My First Million - ANNOUNCEMENT: A Special Series Drops Tomorrow

Episode Date: September 17, 2021

We're excited to announce that tomorrow we are releasing a 3-part series from one of Sam's favorite history podcasts, How to Take Over the World. In this episode Sam (@theSamParr) and Shaan (@ShaanVP) talk with Ben Wilson (@BenWilsonTweets), the creator of the How to Take Over the World Podcast (@HTTOTW), about his research process and they all share favorite moments from the series. --------- * How to Take Over the World - https://www.httotw.com/ * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas.

So first of all, I want to say very excited about this new deal. And I was already a big fan of my first million. So very serendipitous that we found each other like this. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road, let's travel, never looking back. All right, we have a special episode by Ben Wilson.

This is a three-part series on Thomas Edison. We discovered this podcast about two or three months ago and freaking loved it. It had very small listenership. Both Sean and I binged, listened to all of them. His name is Ben Wilson. The podcast is called How to Take Over the World. Ben has allowed us to air this episode and the next two. So this is a three-part series on Thomas Edison.

He's allowed us to air it on our feed just because we like it. So his podcast, it only had a few hundred listeners at the time. But we thought this was so cool, Sean and I. And it's about a similar topic that we talk about. So we have this topic called or this segment called Billy of the Week, billionaire of the week. This one is on Thomas Edison. We loved Ben's podcast so much. We just said, hey, man, let us just air this on our feed because it's so good.

So it's called How to Take Over the World. This episode is on Thomas Edison. He's got a few other episodes or a few other folks on his feed. He's got Thomas Edison. I believe he has Alexander the Great, the Rothschild's family. It's really, really cool. I'm a history buff, and so I'm happy that he was cool and let us air this.

We're doing it. None other than just we think it's good, and we want you guys to check it out. So here it is. Enjoy the episode. There's part two and part three on our feed. Check it out. Sean, we have something special.

What is it? I'm just going to let him talk because his mic is so damn good. So, Ben, why don't you say a few words to the people? Let him hear that silky smooth voice. Yeah, this is me. I'm Ben Wilson. Thanks for having me on, guys. I appreciate it. So about eight weeks ago or 10 weeks ago, maybe, I think I message Sean.

I've been listening to this podcast called How to Take Over the World. I think I randomly discovered it because I type in like Napoleon on the Apple podcast. And I saw this podcast. Yeah, as one does. Yeah, as one does because I'm a weirdo. And Ben, you had like no reviews, I think. And I clicked that one episode in your intro music was amazing. And Sean and I, Sean in particular, as a fan.

of Connor McGregor and I sent it to Sean and I go, dude, you got to listen to this. This is amazing. And I binged your whole episode. And then we actually talked about you on our podcast. And I think your listeners like, shut up. How many listeners did you have before we discussed you? Yeah, it was a handful of thousand and I at least two X. So, so thank you for that. I appreciate it. And I have to, I think you're downplaying it. I thought you told me you were having, you had hundreds a day and then you got many thousands a day. Yeah, yeah. If you're looking at where, From a daily perspective, yeah, that's right. It was about 200 per day to many thousands per day.

So it's been a big jump. That was basically Sam was road tripping across America. And so I think he was listening to a bunch of audiobooks and then podcasts. And Sam, you don't listen to a ton of podcasts normally or you only listen to like true crime type of stuff. So you like the story, story style podcast. And you're a big biography guy. And I always love when you tell me like, oh, dude, I read this biography about like Henry Ford. And did you know? And I'm like, no, dude, I didn't know any of this. I don't read these books.

Like, I want to, yeah, but like, you know, I want an extra eight hours in a day. And once I get that, I'm going to totally read all these books. And so you've always been a pretty voracious reader and you love biographies. Let's just call it what it is. Biographies of great men, mostly. It's like people have done amazing things, either good or bad, whatever it is. And so you were saying, oh, dude, I listen to this thing. And I don't know what you said, but I think you might have mentioned the intro music.

