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

Episode Date: September 30, 2022

Episode 369: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Producer Ben (@BenWilsonTweets) take a turn with One Question Friday... instead of a question they discuss traits of conquerors from yesterday and today. ----- Links: * My First Million * How To Take Over The World * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. * Want more insights like MFM? Check out Shaan's newsletter. ------ Show Notes: (02:25) - lessons from Hitler (10:25) - addictive personalities (18:10) - charismatic people (26:25) - bias to action ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

That is what all of them did. That's what Napoleon did. That's what Hitler did. That's what Caesar did. Is this like taking tons of resources and focusing them on a very small point and taking lots of gravity and kind of narrowing the focus? Hey, my first million fans. This is producer Ben.

I'm subbing in this week because Sean is out with some family stuff. But for one question Friday today, Sam and I sat down to discuss how to take over the world some things that I have learned from studying lives of great achievers and conquerors throughout history. And Sam and I just got to talking about history and great people in our own lives and what we've learned from them. So it's a little bit of a more random and less focused on Question Friday, but I think there's some really good stuff in it that I think you'll really enjoy. So I asked you traits of conquerors. And the reason I'm thinking about that is I just finished this like epic book. It's like 1,400 pages long. It's called the, what is it called?

I think it's the rise and fall of the Third Reich. Have you heard of that? Yeah. So it's kind of one of the seminal texts on Hitler and Nazism. Yes. And it's crazy. And I was reading it and I was like, this is nuts that.

The reason I read it was I wanted to figure out why would a country, you know, be so complicit with such bad things. And I was like, what on earth was about this Hitler dude that like convinced all these people to do all these bad things? And so I learned and it was wild. And I started and basically it all kind of came down to like he was in prison one time because he like tried to like basically was a glorified protester.

Like I do, he kind of like stormed the it was like storming the capital kind of like type of thing. And he was arrested for it. And in prison he wrote his book called mine conf. And in the book he wrote like I've recently discovered that it is my obligation to lead the German. people to greatness. And he, like, dedicated his life to that. And it was wild that there was, like, a decision to be made. And, like, it was almost perfect execution. I mean, you know, it wasn't in the end because he didn't achieve his whatever he was trying to achieve. But, like, he got so freaking far, so past what, like, what I ever would have thought. And at the time,

when Nazis came to power, or right before they came to power, they were the freaks of Germany. Like, at the time, they were, like, they had a lot of homosexuals and their, in the crew, which was like not looked on nicely, you know, at that time. They had like a bunch of artists, a bunch of like oddballs. People who were like had a lot of anti-social behavior. Like they dressed funny. Like people were like, who are these guys are a joke. No one's have to take these idiots seriously.

And it, you know, it changed quickly. And so anyway, I thought that was fascinating about conquerors and like these types of people and like how on earth they came to be. And so I wanted to ask you like, what are some common traits amongst those? Do you feel weird learning lessons from the life of Hitler? No, because I, well, I'm not necessarily learning a lesson that I want to emulate, like, but that said, I do think you can learn good lessons from bad people. Like, that's, you definitely can learn a good lesson from a bad person. There's no doubt about that. Like, you can learn, like, everyone's bad in someone's eyes, but like, I can read about Napoleon and learn about, like, war and strategy and apply that to, like, business. So I can, I can always learn good lessons from bad people. But I do, I just wanted to learn, like, why did we do this? Why did so many people go along with this crap?

So here's the thing. Here's a lesson I learned from Sean, Mr. Beast, and Hitler. Okay? There's your headline. Oh, my God. So this was so fascinating to me. So we're do this Camp MFF thing and we're at Cameron Indoor Stadium. And they decide to do a half court shootoff between Sean and Mr. Beast for $10,000, right?

And Sean Which basically Mr. Beast goes Sean, if you make a shot at Halfcore, I'll give you $10,000 and Sean goes, well, you give me $10,000 in Bitcoin? He goes, sure.

Let's do it. So, yeah, I think in the end, told him that he'd give him 10 grand actually in pennies. I don't know if he ended up doing that or not. But so they're going to go

start shooting at Half Court. And Sean turns to the camera and does his cheesiest, like he's joking around, Mr. Beast impression. And he goes, I'm about to shoot from Half Court with Mr. Beast. And whichever one of us makes it first is going to make $10,000, right? Totally hamming it up, kind of poking fun at himself, right?

