yeah, because I sold 10% immediately
    0:41:34 just to like capture something.
    0:41:36 And I sold a bit more in the liquidity pool.
    0:41:39 So, you know, I got around a million dollars out,
    0:41:41 but I still owned 30% of it.
    0:41:44 And immediately I was, I said,
    0:41:46 “Okay, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with it,
    0:41:50 but every dollar in my wallet is going to charity.
    0:41:51 This is non-profit, it’s not for me.”
    0:41:54 Not just charity, going to the research lab.
    0:41:54 Going to research lab.
    0:41:56 That’s researching the potential course
    0:41:57 to your daughter’s thing.
    0:41:58 Okay, correct.
    0:42:01 So I said, “Hey, I’m not gonna move anything
    0:42:02 with our 25 hours notice.
    0:42:05 I’m gonna try to like be very transparent about this.”
    0:42:07 And I thought about it and I said,
    0:42:10 “I’m gonna start selling $1,000 every 10 minutes
    0:42:12 until like we’re done
    0:42:15 because I just don’t have time to run a crypto project.
    0:42:20 And, you know, like I want everyone to know where this is going.”
    0:42:25 So that happened and the price started going down.
    0:42:26 But once we got to a million,
    0:42:30 what happened in between is because it was such a big story,
    0:42:34 a bunch of rare disease organization started reaching out to me.
    0:42:36 And they’re like, “Wow, this happened to you.
    0:42:39 Can we, how do we get in on this?”
    0:42:39 Because…
    0:42:45 They’re like, “Did you say ‘pump.fun’?”
    0:42:45 Okay.
    0:42:49 Because an average budget,
    0:42:51 annual budget for one of these organizations
    0:42:53 was like $100,000, $150,000.
    0:42:54 It’s just like not a whole lot of money.
    0:42:56 This is like more money than the community’s ever seen.
    0:42:57 It’s a lot of excitement there.
    0:43:01 So I thought, well, I was talking to some crypto friends
    0:43:03 and I thought, “Okay, how do we make this like a thing?
    0:43:06 And maybe we can make this more sustainable, long-lasting.”
    0:43:09 And this idea turning Mira into a launchpad
    0:43:11 for other rare disease tokens,
    0:43:16 where Mira’s a liquidity pair token was talked about.
    0:43:19 And so I thought, well, okay, that seems interesting.
    0:43:20 Before I do that,
    0:43:23 I should probably figure out how a coin works
    0:43:24 and how you launch one of these.
    0:43:29 So I went on pump.fun and I thought,
    0:43:31 “Okay, let’s find out how one of these works.”
    0:43:34 So I created a coin called Zero and I entered a description
    0:43:35 for the coin because you could do that.
    0:43:37 I said, “Hey, don’t buy this coin.”
    0:43:38 It literally says, “Don’t buy this coin.
    0:43:40 It’ll never be worth anything.
    0:43:41 I’m never going to do anything with it.
    0:43:42 It’ll be worth $0.”
    0:43:46 So I pressed a button and what I didn’t realize
    0:43:49 is because I was on Ethereum for a long time,
    0:43:50 but I never had a watch wallet,
    0:43:54 what happened is I was in the background,
    0:43:55 the most watch wallet at crypto.
    0:43:59 So within about 100 to 200 seconds,
    0:44:01 the market cap of this coin
    0:44:02 that I told people to not buy in the description.
    0:44:04 Sorry, a watch wallet.
    0:44:06 Does a watch wallet mean that you are someone
    0:44:08 that should be monitored because you’re a potential whale?
    0:44:10 Yeah, people start tracking like,
    0:44:12 “Oh, what is Vitalik doing with his wallet?
    0:44:13 What is, what is…”
    0:44:14 People are copying.
    0:44:15 Someone’s so good with their wallet.
    0:44:16 People want to copy what you’re doing.
    0:44:18 And they think that you’re the man
    0:44:21 because your wallet is old or you have a lot in it.
    0:44:23 Because I was sort of the main character
    0:44:26 of crypto Twitter for a few days.
    0:44:27 Got it, okay, understood.
    0:44:29 So there were copy, there were bots
    0:44:31 like just monitoring what I was doing
    0:44:33 and buying whatever I was buying.
    0:44:35 And so they saw this new token.
    0:44:38 And so within 100 to 200 seconds,
    0:44:41 the market cap of this token was three and a half million dollars.
    0:44:47 So I was just sitting there like panicking.
    0:44:50 And I said, “Okay, I don’t, this is bad.
    0:44:52 I don’t want to have anything to do with this.”
    0:44:56 So I had half of the entire supply and I sold it.
    0:44:58 And that was my main mistake.
    0:45:00 I should have burned it,
    0:45:03 which everyone would have been happy about, right?
    0:45:08 But because I sold, I crashed the price of this token.
    0:45:11 And people got very upset because it was considered a rug.
    0:45:15 So now like, “Oh my God, everyone’s…”
    0:45:17 And when I sold, I made like $80,000
    0:45:19 because even those three and a half million dollars
    0:45:23 in market cap is only about $100,000 or so in liquidity.
    0:45:26 And yeah, I started a thread explaining,
    0:45:28 “Oh my God, I didn’t expect this to happen.
    0:45:31 I got on spaces over video.
    0:45:33 Just like, I’m really sorry.
    0:45:35 I’m like, still trying to figure out how this works.”
    0:45:38 And you know, people don’t did it care.
    0:45:41 And what I realized is just a different community
    0:45:45 than it was when I was really active on Twitter in 2017.
    0:45:46 Like people aren’t Ethereum.
    0:45:48 They’re like very deep tech to people, right?
    0:45:49 They’re like nerdy.
    0:45:53 And with the Solana in 2024,
    0:45:55 I didn’t realize like it’s so much more mainstream.
    0:45:58 A lot of people maybe have like $50 or $100
    0:46:00 and they’re just trying to turn into $1,000.
    0:46:04 And so the amount of the motion there is like very, very different.
    0:46:07 Crypto transition from neckbeards to like everybody
    0:46:10 who looks like Jack Harlow in like four years.
    0:46:13 The community, the Solana community,
    0:46:16 all has like the line etched into the,
    0:46:17 into like the side of their haircut or like multiple.
    0:46:20 It’s very different than like the people
    0:46:22 that got me into Ethereum in the first place.
    0:46:24 Today I learned or this month I learned.
    0:46:26 So anyway, the markout three and a half million
    0:46:28 before I sold, it dumped at 300,000.
    0:46:32 And as I started talking about my mistake,
    0:46:35 the market cat came back and at one point
    0:46:37 it was like five and a half, $6 million.
    0:46:40 Just because I was like talking about it
    0:46:43 and people were just, the more upset people were,
    0:46:46 the more the coin pumped and more money people made from the coin.
    0:46:49 So they were trying to make it like even more dramatic,
    0:46:51 which I didn’t really understand in time.
    0:46:53 I just thought I messed up and people were really upset at me.
    0:46:58 So anyway, so then that was like the main villain turn
    0:47:00 on Twitter and everyone was super upset at me
    0:47:01 because they saw me as a scammer.
    0:47:05 So I thought about what am I going to do with this?
    0:47:08 So first of all, like the $80,000 within a minute,
    0:47:10 I realized this is a mistake.
    0:47:13 So I bought back in into the coin and I burned it all, right?
    0:47:16 So I already was like neutral and I explained that.
    0:47:19 No one cared because of the anonymity of crypto.
    0:47:21 They thought I had like a hundred other wallets
    0:47:25 that was like, that I pumped and dumped on any profit there
    0:47:27 and I can’t prove otherwise.
    0:47:31 So I decided like this is really shitty
    0:47:33 and I don’t want any part of it.
    0:47:37 So what I decided to do is I got some help from, you know,
    0:47:39 friend, he’s a coin base from other people
    0:47:42 who didn’t want to be named to do on-chain analysis.
    0:47:46 So what I set on space is I’m actually just going to pay everyone
    0:47:48 back who lost money on this out of my own pocket.
    0:47:50 And I’ve even touched a cherry wallet.
    0:47:54 So what we ended up doing is everyone who held
    0:47:58 in the first 200 seconds, who owned any coins then,
    0:48:00 up until the point 43 minutes later,
    0:48:05 where the market cap fully recovered back to the same value.
    0:48:07 If you sold and you realized the loss,
    0:48:09 I’m just going to airdrop you sold.
    0:48:13 And it ended up being like $104,000 to $50,000 out of my own pocket.
    0:48:14 And I just paid everyone back,
    0:48:17 which has never happened on any pump fund coin before.
    0:48:21 And maybe like 10% of the people have heard about this.
    0:48:22 I tweeted about it.
    0:48:24 I had to like keep on responding.
    0:48:26 Because every time I tweet for the next like month,
    0:48:28 someone would say, “Oh, you’re a scammer.
    0:48:29 What are you still doing here?”
    0:48:30 And I had to say, “No, I paid everyone back.”
    0:48:32 And they would just like not say anything.
    0:48:36 This is like a crypto Larry David like thing.
    0:48:38 Like it’s like, this is like you’re walking through Times Square
    0:48:42 and one of those fake monks put like a bracelet on your wrist.
    0:48:45 And then like it now expects you to give them like $20.
    0:48:47 It says, even though we called it a free gift,
    0:48:49 like this is just, this is insane.
    0:48:52 So how much did you end up giving to the charity?
    0:48:56 Yeah. So between GoFundMe, so as a million dollars from crypto,
    0:48:59 and just like I locked a bunch of the mirror coin
    0:49:00 into a liquidity pool.
    0:49:02 So it’s sort of still perpetually generating.
    0:49:06 So you bought a million dollars of charity for $150,000 basically.
    0:49:08 That’s correct. Yeah.
    0:49:11 And then we, the total was like a 1.4 million.
    0:49:15 We donated more to match like the mistake.
    0:49:18 And we added a GoFundMe to it.
    0:49:18 So ended up being 1.4 million.
    0:49:22 And then the lab actually like triple leveraged it up into the coin.
    0:49:27 They got hooked on pumped off on.
    0:49:32 All right. I got a public service announcement
    0:49:33 for all the tech founders that are listening to this.
    0:49:36 Listen, job number one for you is to get customers.
    0:49:38 And ideally the bigger the customers, the better.
    0:49:40 And I know when I was trying to do that,
    0:49:42 we would get somebody interested.
    0:49:43 Oh man, there’s a big Fortune 500 company
    0:49:46 or it’s a company that’s raised hundreds of millions of dollars.
    0:49:46 They want to work with us.
    0:49:48 This is so exciting.
    0:49:49 And then we hit the wall
    0:49:52 and the wall was the security and compliance team.
    0:49:55 And all of a sudden we could not land our biggest customers
    0:49:57 just because we were shooting ourselves on the foot
    0:50:00 by not being security ready and compliant.
    0:50:02 And so if you want to solve this, use Vanta.
    0:50:03 Vanta is an all in one solution.
    0:50:05 It helps you get audit ready.
    0:50:07 And it’s quick, it’s painless, it’s easy.
    0:50:08 They’re the number one guys doing this.
    0:50:11 There are 8,000 companies that use them.
    0:50:12 YC companies use them.
    0:50:14 We use them.
    0:50:16 And so if you want Vanta to help simplify
    0:50:17 your security and compliance program
    0:50:18 to help you streamline anything,
    0:50:20 take all those manual security tasks
    0:50:22 and automate them.
    0:50:23 You should use Vanta.
    0:50:24 If you listen to this,
    0:50:25 you guys should get $1,000 off of Vanta too.
    0:50:26 So we got a deal for you.
    0:50:28 Go to Vanta.com/million.
    0:50:32 That’s V-A-N-T-A.com/million.
    0:50:33 Use Vanta.
    0:50:34 That’s what all the cool kids are doing.
    0:50:39 Would you, Sean, give back the 150 like you did?
    0:50:40 I wouldn’t.
    0:50:40 Fuck that.
    0:50:44 I would not have for that situation personally.
    0:50:45 I get why you did.
    0:50:46 It’s almost just like,
    0:50:47 “Dude, this is great.
    0:50:49 All of this was unintentional.
    0:50:51 People are really mad.
    0:50:53 Okay, what’s the sort of like,
    0:50:56 how can I just like clear up any possible confusion?”
    0:50:58 But I don’t think you needed to in this situation, right?
    0:51:00 You created a coin called Zero
    0:51:01 that you said is don’t buy this.
    0:51:02 This is going to Zero.
    0:51:04 It’s a test coin.
    0:51:07 And if somebody went and randomly speculated on it
    0:51:09 using their like, their sniper bots
    0:51:10 that are trying to track your wallet,
    0:51:12 you know, like I wouldn’t have given a shit personally.
    0:51:16 But then again, these, this community is so like crazy
    0:51:18 that they’ll just like make your life hell on Twitter
    0:51:19 for like the next five years.
    0:51:21 It might be, might be worth it, you know?
    0:51:22 Just to clear your own conscience,
    0:51:24 go to sleep at night, you know?
    0:51:24 Exactly.
    0:51:25 I couldn’t, it was for me.
    0:51:26 So I could sleep all night
    0:51:29 because a lot of these people are fairly low income
    0:51:31 and the money is fairly meaningful.
    0:51:32 It was one reason.
    0:51:34 But another reason is like,
    0:51:35 people just don’t read.
    0:51:37 Like I explained this.
    0:51:39 I mean, the coin says don’t buy it.
    0:51:41 I explained this like a couple different times.
    0:51:43 And what I realized is like,
    0:51:45 you just don’t read on the internet.
    0:51:47 And as far as anyone else knows,
    0:51:48 because it makes a lot of noise,
    0:51:54 like I, the, if you don’t, don’t read what it sounds like is,
    0:51:57 I created a scam coin using my own daughter’s name
    0:51:58 to scam people out of it.
    0:51:58 Right, right, right.
    0:51:59 It’s crazy.
    0:52:02 Did you, in the end of this,
    0:52:04 is there anything here that’s interesting
    0:52:06 for fundraising for research?
    0:52:07 Or this is just straight like,
    0:52:10 I accidentally got into a gambling pool
    0:52:12 and it’s kind of got some money for research,
    0:52:14 but this is not a sustainable thing for anybody.
    0:52:16 I’m still trying to figure it out.
    0:52:22 So what I’m hoping to make nearer into is,
    0:52:23 so the way this works is you’re,
    0:52:24 this is like sort of gang theory around,
    0:52:26 okay, you own a bunch of this coin
    0:52:30 because this coin’s narrative is attached to you, right?
    0:52:31 In the case of, you know,
    0:52:33 they port, Portnoy is doing something similar with Jailstool.
    0:52:38 And in order to turn it into real world impact,
    0:52:38 you have to sell.
    0:52:40 There’s no way around that.
    0:52:42 And so when you sell,
    0:52:44 then you’re just like playing a zero-sum game
    0:52:45 against the community
    0:52:47 and they’re all going to be upset for you, for sure,
    0:52:48 no matter what.
    0:52:50 And so that’s a very difficult dynamic.
    0:52:53 And I think my idea here is like the only sustainable way
    0:52:56 to do this is to lock a bunch of the token
    0:52:57 into a liquidity pool.
    0:53:00 And so that when people buy in or out of it,
    0:53:02 you get to exchange, you get the fees.
    0:53:05 And that’s not really like selling into your community.
    0:53:06 I think imagine a version of Dogecoin
    0:53:08 where every time someone, you know,
    0:53:10 it’s like Dogecoin is like a couple tens of billions
    0:53:11 of dollars market cap.
    0:53:13 But every time someone sells or buys,
    0:53:15 it creates like up to,
    0:53:17 could be hundreds of thousands of dollars a day of fees
    0:53:20 and which you can then use to donate.
    0:53:22 I think that might be relatively sustainable.
    0:53:23 This is insane.
    0:53:25 I don’t even know what to say.
    0:53:26 Sounds like a great weekend.
    0:53:29 No, it was a month, it was the last,
    0:53:32 it was Christmas until like maybe, you know,
    0:53:34 now and it ruined my vacation.
    0:53:37 And it’s been by far the most stressful time
    0:53:38 I’ve ever had in my life.
    0:53:42 Can we do a quick detour?
    0:53:45 We were at a dinner once and you talked about some,
    0:53:47 I think it was a Stanford class you took
    0:53:50 called Touchyfeely or that’s the code name for it.
    0:53:51 I don’t know.
    0:53:53 And it’s something about communication and relationships.
    0:53:55 And I remember you said this really great thing at the dinner.
    0:53:56 But this was now many years ago
    0:53:57 and I don’t remember it exactly.
    0:54:00 But can you say that bit again?
    0:54:01 I want to hear it again.
    0:54:02 And I think a lot of people might benefit from it.
    0:54:04 By the way, Siki, how old are you?
    0:54:07 I’m 41, I think.
    0:54:09 You look like you could be 22 or 41.
    0:54:10 I have no idea.
    0:54:12 Yeah, Asian no reason.
    0:54:12 Let’s go.
    0:54:18 Yeah, so I took actually now twice.
    0:54:20 I took class again as we talked.
    0:54:23 This class that was based on the Stanford business world class
    0:54:25 called Interpersonal Dynamics,
    0:54:27 which is the highly braided and most popular class
    0:54:28 in Stanford business school.
    0:54:31 It’s taught by a professor called Carol Robbins
    0:54:32 and it’s generally known as Touchyfeely.
    0:54:36 And its name is for every participant at some point
    0:54:38 will like cry in the class.
    0:54:44 But Carol Robbins is now a co-founder of a group called Leaders in Tech
    0:54:46 which provides the same class for tech leaders.
    0:54:49 So one of the things that you get taught in this class is,
    0:54:52 so the purpose of the class is to teach you how to relate to people
    0:54:54 and build connection for the other people
    0:54:56 because people work with other people.
    0:54:59 And one of the most useful frameworks I got from that class
    0:55:03 is how to think about your connection with other people
    0:55:04 and how to develop that connection.
    0:55:10 And so the two frameworks to connect is one is the two tracks
    0:55:14 of interpersonal communication and the five levels of it.
    0:55:20 So when you’re talking with anyone else, there is two tracks.
    0:55:23 There’s the content track and there’s a relationship track.
    0:55:25 So the content track is filled with facts
    0:55:28 and a relationship track is filled with emotion
    0:55:31 and a relationship track is what is filled
    0:55:34 and what has to be filled for a relationship
    0:55:36 to get become closer and for trust increase.
    0:55:40 And the way you fill each of these tracks
    0:55:42 is through the five levels of communication.
    0:55:45 And the idea is when you are talking to someone,
    0:55:48 there’s five levels at which you communicate
    0:55:51 of increasing vulnerability and death.
    0:55:54 So level one is what’s called ritual
    0:55:57 and that is, hey, how’s it going?
    0:55:58 Hey, right?
    0:56:00 It doesn’t really say anything.
    0:56:02 We’re just ritualized greeting.
    0:56:05 Level two is extended ritual.
    0:56:07 So that is how’s the weather?
    0:56:08 How’s the game?
    0:56:09 Right?
    0:56:12 It’s a longer version of, hey, how’s it going?
    0:56:14 Level three is content.
    0:56:16 So these are facts.
    0:56:17 How’s the project?
    0:56:18 Is it late?
    0:56:21 What are we going to do with this particular idea?
    0:56:24 Level four is emotional self-disclosure.
    0:56:27 So that is when you say something
    0:56:32 that discloses how you are feeling emotionally at the time.
    0:56:33 I feel sad.
    0:56:34 I feel angry.
    0:56:35 And there’s a lot of talk about level four
    0:56:37 because people think they’re doing level four,
    0:56:38 but they’re not.
    0:56:40 And that’s a very common thing that’s unique
    0:56:42 to the English language, which we talk about.
    0:56:43 That was a fairly interesting insight.
    0:56:45 So level five is the deepest one.
    0:56:48 And level five is mutual emotional self-disclosure.
    0:56:52 And it is when you are expressing the emotion
    0:56:54 that you have about the other person.
    0:56:56 I feel angry at you.
    0:56:58 I feel proud of you.
    0:57:00 I feel disappointed by you.
    0:57:02 That’s the deepest level of communication
    0:57:03 you can have with another person.
    0:57:08 And the content track is only filled
    0:57:10 by things from level one to three.
    0:57:12 And the relationship track is only filled
    0:57:13 by level four and five.
    0:57:19 And we are taught to really not use level four and five
    0:57:20 in professional settings.
    0:57:22 But if you want to build a relationship,
    0:57:25 level four and five is kind of the only way you can do it.
    0:57:30 And so a lot of the training is about breaking
    0:57:32 past the barrier or the uncomfortableness
    0:57:35 of engaging level four and level five communication.
    0:57:38 And you basically sit in a circle with 12 people
    0:57:41 for four days straight until you like,
    0:57:44 so you can observe the impact of doing level four or five
    0:57:46 and not doing level four or five.
    0:57:49 And how you are able to be closer to someone
    0:57:51 or further away from someone in emotional distance.
    0:57:54 Has this made your running a company better?
    0:57:57 I mean, I would say this is the most impactful thing
    0:58:00 I’ve ever done in my entire life, like out of any class.
    0:58:03 I always like, as a founder,
    0:58:05 somewhat see the company as some kind of machine
    0:58:08 and I didn’t find it, I’m like, you know,
    0:58:09 Miley asked for a degree.
    0:58:10 So I found it difficult to relate to people.
    0:58:14 But it’s completely transformed all my relationships,
    0:58:15 including my relationship with my wife.
    0:58:21 And so one of the ways, this was even just last week,
    0:58:25 we had an onsite and I was able to do a mini version of this
    0:58:26 with our customer success team.
    0:58:28 We’re just sat or, you know,
    0:58:30 I did a very condensed version of this lecture
    0:58:34 and then we sat and we just talked for about four hours.
    0:58:37 And the amount of closeness people got,
    0:58:39 insight people got was transformative.
    0:58:40 And you wouldn’t normally, you know,
    0:58:42 sit around for a couple hours at a work setting
    0:58:44 and talk about your feelings.
    0:58:45 And it’s very uncomfortable to do so.
    0:58:48 And it’s intentionally so, like it’s very comfortable
    0:58:52 for the first couple of, in the case of a real life workshop,
    0:58:54 it’s half a day.
    0:58:55 In the case of us, we had it like sort of speed running
    0:58:57 and it was uncomfortable about an hour.
    0:59:01 But then people were really into it and it’s weird,
    0:59:06 but everyone at some point was crying about some disclosure
    0:59:09 that they heard or they’ve experienced.
    0:59:11 And as a result, the team got so much closer
    0:59:12 and a trust increase.
    0:59:13 – That’s wild. – This is awesome.
    0:59:15 – Do you, so how do you do this in practice, right?
    0:59:17 Cause when you talk about like, you know,
    0:59:21 I feel angry at you about X or I’m disappointed about Y,
    0:59:25 I could see myself not having the skills
    0:59:26 or finesse to be able to do that
    0:59:29 and let the end result be a positive one
    0:59:33 versus we start talking, you’re upset by this.
    0:59:35 Well, the other person gets defensive
    0:59:40 or they push back and say, well, you did that, blah, blah, blah.
    0:59:43 And so can you give me an example of a conversation
    0:59:47 that you had that like, maybe here’s what I would love,
    0:59:50 a conversation that typically would have gone like this
    0:59:51 or maybe been avoided altogether.
    0:59:54 And instead, here’s how the actual conversation went
    0:59:57 that was useful for you as a CEO, leader, friend,
    1:00:00 whatever husband, whichever example you want to choose.
    1:00:02 – Yeah, so the first one is easy actually.
    1:00:06 So in most people just don’t have the conversation, right?
    1:00:08 So the conversation wouldn’t say, I’m angry,
    1:00:11 you would just be angry and you wouldn’t say anything.
    1:00:12 – Right.
    1:00:13 – And people can tell is the thing,
    1:00:16 like when you feel a certain way about someone,
    1:00:19 it gets, it leaks, right?
    1:00:21 Like there’s a level of,
    1:00:23 even if you’re not attending the passive aggressive,
    1:00:25 you’re just kind of ignoring the person
    1:00:28 or it comes off like you’re like, oh my God, it’s late again.
    1:00:29 – Right.
    1:00:30 – Right, or he didn’t do this.
    1:00:32 And so that’s the default.
    1:00:35 And that’s when you have this negative feedback cycle
    1:00:38 of well, okay, you already felt a certain way,
    1:00:40 then you expressed it unknowingly.
    1:00:42 And now the other person thinks you’re angry at them
    1:00:44 and now they dislike you more.
    1:00:47 And then they do things that you dislike more
    1:00:48 because they dislike you more.
    1:00:49 And it just gets worse.
    1:00:50 That’s what relationships get worse.
    1:00:51 And that’s like the default.
    1:00:55 And so if you know that it leaks anyway,
    1:00:59 then it becomes easier to say, I’m going to express that.
    1:01:02 And you’re going to express it no matter what.
    1:01:04 Your choice is do you express it with words
    1:01:06 or do you express it with not words
    1:01:08 but just like passive aggressive behavior?
    1:01:13 And so, and then you combine that with everyone is entitled
    1:01:14 to know those things so they know.
    1:01:17 But they’re not entitled to make things up
    1:01:19 about what other people are thinking.
    1:01:23 So you are entitled to seeing the same facts
    1:01:25 as everyone else seeing the same behavior.
    1:01:29 You’re not entitled to read the minds
    1:01:31 of some other person and how they’re thinking
    1:01:32 and how they’re feeling.
    1:01:35 But you’re 100% entitled to share what you’re feeling
    1:01:37 because those are facts to you.
    1:01:37 That’s reality.
    1:01:41 And so the mental model isn’t.
    1:01:43 And this is kind of like typical
    1:01:44 because people aren’t used to expressing this.
    1:01:48 The mental model is like, oh, if I am expressing this emotion,
    1:01:50 that means I’m attacking someone.
    1:01:52 And that is true if you don’t express the emotion
    1:01:54 and you’re just acting it out.
    1:01:58 But if I were to say, you know, when I see you do this,
    1:02:02 the story I tell myself is that you don’t respect me.
    1:02:03 And I don’t know if it’s true,
    1:02:05 but this is like what I’m thinking my head.
    1:02:08 And because of that, I feel angry.
    1:02:12 And I just want you to know that because I don’t,
    1:02:13 I don’t know if you know that you,
    1:02:16 I know that you probably don’t because you can’t read my mind.
    1:02:19 But I’m guessing you probably aren’t intending
    1:02:20 to make me feel that way.
    1:02:23 And I thought it’d be helpful for you to share,
    1:02:25 for me to share that to you so that you are aware of it.
    1:02:29 I just learned that technique in therapy last week.
    1:02:29 Amazing.
    1:02:30 I seriously did.
    1:02:33 That’s the nonviolent, nonviolent communication framework, right?
    1:02:34 It is, yeah.
    1:02:36 It’s very connected to that.
    1:02:37 I literally just learned that.
    1:02:40 Yeah, you’re sharing information, right?
    1:02:42 So it’s not an attack.
    1:02:45 Like if you are genuinely doing it,
    1:02:48 because you understand that you can’t read their mind,
    1:02:50 but of course I can’t read your mind either.
    1:02:51 And so by sharing it is,
    1:02:53 you’re offering them a gift of the information.
    1:02:54 One question is,
    1:02:56 you said something about the English language
    1:02:57 making it harder.
    1:02:57 What did you mean by that?
    1:03:01 So what you start seeing when you’re in this class
    1:03:03 with these tall people,
    1:03:06 and you start realizing that,
    1:03:09 oh, like I really only feel closer
    1:03:10 and I get to know someone better
    1:03:12 when they say I feel emotion.
    1:03:13 I feel sad.
    1:03:14 I feel angry when this happened.
    1:03:18 And I feel distanced when they’re expressing that emotion,
    1:03:19 but not saying it.
    1:03:21 You can tell on their faces that they’re pissed off.
    1:03:23 And it becomes scarier.
    1:03:25 So then you start learning that,
    1:03:27 oh, I mean to say I feel.
    1:03:30 The thing about the English language
    1:03:32 is that we say I feel often
    1:03:34 without expressing any emotion at all.
    1:03:36 And that’s the sort of a quirk
    1:03:37 that’s kind of unique to English.
    1:03:40 So when you say I feel that,
    1:03:41 or I feel like,
    1:03:43 it is actually grammatically impossible
    1:03:45 for them that sort to be an emotion.
    1:03:48 I feel that you’re an asshole is not an emotion.
    1:03:51 I feel like this is fucked is not an emotion.
    1:03:55 I feel sad is an emotion.
    1:03:57 I feel happy is an emotion.
    1:03:58 And we’re not used to saying that
    1:04:00 because the word feel is used
    1:04:03 is has been, you know,
    1:04:06 disused, misused for other purposes.
    1:04:09 And so we just often is unconsciously.
    1:04:11 Once you see it, you cannot see it.
    1:04:13 People, I ask people, it’s showed emotion.
    1:04:16 And they say, I feel like I feel that.
    1:04:17 And it’s never an emotion.
    1:04:19 And it’s very, very hard to change the habit.
    1:04:20 Do you guys do this?
    1:04:22 Where like, Sean, in particular,
    1:04:23 I’m curious if you do this,
    1:04:25 but do you guys do this where you like,
    1:04:27 you get into this type of shit,
    1:04:28 whatever you want to call it,
    1:04:29 the touchy-feely stuff.
    1:04:31 And you’re like, this is the way.
    1:04:33 And then like, I get into it.
    1:04:36 And then half the time I execute that poorly.
    1:04:39 And then like, the business sucks.
    1:04:41 And I’m like, I got to have more patience with this person.
    1:04:45 Or I got to like, let them get away with shit more or whatever.
    1:04:48 And then I just go right back to the total opposite end
    1:04:51 where it’s like, what do they call this?
    1:04:53 Doge, where I’m like, everyone has 15 minutes
    1:04:54 to fight for their job.
    1:05:01 Like, you know, like, it’s like, I get influenced by either side.
    1:05:02 And I don’t, but there is no middle ground.
    1:05:03 And that’s like-
    1:05:04 I’m kinda like you?
    1:05:08 That the first sign of resistance, I crumble sometimes.
    1:05:10 So the, but the version of it that happens for me is,
    1:05:12 let’s say I hear this and I’m like,
    1:05:15 ah, Seeky just taught me something.
    1:05:15 This is great.
    1:05:17 Two content tracks, five levels.
    1:05:18 I’m in.
    1:05:19 I got this.
    1:05:20 I’m going level five.
    1:05:21 Maybe you don’t even need one through four.
    1:05:24 And then I’ll go have the next conversation with my wife tonight.
    1:05:28 And I’ll give her like, I feel that.
    1:05:31 No, no, I feel upset.
    1:05:33 And I know you didn’t mean that.
    1:05:35 I tried to do the whole thing and she’s like, what?
    1:05:37 And then she doesn’t, she doesn’t know all of this.
    1:05:39 She didn’t, because she didn’t go to the seminar
    1:05:41 and she didn’t have the skills and the tools.
    1:05:42 She’s like, be a mad Sean.
    1:05:43 Shut up.
    1:05:44 It’s on the front of her mind.
    1:05:46 And so she doesn’t play back like the role play
    1:05:47 that I had heard was.
    1:05:50 And then I’m like, well, I don’t really know the next move.
    1:05:53 Okay, revert, revert back to my old asshole self.
    1:05:58 Yeah, I mean, that’s not a bad response, honestly,
    1:06:02 because I think, I think you have to do whatever works.
    1:06:05 And the reality is to get good at this.
    1:06:10 You know, it took me, I did this four day program twice
    1:06:12 and eat every day was like 12 hours a day.
    1:06:14 And you’re just sitting in this circle practice.
    1:06:15 Did your wife go with you?
    1:06:17 The first time she actually did.
    1:06:18 Okay.
    1:06:20 So she kind of had a dream.
    1:06:20 And we’re not supposed to.
    1:06:24 I kind of, no, I kind of smuffled her into the hotel room.
    1:06:26 So she didn’t go to the class.
    1:06:30 But I will say, like the second night when I went home,
    1:06:31 she was like, who are you?
    1:06:35 Because I was like, oh my God, I feel so bad.
    1:06:36 I’ve been such an asshole.
    1:06:38 Dude, this sounds like, have you guys heard of the Hoffman Institute?
    1:06:40 Have you heard of this?
    1:06:41 I’ve heard of this, but I haven’t been.
    1:06:41 Yeah.
    1:06:44 Like I have, I’ve contemplated going to it,
    1:06:47 but I think they, it’s like, they have a variety of locations.
    1:06:50 They have one in Connecticut near me and then they have a Boston one.
    1:06:52 But you go for, it’s like not expensive.
    1:06:55 It’s like $2,000 and you go for four days
    1:06:56 and you can’t bring your cell phone.
    1:06:58 You can’t, you’re going to be completely disconnected.
    1:06:59 Or maybe it’s even five days.
    1:07:00 It’s kind of a lot.
    1:07:04 But they like, everyone who I go, who goes to it,
    1:07:07 they won’t tell me what happens there,
    1:07:08 but they all say that it’s life changing.
    1:07:10 And they can now develop relationships
    1:07:11 and connections with other people.
    1:07:16 It’s one of these really strange things that I’m so tempted to do,
    1:07:18 but the amount of time to be disconnected
    1:07:21 is very like nerve-wracking or, you know, just like scary.
    1:07:22 This sounds very similar.
    1:07:24 It does sound pretty similar.
    1:07:26 It’s not the time to be disconnected.
    1:07:27 That’s the scary part there.
    1:07:28 Well, yeah, it is.
    1:07:30 Dude, it might even be seven days.
    1:07:33 Could you go seven days without a phone away from your family?
    1:07:36 Away from your family is a little harder.
    1:07:37 Yeah, that’s hard.
    1:07:39 Like in a hotel, like it’s like crazy to be disconnected.
    1:07:41 But yeah, I don’t want to like, also,
    1:07:43 I don’t want to like cry with all the strangers.
    1:07:45 Yeah, I don’t want to go that deep.
    1:07:46 I’m like, I don’t want to go to Tony Robbins.
    1:07:47 I don’t want to see anyone.
    1:07:49 I don’t want anyone to see me dancing and singing.
    1:07:50 Like, you know what I mean?
    1:07:52 Yeah, what’s great about Leaders in Tuck is like,
    1:07:55 is there all like, you know, well-known ish founders.
    1:07:56 It’s like not cheap to go.
    1:07:59 So even worse, be around awesome people.
    1:08:04 God, I want to be my most vulnerable self around cool people.
    1:08:06 Actually, it’s really helpful because you realize that
    1:08:09 all the people that some people that you look up to,
    1:08:10 like we’re kind of all the same.
    1:08:13 Like there’s very similar insecurities.
    1:08:16 Whenever I hear about the stuff,
    1:08:17 I think of the Tony Soprano quote where he’s like,
    1:08:20 whatever happened to the strong silent type, like Gary Cooper.
    1:08:25 I go all down this track and I’m like,
    1:08:27 can I just say like, hey, chief, like, hi, bub.
    1:08:30 I just know that person only at that amount.
    1:08:31 I just say yes or no.
    1:08:34 Siki, you have this interview question that I like.
    1:08:36 You said my favorite interview question.
    1:08:39 After 20 years of doing interviews with people
    1:08:41 is what is your greatest strength
    1:08:44 that you are most worried about not coming across
    1:08:45 in an interview setting?
    1:08:47 Why that question?
    1:08:50 I think I enjoy breaking the fourth wall.
    1:08:53 And interviews tends to be so standardized or formalized
    1:08:56 that what my greatest anxiety when I’m interviewing
    1:08:58 is like, I’m actually really good at a thing.
    1:09:00 And you’re asking me to, you know,
    1:09:03 you know, reverse a leak list or something
    1:09:05 and it’s just not coming across.
    1:09:08 What I find is that it breaks down this deformality
    1:09:11 and lets people, gets people excited to talk about
    1:09:12 something that they’re really, really good at,
    1:09:14 telling great stories.
    1:09:17 And you get to know the person just a little bit better.
    1:09:20 And I think the particular thing is like,
    1:09:21 if you just ask what’s your greatest strengths,
    1:09:23 it sounds really formal.
    1:09:25 But what is the insecurity that you’re bringing in
    1:09:26 that you’re hoping to,
    1:09:28 that you’re worried about not coming across an interview setting?
    1:09:30 It changes the tone quite a bit.
    1:09:32 It’s a great question.
    1:09:33 I’m stealing that.
    1:09:34 Yeah, that’s a good one.
    1:09:37 You know what’s interesting is, so you founded runway,
    1:09:42 which is like a very serious business.
    1:09:44 Like you’re going to have to hire enterprise people,
    1:09:46 I would imagine, enterprise sales people.
    1:09:50 Like it’s like a, I’m basing like the future of my company
    1:09:51 off of some of the output that I’m going to learn
    1:09:52 from your software.
    1:09:56 But you have the vibe of like an artist to me,
    1:09:58 where like you, you have a variety
    1:09:59 of like really intriguing projects.
    1:10:03 You’re like this thinker, almost like a philosopher.
    1:10:05 Is this new to be doing, like,
    1:10:06 is this like a new challenge for you
    1:10:09 to be doing something so serious and regimented?
    1:10:11 Like an, or can you still be like goofy
    1:10:13 and an artist in this B2B world?
    1:10:17 So yeah, funny enough, he’s a serious business.
    1:10:18 That was the name of my first company.
    1:10:20 And we built fun games.
    1:10:23 I feel like if you call it serious citizen, you know?
    1:10:25 Yeah, because we were a games company,
    1:10:26 serious business, fun games.
    1:10:32 But yeah, I mean, I think it’s actually a pretty huge advantage,
    1:10:35 particularly for the things we consider serious.
    1:10:39 So I mean, people have this stereotype of business
    1:10:42 and finances being super serious and super rigid.
    1:10:46 But finance at its best is really about creating value.
    1:10:49 Let’s start looking forward and thinking about new ideas
    1:10:50 about how we can push the business forward
    1:10:52 and grow faster and all these things.
    1:10:54 And in order for us to be creative,
    1:10:56 we have to be in flow and things that are fun
    1:10:57 keeps you in flow.
    1:11:00 And what we actually hear from our customers,
    1:11:02 that the thing that we hear quite often
    1:11:04 and we love hearing is this software feels fun.
    1:11:06 And that’s not a luxury.
    1:11:09 That is a fund that creates flow,
    1:11:10 that creates a creativity, that creates value.
    1:11:13 And when you use something that isn’t fun,
    1:11:16 something that feels slow or confusing,
    1:11:21 that you’re not creative and you’re making worse decisions.
    1:11:24 So I don’t think they’re intentionally with each other.
    1:11:25 I think they’re quite complimentary.
    1:11:28 And that is like very deeply part of our philosophy.
    1:11:29 Have you ever seen this?
    1:11:33 Yes, that’s what made me think of that question.
    1:11:35 What’s the story of this, Ikki?
    1:11:37 This happened last week.
    1:11:40 Our marketing team is run by Cal Freeze,
    1:11:43 who is a YC founder of a company called Tyka.
    1:11:44 He was the CEO there.
    1:11:47 And we also have this woman named Julie Fritas,
    1:11:50 who was at Shopify.
    1:11:54 And I was in the office and I just saw them come out
    1:11:56 in a meeting kind of giggling.
    1:11:58 And they got out of this piece of cardboard
    1:12:01 and started like writing this.
    1:12:01 I’m like, what is this?
    1:12:06 Like, oh, you know how like you didn’t want to do a billboard?
    1:12:08 We decided to just create a billboard ourselves
    1:12:09 and just hold on to Freeway.
    1:12:12 And I’m like, that is such a cracked idea.
    1:12:13 Of course, that’s going to go viral.
    1:12:17 And I said, I’ll do it.
    1:12:18 It’s like, you really will?
    1:12:19 I’m like, yeah, I’ll do it.
    1:12:20 So they’re like, okay.
    1:12:21 So we walked outside.
    1:12:22 We found a Freeway entrance.
    1:12:25 And I was just holding the sign.
    1:12:27 What does it say, by the way?
    1:12:30 It says, if you hate your finance platform,
    1:12:31 getrunway.com.
    1:12:35 Are you the only founder?
    1:12:40 I had a co-founder, Arya Asamonfar,
    1:12:42 and he left the company about a year and a half ago,
    1:12:43 almost two years ago.
    1:12:45 Because that’s like pretty rare.
    1:12:47 I mean, I don’t know when you launched,
    1:12:49 but I feel like you’re very, very, very, very early
    1:12:52 in the period because I remember seeing you guys go on Twitter,
    1:12:54 like get popular on Twitter.
    1:12:58 That’s going to be pretty different to be kind of a,
    1:13:00 the only founder running a company.
    1:13:01 That’d be kind of exciting, right?
    1:13:02 You get to do whatever the hell you want,
    1:13:03 or is it you’re going to be lonely?
    1:13:06 I think the reason why we partnered with Waze
    1:13:08 is things were just slower to make decisions,
    1:13:12 and neither of us were having as much fun as we wanted to.
    1:13:14 And actually, I didn’t want him to leave.
    1:13:18 Like he is, I mean, he’s still on the board.
    1:13:18 I love him.
    1:13:24 He’s just the most wise and high-interviewed person I’ve ever met.
    1:13:26 He was one of Perox’s peers at Twitter,
    1:13:28 and I hired him out of school, my first company.
    1:13:30 And he now works for Brett Taylor at Sierra.
    1:13:35 But if things were going slower than he wanted,
    1:13:37 and he identified that it was him,
    1:13:39 or our relationship slowing us down,
    1:13:40 he decided to fire himself.
    1:13:44 And I didn’t think he was right about that, but he was.
    1:13:46 He usually is right about just about everything,
    1:13:47 and it totally transformed the company.
    1:13:50 He also must have attended interpersonal dynamics.
    1:13:51 He did not.
    1:13:53 You talked about character AI and CHI,
    1:13:55 like some of these AI companies
    1:13:57 that are crushing it, just printing money right now.
    1:14:00 Are there any other companies that just have blown your mind
    1:14:01 in terms of how well they’re doing
    1:14:03 or how fast they’re growing right now,
    1:14:05 like maybe AI, maybe not AI?
    1:14:07 I love the Labs.
    1:14:09 I’m just following that story in that company,
    1:14:12 but they do basically all of the audio,
    1:14:15 translation, generation, sometimes e-fakes.
    1:14:18 And when I met them, there were less than 10 people.
    1:14:20 They were ex-Google.
    1:14:22 They’re working on the foundation of all technology.
    1:14:25 And they are now, I don’t know what they last announced,
    1:14:30 but they’re in the hundreds of millions of AR in like a year
    1:14:31 or two, a year and a half or so.
    1:14:35 And what blew my mind is I never seen a group
    1:14:38 of very good technologists that were also so good
    1:14:41 at commercializing the technology so rapidly.
    1:14:44 They’re at hundreds of millions and–
    1:14:45 Hundreds.
    1:14:46 Hundreds.
    1:14:48 I feel like this just came out.
    1:14:49 And they’re–
    1:14:50 Yeah, but I do know.
    1:14:51 We should have invested in half, right?
    1:14:53 They dubbed our podcast.
    1:14:54 Remember that clip where they were like–
    1:14:55 Yes, the Indian Hindi.
    1:14:56 You’re speaking Hindi now.
    1:14:58 And it was amazing.
    1:14:58 And I DMed them.
    1:15:00 And we were like, hey, this is really cool.
    1:15:03 Like, so stupid of us not to have pursued that more.
    1:15:05 Yeah, there’s that graph, right, for Ys
    1:15:07 and the fastest growing SaaS companies.
    1:15:09 And I think cursor is up there.
    1:15:11 I am fairly convinced that I love the Labs.
    1:15:13 It’s actually faster than all of them.
    1:15:18 But yeah, I think they announced some revenue milestone.
    1:15:18 But it’s large.
    1:15:20 We were tinkering with them.
    1:15:22 It was borderline.
    1:15:23 This is cool.
    1:15:24 This is cute, too.
    1:15:27 I can use this right now.
    1:15:30 It was like just there.
    1:15:31 So I guess they crossed it.
    1:15:33 And people are actually using it to actually–
    1:15:34 Who are they selling to?
    1:15:35 Is it–
    1:15:37 So Apple has audiobooks.
    1:15:39 Oh, so not podcast, sorry.
    1:15:40 Apple audiobooks, right?
    1:15:42 So previously, they did have audiobooks.
    1:15:45 And you would know that a lot of this AI generate
    1:15:47 is Power By One Labs.
    1:15:49 Oh, so they also publishers.
    1:15:52 They also do AI agents for customer service
    1:15:54 and support agents and things like that.
    1:15:56 So they’re the back end of maybe potentially
    1:15:57 other software tools as well.
    1:15:58 Yeah.
    1:16:00 So they have all kinds of product lines.
    1:16:01 They sell the book publishers, the Power Agents.
    1:16:02 They do–
    1:16:04 Why are they better than what OpenAI–
    1:16:06 The risk with all these AI companies
    1:16:08 is that the general, the base models,
    1:16:11 OpenAI and Anthropic, et cetera,
    1:16:15 can just offer those capabilities as part of the main suite.
    1:16:16 Do they do something different?
    1:16:18 Are they fine-tuning it in some way?
    1:16:21 No, it’s their own foundational models.
    1:16:23 And the quality and expressiveness is just better.
    1:16:25 And the form factor is better.
    1:16:28 So you can use it for all these other use cases.
    1:16:31 And the voice API of the OpenAI is actually not as good.
    1:16:33 That way, it’s easily usable.
    1:16:34 Dude, you’re super fun to talk to.
    1:16:35 I just like hearing all these like–
    1:16:40 I feel like you’re like a treasure box.
    1:16:41 And I just like pick–
    1:16:43 I just grab something out of the toy chest
    1:16:44 and be like, tell me the story behind this.
    1:16:46 You know what I mean?
    1:16:47 I think that’s awesome.
    1:16:49 Yeah, thanks for coming on, dude.
    1:16:51 And give people a shout out for your company
    1:16:53 and where to follow you for more.
    1:16:54 Yeah, we’re runway.com.
    1:16:57 You can follow me at bladerbladewithanr or runwayco.
    1:17:02 And if you are a CFO, you should use our software.
    1:17:03 How much did you have to pay for that domain?
    1:17:05 A quarter of a million dollars.
    1:17:06 That’s not bad.
    1:17:08 It’s funny, Nevolvicont named the company
    1:17:10 and suggested that we use it under.com.
    1:17:12 I think that was smart.
    1:17:13 A quarter of a million is not a lot, I feel like, for that–
    1:17:15 Wait, what do you mean Nevolg named the company?
    1:17:17 Like you went to him being like, hey, what did we name this?
    1:17:18 Or he just suggested it?
    1:17:22 So when Clubhouse only had one room in April 2020,
    1:17:24 it was in the Nevol app, right?
    1:17:25 I think you were on it quite a bit, too.
    1:17:30 So when I was thinking about what I want to do for next company,
    1:17:32 I said I want to do a finance company.
    1:17:35 And I got a great name for it, Nevol, CFO.ai.
    1:17:36 He’s like, no, don’t call it AI.
    1:17:38 It’s going to be dated in like two years.
    1:17:39 Everything you call AI.
    1:17:42 You should just call it runway and you get the .com.
    1:17:45 And he wrote the first track into runway.
    1:17:46 And that’s why we got the .com.
    1:17:49 It’s so funny that you said it was the Nevol app at the time.
    1:17:50 It totally was.
    1:17:52 And it was amazing.
    1:17:53 It was an app in the open to talking to all Rob got.
    1:17:54 It was amazing.
    1:17:59 By the way, I was using Air Chat pretty religiously for like two months.
    1:18:03 Even though I knew Air Chat’s not going to work, I was like,
    1:18:04 oh, it doesn’t matter.
    1:18:05 This is Nevol’s app.
    1:18:06 He’s going to be on 24/7.
    1:18:07 Cool, this is like–
    1:18:09 I like to hang out with Nevol.
    1:18:12 I’m not going to email him like a million other people and say,
    1:18:13 hey, can we get a coffee?
    1:18:16 Just a thousand dollars a month and you can talk to Nevol whenever you want.
    1:18:17 Yeah, exactly.
    1:18:19 I was like, I’m going to be on this for two months.
    1:18:22 I’m going to be a power user for exactly two months
    1:18:24 and I’m going to hang out with Nevol and that’s exactly what happened.
    1:18:25 I was very proud of myself for that.
    1:18:27 It was the most fun way to use that app.
    1:18:29 Dude, thank you for doing this.
    1:18:30 You’re the man.
    1:18:32 And we’re thinking of you and your daughter.
    1:18:33 And hopefully–
    1:18:33 Thank you.
    1:18:34 Appreciate it, man.
    1:18:34 –the Nevol too.
    1:18:35 All right, see you.
    1:18:35 Thank you.
    1:18:36 That’s it.
    1:18:37 That’s the pot.
    1:18:39 I feel like I can rule the world.
    1:18:41 I know I could be what I want to.
    1:18:44 I put my all in it like no days off on a road.
    1:18:46 Let’s travel never looking back.
    1:18:52 Hey, Sean here.
    1:18:54 I want to take a minute to tell you a David Oglevy story.
    1:18:55 One of the great ad men.
    1:18:58 He said, remember, the consumer is not a moron.
    1:18:59 She’s your wife.
    1:19:01 You wouldn’t lie to your own wife.
    1:19:02 So don’t lie to mine.
    1:19:03 And I love that.
    1:19:04 You guys, you’re my family.
    1:19:05 You’re like my wife.
    1:19:06 And I won’t lie to you either.
    1:19:09 So I’ll tell you the truth for every company I own right now.
    1:19:10 Six companies.
    1:19:13 I use Mercury for all of them.
    1:19:14 So I’m proud to partner with Mercury
    1:19:16 because I use it for all of my banking needs
    1:19:19 across my personal account, my business accounts,
    1:19:20 and anytime I start a new company.
    1:19:21 This is my first move.
    1:19:22 I go open up a Mercury account.
    1:19:24 I’m very confident in recommending it
    1:19:24 because I actually use it.
    1:19:25 I’ve used it for years.
    1:19:28 It is the best product on the market.
    1:19:29 So if you want to be like me
    1:19:32 and 200,000 other ambitious founders,
    1:19:34 go to mercury.com and apply in minutes.
    1:19:37 And remember, Mercury is a financial technology company,
    1:19:37 not a bank.
    1:19:40 Bank banking services provided by Choice Financial Group
    1:19:42 and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.
    1:19:44 All right, back to the episode.