And so I was like, oh, let me just go listen to this. And so I had to go drop somebody off at the airport. And, you know, so I turned a task that's kind of a pain in the ass errand of like an hour drive, suck in traffic, drive back. So like, okay, this is two hours of listening time. And I listened to the episodes you did, Ben, about Thomas Edison. And so we should say, the name of the podcast is how to take over the world. Baller name.

Second thing, intro music, baller. And then the first ones I listened to this, Edison one was so good. I literally kept driving. So I had done the two hours, but it's a three-partum, so it's three hours. So I just went, I was like, let me go run an errand. And so I went to the grocery store so I could just finish it in one go. And I want to say two things. So there's a bunch of stuff about Edison that I didn't know.

That's kind of crazy. And I kind of want to talk about some of those things. But the important part for people listening to this is we made a deal with you. We said, look, this content is amazing. We loved it and we think our fans are going to love it. So we're going to cherry pick our favorite episodes from your feed and we're going to play it on our feed, which is going to be, for our audience, it's going to be an easy way to listen to it. But then the second thing is it's going to get you a whole bunch of new people. And so that's what, I guess like that's an announcement that we're making here today is that that's what to expect.

We're going to put the Edison episodes up next, all three that you can binge Netflix style. And then based on how people feel about that, we might do more of this in the future. So that's the big news. Sam, what did I miss? Nothing. Ben, we've been rambling for four minutes. How do you come up with all this stuff? Are you just like reading biographies and then just like taking notes and regurgitating?

Yeah. So first of all, I want to say very excited about this new deal. And I was already a big fan of my first million. So very serendipitous that we found each other like this. And one thing I have to correct you on Sam is you said I had no reviews. And when you said that, my mom actually called me. And she was like, okay. So I really thought that I had given you a review on Apple podcast.

But Sam said you didn't have any. So what did I do wrong? Can you walk me through this? And I had to tell her like, no, he didn't mean literally zero. Like, I had reviews. How many did you? I guess I don't want to play it up too much. I kind of want to, the storyline I'm going here is that we discovered you.

I don't know if that's entirely true or not. That's fair. That's the truth we run with. That is fair. And yeah, so I had under 100 of views. Now I think I've got over 200. So I think it's fair. Sam, you get all the credit.

You discovered me. Absolutely. Take it and run away. You do all the work and we get all the credit. That's what I'm looking for. In terms of my process, yeah. So this thing kind of started out as a hobby just because I, like Sam, like reading biographies, like learning about these great people throughout history and kind of how they did

what they did. So I decided early on, I didn't want to just read one biography for each person because then you're getting someone else's perspective. So I decided I always want at least two data points. And if I can, I want one of those data points to be autobiographical so that I can see what they thought about, you know, themselves. So I read at least a couple biographies and usually some, it's usually like three or four books for each major biography that I do. And then I'm just taking notes the whole way through at the end of each chapter and then adding some my own thoughts at the end in terms of analysis and what I took away from it and what I think people can learn from it. One thing I love with this is, so I like audio because I can.

do it while I'm going out, I'm driving, I'm doing other things. But audio books kind of put me to sleep. I don't know how you do it, Sam, but audio books themselves, it really depends on how the person reading it is. And even then, reading a book is sort of like this, like, kind of hypnotic thing that happens. But when what you did was nice, which is that you read the books, but then you told a story. And it's like audio first. It's like you, you're not just reading off of a page what was meant to be like read silently in somebody's head. You're actually just like kind of doing the summary yourself. So it saved me the time, but it didn't bore me, which is like the sweet spot, I think. Yeah. And there's always that push and pull, right, between trying to give enough

detail that people can like make their own takeaways. But I try and keep it short enough that that it's audio first and that it's engaging the whole time. And I'm glad to hear you say that. It sounds like it's, I'm doing an okay job at least. No, you're doing a good job. Let's talk about some of the things from the, from the Edison episode. So some of the takeaways. We had mentioned a little bit of this before, but after going and listened to it, here are some of the things that I thought were pretty baller. Okay, so here's my, I'm going to give you three of my little favorite nuggets from it. The first one is this like train story. So young Edison was a hustler.