The funny thing is, when we post the video, it actually popped off and went viral on TikTok. His little... Really? Yeah, yeah. That was one of our videos that is, I think, in the millions of views. If not, it's in the hundreds of thousands of views on Reels and on TikTok. And what it realized in my mind, what clicked in my mind when I saw that is, oh, like, it's actually not that hard to figure out what you're supposed to do to be successful in this kind of

stuff. Just very few people are willing to commit to the bit fully, right? Like, Mr. Beast fully commits to the bit. Like, he actually does that every time. He looks at the camera. I'm about to give $100,000 away to these people, if they eat a cockroach or whatever he says, right? and he fully commits to it.

And Hitler is the same thing. Like you go and you watch those speeches and he's ridiculous, right? He's gesticulating. He's yelling. He's screaming. But he like fully committed to being Hitler to like representing, you know, German greatness and the Aryan race or whatever. But like he didn't care.

Everyone thought he looked ridiculous outside of Germany, right? Like tons of people mocked and made fun of Hitler. He was very mockable, very easy to make fun of. And you can easily make fun of. And you can easily make fun of. of Mr. Beasts and the thing he does. Sorry Mr. Beasters for comparing you to Hitler. But like, that idea of just like, throw away your shame and embarrassment.

Whatever you're trying to do, just fully commit to the bit and you're going to be really successful. I think that's very true. Dude, I, and I want to talk about like other people and what they had in common. But like the, like, I was like emotional reading this thing. So basically Joseph Goebbels. Is it Goebles? Gerbles is that you're not.

Burbles. He was like head of propaganda. And this guy, like, if you Google him, he looks like the most evil person on earth. And he was a horrible guy. And he wrote in a journal throughout this whole process. Like he was journaling like crazy. And so his book cited his journal. And they tell the story of basically Hitler has just killed himself. And Joseph Goebel, Gerbils and his wife have, I think, five or six kids. And they write in their diary and tell people, they're like, well, we're going to go and kill our kids right now, then we're going to kill ourselves because us and our children belong to the furor

to the Third Reich. And if the Third Reich won't exist, we do not deserve to exist either. And I was like, that's just like the worst crime. I mean, I don't know about the worst because they did so many horrible things, but I mean, they just went and killed their children, six of them, all below 12 years old.

And I was like, this is the power that charisma or whatever. it was had over people that like they went and committed i mean all they obviously we killed or not we but they killed five or six million people there was it was horrible but like that act is even more intimate in some regards and i remember reading that i'm like holy crap i cannot believe that this person this evil guy got all these people to do this crazy shit it was that was one of the more emotional periods uh of that book yeah that's tough that's tough okay let's talk a little bit like kind of military strategy and good strategy. Let's pivot from the darkness a little bit. So common attributes of

great conquerors. So one of the things that I think is interesting, have you heard of Blitzkrieg? It basically is a, it's a German thing where it says like when they attack, they kind of go all out for short periods, right? Like the opposite of what World War I was, wasn't it? Yes. So it means lightning attacks or lightning strikes and the idea is it's these short quick like attacks before you know you shock the enemy and and go faster than they expect what's interesting to me is that blitzkrieg is was sort of a marketing stunt it wasn't anything that the nazis talked about internally it's really something like an american invention to explain german success what the germans actually talked about was this word, oh, I can't remember the word in German, but it essentially means

gravity. Looking it up. Shwerpunct. And it means gravity. And so it wasn't just that the attacks were fast, although they were, but it was actually like massed strikes. So they attacked fast, yes, but they were able to sustain that attack and follow up on it for a long time, which is actually the same thing that Napoleon did. So in the Napoleonic Wars, before he came along, people were stretching out their troops further and further to try and flank their enemies. And then he's like, well, if everyone's going to do that,

I'm actually just going to pack all my troops in the middle and then like punch a hole in the middle of their lines. And I think, like, to go back to the Amazon example, like I think that has big applications in business as well. Well, haven't you heard the phrase blitz scale? There you go. That's Reed Hoffman, right? Yeah.