    Episode 678: Sam Parr ( https://x.com/theSamParr ) and Shaan Puri ( https://x.com/ShaanVP ) talk to Siqi Chen ( https://x.com/blader ), the founder of Runway.com.

    —

    Show Notes: 

    (0:00) Early days at Zynga 

    (14:34) Business ideas

    (52:18) Touchy-feely class

    (1:07:24) Siqi’s favorite interview question

    (1:12:48) Insane growth of ElevenLabs

    —

    Links:

    • Limitless – https://www.limitless.ai/ 

    • Rewind – https://www.rewind.ai/ 

    • Runway – https://runway.com/ 

    • Hoffman Institute – https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/ 

    • Pump – https://pump.fun/board 

    • ElevenLabs – https://elevenlabs.io/ 

    —

    Check Out Shaan’s Stuff:

    Need to hire? You should use the same service Shaan uses to hire developers, designers, & Virtual Assistants → it’s called Shepherd (tell ‘em Shaan sent you): https://bit.ly/SupportShepherd

    —

    Check Out Sam’s Stuff:

    • Hampton – https://www.joinhampton.com/

    • Ideation Bootcamp – https://www.ideationbootcamp.co/

    • Copy That – https://copythat.com

    • Hampton Wealth Survey – https://joinhampton.com/wealth

    • Sam’s List – http://samslist.co/

    My First Million is a HubSpot Original Podcast // Brought to you by The HubSpot Podcast Network // Production by Arie Desormeaux // Editing by Ezra Bakker Trupiano

  • Scott’s Thoughts on Bitcoin, How to Stand Out When Applying to a Job, What to Do With an Inheritance

    AI transcript
    0:00:02 – Okay, business leaders, are you here to play
    0:00:04 or are you playing to win?
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    0:00:30 at netsuite.com/vox. NetSuite.com/vox.
    0:00:31 ♪ Herama ♪
    0:00:35 – Behold, my name is Maximus Entertainmentus
    0:00:38 and I come to you with big stars in big dramas
    0:00:42 like Gladiator 2, Dexter, Original Sin, and 1923.
    0:00:45 – Stream Paramount Plus for $6.99 a month.
    0:00:47 – Want prize with that?
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    0:00:55 and you could win one of millions of prize
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    0:01:03 Say yes to McDonald’s new game.
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    0:01:11 Intercodes by March 24th.
    0:01:13 Chances of winning based on code entry time.
    0:01:14 Rules and app.
    0:01:18 – Welcome to Office Hours of PropG.
    0:01:20 This is the part of the show where we answer questions
    0:01:21 about business, vector, entrepreneurship,
    0:01:22 and whatever else is on your mind.
    0:01:25 If you’d like to submit a question,
    0:01:26 please email a voice recording
    0:01:28 to officehours@propgmedia.com.
    0:01:31 Again, that’s officehours@propgmedia.com.
    0:01:32 So with that, first question,
    0:01:35 and also I have not heard or seen these questions.
    0:01:40 – Hi, Professor Galloway.
    0:01:42 Thank you for your time.
    0:01:43 My name is Mike.
    0:01:44 I’m 35 years old.
    0:01:47 I live on Long Island in Nassau County.
    0:01:51 I have a modest job and my wife’s a teacher in Brooklyn.
    0:01:53 My question is, what will happen to the value
    0:01:56 of my limited wealth and that of other Americans
    0:01:59 that don’t have Bitcoin when the US buys a strategic reserve
    0:02:01 and there’s more widespread adoption?
    0:02:04 Will the value of my retirement portfolio collapse?
    0:02:05 I’m worried about losing everything
    0:02:07 in my family falling behind.
    0:02:09 I feel like I’m gambling on which currency
    0:02:13 will be more prevalent or even exist in 20 to 30 years.
    0:02:15 What should we do?
    0:02:15 Thanks.
    0:02:18 – Hi, Mike from Long Island.
    0:02:22 So you’re 35, sounds like you’re in a good relationship.
    0:02:23 You both are working.
    0:02:26 Your wife’s doing something important as a teacher.
    0:02:29 So the first thing is to recognize you’re young.
    0:02:30 Sounds like you’re in love.
    0:02:31 You’re both employed.
    0:02:33 Things are pretty good for you.
    0:02:36 So okay, so the honest answer to your question
    0:02:37 is nobody knows.
    0:02:40 I talked to Michael Saylor and when I leave his,
    0:02:41 I had lunch with him.
    0:02:42 When I leave the lunch,
    0:02:43 I think I should put everything into Bitcoin.
    0:02:44 And then an hour later, I’m like,
    0:02:45 “Wait, what is Bitcoin again?”
    0:02:49 Anyway, so the bottom is nobody knows.
    0:02:51 Trump recently announced that his administration
    0:02:52 will be considering the creation
    0:02:55 of a national digital asset stockpile.
    0:02:58 Well, this really isn’t quite a strategic reserve.
    0:02:59 It could still have a massive impact
    0:03:01 on America’s involvement with cryptocurrencies,
    0:03:03 specifically if the US government weighs in
    0:03:05 and buys a shit ton, the price would go up.
    0:03:07 Currently, America holds more Bitcoin
    0:03:08 than any other government
    0:03:10 as a result of large scale asset seizures,
    0:03:12 about 5 billion as of 2023.
    0:03:14 Even so, they’ve sold none of it.
    0:03:16 Countries including Germany, Hong Kong,
    0:03:18 Russia, Brazil and Poland are all taking steps
    0:03:21 to review Bitcoin as a reserve asset.
    0:03:23 In the past 10 years, Bitcoin is up over,
    0:03:26 Jesus Christ, 48,000%.
    0:03:29 In the past year, it’s up 140% since the election,
    0:03:30 it’s up 50%.
    0:03:32 So, okay, what do you do?
    0:03:34 The genius of Bitcoin in my mind
    0:03:37 is they’ve come up with this incredible means
    0:03:41 of creating a somewhat credible sense of scarcity.
    0:03:42 What do I mean by that?
    0:03:45 We keep printing more dollars that we’ve had inflation,
    0:03:48 so you could argue that the value of the dollar
    0:03:50 goes down every year.
    0:03:52 You know, I bought a house,
    0:03:56 every house I bought 30 years ago is worth,
    0:03:57 I wish I’d never sold it,
    0:03:59 is worth six to 10 times what I bought it for,
    0:04:00 more than inflation.
    0:04:03 Is that because the asset’s got them in value
    0:04:04 and it’s producing more rent?
    0:04:07 No, it’s because there are more dollars chasing
    0:04:10 fewer assets, that’s the definition of inflation.
    0:04:12 Or simply put, the dollars you throw into your mattress
    0:04:14 get worth less and less every year,
    0:04:16 because we keep producing more of them.
    0:04:19 Bitcoin has created this credible feeling
    0:04:22 that because of the algorithm or the structure
    0:04:26 where it requires more and more numbers to be thrown
    0:04:29 at an algorithm or at a math problem,
    0:04:31 that it takes more energy, it limits the supply,
    0:04:33 and they say they’re gonna stop mining Bitcoin
    0:04:35 at 21 million coins.
    0:04:37 And the market believes it, so the market says,
    0:04:40 all right, this is a credible store of value
    0:04:43 and a place to hedge inflation.
    0:04:45 It’s also a place to hedge currency risk
    0:04:47 if you’re in Argentina and your pesos
    0:04:49 are worth 30% less every month.
    0:04:51 You immediately get them and there’s currency controls,
    0:04:53 meaning you can’t trade it for dollars,
    0:04:55 you immediately go into Bitcoin.
    0:04:58 So there is real use cases here, right?
    0:04:59 It’s not a payment system.
    0:05:02 I’ve never been paid or paid anyone in Bitcoin.
    0:05:03 I don’t see this having a lot of utility.
    0:05:08 I just don’t use the blockchain, call me old fashioned.
    0:05:10 So the question is, what do you do?
    0:05:13 I think it’s highly unlikely and I wouldn’t bring your hands
    0:05:15 too much or spend too much time worrying
    0:05:17 that your assets are gonna go to zero
    0:05:21 because of Bitcoin and the America’s decision
    0:05:24 or not decision to create a strategic reserve of Bitcoin.
    0:05:28 Well, you might wanna do is maybe put two, three,
    0:05:31 4% of your net worth into Bitcoin.
    0:05:32 That way you’re a little bit hedged
    0:05:34 and if it does go up two, three, 10 fold,
    0:05:37 you feel as if you’ve participated in the upside.
    0:05:41 I would not go all in on this much less really anyone asset.
    0:05:43 If you’re making some money,
    0:05:45 my guess is your wife has good benefits.
    0:05:47 You max out your 401k,
    0:05:48 anything that’s matched or tax deferred,
    0:05:49 try and match that out,
    0:05:52 try and get money taken out of your paycheck
    0:05:54 so it’s never in your hands
    0:05:55 and make sure you’re diversified
    0:05:57 and in low cost index fund.
    0:06:00 So if you’re worried about crypto
    0:06:01 or you think that in fact,
    0:06:04 it’s going to be something that might take off,
    0:06:05 put a little bit of money in,
    0:06:08 don’t put all three or 4% or 5% in at one time,
    0:06:11 dollar cost in because it’s a highly volatile asset.
    0:06:13 But if you want to hedge a little bit
    0:06:15 against the upside or the downside
    0:06:17 of your current portfolio, then yeah,
    0:06:19 put a little bit of your money into,
    0:06:21 I would just probably do Bitcoin.
    0:06:23 I think some of the other shit coins are just too volatile
    0:06:25 and you end up staring your phone all day.
    0:06:27 But sure, dip your toe if you think,
    0:06:29 if that’s going to make you feel a little bit better,
    0:06:31 but I wouldn’t lose sleep thinking
    0:06:33 that all other assets are going to crash.
    0:06:35 Thanks for your question.
    0:06:37 Question number two.
    0:06:39 – Hi, Prof. G. I’m Peter from Boston.
    0:06:41 I got my first job out of school
    0:06:43 nearly four years ago at a small firm
    0:06:45 and for the first time I’m looking to change positions
    0:06:48 to a larger company with a deeper talent pool
    0:06:50 for mentorship and better growth opportunities.
    0:06:51 In my current role,
    0:06:54 I was able to take on a lot of responsibility early on
    0:06:56 due to the fact that we were a small team
    0:06:58 and grew rapidly since I started.
    0:06:59 As someone who has been
    0:07:01 on the other end of the hiring process,
    0:07:02 do you have any advice on how to stand out
    0:07:05 when my experience and abilities are greater
    0:07:08 than what the number of years on my resume might suggest?
    0:07:09 To phrase another way,
    0:07:11 how do I know if I’m just a big fish
    0:07:13 in a small pond aiming too high?
    0:07:14 Thanks for your time.
    0:07:16 – Everyone thinks they’re,
    0:07:17 well, thanks for the question.
    0:07:18 Everyone thinks they’re aiming too high
    0:07:19 until they hit the target.
    0:07:22 I’ve never been qualified to do anything I’ve ever done.
    0:07:23 I wasn’t qualified to get a job at Morgan Stanley.
    0:07:25 I definitely wasn’t qualified to get into business school.
    0:07:26 I wasn’t qualified to start a strategy.
    0:07:29 I’ve never been qualified to do anything I’ve ever done.
    0:07:32 So just put that away thinking that you’re aiming too high.
    0:07:33 You may not hit the target.
    0:07:35 You may apply to be a VP somewhere
    0:07:37 and they say, “Sorry, you really aren’t qualified.”
    0:07:40 But the way you do this is you start interviewing.
    0:07:44 And the easiest questions are the hardest to answer.
    0:07:47 And that is, you know what they’re going to ask you.
    0:07:48 Why should we hire you?
    0:07:50 What’s different about you, right?
    0:07:53 What do you bring to this company that’s unique?
    0:07:55 Yeah, why do you want to work here?
    0:07:58 And what do you do to try and improve
    0:08:00 your, you know, your sustainable advantage
    0:08:03 or these assets that are differentiated, right?
    0:08:05 In sum, what differentiates you?
    0:08:07 Why is it relevant to us?
    0:08:08 And how do you, what practices
    0:08:10 or what do you do that makes it sustainable?
    0:08:12 So you literally want to show up
    0:08:15 and kind of act like they’d be crazy not to hire you, right?
    0:08:18 I also find it kind of a hack in interviewing
    0:08:19 to get the person to like you
    0:08:21 because a lot of this is based on relationships
    0:08:23 and how they feel about you after the interview
    0:08:25 is start asking them questions.
    0:08:28 People are narcissists or they’re self-involved
    0:08:30 and they love talking about myself.
    0:08:33 So Lisa, how did you get involved at Salesforce?
    0:08:36 Or, you know, what do you like about working here?
    0:08:39 Or when you look at my skills, what do you think?
    0:08:41 Do you think I’d be a good fit here?
    0:08:44 So, you know, what you want to figure out
    0:08:46 and you want to be confident is to say, okay,
    0:08:47 I think I’d be great at this,
    0:08:50 but is this the right fit for me?
    0:08:51 You know, start asking them questions.
    0:08:53 Who does really well at Salesforce?
    0:08:56 Or I’m just using that as an example.
    0:08:58 But the key here is you, you know,
    0:08:59 you miss all the shots you don’t take,
    0:09:02 just start interviewing and find out
    0:09:05 if in fact you’re in that weight class.
    0:09:09 But circling back, you know, everyone’s an imposter.
    0:09:11 Everybody thinks they’ve fooled people, not everybody.
    0:09:12 Most people think they’ve fooled people
    0:09:15 when they get the job or get into graduate school
    0:09:17 or get a high character boyfriend or girlfriend.
    0:09:19 So, yeah, aim high.
    0:09:22 If you miss, don’t take it too seriously, keep aiming.
    0:09:24 And if you really want to see what your currency
    0:09:26 is in the marketplace, then go into the marketplace
    0:09:27 and try and start interviewing.
    0:09:29 Thanks for the question.
    0:09:31 We have one quick break before our final question.
    0:09:32 Stay with us.
    0:09:40 Support for Prop G comes from Domo.
    0:09:42 A lot of people think that data is just cold hard facts
    0:09:44 about as impersonal as you can get.
    0:09:46 But wouldn’t it be great if you could ask your data
    0:09:49 anything at any time, like how are sales this quarter?
    0:09:51 Or how’s the new marketing campaign performing?
    0:09:54 Or what does the overall health of the company look like?
    0:09:57 And what if that data could get you those answers right away,
    0:10:00 complete with charts and graphics and actionable information?
    0:10:03 Well, with Domo’s AI and data products platform,
    0:10:04 you can get just that.
    0:10:06 Domo lets you channel data quickly, securely
    0:10:09 and innovatively to deliver measurable insights wherever
    0:10:10 and whenever you need them.
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    0:10:23 helping you make smarter and faster decisions
    0:10:24 and drive real growth.
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    0:10:30 Top companies across several industries
    0:10:31 rely on Domo to make smarter decisions.
    0:10:34 See how Domo can help transform yours.
    0:10:37 Learn more at AI.Domo.com.
    0:10:39 That’s AI.Domo.com.
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    0:11:17 – We’re taking Box Media Podcast on the road
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    0:11:20 for the South by Southwest Festival,
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    0:11:30 That dog’s going to the great state of Texas.
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    0:11:57 That’s voxmedia.com/sxsw.
    0:12:00 (upbeat music)
    0:12:07 – Welcome back, question number three.
    0:12:10 – Hey, ProfG, I’m Josh, a 27-year-old from Mexico
    0:12:13 working in marketing for a large multinational company.
    0:12:15 Thank you for everything you do.
    0:12:17 Your content really inspires and helps my day-to-day,
    0:12:19 so I really appreciate it.
    0:12:21 Sadly, my father passed away last year
    0:12:25 in getting with an inheritance that I will just receive.
    0:12:27 This has left me with a financial question.
    0:12:30 My first thought was to buy two apartments,
    0:12:32 since it’s money that I didn’t really work for
    0:12:35 and see it as securing something my dad left me.
    0:12:38 However, I know today, renting and investing the money
    0:12:40 in the market make more sense.
    0:12:42 This would also leave me the opportunity
    0:12:45 to use the money for a grad school if I needed it,
    0:12:47 since I know it’s something that could boost my career.
    0:12:50 I’ve been lucky enough to land a job that makes good money
    0:12:52 and have advanced quickly in the corporate world.
    0:12:55 So my question is, what’s your stance
    0:12:57 on renting versus buying, and what would you do
    0:12:59 if you were a 27-year-old male
    0:13:02 that suddenly received a lump sum like this?
    0:13:05 Again, thank you for your thoughts and all the content.
    0:13:06 Cheers.
    0:13:08 – So the first thing you wanna do
    0:13:13 is you wanna put it in a bond fund or a treasury fund
    0:13:15 that’s getting four and a half or 5% right now.
    0:13:18 If it’s $100,000, that’s 5,000 a year,
    0:13:21 low risk or no risk, so you’re getting $400 a month,
    0:13:22 but don’t just let it sit there.
    0:13:26 Put it into some sort of, you know, T-bill fund
    0:13:27 or what do they call it, certificate of deposit,
    0:13:28 whatever you wanna call it.
    0:13:31 Basically, if you put money in at Interactive Brokers
    0:13:34 or Schwab, I think you get between four and 5%
    0:13:36 while you’re trying to figure this out.
    0:13:38 Okay, so in terms of where to put it,
    0:13:41 you wanna lean into your advantage.
    0:13:44 If you understand the local real estate market
    0:13:48 and you or someone in your life could manage those apartments
    0:13:49 and you’re scrappy and maybe know
    0:13:51 how to fix up an apartment,
    0:13:53 buying real estate, fixing it up
    0:13:55 and turning it into rental properties
    0:13:58 is a fantastic way to build wealth slowly.
    0:14:03 I own almost 30 rental units in Delray Beach, Florida
    0:14:05 and they’ve been one of my best investments.
    0:14:09 It’s obviously a lot about when you buy, where you buy,
    0:14:11 and I bought in Florida when no one else wanted to buy,
    0:14:13 which is the time you wanna buy
    0:14:15 ’cause prices were really, really low.
    0:14:17 I bought these things for about an average of 100,
    0:14:19 sometimes 120,000.
    0:14:22 They produce really good rental income
    0:14:25 and my guess is they’ve tripled in value since then,
    0:14:26 but I don’t wanna sell them.
    0:14:28 I wanna have cash flow as I get older.
    0:14:32 So I think rental units, if you have some advantage,
    0:14:34 do you understand the local market so you don’t overpay?
    0:14:36 Do you have the ability to manage them?
    0:14:40 Do you have some skills to improve them, to upgrade them?
    0:14:43 Otherwise, you’d be better off just buying REITs
    0:14:44 than managing your own real estate
    0:14:45 ’cause there really is some headache
    0:14:48 around managing these things.
    0:14:51 I would suggest, and if you don’t have those advantages
    0:14:52 or market knowledge around real estate,
    0:14:53 that you just take the money
    0:14:56 and you put it in low-cost ETFs.
    0:14:59 Not only SBY or QQQ the NASDAQ,
    0:15:02 but start thinking about maybe putting half of it even
    0:15:06 in some sort of diversified, low-cost world index
    0:15:08 sans the U.S.
    0:15:09 Why do I say that?
    0:15:11 The U.S. has become very expensive
    0:15:13 and while, I mean, what do you know?
    0:15:15 You want low-cost, you want diversification,
    0:15:17 you want an index fund or an ETF,
    0:15:19 but you’re still, to a certain extent,
    0:15:22 trying to find alpha and pick stuff.
    0:15:26 So even though you’re picking all of the S&P with SPY,
    0:15:28 I think the S&P, I would argue,
    0:15:31 is historically expensive, maybe even overvalued.
    0:15:32 I was with a buddy of mine
    0:15:36 who runs Private Wealth for JPMorgan
    0:15:37 and he was saying, I said,
    0:15:39 the market cap of the U.S. right now
    0:15:43 is equivalent to half of the total market cap of the globe.
    0:15:45 And he said, actually, it’s worse than that
    0:15:46 ’cause if you counter in debt,
    0:15:48 70% of the capital markets are in the U.S.
    0:15:52 So if you add up the money corporations have borrowed
    0:15:55 and U.S. borrowing, or consumer borrowing,
    0:15:57 plus the value of our stock market,
    0:16:00 70% of the value is supposedly registered in the U.S.
    0:16:04 So if someone said to you, you can buy the U.S. for $70
    0:16:07 or you can buy the rest of the world for $30,
    0:16:08 I would argue there’s more upside
    0:16:11 to buying the rest of the world for $30.
    0:16:14 So I would use a robot advisor to spend some time on AI
    0:16:18 and say I want low cost index funds.
    0:16:22 And I also wanna make sure that I’m not only diversified
    0:16:26 within the U.S. but I’m diversified to a certain extent
    0:16:28 around my investments from the U.S.
    0:16:31 But low cost ETFs or index funds.
    0:16:34 Also, it sounds if you’re doing well,
    0:16:39 I’d be reticent or careful to blow that money
    0:16:41 or invest that money in grad school
    0:16:43 unless you really think it’s gonna pay off
    0:16:46 because you’ve been given a gift from your father,
    0:16:48 his hard work, his time.
    0:16:51 And at your young age at 27,
    0:16:55 I don’t know, say it’s $50,000.
    0:16:56 By the time you’re 67,
    0:16:59 which will happen much faster than you think
    0:17:01 with a low cost ETF,
    0:17:05 you’re probably gonna have a really nice nest egg
    0:17:07 or something to fall back on.
    0:17:09 So, and I would imagine that’s what your father wanted.
    0:17:10 So I’m not saying don’t invest in yourself,
    0:17:11 don’t go to grad school,
    0:17:15 but maybe be very selective if you’re doing well
    0:17:18 at your job and make sure you can get some financial aid.
    0:17:20 Just because I hate to see kids
    0:17:23 borrow a lot of money or spend a ton of money on grad school
    0:17:26 when it may not provide the pop that they’re anticipating.
    0:17:27 Then that never used to be an issue.
    0:17:28 It always used to be worth it.
    0:17:31 Now you actually have to do the math.
    0:17:32 Let me back up.
    0:17:35 This is a really good problem.
    0:17:37 Congratulations to you, but again, low cost ETFs.
    0:17:42 And I would do say 50, 60% US, 40% international.
    0:17:43 If you wanna lean into real estate,
    0:17:44 make sure you know what you’re doing
    0:17:47 and you have some advantages there.
    0:17:48 But again, this is a good problem.
    0:17:50 And I’m sorry about your father’s passing.
    0:17:52 It’s something we all deal with,
    0:17:54 but it’s something I don’t think any of us are prepared for.
    0:17:56 It’s heartbreaking when it happens.
    0:17:58 So I’m sorry about your dad.
    0:18:01 That’s all for this episode.
    0:18:03 If you’d like to submit a question,
    0:18:04 please email a voice recording
    0:18:06 to OfficeHouras@PropertyMedia.com.
    0:18:09 Again, that’s OfficeHouras@PropertyMedia.com.
    0:18:21 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
    0:18:23 Our intern is Dan Shalon.
    0:18:25 Drew Burroughs is our technical director.
    0:18:27 Thank you for listening to the “Property Pod”
    0:18:29 from the Vox Media Podcast Network.
    0:18:30 We will catch you on Saturday
    0:18:33 for “No Mercer No Mouse” as read by George Hahn.
    0:18:35 And please follow our “Property Markets” pod
    0:18:38 wherever you get your pods for new episodes
    0:18:39 every Monday and Thursday.
    0:18:42 (upbeat music)

    Scott talks about Bitcoin, explaining why it won’t replace traditional investments and why long-term diversification matters. He then shares tips on standing out in job applications and gives advice on investing inheritance money.