And I always thought of Edison as kind of this Einstein genius, just like a guy in a lab, you know, and he never leaves the room. It's just piles of books all around him. That's all he ever experiences. But actually, Edison was kind of a businessman hustler in addition to an inventor. So he, as a kid, I think, a teenager, maybe, I don't know how old he was, but like, he gets on the train. And he basically does two things. First, he notices an arbitrage. He's like, oh, I can buy fruits in one area.

Was it fruits? I don't remember what it was. He's like, I'm going to buy something. Yeah. I'm going to buy berries in one town. I'm going to come back and sell it for a profit on the other side. And then I'm going to give free berries to the driver so I don't have to pay the fee or whatever. I'm like allowed to do this like smuggling operation.

And I was like, oh, that's cool. I didn't know he had that like hustle to him. And that's like the original arbitrage. Right. then the second thing he was doing was like he starts printing newspapers he brings a printing press on the train and like eventually like blows up his whole setup on the train so he's kind of this like mad genius inventor like he literally blows it up like there's an explosion exactly so I thought the train thing was cool because I didn't know we had that kind of like what seems like just like a a street smart kid in a hustler mentality not just high IQ super genius

And the thing from the episode from the train that I really love is the battle. So people were following the Civil War. At the time, that was like the gossip column. Like everyone wanted to know exactly what was happening in the Civil War. And so the battle Shiloh happens, which is a huge battle in the Civil War. And everyone is waiting to hear how it went. And so he gets, he gets the idea that like, oh, people are really going to want these newspapers. And so he buys up the entire stock.

He walks into the newspaper office and is like, hey, I want them all. And then he was like a real black market guy. So he bribed someone to telegram ahead to all these cities on his train stop saying news from the battle Shiloh is coming on the evening paper. But we're not going to say what happened. So people really want these newspapers. And so he buys all the newspapers for five cents, the entire stock and sells them for like

a couple dollars. And in one day makes like a mini fortune, right, for a 12 year old, which is how old he was. So yeah, he was this little like Mark Twain type character. Gangster. Yeah. So I liked that one. The second one I liked was the story of how he created the phonograph. I don't know if it's the phonograph, but basically he was hard of hearing, right?

So he's like partially deaf. Is that right? From an explosion in this last thing that he was doing, right? Didn't he like when he had an experiment and it blew up and it made him deaf? So that's not confirmed. No one knows exactly what made him deaf. That's kind of my conjecture. I think all these like explosions he experienced in his childhood probably had something to do with it though.

Yeah. And so he he's and you described. I forgot what's called the insomnia crew. What's the name of his crew? Basically it's this group of kind of like inventors. And they're kind of like hackers of today, right? But they're and they're like nocturnal. So they're just like working all night every night.

And it's sort of like a little bit of a party. And they're like they kind of work until they're sort of like, you know, you get a little delusional at night. And they're like, yeah, that's when our creative juices start flowing. and they're all just like working on their projects late at night, this insomnia crew. And from what I remember in the episode was like, because he was hard of hearing to like kind of hear music better, or he was like kind of like sensing the vibrations. And his brain sort of worked out, oh, if vibrations let me feel the music, then what if I created vibrations would I create music? And that was like sort of the aha moment where in sort of like the epiphany where he realized, you know, created what eventually became kind of like a record player, right?

which is like, let's scratch this vinyl and then that vibration will create a sound. And that sound can be like printed basically as the music. Yeah. I, you know, that creation of recorded sound, I like to think of inventions in terms of how far forward does it pull the future, right? So like if you think about Steve Jobs and the iPhone, the smartphone, he probably pulled the future forward like five, 10 years, right? If Steve Jobs had never existed, the smartphone was still going to happen at some point. right? I think with the phonograph with recorded sound, he pulled the future forward like 50 years. And so you see it in their reaction when they do it for the first time, his chief engineer,

his reaction says, my God in heaven. Like he's just shocked. Like he just like can't believe. They have no way to like even process what they just discovered. That is one of my favorite stories from his life. Yeah. So there's a bunch of these. Sam, what was your kind of favorite one from this? What was the milk thing? The, wait, what did you? Oh, he only ate milk and bread, right? Yeah, he would go on like, yeah, that's it. He would just drink milk and he would only eat like four ounces per meal. He was psycho like that.