Yeah, of it's not just going fast, although fast is important, but it's that like focusing tons of resources on a small focal point. So like to go back to the Amazon example, it's starting with bookstores, right? It's starting with just books. Like I'm going to take tons of resources and just focus on this tiny place and then follow up on that victory. I'm going to win books first and then I'm going to follow up on that with other marginal victories. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so that was interesting to me that like that is what all. All of them did.

That's what Napoleon did. That's what Hitler did. That's what Caesar did. Is this like taking tons of resources and focusing them on a very small point and taking lots of gravity and kind of narrowing the focus? So that was one interesting takeaway from me. What else did they have that they did a lot of like conquerors, which I don't know even know how we would define a conqueror, but there's like the stereotypes of like a

Napoleon. I don't know like what would a good American leader example of this would be. like whoever we describe it as, what else do they have in common? Or even the business people like Edison or something. Yeah. I mean, so for me, the number one, you know, you mentioned Edison. And the one I think I think of is total obsession, right? With Edison, the big thing that clicked for me was he was inventing so much that

he was basically not eating, super skinny, super gaunt. He wasn't washing his clothes. He smelled bad. He was barely sleeping. he would like invent and tinker until he fell asleep at his workbench and then he would like wake up in the morning and like start inventing again his family was worried about him and i was like oh man like substitute inventing for meth or heroin and it would be very clear that this guy was an addict that he was a junkie and i that's when it clicked for me oh all of these people who are super successful have addictive

personalities it just so happens that they're addicted to something that is considered positive was he born that way you think realized people are they born this way I think so. And if you look at the numbers, people who achieve a lot, CEOs, you think that they don't have problems of substance abuse, right? Because these are highly functioning people. But it actually turns out that they have higher rates of addiction and substance abuse than the general population when they study it. And so I think they are born with this propensity to addiction. And they're the kinds of people that, like, they could end up. you know, conquering a vast European empire, or they get hooked on laudanum when they're like a teenager and end up a junkie on the streets, right? Like, they're going to end up addicted to something. Let's just hope it's something positive. Dude, have you read, have you ever heard of this book called the First Rate Madness, I think it's called? No.

So this author has this premise where he was like, in times of like stability, a non-mental ill, mentally ill leader is needed, but in times of turmoil, which includes like the American Civil War or includes like someone who's like trying to dominate and conquer or it includes like MLK, you know, trying to like during the civil rights movement is like a non or sorry, a mentally ill leader during those periods is actually ideal and they tend to be better. And the author explains like, well, first let's define mentally ill. And it's like a propensity. to be addicted to drugs and alcohol or like huge bouts of depression or in Lincoln's case, he actually tried to kill himself like two or three times before he became president or Churchill.

Churchill was like, I've thought about killing myself a ton, but I'm just too big of a sissy in order to do it. And so he was an alcoholic. And so like they basically just talk about how the great, great leaders during troubled periods, majority of them have mental illness. Yeah, and this is something again to go back to Mr. Beast that I actually don't know if I'll just say this. We'll see if I should cut it or not. But I was talking with him and he was like, yeah, I can't really gamble because I'm kind of a gambling addict. And he talked about like, I don't know what I say the name of the game, highly addicting crypto gambling. site that he would be wagering like tens of thousands of dollars on.

Yeah, man. That's no secret, though. People who get there, they are. And that's what I realized is that for him, YouTube is another form of gambling, right? Because, like, you put out the video and who knows how it's going to do. And then you get that dopamine hit of like, oh, this got 50 million views. Like, it's very similar. That variability, the way that the algorithm can pick it up, make anything go viral.

it's just as gambling addiction put into something positive, right? And so I think that's very much exactly what you're saying, that for a lot of these people, in normal circumstances, they can't just chill and be happy and be normal. They have to be, like, running at such a high level. They have to be running at a 10 at all times. And that's good in extreme circumstances, but not in normal circumstances.

I don't even want to talk about Mr. Beas that much because we've kind of like done that plenty. But I remember at like 11 p.m. at night, someone mentioned basketball and how excited he was to play basketball. And Jimmy, he goes, let's just go right now. And we were like, what? Dude, it's like 11 o'clock. No one, he goes, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's figure it out.