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  • Kurt Gray: Understanding Outrage to Heal America

    AI transcript
    0:00:05 it takes a fifth of a second for your flight or flight response to be activated and 20 minutes
    0:00:12 for it to calm down. And so part of, I think, managing outrage is just taking some time and space
    0:00:19 away. It’s okay. It’s okay to walk away from the situation and say you need a little bit of time
    0:00:24 to calm down when you think about it. And it’s okay to schedule it for a different time when
    0:00:29 you’re not feeling any like don’t send emails in anger. Try not to talk about politics when you’re
    0:00:34 filled with rage. But I think what I try to do, and to get to the, you know, your point about
    0:00:42 thinking about the minds of others, is to think about like how these folks that I disagree with
    0:00:48 might feel victimized and the harms that they see. Because once you see that the harms that someone
    0:00:53 else is worried about or how they feel like they’ve been victimized, even if I don’t agree
    0:00:58 with their position, I can at least see them as a little more human. And that goes a long way.
    0:01:06 I’m Guy Kawasaki. This is “Remarkable People.” We’re on a mission to make you remarkable,
    0:01:12 so we bring in remarkable guests so that they can pass on their knowledge and wisdom and tactics
    0:01:22 and strategies. Today’s remarkable guest is Kurt Gray. He earned his PhD in psychology at Harvard.
    0:01:28 He’s currently a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina
    0:01:33 Chapel Hill. Is that where Michael Jordan went to school? You bet, you bet.
    0:01:40 He’s the second most famous graduate of the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.
    0:01:48 And he’s the director of, I have never heard of academic labs named like this, but he’s the
    0:01:54 director. I got to read this to make sure I got it right. He’s the director of the Deepest Beliefs Lab
    0:02:00 and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. That’s quite a mouthful.
    0:02:08 Yeah, we rebranded. I thought we study everyone’s deepest beliefs, politics, religion, morality,
    0:02:16 and why not name the lab what we do? Yeah. It couldn’t just be the University of North Carolina
    0:02:26 Neurosciences Lab, are we? Okay, so let’s just ease into this interview, all right? And I’m inspired
    0:02:31 by something at the very end of your book where you discuss the work of John Saroof. I hope I
    0:02:37 pronounced that right. And so you asked him a very easy question, which I’m going to now ask you,
    0:02:45 which is, what are the three easy steps to heal America? Could you just get to that in like 60
    0:02:52 seconds or so? First, he laughed and he said no. He’s like, it’s too hard, but then he tried to kind
    0:02:59 of lay it out. And so I figured the best three steps from what I could, and they are how to have
    0:03:06 better conversations with each other. And so those three steps are connect in conversations, invite
    0:03:12 in conversations, and then validate. So those are the three steps. It’s a way of having conversations
    0:03:18 about politics that we frequently, well, we don’t have. I’m happy to go through those steps.
    0:03:24 Yeah, because there were lots of things in those steps which I found counterintuitive.
    0:03:31 For example, you talk about it’s better to ask too many questions than too few. So can you just
    0:03:37 tell us like, connect? What’s the power tips for connect? Totally. And all this is against a backdrop
    0:03:42 of like, you’re trying to have conversations across differences. It’s hard. You want to do it. You
    0:03:46 want to talk to your uncle that you haven’t talked to him while you’re a co-worker who disagrees with
    0:03:52 you sometimes. And so the CIV is the SIV, the beginning of more civil conversations. So that’s
    0:03:57 where the kind of term comes from. So connect. The first thing you want to do before you talk
    0:04:02 about anything contentious is connect with someone as a person. There’s so many things that you could
    0:04:07 talk about that aren’t like politics or what you disagree about, right? Food, music, family,
    0:04:13 jobs, whatever, you know, weather. I mean, weather is boring, right? And let’s get away from the
    0:04:19 weather and let’s ask deep questions. So it turns out that people really like when you ask them
    0:04:25 questions, especially surprisingly, deep questions, right? When we think of someone who’s a good
    0:04:30 conversationalist, we think of someone who talks a lot. But what we really like is someone who asks
    0:04:35 us deep questions. So think about conversations as more like a date. Like if you went on a date with
    0:04:40 someone and they just talked at you forever, you’d think, oh my goodness, like what a windbag.
    0:04:45 But when someone asks you questions, follow up questions and, you know, about you,
    0:04:49 where’d you grow up? Oh, what was it like growing up to? How did that shape you? How did it make you
    0:04:54 who you are today? What hopes and dreams do you have about the future? When’s the last time you
    0:04:59 cried? These questions might seem crazy to ask someone, but people really appreciate connecting
    0:05:08 deeply in conversations. And what about the quantity of questions? Yeah, more than you think. It’s
    0:05:12 more than you think is better, especially follow up questions, right? So you can imagine having
    0:05:18 conversation with someone and lots of research to back this up. Someone says, here’s this heartfelt
    0:05:25 story of me. And once my kid’s fish just died, very tragic. We had to bury my daughter’s fish
    0:05:30 out back and imagine I told you this story of my fish dying. And then instead of you saying, wow,
    0:05:34 that must have been really hard. I’m sorry for your fish loss. You know, you’re just like, oh,
    0:05:38 yeah, yeah. Anyways, I went fishing the other day and that this is what reminded me of fish.
    0:05:44 You know, like that’d be terrible. And so you want to ask follow quite right how your daughter’s
    0:05:50 dealing with it. Did you have a special ceremony for the fish? And it’s a funny example, but follow
    0:05:56 up questions, show that you’re listening. And so I think that is an important thing for connecting.
    0:06:04 We had a guest about a week ago who she cited many studies about speed dating. And she gave us
    0:06:10 all these speed dating tips. And she basically said exactly what you said. Maybe you guys are
    0:06:16 both talking about the same studies. But she said, in speed dating, you got to ask a lot of questions
    0:06:22 and you got to go deep really fast to stand out from other speed daters. Yeah, just human nature,
    0:06:28 right? It’s what humans want. Yeah. Because if you’re just like, hey, pretty hot out, isn’t it?
    0:06:36 Okay, sure. You’re not connecting with that. All right. Okay, so that’s connect now. Invite.
    0:06:44 Invite. So invite, if you want to talk about some like deep issues, the invitation is something
    0:06:50 that people appreciate. And an invitation means that something where someone can say no, right?
    0:06:55 So if I’m inviting you into a party, you can say no. But if I’m demanding you to go to a party,
    0:06:59 that’d be kind of a jerk move, right? I’m having this party and you better come or else.
    0:07:04 And I think when we talk about politics and we talk about moral questions, we often do demand.
    0:07:09 How could you vote for this person? How do you believe this? Explain to me, right? Like,
    0:07:13 justify yourself. No one needs to feel like they’re justifying who they are, what they believe.
    0:07:19 And so an invitation is really focused on understanding and the intention there is learning.
    0:07:27 So please, I’d love to learn what you think about immigration. And I know maybe we disagree,
    0:07:31 but I’m just like, I’m trying to understand and I want to understand where you’re coming from
    0:07:35 and what experiences might be of lead there. So I just really appreciate hearing kind of your views,
    0:07:39 even if they’re different from what I think. How about if you say to the person,
    0:07:46 can I ask you a question about immigration? That’s good. Yeah, that’s a great place to start.
    0:07:55 And a question before the question, that’s perfect. Yeah. Okay, now can I ask you about validation?
    0:08:02 Thanks for the invitation. I’m happy to share. See, like it worked. It just worked for us right
    0:08:07 now. So you know, you invite someone to share something that is going to be hard for them to
    0:08:13 share invitation. You’re like putting in kind of a little like grace, I like to say, you know,
    0:08:17 I talked to a lot of churches. So you’re like putting in some grace, like I’m inviting you.
    0:08:21 And I know it’s going to be hard for you to share this thing. And you’re probably going to say
    0:08:24 something offensive. You don’t need to say that to someone, but like, come up with a mindset that
    0:08:30 someone might say something offensive to you. And then they’ll say something. And then maybe your
    0:08:35 first reaction is to say, I don’t think that or what about this? Here’s this other thing you
    0:08:40 are considering. You want to say no right away, you want to like fire back something, but you should
    0:08:45 resist that impulse and instead validate. It doesn’t mean agree. It does mean, thanks so much for
    0:08:50 sharing that I understand it’s hard to share. If I’m listening correctly, I think you mean this,
    0:08:56 and I’m going to rephrase it in a way that’s very charitable. And then that’s going to make you feel
    0:09:00 heard. It’s going to make you feel seen. And it’s going to allow us to have a better conversation
    0:09:07 after that. And it’s not part of CIV, but you also make a very big deal about showing that
    0:09:14 you’re vulnerable. So how does vulnerability play into this? Yeah, I guess taking a step back,
    0:09:20 the goal for all these conversations is to see the humanity in each other, right? To recognize
    0:09:26 that we’re all good people. We’re all trying to figure out our lives and our world. And oftentimes
    0:09:32 when we’re disagreeing with someone, we and this is John Saroo’s turn, we flatten them. We see them
    0:09:37 as two dimensional. And so all this is a way of seeing someone in their rich, three dimensionality.
    0:09:44 You want to connect, you want to invite, you want to validate, and you want to let them see you as
    0:09:51 well as someone who is human. And a big part of that is vulnerability. So I’m going to share the
    0:09:55 stories after you shared with me. I feel comfortable with you now because we’ve had a connection.
    0:10:01 And so I’m going to share the stories of suffering, of harm, my concerns. And so you can see
    0:10:07 that I’m really basing my moral judgments, my concerns in questions about harm, because that’s
    0:10:13 where our minds are rooted when it comes to morality and politics and concerns about protection.
    0:10:21 So the name of your book is Outrage. And I have to ask a very simple question, which is what causes
    0:10:30 people to get outraged? It’s a great question. It’s a pretty simple answer. And the answer is we
    0:10:40 get outraged when someone rejects or challenges or defies our understanding of what is harmful
    0:10:47 and who is vulnerable to harm. So we get morally outraged when we see someone causing harm
    0:10:52 or rejecting our understanding of who or what is harmful.
    0:11:02 And would you say that being outraged is highly correlated with justifiable reasons to be outraged?
    0:11:08 If you stepped aside, would it be irrational to be outraged?
    0:11:16 Here’s the thing. So outrage evolves as a way of protecting ourselves. So if in our community,
    0:11:22 someone did something that we thought was harmful, we would all band together in anger,
    0:11:27 we’d grab our pitchforks, our torches, and we would kick that person out of the community,
    0:11:34 or we would punish them or censor them somehow. Except today, we’re no longer faced as much with
    0:11:39 kind of things that we all agree are harmful. Instead, we disagree, immigration, abortion,
    0:11:45 taxes, different people on the left and right disagree about what’s harmful and what’s worthy
    0:11:52 of outrage. And so going back to your question, it’s really hard to know what’s the rational
    0:11:58 right thing to be upset about because there are so many people on each side of an issue
    0:12:03 who have a legitimate point often. And so I think it’s hard to say what’s rational and what’s not.
    0:12:16 We can all agree on some things, but other things we’re very far apart on.
    0:12:30 As I was reading your book, this section about outrage, a moral outrage, I just thought, would
    0:12:38 you say that the United States reaction to 9/11 was the mother of all examples of moral outrage?
    0:12:44 I mean, it’s certainly, there’s a case to be made. So we were harmed. We were harmed by
    0:12:53 someone we thought is a true villain, in this case, Bin Laden, and like foreign folks doing harm on
    0:12:58 our soil, attacking our institutions. And certainly we were collectively outraged enough, we came
    0:13:04 together and then tried to punish the folks who caused that harm. I think that’s a good example.
    0:13:11 But isn’t the point of your book that we should look at it from the other perspective and see
    0:13:19 what drove them to do 9/11? Or is that a stretch? I think the point of the book is to understand
    0:13:25 how everyone has the same moral mind and we’re all driven by outrage. And so I think it’s
    0:13:32 justifiable that many Americans were outraged at that act. But I do think that failing to appreciate
    0:13:37 the kind of mindset of, let’s say, folks in Afghanistan, folks in Iraq, other folks in the
    0:13:43 Middle East is like, you know, America goes in there and causes a lot of harm. I think we maybe
    0:13:49 needed to think about how they might feel outraged at America in return, right? There’s always two
    0:13:54 sides of any issue. And there’s always people who take the other side. So at least we should have
    0:13:57 had a better understanding of what they’re thinking and what they’re feeling.
    0:14:05 So do you have a practical tip that when you’re feeling moral outrage, you know,
    0:14:11 before you react, you should take these steps or do you just start launching B-52s?
    0:14:17 Well, you know, John Sirouf has this other quote that I really like when he’s working with
    0:14:24 divided communities. And he says, “It takes a fifth of a second for your flight or flight response
    0:14:32 to be activated and 20 minutes for it to calm down.” And so part of, I think, managing outrage is
    0:14:39 just taking some time and space away. It’s okay. It’s okay to walk away from the situation and
    0:14:45 say you need a little bit of time to calm down when you think about it. And it’s okay to schedule it
    0:14:49 for a different time when you’re not feeling anger. Like, don’t send emails in anger. Try not to
    0:14:54 talk about politics when you’re filled with rage. But I think what I try to do, and to get to your
    0:15:02 point about thinking about the minds of others, is to think about, like, how these folks that I
    0:15:08 disagree with might feel victimized and the harms that they see. Because once you see that the harms
    0:15:12 that someone else is worried about or how they feel like they’ve been victimized,
    0:15:18 even if I don’t agree with their position, I can at least see them as a little more human. And that
    0:15:25 goes a long way. Author to author. I’d like to ask you this question or maybe I should pose it as
    0:15:35 author to author. May I ask you a question? Yes, you bet. So did you consider titles for your book
    0:15:42 that were not quite violent or negative? Instead of outraged, it would be like harmless or something
    0:15:49 like that, the flip side of outraged. I did consider harm less. I thought that would be nice.
    0:15:55 The original title, the kind of secret working title was The Victim Within, which is a negative
    0:16:03 but maybe less violent. It turns out no publisher wanted that book. You’re a victim and no one
    0:16:07 wants to walk through the bookstore and be like, you know what, I am a victim, even if we might
    0:16:12 all feel like it at some times. But I think we thought that the one word title, you know, with
    0:16:18 a bright orange cover and the aggressive question or exclamation mark rather, maybe a question mark
    0:16:25 would have been better, right? Outraged. But I think we wanted people to resonate and many people
    0:16:30 are feeling outraged today and we wanted to help them make sense of that. Okay, fair enough. And
    0:16:38 now I’m going to ask you one more author to author question that I noticed. And you may find this
    0:16:46 really bizarre, but on page 190 of your book, I have a question. And let me read a quote. So on
    0:16:54 page 190, it says, “Most conservatives generally want to protect black men and most liberals
    0:17:00 generally want to protect the police.” Is that an error? Is that a typo? Was it transposed?
    0:17:09 No, no, because it is the case that when we think of progressive folks and conservative folks,
    0:17:13 we generally think of conservative folks being more concerned about the police. Progressive
    0:17:20 folks being more concerned about protecting black men, black lives. But it is the case that most
    0:17:26 progressives do think that police officers are good and want to protect them. Oh, okay, I get it
    0:17:33 now. Okay, so you were like busting two myths there. Exactly, exactly. And where the disagreement
    0:17:38 comes is like the relative concern when those two groups, those two interests are kind of
    0:17:45 pit against each other. But most people want to protect most other people. I read that sentence
    0:17:52 about four times and I said, is this an error? What is he trying to say? So I stand corrected.
    0:17:56 I stand corrected. Thank you very much for clarifying. But you’re right. We have these
    0:18:02 myths that the other side is so stuck in their political positions that they don’t care about
    0:18:08 the other side or other interests. But most people do generally care for others and want a world where
    0:18:14 people are protected. Just these disagreements come down to these trade-offs. The foundation of your
    0:18:20 book is something that I never considered, which is I’ve had many social psychologists on this
    0:18:25 podcast and there are many explanations for this divide in the United States. But
    0:18:33 none of whom have ever said something like harm is the key variable and the master key to explain
    0:18:40 human morality. So can you explain why harm is such a big deal? Because I never considered it. I
    0:18:47 never thought of it like that. I think the reason that harm is the master key of morality is because
    0:18:54 we as a species and as individuals, we’re really concerned with protecting ourselves
    0:19:01 and we evolve through time as being threatened. If you go out, I make the argument that we’re
    0:19:06 a lot more prey than predator. If you go out into the forest and you strip down to your underwear
    0:19:11 and you wait for nighttime and you hear a twig snap behind you, you’re not going to think, oh
    0:19:16 good, I hope it’s an animal that I can eat. You’re going to think, oh my goodness, right? Something’s
    0:19:22 coming to eat me. Something’s coming to kill me. And if you walk through a dark alley and you hear
    0:19:26 some shuffling in the darkness, you’re going to think, oh no, there’s something there. There’s
    0:19:32 something trying to get me. So we are so attuned to threats because the revolution that people who
    0:19:37 were not attuned to threats, they died. If you were like, oh look, there’s like something lurking
    0:19:41 in the darkness. I’m going to go try to hug it. You got eaten. And so we’re attuned to threats and
    0:19:47 in the past, those threats were clear. The predators are people who might kill us.
    0:19:53 But today, those threats are a little more ambiguous, right? Are immigrants a source of
    0:19:59 income for America? Or are they threats? Are taxes going up? Or is that bad? Is that good? So today,
    0:20:03 we’re divided by what’s the most threatening. But at the heart of all our moral judgments,
    0:20:08 is this concerned about protecting ourselves from harm? And that’s why it’s the master key.
    0:20:16 And if someone from 100 years ago took a time machine and came to America today
    0:20:23 and saw what we considered harmful threats, would that person just be scratching their
    0:20:30 head and saying, listen, you guys, you got to have more serious things to worry about than,
    0:20:34 I don’t know, not being able to get into Harvard. That’s not the biggest threat in the world.
    0:20:42 I think you’re exactly right. I often think, going back in time, if you went to a parent
    0:20:48 in the Industrial Revolution, and their kids were working in a factory, it’s dark, it’s hot,
    0:20:53 there’s spinning machinery that could catch your hand and cut it off. And they’re thinking every
    0:20:58 day, I hope my child’s going to come home. And then, as you say, you tell them, you’re like,
    0:21:04 maybe your kid’s not going to get into this elite school, or maybe your kid is going to
    0:21:06 look at the screen too much. They didn’t have a screen, maybe you don’t understand, right?
    0:21:10 But if they look at the screen too much and not feel fulfilled, the parent will be like,
    0:21:16 I just hope they come home with their hands. And so, it’s not saying that these harms we’re
    0:21:22 worried about today aren’t real to us and don’t cause concern, but it’s certainly a stretch from
    0:21:28 days of your. So let me ask you something so that if you are dealing with someone who you
    0:21:36 disagree with, should you be so transparent and ask them what harm they are seeing or what harm
    0:21:41 they’re trying to avoid? Can you just be that blunt and ask, what’s threatening you?
    0:21:49 I think you can. I think I probably wouldn’t start with that. Going back to the CIV, I would
    0:21:55 probably get into the conversation a little more obliquely, talking to them as a person.
    0:22:00 But I think it’s totally reasonable, once you’re actually talking about politics, about morality,
    0:22:06 to say, what are you most worried about? What do you think the harm is of this policy? People
    0:22:12 will tell you, people have a gut feeling that the things they’re against are harmful. And so,
    0:22:16 I think they’re very happy to tell you as long as you don’t throw back in the face, as long as you
    0:22:24 don’t deny the kind of victims that they see. Okay, so I’m a hardcore liberal and probably most of my
    0:22:29 audience is liberal, too. Maybe I have two or three conservatives listening to this podcast. So,
    0:22:35 I gotta tell you, a lot of the book was just eye-opening to me that there is another argument to
    0:22:44 be said about abortion or vaccination or guns. So, can you just quickly explain to us, what’s the
    0:22:53 other side of you guy? What harm do they see with too much abortion or vaccination or gun control?
    0:23:02 Yeah, good question. And I want to preface this with this idea of, look, there are like statistical
    0:23:09 truths of who or what is more likely to be harmed in some situations. And so, I think vaccination,
    0:23:15 you know, as a scientist, I think vaccination, it’s a good. It’s a clear good. I’m a scientist.
    0:23:22 There’s lots of evidence to support that. But I think that statistics don’t always resonate.
    0:23:29 In our minds, and in fact, they seldom do. And what does resonate are kind of stories about harm.
    0:23:34 And so, even if we are all concerned about protecting the vulnerable from harm, especially kids,
    0:23:42 that you can have powerful stories, visions of what’s harmful that contradict any kind of
    0:23:47 statistics. So, let’s say your kid gets a vaccine and falls terribly ill, that’s going to be a
    0:23:54 personal experience that overwhelms how many scientists tell you that vaccines are okay.
    0:23:59 Or if you hear a story of a friend, I think guns are the same way, right? If you have experience
    0:24:04 and you’ve used a gun to defend yourself, that’s really powerful. And guns is also an interesting
    0:24:09 case because we could argue about what’s most relevant to the gun debate. If you’re like,
    0:24:14 look, the real problem is his mental illness, or it’s not like taking care of your gun or putting
    0:24:18 them in safes, then we shouldn’t be worried about how many guns are there. We should be worried
    0:24:23 about responsible gun ownership. And if someone comes to your family, if the zombie apocalypse
    0:24:28 comes, you want to have a handgun. And so, you see those threats and you see guns as a way of
    0:24:33 protecting yourself against those threats. So, it just always comes down to this kind of this
    0:24:41 worldview about what best protects us and our family. Would you say that it’s accurate that
    0:24:49 conservatives and liberals would almost completely agree on the desirability of protecting kids?
    0:24:55 Yes. I think we agree on the desirability of protecting most people. We just make different
    0:25:02 assumptions about what protects them. So, a liberal would make the argument that vaccination
    0:25:07 protects kids, and a conservative might make the argument that vaccination is going to cause
    0:25:14 autism. So, they’re both trying to protect kids. That’s exactly right. Wow. But let me ask you,
    0:25:20 Kurt, is there a point too far? I understand seeing the other sides, but are you telling me
    0:25:27 I’m supposed to see the other side for Hitler and Putin and Musk and Trump? I mean, RFK says,
    0:25:31 don’t get vaccinated. Is there a point where you just say, I don’t think so?
    0:25:39 I think there is a point. There is a point where you say this is a step too far. But I do want to
    0:25:46 separate the morality and humanity of everyday people from maybe political elites. So, this book
    0:25:51 is not written as like being an apologist for Putin. In fact, in one chapter, I say like,
    0:25:57 Putin thinks he’s a victim, and obviously he’s not. That idea is crazy. But I do think that many
    0:26:03 people in America have so many kind of different assumptions about who’s vulnerable to harm from
    0:26:08 social media, from cable news. And I think most people left or right just want to protect their
    0:26:14 family and want to have a better world to live in. And maybe some folks make assumptions or
    0:26:19 misunderstand the science. Questions of vaccination are probably more complex than most people realize,
    0:26:26 even if they’re uniformly, I think, a good thing for society. And so, I think we should just
    0:26:34 see the humanity on the other side, even if we want to argue against them. But that understanding
    0:26:39 of humanity doesn’t have to extend to Elon Musk if you don’t want it. This is about reconnecting
    0:26:43 with your friends and family and coworkers. And if people don’t want to have a reasoned conversation
    0:26:50 with Kanye or Elon or Donald Trump, I think that’s okay. This is about healing our kind of
    0:26:56 everyday fractures. Although, I do want to say there are people who think that you can extend
    0:27:02 the bridge even further. So, Daryl Davis is a black blues musician. Talk about him in the book.
    0:27:07 He devotes his life to befriending KKK members and getting them to hang up their robes. So,
    0:27:13 should we require a black man to talk to a KKK member? No. But the fact that he did it,
    0:27:19 I think, makes society better because he deradicalizes them and brings them towards the middle. So,
    0:27:24 those conversations are good. But I think a very subtle and important point is that
    0:27:32 where do you draw the line between communication and understanding and empathy and vulnerability
    0:27:38 and crossover into persuasion? Because once you cross into persuasion,
    0:27:45 it changes the CIV, right? Right. And so, in general, when you have these conversations,
    0:27:49 for them to go, “Well, you should be trying to understand and not win.” Because if you try to
    0:27:55 win, say you’ve already lost. But you can persuade someone through understanding, which I think is
    0:28:00 actually the only way to do it. Because if I come at you and I say, “Look, your positions are wrong.
    0:28:05 I heard some statistics on Fox News and here’s how, like, you’re following the wrong party
    0:28:09 and you’re a sheep and let me tell you the right statistics,” that’s not going to persuade. That’s
    0:28:13 going to send you in the other direction, right? You’re going to get angry. You’re an idiot. Like,
    0:28:17 you don’t know the right facts. And this is why facts don’t work to persuade because people have
    0:28:23 different facts. But if instead I say, “Look, here’s why I believe what I believe. It’s because of how
    0:28:28 I was raised. This really formative thing happened to me as a child. I felt very vulnerable and I
    0:28:34 got assaulted by a migrant or like I used a gun to defend my right. These positions on the right,
    0:28:40 I think you’ll think, “Oh, okay. Like, I see where you’re coming from and now you can generalize my
    0:28:45 own stories and feelings of harm maybe to other folks on the side. And that could be persuasion,
    0:28:49 but not because I’m trying to persuade. Because I’m trying to just show you who I am.”
    0:28:59 But isn’t there an inherent flaw in using stories this way? Because stories are not necessarily
    0:29:05 statistically or scientifically valid, right? You could say, “Yeah, my uncle smokes cigarettes
    0:29:12 every day for 70 years. He never got lung cancer. So cigarettes, according to my story, are safe.”
    0:29:17 Yeah. No, that’s a good point. And I teach my students in psychology and science that
    0:29:26 stories, just anecdotes, are not data. And the point is very apt. But our minds do not
    0:29:33 work well around statistics. And they should work better. And I teach my students to think about
    0:29:39 statistics, right? But in a political conversation, it doesn’t work. I wish that it worked. Then we
    0:29:44 could agree on like a common set of statistics or facts, but we don’t. Because each side has
    0:29:51 statistics and they disagree about which statistics are most relevant. So there’s a statistic that
    0:29:57 somewhere between 100,000 and 1.2 million times every year, guns are used in self-defense.
    0:30:05 And there’s a broader set of statistics, even more times in America each year. Guns harm people,
    0:30:09 not in self-defense. But I could say, look, as a conservative, like those other statistics,
    0:30:13 they’re not relevant because they’re not using guns correctly. They’re not well-trained. It’s not
    0:30:18 the right kind of guns. And there’s always a way to, I think of like Neo and the Matrix,
    0:30:22 you dodge around which facts are real. And so at the end of the day, if you want to understand
    0:30:27 someone, you need to put statistics aside, at least at first, at first connect with someone
    0:30:33 as a person, and then you can talk about statistics. So do you basically tell your students that
    0:30:40 stories are very powerful way to communicate and persuade, but you should also be understanding
    0:30:50 that when you run the side of the recipient of the story, you have to ask, is this valid in general?
    0:30:57 I think people already do that. I think if I tell you a story, as I have, so here’s how a gun
    0:31:03 writes out of a kit, why they would be pro-gun because of they used a handgun to defend themselves,
    0:31:09 or your kid got sick and you thought it was because of the vaccine. That’s a story you would
    0:31:14 spontaneously say, that’s not valid. That’s not a right story. That’s not generalizable. People
    0:31:18 already do that. And so I think the step we’re missing is to say, wow, that must have been hard.
    0:31:24 Thanks for sharing that. I can understand where you’re coming from. And then you can talk about
    0:31:29 some broader statistics. I think once you’ve shared your own story, so the person knows where
    0:31:34 you’re coming from. And there’s lots of programs actually to bring lawmakers together across the
    0:31:41 country. And those programs, they allow storytelling initially, and then afterwards, they have lawmakers
    0:31:46 think about statistics and policies and affecting the most good. I’m kind of narrow range of issues
    0:31:52 typically, but statistics are still part of it, but they don’t happen first, if that makes sense.
    0:32:00 In Silicon Valley, one of the most common stories is that you don’t need a college education because
    0:32:06 Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg don’t have an undergraduate college degree,
    0:32:14 so they don’t need it. You don’t need it. Drop out of college. And that is statistically a very,
    0:32:20 very misleading story, right? Right. I think about in terms of the stock market too, right?
    0:32:26 Yeah. Sometimes there’s big crashes, but statistically speaking, it just makes sense
    0:32:32 to invest your money in a stock market because it goes up. But morality is not, it’s not like
    0:32:39 other facts. It’s not like other statistics. If you have a deep moral conviction and I say,
    0:32:43 “Hey, there’s a statistic out there,” and it suggests that your moral conviction is wrong,
    0:32:47 it’s not that you’re not going to be like, “Oh, you know what? You’re right. I guess I’ll just
    0:32:52 give up my view,” because that’s not how we’re built, right? Our moral convictions, they tie
    0:32:56 communities together. They make us feel like we’re good people. And so maybe you can have
    0:33:00 moral change over time and people do. People shift left to right or right to left. But like,
    0:33:05 it’s not the same kind of thing of what’s the most reliable car you can buy. It’s not the same
    0:33:09 kind of thing as what should you believe about abortion. Okay, so now I’m kind of reversing
    0:33:16 my direction on stories. Can you tell us how to optimize the use of stories? So let’s say I’m
    0:33:23 sold. I’ve seen the light. I love stories versus facts. So how do I use stories most effectively?
    0:33:28 Before we get there, I think one thing that’s useful to note is that political operatives,
    0:33:32 the people that I’m saying you don’t need to have quite as much empathy for as everyday people,
    0:33:37 they understand the power of storytelling and fears and harms. These are the things that motivate
    0:33:42 the base that get out donations, that get out the vote. These people are out there,
    0:33:47 they’re coming for you, they’re coming for America. So I think stories do work.
    0:33:52 And the other side uses them, whether you’re on the left or the right, the other side is always
    0:33:58 using them to almost for evil to drive division, especially during elections. And so I think it’s
    0:34:05 useful for us to know that they work. And I think even drawing from those kind of like the success
    0:34:11 of fear and threat, the stories that work best for bridging divides are, as we mentioned a
    0:34:17 little bit earlier, stories that kind of reveal your vulnerability and reveal that you’re a good
    0:34:24 person. If I tell you the story and I talk about my family. And so here’s a story of like why I
    0:34:31 want to bridge divides and see the humanity in the other side. And even though I like hang out
    0:34:38 mostly with progressives, I have family in Nebraska and they very clearly love me and they
    0:34:43 love me as a kid. I was a stepchild. I was a foreigner. I came down when I was like seven and
    0:34:49 10. And they opened their arms to me and accepted me as part of the family, despite these facts.
    0:34:56 And even as I got older and I realized I disagreed on issues, I couldn’t write them off and say that
    0:35:02 they’re just, you know, stupid or evil because I know that’s not true. And so it’s my personal
    0:35:08 experience of like feeling loved and having them kind of sacrifice for me, drive across the country
    0:35:15 to see me get married. These are the things that make me feel connected. And so my own story for
    0:35:18 why I’m a pluralist and why I think we should bridge divides is like grounded in my personal
    0:35:23 experience and my feelings of love and openness. So I think those are the stories that are optimized
    0:35:30 in a sense, like bearing yourself and showing who you are personally up next on remarkable people.
    0:35:34 And so I think we’re exhausted about fighting about what the best way to do it is and we’re
    0:35:39 exhausted about the kind of loudest voices on social media and on cable news. Even though I
    0:35:44 think we’re kind of like there’s like terrible addiction to kind of social media and cable news
    0:35:50 like we would be happier if we put it aside for a little bit, took some time, rested, slept and
    0:36:00 connected with people on a human basis. And that might make us feel less exhausted.
    0:36:09 Thank you to all our regular podcast listeners. It’s our pleasure and honor to make the show for
    0:36:15 you. If you find our show valuable, please do us a favor and subscribe, rate and review it.
    0:36:20 Even better, forward it to a friend, a big mahalo to you for doing this.
    0:36:25 Welcome back to remarkable people with Guy Kawasaki.
    0:36:30 You brought it up so I gotta ask, did you ever get baptized?
    0:36:39 I never got baptized, despite as the story in the book goes, in a Sunday school in Nebraska
    0:36:45 and the lessons on baptism. And I was like a seven-year-old or 10-year-old or something sitting
    0:36:49 in the basement. And the teacher says, can anyone tell me what happens to people who aren’t baptized?
    0:36:55 I’m the only kid obviously who’s not baptized. And some kids put it in his hand and the teacher says,
    0:37:03 yes. And the kid says, they go to hell. And that’s what everyone believed. But I felt like it was
    0:37:09 a bit of a setup, like you’re just like telling me I’m going to hell. And I was a little offended
    0:37:14 initially. But then I took some time. I was like hot on it for a little bit. But I took some time
    0:37:20 to think about it. I went away a little bit. And I realized kind of what harms do they see? Well,
    0:37:26 they see me going to hell. And they love me. And they don’t want me burning in a pit of fire for
    0:37:33 eternity. That’s dad. That’s a harm. And now that I see this concern, which is a little offensive,
    0:37:38 actually as a way of trying to protect me and reach out to me. And so I see it in a new light.
    0:37:42 And I’m still not baptized. I don’t think I’m going to hell. But I do appreciate their concern
    0:37:45 for me, even if I disagree with their assumptions about the world.
    0:37:55 I got to tell you, I love that story. I was baptized. I was probably 40 years old or something.
    0:38:03 It’s never too late. I got baptized at 40. I took up hockey at 44. I took up surfing at 60.
    0:38:08 You, Kurt, take your time. You got a lot of times. There you go. I’ve already had a couple
    0:38:15 concussions. So I don’t know about hockey, but definitely surfing. You put together two words
    0:38:23 that I have never seen put together in my life. And I want you to explain the concept of moral
    0:38:30 humility. What do those two words have to do with each other? So there has been a big
    0:38:37 trend, a movement towards intellectual humility, which is this idea of maybe I don’t know how the
    0:38:44 world works. And so you can make people feel intellectually humble very easily if I say,
    0:38:48 imagine a helicopter. You know how it works. And you’re like, yeah, I got it. There’s like
    0:38:53 two rotors. It’s cool. And then I say, could you please draw out a helicopter in sufficient
    0:38:58 detail that you could like explain how it works? And then you like get your pen and paper and you
    0:39:02 start drawing the helicopter and you’re like, I don’t know. I have no idea. That creates some
    0:39:08 humility or even like how does the toilet work, whatever that creates humility because you realize
    0:39:13 intellectually, you don’t know everything that you thought you knew. Moral humility is that
    0:39:20 understanding about a moral issue. And it’s harder one, I think, but I think you can still have it.
    0:39:25 And I think it’s still important if you acknowledge that like, well, maybe there’s someone on the other
    0:39:34 side of an issue about guns or abortion or taxes, that maybe has a bit of knowledge or a bit of
    0:39:40 opinions that I might learn from that really changes the conversation, right? Because now they’re
    0:39:45 not evil. They just they think differently. And even if I don’t agree with it, like I could still
    0:39:50 learn a little bit from them. And every time I’ve had commerce, like I had an Uber ride with a
    0:39:55 Christian nationalist, I don’t agree with Christian nationalism. But at the end of this 20 minute
    0:40:00 conversation I had where I asked him a lot of questions, I connected, I invited, I validated.
    0:40:05 I learned a lot about his position and I still don’t agree with it. But I still learned about
    0:40:09 what he’s thinking about. And I appreciated that learning. So I think humility can help.
    0:40:16 Okay, Kurt, you opened another door here. Tell me, what did you learn from a Christian nationalist?
    0:40:21 I want to hear this. I want to be morally humble and learn this.
    0:40:27 So a Christian nationalist was an Uber driver. He had his own business. He has his family.
    0:40:31 And he was describing to me like what he thought about the state, what he thought about the church.
    0:40:40 And I was surprised in a sense how tolerant he actually was of other faiths. He thought that
    0:40:44 like Christianity should be the kind of national religion. It’s definitional in the idea of a
    0:40:48 Christian nationalist. But he’s like, you can be Muslim. Maybe it’s not as prominent as being
    0:40:54 Christian. And I didn’t realize that he would be supportive of that idea. And he also had like more
    0:40:59 nuanced beliefs on the economy than I thought. He’s like, oh, I’m kind of libertarian, but not in
    0:41:05 the following ways. And so I think I learned about the kind of economic and social complexity
    0:41:10 in this view that I didn’t appreciate. And that made me kind of reflect on like, well,
    0:41:15 what do I think of the connection between the state and the church? And there’s lots of tax
    0:41:20 breaks for churches. And do I think that’s reasonable? I’m not sure. But he’s advancing
    0:41:24 arguments for like why that’s meaningful to him and like the connection between the church and
    0:41:28 supporting his family. So just make me think of there’s nuance around these issues. And it didn’t
    0:41:34 change my core convictions. But it did make me realize that there’s unanswered questions you
    0:41:41 could have about these topics. And did you give them five stars and a tip? I did give them five
    0:41:46 stars. And here’s why. Here’s why. Okay. So we had a 20 minute conversation by Christian National.
    0:41:52 I asked questions. I invited, I validated. And then as we’re driving up the ramp to the airport,
    0:41:55 we start talking about abortion. And abortion really comes down to your like assumptions
    0:41:59 about when life begins. And this may be a whole other conversation. But interestingly,
    0:42:03 evangelical Christians used to think that life started at birth, not at conception,
    0:42:08 which is like a whole turnaround in the 70s. But I digress. So we’re having conversation about
    0:42:14 abortion. He’s very pro life. And he starts saying that anyone who’s pro choice is kind
    0:42:19 of aligned with the Nazis. What? Yeah. And you mentioned it as well, it doesn’t take long for
    0:42:25 someone to connect a moral position they disagree with to the Nazis, right? It’s so easy in discourse
    0:42:31 today. It’s like natural, even because they’re like the paradigm of evil. And I teach a class
    0:42:35 on this, I teach undergrads to have reasonable conversations about contentious issues. And I
    0:42:42 say, Listen, we can’t have this conversation. If you’re going to compare half of America to the
    0:42:46 Nazis, it’s just not acceptable, right? That’s not fair. We can’t have a good faith conversation
    0:42:54 about about morality if this is going to happen. And he pauses. And he says, you know what, you’re
    0:43:00 right. I’m sorry. I’m going to take that back. All I was trying to say around giving us some grace
    0:43:06 here to explain his views, like the invitations and validation is that I’m worried that people
    0:43:11 who don’t respect the sanctity of fetal life will slide down a slippery slope is kind of my words,
    0:43:16 but like, you know, and other areas will neglect life. And that’s going to be bad for everyone in
    0:43:21 society, especially kids are the vulnerable. And the idea of a slippery slope is a reasonable
    0:43:28 philosophical argument that people on both sides have. And I could understand where that was coming
    0:43:35 from. And five stars, he took it back. He had some moral humility himself, because he’s like,
    0:43:39 that’s wrong. I’m sorry. But that only happened because I tried to understand and ask questions.
    0:43:44 And so I think it’s a good example of how these things can, if not change people, at least allow
    0:43:48 them to have respect for the other side in a way that probably didn’t happen for him.
    0:43:54 I’m a college professor, he probably thinks I’m like the indoctrinating enemy. But now I think
    0:44:01 there’s some respect that hopefully persists over time. And why didn’t this story make the book?
    0:44:07 It happened after the book was written. Oh, bummer. But I have a sub stack on it if folks
    0:44:12 want to see the sub stack. But it’s one of my favorite stories, because I took all the book
    0:44:18 and I put it into practice. Yeah, it encapsulates the whole book, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly.
    0:44:24 You never know what happens in an Uber. That’s another important lesson here. My last section
    0:44:33 of questions is I want to explore the concept of being mentally exhausted. So what causes mental
    0:44:41 exhaustion? Well, am I asking questions that are too easy? So in the book, I talk about this idea
    0:44:48 of the exhausted majority. When it comes to politics, and then most people are, like you say,
    0:44:53 mentally exhausted, we’re tired of the shouting, we’re tired of all the anger, we’re tired of the
    0:45:01 division. And even if it’s a gut reflex, we just want to live our lives. And we just want to feel
    0:45:08 like the country is working for us by us. And we disagree about that, obviously, about who’s the
    0:45:13 most effective leader. But most people want cheaper gas prices, want cheaper milk prices,
    0:45:18 want schools that flourish, want healthcare that helps them. And so I think we’re exhausted about
    0:45:22 fighting about what the best way to do it is and we’re exhausted about the kind of loudest voices
    0:45:27 on social media and on cable news. Even though I think we’re kind of like there’s like terrible
    0:45:32 addiction to kind of social media and cable news, like we would be happier if we put it aside for
    0:45:38 a little bit, took some time, rested, slept and connected with people on a human basis. And that
    0:45:44 might make us feel less exhausted. So your recommendation is put social media aside, don’t
    0:45:52 doom scroll and try to interact on a personal basis using CIV. Exactly. Exactly. And even if you use
    0:45:58 social media, we have some research on this, that if you unfollow the most divisive accounts,
    0:46:04 like that’s going to make you feel better. Just those like 10 people that are conflict
    0:46:09 entrepreneurs is a nice word from Amanda Ripley, that people are making money by making you angry.
    0:46:16 Put it aside and actually have conversations with your Uber driver, someone who bowls with you,
    0:46:20 the guy who like runs the whole landscaping operation around here. He’s certainly more
    0:46:26 conservative than I am. We talk about kids and we talk about how he’s doing, talk about like his house
    0:46:30 and he’s planting trees. There’s so many things that we’ve in common that’s not about politics.
    0:46:34 And then if we get to politics, we can like tiptoe around a little respectfully,
    0:46:38 but those in-person conversations are much better than screaming into platforms.
    0:46:43 You made the argument that you should unfollow the 10 most disruptive people.
    0:46:50 I could make the case you should unfollow the 10 people that you most agree with, right? Because
    0:46:58 put you outside the echo chamber. Yeah, I think that’s not a bad idea either. I think, again,
    0:47:02 you should be striving, maybe this is a mindset for life, right? You should be striving to learn
    0:47:07 in general. And if you’re just hearing anything that you already believe parroted back,
    0:47:12 it’s not a way to learn. But with social media, I mean, the algorithm is so fine-tuned to induce
    0:47:16 outrage. Like, I don’t even know if social media is the right place to learn. You can read reports
    0:47:20 by think tanks. I think that’s probably boring for most people. But I think if you’re going to use
    0:47:26 social media, follow like the US parks, cat memes, I don’t know, anything’s better than politics on
    0:47:31 social media. In fact, I’m going to study the shows that people who follow politics on social
    0:47:36 media and pay attention to virality metrics, like how many retweets, how many shares,
    0:47:40 they have symptoms of PTSD that are above clinical threshold often.
    0:47:47 Crazy. Like, that’s how bad it is to like politics and care about virality on social media. Don’t
    0:47:53 do it. The guy who just time traveled 100 years, he’s going to be saying, yeah, 100 years ago,
    0:47:59 we were worried about being killed. And now you’re worried about PTSD from reading posts on social
    0:48:06 media. True. Although, you know, 100, I don’t know how many 150 years ago, right, sale and witch
    0:48:11 trials, like all sorts of panic about witches. And they didn’t have social media, right? But they
    0:48:15 had the Bible and they had like preachers saying that like Satan’s coming for them and things are
    0:48:20 terrible. So they still had a kind of panic. It didn’t happen as fast as social media. But I think
    0:48:26 it’s still a kind of like deeply human thing to be terrified of threats and to band together and
    0:48:34 get outraged. Okay, this is my last question. And this last question may not go over well with your
    0:48:41 relatives in Nebraska, but let’s just pretend that you become the chairman of the Democratic
    0:48:47 National Committee. What would you do? I would tell stories of harm because I know that’s effective,
    0:48:57 I suppose. I mean, I think deep in my heart, I think that the best way to run America is how it
    0:49:03 was founded, which is as a pluralistic democracy. And it’s totally fair to have convictions. But I
    0:49:08 think some of the best bills that were passed are bipartisan bills, like overhauling the criminal
    0:49:15 justice system, to be kinder, to be less punitive, to be less racially biased, but also just give
    0:49:21 individuals a second chance, no matter what their race is. And so I would try, I think, to build
    0:49:26 broad-scale support. This is why I would never be elected, by the way, or chosen as the DNC
    0:49:32 chairman, because I’m not like motivating the base enough. But I think big social movements pass.
    0:49:40 Civil rights, women’s suffrage, right? Because there is bipartisan support. There’s understanding
    0:49:45 on both sides. There’s allies that see, same with gay rights. It’s like John McCain’s daughter
    0:49:50 is gay, and he could see the humanity in those folks, and then there’s this widespread support.
    0:49:55 I think for moral progress to happen, I think it needs to be a more united effort than what we’re
    0:50:04 seeing today. And as you said, and I misunderstood, quote, “Most conservatives generally want to protect
    0:50:11 black men, and most liberals generally want to protect the police.” And right? So we’re probably
    0:50:20 more similar than we are different, if we could just stop being outraged. Exactly. We are so
    0:50:26 similar. If you take a law book and you flip to a random page, we probably agree on 99.99 percent
    0:50:32 of those pages of law. And even when it comes to contentious issues, we generally do agree.
    0:50:36 What pushes us apart is our partisan filters and what the media tells us. So if we just go
    0:50:40 within ourselves and think about our own minds and our own concerns about harm and other people’s
    0:50:45 concerns about harm, it brings us a lot closer together. All right. Kirk, thank you so much.
    0:50:51 This has been such an interesting episode, and I learned a lot reading your book. I would love
    0:51:00 to see all your theories and concepts get into practice so that we do have a more civil CIV
    0:51:08 in-caps society. So thank you very much, Kurt. I appreciate this very much. And you are a remarkable
    0:51:15 person. So we will be in touch, okay? Sounds good and appreciated. All right. So I’m Guy Kawasaki.
    0:51:22 This has been the Remarkable People Podcast with the Remarkable Kurt Gray. And I hope you learned
    0:51:29 some very tactical and practical ways to bring society together. I certainly did. And remember
    0:51:34 his book is called Outraged, even though I think it should be called Harmless.
    0:51:41 But don’t worry about that because he had to get the book published. And if publishers
    0:51:48 want to call it outraged, so be it. And focus on the big issues, right? That’s right. Outrage cells.
    0:51:56 Outrage cells. All right. Thank you very much. Have a great week, everybody. Mahalo and Aloha.
    0:52:02 Thank you for my crew, Madison, Nismar, Shannon Hernandez, and Jeff C. That’s the
    0:52:08 Remarkable People team behind me, Kurt. And we’re all trying to help people be remarkable.
    0:52:15 This is Remarkable People.