Yeah, and then there was another story where he basically, right around where I'm staying in New York, he wanted to have a power grid. He invented electricity and he invented the light bulb and he's like, but in order for the lights to work, we need electricity. And so he brought all these politicians and the mayor and a couple of other folk into a dark room at night. and then he flips a switch and he goes and then it was like a full buffet there and like a beautiful dinner I think and he goes

now do you see how we could see at night everyone in the city should feel this way but they can only feel this way if we have the power grid and so he was a showman right did I tell that story correctly that's exactly it and like for six months they had basically been lobbying to let them build this power grid and nothing had happened and then in one night the next day everyone was like okay yep go ahead

yeah so so you have this person who's As a youngster is sort of like a schemer and a hustler. He's basically, him and Elon are similar. And yeah, exactly. And so then he is in a big inventor. So he creates some like game changing inventions, whether it's recorded sound, the light bulb. You know, basically like also the telephone, like Alexander Graham Bell gets a lot of credit for the telephone. But it seemed like from what you were saying, like Edison really made the phone like usable.

Like he was he wasn't necessarily the inventor, but he's the one who made the kind of the phone that actually worked that we all like. That's right. And that was like a key, key invention. So those are game changers. And then as a business person, you know, the company he created essentially became General Electric, right, GE. And so, so, you know, pretty prolific life span. And of course, invented the word hello, which is, you know, brought the word,

the phrase hello into into pop culture. So I think, you know, that was really, really impressive to me. Yeah, he did. It's crazy the volume of the stuff he did. And as you said, Elon, I think, is a good comparison. And, you know, it's funny because people set up this rivalry between Tesla and Edison. And so it's funny that Elon Musk named his company Tesla when he himself has admitted, he has said an interview is like, yeah, you're right.

I'm a lot more like Edison than I am like Tesla. And they are very similar in a lot of ways. And it's kind of the cool thing to say, like, oh, Tesla was the real inventor. He was the greatest inventor of all time. I mean. And you kind of said, no, I don't know. I think that's, I think you said your quote was that's laughable. So, yeah, Tesla has one really great invention to his name, which is alternating current, which was a big discovery, but like three other people discovered it independently in the next year. So like, when you talk about how far forward you're pulling the future, it was like a year. It was like six months for Tesla. And I don't want to like bag on him, but it's just he wasn't nearly the inventor that the Edison was. I think if you really stack it up. So when is this, when is this, people are listening to this today? Let's say they're listening to this episode right now when it came out.

When's, when are the Edison episodes going live the next day? Let's push him out the next day. So if you're listening to this now, the next day, the Edison war and put all three out. You can binge it like a Netflix show. See if you like it. Me and Sam are both into these like oddball prodigy phenom type. Sam likes to go historical. I specifically love young people who did, who kind of like, you know, excelled in their field.

That's like my thing. I love to go on YouTube rabbit holes for that. And so if you like this kind of like oddball greatness, I would definitely, I would definitely be, definitely check it out. Let us know what you think. You could tweet at me or Sam and let us know.

It'll be like, yay or nay, if you guys want more or less of these. And yeah, let's see what happens. But I dig it. Good job with these. Who's the next person you're going to feature?

Well, I think we're both lobbying for you to do Ross Oldbright, right? Yeah, what did you think of that idea? We texted you this yesterday. Yeah, I, yeah, absolutely. So I should say I already have a couple scripts in production. So he's not going to be next. So next is a guy by the name of Laslo Polgar who this is like a selfish episode for me

because I just had a kid. I just had a daughter nine months ago. And so this guy, Laslo Polgar claimed that he came up with a strategy, a technique by which you could, a foolproof way to raise a genius. Right. So he had three kids. He's like, I'm going to raise them all to be geniuses. and he had three daughters and they were the three greatest women's chess players of all time.

And so it's like, oh, it seems like this might work. So I kind of break down his life, his technique, how he raised his daughters to be geniuses. So that's the next one that's coming out. But Ross Albright, we're going to make it happen soon. All right. All right. We'll get you out of here. People will be hearing more from you.