And as he said that, his assistants were calling high school gyms, trying to wake up like the principals and being like, hey, I'll give you five grand if we can come play basketball right now. And I was like, what? No, dude, I don't want to do that. It sounds like hell, but he was serious. He wanted to go do it. Yeah. It was weird. It was crazy. Who have you met besides him that you'd put in that category of these like obsessed like almost conquer types? Whatever, whatever we're calling this, this personality type. Who have you met that kind of has that gene other than him? You, I think you kind of have a screw loose in that way. Like look at the way you approach fitness. like you have trouble dipping your toes into things.

Yeah, that's for sure. And you've talked about your, you have an addictive personality as well. I do. But yeah, I think I definitely am crazy. I think though that I don't have the drive. Like I am a little bit more self-aware where I'm like, no, I don't want to do that.

That sounds too hard. But yeah, I'm definitely crazy in that obsession regard. Yeah, yeah. Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot? See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess. But HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM.

Our software is the best. HubSpot, grow better. I'll give you one. Yeah, give me one. Do you know who Tucker Maxes? Yeah. So Tucker Max is this author. He's my friend.

I haven't talked to him in a while, but I used to be buddies with him. And he's an author. He wrote a, I hope they sort of. beer in hell. Now he has a company. And lately he's taking kind of like a fairly right turn or I don't know what you want to call it where he like writes these articles predicting that the world's going to end. And I don't agree with anything that he says about that type of thing. I mean, I agree that like, okay, cool, prepare and be like self-sufficient, but I don't think the world's going to end. And I disagree with so many of his point of views. But whenever I hang out with him and I hear him talk,

in my head, I'm like, I think you are wrong. I think you're wrong. I think you're wrong. And yet, I find myself by, like, fighting myself from buying into what you are saying, even though logically, I'm like, no, that's, I don't believe that that's true for these following reasons. But when I get around them, I'm like, dude, you like are so confident. You are such a good storyteller. You have such strong energy driving you into one direction. It's sucking me in. And so I would find myself having to, like, pinch myself to him.

Like, dude, you got to snap out of it. And Tucker Max has that hardcore. And if you read his writing, it comes through in his writing, you'll read something and you'll say, oh, this guy's totally right. And then I've got to go and like read something that's the opposite. Like, oh, well, there are counterpoints. Yeah, yeah. I, so I just thought of one that's a little like, I guess off the wall. His name's Dalton H. Oaks. He was on circuit court of appeal. He was one of the highest judges in the United States, was on the short list to be on the Supreme Court for Reagan, but then didn't become a Supreme Court justice, ended up becoming an apostle.

for the Church Jesus Christ for Library Saints is now the number two person in the church is set to take over the church probably in a few years. What I found interesting is I think that was the first time I met him when I was like 16 that I encountered true charisma and it felt different than I thought it would feel. Because when I talked to him, he talked to me for like 10 minutes, unbelievably charmed me. Like I couldn't believe it. But the impression I had coming away was, wow, I'm so smart. because he was so good at, I don't want to say manipulating, but like, at playing on my feelings and just being like, wow, that's really interesting. You know, and just kind of like getting me to feel comfortable and divulge information about

myself and like focusing all his attention on me that I came away and I was like, man, I'm super special. And I think that's what truly charismatic people do. People think that it's like inward magnetism, but it almost goes the opposite direction of like somehow they're able to make you feel like you're the special one. And, uh, and then you like get like drunk on that almost. Totally. I've been, uh, I used to work for this guy named John Cops. John ran this company called apartment list. They bought my other business. And I don't know how big they are now. Maybe it's like a hundred,

they've raised maybe one or two hundred million dollars in funding and like they're probably going to go public or I met. That's what they have to do. And this guy, I was only 22 when I worked there. And he would give these talks at the office. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I believe that I am, and we weren't even doing anything interesting. It was just like a Zillow competitor, which was like not exactly the most sexy thing. We're not saving the earth. We're not going to the moon. Like there's nothing like, it's just a cool money making scheme and a slightly better way to maybe find an apartment in some cities.

And I remember like hearing him talk and I'm like, I am so, we are, we are democratizing housing. And like, we are like, I am so on board with this. We are making people's lives so much better. And we owe it to the world to do this. And he has just shown me that it is possible. And you begin to think that rules don't apply to you. And you say it's us versus everyone, which is a common tactic and a cult. And you should always do this in a good company, which is you have you and then you have the enemy.