    Step into the fascinating world of moral psychology with Kurt Gray, professor of psychology and neuroscience at UNC Chapel Hill, who explores the psychology of outrage and moral understanding. As director of the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, Kurt unveils how we can bridge America’s deepest divides through his groundbreaking CIV approach – Connect, Invite, and Validate. His new book ‘Outrage’ challenges us to understand both sides of moral conflicts and find common ground in our shared humanity.

    —

    Guy Kawasaki is on a mission to make you remarkable. His Remarkable People podcast features interviews with remarkable people such as Jane Goodall, Marc Benioff, Woz, Kristi Yamaguchi, and Bob Cialdini. Every episode will make you more remarkable.

    With his decades of experience in Silicon Valley as a Venture Capitalist and advisor to the top entrepreneurs in the world, Guy’s questions come from a place of curiosity and passion for technology, start-ups, entrepreneurship, and marketing. If you love society and culture, documentaries, and business podcasts, take a second to follow Remarkable People.

    Listeners of the Remarkable People podcast will learn from some of the most successful people in the world with practical tips and inspiring stories that will help you be more remarkable.

    Episodes of Remarkable People organized by topic: https://bit.ly/rptopology

    Listen to Remarkable People here: **https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/guy-kawasakis-remarkable-people/id1483081827**

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  • #215 David Heacock: Managing and Marketing a $250M Business