So this is Ben, not the Ben I'm normally referencing. That's my right-hand man, Ben. That's Ben Levy. This is Ben Wilson. So two Ben's in my life now. And glad to have you doing this with us, man. I'm pumped. Here's my prediction.

I'm going to go on the record and say this now. I believe, and I will also make my best effort, I believe your podcast is going to be twice as big as ours within two years. That's my prediction for this thing. I think we discovered you, Sam discovered you. I think we're giving you the boost. We're slingshotting you, but your content and the niche is so good that I think when people get this is going to fly.

So I predict in two years you're going to be bigger than us. I agree with you, except I think six months. Oh, nice. Okay, he ups the Annie. Yeah, I think the thing is, is that, okay, the history, Ben, his shit is amazing and also his category is so big. How big is this category, right? Because history seems like a niche thing, right? Like, you know, history, boring class in school. But give us some idea. How big is you think the appetite for this? I know there's hardcore history. I don't know any of his numbers. Do you know any of his? I don't know his numbers. I just know that his episodes like will regulate. do, Dan Carlin's amazing, by the way. He's one of my big inspirations, but his episodes regularly get ranked in the top 100,

I think even the top 10 for podcast episodes. Which means it's doing over a million downloads per episode, if you're in the top 10, that's my guess. But I don't think that this is going to fall entirely into history. I think it's going to, this is like stuff you should know territory. Right. So maybe that's pop culture. I don't know what's called.

Well, in my frustration with a lot of history podcasts, is that, and now I'm going to get a lot of hate mail for this, but it's a lot of history nerds talking about history. And like, I just don't think that's what people want, you know, like they don't want to get bogged down in those details. Like you were saying, Sean, like, they want to know, what do I need to know? How does it apply to me? Why is this interesting to me? So that's why I try and focus on. And yeah, I think, I hope it has some crossover appeal. I want to know, here's what I want. I want to, while I'm listening to it, I want to feel completely inadequate with my life. Right? So I want to be so inspired that I feel like everything I've done is a tiny speck of,

of, you know, I'm a fart compared to this, this person. And by the way, there's actually a quote in this where Edison feels that way. He's like, oh, I'm, what did he say? He's like, I'm already 25 and like, all I've done is this. And like, they're like, dude, you fucking like invented the light. But what are you talking about? He's like, no, my life, my healthy life is half done and I've only done whatever. You know, he was looking at, I think it was Tesla.

Who was he looking at Michael Faraday, who was an inventor before? Michael Faraday. Yeah, Faraday, the physicist. And he's like, Faraday has already done X, XYZ. Oh my God. I'm so behind. And it's like ironic, right? You're Edison.

And then he was talking about, or you were, I think you were talking about Caesar. Julius Caesar once like saw a statue of who was it? Alexander the Great. Yep. And it had the same thing. He's like,

oh, you know, like, what am I? Just the Emperor of Rome? Like Alexander the Great by my age was ruling, you know, like the universe basically.

And it's like, oh, okay. You know, lesson learned, no matter who you are, no matter how much you've made it, you sort of, you can always,

it's all relative. You'll always find the bigger, batter, faster, you know, version of you, even if Caesar. And if Caesar and Edison felt it, you know, it's not completely normal for you as a product manager at Facebook to feel the same. Yeah, that's how I feel. Oh, go ahead. I say what you're going to say. And then we're going to wrap up. Cool. I was just going to say that's actually the reason I started doing this is because I would read these, these biographies and I'd come out of it just feeling like I'd been injected with bowl testosterone or something and gorilla testosterone. And, uh, uh, gorilla testosterone. And, uh,

just like ready to take over the world, you know, the name of the podcast. And I'm glad to hear that other people get that same feeling when they listen. Well, I'm happy we did this. This is going to go live like the next day. If you're listening to this, just give it 24 hours. It'll be live. Awesome. Okay.

See you, Ben. All right. Thanks, guys. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On a road. Let's travel.

Never looking back. Black lives.