And everyone's out on the enemy's side. And it's us versus them. And you have to create that dynamic. And also I felt with him, whenever he would give these talks on a Friday, we used to have this thing where Friday at 4, he would give a talk. And I remember thinking, like, rules don't apply to us. Like, what, yeah. And I, and I've heard stories about Travis Kalanick at Uber. And I remember the people, it was like the same thing.

They were like breaking laws and they're like, there, there, it wasn't these laws, we shouldn't be breaking them. It was these laws shouldn't exist and they are wrong and we need to prove to them that they are wrong. You know what I mean? And I remember hearing that and you just get intoxicated with it. Yeah. You know who's, who's pretty good at this.

I found the camp MFMFM is Sue Lee. your friend Suu. You think so? Yeah. Just like when I was talking to him, I think he kind of brain raped me a little bit. Like, why? At the end, I don't know. Just at the end, he just was like so interested in me.

And then I was just like, did I just tell Suley like everything about my life and like everything. He does that. Yeah. And he won't tell you a thing about his. No. Yeah. I was like, how is it like you're the multi-millionaire. Like you have the successful business that you sold like you've done all this impressive stuff.

And like we just spent 20 minutes talking about me and like you know everything about me. and I don't know anything about you at the end of this. How did this happen? He's so good at it. I don't know. Yeah, he's good at it. So is Ben Levy, Sean's partner. Sean, he's really good at that, man.

Ben, I always call Ben a shark, but he's not actually a shark because he doesn't mean he's not going to, like, harm you probably. Well, maybe. I don't know. I don't think so. But he's so good where I'll have to stop myself. I'm like, dude, shut the fuck up. You don't need to tell this guy all this shit.

Like, it's good to be privates about some stuff. And he's so good at getting stuff out of, getting stuff out of you. He's really good at that. Yeah. So, yeah, those people, they are good at that. They, um, another guy is, um, who I find myself getting like intoxicated with. There's a couple people, uh, uh, Sam Bankman Fried. You know, the guy from, uh, what's his, what, the, the, you know, Bitcoin to do.

What's his company called? Um, FTC. FTC. What is it? FTX. And he has another one, I think. Uh, anyway, FTX. When I hear him talk, I just think like, oh, you're right.

write about everything. Like, I don't want to, like, I can't have, and it's hard for me to understand anything other than what you believe, because you've just logically shown to me that this is all true, even though I'm like, you have to remind, I have to remind myself, like, this guy's just a 29-year-old smart guy, which is cool and all, but like, he's just a guy. He's just a dude. He's still figuring out, just like I am, but I will hear him talk and I'm, I buy into everything he's saying. And another good person is Malcolm Gladwell. If you ever read a Malcolm Gladwell book, you'll think, oh, everything you're saying is facts. In reality, a lot of it's just theories. And he'll say, this is just my, this is just a theory based off of the data. Who knows if I'm right or wrong?

This is just an idea. But I'll read his stuff. And I think, oh, this is, this is just how the world is. And my takeaway from that is storytelling is so important. It's so important. I think that Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap. Most of his stuff is like, with little to no value. Anyone who asked me how to do storytelling, I'm like, just go listen. to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast and analyze every single sentence. Like, it doesn't matter what you think of what he has to say. I think he's this generation's most gifted storyteller and it's like not close. Dude, he's so good.

He's so good. He's unbelievable. He's unbelievable. He gets you intoxicated is what he does. You feel like this intoxication and you feel like, of course, this is the answer. What you were saying is true. And I have to purposely go and seek out like other opinions to be like, oh, well, you know, I got to remind myself, this isn't necessarily true.

It might be, but maybe not. Ogilvy has this good quote, David Ogilvy, like a very famous copywriter and advertiser, that the job of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence. And the job of the second sentence is to get you to read the third sentence. And if you read Gladwell with that lens, that framework in mind, he's such a master. Like the first sentence of every podcast is independently, extremely engaging and interesting and it gets you to listen to the second sentence, which is itself extremely engaged. And like every single sentence is a masterpiece that gets you to go into the next sentence.

Everyone should read it. Everyone should read and listen to as much Gladwell as they can. What's the name of his pod? I forget. It's called something history. Revisionist history. Yeah, it's good, man. And he does a really good job of voice inflections.