    #215 David Heacock: Managing and Marketing a $250M Business
    #215 David Heacock: Managing and Marketing a $250M Business
    AI transcript
    0:00:02 I like to think about,
    0:00:04 what am I going to be thinking about on my deathbed?
    0:00:06 And I know for me,
    0:00:10 the things I will regret are things that I did not try
    0:00:12 or that I knew I could have done
    0:00:13 or thought I could have done
    0:00:15 if only I put in more effort
    0:00:18 or things that I didn’t do because I was fearful.
    0:00:20 Those are the things that I’m going to regret.
    0:00:22 It’s not going to be the times where I make a mistake.
    0:00:25 And so for me, there is no other option
    0:00:27 but to see how big of an impact I can have.
    0:00:29 I’m on a mission to build the world’s leading indoor air quality
    0:00:30 company.
    0:00:33 I’ve scaled from zero to $250 million a year.
    0:00:35 And in the next five to 10 years,
    0:00:37 I intend to take that to a billion dollars plus.
    0:00:41 And I wake up every single day,
    0:00:43 working on my business and thinking about
    0:00:45 how I’m going to grow it
    0:00:48 and ultimately build out my vision.
    0:00:58 Welcome to The Knowledge Project.
    0:01:01 I’m your host, Shane Parrish.
    0:01:02 In a world where knowledge is power,
    0:01:05 this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the best
    0:01:07 of what other people have already figured out.
    0:01:09 If you want to take your learning to the next level,
    0:01:11 consider joining our membership program
    0:01:13 at fs.blog/membership.
    0:01:16 As a member, you’ll get my personal reflections
    0:01:18 at the end of every episode,
    0:01:20 early access to episodes,
    0:01:21 no ads including this,
    0:01:23 exclusive content,
    0:01:25 hand edited transcripts and so much more.
    0:01:27 Check out the link in the show notes for more.
    0:01:30 Today, I’m talking with David Heacock,
    0:01:31 who left his Wall Street career
    0:01:34 to build a business selling air filters.
    0:01:38 What sounds like an unlikely bet has become filtered by
    0:01:42 a $250 million manufacturing company,
    0:01:45 producing over 100,000 filters daily
    0:01:48 and serving more than 7 million customers.
    0:01:51 David shares the real story behind his empire,
    0:01:52 walking away from Wall Street,
    0:01:55 constructing his first plant, navigating Amazon
    0:01:57 and even the freight decision,
    0:01:59 he now calls his biggest mistake.
    0:02:01 No startup platitudes,
    0:02:03 just hard-earned lessons from someone
    0:02:05 who’s been in the trenches.
    0:02:08 We dig into what actually matters in building a business,
    0:02:11 hiring, managing its scale, branding versus marketing,
    0:02:14 why many direct-to-consumer brands
    0:02:16 aren’t really direct-to-consumer at all.
    0:02:20 David talks candidly about balancing between obsession
    0:02:23 that you need for success and with family life at home.
    0:02:25 And importantly, throughout the podcast,
    0:02:28 you’ll see the mindset of a founder in real time.
    0:02:30 Whether you’re starting a business, scaling one
    0:02:34 or simply curious about turning a bold idea into reality,
    0:02:37 this conversation is packed with actionable insights
    0:02:40 from someone who’s done it and is doing it.
    0:02:42 It’s time to listen and learn.
    0:02:49 – You said you felt like an outsider at Goldman.
    0:02:50 Why did you stay so long?
    0:02:54 – Well, I’m stubborn and honestly,
    0:02:57 I had manifested my job at Goldman in a way.
    0:03:00 Like, I really, it’s something that for years,
    0:03:03 I had idolized and it made happen in my life.
    0:03:04 You know, I didn’t go to an Ivy League school.
    0:03:08 I didn’t come from a rich Northeastern-type family
    0:03:10 that had, you know, family and private equity
    0:03:12 and all the traditional feeders
    0:03:15 that lead to a finance career normally.
    0:03:18 I went to the George Washington University.
    0:03:20 And about my sophomore or junior year,
    0:03:22 I really decided I wanted to go into finance
    0:03:25 and the premier place to work was Goldman Sachs.
    0:03:30 And so I became very obsessed with working at Goldman Sachs.
    0:03:34 And there’s no pathway from the George Washington University
    0:03:36 to Goldman Sachs, at least not at the time.
    0:03:39 You know, it’s just not how they hired and recruited.
    0:03:42 And I studied economics and statistics in college
    0:03:45 and, you know, I was in Washington, D.C.
    0:03:48 and I just happened to be really close
    0:03:50 with like the economics professors
    0:03:52 because I was probably the top, you know,
    0:03:55 kind of economic student in college
    0:03:59 and did a paper on predicting currency crises
    0:04:02 using a diffusion index kind of geeky thing.
    0:04:04 And my professors were really impressed by it
    0:04:07 and kind of ended up forwarding it to somebody
    0:04:09 within Goldman that saw it.
    0:04:10 And then I ended up interviewing
    0:04:12 within the economics research department.
    0:04:13 So I ended up coming to New York
    0:04:17 and doing seven or eight interviews and they hired me.
    0:04:19 It was less formal of a hiring process
    0:04:22 than, you know, the traditional Goldman process.
    0:04:26 So I kind of got in through the backdoor that way.
    0:04:26 And it was great for me.
    0:04:29 I mean, I loved it.
    0:04:30 It was such a challenge.
    0:04:33 And honestly, I would not be where I am today
    0:04:36 without the skills that I honed in that.
    0:04:37 So–
    0:04:38 – What did you learn there?
    0:04:40 Like what specifically, what lessons
    0:04:41 did you take away from that?
    0:04:44 – It’s really the ability to make a decision quickly
    0:04:45 and then own that decision
    0:04:48 and manage the risk of that decision.
    0:04:51 And so when it fast forward to my business career,
    0:04:54 like one of the things that I think that I sell at
    0:04:58 is making decisions quickly and owning those decisions
    0:05:01 and not, you know, second guessing or not kind of,
    0:05:02 like once I make a decision,
    0:05:04 I make a decision and I move on.
    0:05:07 But I also am very aware of my risk.
    0:05:09 And like if it’s a decision
    0:05:11 that has a lot of risk associated with it,
    0:05:13 it’s something that I, you know,
    0:05:15 make sure that I’m taking that into account.
    0:05:18 And so, you know, Jeff Bezos has this concept
    0:05:20 of one-way doors versus two-way doors.
    0:05:22 You know, so you have to be like,
    0:05:24 but with two-way doors where you know
    0:05:26 that you can always get out of it very quickly,
    0:05:28 like I make decisions quicker than anybody
    0:05:31 and then manage that and don’t pray so much about it.
    0:05:33 But I’m also hyper aware of those one-way doors
    0:05:36 where you need to be super careful doing something
    0:05:39 that, you know, was irrevocable more or less.
    0:05:43 And so I think the hyper-awareness around that
    0:05:45 and living that on a day-to-day basis
    0:05:49 really accelerated the learning curve for me later on.
    0:05:50 – Well, let’s double click on that for a second.
    0:05:55 You said growing quickly at Filter by was a one-way door.
    0:05:57 How did you think about that decision?
    0:05:59 – Well, I don’t know that I said that explicitly,
    0:06:02 but I don’t know that that would be untrue.
    0:06:07 You know, I committed to my entrepreneurial journey fully
    0:06:09 when I made that decision.
    0:06:13 And so for me, it’s ultimately a decision
    0:06:17 that I knew that I was going to own completely
    0:06:18 and there was no failing.
    0:06:20 And so, you know, if I was going to frame it
    0:06:23 in the one-way door world, it would be around that.
    0:06:25 It’s like, I’m burning all the boats
    0:06:28 and I’m all in on my vision.
    0:06:32 And, you know, there was a long common-looded story
    0:06:35 about how I ultimately got into that business.
    0:06:38 But when I left my job at Goldman and, you know,
    0:06:41 I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do,
    0:06:44 but I was determined to make it successful
    0:06:45 and to make it something big.
    0:06:49 And, you know, a big motivation for me going so public
    0:06:52 with my personal brand in the last couple of months
    0:06:55 is really about burning the boats behind me
    0:06:57 because, you know, I’m on a mission
    0:06:59 to build the world’s leading indoor air quality company.
    0:07:02 And, you know, I don’t want there to be
    0:07:04 any other option for me.
    0:07:07 And I know if I come here and I tell you that
    0:07:09 and I tell the people that are watching that,
    0:07:11 that I’ve effectively burned all the boats
    0:07:13 and I’m fully committed to that
    0:07:15 because I’m going to wake up every day
    0:07:18 and work towards that bigger vision.
    0:07:22 And so that was a very calculated one-way door,
    0:07:24 as you put it, because I don’t want to give myself
    0:07:26 any other alternative.
    0:07:27 – I love that.
    0:07:29 You mentioned the word “obsessed” earlier.
    0:07:32 That seems to take a negative connotation in culture,
    0:07:34 but I think you embrace it.
    0:07:36 – Yeah, I mean, I think if you want to do anything big,
    0:07:37 you have to be obsessed.
    0:07:39 Because if not, you’re competing with somebody who is.
    0:07:42 And, you know, it’s completely okay not to be obsessed.
    0:07:45 I mean, there’s, and not to be super driven
    0:07:48 or like there’s no, there’s nothing wrong
    0:07:49 with not having that.
    0:07:51 But if you want to be the best at something
    0:07:55 or if you want to have a disproportionate outcome in life,
    0:07:57 then you have to be, we have to recognize
    0:08:01 that you’re competing with other people that are obsessed.
    0:08:04 And so I think that you’re being quite naive
    0:08:06 to believe that you can achieve anything big,
    0:08:08 competing with the world’s marketplace
    0:08:10 without being obsessed.
    0:08:13 And so, you know, I think that, you know,
    0:08:15 it just depends on what you want out of life.
    0:08:16 – Take me up close.
    0:08:17 What does obsession look like?
    0:08:20 What does it look like on a day-to-day basis?
    0:08:24 And what are the tolls or the costs that people don’t see?
    0:08:27 – I have on filter by for 12 years, more or less.
    0:08:29 And there’s not a day I don’t wake up.
    0:08:32 And it’s the first thing I’m thinking about.
    0:08:35 Seven days a week, you know, if I go on vacation,
    0:08:38 there’s no, you know, not checking in
    0:08:39 or no, I’m not thinking about it.
    0:08:41 I actually view vacation as a great time
    0:08:43 for me to mentally reset.
    0:08:46 But that reset comes around framing about,
    0:08:48 hey, what is my next move going to be, right?
    0:08:53 So there is no other part of my business life outside of that.
    0:08:57 I mean, I’m fortunate that I do have a great family.
    0:09:01 And I think it’s possible to have good personal relationships
    0:09:04 and, you know, be a good father and whatnot.
    0:09:07 Like I don’t think that those things are mutually exclusive,
    0:09:08 but I don’t have any hobbies.
    0:09:11 It’s my family and my business.
    0:09:13 And that is my life.
    0:09:16 And I wake up every single day, you know,
    0:09:18 working on my business and thinking
    0:09:20 about how I’m going to grow it
    0:09:23 and ultimately build out my vision.
    0:09:26 And that is what obsession is.
    0:09:28 I mean, there is no, like I saw,
    0:09:31 there was some controversial post a few days ago
    0:09:33 about how people shouldn’t work on weekends.
    0:09:35 And, you know, talking about the importance
    0:09:36 of work-life balance and stuff.
    0:09:38 And, you know, everybody’s different
    0:09:40 and that’s completely fine.
    0:09:44 But for me, my lived experience is if I want to do something
    0:09:47 in a big way, then I have to be all in on that.
    0:09:50 And, you know, for me, that’s, you know,
    0:09:52 burning all the boats and, you know,
    0:09:56 waking up every day, working towards one vision.
    0:09:58 And that’s what it looks like for me.
    0:10:01 – After you had the first plant up and running,
    0:10:03 how did you decide what next?
    0:10:05 Walk me through sort of like, how do you go from that?
    0:10:08 How do you determine what the next step is?
    0:10:11 – Well, I think that people like to look back
    0:10:15 and, you know, kind of idolize it as if there’s, you know,
    0:10:17 there was a plan, it was a plan all along.
    0:10:22 When oftentimes it’s, you know, evolution of skills
    0:10:24 and an evolution of your thinking.
    0:10:27 And, you know, honestly, you know, for the first eight years,
    0:10:29 we only operated in Talladega, Alabama,
    0:10:31 where I’m originally from.
    0:10:34 And I knew it was important for us
    0:10:36 to diversify geographically,
    0:10:38 but I was too scared to do it
    0:10:40 because it felt like such a big risk
    0:10:42 and such a big undertaking.
    0:10:46 And I didn’t have the guts, quite frankly,
    0:10:47 to go in and to do it.
    0:10:51 And then COVID happened and I worked with the team
    0:10:52 to figure out how we were gonna work through it.
    0:10:55 And we were getting so slammed
    0:10:57 and about two to three weeks into that process
    0:10:58 of working with it,
    0:11:01 Amazon stopped third-party sellers
    0:11:04 from sending products into their warehouses.
    0:11:07 And at the exact same time, FedEx made the decision
    0:11:09 to cap the number of trailers
    0:11:12 that we were able to ship from our Talladega location
    0:11:14 because they were getting overloaded.
    0:11:15 It’s basically saying, you know,
    0:11:17 we can’t take any more business.
    0:11:20 And I was faced with the decision,
    0:11:23 do I either expand my geographic footprint
    0:11:25 and I made the deal with FedEx
    0:11:27 to allow me additional capacity
    0:11:29 if I would expand it out
    0:11:32 and not overload just their Southeast network
    0:11:35 or do I just raise my prices like a lot of our competitors
    0:11:37 did and milk this for what it’s worth
    0:11:40 and, you know, stay as we are.
    0:11:44 And I made the decision to open our Ogden Utah plant
    0:11:49 in May of 2020 because after those discussions
    0:11:53 and by July of 2020, we were shipping products out of there.
    0:11:55 And that was, you know,
    0:11:58 when I made the decision to really go all in
    0:12:01 and kind of stop being scared about it to an extent
    0:12:04 and was really kind of the point
    0:12:06 that led us from where we are today.
    0:12:09 In 2019, we did about $70 million of revenue.
    0:12:11 So we had gotten to some size just grinding,
    0:12:13 but it was not super profitable
    0:12:16 and it was still just really difficult.
    0:12:17 And, you know, now in 2024,
    0:12:20 we’ll do about $250 million of revenue.
    0:12:22 And so it was COVID,
    0:12:24 COVID was a big tailwind for that.
    0:12:27 But because we’re in a consumable product
    0:12:30 where customers need to come back after they find you
    0:12:34 and COVID was such a good customer acquisition time for us
    0:12:36 that my decision to actually lean in
    0:12:40 and figure out a way to service those customers at scale
    0:12:43 is really a key point that allowed me
    0:12:45 to get to where I am today.
    0:12:48 – Walk me through building the first plant
    0:12:51 and the problems and challenges that you had to overcome.
    0:12:53 – You know, it’s one of these things
    0:12:55 that’s extremely difficult to articulate
    0:12:59 because it almost sounds far-fetched so much of it.
    0:13:01 And it’s hard for me to even believe I lived it, you know,
    0:13:05 in retrospect and being a bit more mature now,
    0:13:06 when I look back on it,
    0:13:09 it was a very much a hubristic move to say,
    0:13:11 I’m going to go out,
    0:13:14 I have zero experience in manufacturing,
    0:13:17 zero experience in manufacturing an air filter,
    0:13:21 never been in an air filter manufacturing plant,
    0:13:24 but I’m going to start the process
    0:13:27 of manufacturing air filters at scale.
    0:13:31 So, you know, when I look back at it with, you know,
    0:13:34 kind of more mature eyes, it seems quite crazy,
    0:13:37 but, you know, I was younger
    0:13:41 and I guess I was very self-confident
    0:13:44 and I knew just had the self-belief
    0:13:47 that I was going to figure it out.
    0:13:51 But it really took me three to four years
    0:13:54 to get to the point where we could manufacture
    0:13:56 a product profitably.
    0:14:00 And what I mean by that is until that three
    0:14:02 or four year period, it would have been cheaper
    0:14:05 for me to buy the product we were selling
    0:14:08 from a large manufacturer of air filters.
    0:14:10 – And just repackage it. – And repackage it.
    0:14:13 And so, you know, we weren’t actually losing money
    0:14:15 in that, you know, our business model was different
    0:14:17 and we were lucky that I was good
    0:14:20 with the online marketing piece of it.
    0:14:22 And it was, you know, I brought a lot of those skills
    0:14:24 that allowed us to kind of get through that period
    0:14:26 that I did it myself.
    0:14:30 But, you know, I, any time in that, you know,
    0:14:31 first four years, if you had looked at it,
    0:14:35 you would have said that this manufacturing makes no sense
    0:14:38 because, you know, we weren’t making any money.
    0:14:41 In fact, we were losing potential money by doing it
    0:14:44 and it was taking up so much of my energy
    0:14:46 and we had so many employees in that
    0:14:50 and it was constantly bringing problems.
    0:14:52 But I knew that to do it at real scale
    0:14:55 that I needed to have that manufacturing.
    0:14:56 So I stuck with it.
    0:15:01 And, you know, I was living in New York City at the time.
    0:15:05 My wife was, or still is a radiologist at NYU.
    0:15:10 And we were living here and I would travel
    0:15:12 every Monday morning to Alabama.
    0:15:15 I actually kept a car in Atlanta at the, you know,
    0:15:19 parking go where I would go there a Monday morning
    0:15:21 and then drive from Atlanta to Talladega.
    0:15:23 It’s about a two hour drive.
    0:15:26 And I would stay there Monday through Friday and come back.
    0:15:28 And so for the first three years,
    0:15:31 I did that essentially every week, you know,
    0:15:34 building the manufacturing during the day
    0:15:37 and doing all of my programming work
    0:15:41 or marketing work or whatever you need at night
    0:15:43 for, you know, that first three years.
    0:15:45 I mean, and I still did a lot of those functions
    0:15:47 for the first eight years of the business.
    0:15:51 And, you know, because I couldn’t afford to actually hire
    0:15:54 anybody else to do any of those things.
    0:15:57 So I did all the finance, all the management
    0:16:00 of our development team, all the marketing, you know,
    0:16:03 and that’s what the reality of bootstrapping a business
    0:16:04 actually looks like.
    0:16:06 – You were doing the manufacturing during the day
    0:16:07 and trying to figure that out at night.
    0:16:11 You were doing all the admin work, all the marketing.
    0:16:13 That’s often, my friend Brent Beshore
    0:16:15 calls this the ceiling of brute force.
    0:16:18 And it’s where a lot of businesses get stuck,
    0:16:19 a lot of small businesses.
    0:16:23 It’s the limitation on the entrepreneur.
    0:16:25 And how did you decide when to hire people,
    0:16:28 when to go big, when to take the next step?
    0:16:31 – You as an entrepreneur have to really understand
    0:16:33 your business if you want to be able to scale
    0:16:34 and do anything big.
    0:16:38 And it’s almost impossible, in my opinion,
    0:16:41 especially when you’re smaller, to hire somebody
    0:16:43 that’s going to build the systems that you need
    0:16:45 to really do something big.
    0:16:47 And you kind of have to do it yourself.
    0:16:49 And at least that has been my experience.
    0:16:52 And, you know, I think that it sounds great to say,
    0:16:54 “Hey, I’m just going to go and hire somebody
    0:16:56 “to do all of these things.”
    0:16:58 But the reality is that if you really want
    0:17:00 to do something big, and if you want to do something
    0:17:03 different that there’s not an established playbook for,
    0:17:05 which is what we have done,
    0:17:10 then it’s your responsibility as the entrepreneur
    0:17:12 to go and figure all of that out.
    0:17:16 And, you know, we have a mutual friend and Dr. Garner,
    0:17:17 and I actually have been working with her
    0:17:22 for about two years now, and I’ve really enjoyed that.
    0:17:25 But the one thing that she and I have been talking
    0:17:29 about a lot lately is that, you know,
    0:17:33 I think that I’m at my best when I’m out there,
    0:17:36 you know, building new systems, new frameworks,
    0:17:39 and getting them started to the point
    0:17:40 that, and solidified to the point
    0:17:42 that then I can bring in other people
    0:17:47 to actually manage them and improve them going forward.
    0:17:50 And so that’s the framework that I like to think about it.
    0:17:52 And, you know, I only know my lived experience.
    0:17:55 I don’t know how other people live this stuff.
    0:17:57 But I think the fact that I understand
    0:18:00 our finance function, I understand our marketing function,
    0:18:02 I understand our manufacturing and operations function,
    0:18:05 I understand our shipping function,
    0:18:09 all with a great level of detail puts me in a position
    0:18:11 that if you want to go and hire all of that out
    0:18:14 for your business, and you want to compete with me,
    0:18:15 you’re gonna struggle.
    0:18:18 But it doesn’t mean I do all of those things now.
    0:18:22 And I have a great team, and I’ve really worked hard
    0:18:25 at building a management team in the last couple of years
    0:18:28 to allow me to build, you know,
    0:18:31 to grow and build this business.
    0:18:33 But I think as an entrepreneur,
    0:18:35 if you really want to grow a business,
    0:18:37 then it ultimately is your responsibility
    0:18:40 to go and figure out the systems and processes
    0:18:41 you need to grow.
    0:18:42 If you just want to maintain a business,
    0:18:44 that’s a very different calculus.
    0:18:45 But if you really want to grow,
    0:18:47 then I think you as an entrepreneur
    0:18:48 have to take on that responsibility.
    0:18:50 – Well, let’s walk through a particular example.
    0:18:52 So you’re doing all the functions,
    0:18:55 and then what was the key role you hired first?
    0:18:57 And I want to walk through how you hired them.
    0:18:59 Did you hire somebody who’s done this at scale before?
    0:19:00 Did you hire somebody who,
    0:19:03 like what were you looking for?
    0:19:05 Maybe it’s a COO, maybe it’s a CFO.
    0:19:07 What was that first role?
    0:19:08 And how did you decide,
    0:19:10 I want somebody who’s done this at 100 minutes,
    0:19:12 ’cause you’re trying to build a billion dollar business.
    0:19:14 – Am I trying, I want to do it.
    0:19:16 But I just, I hate the word trying.
    0:19:17 It’s a pet peeve of mine.
    0:19:19 But yes, I intend to build a–
    0:19:20 – I love that you corrected me.
    0:19:23 – I intend to build more than a billion dollar business.
    0:19:24 Honestly, I think, you know,
    0:19:26 I intend to build the roles leading
    0:19:27 into our air quality company,
    0:19:29 which I think is a $10 billion plus opportunity
    0:19:30 for a business easily.
    0:19:33 I’ve scaled from zero to $250 million a year.
    0:19:36 And, you know, in the next five to 10 years,
    0:19:38 I intend to take that to a billion dollars plus.
    0:19:40 You know, I don’t like putting any exact timeline on it
    0:19:42 because I don’t believe that, you know,
    0:19:44 that is even that helpful,
    0:19:46 but that is the trajectory that we’re on.
    0:19:48 And, you know, like,
    0:19:49 I think we need to have an honest discussion
    0:19:51 about what you’re talking about,
    0:19:54 because I am not the poster child you’re gonna put up
    0:19:58 for great hiring practices for management teams.
    0:20:00 – I don’t want the poster child, I want the raw role.
    0:20:02 – You know, the reality is,
    0:20:04 I’ve been in this business for 12 years.
    0:20:06 And basically there’s one person there
    0:20:08 that I hired four years ago
    0:20:09 and they were my first marketing hire.
    0:20:12 So like I’d had some people
    0:20:14 that had kind of helped along the way.
    0:20:16 So like, you know, somebody’s watching this.
    0:20:19 Like there were a few other people that came in and out,
    0:20:21 but I effectively did all of the marketing
    0:20:23 for the first eight years.
    0:20:27 And, you know, so then the last four years,
    0:20:29 you know, I’ve slowly been offloading pieces
    0:20:30 and pieces of it,
    0:20:32 but I’m still heavily involved
    0:20:35 in our marketing function as an example.
    0:20:38 But, you know, now, like 18 months ago,
    0:20:42 I hired a CMO to be our chief marketing officer
    0:20:45 that oversees our marketing team.
    0:20:49 And she was probably the first of the higher level hires
    0:20:53 that I actually made, and she’s still with us today.
    0:20:56 And, you know, late last year and early this year,
    0:21:01 I really focused on recruiting and learning
    0:21:02 how to build management teams.
    0:21:05 I studied a lot of, you know,
    0:21:08 the operating systems that you hear people talk about,
    0:21:10 like traction or the Rockefeller habits,
    0:21:13 you know, which have a lot of similarities and overlap.
    0:21:16 And really, you know, did a lot of soul searching
    0:21:20 about like, how am I going to put together
    0:21:22 the management team for me going forward?
    0:21:26 And I worked with a couple of recruiters
    0:21:31 and hired a CFO and a VP of ops
    0:21:35 to handle both the finance and the operations function
    0:21:40 that have been with me for, you know, six to eight months now.
    0:21:43 And I’m very happy with how we’re, you know,
    0:21:46 how that’s progressing, but it’s really very recently
    0:21:50 that I’ve really started to figure out
    0:21:53 how to do what I would call management level hiring.
    0:21:56 You know, over the years, like I have people
    0:21:58 that are in charge of manufacturing facilities
    0:21:59 when that’s where a lot of our people are.
    0:22:02 So like it’s more hiring and then training
    0:22:04 rather than hiring people that have experience
    0:22:05 because nobody has experience doing
    0:22:07 exactly what we’re doing.
    0:22:10 So I’ve done it, but you know, I’ve had people
    0:22:12 that have been in place in each of our manufacturing facilities
    0:22:15 that have been important to keeping our operational piece
    0:22:18 of our business in check.
    0:22:20 And that’s really where I spent most of my time and energy.
    0:22:24 And until recently, I largely did all the higher level
    0:22:25 management functions.
    0:22:30 I built all of the systems that do our finance and accounting.
    0:22:31 – I wanna come back to the systems,
    0:22:33 but I really wanna get specific on like,
    0:22:36 how did you identify you’re building a huge company?
    0:22:38 How do you identify the talent?
    0:22:40 Is it somebody who’s done this before
    0:22:43 at a different scale, the scale you’re trying to reach?
    0:22:47 Or is it somebody that has different traits
    0:22:49 that you’re looking for or?
    0:22:51 – I think that it evolves over time,
    0:22:54 but you, how I think about it now
    0:22:55 and where I found success.
    0:22:57 And I’ve worked with a lot with Dr. Garner about this,
    0:23:02 actually, but I realized you need to find people
    0:23:04 that have done the task that you’re looking
    0:23:07 to get done today or before.
    0:23:09 At least maybe it rhymes, maybe it’s not exactly.
    0:23:12 But like, if you want to hire a CFO, for example,
    0:23:16 I want to find somebody that has done the things
    0:23:18 that I know we are lacking before.
    0:23:20 And so like in my example, I hired a CFO
    0:23:22 that came from U.S. foods
    0:23:24 that has a lot of distribution,
    0:23:27 managing distribution centers experience
    0:23:28 and really cost accounting
    0:23:32 and understanding, zero base budgeting
    0:23:33 and this kind of stuff.
    0:23:35 That’s what we were lacking, that’s what we needed.
    0:23:37 And so I went out and I searched for somebody
    0:23:39 that had done exactly that before.
    0:23:43 And that is how I chose him
    0:23:47 and he’s been successful in his role with us so far.
    0:23:51 So I do think that historically I have made the mistake
    0:23:55 of hiring aspirationally because if I like somebody
    0:23:57 or I think, oh, they’ve got a lot of good energy
    0:24:00 and a lot of potential, then I have been burned
    0:24:04 by that so many times in my career.
    0:24:06 And I really had to take a step back a bit.
    0:24:08 And I think it’s, for me at least,
    0:24:13 hiring somebody that’s done what I’m looking to solve
    0:24:17 before is really kind of an important factor for me.
    0:24:22 But that doesn’t mean that you cannot then grow those people
    0:24:25 or mentor those people or bring them up into other things.
    0:24:27 And I’ve had some success with that,
    0:24:29 but I think that I’ve made the mistake historically
    0:24:32 of hiring aspirationally when I think
    0:24:35 that you’re much better off or at least I’m much better off
    0:24:37 hiring somebody that’s already solved the problem
    0:24:39 that I’ve already noticed I need to solve.
    0:24:41 – And is it important that they’ve solved that recently
    0:24:44 or is it just that they’ve solved it before?
    0:24:46 Is there a nuance there?
    0:24:51 – I gravitate towards people that are high energy
    0:24:55 and really looking to grow and build something big.
    0:24:59 I mean, I’m a big believer in culture fit
    0:25:01 being super important because part of the reason
    0:25:03 why I do all these videos, I want people to know who I am
    0:25:07 and know that I’m looking to grow quickly
    0:25:09 and looking to do big things.
    0:25:11 And I need people that are excited by that.
    0:25:16 And so generally what I found is people that fit that mold,
    0:25:20 you know, have had some type of recent experience
    0:25:22 of doing something similar to what I’m doing.
    0:25:25 And then they are, you know, they gravitate towards us
    0:25:27 because they feel a little bit stuck
    0:25:31 and they want to be able to grow and do more.
    0:25:34 And that’s really the type of person that I think
    0:25:38 I’ve found to be most successful in working with me at least.
    0:25:44 – Are you crushing your bills?
    0:25:46 Defeating your monthly payments.
    0:25:48 Sounds like you’re at the top of your financial game.
    0:25:53 Rise to it with the Beamol Eclipse Rise Visa card,
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    0:26:09 – Sick of dreaming smaller, sick of high fees
    0:26:10 eating away at your investments,
    0:26:13 but just don’t have the time to invest on your own?
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    0:26:17 doesn’t mean you should pay high fees
    0:26:18 for someone to do it for you.
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    0:26:37 – We’re down like eight levels in the inception here.
    0:26:38 I want to come back to marketing in a second,
    0:26:40 but what have you worked with Dr. Garner?
    0:26:42 What are the lessons that you’ve learned
    0:26:45 in terms of management level hiring?
    0:26:48 – The most important thing that I get from her,
    0:26:52 and I would recommend for anybody to consider,
    0:26:56 is first of all, I’m a bootstrapped entrepreneur.
    0:26:58 I own my old business, I don’t have a board of directors,
    0:27:02 and so I don’t have accountability that’s baked in, right?
    0:27:04 And I ultimately have the power
    0:27:06 to make effectively any decision within my business,
    0:27:10 and that’s great, super important for me,
    0:27:13 but also accountability is very important,
    0:27:17 and having her in my life was me forcing that accountability,
    0:27:19 or one of the ways that I was forcing that accountability,
    0:27:22 because I know if I tell her in a week
    0:27:25 that I’m going to focus on X, Y, or Z next week,
    0:27:27 that she’s going to be asking about it
    0:27:29 the next week or asking for an update,
    0:27:32 and I want to be able to deliver on that,
    0:27:34 because that’s just how I’m built.
    0:27:38 And so for me, the most important thing with her
    0:27:40 has been building that accountability.
    0:27:44 But then the second part of it is having somebody
    0:27:48 to bounce around things that are maybe going on in my head,
    0:27:52 and help me to become self-aware about what I deep down know
    0:27:55 the right answer is, because I think so often,
    0:27:59 we know in our gut the actions that we need to be taking,
    0:28:03 and they say that the easiest person to fool is yourself
    0:28:05 at the end of the day, and so it’s so easy
    0:28:09 to talk yourself into believing things
    0:28:12 that you want to believe, but maybe that’s a little bit
    0:28:14 different than what you know the truth actually is,
    0:28:18 and by talking it out with her every week,
    0:28:21 then it allows me to get to that truth,
    0:28:23 and make those decisions quicker, I think.
    0:28:26 And so when you talk about management-level hiring,
    0:28:30 she’s been super important for me in figuring that out,
    0:28:33 and part of the reason why I feel so comfortable
    0:28:35 going public with everything is I feel like
    0:28:37 I’m really getting better at that,
    0:28:39 and really have a solid team around me
    0:28:43 that can help me to achieve these bigger goals.
    0:28:46 But I think the biggest thing that she brought to that
    0:28:49 was forcing me to be honest with myself
    0:28:54 in conversation every week about what really the root cause
    0:28:57 of maybe a problem is, or what I’ve maybe overlooked
    0:29:00 in the past in examples where this has gone poorly,
    0:29:02 and we examine those, and she forces me
    0:29:05 to articulate those, and oftentimes by the end
    0:29:10 of an hour-long conversation, I’ve come to the conclusion
    0:29:13 myself just because I have somebody to talk about it with,
    0:29:15 and because I don’t really have anybody else
    0:29:19 to talk about those types of problems, or with,
    0:29:24 or in a detailed way, and she’s been very key
    0:29:30 in allowing me to kind of have that self-exploration
    0:29:32 in a very thoughtful way.
    0:29:34 – I want to come back up one level here you mentioned earlier
    0:29:36 that you’ve been studying how to build
    0:29:38 operating systems for companies.
    0:29:40 Walk me through some of the different models
    0:29:42 and what you think about them.
    0:29:44 – Oh, that’s a good question.
    0:29:48 I don’t know that I’m the right guy to exactly walk you
    0:29:51 through how attraction works, or how Rockefeller habits work,
    0:29:56 but my general sense, or my takeaway from them
    0:29:59 is you have some that are way more rigid,
    0:30:03 and others that are more pushing responsibility
    0:30:08 down through your teams, you have some that are
    0:30:13 very rigid about recommending only X number of people
    0:30:18 can report up to one person, and they hold them closely,
    0:30:22 and then I look at it in the context of a business
    0:30:25 like ours, where we do so many different things
    0:30:27 that it really actually makes no sense.
    0:30:30 How I look at it is like I look at everybody
    0:30:33 has a different opinion on how you structure meetings,
    0:30:35 how many meetings you should have,
    0:30:38 how formal you should be around those meetings.
    0:30:39 – So where did you land on this?
    0:30:41 What’s your business operating system?
    0:30:44 – For me, it’s different based off departments,
    0:30:46 because like every department is different,
    0:30:48 and that was kind of the nuanced thing that I found.
    0:30:50 So like how we operate within our marketing department
    0:30:52 is very different than how we operate
    0:30:55 in our manufacturing facilities, for instance.
    0:30:58 And so I have one person who I should mention
    0:31:00 is I have a chief of staff named Karan,
    0:31:05 who actually gave me COVID on her second day of the job,
    0:31:10 when I had hired her here in New York just before COVID,
    0:31:11 just before the COVID lockdowns,
    0:31:13 and we always laugh because she gave me COVID,
    0:31:16 and she was my executive assistant at the time,
    0:31:19 and then was very instrumental in helping me manage
    0:31:23 the people part of our business through COVID up to now.
    0:31:26 And so now she has the title of chief of staff.
    0:31:30 And so she’s the one that would kind of be responsible
    0:31:33 for helping me in this organizational structure, more or less.
    0:31:37 And so we really in the last couple of years
    0:31:40 have started to outline
    0:31:43 how we expect different departments
    0:31:44 to operate and behave.
    0:31:46 And it’s like in our manufacturing,
    0:31:48 where like some of our manufacturing plants
    0:31:51 have 350 people or whatnot there
    0:31:54 that do various functions from shipping
    0:31:57 to actually manufacturing to material management
    0:31:58 and this kind of stuff.
    0:32:02 We actually built out a model for that specifically
    0:32:06 that works for us with the performance reviews
    0:32:10 and they’re geared towards that type of employee,
    0:32:12 but then we actually have a different
    0:32:16 kind of more traditional traction-like framework
    0:32:18 for some of our other departments,
    0:32:19 like our marketing department,
    0:32:21 where we’re really working on,
    0:32:23 I guess they call them rocks and traction,
    0:32:26 but like we have certain goals and objectives
    0:32:30 that we are looking to meet on a quarterly basis
    0:32:31 and on a yearly basis.
    0:32:33 And we have a three to five year plan
    0:32:35 and we operate within those departments
    0:32:37 more on that type of model.
    0:32:39 But the thing that I think is actually most important
    0:32:41 or the thing that was most impactful for me
    0:32:44 that I took away from all of these operating systems
    0:32:47 was it all starts with a clear vision
    0:32:50 and a clear mission for the business
    0:32:53 that then has to roll down to all of the people
    0:32:56 that are working for that business.
    0:32:58 And I think one of the things that we lacked
    0:33:01 as a business, and my big takeaway
    0:33:02 from doing all of the research
    0:33:04 around these operating systems
    0:33:06 was ultimately the operating system doesn’t matter
    0:33:09 as much as like what are you looking to accomplish.
    0:33:12 And I think that we had not done a great job
    0:33:15 of articulating that to our employees
    0:33:16 and to maybe to our customers
    0:33:18 or even to myself prior to this year
    0:33:21 because it’s like, okay, we’re an air filter company,
    0:33:24 we’re an air filter brand, what is our mission?
    0:33:26 Or is it just to manufacture air filters
    0:33:29 and ship them well and do that at scale?
    0:33:32 Is that your vision or is it more than that, right?
    0:33:36 And we had never, I never really put any thought into that.
    0:33:41 And so the first step for me after doing this research
    0:33:44 was really building out a mission statement
    0:33:45 and our values.
    0:33:49 And I spent two or three months
    0:33:51 really soul searching on that
    0:33:55 and thinking through like, what matters
    0:33:56 and like what do I want to accomplish
    0:33:59 and what do we as a company stand for
    0:34:02 and what type of people do we want to attract
    0:34:05 and how do we want to judge our people,
    0:34:08 rate our employees and whatnot.
    0:34:10 And I ultimately built out our mission statement
    0:34:13 which to build the world’s leading
    0:34:14 into air quality company more or less
    0:34:17 and we define what that means
    0:34:19 as well as the company values.
    0:34:22 And from operating system perspective,
    0:34:26 the thing that I’ve realized is the most important
    0:34:30 across all of them is your values are what allow you
    0:34:35 to coach your employees to behave in the way
    0:34:38 that you as a business value and want to stand for.
    0:34:42 And what that means is like bias to action
    0:34:44 is one of our core values
    0:34:46 and it’s a core value that I have in my life.
    0:34:50 And sometimes like if an employee makes a mistake
    0:34:54 like that it’s like, oh, Joe didn’t call me back
    0:34:57 so I therefore I couldn’t do this thing, right?
    0:34:59 Like, you know, that would be an excuse
    0:35:01 that somebody may come and give you
    0:35:02 but then you’re like, okay,
    0:35:04 how do I actually coach you on this?
    0:35:06 Because, you know, what am I supposed to say?
    0:35:10 Like he didn’t call you back so you failed, right?
    0:35:11 Oh, it’s not your fault.
    0:35:13 That would be one way of approaching it.
    0:35:14 It’s a hard thing to refute.
    0:35:16 But if you have a core principle
    0:35:18 or of core value of bias to action,
    0:35:20 then you can say, well, you know,
    0:35:22 we at Filterby have a bias to action.
    0:35:26 And like, and what that would mean is in this example,
    0:35:28 you need to call him if he didn’t call you back
    0:35:29 or you need to make sure you’re following up with him
    0:35:31 and doing everything you can to get that fixed
    0:35:32 because that’s just what we do.
    0:35:34 And we use that as an example.
    0:35:36 And so the reason the values are so important
    0:35:38 and this goes across the department
    0:35:41 is that that is what allows you to frame
    0:35:44 all of your discussions with employees
    0:35:46 or with partners or whatever the case might be
    0:35:49 in the way that you as a company
    0:35:52 or you as an organization expect.
    0:35:54 And that is why the value piece
    0:35:56 of an organizational structure
    0:35:57 or the operational structure is really,
    0:35:59 ironically, the most important.
    0:36:01 And two years ago, if you had told me that,
    0:36:03 I would have said, oh, that’s just a waste of time.
    0:36:06 Or like, why am I gonna waste my time going through this?
    0:36:09 Right, I mean, like I would not have thought much of it
    0:36:11 because I always, you know, figured,
    0:36:13 oh, I own the whole business.
    0:36:16 I’m gonna go just kind of figure it out as I go.
    0:36:19 I don’t need to be so rigid.
    0:36:21 And I think that that was a real mistake.
    0:36:23 – I think a lot of our listeners would think
    0:36:26 when you say vision statement, mission statement values,
    0:36:28 that they have the exact same skepticism
    0:36:30 that you might have had.
    0:36:32 How do you use the vision and the mission statement?
    0:36:34 Often there are things on a website or on a wall
    0:36:37 and people just like, whatever, doesn’t matter.
    0:36:40 I loved how the example of how you actually took the values
    0:36:42 and you use them to coach people
    0:36:45 and you use them to make a difference in the company.
    0:36:48 – Well, that was the big kind of aha moment for me,
    0:36:50 actually, was realizing we actually had a problem
    0:36:52 with a particular person when I was doing,
    0:36:54 when I was building these values
    0:36:56 and just kind of, you know, going through the motions
    0:37:00 with it, we had a problem with an employee that,
    0:37:02 you know, on the surface, you would say,
    0:37:05 well, you know, was there really anything
    0:37:07 they could have done?
    0:37:09 But like, I knew like there were actions
    0:37:11 that they could have taken that, you know,
    0:37:14 would have taken a little more effort
    0:37:16 to get it done, not that, well, you know,
    0:37:18 this is the great example where, you know,
    0:37:21 if we have a biased action in this example
    0:37:23 as a core value, it’s a coaching moment
    0:37:25 where we can say, hey, you know, this is what we stand for.
    0:37:27 This is what is important.
    0:37:32 You’re going to be reviewed on these values that we have.
    0:37:35 And we take them seriously, then all of a sudden
    0:37:39 that gives you a way to frame it with an employee.
    0:37:42 But the reality is that in my example,
    0:37:45 like, they’re so personal to me.
    0:37:47 And so like, I’ve been able to build this business
    0:37:49 on my own and, you know, I think that’s unique
    0:37:51 and I would not recommend it for most people.
    0:37:52 I actually think for most people,
    0:37:54 or I don’t know what’s right for most people.
    0:37:56 I only know what’s right for me.
    0:37:59 And so once I realized that, you know,
    0:38:03 I could kind of personalize it and then get buy-in
    0:38:05 from the people around me that,
    0:38:08 because they saw how these values that we exhibited
    0:38:11 were the differentiator for us in growing this business.
    0:38:14 And we have tangible examples around each of those.
    0:38:15 Once I got the buy-in from that,
    0:38:18 then it’s much easier to articulate and show
    0:38:20 to everybody within the company
    0:38:22 that, hey, we actually take these seriously.
    0:38:26 And we give out an employee of the month award now
    0:38:28 that we started earlier this year,
    0:38:29 where we highlight somebody
    0:38:32 that actually exhibited one of our core values.
    0:38:34 We pick a different core value every month
    0:38:36 and we find somebody that actually exhibited that
    0:38:39 and use that as a kind of coaching mechanism
    0:38:41 or as a way just to reward somebody
    0:38:44 who is living up to our values.
    0:38:48 And so like, once I realized how powerful that could be,
    0:38:52 then I really became, I really bought into it.
    0:38:55 But the key is they have to really be true.
    0:38:57 Like, you can’t just make them up.
    0:38:59 I think that so many people go through the exercise
    0:39:02 and it’s aspirational and it’s great to be aspirational,
    0:39:05 but if you’re not willing to actually live by that,
    0:39:08 you yourself first, but then also,
    0:39:11 if you have somebody that maybe is a high performer,
    0:39:14 but is clearly not consistent with your values,
    0:39:16 you have to be willing to part ways with them,
    0:39:18 even if that’s going to be tough for a while
    0:39:19 for your company.
    0:39:22 And we take it to that level of extreme
    0:39:25 because it’s, to me, it’s extremely important.
    0:39:27 And I think if you want to be successful with this,
    0:39:30 that you have to have that level of commitment.
    0:39:32 – I want to rewind a little bit back to when you were doing
    0:39:34 all the jobs you were traveling,
    0:39:36 you were spending all week in the factory,
    0:39:39 and then at night, you’re sort of doing the other stuff.
    0:39:40 You did, you came from Goldman.
    0:39:43 You didn’t know anything about DTC marketing.
    0:39:45 How did you, how did you learn marketing?
    0:39:49 – It’s not 100% true in that I’ve been an entrepreneur
    0:39:51 since I was probably 10 years old.
    0:39:56 And I was born in 1983 and really came of age in the ’90s
    0:39:58 when the internet was just starting to come up.
    0:40:01 And so I always had side hustles
    0:40:03 and things that I was working on.
    0:40:07 And in my teenage years, I was basically assembling computers
    0:40:09 and selling them on eBay.
    0:40:13 And my eBay screen name was Momentum Corp.
    0:40:16 And I’ve always been a believer in momentum,
    0:40:17 I guess, from the early days.
    0:40:21 And I just think momentum in life and in businesses
    0:40:26 is so important and I fight to maintain momentum always.
    0:40:28 And at any time I lose momentum, I hate it,
    0:40:30 but then I remember I got to go in
    0:40:32 and create that momentum again.
    0:40:34 We can maybe dig into that later.
    0:40:38 But I always was kind of tinkering around
    0:40:41 with online businesses.
    0:40:46 And actually in 2007, I had just moved to the trading desk
    0:40:51 from my economics research desk.
    0:40:54 And that was the beginning of the financial crisis.
    0:40:57 And I saw a lot of turmoil
    0:41:01 and saw a lot of people around me starting to get fired.
    0:41:04 And I was convinced I was gonna lose my job.
    0:41:07 And my wife was in medical school at the time.
    0:41:10 And we had not taken on any debt for her medical school
    0:41:11 because I was paying for it.
    0:41:15 And I was determined not to take on any debt.
    0:41:18 And I started a side hustle
    0:41:22 where I was effectively an affiliate for StubHub.
    0:41:24 And it was quite scammy what I was doing.
    0:41:27 I was using Craigslist as a traffic source
    0:41:29 where I had a team of guys in Vietnam
    0:41:32 who were helping me to basically spam Craigslist
    0:41:34 to get traffic to a site
    0:41:36 that then ultimately would lead them to StubHub.
    0:41:38 And I would get a commission.
    0:41:42 But in 2008, I made about half a million dollars that year.
    0:41:46 Just on the side hustle, doing affiliate marketing.
    0:41:48 And at the time, I realized
    0:41:51 that there’s obviously a lot of money to be made
    0:41:52 in this kind of world.
    0:41:54 Wouldn’t it be great if I owned the whole offer?
    0:41:56 Like rather than being an affiliate,
    0:41:58 if I owned my own product, so to speak.
    0:42:01 And I started a company called My Office Delivered
    0:42:05 where we were effectively drop shipping office supplies.
    0:42:10 And in 2009, sold six and a half million dollars or so
    0:42:13 of office supplies primarily on Amazon.
    0:42:16 And when I looked at the actual underlying data of it,
    0:42:21 about 60% of that was either air filters
    0:42:24 from a small company in Creole, Alabama called Filters Now
    0:42:26 or in cartridges.
    0:42:27 Those were the two big markets
    0:42:30 or the two big things that drove a large portion
    0:42:32 of our revenue.
    0:42:34 So then fast forward into 2009,
    0:42:37 like my, the financial crisis ended up being great for me
    0:42:39 from a career perspective.
    0:42:42 And I got promoted and my career really took off
    0:42:43 and I ended up shutting down that business
    0:42:48 because I didn’t have the energy to continue to do both.
    0:42:50 So I shut it down.
    0:42:53 But the reason I give you that answer
    0:42:57 and it’s something I talk about a lot with people is,
    0:42:59 you know, people always talk about money
    0:43:02 being the limiting factor in starting a business
    0:43:03 or doing something new.
    0:43:06 And I think that the reality is the limiting factor
    0:43:09 for most people is the skills and the curiosity.
    0:43:14 And I, from an early age, was building those skills,
    0:43:16 building the online marketing skills,
    0:43:18 building the entrepreneurial skills
    0:43:21 that ultimately I’m still honing today.
    0:43:23 And it’s just been an evolution
    0:43:24 over that long period of time.
    0:43:29 So it was something I was curious about from an early age
    0:43:33 and, you know, kept tinkering and figuring it out.
    0:43:36 And so like by the time I actually started the business,
    0:43:39 it was just a culmination of me,
    0:43:41 of all of those skills that I had already started to build.
    0:43:43 And then I just continued to build them
    0:43:46 and I see opportunity and I lean into that opportunity.
    0:43:49 And I think that that is the reality
    0:43:52 of how most successful people operate.
    0:43:54 And I think that, you know,
    0:43:56 people are always looking for that cheat code
    0:43:59 or, you know, that, that aha moment
    0:44:02 that’s going to then change their life forever.
    0:44:04 And, you know, if that happens for people,
    0:44:07 I’ve certainly never experienced it.
    0:44:10 For me, it’s more of a slow evolution
    0:44:13 and a compounding of skills
    0:44:17 and a compounding of knowledge over a long period of time.
    0:44:21 But with a consistent focus
    0:44:23 that’s long-term that is immutable.
    0:44:25 And I think it’s so hard for people
    0:44:27 to hold both of those things to be true.
    0:44:28 I know it’s been hard for me in the past,
    0:44:31 but it takes a long time to compound
    0:44:34 to something meaningful and for skills to compound.
    0:44:37 And, you know, it’s easy to get impatient,
    0:44:40 but if you do it over a long period of time,
    0:44:42 you’ll be shocked how far you can go.
    0:44:44 But it would not be fair to say,
    0:44:46 oh, I just woke up and learned marketing skills on this day.
    0:44:49 It was something that I had been interested in
    0:44:52 and kind of toyed around with for years
    0:44:54 and ultimately honed them more and more.
    0:44:57 I still am homing them today.
    0:45:00 You know, it’s a never-ending process.
    0:45:02 – So let’s talk about marketing.
    0:45:02 What does that look like?
    0:45:04 Is it Amazon, Google?
    0:45:06 I mean, I would assume people have intent
    0:45:07 when they’re buying a filter.
    0:45:10 How do you think about marketing and branding?
    0:45:11 – Yeah, so branding and marketing
    0:45:13 are two very different things to me.
    0:45:16 And, you know, we can go as deep as you’d like on it.
    0:45:19 But I actually would like to start with the brand
    0:45:23 a little bit in that I, from the very beginning,
    0:45:25 was focused on building a brand.
    0:45:28 To me, like if you look at any big company
    0:45:31 that stands the test of time or has, you know,
    0:45:34 real value is really the brand.
    0:45:37 You know, nobody is searching for or,
    0:45:39 there are people that are searching for shoes
    0:45:41 and there are people that are searching for Nike.
    0:45:44 You want to own the company that is Nike
    0:45:46 because then people, you have no competition
    0:45:47 if somebody is searching for Nike.
    0:45:49 They’re only looking for you.
    0:45:50 If there’s somebody searching for shoes
    0:45:52 and you have to compete with all those people
    0:45:56 that are selling shoes, that’s a much harder game
    0:45:59 and not likely to be to stand the test of time.
    0:46:02 And so I recognized that early on
    0:46:05 and it was important to me to build a brand.
    0:46:08 But you don’t build a brand overnight.
    0:46:09 It’s much like a reputation.
    0:46:10 It takes a lifetime to build
    0:46:13 and it takes a second to ruin, you know?
    0:46:15 And that’s just true.
    0:46:18 But from the beginning, you know, we really focused on,
    0:46:22 I really focused on branding and, you know,
    0:46:24 there’s lots of nuances that go into that
    0:46:27 but as simple things like how we package
    0:46:30 all of our products and a lot of our competitors,
    0:46:33 especially early on, didn’t do any packaging at all.
    0:46:36 They were just putting generic filters into a box
    0:46:39 and we’ve really gotten more and more,
    0:46:41 much better over the years.
    0:46:43 I really differentiating within our brand
    0:46:45 and we’ve actually rolled out some new media
    0:46:48 with Kimberley Clark to do it
    0:46:52 and we really kind of innovated and worked to make sure
    0:46:55 that we have a best in class product
    0:46:59 that people see, they resonate with it
    0:47:01 and ultimately led us to launching a Walmart
    0:47:04 two and a half months ago, which retail I think
    0:47:06 is something you may want to double click on later.
    0:47:11 Anyways, you know, branding was extremely important
    0:47:13 to me from the beginning.
    0:47:18 And, you know, marketing to me is anything
    0:47:21 to raise awareness about that brand.
    0:47:23 But marketing without a good product
    0:47:27 or without a good experience is completely wasteful
    0:47:32 because especially if you’re in a high customer acquisition
    0:47:35 you know, type business that you need that recurring revenue
    0:47:38 or that repeat revenue in order to be able to make it
    0:47:41 into a business, you have to have a good product
    0:47:42 and a good customer experience.
    0:47:46 So a brand all starts with that, just like a reputation.
    0:47:48 It’s like, you know, building that over a long period
    0:47:51 of time and all the elements that go into that.
    0:47:54 But then, you know, from a marketing perspective
    0:47:57 the business originally was built almost exclusively
    0:48:00 on what I would call intent based marketing.
    0:48:04 And so, you know, basically if you search for air filter
    0:48:06 or any iteration of an air filter like 20 by 20
    0:48:10 by one air filter or 20 by 25 by five air filter
    0:48:14 or furnace filter or AC filter, HVAC filter on Google
    0:48:19 or Amazon or Bing, then, you know, you’re going to see us.
    0:48:21 And that’s been the case for about a decade.
    0:48:25 Early on my strategy was I wanted to suck all the oxygen
    0:48:27 out of the market in that, you know,
    0:48:29 I knew we were vertically integrated
    0:48:34 and that means that our cost of delivering a product
    0:48:36 to a customer is as cheap or cheaper
    0:48:38 than anybody else’s possibly could be.
    0:48:41 That’s part of the nuance of our business model
    0:48:44 because, you know, we are completely vertically integrated
    0:48:46 and, you know, we’re really in the logistics business
    0:48:47 not the air filter business.
    0:48:50 If you manufacture an air filter for about $2
    0:48:53 and sell it on average for 12, you know,
    0:48:57 unfortunately that’s not all just profit between the two.
    0:48:59 There’s a lot of logistics involved
    0:49:01 in getting that product to the end customer.
    0:49:04 But because we’ve optimized all of that, you know,
    0:49:06 I know that there’s basically nobody
    0:49:09 that can compete with us on price
    0:49:11 if that was a deciding factor
    0:49:13 that I wanted to go on and compete on.
    0:49:15 We don’t compete on price, it’s just not something,
    0:49:16 you don’t build a brand that way.
    0:49:19 But I knew that because of that,
    0:49:23 I had the kind of staying power from a marketing perspective
    0:49:25 and an intent-based marketing perspective
    0:49:28 to suck all the oxygen out of the rest of the market.
    0:49:32 And I did that even when it was hard early on,
    0:49:35 but I knew that if you were searching for an air filter
    0:49:40 or something related that we needed to be the obvious choice
    0:49:44 based off of the, you know, taking over all the ad spots
    0:49:47 that would be related to that.
    0:49:51 And so that was effectively the marketing strategy
    0:49:56 that got us to where we are today, more or less, right?
    0:49:59 I mean, that combined with great product, quick delivery,
    0:50:02 great branding, great quality, you know,
    0:50:06 all of those things combined with the sucking all the oxygen
    0:50:09 out of that intent-based marketing world
    0:50:11 is how we built the brand we have today.
    0:50:14 I mean, you fast forward now, you know, on Amazon,
    0:50:17 we know because, you know, we have access to the data
    0:50:18 that’s pretty public.
    0:50:22 Between one and four and one and three filters purchased
    0:50:24 in the furnace filter category on Amazon is one of ours.
    0:50:28 So like we’ve really taken a ton of market share
    0:50:30 in that specific category,
    0:50:32 just off of that long-term marketing strategy.
    0:50:35 – How do you think about turning an Amazon customer
    0:50:37 where you don’t get the data yourself or do you?
    0:50:38 Are you shipping?
    0:50:39 Are you doing all the logistics?
    0:50:42 – We fulfill 100% of our orders on Amazon.
    0:50:44 – So you get all the customer data.
    0:50:46 – I mean, we get their address,
    0:50:48 I mean, we have to ship it to them.
    0:50:49 – Do you get their email address and stuff?
    0:50:51 – No, you don’t get their email address.
    0:50:52 But I know the question you’re asking
    0:50:55 and I think it’s the wrong question and I’ll tell you why.
    0:51:01 If you are a brand, if you’re a CPG brand,
    0:51:03 your goal should be to sell and be
    0:51:05 wherever your customers are.
    0:51:09 And I shouldn’t care where you buy my product.
    0:51:11 I just want you to be buying my product.
    0:51:15 And so like 60% of product searches start on Amazon.
    0:51:16 That’s just a fact.
    0:51:21 So like if you are selling a product that you,
    0:51:23 for whatever reason say,
    0:51:25 oh, I don’t want to sell on Amazon,
    0:51:29 then you are basically ignoring 60% of your potential buyers.
    0:51:33 And so like from the beginning and a big motivation for me
    0:51:35 starting this business and the way that I did
    0:51:39 is I wanted to build a brand and a product
    0:51:41 that I could work with companies like Amazon
    0:51:44 rather than trying to compete with them.
    0:51:47 And when you own a brand and you own all of your manufacturing,
    0:51:50 then we’re in a unique position to be able to do that.
    0:51:53 And it goes back to that earlier experience I had.
    0:51:56 I told you in 2009, a long time ago,
    0:51:58 we sold six and a half or I sold six and a half million
    0:52:03 dollars of office supplies on, primarily on Amazon.
    0:52:05 Like that was where I saw all these people were buying stuff.
    0:52:08 And so to me, the opportunity was,
    0:52:12 I want to find a product that I can sustainably sell
    0:52:13 on Amazon as a channel
    0:52:15 because I know that that’s where the customers are.
    0:52:19 And so I think anybody that kids themselves and says,
    0:52:21 oh, you know, I’m too good to sell on Amazon
    0:52:24 or I want to ignore it, it’s just incredibly naive.
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    0:52:49 – A lot of people spend a lot of time going,
    0:52:51 yes, I want to be on the Amazon channel,
    0:52:54 but then I want to take that person that buys on Amazon
    0:52:56 and convert them into a direct relationship
    0:52:59 because with Amazon, I don’t own the relationship
    0:53:00 with the customer.
    0:53:02 Amazon is the middle person.
    0:53:04 And for better or worse, and I don’t have an opinion
    0:53:07 on this because I don’t sell on Amazon at all.
    0:53:09 They want to take that and have a direct relationship
    0:53:10 with that consumer.
    0:53:12 How do you think about that?
    0:53:15 – Early on I would spend some time thinking about that.
    0:53:19 And honestly, I realized at least in our case,
    0:53:21 and maybe everybody’s different, it’s a fool’s errand.
    0:53:24 I mean, it’s like, there’s a reason why customers choose
    0:53:25 to buy on Amazon.
    0:53:27 I mean, there’s a funny story.
    0:53:29 She’ll maybe get mad at me for telling it,
    0:53:31 but I will about two years ago,
    0:53:33 we needed some air filters at our house
    0:53:36 and my wife actually ordered our air filters on Amazon.
    0:53:38 And it really irritated me at the time
    0:53:40 because I said, how in the world, why in the world
    0:53:43 would you go on Amazon and buy our air filters?
    0:53:46 But for her, she was just doing a chore
    0:53:49 and she was looking for the easiest way to,
    0:53:50 she wanted to solve that problem
    0:53:53 and we buy a lot of stuff on Amazon.
    0:53:55 And so she just went and clicked order on Amazon.
    0:53:58 And so that’s my wife that made the decision
    0:54:00 to go and buy our product on Amazon.
    0:54:05 So I quite frankly gave up on spending any energy
    0:54:08 and worrying about it.
    0:54:10 I’m focused on building our brand
    0:54:13 and making the best products we can
    0:54:15 and giving the best customer experience we can.
    0:54:19 And if people choose to buy on Amazon, then that’s great.
    0:54:20 I don’t care where people buy us.
    0:54:22 Early on, I thought I would never get into retail
    0:54:23 to be honest with you.
    0:54:26 And here I am, we just launched in 505 Walmart’s
    0:54:30 and really have a big retail strategy going forward.
    0:54:34 84% of retail transactions still happen in store.
    0:54:36 So I can sit here and say,
    0:54:39 oh, I’m just going to sell online
    0:54:42 because I want to be a pure direct to consumer company.
    0:54:43 And that’s fine.
    0:54:47 But to me, that is very short-sighted
    0:54:50 and you’re losing a lot of potential customers
    0:54:51 in that process.
    0:54:52 And I mean, that’s the decision that you’re making
    0:54:54 but you’d have to at least know
    0:54:55 that you are making that decision.
    0:54:58 So that’s really how I think about that
    0:55:01 is I’ve really stopped thinking about it.
    0:55:02 – I love all the detail.
    0:55:03 Thank you for this.
    0:55:04 Keep going with us.
    0:55:06 Do you outsource the marketing to somebody else
    0:55:08 or do you have it all internally
    0:55:10 and is that important and why?
    0:55:11 – It’s mostly internal.
    0:55:14 We do have an agency that we work with
    0:55:16 that I hired a few years ago
    0:55:19 that does manage some of our ad accounts
    0:55:20 that are more on autopilot
    0:55:22 but it’s just keeping best practices
    0:55:24 and keeping things together.
    0:55:26 Like I built out all of our,
    0:55:28 like all of our intent-based ad campaigns.
    0:55:30 Our budget next year is $42 million
    0:55:31 for our marketing in general.
    0:55:32 So like we’ve spent about,
    0:55:34 it’s a $42 million line item for us,
    0:55:35 at least going to next year.
    0:55:38 I think it was $38 million this year.
    0:55:39 So it’s a big line item for us
    0:55:41 and we manage most of it internally
    0:55:43 but so interesting still to me,
    0:55:45 my marketing team may not like,
    0:55:46 they let me say it,
    0:55:48 but it’s like most of that money is still built
    0:55:53 on ad campaigns that I effectively launched
    0:55:56 12 years ago when honed over that period
    0:55:58 or 10 years ago, in Amazon’s case,
    0:56:00 they wrote out their advertising a bit later
    0:56:02 but it’s not like those things
    0:56:04 have shifted all that much.
    0:56:07 One of my big goals personally,
    0:56:11 you know, like I really am going all in on brand
    0:56:13 and on building the Rosalind Indoor Air Quality Company
    0:56:15 and we’re getting into the service business
    0:56:16 and doing some other things.
    0:56:19 And so for me, the next kind of step of marketing
    0:56:24 is building top of the funnel brand awareness.
    0:56:27 And it’s part of the reason why I’m going so public now
    0:56:29 and then we’re going to start alongside me,
    0:56:32 I’m going to have people doing the same thing
    0:56:34 for the core filter by brand
    0:56:36 that may appeal to different demographics
    0:56:37 that I would appeal to.
    0:56:41 And we’re really kind of going all in on,
    0:56:43 you know, that top of funnel brand awareness.
    0:56:45 You know, we gave a Jeep away last year,
    0:56:47 we’re doing big giveaways every month
    0:56:49 and we’re doing things that are,
    0:56:51 you know, not related to air filters
    0:56:54 but that get us into a customer’s mind.
    0:56:56 That’s kind of where our marketing is going
    0:56:58 and almost all of that’s done in-house.
    0:57:01 – You mentioned retail earlier, why retail?
    0:57:02 – Well, like I just said,
    0:57:06 you know, 84% of transactions still happen in a store
    0:57:08 whether you like it or not.
    0:57:12 And I just realized that, you know,
    0:57:13 I know I keep coming back to it
    0:57:16 but I truly am mission driven, I really live that.
    0:57:18 And I just know if I want to achieve my mission
    0:57:20 that I need to be where the customers are
    0:57:23 and a lot of those customers are in retail.
    0:57:25 And as I tell the retailers, you know,
    0:57:28 they offer a very different value proposition
    0:57:28 than we do.
    0:57:30 And I think it actually, it makes sense
    0:57:33 that they exist and we exist in that, you know,
    0:57:37 for us to get our shipping economics down,
    0:57:39 we incentivize customers to buy, you know,
    0:57:41 a four or six pack at a time
    0:57:44 because that’s where you really get the best value
    0:57:46 or we can deliver the best value to a customer.
    0:57:49 So online, on average, we ship five and a half filters
    0:57:52 to a customer and any one transaction.
    0:57:55 But in retail, because it costs us the same
    0:57:56 to ship every single filter,
    0:57:58 whether it’s wrapped in four or one,
    0:58:00 it still takes up the same amount of truck space.
    0:58:04 We can give them one packs and they can compete in retail
    0:58:07 with our four pack per unit price
    0:58:09 on the one pack on the shelf.
    0:58:12 And so they’re offering a different value proposition
    0:58:13 to the customer.
    0:58:15 The customer obviously has to go then pick it up
    0:58:17 and they have to do that extra work themselves.
    0:58:18 But if they’re already there,
    0:58:21 maybe it’s something that they would like to take.
    0:58:24 But for me, also as a brand,
    0:58:28 we now are selling between 10 and 20,000 units a week
    0:58:29 in Walmart.
    0:58:34 And that’s 10 to 20,000 potential new to brand customers
    0:58:36 a week that we are reaching
    0:58:38 just in our kind of trial,
    0:58:40 505 store period in Walmart.
    0:58:42 And so as for a brand, you know,
    0:58:47 that’s a huge potential future customer acquisition channel
    0:58:48 for us, right?
    0:58:50 Because you have all these people
    0:58:53 that are now being exposed to our brand
    0:58:55 that maybe weren’t being exposed to it before.
    0:58:57 And so that’s really the motivation
    0:58:59 for going into retail.
    0:59:01 – Why do people buy air filters?
    0:59:04 Like, what makes them buy your filter over 3M?
    0:59:04 Is it price?
    0:59:05 Is it convenience?
    0:59:06 Is it…
    0:59:08 – Like how you put in versus 3M,
    0:59:10 our arch enemy, at least they think so,
    0:59:12 although we’re actually very different games.
    0:59:14 You know, there are a lot of factors
    0:59:18 and it’s a simple question that is a little more complex.
    0:59:21 Take a little bit of a step back.
    0:59:23 You know, one of the things
    0:59:26 that makes us the most unique, I think,
    0:59:30 is that we sell to both the residential
    0:59:32 and to the business to business market.
    0:59:33 So like business to business
    0:59:36 is actually our fastest growing segment now
    0:59:39 where we sell, you know, direct to hospitals, hotels,
    0:59:41 you know, gyms, you know, you name it.
    0:59:45 And, you know, all of our product that we manufacture
    0:59:48 is geared towards that commercial customer.
    0:59:52 And so it’s, you know, a, you know, higher quality
    0:59:56 beverage board and, you know, a double-sided frame
    0:59:58 and like little nuanced type things
    1:00:01 that really make it a quality product
    1:00:02 that can stand up, you know,
    1:00:04 even if it was put on an outside, you know,
    1:00:07 air handler unit, but that’s the exact same product
    1:00:12 that we’re selling to residential and to consumers.
    1:00:15 And we’re able to do that at a comparable
    1:00:18 and oftentimes cheaper price than 3M,
    1:00:20 you know, I’m not knocking them at all
    1:00:22 and not looking for a fight with it, it’s just,
    1:00:25 but they’re just, they and a lot of the other companies
    1:00:28 that sell into the residential world
    1:00:31 only sell like residential grade or filters
    1:00:34 that are not really made for that commercial use.
    1:00:38 And so when they’re putting them in stores
    1:00:42 they’re basically limiting themselves to residents,
    1:00:43 to homes, same way with online,
    1:00:46 they’re basically limiting themselves to homes.
    1:00:49 When 70% of air filtration is actually commercial.
    1:00:52 And so 70% of air filters that are purchased
    1:00:55 are purchased for a commercial setting.
    1:00:58 And so I think online, one of the reasons
    1:01:01 why we have been able to gain so much market share
    1:01:04 is because, you know, a lot of those commercial people
    1:01:07 see that and end up purchasing our product.
    1:01:09 But you combine that with the fact that, you know,
    1:01:13 we manufacture 300 different sizes as standard
    1:01:16 and we have a team, you know, an aggregate of 50 or 70 people
    1:01:19 that make custom filters all day every day.
    1:01:21 So like if you have a crazy size filter
    1:01:23 which in the US is quite common, you know,
    1:01:26 that you don’t have a, you can’t go to the store and buy.
    1:01:30 And if it’s not one of even the 300 sizes that we have
    1:01:34 then we will make it for you and still ship it same day.
    1:01:37 So you get it next day or two days depending on where you are.
    1:01:40 And so we have the infrastructure to do all of that.
    1:01:42 Whereas like the typical brands that are selling
    1:01:45 into places like Walmart may have a total
    1:01:47 of 20 different sizes that they sell
    1:01:48 and they only sell through retail
    1:01:50 and they don’t do all the rest.
    1:01:53 And the reality is that there are a lot of homes
    1:01:54 that have multiple sizes.
    1:01:57 And so if you have one odd size
    1:01:59 and you have all these other standard sizes
    1:02:00 then we ultimately get your business
    1:02:02 because we have the whole catalog
    1:02:04 and we can get it to you quicker.
    1:02:06 So there are a lot of little factors like that
    1:02:07 that make a huge difference.
    1:02:09 – Is that what you mean when you’re in a different business
    1:02:12 than 3M or is there another nuance to that?
    1:02:13 When it comes to air filters?
    1:02:16 – Yeah, so 3M best I can tell
    1:02:19 and they can refute it if they want
    1:02:23 but they mostly sell through retail
    1:02:27 so places like Walmart, Costco and whatnot.
    1:02:29 And that is their major distribution channel.
    1:02:33 And until this year we did literally zero retail.
    1:02:35 So they did that and they sell online
    1:02:37 but that’s basically the extent
    1:02:39 and when they sell online they’re basically doing it
    1:02:43 through Amazon and Walmart and other retailers
    1:02:46 which means they’re effectively trucking in product
    1:02:47 to a distribution center.
    1:02:50 Then that distribution is taking it off the truck,
    1:02:54 taking it out of the case packed boxes likely,
    1:02:55 then moving it around the country
    1:02:57 to their distribution network,
    1:02:58 then putting it back on a shelf
    1:03:01 and then picking it again and putting it in another box
    1:03:02 and sending it to an end user.
    1:03:05 All of those are steps that we do not have
    1:03:06 in our supply chain
    1:03:11 which means that the cost structure for us
    1:03:15 versus them through that network is very different.
    1:03:20 And my opinion and in my opinion
    1:03:21 that a lot of these big companies
    1:03:24 actually subsidized companies like 3M
    1:03:28 maybe unknowingly to compete on price,
    1:03:31 on online on some of these products
    1:03:33 because the economics of shipping them
    1:03:35 and putting them through their distribution networks
    1:03:36 just would not make sense.
    1:03:38 Again, that’s my opinion
    1:03:40 but I’ve studied the market pretty closely
    1:03:43 but their market is mostly retail
    1:03:48 whereas we’re traditionally directing consumer
    1:03:50 but more and more direct to businesses.
    1:03:53 And so we sell, we have school systems
    1:03:57 where we may sell $500,000 a year of filters too
    1:04:00 and we have other types of non-pleted air filter products
    1:04:04 like the V-sale HEPA filters and ring panels
    1:04:06 and other things that we don’t actually market online
    1:04:09 but we’re able to, but we manufacture
    1:04:11 to sell into B2B businesses.
    1:04:14 And so like basically the filtration market
    1:04:16 is mostly you’re either commercial
    1:04:18 and you focus on that and a lot of brands
    1:04:19 you’ve probably never heard of
    1:04:23 or you’re 100% residential which is 3M
    1:04:26 is by far the biggest in that but there are a few others.
    1:04:28 And we’re unique in that we play in both
    1:04:31 and our distribution allows us to play in both
    1:04:35 and that’s really the kind of nuance difference
    1:04:37 between us and them.
    1:04:38 – Is that what you mean when you say
    1:04:41 that you’re a logistics business?
    1:04:43 – Correct, we’re a logistics business
    1:04:46 because the reason why we exist is because
    1:04:50 we’re able to move, we’re able to deliver an air filter
    1:04:55 to an end user as cheap if not cheaper than anybody else.
    1:04:57 So I mean, that’s my belief.
    1:04:59 There’s basically no other company that’s set up
    1:05:02 that’s purpose built just to do what we do.
    1:05:04 There are a lot of manufacturers of air filters.
    1:05:06 There are a lot of retailers and distributors
    1:05:10 of air filters but there’s nobody at least at our scale
    1:05:14 that does the whole thing from raw material
    1:05:16 to effectively in delivery.
    1:05:19 And we’ve optimized that over the years
    1:05:21 and we’ve also aggregated a lot of customers
    1:05:24 that give us the economies of scale to be able to do that.
    1:05:27 – You mentioned a lot of companies
    1:05:29 that think they’re D2C brands
    1:05:32 aren’t actually D2C brands, walk me through that.
    1:05:35 – Yeah, so when I started Filterbuy,
    1:05:39 it was really at the time where you had a lot
    1:05:41 of direct-to-consumer brands coming to market.
    1:05:45 Companies like Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s
    1:05:47 were really big at the time.
    1:05:49 And you’ve seen a lot that have come out
    1:05:50 over the last decade or so.
    1:05:53 And my pet peeve is they call themselves
    1:05:55 direct-to-consumer and I’m not talking about
    1:05:57 any one specific company in this case.
    1:06:00 I don’t know all of the details of how they do things
    1:06:03 but for the most part, when I observe them,
    1:06:05 they’re brands but they’re not really direct-to-consumer
    1:06:08 because they are manufacturing their product in Asia
    1:06:13 and using third-party fulfillment to fulfill their orders.
    1:06:18 They’re really just brands that are using e-commerce
    1:06:19 as a sales channel.
    1:06:21 And which is actually quite limiting, right?
    1:06:24 Because we just haven’t talked about retail and B2V
    1:06:25 and all these other potential sales channels.
    1:06:29 It’s like, why would you be so proud of the fact
    1:06:32 that you’re a brand that is limiting yourself to one channel?
    1:06:37 And I just find it to be one of these kind of mind games
    1:06:41 that is quite interesting if you actually think about it
    1:06:44 because what is direct-to-consumer at the end of the day?
    1:06:46 What it meant to me and what it still means to me
    1:06:49 is if you actually are vertically integrated,
    1:06:51 you do all of your own manufacturing
    1:06:54 and you sell that product to the end user.
    1:06:56 Like that’s how I would always describe my business
    1:06:58 early on when we were just an air filter business.
    1:07:01 I would say we are completely vertically integrated,
    1:07:03 we manufacture all of our own product
    1:07:06 and we sell it direct to the person who’s installing it.
    1:07:09 That is what direct-to-consumer means to me.
    1:07:11 But basically every direct-to-consumer quote unquote brand
    1:07:15 that I’m aware of is effectively manufacturing their product
    1:07:19 with an overseas contract manufacturer
    1:07:21 putting their name on it.
    1:07:23 And maybe they’re doing some innovation
    1:07:24 in the product itself, I don’t know,
    1:07:27 but they’re putting their name on it
    1:07:29 and then they’re bringing it into the U.S.
    1:07:31 and using third-party fulfillment to sell it.
    1:07:34 And that’s not direct-to-consumer,
    1:07:36 that’s just a brand using e-commerce
    1:07:38 as a primary sales channel.
    1:07:43 And I think that that’s how it should be spoken about.
    1:07:47 And I actually have no interest in being any more,
    1:07:50 I do not want to be considered a direct-to-consumer brand.
    1:07:52 I want to be an indoor air quality brand.
    1:07:55 I mean, that’s really what I wanna be
    1:07:58 because I think direct-to-consumer is so limiting
    1:08:01 and I think words and categorization matters.
    1:08:03 And so you need to be really thoughtful
    1:08:07 about what it means if that’s what you’re pursuing.
    1:08:09 – Speaking about words that matter,
    1:08:11 one word we lingered on earlier,
    1:08:13 we’re still in this rabbit hole here a little bit,
    1:08:15 was momentum.
    1:08:19 Talk to me about what it is, why it’s important.
    1:08:20 – Momentum is everything.
    1:08:23 And it’s such an intangible thing at the same time.
    1:08:27 In life, in and anything,
    1:08:30 you’re either progressing or you’re regressing.
    1:08:34 There’s really no steady state in reality.
    1:08:38 I mean, our bodies deteriorate over time with no activity.
    1:08:41 There are just so many examples of this throughout life.
    1:08:46 And in business and in personal life or in health,
    1:08:48 I think it’s very much the same.
    1:08:52 It’s like you either are improving
    1:08:54 and building on something day in, day out
    1:08:57 or you’re declining.
    1:08:59 And the reality is, is that once you go through
    1:09:01 these periods of decline,
    1:09:04 even if it’s micro periods of decline,
    1:09:08 it’s oftentimes so hard to get your positive momentum
    1:09:11 to get to that improving again.
    1:09:16 And I’ve actually experienced it some of this year
    1:09:21 in that in a business, you kind of ebb and flow.
    1:09:22 Like I feel like you go through times
    1:09:24 or at least I experienced times of kind of growth
    1:09:25 and you’re pushing forward
    1:09:28 and you feel all this positive momentum
    1:09:28 you’re doing things.
    1:09:31 And then for whatever reason,
    1:09:32 things kind of settle in a little bit
    1:09:34 and then it gets a little bit harder
    1:09:37 and then you have to reignite that momentum again.
    1:09:40 And we had a lot of technical issues over the summer,
    1:09:42 including on prime day,
    1:09:44 I actually did a short about this,
    1:09:47 but we had a big prime deal that was running
    1:09:49 and by some glitch of the system,
    1:09:52 I got a call at three o’clock in the morning
    1:09:55 from someone at Amazon that our deal was not running
    1:09:58 and they were looking at fixing it.
    1:10:00 I got up, started monitoring it
    1:10:02 and by nine o’clock in the morning,
    1:10:05 like still nobody could purchase any of our product
    1:10:06 that was on a deal on Amazon.
    1:10:09 And I had to kill that deal
    1:10:11 just so we could go back to being viable.
    1:10:15 And normally we would have expected an incremental $2 million
    1:10:16 or something of revenue
    1:10:20 on that deal that we didn’t get.
    1:10:22 But I use that as an example
    1:10:25 because we had a few things like that that happened
    1:10:28 that just, stuff happens when you’re in business
    1:10:32 and we had a much slower kind of few months in the summer
    1:10:33 than we were expecting.
    1:10:35 And I hated it,
    1:10:38 but I’d actually just hired a new CFO
    1:10:39 a couple of months before
    1:10:40 and he really took it personally
    1:10:45 and he was, I think maybe even a little bit worried.
    1:10:48 He was like, wow, like, you know,
    1:10:50 we had all these kind of problems stack up and like,
    1:10:53 but for me, I’ve been through that kind of situation
    1:10:55 so many times, it didn’t even bother me.
    1:10:58 And like, we’ve actually now as a business
    1:11:00 like gained a lot of momentum
    1:11:03 and like we’re really kind of over indexing now
    1:11:08 from what we would have expected a few months ago.
    1:11:11 And that came from a conscious effort
    1:11:13 to really build momentum
    1:11:16 and like, you know, build like all the building blocks
    1:11:19 that you know you need in order to get that momentum
    1:11:20 from, you know, from marketing
    1:11:23 and from, you know, sales
    1:11:25 and all the things that go into that.
    1:11:27 And it’s just day in, day out grinding
    1:11:30 and pushing all of those things forward.
    1:11:31 And then you wake up one day
    1:11:33 and you’re like, wow, we’re over indexing again.
    1:11:36 And it’s because you built that momentum in your system
    1:11:38 to allow that to happen.
    1:11:40 And I’ve done it so many times
    1:11:41 in so many aspects of my life
    1:11:43 that I know like inherently
    1:11:45 when I’ve kind of lost momentum
    1:11:47 or maybe I’ve lost focus on something that’s important
    1:11:48 and I need to regain it
    1:11:51 and I can consciously, you know
    1:11:52 push that momentum forward
    1:11:56 or do the fundamental things that I know I need to do
    1:11:59 in order to regain that momentum
    1:12:02 if I repeat that consistently over some period of time.
    1:12:05 So it’s definitely a muscle that you build
    1:12:07 but that’s how I feel about it.
    1:12:09 And I think so many people have bad things
    1:12:10 that happen to them
    1:12:12 and like rather than going back to the fundamentals
    1:12:15 and like, hey, how am I going to start to dig out
    1:12:19 and regain that positive momentum in this?
    1:12:21 They, you know, linger on it for too long
    1:12:23 and let it atrophy
    1:12:26 and then it’s much harder to get that momentum.
    1:12:28 So anytime I see things
    1:12:32 whether it be in my health, a relationship or business
    1:12:34 so anytime I see things that are like starting
    1:12:37 to show some cracks and starting to slow down a bit
    1:12:39 then I’m very conscious of that.
    1:12:42 I say, oh, what do I need to do to get back to fundamentals
    1:12:44 to be able to put myself back on the path
    1:12:45 that I want to be on.
    1:12:48 – What are the core fundamentals you use personally?
    1:12:50 – Well, you know, in doing this YouTube series
    1:12:52 I’ve actually thought about this a lot.
    1:12:55 And so I do have a few traits that I can speak about
    1:12:56 that are important to me.
    1:12:59 But the very first one which I recommend for everyone
    1:13:01 but whenever I say these things
    1:13:04 is really a reminder to myself more than it is advice
    1:13:07 although I think it is great advice, but it’s focus.
    1:13:10 Time and again in my life or really as an entrepreneur
    1:13:14 I should say is I’ve had the tendency
    1:13:16 to get distracted by a shiny object
    1:13:18 or by potentially another new business model
    1:13:21 that sounds interesting or would be fun to pursue.
    1:13:25 And every time I’ve started one of those things
    1:13:28 realized it’s a lot harder than it probably looks
    1:13:30 and I end up shutting it down
    1:13:33 or refocusing on my core activity
    1:13:35 and I’m always better for it.
    1:13:38 And, you know, like I started a freight business during COVID
    1:13:41 and that I could kind of squint and say made sense
    1:13:44 because I had been the logistics business after all, right?
    1:13:46 But it ended up being a big mistake
    1:13:48 and I have a lot of examples like that.
    1:13:52 And every time that I’ve like really refined my focus
    1:13:54 and I kind of just kind of come back
    1:13:56 to the fundamentals as we talked about,
    1:13:57 I’ve been better off.
    1:13:59 And so that’s why, you know, having the focus
    1:14:02 around my mission and why you hear me talk about it
    1:14:03 all the time because I’m reminding myself
    1:14:05 I gotta stay focused on that.
    1:14:07 Like either every activity that I’m doing
    1:14:09 has to be towards that singular focus
    1:14:11 or I should not be doing it.
    1:14:13 And that’s what focus means to me
    1:14:15 and why the mission part of it is so critical.
    1:14:20 And I think, you know, people would be better suited
    1:14:21 to really be self-aware with themselves
    1:14:23 about what it is they really want out of life
    1:14:25 and be focused on, you know,
    1:14:29 building the becoming the person that gets them that.
    1:14:33 And so all those things are wrapped up in focus for me.
    1:14:37 Second kind of principle for me is persistence.
    1:14:41 And, you know, what I mean by that when I say it
    1:14:45 is that things take time, it’s not easy, you know,
    1:14:48 but like you’ve got to, when you’re focused on something
    1:14:50 then you’re obsessed with it.
    1:14:54 You’re gonna be persistently working towards that thing.
    1:14:58 And time and again, like I start off something thinking,
    1:14:59 oh, how hard can it be?
    1:15:01 Or I’ll get this done in a few months
    1:15:05 and it, you know, you know, takes a lot longer to get it done.
    1:15:08 I mean, wrapped up with that persistence is really patience.
    1:15:09 I would say persistence and patience
    1:15:12 or I sometimes talk about them separately,
    1:15:15 but they’re really the same in that, for me,
    1:15:19 in that things take longer than you want.
    1:15:20 You know, you consistently overestimate
    1:15:21 what you can achieve in a year
    1:15:23 and underestimate what you can do in a decade.
    1:15:26 I say that often and I’ve lived it so often.
    1:15:28 And that’s just a reminder to myself
    1:15:32 that it takes time to really build anything
    1:15:34 that’s meaningful and so you have to be persistent
    1:15:36 and on that journey.
    1:15:40 Then resilience, because, you know, bad things happen,
    1:15:42 like we talked about with momentum
    1:15:45 or like that prime day example, bad stuff happens,
    1:15:48 but resilience is the muscle to know that,
    1:15:49 hey, I’m gonna be able to solve it.
    1:15:52 There’s no problem that is not solvable
    1:15:55 and within business, I fundamentally believe that.
    1:15:59 Your responsibility is the entrepreneur
    1:16:01 or the business owner to solve them
    1:16:03 and that’s where resilience comes in.
    1:16:04 And so when bad things happen,
    1:16:05 you just have to remind yourself
    1:16:08 that that’s just part of the game
    1:16:11 and you gotta step up to make it happen.
    1:16:15 And then the last thing that I really live by
    1:16:18 is accountability and building accountability into my life
    1:16:22 and being accountable first and foremost to myself,
    1:16:25 but then having the self-awareness to know
    1:16:27 the areas where I’m weak and to build in
    1:16:30 the accountability structures
    1:16:33 in order to hold me accountable.
    1:16:35 And so like Dr. Grunner would be a good example.
    1:16:39 I realized I needed accountability within my business
    1:16:40 in a way that I didn’t have.
    1:16:44 And so I put in the guardrail by working with her.
    1:16:47 I also work with a personal trainer six days a week,
    1:16:50 you know, religiously and because I’m accountable
    1:16:52 I’m accountable to him at six 30, six days a week.
    1:16:55 Even if I’m traveling, when I’m traveling we do Zoom
    1:16:57 and I’m in person, we do it in person
    1:16:59 and we do that religiously.
    1:17:01 And I’ve done that for three and a half years
    1:17:04 and I really decided to take my health seriously.
    1:17:07 And I knew that if I just relied on myself
    1:17:09 and my own willpower to make that happen
    1:17:12 that it was something that wouldn’t happen for me
    1:17:13 because I am obsessed with my business
    1:17:14 and I’m all in on that.
    1:17:17 And I’m always going to find excuses not to do it.
    1:17:20 But I created that accountability with the trainer.
    1:17:22 And so I look for ways when I know that I’m weak
    1:17:25 at something to create the accountability
    1:17:28 to force myself to do it.
    1:17:32 So those would be like the general kind of self principles
    1:17:36 that I live by and remind myself of every day.
    1:17:40 – Eventually everybody loses the battle with willpower.
    1:17:41 – Willpower is not a strategy.
    1:17:45 You know, that’s why kind of going back to your obsession
    1:17:49 point, the people that are really successful are obsessed
    1:17:51 because when you’re obsessed with something
    1:17:53 you’re not like, you don’t need willpower
    1:17:57 because it’s all consuming for you and that’s what you do.
    1:18:02 And I think that that’s really why people need
    1:18:06 to lean into things that are more natural for them
    1:18:07 or interesting for them.
    1:18:09 It’s not that, oh, follow your dreams
    1:18:10 and everything’s gonna be great.
    1:18:11 I think that’s awful advice.
    1:18:15 But you do need to lean into the things that you enjoy
    1:18:17 and are genuinely curious about.
    1:18:20 It’s not like I enjoy air filters in and of themselves
    1:18:24 but I love business and I love the puzzle of that
    1:18:25 and there are lots of pieces of that
    1:18:28 that I can easily become obsessed with
    1:18:29 that are wrapped up in it.
    1:18:32 And so I think that figuring out
    1:18:34 where your natural curiosity is is super important
    1:18:37 because that obsession wins
    1:18:42 whereas willpower will break inevitably time and time again.
    1:18:45 – I like that obsession wins willpower breaks.
    1:18:49 Describe the hardest moment that you went through.
    1:18:52 Was there a moment when you wanted to quit and give up?
    1:18:53 – Yeah, I told this story a few times
    1:18:55 and I’ll give you the short version
    1:18:57 but it’s a bit tricky to articulate
    1:19:00 but I had been working on manufacturing air filters
    1:19:03 for about three years, maybe two and a half years.
    1:19:06 And there’s a part of the manufacturing process
    1:19:09 which is the beginning where you basically laminate
    1:19:12 or put glue onto like this chicken wire
    1:19:14 that goes onto the media to give it the media
    1:19:17 the rigidity in the air filter.
    1:19:19 So it’s called the laminator.
    1:19:23 And when I bought the initial machines
    1:19:25 I bought what’s called a cold glue laminator
    1:19:29 which means like Elmer’s glue type consistency
    1:19:32 that goes on and then it dries
    1:19:34 and it’s supposed to dry before it gets rolled up
    1:19:36 into this roll that then goes into the next part
    1:19:38 of the manufacturing process.
    1:19:40 Well, there was a May in Alabama
    1:19:42 when it was super humid
    1:19:44 and it was super humid in our manufacturing facility
    1:19:46 and the glue was not drying.
    1:19:48 It was not drying in the way it was supposed to be.
    1:19:50 There was so much water in the air.
    1:19:52 And so we were making all of these components
    1:19:55 or all of this raw material that’s supposed to, you know
    1:19:57 feed our whole manufacturing process
    1:20:01 and the glue was, the rolls were ultimately getting stuck
    1:20:03 to each other because it hadn’t dried properly
    1:20:05 and it became unusable.
    1:20:08 And so we were wasting about half of our raw material
    1:20:11 any given day, which was extraordinarily expensive
    1:20:13 and also was keeping us from being able to manufacture
    1:20:15 the product that we needed for our customers.
    1:20:16 And I was panicking
    1:20:18 because I didn’t know how to solve this problem.
    1:20:21 What am I supposed to do differently?
    1:20:24 And I started calling around like desperately
    1:20:29 and found a company in Indiana that had what’s called
    1:20:31 but a hot glue version of this laminator
    1:20:33 where you use hot glue rather than cold glue to do it
    1:20:35 which I did not even know existed.
    1:20:38 And by some act of God, they had one on the floor
    1:20:42 that I’ve never had that happen since
    1:20:45 where I’m able to find a machine that was built to order
    1:20:49 but for some reason they had one on the floor
    1:20:54 and I spent like $55,000 probably close
    1:20:59 to the last 55 grand I had to buy that hot glue laminator.
    1:21:04 I drove up on a, I rented a 20 foot Pinsky truck
    1:21:09 in Anniston, Alabama, I drove to New Albany, Indiana
    1:21:13 got there about two o’clock in the morning, woke up,
    1:21:18 got trained on that laminator all day that Friday
    1:21:22 then drove through the night back to Alabama
    1:21:24 and early Saturday morning trained the team
    1:21:26 on that hot glue laminator
    1:21:29 and that solved all of our laminating problems.
    1:21:33 And if they had not had that piece of machinery in stock,
    1:21:35 I do not know that I would have been able
    1:21:37 to continue manufacturing air filters
    1:21:39 because that was my breaking point
    1:21:41 and I really didn’t know how to solve it
    1:21:45 but I ultimately found that solution
    1:21:46 and went and figured it out.
    1:21:48 And actually, you won’t be able to see it here
    1:21:50 but I actually have a scar on my finger
    1:21:54 where I almost cut off my finger on that machine
    1:21:57 when I was training them as I made a mistake
    1:21:59 and I literally almost cut off my finger
    1:22:00 that Saturday morning when I got back.
    1:22:04 So I have the scar to remind myself of that experience
    1:22:07 but that was really the turning point for us
    1:22:10 because after that, things started really coming together
    1:22:14 but that was two and a half years into my entrepreneurial journey
    1:22:18 and I would not have had the financial
    1:22:21 or quite frankly, mental staying power
    1:22:25 to continue to do it if I had not been able
    1:22:26 to find that solution.
    1:22:28 But it’s also very formative for me
    1:22:31 in that ever since then, I’ve been hit with a lot of problems
    1:22:33 some of them seem seemingly bigger than that.
    1:22:35 I mean, and that’s just life
    1:22:37 and that’s certainly life in business
    1:22:40 but I’ve realized as I’ve gotten older
    1:22:43 that I’ve built the muscle of dealing with those problems
    1:22:48 and actually almost thriving in those situations
    1:22:51 because I get hit with something that it’s always annoying
    1:22:54 but you say, but I have the confidence
    1:22:58 that I’m gonna go and figure out a solution to it
    1:23:00 and that’s definitely one of my superpowers
    1:23:03 and I think that you have to embrace that
    1:23:04 if you wanna do something big.
    1:23:06 – Where does that confidence come from?
    1:23:09 – You know, some of it is, you’re born with it probably
    1:23:13 if I’m honest, I mean, I don’t know the alternative.
    1:23:15 I’m just uniquely determined in a lot of ways
    1:23:19 and I see that and that’s why I always hate giving advice
    1:23:21 to people because I know what works for me
    1:23:23 is different than what would work for somebody else
    1:23:25 and what I want is very different
    1:23:27 than what somebody else might want
    1:23:32 and I think I was blessed with a lot of unique skills
    1:23:34 that allowed me to do what I do
    1:23:36 and I don’t think that most people would be happy
    1:23:39 in the living the life that I’ve chosen to lead
    1:23:42 and I think that people need to have self-awareness
    1:23:47 around that but I had two loving, wonderful parents
    1:23:52 that I think were very helpful for that
    1:23:57 and so they definitely helped to instill that in me
    1:24:00 and I think that without having to be remiss
    1:24:03 if I didn’t give them some credit for that.
    1:24:06 – I have a theory, maybe you can correct me if I’m wrong
    1:24:08 but people who are obsessive
    1:24:11 and information gathering all the time
    1:24:15 and are hands on tend to have a lot more confidence
    1:24:17 do you think that they have the confidence
    1:24:18 because they have the information?
    1:24:21 – Yeah, the more you know how things work
    1:24:23 the more confident you become
    1:24:26 that you’re able to kind of turn the system
    1:24:28 in your favor I guess, you know?
    1:24:31 So I think that there’s a lot of truth in that.
    1:24:34 I mean like I definitely have proven that
    1:24:35 to myself time and time again.
    1:24:41 I think that there are people that are doers
    1:24:45 and then there are people that just let life happen to them
    1:24:50 I guess and I think that because I’ve been able to
    1:24:54 over time build more and more skills,
    1:24:58 more and more resources or like you know
    1:25:00 just compound things positively
    1:25:03 that you get more and more confidence as time goes on
    1:25:05 and that comes from experimenting
    1:25:09 and going down rabbit holes and that kind of stuff
    1:25:12 and I think that that lends itself ultimately to confidence.
    1:25:15 I mean, you know, I see so many people
    1:25:19 so many friends even like that from my finance days
    1:25:21 that you know, you look at and make
    1:25:24 they made a lot of money on a relative basis
    1:25:28 and some of them, you know, still make a lot of money
    1:25:30 but don’t have the confidence
    1:25:32 and I think it’s because when you’re working
    1:25:36 for somebody else or relying on other people to, you know
    1:25:39 pay you or validate you that you never really get
    1:25:41 the confidence that you can build as an entrepreneur
    1:25:43 when you’re kind of out there making things happen
    1:25:48 on your own and I think that for me at least
    1:25:49 that’s been super important.
    1:25:51 And part of the reason why I wanted to leave Goldman
    1:25:54 when I did is I wanted to go out and like build my own life
    1:25:58 and I knew that I would find freedom in that.
    1:25:59 You know, as I sit here today, it’s like
    1:26:03 if I lost everything tomorrow, I have the confidence
    1:26:05 that I have the skills and the knowledge
    1:26:07 and the ability to, you know
    1:26:09 go out and do something else that’s big
    1:26:13 and you know, that is where I have found real freedom
    1:26:15 and where I think real freedom lies
    1:26:18 and that’s why I always push back so much on people
    1:26:22 that think that money in and of itself gives freedom.
    1:26:26 I’ve seen so many examples where it’s actually
    1:26:28 quite the opposite and you know,
    1:26:31 a corollary to that that I think is important
    1:26:35 is when people get money that they maybe didn’t deserve
    1:26:38 or they didn’t earn, then they’re forever living
    1:26:41 in a scarcity mindset because they’re afraid of losing it
    1:26:43 because if you have something that you covet
    1:26:45 that you have no way of getting back if you lose it
    1:26:47 then you have to hold on to it so tight
    1:26:51 and that is not conducive to living a happy life
    1:26:54 or accomplishing big things.
    1:26:56 You need to have in my opinion an expansive mindset
    1:26:59 and the way you can build that expansive mindset
    1:27:03 is to have the, you know, confidence
    1:27:06 that you can go out and build something
    1:27:08 or get that money again, you’re not afraid of losing it
    1:27:10 because you know you’re gonna be able to go out
    1:27:12 and make it happen again
    1:27:14 and that’s really the mindset that it takes
    1:27:18 to do something big I think and you know,
    1:27:20 that just comes from building the confidence
    1:27:22 and that muscle over time
    1:27:25 that you get more and more confidence as you build
    1:27:26 and you know I’m certainly more confident
    1:27:29 than I was a decade ago and I think decade ago
    1:27:31 I was more confident than I was a decade before that
    1:27:34 but it’s all about building the momentum towards that.
    1:27:36 – I love that.
    1:27:38 Talk to me about the freight decision.
    1:27:40 What went into that?
    1:27:42 How did you realize it wasn’t working?
    1:27:45 What did you do when you realized it wasn’t working?
    1:27:48 – Oh, you wanna rub some salt in my wounds.
    1:27:51 You know, I could actually give you a couple
    1:27:53 of other examples too but freight,
    1:27:58 long story short in COVID, sorry in 2020,
    1:28:02 freight became very hard to source
    1:28:03 and it was very expensive
    1:28:07 because there was just so much demand to move this stuff
    1:28:09 and again, a bit hubristic I would argue
    1:28:11 if I was looking back at it.
    1:28:14 I thought, well, you know, I’m so good
    1:28:15 at this business thing, right?
    1:28:18 How hard could running a freight business be?
    1:28:21 And I have a lot of demand for freight
    1:28:22 so I can just do my own freight
    1:28:25 and then sell the excess to other people
    1:28:30 and also in US tax code, there’s a bit of an aside.
    1:28:33 There is a section that basically allows
    1:28:37 for accelerated depreciation and what that means
    1:28:41 is that if you bought a million dollars of equipment
    1:28:43 like trucks, then you could ride off that million dollars
    1:28:46 against your taxes in that year.
    1:28:47 – Oh, wow.
    1:28:49 – And it’s actually still exists currently this year.
    1:28:51 You can only do 60% with Trump back in office,
    1:28:53 my guess is it’ll go back up to 100%.
    1:28:58 But it’s for something that you don’t see talked about a lot
    1:29:02 but like if I bought a million dollars of trucks,
    1:29:05 I could effectively borrow a million dollars from a bank
    1:29:09 because they love to finance against trucks
    1:29:12 and you could also, if you had a million dollars of income,
    1:29:14 you could then take that income effectively to zero
    1:29:16 and pay zero income tax.
    1:29:18 That’s how accelerated depreciation works.
    1:29:19 So that’s another part of the reason
    1:29:21 I got sucked into this whole thing.
    1:29:23 But I thought, oh, if I can do this
    1:29:24 and operate a freight business,
    1:29:27 then I found a cheat code here.
    1:29:31 So that was out of the origin for me getting into it.
    1:29:36 And between 2020 and 2021,
    1:29:39 I bought 50 tractor trailers.
    1:29:42 So I bought 50 trucks and actually probably 60 trailers
    1:29:43 to go along with it.
    1:29:45 So I don’t do things in a small way
    1:29:46 or I don’t make small mistakes.
    1:29:48 If I make them, I make them big.
    1:29:53 So, it’s probably six or $7 million worth of equipment
    1:29:55 more or less in that neighborhood.
    1:29:58 And we operated them and never once
    1:30:00 to be operating them profitably,
    1:30:01 even in the beginning,
    1:30:06 it was an example where the freight business
    1:30:08 is very cyclical and I knew that going in.
    1:30:09 It wasn’t like I knew it.
    1:30:14 I decided I was smart enough to be able to mitigate it,
    1:30:17 which is wrong, but it’s very cyclical.
    1:30:22 And you saw freight rates start to come down pretty quickly
    1:30:26 in 2022, at the end of 2022 and really into 2023.
    1:30:27 But even when they were higher,
    1:30:31 the managing of that business was both a distraction
    1:30:33 because that’s a lot of people to manage.
    1:30:35 We did not have the right infrastructure to manage it
    1:30:37 and the right teams to manage it.
    1:30:40 I really bit off more than we as a company could chew
    1:30:42 while still we’re still growing our business
    1:30:43 at a really rapid rate, right?
    1:30:47 And I’m trying to do this as a side.
    1:30:53 And so ultimately, I liquidated all of those trucks
    1:30:55 at the end of 2023.
    1:31:00 All in that probably was a $3 or $4 million mistake
    1:31:03 on my side, but the money is one thing.
    1:31:07 The biggest mistake was the lack of focus
    1:31:11 or the energy that it took in distraction away
    1:31:14 from the core business, both for me and for people around me
    1:31:16 that were helping me to manage it.
    1:31:19 So it cost you $3 to $4 million in actual money,
    1:31:21 but it cost you a lot more in loss of focus.
    1:31:23 Oh, a lot more in opportunity cost, in my opinion.
    1:31:25 And I mean, that’s why I remind myself number one focus
    1:31:28 because that’s just an example.
    1:31:33 And I have others where I got off track a little bit
    1:31:37 and I convinced myself that it was consistent
    1:31:39 with what I was doing because you’re always the easiest
    1:31:42 person to fool is yourself, always.
    1:31:44 And I convinced myself, fooled myself
    1:31:47 into thinking it was a good idea.
    1:31:50 What’s another example that comes to mind where you did that?
    1:31:52 Well, we actually did a video about it,
    1:31:57 but I effectively in 2021 with a partner from Goldman
    1:32:02 bought an HVAC service business in Hollywood, Florida,
    1:32:04 which is outside of Miami.
    1:32:05 You’re still operating this, though.
    1:32:07 Well, we, it’s different now,
    1:32:09 but we can talk about what that is.
    1:32:12 It’s a big part of what I intend to do in the future.
    1:32:17 But long story short, we bought this business
    1:32:21 and when we started operating it, it became clear to us
    1:32:25 that it was not the business that we were sold.
    1:32:28 And what scale was it when you bought it?
    1:32:29 How much revenue?
    1:32:32 It was doing about $5 million of revenue
    1:32:37 and supposedly making $1.2 million of EBITDA at the time.
    1:32:39 That’s a pretty good margin.
    1:32:41 And yeah, well they, I mean,
    1:32:43 a typical HVAC service business operates
    1:32:46 at about a 15 to 20% net margin is what you’d find
    1:32:50 most good HVAC services business, businesses operate at.
    1:32:53 The business we bought was different
    1:32:54 than the business that was represented.
    1:32:58 But I did that with a partner who still works with me today
    1:33:01 and he’s the guy that runs our HVAC solutions business.
    1:33:06 But I realized that we did that too quickly.
    1:33:12 And we, again, it was an arrogant decision
    1:33:15 that as I have this belief
    1:33:18 that any business problem is solvable.
    1:33:21 And I still stand by that very clearly,
    1:33:26 but I was not as close to that specific transaction
    1:33:27 as I probably should have been.
    1:33:32 And going into a new industry as I was more or less
    1:33:36 with that, I should have been a lot more careful,
    1:33:38 even though I knew it was consistent
    1:33:41 with my longer term vision, I rushed into it.
    1:33:44 And that basically, we ended up having to shut down
    1:33:47 that business and it cost us a total of $4.5 million.
    1:33:50 And I’ve taken the learning from that
    1:33:53 and now doing it right and we’re building out
    1:33:56 filtered by HVAC solutions where we operate now
    1:33:59 in South Florida and we intend to take that nationwide.
    1:34:02 But I’m doing it on my own terms
    1:34:07 and really methodically building out our systems
    1:34:10 and processes, customer acquisition funnels,
    1:34:11 all of those types of things
    1:34:13 that I think are really important to be able to scale it.
    1:34:16 And so I really took a big step back
    1:34:19 to get it right this time around.
    1:34:22 – Talk to me about building that from the ground up.
    1:34:23 How are you thinking about it?
    1:34:24 Sounds like you’re thinking about it
    1:34:27 as a much larger business than it already is.
    1:34:29 – So my intention is to build a nationwide
    1:34:32 HVAC service business, which in the US
    1:34:33 does not currently exist.
    1:34:36 And so my benchmark for that is could I,
    1:34:38 if I wanted to run a Super Bowl ad
    1:34:42 and have it be effective because it touches everybody
    1:34:43 that would be watching it, right?
    1:34:46 That’s what a nationwide HVAC service business is.
    1:34:48 And right now that’s a very fragmented market.
    1:34:51 There are lots of mom and pop type businesses
    1:34:53 that have been around for a long time
    1:34:55 to serve specific geographic areas.
    1:34:59 But there’s no nationwide HVAC service business,
    1:35:00 at least I’m aware of that.
    1:35:02 And there’s been a lot of private equity interest in it
    1:35:04 because as you noted that there are good margins
    1:35:05 in that business.
    1:35:08 And so the private equity players end up rolling up
    1:35:10 businesses of different brands,
    1:35:13 but they can’t consolidate them under one brand
    1:35:16 because they would lose all that goodwill
    1:35:18 or that brand equity, right?
    1:35:23 I’m in a unique position in that we have sold
    1:35:27 to somewhere around eight million unique residences
    1:35:28 across the country.
    1:35:33 All those customers by definition have an HVAC unit
    1:35:35 that needs to be serviced.
    1:35:37 So I call the air filter our Trojan horse
    1:35:38 into somebody’s home.
    1:35:43 And so I think when somebody’s riding my biography
    1:35:45 in 30 years, I hope that that’s what they’re talking about
    1:35:49 is like that was the start of this much bigger
    1:35:51 indoor air quality company that was ultimately built
    1:35:54 because that air filter was the Trojan horse
    1:35:56 that got us that customer’s relationship.
    1:36:00 So we already have a relationship with customers
    1:36:02 and like the customer acquisition costs
    1:36:05 and the brand is actually the hardest thing to build
    1:36:08 from scratch.
    1:36:11 And so like we already have that as a starting point.
    1:36:16 But you know, my belief is that the way that millennials
    1:36:21 and younger are want to interact with their service people
    1:36:23 is very different than how the older generation did.
    1:36:28 Like generally now people do not want to haggle on price.
    1:36:31 They want transparent pricing.
    1:36:33 They don’t want opaque pricing.
    1:36:35 Lots of factors like that, that you know,
    1:36:38 the HVAC service business is actually operates
    1:36:40 in kind of an old school way.
    1:36:43 And I think that there’s room for a, you know,
    1:36:46 national brand that, you know, has the trust
    1:36:49 and the reputation backing behind it.
    1:36:53 And that’s something that the younger generations
    1:36:57 are actually looking for that does not currently exist.
    1:37:00 And we’re in a unique position to build that.
    1:37:03 But, you know, I’d be remiss not to say that, you know,
    1:37:05 part of the reason I’m going so public
    1:37:07 with my personal brand is like I actually think the way
    1:37:09 I’m going to be able to execute against that
    1:37:13 is ironically ultimately buying and partnering
    1:37:18 with other HVAC businesses that maybe are struggling
    1:37:21 or are struggling to grow or maybe have or working
    1:37:24 in a niche market and want to be a part of something bigger.
    1:37:29 I want to bring the brand and the kind of operational
    1:37:32 playbook and expertise to, you know,
    1:37:33 partner with them potentially, you know,
    1:37:37 maybe buy a majority stake and partner with them
    1:37:39 to really grow that business.
    1:37:43 Kind of a model is what I ultimately intend to do
    1:37:46 with my personal brand and why I’m, you know,
    1:37:48 starting to be public about it.
    1:37:51 And the difference between like when I bought
    1:37:55 that first HVAC business that failed is I had not built
    1:37:57 my own operational playbook yet
    1:38:00 that I was comfortable with going out and doing at scale.
    1:38:03 I hadn’t really done the work to deserve that yet.
    1:38:05 I was just trying to buy somebody else’s.
    1:38:08 And for me, at least that just doesn’t work.
    1:38:11 And, you know, so now I’m really going through the process
    1:38:14 of building out that, you know, operational playbook
    1:38:16 that can scale.
    1:38:19 And then I’m going to hopefully scale that by acquisition
    1:38:23 and by partnering with businesses to do it quickly.
    1:38:26 – What goes into that playbook for HVAC?
    1:38:28 – Well, I mean, it’s really for any business,
    1:38:29 it would be the same.
    1:38:32 It’s like, how am I going to deliver a product
    1:38:34 or service consistently?
    1:38:36 So having the infrastructure to do that
    1:38:39 and, you know, hiring experts, in this case,
    1:38:41 now I’m far enough along, I can really hire experts
    1:38:45 to help me to build that, make sure that we’re, you know,
    1:38:47 operating in the most efficient way possible,
    1:38:49 offering the best service possible,
    1:38:52 doing that consistently, doing that repeatedly.
    1:38:53 So that’s one.
    1:38:56 And the second, and arguably the trickiest,
    1:38:59 although they’re both tricky, is the marketing and branding,
    1:38:59 right?
    1:39:02 And, you know, customer acquisition costs
    1:39:04 in the HVAC service space is very high.
    1:39:09 I mean, you may be paying $500 for a new customer
    1:39:11 on average, if you’re looking for a replacement
    1:39:13 or whatnot of an HC unit.
    1:39:16 But that’s an area where we at Filter by Excel
    1:39:18 is something that I’m obsessed with.
    1:39:22 And a big reason why I’m doing all this personal branding
    1:39:26 is I’m learning, you know, how to market a, you know,
    1:39:29 HVAC service business at scale through social media
    1:39:32 or through wherever the eyeballs are.
    1:39:35 And so really for me, it comes down to that marketing
    1:39:37 and that operations.
    1:39:40 And I have some really strong people in the operations piece
    1:39:41 that are taking ownership of that.
    1:39:44 And then I’m really focused on building the marketing engine
    1:39:47 to be able to drive that for the brand as a whole.
    1:39:50 – There’s a popular narrative in sort of like the VC
    1:39:54 and private equity world that you can buy these low tech
    1:39:57 businesses at, you know, very small multiples
    1:40:00 and add technology magically somehow
    1:40:02 and all of a sudden sell them for more.
    1:40:04 Talk to me about that.
    1:40:06 – Yeah, I kind of positioned myself
    1:40:09 as the opposite of private equity in that.
    1:40:12 And I went like anybody that may partner with me
    1:40:15 or partner with us to know that and to believe that
    1:40:17 because I believe in adding long-term value.
    1:40:20 And, you know, I have no intention to sell my businesses.
    1:40:22 I think there’s a world in which we make a public one day
    1:40:23 way down the road.
    1:40:26 But other than that, like I’m in it for the long haul
    1:40:28 and I don’t have any intention to buy it
    1:40:31 and, you know, flip it, which is what the mindset
    1:40:34 of so many of these private equity firms have.
    1:40:37 And so I just think that’s first thing
    1:40:39 that’s important to know, you know,
    1:40:43 I think that the smaller HVAC service space
    1:40:45 or any service space is incredibly tough.
    1:40:49 And it’s a lot tougher than, I mean, there are a lot of,
    1:40:53 you know, big social media people currently
    1:40:57 that are, you know, are big proponents
    1:41:00 of that type of a model than doing it on small scale.
    1:41:04 And like, all I can tell you is that, you know,
    1:41:06 I have a lot of resources and have done
    1:41:09 and I think I’m a pretty established and good entrepreneur
    1:41:12 and my first acquisition, I lost four and a half million
    1:41:16 dollars and, you know, that, and that was on a, you know,
    1:41:18 three and a half million dollar purchase price.
    1:41:22 So we managed to lose more than we paid for the business,
    1:41:25 you know, in trying to fix it.
    1:41:28 And so there are risk involved in doing this stuff
    1:41:31 and the operational risk are huge.
    1:41:36 And so I’m quite skeptical as to,
    1:41:39 especially on a small scale, people’s ability to do it.
    1:41:39 Well, it doesn’t mean you can’t.
    1:41:42 I mean, I think there’s huge opportunity if you can,
    1:41:44 but I think it’s a lot more difficult
    1:41:47 than most people are articulating.
    1:41:50 And I think it’s maybe because they don’t really understand
    1:41:52 the risks that are associated with these.
    1:41:56 – But to answer your question more specifically,
    1:41:57 there are certainly private equity companies
    1:42:02 that do this type of thing well and in all types of spaces.
    1:42:06 And the ones that do it well,
    1:42:08 understand the business that they’re in really well
    1:42:12 and do build the operations that give you economies of scale
    1:42:15 for the smaller people or smaller entities
    1:42:16 that they’re running.
    1:42:18 So like if you can consolidate, you know,
    1:42:22 the ERP system that you’re using across all your companies.
    1:42:24 So you have one expert that understands, you know,
    1:42:27 service titan or whatever that might be,
    1:42:30 or you consolidate your, you know, recruiting practices
    1:42:35 and, you know, really have like the playbooks down
    1:42:36 for all of those things.
    1:42:38 There are some private equity companies
    1:42:40 that are great operators that are able to do that
    1:42:43 and can go out and roll these things up very well.
    1:42:46 You know, but I think that there are a lot of kind of
    1:42:49 medium and smaller, particularly quote unquote,
    1:42:50 private equity companies,
    1:42:52 which means they just went out and raised private capital
    1:42:54 to go and run these playbooks
    1:42:56 that don’t have the operational expertise
    1:42:59 that they need to really run these businesses well.
    1:43:03 And I think that it creates a lot of problems both for them
    1:43:06 and for the employees of the companies that they hire.
    1:43:11 And I can tell you, you know, almost every major person
    1:43:15 that I’ve hired at management level
    1:43:18 has come from a company that was owned
    1:43:20 by a private equity company
    1:43:21 and they absolutely hated it
    1:43:24 and they were looking for, you know, a different path.
    1:43:27 I mean, like when I interview for CFOs
    1:43:30 or for any of these positions, you know,
    1:43:32 most of what we see are people that are working
    1:43:35 for a private equity-based company that are miserable
    1:43:38 because, you know, there really is no clear vision,
    1:43:40 no clear direction.
    1:43:42 You know, they’re just looking to optimize
    1:43:45 to financial engineer to be able to sell it
    1:43:47 to the next person up.
    1:43:49 I mean, like, I’m not gonna say that’s all private equity,
    1:43:51 but that’s a lot of private equity
    1:43:54 and the people that are working for them
    1:43:55 are miserable oftentimes.
    1:43:59 And that’s why I consider myself anti-private equity.
    1:44:01 – Why do you think we’re attracted
    1:44:03 to strong missions and visions?
    1:44:07 – I think that we, as human beings,
    1:44:10 need to have a purpose in life
    1:44:12 and have a reason to wake up every day.
    1:44:14 And I’ve seen that, you know,
    1:44:18 both at high level executive type people
    1:44:20 all the way down to people
    1:44:22 that work on manufacturing lines
    1:44:24 that really take their job seriously
    1:44:26 and really find meaning and fulfillment
    1:44:31 and, you know, working for a company that, you know,
    1:44:33 has a mission and a purpose.
    1:44:36 And I think that it’s the X factor
    1:44:41 that gets people excited to come to work
    1:44:45 and to go the extra mile any given day.
    1:44:46 But I just think it’s how we’re wired.
    1:44:50 I mean, I think that we’re not wired to get money.
    1:44:52 I mean, I think that like money
    1:44:54 is something that’s important for everyone.
    1:44:59 And, you know, obviously is an important factor
    1:45:00 in anybody’s life.
    1:45:04 But, you know, that’s not enough to, you know,
    1:45:05 solve people’s problems
    1:45:07 or to give them fulfillment most importantly.
    1:45:09 Like there’s so many people oftentimes
    1:45:13 that were given money that are actually miserable.
    1:45:15 And I’ve seen that so many times in my life
    1:45:20 and I’m so, I tried to avoid that so much
    1:45:23 because I just see people that have so much money
    1:45:26 that are so miserable because they don’t have any fulfillment.
    1:45:28 They have no reason actually for existing
    1:45:29 or waking up every day and they know that.
    1:45:31 Like deep down, like when you’re in that situation,
    1:45:34 you know it, that you don’t have a purpose in life
    1:45:38 is you don’t have a reason to really wake up
    1:45:39 and exist every day.
    1:45:43 And I think that when that’s you, you’re miserable.
    1:45:47 And, you know, but when you know, like, hey, I’m here,
    1:45:49 I’m working on this, it can be the most inane problem.
    1:45:53 But like if you have a reason for existing on a purpose,
    1:45:57 then it’s something that ultimately can allow you
    1:45:58 to have fulfillment.
    1:46:00 And it’s just how we’re wired.
    1:46:02 And that’s why it is something
    1:46:04 I don’t think we talk enough about
    1:46:07 because we all, you know, focus on the material.
    1:46:08 And the material stuff is important.
    1:46:09 Don’t get me wrong.
    1:46:12 I mean, I think material stuff is very important,
    1:46:13 but that’s not enough.
    1:46:16 Just take a little step back about it.
    1:46:18 You know, about two years ago,
    1:46:20 and really when I started working with Dr. Gurner,
    1:46:24 I was, you know, having a little bit of a crisis of self
    1:46:27 in that, you know, what do I want out of life?
    1:46:30 I could sell the business and, you know,
    1:46:32 have more money than I could ever spend
    1:46:34 or my children could ever spend.
    1:46:37 And I would have been 40 years old
    1:46:38 or just about to turn 40,
    1:46:40 could have hundreds of millions of dollars.
    1:46:43 And, you know, then just retire to the sunset.
    1:46:46 Like, is that what I should want out of life?
    1:46:49 You know, we’re like, what should I do?
    1:46:49 What should I do?
    1:46:52 And then I ultimately went through that journey
    1:46:56 and decided that, you know, I wanted to have a mission
    1:46:58 and a reason to wake up every day
    1:46:59 and a reason for existing.
    1:47:01 And I knew that I was not going to be happy
    1:47:05 if I just became another, you know,
    1:47:08 rich guy that, you know, spent all of his time
    1:47:10 at the beach and on the yacht all day long.
    1:47:13 I knew I would be miserable in that.
    1:47:15 Or with the foundation even that I just, you know,
    1:47:18 pretended to give a little bit of money away
    1:47:21 so I had something to do.
    1:47:23 You know, I just knew that for me,
    1:47:25 I would only find misery in that.
    1:47:30 And so that’s what ultimately led to me, you know,
    1:47:33 creating my mission of building the world’s leading
    1:47:34 indoor air quality company.
    1:47:35 Because that’s something I know I can work on
    1:47:36 for the rest of my life.
    1:47:39 And be excited about and be proud about
    1:47:42 and hopefully rally people around me
    1:47:45 to work on and achieve that together.
    1:47:47 And that’s a purpose, that’s my purpose.
    1:47:50 And I would encourage anyone to go out
    1:47:51 and find their own unique purpose.
    1:47:54 It doesn’t need to be that or it doesn’t need to be as big.
    1:47:56 You can be way bigger.
    1:47:57 It can be anything that you want.
    1:48:00 But like that’s the driver, that’s the fuel
    1:48:03 that gets you out of bed every day,
    1:48:03 gets me out of bed every day.
    1:48:06 And I think that that’s how human beings are wired.
    1:48:09 And the most miserable people I know are the people
    1:48:11 that don’t have any purpose.
    1:48:13 – Talk to me about the balance is probably the wrong word,
    1:48:15 but I’m gonna use it anyway between
    1:48:17 your obsession and your family.
    1:48:20 – I was incredibly lucky.
    1:48:24 I have great parents and you know,
    1:48:26 I actually married my high school sweetheart.
    1:48:29 We’ve been together since we were 17 years old.
    1:48:31 Actually, she was 16, I was 17.
    1:48:33 And we’ve been together that whole time.
    1:48:39 And you know, 24 years now, I guess.
    1:48:42 And you know, I’ve got three young children
    1:48:46 and I have a great relationship with them.
    1:48:50 And you know, my wife understands who I am at a deep level.
    1:48:53 And you know, it never would try to change me
    1:48:55 and she trusts me completely, you know.
    1:49:00 And so I’ve been very fortunate for that.
    1:49:03 And I think that having a stable good partner
    1:49:06 is a cheat code in life.
    1:49:09 And you know, I really prioritize it.
    1:49:13 You know, I work really hard and I travel a lot,
    1:49:18 but I’m at home for 6.30 for dinner almost every night.
    1:49:23 When I travel, you know, I now have a plane
    1:49:25 and I go all over the country,
    1:49:28 but I do my best to minimize myself to one night
    1:49:32 gone a week, worst case, I’m gone two nights.
    1:49:36 And the rest of the time, I’m at home by 6.30
    1:49:40 and I see them in the morning before they go off to school.
    1:49:43 And you know, I have a great relationship with them.
    1:49:46 And you know, I think that, you know,
    1:49:50 people use it as an excuse often times to say,
    1:49:53 oh, I need balance or I can’t have it all
    1:49:54 or can’t be above that.
    1:49:55 I don’t think you can have it all.
    1:50:00 But it’s like, you know, there’s so much time in the day.
    1:50:03 And, you know, you just have to prioritize
    1:50:04 the things that are important to you.
    1:50:07 And for me, it’s my business and my family.
    1:50:09 And, you know, there are a lot of things I don’t get to do
    1:50:12 that other people may do.
    1:50:15 I don’t get to play tennis and I enjoy playing tennis
    1:50:17 or, you know, I don’t golf.
    1:50:22 And, you know, I, my, you know, friendships
    1:50:23 have probably suffered in that,
    1:50:25 like I don’t have, you know,
    1:50:27 friends I hang out with every weekend
    1:50:28 and that kind of stuff.
    1:50:32 I mean, those are the things that are the cost of that,
    1:50:36 but I have such a fulfilling life with my family
    1:50:37 and my business.
    1:50:42 And so I find real purpose in my work
    1:50:47 and I have a family that supports me completely
    1:50:51 and understands and, you know, it’s thankful for that.
    1:50:53 And, but I also get to spend a lot of time with them.
    1:50:57 I mean, more than, you know, I think people might think.
    1:50:59 And I think I spend more time with my kids
    1:51:02 and a lot of people that work way less probably.
    1:51:04 And, but it’s because I prioritize that
    1:51:05 is important to me.
    1:51:06 – I’m the same way.
    1:51:10 You mentioned a stable partner being a cheat code for life.
    1:51:11 What are the other cheat codes?
    1:51:13 What would you tell me?
    1:51:14 – I don’t want to sound like a broken record,
    1:51:17 but ultimately really self-awareness
    1:51:21 and knowing like what you need out of life
    1:51:23 is a huge cheat code.
    1:51:25 I think a lot of people are trying to live
    1:51:27 somebody else’s life.
    1:51:31 And I think, and then then wondering why they’re unhappy.
    1:51:34 And it’s because they’re trying to live somebody else’s life.
    1:51:37 And that’s what’s so dangerous about the modern influencer
    1:51:40 culture because it’s so easy to want to live
    1:51:41 somebody else’s life.
    1:51:42 We all fall into it.
    1:51:45 You know, Charlie Munger, probably my greatest
    1:51:47 virtual mentor has a saying that, you know,
    1:51:52 the thing that drives the world isn’t greed, it’s envy.
    1:51:58 Envy is the real problem because people always want
    1:52:01 what somebody else’s has.
    1:52:03 And I think that it’s very easy for us to fall
    1:52:06 into that trap that ultimately leaves to misery
    1:52:10 because, you know, what works for you is going to look
    1:52:11 very different than works for me.
    1:52:13 And that’s what’s beautiful about it.
    1:52:15 But if I tried to be you or you tried to be me,
    1:52:16 we would both be miserable,
    1:52:19 even if we were financially successful, right?
    1:52:20 At least that’s my belief.
    1:52:23 And I think that that self-awareness of knowing like,
    1:52:27 really, who are you and like what do you,
    1:52:29 but what really gets you going and what do you really need
    1:52:33 out of life to have a fulfilled life is the biggest
    1:52:34 cheat code of all.
    1:52:37 And I think it’s the thing that most people don’t spend
    1:52:39 any time actually thinking about.
    1:52:41 – There’s a lot of people who get to a certain level
    1:52:44 of success, be it whatever it is, 5 million, 10 million,
    1:52:47 100 million, and they take their foot off the gas
    1:52:49 and they start living a lifestyle.
    1:52:53 And maybe or maybe not that lifestyle sort of becomes
    1:52:55 too expensive and they have to go back to work.
    1:52:58 A lot of people, I know a lot of people that’s happened to you.
    1:53:00 What keeps you going?
    1:53:03 – My mission, I mean, as I told you, I mean,
    1:53:06 I had a bit of a crisis of self.
    1:53:07 I wanted to know like,
    1:53:09 I wanted to answer that question myself, right?
    1:53:12 And for me, I like to think about,
    1:53:15 what am I going to be thinking about on my deathbed?
    1:53:19 And I know for me, the things I will regret are things
    1:53:24 that I did not try or that I knew I could have done
    1:53:27 or thought I could have done if only I put in more effort
    1:53:31 or things that I didn’t do because I was fearful.
    1:53:33 Those are the things that I’m going to regret.
    1:53:36 It’s not going to be the times where I make a mistake.
    1:53:41 And I know that I am uniquely gifted in a number of ways.
    1:53:47 And I feel a tremendous responsibility
    1:53:50 to those people I touch and the people around me
    1:53:53 to have a positive impact.
    1:53:55 And that sounds corny to say,
    1:53:58 but it’s really a big driver for me.
    1:54:02 And I know that if I just gave up now
    1:54:04 and sold to a private equity company
    1:54:07 or took a big check from somebody
    1:54:09 and then just kind of went to the sunset,
    1:54:12 that I’m not fulfilling my full potential.
    1:54:15 And I know in my deathbed that I would regret that.
    1:54:19 And so for me, there is no other option,
    1:54:23 but to see how big of an impact I can have.
    1:54:27 And what exactly that means is maybe somewhat nebulous,
    1:54:29 but I intend to have a very big impact
    1:54:32 on the people that I touch.
    1:54:37 And I think I have a duty to do that.
    1:54:39 And that really drives me and what ultimately led to me
    1:54:42 building this mission to give me a framework
    1:54:43 for thinking about it.
    1:54:45 – Talk to me about the lifestyle creep you mentioned.
    1:54:47 You’ve seen this before with people.
    1:54:49 Is there, without mentioning names or anything,
    1:54:51 is there an example that stands out to you
    1:54:52 that other people might be able to learn from
    1:54:54 who are listening to this?
    1:54:57 A lot of incredibly successful people listen to this.
    1:54:59 – Yeah, well, the examples that I’ve seen come back
    1:55:02 to something we spoke about earlier in the conversation,
    1:55:06 but when you’re relying on other people or a paycheck
    1:55:10 or one income stream to pay your bills,
    1:55:12 and then it may be like if you’re working in finance
    1:55:14 and you’re making a few million dollars a year,
    1:55:16 then your lifestyle creeps up to that.
    1:55:21 And then you wake up one day and maybe you’re not
    1:55:23 as marketable as you were before,
    1:55:25 and you don’t have any other skills,
    1:55:30 and you don’t have the muscle of building those new skills,
    1:55:32 and then you’re in trouble.
    1:55:35 And I know a number of people that have lived that
    1:55:36 because it’s easy to think,
    1:55:38 oh, this is gonna go on forever,
    1:55:40 and then it inevitably doesn’t.
    1:55:42 And even if you have a lot of money,
    1:55:44 it goes back to that scarcity mindset.
    1:55:46 Because you’re so afraid of losing it,
    1:55:48 you can’t spend it, you can’t invest it,
    1:55:50 you can’t take the risk that you need
    1:55:53 in order to be able to go out and build that lifestyle
    1:55:54 again, so to speak.
    1:55:56 And so most of the people that I’ve seen
    1:55:58 that have been impacted have come from the finance world
    1:56:03 that is now declining as a share of GDP.
    1:56:05 And so it’s just contracting,
    1:56:08 there’s not as much money as there was before.
    1:56:10 And then a lot of those people get to a point
    1:56:13 where then they’re not employable at the same level,
    1:56:15 but they still have that same lifestyle.
    1:56:18 And even if they have a decent amount of assets,
    1:56:21 they’re then ironically taking less risk with them
    1:56:23 because they’re afraid of losing it,
    1:56:27 which creates this whole negative kind of spiral with that.
    1:56:30 So that’s what I have seen.
    1:56:32 I think it’s easy to have lifestyle creep.
    1:56:35 I mean, I look at my, I always talk to my wife,
    1:56:38 it’s like, when I travel or go out,
    1:56:40 it’s mostly work related.
    1:56:42 So when I look at our personal expenses,
    1:56:44 my wife is not a big spender,
    1:56:46 and I’m very thankful for that.
    1:56:49 But I look at it and these things add up so much.
    1:56:52 And you’re like, how do regular people do this?
    1:56:55 It’s easy for that to happen.
    1:56:57 And the more successful you are, ironically,
    1:56:59 the more people take advantage of you.
    1:57:01 And it’s in subtle ways,
    1:57:05 but it’s definitely one of those things that happens.
    1:57:09 So I understand how things creep up,
    1:57:12 but I come at all of these things from a place of abundance.
    1:57:16 And I have the confidence to go out,
    1:57:18 that I know I can go out and build what I’ve got to build.
    1:57:21 And I earn more than I spend.
    1:57:25 And I really do that through the business
    1:57:28 and compounding it, so I’m certainly fortunate.
    1:57:32 But I think the way that you ultimately combat it
    1:57:35 is to build the skills to be undeniable.
    1:57:37 And then you have the confidence
    1:57:39 that you can go out and earn what you want.
    1:57:43 I mean, I’m so adverse to the thinking of,
    1:57:47 oh, I need to cut my expenses and live.
    1:57:51 To me, the answer isn’t living a lower lifestyle
    1:57:52 in those cases.
    1:57:55 The answer is going out and figuring out a way to add value
    1:57:58 to be able to deserve that lifestyle.
    1:58:00 And that’s not great advice for everybody.
    1:58:02 I mean, everybody’s different,
    1:58:03 but that’s just how I’m built
    1:58:04 and how I have to frame it
    1:58:06 and how I have to think about it.
    1:58:07 – We always end on the same question,
    1:58:10 which is what does success look like for you?
    1:58:11 – What does success look like for me?
    1:58:12 – You’re on your deathbed.
    1:58:17 – Is to not have any regrets of not doing something
    1:58:20 that I knew I should have done.
    1:58:22 Or not have tried something that where I’m saying,
    1:58:27 only if, that is the thing that I think about that every day.
    1:58:30 You know, like when I’m making a decision
    1:58:32 or deciding to go into something,
    1:58:35 like am I gonna regret not trying it?
    1:58:36 And so like, that’s why this personal brand thing,
    1:58:38 I was private for so long
    1:58:42 and I really was scared of going out and being so public.
    1:58:45 And especially in the way that I am now
    1:58:48 or to telling the world I’m going to do something so big.
    1:58:49 It’s really scared me.
    1:58:54 But ultimately, I know that if I didn’t do it
    1:58:56 on my deathbed, I would say to myself,
    1:58:57 “Oh, I wonder only if.”
    1:59:01 And that is just not acceptable to me.
    1:59:03 (upbeat music)
    1:59:10 – Thanks for listening and learning with us.
    1:59:12 The Furnham Street blog is where you can learn more
    1:59:13 about my new book, “Clear Thinking,”
    1:59:17 turning ordinary moments into extraordinary results.
    1:59:19 It’s a transformative guide
    1:59:21 that hands you the tools to master your fate,
    1:59:23 sharpen your decision-making
    1:59:27 and set yourself up for unparalleled success.
    1:59:30 Learn more at fs.blog/clear.
    1:59:31 Until next time.
    1:59:34 (upbeat music)
    1:59:37 [MUSIC PLAYING]
    1:59:44 [BLANK_AUDIO]

    Imagine leaving a six‐figure Wall Street salary behind to chase a single, daring idea. In this episode, David Heacock shows you how he turned a basic product into a $250M empire. At 29, he left Wall Street to bet on air filters. That bet transformed into Filterbuy, now a $250 million direct-to-consumer manufacturer serving more than 7 million customers through a ruthlessly efficient operation. Today we talk about what actually matters when building a business, balancing obsession with family life, selling on Amazon, what he’d do differently if starting over, and the freight decision he calls his biggest mistake. Whether you’re starting a business, scaling one, or simply looking for insights on hiring, managing, or making bold decisions, David shares the lessons that helped him build his empire. 

     

    David Heacock is the founder and CEO of Filterbuy. Before revolutionizing the air filter industry, he traded options at Goldman Sachs from 2005-2012. 

    If you’re driven by bold decisions and value hard-won lessons, this conversation is your playbook. Don’t miss out on the insights that could redefine your own path to success.

    Newsletter – The Brain Food newsletter delivers actionable insights and thoughtful ideas every Sunday. It takes 5 minutes to read, and it’s completely free. Learn more and sign up at fs.blog/newsletter

    Upgrade — If you want to hear my thoughts and reflections at the end of the episode, join our membership: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠fs.blog/membership⁠⁠ and get your own private feed.

    Watch on YouTube: @tkppodcast

    (00:02:56) David’s Journey to Goldman Sachs 

    (00:06:07) Committing to Entrepreneurship 

    (00:07:35) The Power of Obsession 

    (00:10:08) The Decision to Expand Geographically 

    (00:12:55) Challenges in Building the First Plant 

    (00:18:58) Management Level Hiring 

    (00:22:41) Studying Operating Systems for Companies 

    (00:24:49) The Nuances of Hiring 

    (00:25:53) External Accountability 

    (00:29:37) Adapting Business Operating Systems 

    (00:30:13) The Role of a Chief of Staff 

    (00:31:03) Building Department-Specific Operating Models 

    (00:32:56) Articulating the Company’s Mission and Values 

    (00:44:19) Understanding Marketing and Branding 

    (00:47:10) The Strategy Behind Intent-Based Marketing 

    (00:52:13) The Decision to Enter Retail 

    (00:57:26) Success in Retail and Customer Acquisition 

    (00:58:19) Diversifying Market Segments 

    (00:59:13) Competitive Advantage Over Other Brands 

    (01:01:07) The Logistics Aspect of the Business 

    (01:04:25) Defining Direct-to-Consumer Brands 

    (01:08:39) Technical Challenges and Overcoming Setbacks 

    (01:11:46) Core Personal Traits for Success 

    (01:16:37) The Power of Obsession Over Willpower 

    (01:17:46) Facing the Hardest Moments in Business 

    (01:26:36) The Decision to Enter the Freight Business 

    (01:30:48) Diversifying into the HVAC Service Business 

    (01:34:51) The Future of HVAC Service Business 

    (01:36:01) Personal Branding and Business Growth 

    (01:37:23) The Role of Marketing and Operations 

    (01:38:48) Contrasting Business Models: Private Equity 

    (01:43:00) The Importance of Mission and Vision 

    (01:47:12) Balancing Obsession and Family Life 

    (01:53:44) The Dangers of Lifestyle Creep and Maintaining Financial Stability 

    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

  • Raging Moderates: What’s Trump’s Endgame in Ukraine?

    AI transcript
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    0:00:42 okay business leaders are you here to play or are you playing to win if you’re
    0:00:47 in it to win meet your next MVP net suite by Oracle net suite is your full
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    0:01:15 behold my name is Maximus entertain us and I come to you with big stars in big
    0:01:22 dramas like gladiator to Dexter original sin and 1923 stream paramount plus for
    0:01:28 699 a month welcome to raging moderates I’m Jessica Tarlow I’m Tim Miller Tim
    0:01:34 this is the banter section how are you hey banter I’m just happy to be in here
    0:01:39 for Scott you know I think that I’m gonna be a downgrade in certain manners and
    0:01:44 upgrade in hair you know we’ll see what the what the people think we will see
    0:01:46 what the people think I think they’ll be excited to see if they were super
    0:01:49 excited when you joined us but we were together all three of us it was fun it’s
    0:01:54 good I mean I’d rather be raging with you guys than I don’t maybe you have a
    0:01:58 view on this I think not raging with the dams on the hill I don’t I’m not
    0:02:03 feeling a raging yes no democratic snoozing yeah I’d rather be raging with
    0:02:09 the moderates than snoozing with the progs heavy for the banter section no
    0:02:13 no I’m good with it you want to talk about Marty ground times no I don’t want
    0:02:16 to talk about I mean if you want to talk about Marty ground hiding in your
    0:02:23 house we could do that but do you really think that they’re snoozing or we’re not
    0:02:28 paying attention it’s a good question I think that they are doing a lot of stuff
    0:02:35 that people who are who read hill newsletters and who like care and who
    0:02:39 know a lot about what’s happening in the federal government I think they are
    0:02:46 seeing Democrats I think that anyone who’s a casual observer of politics is
    0:02:51 seeing only Donald Trump and Yvonne Musk and Travis and Taylor I think that’s
    0:02:54 like the material that they’re giving and so I don’t know if they’re
    0:02:59 snoozing so much as they’re not yelling you know and I feel like they could
    0:03:04 probably benefit from some yelling that resonates outside of yelling is the
    0:03:12 trick for that one because I have seen some yelling and I have hated it in the
    0:03:18 right kind of context you know I’m open to singing and chance but you know maybe
    0:03:23 maybe we could work on the language of the chance a little bit yeah we’re
    0:03:27 getting lapsed by the YMCA so you got to think about that we’ve given I the gays
    0:03:30 gave away YMCA well you don’t even want it back I know I made it official it was
    0:03:34 a long it was not a you know it was it was not a battle in the culture where
    0:03:39 we expected but it was a battle that was thrust upon us and I think for a
    0:03:44 moment during the Biden era we had felt like we’d taken YMCA back from the
    0:03:49 magas and unfortunately I think that is one L we just have to take it’s over now
    0:03:54 and the village people in YMCA despite the fact that that is a song about
    0:03:58 cruising in gay gyms the magas have taken it from us and I don’t think we’re
    0:04:01 ever gonna get it back it’s unfortunate I don’t think you’re gonna hear a lot of
    0:04:07 YMCA at gay pride this year no probably not abracadabra by Lady Gaga instead I
    0:04:09 think you’ll be hearing a lot of abracadabra it’s a pretty good upgrade I
    0:04:14 think so did you watch any of the SNL 50 stuff I was in and out I was watching
    0:04:19 White Lotus and I was you know podcast prepping so I caught a little bit of it
    0:04:24 I really liked a couple of the Eddie Murphy segments Eddie Murphy being
    0:04:30 Tracy Morgan was hilarious Eddie Murphy doing some borderline inappropriate
    0:04:34 prison rape jokes with Will Ferrell and like one of the very last segments I
    0:04:38 also really liked those are my big takeaways prison rape is always a
    0:04:43 highlight I said multiple times to my husband that I can’t believe this show
    0:04:47 is happening like if it weren’t the SNL 50 there’s no way these jokes would have
    0:04:50 made it in but I’m pretty sure everybody showed up and they were like we are not
    0:04:55 playing by 2025 standards we’re playing by whatever year we were actually on the
    0:05:01 show and it was a lot of it was hilarious but I was overwhelmed by
    0:05:05 Cher I don’t know if you saw these shots of like Kevin Costner losing his mind
    0:05:10 and Billy Crystal watching this 78-year-old woman look like a 30-year-old
    0:05:14 woman belting out if I could turn back time which I think the gaze still we
    0:05:24 still have and now to the show and I’m keeping us on time which is not Scott
    0:05:29 strong suit so how’d I do in the banters I think you did great I don’t know we’ll
    0:05:33 see okay so in today’s episode of raging moderates we are discussing Trump’s plan
    0:05:37 to end the war in Ukraine Trump’s lifeline to Eric Adams and the state of
    0:05:42 anti-Trump Republicans your specialty all right let’s get into it big moves on
    0:05:46 the world stage last week Trump says he had a highly productive call with
    0:05:50 Vladimir Putin claiming that they’re now working closely on a Ukraine peace deal
    0:05:55 he even floated the idea of a future sit-down with Putin this all came after
    0:05:58 Russia released American teacher Mark Fogle which Trump called a quote sign of
    0:06:04 good faith meanwhile Kiev is on edge after a drone strike hit Chernobyl just
    0:06:07 days after Zelensky asked the US for more aid and in Europe leaders are
    0:06:11 scrambling an emergency summit is set for Monday so that’s today so by tomorrow
    0:06:15 you may have an update a man fears that Trump’s outreach to Russia is leaving
    0:06:19 them isolated UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer called it a once in a
    0:06:23 generation security moment vice president JD Vance warned that Russia could face
    0:06:27 economic and military pressure if it doesn’t negotiate in good faith but in
    0:06:31 Munich he took aim at European leaders instead claiming their real threat isn’t
    0:06:35 Russia or China it’s their own policies on free speech and refusal to work with
    0:06:40 the hard-right parties in government back at home not much better the White
    0:06:43 House is clashing with the press again this time banning an AP reporter from
    0:06:48 the Oval Office for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America the
    0:06:53 AP is now accusing the administration of violating the first amendment let’s talk
    0:06:59 Ukraine first what do you think the game here is I mean you can start with Pete
    0:07:04 Hague Seth’s maiden voyage which did not go well and he’s walking things back
    0:07:11 within 24 hours but what do you think Rubio and Trump and Vance want for
    0:07:15 Ukraine well as a I guess cradle neocon I don’t know if the neocons exist anymore
    0:07:20 I have a ton of thoughts about this I first just really quick because this I
    0:07:23 think it’s got lost and I’m obsessed with the crypto element of everything that’s
    0:07:27 happening the hostage trade or we’re gonna call it mark Fogel very happy
    0:07:33 Fogel’s back that’s great news but what got missed was the person that got let out
    0:07:39 on our side was like one of the original crypto scammers who was running a
    0:07:46 massive crypto scam that allowed Russia to you know avert sanctions you know by
    0:07:50 by paying for things you know using using crypto rather than you know cash and
    0:07:54 going through the regular banking system I only say that just because I just
    0:07:59 everybody should just like make a mental note of that because I think that the
    0:08:04 crypto corruption that is coming over the next four years might end up being one
    0:08:08 of the biggest stories that happen bigger than the Trump coin it’s
    0:08:11 interesting well it’s related the Trump quite it’s all related right like I
    0:08:17 mean I think that that’s how people can manage it well they just say okay we
    0:08:21 know he’s a grifter who does things like this but it’s so much bigger than that
    0:08:25 and the trade wasn’t publicized at all it took days for anyone to know if we
    0:08:30 got if we had to trade anything for Mark Fogel yeah for sure and so obviously
    0:08:33 they’re bad people getting traded and all these things like Victor boot got
    0:08:36 traded during the Biden administration so I and I’m happy Mark Fogel is home so
    0:08:40 it’s like less a commentary on like the particular trade than just like it’s
    0:08:43 interesting where the priorities work like that the first Russian person out
    0:08:49 is this crypto scammer person doing the deal Steve Whitcoff his son is business
    0:08:55 partners with the Trump kids on their crypto scam right so like that’s not a
    0:08:59 coincidence all right I’m not I’m not the always sunny guy putting yarn against
    0:09:03 the wall here like it’s a pretty direct connection directly to Trump’s pocket so
    0:09:10 anyway the broader deal I mean like the sad part about this is that just like we
    0:09:13 appear to be on the side of the bad guys I mean I think that JD did some tough
    0:09:18 talk but what is happening is we have this meeting in Saudi that you referenced
    0:09:23 the Ukrainians aren’t even invited like we’re having a bilateral with the
    0:09:29 Russians who invaded Ukraine and who we are sanctioning currently to try to cut
    0:09:34 a deal that Ukraine isn’t even at the table for and Europe is having a separate
    0:09:37 you know that the Europeans are having a separate meeting at the same time as you
    0:09:41 mentioned Kirsten we’re like the UK is out there saying we’re gonna put boots on
    0:09:46 the ground if necessary peacekeeping troops to support Ukraine and so like in
    0:09:50 this moment like we’re giving some mixed signals from the White House but
    0:09:56 directionally most of the signals are that we are sympathetic to the invaders
    0:10:01 to the autocrats to the people that are we’re attacking a free democratic
    0:10:05 country like this you know whatever you thought bad about American foreign
    0:10:11 policy in the past like this is like a massive shift like this is not just a
    0:10:15 bad judgment call it’s like it’s the fact that it seems like that we’re
    0:10:20 supporting you know the countries that are in conflict with what the American
    0:10:25 values have been in the post-World War II era so like at the top level like that
    0:10:28 is the thing to me that’s the most striking and when you looked at these
    0:10:33 press conferences both Hegseth and Trump can’t remember if answers asked this but
    0:10:36 definitely Hegseth and Trump were asked you know as part of these
    0:10:40 negotiations what are you asking Russia to give up and neither of them could
    0:10:44 answer I get Hegseth gives like a two minutes of gobbledygook because you
    0:10:48 know that he couldn’t come up with anything and Trump starts attacking
    0:10:52 Europe during the answer to that question and so I think that kind of
    0:10:55 tells you all you need to know yeah I think there was something about shooting
    0:11:00 values and that you can’t do that and Pete’s answer I can’t really get to
    0:11:04 calling him Secretary Hegseth yet I’m still in in Pete mode you and Pete
    0:11:13 pals did you guys not drinking buddies we we have socialized but no comment no I
    0:11:17 totally agree with you and one thing that’s been sticking out to me is how
    0:11:24 quickly everybody has folded from who they were beforehand because at least I
    0:11:28 was holding on to the idea I know I know Mike Waltz really well the National
    0:11:32 Security Advisor were in a foreign policy group together Marco Rubio has been
    0:11:38 very clear about his foreign policy views for a long time and I don’t think
    0:11:43 any of either of those two would have ever thought that they would be part of
    0:11:48 the deal that was going to essentially tell Ukraine you have no future in NATO
    0:11:51 and you’re never getting back your territory I mean even for getting the
    0:11:57 pre-2014 lines even from just a few years ago and maybe that speaks to the
    0:12:01 awesome power of Trump maybe that speaks to the new realignment within the
    0:12:07 Republican Party but I don’t see anyone in positions of power now that are going
    0:12:13 to be holding on to traditional American views of foreign policy in our role in
    0:12:17 the world no I mean Rubio has been basically a full-throated defender of
    0:12:23 the Trump push on this and and that pivot for him has been you know kind of
    0:12:28 happening gradually over time since 2016 when he was you know kind of the
    0:12:33 candidate that was running you know the most maybe even more than chev like the
    0:12:38 most W with like the most Bush compassionate conservatism like type
    0:12:43 platform of any of the candidates and so you know no who knows what how things
    0:12:49 actually go I guess it’s better that Rubio is there in Saudi Arabia than some
    0:12:53 of the other potential people who could be there from the Trump orbit maybe
    0:12:57 there are things happening on the margins that matter and like you said
    0:13:06 Waltz was a very traditional you know type of you know type of Republican it
    0:13:10 is in the house as far as foreign policy is concerned and I interviewed Tom
    0:13:14 Malinowski the Democrat from New Jersey last week who’s he’s a pretty kind of
    0:13:18 hawkish Democrat and so he was like when I got to Congress I was looking to
    0:13:21 Republicans that I could work with like where we might have some overlap on
    0:13:26 foreign policy and and he was like Waltz and Stefanik were the two people that I
    0:13:30 turned to and and he’s like they’ve you know he’s like it’s just Stefanik is
    0:13:35 totally you know gone native with the MAGA and he’s like it appears like Waltz
    0:13:40 is doing the same so and we’ll see how things shake out this week but the
    0:13:44 signs are not positive and it’s really a sign of kind of submission to the
    0:13:48 Trump worldview from all these folks. What do you think is the likelihood that
    0:13:52 Zelensky gets his way so he was speaking at the Munich Security Council and he
    0:13:56 said we need an armed forces of Europe this is after JD Vance essentially took
    0:14:01 a flamethrower to our relationship with Europe in his speech clearly Zelensky
    0:14:08 does not see us as the top partner opportunity for him going forward do
    0:14:13 you think Europe is really going to unify without us? Yeah I mean I wouldn’t see us
    0:14:17 as the top partner opportunity either if I was saying yeah I think Europe will I
    0:14:25 think it could be a positive outgrowth of like the Trump worldview the Europe
    0:14:32 ends up you know stepping up their game on defense and you know takes more
    0:14:35 responsibility and it’s not like I don’t want to say they’re not taking any
    0:14:39 responsibility for their own defense but but actually you know you know sort of
    0:14:43 takes seriously the act that they might have to go it alone at some point and
    0:14:45 you’ve seen this from people and from Europeans at the Munich Security
    0:14:50 Conference leader NATO said something to this effect which was pretty Secretary
    0:14:54 General rather which is pretty alarming so I think that that’s possibly
    0:15:01 positive but like okay that has potential massive negative ramifications
    0:15:07 for us you know I mean I was going for this out there was a woman who is a
    0:15:13 journalist in Ukraine who whose quote just really kind of dropped me in my
    0:15:18 feet over the weekend she wrote she said this her name is Anna Merlekina she’s
    0:15:21 from Moria Paul and like had to flee to Kiev she said when you live in a world
    0:15:24 that is crumbling under your feet the only thing that helps you survive is to
    0:15:27 believe in guidelines and civilized democratic countries that uphold values
    0:15:31 when countries like the United States cease to be pillars there’s nothing to
    0:15:37 hope for I mean that is like that is a jaw-dropping quote from from somebody
    0:15:41 over in Ukraine and I just think that’s reflective of how people in Europe are
    0:15:46 gonna see us and I just believe that there’ll be negative ramifications for
    0:15:50 that down the line we don’t exactly know how or when but you know I think that
    0:15:54 Europe will kind of decide that they should be prepared to go it without us
    0:15:58 going back to I guess we we got into ineffective Democrats very early on in
    0:16:04 the podcast but I do maybe just because I work in communication I guess that I
    0:16:08 always think that there was an opportunity to do better if we had
    0:16:14 messaged properly about this and it doesn’t feel like we have made the case
    0:16:17 this is Democrats and Republicans like obviously you know Mitch McConnell and
    0:16:21 the kind of more traditional sad have been you know screaming from the rooftops
    0:16:26 at a low pitch he doesn’t scream so loud anymore at 83 but have been trying to
    0:16:30 talk about the importance of keeping together the democratic world order and
    0:16:36 that you need to swear countries that share our values and it feels like that
    0:16:41 has just fallen on completely deaf ears and that people have moved to this world
    0:16:48 where it’s what about me first and can’t see the second order effects if we end up
    0:16:52 abandoning Ukraine and so do you think there’s anything we could have done or
    0:16:56 this storm which is taking over the world right was there any way to stop this
    0:17:00 on this one I’ll let you make fun of the Democrats communications and I’ll take
    0:17:04 responsibility for my people because I you do you I think possibly no because of
    0:17:12 Iraq honestly like I do think that it was just such a debacle that they’re you
    0:17:17 know within the country like there has just become an increased skepticism
    0:17:23 from another word like hostility to the idea that we should be involved overseas
    0:17:28 in foreign conflicts and I think it’s very complicated to then say okay well
    0:17:32 this is not a rock right like Ukraine is different like we don’t have troops on
    0:17:36 the ground we’re not trying to do regime change we’re trying to defend an ally and
    0:17:41 that helps us because you know if Russia successfully overtakes Ukraine that’s
    0:17:46 going to demonstrate weakness you know to the you know rules-based order and
    0:17:49 that could cause threats to us down the line right like it’s just it’s a
    0:17:55 complicated point to make right especially in in the face of you know
    0:18:01 really like pretty bipartisan increasingly like opposition to us
    0:18:07 playing this role in the world and so to me the obligation is then like this is
    0:18:12 what Trump has unraveled is that there were a number of things that are not
    0:18:19 really popular among the whole country that leaders in both parties continued
    0:18:23 to do such as USAID because it was the right thing to do and because they were
    0:18:29 responsible leaders right and sometimes that is you know required this is not
    0:18:34 ancient Greece we don’t we don’t have a direct direct democracy on purpose not
    0:18:40 everything should be decided based on 50% plus one vote you know if that is true
    0:18:44 I would have never gotten married right like that was a fell as an opposite
    0:18:48 opposed vote until the Supreme Court did it right like eventually sometimes
    0:18:50 leaders have to do things that are unpopular because they’re the right
    0:18:54 thing to do maybe sometimes they get held accountable for that Trump because he
    0:18:59 doesn’t care about any of that doesn’t like have really core values or empathy
    0:19:04 or care about you know the American idea doesn’t believe that doesn’t believe
    0:19:09 that exists only believes their American interests has wiped away all of that and
    0:19:15 so I don’t know that the Democrats could have you know just by making their
    0:19:22 messaging better you know changed people’s view of this or you know broadly
    0:19:25 America’s role when it comes to aid so I mean I think that you could probably
    0:19:29 give a few of them some lessons on how to make those arguments better having
    0:19:34 watched you on the five and having watched some of them but I don’t know
    0:19:37 that it would have actually made the difference in this case it’s just such a
    0:19:42 big failure when you think about how core Biden made it to his reason for being
    0:19:46 right I mean part of it was I have to get you all through COVID and I can be
    0:19:50 America’s grandpa and I’m the most empathetic man you ever met but it was
    0:19:55 also like this return to normalcy and you know people’s lived experience was
    0:20:00 just so not commensurate with the world that he was talking about that they
    0:20:06 were just like a few right I’m out it was a failure and and I don’t and I mean
    0:20:12 obviously Biden’s inability to deliver a message I had ramifications like what
    0:20:15 you know in this case was it you know was that the key difference I don’t know
    0:20:18 but I mean I think it was a problem across multiple verticals and it
    0:20:22 relates to the democratic stuff now it just he was not he was absent right and
    0:20:25 there was a moment in 2020 where I think people were so fucking sick of the
    0:20:29 news and Trump and COVID like the idea that Biden wouldn’t be in their lives
    0:20:32 every day was kind of people are like that’s a good thing there really some
    0:20:37 people out there that that that was an attractive but like over time as crises
    0:20:42 unfolded as inflation happened as the invasion of Ukraine happened as 10
    0:20:48 7 happened you know people need somebody that can talk to them right and to
    0:20:53 deliver a compelling message and that can you know I demonstrate leadership
    0:20:58 traits or demonstrate strength at least and I think that that was like kind of
    0:21:01 missing from the last couple years a lot of the last administration I would even
    0:21:05 say that the quality of the messaging wouldn’t have mattered as much if it was
    0:21:09 happening as more frequently that people actually just want to physically see you
    0:21:12 and then their minds run wild and obviously there are people who are
    0:21:15 feeding this that are like oh he’s not here because he’s dead but he’ll be
    0:21:20 awake at 2 o’clock and then he’s gonna die again I tell you I never
    0:21:25 compliment Trump so just so you want but like guy has been ever like there was
    0:21:28 this thing on on the left in like resistance world like and during the
    0:21:33 campaign that was like Trump is just as old as Biden and Trump’s you know brain
    0:21:37 is putting to and like the media it’s so unfair that the media is making the
    0:21:41 Biden age thing like the only thing that’s like I can say I don’t think that
    0:21:46 is true like Trump gives off crazy energy not old energy like he just does and
    0:21:49 since he’s been in there I thought I didn’t know I thought it was an unknown
    0:21:54 like could my Trump win and just be so happy that he’s not in jail that he’s
    0:21:59 just gonna golf and like go on the NASCAR track which he did and like do fun
    0:22:02 stuff do the fun stuff and the accoutrements of the presidency and not
    0:22:05 do everything else and that’s been the opposite like he’s given more press
    0:22:09 conferences than anybody like dude is like I lose track of all the press
    0:22:12 conferences he’s done like I missed one on Friday you know but like he’s
    0:22:20 talking to media all the time and I’m like that is how to do it in the modern
    0:22:24 media age like and I think that that is something that those of us who oppose
    0:22:27 them could could learn from. Yes be everywhere all the time even if they
    0:22:31 don’t like you and their feed I have this conversation constantly with people
    0:22:35 I’m like oh but the engagement is so mean and they’re like but it’s engagement
    0:22:41 like that’s what Trump understands like all the hate comments they’re still
    0:22:44 thinking about you you’re still living what did they say like rent-free in your
    0:22:49 head I want to talk to you about the AP but just really quickly did you I
    0:22:52 shouldn’t say did you make anything because it obviously is a big deal about
    0:22:56 the State Department taking down the statement that they that we do not
    0:23:02 support Taiwanese independence and like that feels like it’s flying in the face
    0:23:05 of the way that we’re moving with Russia because obviously that’s China’s red line
    0:23:10 that feels like signature Rubio to me who’s such a big China hawk do you think
    0:23:14 anything’s gonna come of this or maybe I’m wrong about this but I kind of just
    0:23:18 see Taiwan and going the same path as Ukraine right where there is some
    0:23:22 resistance inside the administration that like once you know wants us to be
    0:23:25 stronger in that case and that there’s some resistance among the Republicans on
    0:23:29 the Hill resistance or but some views among Republicans on the Hill and in
    0:23:33 the administration there are more hawkish on Taiwan than Trump’s itself but
    0:23:36 Trump was asked about Taiwan at one of his hundred press conferences we were
    0:23:40 just talking about recently and he goes on a rant about how they’ve been
    0:23:45 stealing our jobs and how you know jobs for the micro the chips need to be
    0:23:51 coming back to America and I just if you just looked at the tone of his comments
    0:23:55 it didn’t sound like the tone of somebody that’s ready to put American
    0:24:01 defense power on the line to protect Taiwan and I just don’t see how a Trump
    0:24:06 Vance administration you know who has just laid the groundwork with their
    0:24:10 followers that they only care about us first they only care about American
    0:24:13 interests first we shouldn’t care about what’s happening on the other side of
    0:24:19 the globe I if I if a conflagration happened with China and Taiwan I just
    0:24:22 don’t know how they can go to their supporters and be like oh yeah that
    0:24:25 actually we need to put in a couple hundred billion here or God forbid
    0:24:30 troops or ships or whatever I like I don’t see it Marco might be trying to fool
    0:24:33 himself into thinking that Trump sees China differently because it’s a bigger
    0:24:39 threat but I I think that if push came to shove we’d see pretty much the same
    0:24:42 thing we see from him on Ukraine all right so we’ve got a rogue Rubio moment
    0:24:46 that’s that’s how I see it and I think Trump likes that actually too by the way
    0:24:50 I will say this I think Trump doesn’t mind if people are confused you know like
    0:24:55 his his he is he benefits from us being right and so I think it’s I don’t think
    0:24:58 that like he’s like mad at Marco over this I think that he’s like well you know
    0:25:03 we’ll keep them on their toes like that’s part of Trump’s mindset and so I my
    0:25:08 point is just like if push comes to shove I don’t if I’m she I’m like these
    0:25:12 guys aren’t gonna go to battle for Taiwan that would be the bad I’d be making
    0:25:16 yeah like let them put whatever they want on their silly website about
    0:25:21 cooperation with Taiwan okay moving on to something else sad I I want to talk
    0:25:25 about the AP getting banned so they were kicked out of the press briefings and
    0:25:30 then they weren’t allowed a photographer and a reporter weren’t allowed on the
    0:25:36 presidential plane and there was a big I shouldn’t it feels so lame to say there
    0:25:40 was a big explainer because it wasn’t even like a real piece of journalism but
    0:25:45 I got a nifty newsletter from Axios talking about the kind of history of
    0:25:49 this administration’s objections to the AP and basically they’re mad that the
    0:25:57 AP style book has used terms that they hate to liberally like gender DEI
    0:26:04 inclusivity etc I’m old enough to remember when the other news stations
    0:26:09 stood with Fox News when the Obama administration wasn’t going to let them
    0:26:13 in to do a pool briefing with the representative from the administration
    0:26:17 and basically ABC NBC CBS they all said if Fox can’t do it then we’re not doing
    0:26:20 it and then they let them in begrudgingly but it doesn’t feel like that moment is
    0:26:24 happening at all like everyone is bemoaning the fact that the AP is
    0:26:29 being excluded but no one is doing anything about it and I mean this feels
    0:26:35 like a pretty obvious we a don’t know what the First Amendment means and be we
    0:26:38 don’t care and we’re running this like the Wild West
    0:26:43 I mean the asymmetry is just so obvious it’s almost like you know it’s like dog
    0:26:47 bites man to even mention it like yeah I mean look so in part I actually would
    0:26:53 be defensive of the other mainstream outlets like because I think that if ABC
    0:26:58 and NBC and CBS said we’re gonna boycott in solidarity with AP I think I feel like
    0:27:07 the Trump administration would be like okay peace you know yeah so I don’t you
    0:27:10 know I mean that’s like the situation I think everybody should just be aware of
    0:27:14 like what time it is and what’s what’s happening out there as far as like the
    0:27:17 more interesting part of this I know obviously there’s the First Amendment
    0:27:25 threat here but to me is how all in these guys are going on like you know
    0:27:29 Patriot what I call patriotic correctness like you know it it’s not
    0:27:37 just enough to stop doing you know pro DEI activities they they need to snuff
    0:27:44 out anybody that is using words or language that they don’t like right and
    0:27:50 to a preposterous extent right like the idea that like everybody has to use the
    0:27:55 new name of the Gulf that they just changed one minute ago like it you know
    0:28:00 or else they’re gonna be banned is ridiculous right like and in some ways
    0:28:03 it’s ridiculous as some of the most extreme things that you see like on the
    0:28:09 far left on PC like demanding that people you know use you know use Latinx
    0:28:12 or whatever right and so I do wonder if it’s going to backfire on them
    0:28:19 eventually I don’t are people really for this like it feels it feels very
    0:28:26 mockable so obviously it’s serious but I do think they are like very much being
    0:28:31 responsive to something that only like a tiny group of far-right trolls who are
    0:28:36 super online actually care about and I don’t know if that’s like a path to
    0:28:41 long-term success for the right now I they definitely just want to get in as
    0:28:45 many kind of gloating laps early on I think that they know that it just gets
    0:28:50 more and more complicated and certainly as we head into special elections and
    0:28:53 the midterms and things like that which hopefully Democrats will perform better
    0:28:58 than we did so you do think that’s conscious like they’re like hey you
    0:29:02 know this isn’t gonna last forever this like gloating honeymoon and so we want
    0:29:06 to like rub their face and shit as for as long as possible like and like there’s
    0:29:09 like a little bit of that I think they can look to past administrations and say
    0:29:13 okay you know your first two years are when you can actually get things done
    0:29:17 right they have control of everything they’re definitely trying it on right
    0:29:21 to the largest extent possible you know let’s ram through four and a half
    0:29:26 trillion in tax cuts like let’s try to cut all of these entitlement programs
    0:29:30 now they realize that they’re not going to get their wish list of all of it but
    0:29:33 they are at a moment where they’re owning the culture and so I feel like
    0:29:37 they’re just taking advantage and saying okay well if we haven’t
    0:29:41 grated ourselves to a segment of the American population that wouldn’t have
    0:29:46 given us their time at all for eight years ago let’s really go for it and you
    0:29:50 can tell that also in the attitude that Caroline Levitt the press secretary has
    0:29:56 about everything I mean she’s so haughty and arrogant in the way that she
    0:30:00 delivers everything which I listen I wish that I had more of that in me I
    0:30:05 wish I didn’t have such a terrible case of imposter symptoms but like to be 27
    0:30:11 years old and to walk up there with that you know it’s a fact this is a fact
    0:30:16 right or like every man in Gaza is wearing a condom that we paid for well
    0:30:23 actually no no that’s not true in Mozambique there are some condoms the
    0:30:28 godsend you know and it’s it’s the Trump bravado that if you say it a certain
    0:30:34 way there’s at least a good amount of people that are gonna believe you and I
    0:30:38 think that they’re living for the moment right it’s like a Yolo administration
    0:30:43 at this point and until there are real consequences I think they’re gonna go
    0:30:47 for it with everything when the AP is calling Mount Denali, Mount McKinley
    0:30:52 right now I mean they’re doing half of the crazy thing I wonder is yours is that
    0:30:56 true like your comment about how they’re owning the culture now I can’t figure
    0:31:02 this out like is that actually true or does it just kind of feel like it’s true
    0:31:06 and or and maybe that’s a distinction without it would I be able to have a
    0:31:10 distinction without a difference right but I don’t I’m kind of like is it just
    0:31:15 political obsessives who feel this way I mean did people’s lives really just
    0:31:18 change like did they change like their mindset on this sort of stuff like
    0:31:25 overnight I don’t know well they’re owning infrequent voters that’s true that
    0:31:32 are 18 to 40 right that and those are real culture vultures those are people
    0:31:35 that are listening to podcasts those are people who are concerned about all of
    0:31:41 the dies in our food those are people who are picking schools for their kids to
    0:31:46 go to and are disenchanted with the public school system and wanting to get
    0:31:50 away from feeling like they have to use gender pronouns on their email
    0:31:55 signatures I mean these are real things that folks are thinking about and so I
    0:31:58 don’t know if owning the culture is the right way to put it because I still
    0:32:04 don’t think that Kid Rock is cooler than Jay-Z that will just never happen but you
    0:32:12 can tell I can’t I can’t fight the 40 and I’m 41 in a couple of weeks no but
    0:32:15 Kid Rock was on Bill Maher on Friday night and I found the interview really
    0:32:19 interesting I mean he was first of all I had forgotten I guess that he played
    0:32:24 Obama’s inauguration in 08 and he was like it’s not as if I liked Obama then
    0:32:32 you just show up and you do this but he was essentially mocking us for like
    0:32:37 liberal leaning people and you knew new to the side of the fence but for freaking
    0:32:41 out about everything all the time and I do think that they are owning the
    0:32:46 culture by making it clear that majority of people feel like it’s just not that
    0:32:52 serious and part of that is a mistake on Democrats part by not making it feel
    0:32:57 like it’s that serious in practical ways not like this guy is actually gonna fall
    0:33:00 but like this is the way that your checkbook is going to be affected this
    0:33:03 is where your kid is going to be affected but like people are walking
    0:33:07 around just saying I don’t think politics is that serious and the
    0:33:11 Republican side seems like that right now yeah it’s interesting I mean that
    0:33:16 goes against you know my entire like like everything in my body wants to
    0:33:19 reject that like you know some like things are singers things matter
    0:33:25 actually but I do I’m it makes me curious about the Federman kind of model
    0:33:30 because he that like that’s kind of what he’s doing basically which is like
    0:33:36 mocking like progressive who are like hyperventilating while like just
    0:33:40 basically voting with the Democrats all the time and I don’t think that every
    0:33:45 Democrat should act like that but I do wonder if there is some potential
    0:33:50 efficacy to having a couple of Democrats out there who have more of a
    0:33:55 slack or energy to try to break through all right let’s take a quick break stay
    0:33:57 with us
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    0:36:33 get covered at pac dot blue cross dot ca welcome back mayor Eric Adams just got
    0:36:36 a legal lifeline but it came from the most controversial figure in New York
    0:36:40 politics Donald Trump the Trump administration’s justice department
    0:36:43 dropped Adams’s corruption case but in a city where Trump remains deeply
    0:36:48 unpopular that reprieve could be more of a political liability than a win now
    0:36:52 Adams is facing accusations of being in Trump’s pocket especially after appearing
    0:36:55 alongside Trump’s borders are Tom Homan and making moves that align with the
    0:36:59 president’s immigration policies meanwhile the case is dismissal has
    0:37:03 sparked a crisis inside Trump’s DOJ a mass resignation of prosecutors
    0:37:08 including one who accused DOJ leaders of looking for a quote fool to take the
    0:37:15 fall have you been following that’s probably not as closely as me here’s
    0:37:18 why I’m into it Hagen Scott and who you know he’s the guy you mentioned who said
    0:37:21 that I expect you’ll eventually find someone who’s enough of a fool or a
    0:37:28 coward to file your file your motion this guy is like special forces dude who
    0:37:34 brown stars whatever I’ll give him a third for this if he only has two but
    0:37:40 who clerked for so I believe he was Kavanaugh and Roberts and then Danny
    0:37:45 also soon who’s the original person who read the letter to Emil Bove she was
    0:37:51 Scalia a Scalia clerk both I mean both like Scott and his letter kind of
    0:37:55 subtly implies that he likes Trump I never get exactly how he put up but he
    0:37:58 was like I could kind of see the perspective he’s like some people might
    0:38:01 be quitting because they’re really upset with this administration like that’s
    0:38:04 not me and I kind of see how a businessman could think this was a good
    0:38:08 deal it’s just not legal like was that’s like that’s TLDR summary of his
    0:38:15 letter and so the fact that it’s these two people who are fed sock folks who are
    0:38:20 stepping out that’s Federalist Society for maybe raging moderates audiences are
    0:38:31 like conservative legal folks who are just saying no who are like standing up
    0:38:35 and saying I’m not gonna go along with this and I think that’s pretty powerful
    0:38:38 and it comes at a time when I don’t know at least maybe just maybe just me or
    0:38:42 maybe just a bulwark people are like thirsting for people to be showing a
    0:38:46 little bit more backbone right now and so I’ve that’s kind of why I’ve been
    0:38:50 following it less on like the legal nerd side but just more on this is kind of
    0:38:56 how you do it as far as standing up to a liberal actions yeah I mean I was into
    0:39:02 it I had been feeling starved I guess for some old-school intellectual
    0:39:07 resistance I guess not people out there with a sign you know like hands off my
    0:39:14 whatever but I like them but they’re not getting us really anywhere at this
    0:39:22 point but it feels like what they’re doing is because it’s a harbinger of bad
    0:39:25 things to come so the Adams case itself or at least what we know about it you
    0:39:29 would expect more I guess in the indictment he definitely broke the law
    0:39:33 and I thought that’s a student’s letter was you know very specific about that
    0:39:37 and that does matter to people that are career prosecutors who take the law very
    0:39:44 seriously but to me I felt a little bit of a if you think that we’re just gonna
    0:39:49 roll over for all of this from like the lighter fare of this which obviously has
    0:39:54 very real implications for New York City politics and national politics even but
    0:39:57 that they’re scared of what this administration is going to be asking
    0:40:03 them to do like Pam Bondi will see us all as folks that are ready to just line
    0:40:08 up and rubber stamp whatever is to come and they can’t help the fact even though
    0:40:13 Bondi was one of the lesser controversial nominees which just speaks to how
    0:40:18 crazy the set of nominees were but you know Pam Bondi was all in on the 2020
    0:40:23 election was rigged out there front and center on that and to me it felt like a
    0:40:30 little bit of a cry for help or at least a signal of like we can’t be there for
    0:40:34 whatever they are going to try because they’ve spent so much time bemoaning
    0:40:39 quote-unquote lawfare and it is very clear that they are looking to weaponize
    0:40:44 everything back for their own benefit yeah and we also had a US trainee down
    0:40:48 here and and Louisiana who quit I think that there are a lot of those warning
    0:40:51 sense happening in this guy the character that I’ve been watching closely in
    0:40:55 this thing is this I kind of hate saying his name and Neil Bove kind of when
    0:40:58 it come like Amel Bove I don’t know it’s kind of a pretentious
    0:41:05 for name for one for a maga but anyway Bove was the person who in this
    0:41:09 assumed letter I think the most powerful thing was like in the first footnote
    0:41:13 where she was like someone was taking notes in the meeting where they told us
    0:41:17 that they’re gonna you know about the deal on the prosecution and he collected
    0:41:22 the notes at the end of the meeting which is like no note taking which you
    0:41:26 know feels very fascistic the oh also kind of dumb sort of and I guess a lot
    0:41:30 of times fascism is dumb like dumb bad it’s like okay well the notes are gone
    0:41:33 but I prefer it when it’s dumb because at least we can talk about it he took
    0:41:39 away the notes yeah and so but he’s the same guy who is at the center of the
    0:41:42 FBI firings right and there’s a whistleblower and if you saw that over the
    0:41:46 weekend where you know they were saying that Cash Patel lied during his
    0:41:51 confirmation hearing because you know the note taking in that meeting the FBI
    0:41:56 meeting said that Bove had said that Cash Patel had and Stephen Miller were
    0:42:01 the ones that were asking for this so they have this like kind of henchmen in at
    0:42:08 the DOJ and so I think that it is pretty it is good that you know because
    0:42:11 there’s always this debate right like should people like this stay would we
    0:42:16 rather have Hagin Scott and in there than whoever replaces them and and I
    0:42:22 think that in my view it’s actually better for these folks to you know kick
    0:42:26 up a cloud of dust here and like draw attention to this person so people can
    0:42:30 watch it so it’s not like happening you know behind the scenes and cloak and
    0:42:34 dagger yeah though you do need good people to stay I said a couple weeks ago
    0:42:39 that we’re it’s going to require thousands of Mike Pence’s to make it
    0:42:43 through whatever is to come over the course of the next four years so I
    0:42:47 agree with you and I think it’s also matters that this is happening so early
    0:42:52 on I can’t believe we’re only in the beginning of the fourth week of this but
    0:42:58 we are going to need people who are interested in the rule of law in a
    0:43:02 traditional sense not in the rule of law just because I said so and Napoleonic
    0:43:07 slash Trump terms to reference his weekend tweeting which did not feel like
    0:43:11 him at all I don’t know that felt more must here’s the thing that made it me
    0:43:15 think it might be him I was reading an article and that quote is actually from
    0:43:21 a movie called Waterloo that’s not from Napoleon and then it’s like it’s
    0:43:29 accredited yeah like the direct quote is from Waterloo the movie the movie is in
    0:43:34 1970 and that to me like feels like it could be a Trump cultural reference like
    0:43:38 he might have watched a 1970s movie about Napoleon like that feels like the
    0:43:41 thing he might have watched but maybe not I don’t know that was the only because I
    0:43:47 agreed with you initially it did feel musky but or somebody or Stephen Miller
    0:43:54 like someone got control of the of the phone for a second I don’t want to
    0:44:00 belabor that Adam stuff that much but part of the deal that I guess he’s made
    0:44:03 but she claims he hasn’t made a deal with the administration but it’s quite
    0:44:07 obvious since he had to sit on the Fox and Friends couch and be humiliated by
    0:44:14 Tom Homan a couple days ago but is that they’ll be easing or he’s going to try
    0:44:19 to use sanctuary city laws as it applies to Rikers and the way that sanctuary
    0:44:25 city policy works in New York is that ice can’t be near the prisons and the
    0:44:30 reason that that’s the case is not necessarily that we don’t want criminals
    0:44:35 to be deported but it’s because they could pick up people who haven’t actually
    0:44:39 been convicted yet people who have just been charged and not gone through their
    0:44:44 due process which they’re entitled to and you have any views kind of thinking
    0:44:50 about the macro issue that I think liberals are finding themselves in is
    0:44:56 having been way too lax about illegal migration and even too lax on people who
    0:45:01 are here illegally and then committing violent crimes on how we should be
    0:45:07 approaching sanctuary policy so my viewpoint which is I think different
    0:45:10 from some of from like kind of the conventional wisdom among Democratic
    0:45:18 strategists is that like maybe like in February of 2025 like the right thing to
    0:45:23 do is to fight these guys tooth and nail and to figure out what happened and
    0:45:28 figure out with how things shake out and in 2026 summer you can decide to be
    0:45:31 strategic and like figure out which issues are the right ones for the for
    0:45:34 the electorate like we don’t fucking know what’s gonna happen over the next
    0:45:40 year so just fight him and try to make him fail my exception to that is like on
    0:45:43 some of these like there are a couple of policies for these two Democrats like
    0:45:48 obviously got out way too far to the left away from public opinion and I just I
    0:45:54 do think sanctuary cities is one of them I’m so like I was like the
    0:45:57 compassionate conservative Bush Republican I was I’m like about as liberal
    0:46:02 on immigration as you can get to like I was part of the group of Republicans that
    0:46:06 the Republican voters wanted to overthrow and like the kind of McCain view of
    0:46:12 the world immigration so like I am extremely sympathetic to immigrants
    0:46:18 and the plight of immigrants who are fleeing you know oppression or fleeing
    0:46:22 whatever and want to come to America that’s what America is about like that
    0:46:26 said like some of the sanctuary you know like some of the sanctuary city stuff
    0:46:30 it just got overboard it was just kind of crazy like and I understand there might
    0:46:34 be like a specific reason why it makes sense to not have ice in the prisons
    0:46:42 but I just think that like fighting over whether prisoner illegal migrants who
    0:46:48 committed crimes in this country should be deported is like maybe one of the
    0:46:52 fights out say I think you can take a pass on this one I should that if you’re
    0:46:59 with Democrats so that would be that that’s my view on that yeah it’s
    0:47:01 definitely the way that a lot of Democrats feel you and you already
    0:47:05 reference John Federman or you’d be like why are you wasting my time with this
    0:47:09 right this is you’re in a privileged position that you got to be here
    0:47:17 illegally in the first place and you can just see the next iteration of the
    0:47:22 Charlemagne ad about giving transgender surgeries for undocumented people in
    0:47:26 prison being written about something like this it doesn’t change the fact that
    0:47:31 the city council has to be the ones to revise sanctuary city laws but I tend
    0:47:35 to agree with you that kicking up a massive fuss about it probably just
    0:47:40 allows Trump and co to continue to say that we’re so out of step with where
    0:47:44 culture is here’s the other thing they are gonna overstep on immigration so
    0:47:47 here’s the area where I would say Democrats do not like don’t need to be
    0:47:53 over cautious right like people do not want dreamers to be deported right like
    0:47:57 people don’t want that people don’t want like people who are in this country you
    0:48:01 know whose parents brought them to this country when their kids you know to be
    0:48:04 deported or to be separated from their families and there are already a couple
    0:48:09 of examples of like very sympathetic individuals who are being either
    0:48:14 detained by ICE like one like there’s like a guy in Newark who is a veteran who
    0:48:22 is like detained by ICE and so I think that there are going to be ways to fight
    0:48:27 immigration you know immigration from a humanitarian standpoint that are
    0:48:31 beneficial for Democrats and they should choose those fights rather than
    0:48:35 fighting over whether prison deportations happen or not under the
    0:48:38 administration. Yeah that leads me to something I’ve been thinking about in
    0:48:44 general about like where Democrats show up and stand up and amplifying stories
    0:48:50 like that on a local level versus in DC I mean DC unless you know unless you
    0:48:54 represent Virginia or Maryland like I don’t think any of this should be going
    0:48:58 on in DC I think you need to be back with your people and talking about stories
    0:49:01 like that there was another one in Milwaukee which I talked about on the
    0:49:06 five and rarely do my colleagues just shut up but they were like oh my god
    0:49:12 that happened where they took in a toddler a mom and a grandmother for
    0:49:16 speaking Spanish and someone had to come with birth certificates they were
    0:49:21 Puerto Rican to get them out of the detention center and the idea of a
    0:49:26 two-year-old in a detention center for allegedly you know where we’re going to
    0:49:31 be holding people that have committed violent crimes and were here illegally
    0:49:36 when they’re Americans and did nothing but speak another language seemed to hit
    0:49:41 the audience hard and so yeah and this is to me and this is what I would say
    0:49:46 local is fine but what you’re doing is I think probably the most useful like on
    0:49:51 Fox and on conservative media platforms and on culturally conservative
    0:49:56 platforms again like people have this totally wrong view of what like the
    0:50:02 manasphere podcasters think about all this stuff yeah like you give specific
    0:50:06 examples like the ones you’re giving like they’re 80% issues like people do
    0:50:13 not want most people besides racist and like extreme you know far-right freaks
    0:50:18 do not want people detained for speaking Spanish in this country like that is not
    0:50:23 something that is popular actually and so if you can focus on a couple of those
    0:50:28 examples and bring them in to the lion’s den I think that is like a use a much
    0:50:33 more useful way to spend time than having a press conference on the hill and
    0:50:37 at Jared Moskowitz I saw was on Fox over the weekend I just think that like more
    0:50:43 is more on this I obviously agree with you and that’s always great when I see
    0:50:49 others showing up not even necessarily to get the clickbait that worked in 2016
    0:50:52 you know how everything was just about owning the other side and there were
    0:50:57 those huge fights now it’s like showing up and being reasonable makes even more
    0:51:01 of a difference because people’s partisan lines have been completely
    0:51:05 scrambled right you can’t predict it anymore in the same way and so if you
    0:51:10 show up like Jared Moskowitz did and you sound reasonable about immigration you
    0:51:13 know he was one of the first ones to say let me in the doge caucus for instance
    0:51:17 but then you hold the line about stuff that really matters and it gets
    0:51:21 amplified like that because he was on you know on primetime they love it
    0:51:25 they’re gonna get the clip out into their ether we’ll get their clip out
    0:51:28 into our ether and suddenly you know Jared Moskowitz is president yeah
    0:51:32 well that’s ups to God’s ears but yeah the prime example of this that I saw
    0:51:36 recently was Zelensky did the Lex Friedman interview Lex Friedman and like
    0:51:40 if you just look at the comments on Lex Friedman’s YouTube which is like he is
    0:51:44 he’s like Magan the Muskway right like he is like contrarian or whatever he’s
    0:51:47 not like a far-right he’s not like a social conservative you know what I mean
    0:51:53 like he’s like a contrarian so he’s in that sort of ecosystem and so it’s like
    0:51:56 that is a mostly anti-ukrain ecosystem Zelensky does the interview and like
    0:51:59 there were a lot of people in the comments so we’re just kind of like huh
    0:52:05 like oh I was expecting to hate him a lot more or he made a couple you know like
    0:52:09 so anyway it’s worth doing that or even people with that in interview in
    0:52:14 particular who are big Lex Friedman people but thought like he went too far
    0:52:18 in pushing him to say that Russia should get to keep territory that they
    0:52:22 obviously illegally took I thought that was even if it was just for that sound
    0:52:27 bite that it was worth the three hours of Zelensky’s time to do it I want to get
    0:52:33 to kind of the future of the anti-trump Republican faction but quickly are you
    0:52:39 pro Cuomo anti Cuomo because he did you see the ad he released the Valentine’s
    0:52:45 Day ad where he’s with all of these older women mostly women of color talking
    0:52:49 about how tough it is right now for New Yorkers and that but we can always find
    0:52:54 a way forward and that the opposite of hate the four letter word that matters
    0:53:00 most is love I think it was the phraseology I am I’m anti Cuomo I think
    0:53:05 that he he handled COVID atrociously in addition to just all of his personal
    0:53:10 misdeeds I maybe have some personal bias I’ve got some friends who are in who
    0:53:17 were in conflict with Andrew Cuomo let’s just say and so I think he’s kind of a
    0:53:25 creep I will say though like Democrats need more people that like quote that
    0:53:31 who are like Cuomo who talk normal and he talks Italian but like you can tell
    0:53:35 he’s being authentically himself he doesn’t talk like a fucking valedictorian
    0:53:42 kid that’s trying to appease the bosses in a PowerPoint presentation and I
    0:53:47 think that Democrats could learn from that and I don’t you know I don’t I’m
    0:53:52 no fan of his in particular but I think the data is people want it and I won’t
    0:53:56 I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s successful in the mayor’s race yeah it’s
    0:54:00 pretty crazy to think about but the amount of normie Democrats that I know
    0:54:05 who don’t like Cuomo for a whole host of reasons whether it’s you know the
    0:54:12 sexual harassment charges or even the management of COVID and lost people in
    0:54:17 nursing homes and just really wanted an apology for him that he couldn’t get out
    0:54:21 there just couldn’t muster the strength to say I would have done things a little
    0:54:25 bit differently which I think would have gone a tremendously long way they’re
    0:54:31 like I could use a competent gangster right now like the city is in shitty
    0:54:36 trouble at this point I hate being on the subway and he feels like when you
    0:54:40 look at Adams on the other side of this and you think I’m not gonna go for
    0:54:45 someone as progressive as like Scott Stringer that he might be the answer
    0:54:56 woof all right one more but one more quick break stay with us
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    0:57:15 welcome back before we wrap and we’ve already been touching this a little bit
    0:57:19 but I want to get into it more deeply with you and there aren’t that many
    0:57:23 Republicans openly pushing back and Trump’s agenda these days Mitch McConnell
    0:57:26 for instance was the lone Republican to vote against confirming Tulsi Gabbard
    0:57:30 an RFK junior and Tim you pointed out on the bullet work that even the Wall
    0:57:34 Street Journal’s editorial board usually a pretty Trump-friendly finally took a
    0:57:39 shot at his economic policies what do you think is the future for the anti-Trump
    0:57:45 Republicans in a party that seems like they’ve given up a bit besides an
    0:57:50 editorial or two yeah there’s no future yeah there’s no future there’s no
    0:57:56 present I I felt like I felt this way for a while it’s I’ll give you a little
    0:57:59 scoop I don’t know if this is a scoop anybody cares about me would would
    0:58:02 care about that’s nobody else would but like I was planning on writing a book
    0:58:07 that was about you know that was the shorthand pitch for it was Trump is
    0:58:11 forever that I just like I felt like that that the MAGA that the Republican
    0:58:16 voters want Trump or something like it right like whatever comes after Trump if
    0:58:22 he ever goes away you know will obviously not be a carbon copy of him
    0:58:27 because he has like a lot of unique traits and he’s an eccentricities and
    0:58:30 like it’s you know you’ve seen how hard it is to copy him at the local level and
    0:58:36 how that has failed in other ways with you know Kerry Lake and others but but
    0:58:42 directionally like the idea that of America first of fighting these culture
    0:58:49 war battles of not caring about norms and institutions and you know not caring
    0:58:53 about like the traditional you know free markets and free people ethos of the
    0:58:58 80s and 90s two thousand Republicans like all of that is gone right and it was
    0:59:03 already going to be gone even if Kamala Harris had won because that’s just what
    0:59:08 that parties are just parties are not actually permanent coherent ideological
    0:59:14 groups they are a reflection of a group of people and that group of people can
    0:59:17 change over time and I might change them up might change then the nature of the
    0:59:23 party and Trump has massively changed the makeup of the Republican Party and as
    0:59:29 a result it will be in his image for at least you know until the next realignment
    0:59:32 for probably a quarter century or something so I just think that is what’s
    0:59:36 happening I think that there will be individual fights on the on the on the
    0:59:39 outskirts right like you mentioned this Wall Street Journal article which was an
    0:59:43 attack on him over tariffs and and pushing for lower interest rates given
    0:59:48 threats for inflation you know if we get into a more normal future in 2028 where
    0:59:51 Trump doesn’t try to run again and like you know there’s a primary there will be
    0:59:55 some people who are like Trumpy or pro-tariff and there’ll be some people
    0:59:58 who are more traditional free market conservative on trade and and on some of
    1:00:04 those issues you know it won’t always fall on the Trump side of the line I
    1:00:07 think that there will still be skirmish little skirmishes in the ideological
    1:00:13 coalition but directionally things are to Trump and I and people nobody is gonna
    1:00:17 stand up to him except for people like Mitch McConnell who are already one foot
    1:00:22 out the door and that’s basically seen for like a decade now do you have any
    1:00:29 idea about what happened during these confirmations to people like Lisa
    1:00:34 Murkowski Susan Collins Todd Young in Indiana or I should say from Indiana who
    1:00:41 was really anti-tulsi for instance I mean is it straight like doxxing
    1:00:45 threatening you with a primary like Bill Cassidy already voted to convict him so
    1:00:52 I don’t this idea that he promised Cassidy to essentially RFK Jr. to not be
    1:00:56 who he is right and to say you can be my dad and you can check in on me every day
    1:01:00 and make sure that I’m not gonna do these things when even the CDC site
    1:01:04 already has information about the flu down so obviously that’s not gonna hold
    1:01:14 up like what level of threatening or trolling was going on to make people
    1:01:18 like this lay down and vote for every single one of these nominees yeah and
    1:01:23 the Joni Ernst thing with eggs that was the was really you know I think the test
    1:01:27 case yeah what are the tip for this I mean I was in I so I worked in Iowa in a
    1:01:33 couple campaigns I was in Iowa like during when all this was happening it was
    1:01:38 like about and I was like at an event with a lot of Republicans and and you
    1:01:42 know it was like in between when she had spoken out and when she had kind of
    1:01:46 fooled it right and there to us to a person I could not find a person at
    1:01:49 this event that thought she was gonna hold the line eventually and there were
    1:01:52 some very pro Joni people there right and and to people who like her and wish
    1:01:55 she would have held the line I got across the board Maga to people who are
    1:02:03 like me who are who are lapsed everybody thought no because the voters wanted you
    1:02:08 know want Trump to get what he wants like that’s what they want and so she
    1:02:12 was just getting totally bullied online phone calls and I think the other
    1:02:16 senators really saw that I think in addition to that I do think these
    1:02:19 private meetings Trump and then basically said to the nominees just tell
    1:02:22 these people whatever they want to hear who cares we’ll figure it out on the
    1:02:26 back end right again because these are not rigid ideologues like it’s it’s does
    1:02:33 not what Trump is so I think that helped you know give a rationale to some of
    1:02:38 these senators to do the easy thing and I also just I just fundamentally don’t
    1:02:42 think anybody was gonna actually stand up besides McConnell who’s one step out
    1:02:45 the door and Rikowski and Collins will choose their spots because they have
    1:02:50 kind of a different sort of brand everybody else I was with Gates at a
    1:02:55 TPS I go to the TPS a annual gathering every year to just kind of well you live
    1:02:59 in Fox world I don’t I want to make sure I’m not in my little bubble my little
    1:03:05 resistance you know form feels like a very place to test it out no it’s fine
    1:03:09 the types of people go to those sorts of things are the people you got to worry
    1:03:11 about are the people who are alone in their basement getting radicalized
    1:03:15 honestly like people that show up to a gathering I’ve at least I found them to
    1:03:19 be relatively sociable I had a few people shit talk me but but I never felt
    1:03:23 unsafe they’re not bad to your face I’ve always found everyone is like I feel so
    1:03:27 terrible that I’ve been calling you the c-word online for three years and I’m
    1:03:31 like well stop doing that and I’m so nice do you want a picture that’s
    1:03:35 hilarious so anyway I was with Gates and I was like why did you drop like I was
    1:03:40 like because I think that you are gonna get through and Gates was like well John
    1:03:47 Curtis the guy from Utah who replaced Mitt told me and I wasn’t it wasn’t an
    1:03:50 interview so I wasn’t taping outside forget the exact line but it was little
    1:03:54 it was something like I would sacrifice my children before I would confirm you
    1:03:58 it was some like very ostentatious comment about and so Gates was like I
    1:04:02 didn’t think you know it was clear I was gonna get through and I said to him I
    1:04:06 was like Curtis would have folded and I like really think I’m right about that
    1:04:10 like I do I do think that there is a lot of behind-the-scenes people you know
    1:04:13 trying to use a little influence they can without creating and get any
    1:04:18 backlash like when push comes to shove like the voters are where their voters
    1:04:24 are and so like that is why you’re not saying anybody like the top young so the
    1:04:30 world actually stand up yeah I’m popular opinion but I don’t think that you have
    1:04:34 to do everything that the voters want like they picked a person who can also
    1:04:38 think for themselves who broadly represents their interests right and
    1:04:42 understands their constituency but can’t think for themselves so if you pick you
    1:04:48 know one of 15 people that you don’t think is unqualified for to kind of lay
    1:04:53 down your marker in the sand and say your children will be vaccinated or we
    1:04:57 will not have someone who thinks Assad wasn’t really that bad that that might
    1:05:03 be good for you long-term but I’m also not running for public opinion me I say
    1:05:06 that to the Republicans I talked to all the time and fewer and fewer of them
    1:05:10 actually want to talk to me so you know maybe that’s part of my why my
    1:05:14 influence isn’t working but I’m like you don’t have to be me I’m not asking
    1:05:20 Republican senators or congressmen to troll Trump online you know to try to
    1:05:26 own him you know to like fight everything like there’s a huge space between me and
    1:05:31 like total submission and it’s just like they’ve kind of decided to abandon that
    1:05:36 whole space like there’s just nobody that has decided to try to occupy that and
    1:05:39 succeed and I think that’s wrong I do I think people could I mean Collins I
    1:05:44 guess as the as the example as the example like I don’t really love Susan
    1:05:47 Collins everything that she’s done but she did manage to occupy that space in
    1:05:51 between total never-trumper and total Trump’s sycophant and it worked for her
    1:05:55 she was like the only senator well this cycle a couple happened but before you
    1:05:59 know during the first Trump she was the only senator that won and went the
    1:06:05 opposite way as the state you know in 2016 and 2020 yeah you’re saying that I
    1:06:14 wasted my dollars on Sarah Gideon no I don’t know if you gave any money to
    1:06:23 Jamie Harrison no I have a friend who is a doctor and loves politics but isn’t in
    1:06:26 the day-to-day insanity she’ll send me like a New York Times article the day
    1:06:30 after and she’ll be like can you believe this and I’m like I need to talk to you
    1:06:33 about how fast the news cycle goes but she’ll regularly send me a link to
    1:06:37 various Democrats and she goes worth my money I’m like well how much money like
    1:06:42 if you want it if you want to be spreading $10 all over the place go
    1:06:48 ahead for it but Amy McGrath is never gonna be the senator that takes a Mitch
    1:06:52 McConnell seat okay thank you so much for being here that’s it for this
    1:06:57 episode thank you for joining us Tim and the raging moderates crew our
    1:07:01 producers are David Toledo and Chinane Onike our technical director is Drew
    1:07:05 Burroughs you can now find Raging Moderates on its own feed every Tuesday
    1:07:09 that’s right it’s own feed there you’ll get exclusive interviews with smart
    1:07:13 voices and politics like our latest guest congressman Pat Ryan follow us
    1:07:18 wherever you get your podcasts also follow Tim in all of Bulwark world and
    1:07:21 thank you for being with us well just me Scott’s not here but he loves you from
    1:07:28 afar I loved it good to be here we’ll do that again soon peace bye

    Jessica and Tim Miller break down the biggest political moves of the week. Trump is making waves on the world stage, claiming a breakthrough in Ukraine talks with Putin—so what’s his real endgame? Back at home, he’s throwing a legal lifeline to NYC Mayor Eric Adams, but is that “help” actually a political liability? Plus, where do Anti-Trump Republicans stand in a party still dominated by him? 

    Follow Jessica Tarlov, @JessicaTarlov. 

    Follow Tim Miller, @Timodc.

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