It doesn't sound like my voice is fairly aggressive. His voice is like soft and welcoming and like warming. And so his inflections aren't like when Sean and I talk and then we like get down low. And then we and we come right back up. It's way more subtle. But in everything he says is like a kind of a whisper. But he's but but he like knows how to use empty space and silence. And then he knows how to come back in and lead you down and get you to come a little bit more.

And then he'll break it to you. You know what I mean? Like he does these things. And I like I'm tripping. It's called the slippery slope. That's what I call it. And the slippery slope is my name for that copywriting concept of the first sentence to get you to read the second, which is get you read the third. That's the slippery slope.

I want to pull you down that slope because the further I pull you along, the more bought in you get. And if you read like a Tony Robbins book, he'll say like, I'm about to tell you about one thing that's going to change your life. And he'll spend the rest of that chapter saying, we're about to get to it. We're getting to it soon. But before we do, I need to tell you why it's important. And then there's a reveal at the end. And oftentimes that reveals a little bit anti-climatic, but you're so deep down this slippery slope

that you're bought in. And so that's what Malcolm Gladwell does wonderfully. He gets me to go down this slope. And he pulls me down. And a lot of the great dictators and CEOs and these leaders, both good and bad, they were awesome at being auditors, which is something we don't really talk about anymore.

But like Obama was like that, where I was like, I heard Obama talk. And I'm like, Dude, whatever you say, yes, I like this. It's seductive almost. It's seductive. It's seductive, which the root of all this is learning how to write well and how to storytell and then if possible how to speak, how to speak it.

Can I talk about one more attribute that actually you and Sean have done a good job with recently on getting me on me about is this idea of bias to action? So for me, my favorite story about this is Napoleon comes into command of the French army in Italy. And it's just been sitting there for months. And the reason is they have, they don't have enough guns. They don't have enough ammunition. They don't have enough shoes.

They don't have enough clothes. They're like horribly undersupplied. The morale is low. And so the general before Napoleon is like, we cannot, they're fighting the Austrians. We cannot go give battle to the Austrians like this. We're in a horrible state. And Napoleon comes in and he's like,

okay, so today, I'm going to take account of everything that's happening in this army. You're going to give me an accounting of exactly how many issues we have, the status of everything. And tomorrow, we're going to march to go fight the Austrians. And they're like, this is a horrible idea. Like, you should not do this. This army is in no shape to fight. And he's basically like, yeah, Isaac Newton, an object at rest stays at rest. An object in motion stays in motion.

And so, like, I don't care. We're going to go attack. And so they go out, they attack. They score cheap, easy victory. And then they're just rolling. right? And then they roll through Italy and kick the crap out of the Austrians in like a matter of weeks. And so I, you know, I've been talking to you and Sean about doing better with how to take over the world and getting bigger. And I'm just like, man, I have all these problems. I like, I need more researchers. I need more writers because I have to do all this research. And both of you were just kind of like bullshit. Like, no, you don't. Just put stuff out. Like, just put out more episodes. What's wrong with you? Just put out more episodes. And so that's something I've been focusing on is like, It's so easy to focus on all the inputs, on getting everything ready, on planning, on preparing,

and this bias to action of like, no, no, no, no. Every single day you need to be taking steps that have measurable outcomes that advance your goals forward. You need to be doing and you need to have a bias towards doing those things rather than planning and preparing. Dude, and a good example of that is like only six months ago or something. So we were fairly popular. Sean, for some reason, because he's always a little disorganized, his microphone wasn't working.

And he's like, fuck it. I'm just going to use my AirPods. I'm like, all right, fine. And he puts his AirPods in and only one of them worked. And the other one didn't even work. It was for some reason, it was out of battery. He goes, we're just like, screw it. We're going to record this, Sean, with just your webcam and your one AirPods. See, that AirPods is going to be your microphone and your like how you could hear me talk. He's like, yeah, let's do it. Versus waiting 20 minutes for it to get charged. We're like, no, we can't wait. We have to do it. it right now. We have to go. And I think that that is the way to go. I think that the world wants you to be vanilla. The world wants to make everyone vanilla and they want you to be safe. And that means planning, planning. And so so many people write on their goals for the day, I bet you there's a lot of people listening. They have one task today which says plan workout or plan, you know, like business, like how I'm going to launch this business, like plan something. It's like that's their to do.

And that's really just kind of a self-masturbation. Like, it's a, it's a bullshit way to make you think that you actually are doing something when instead you should just start and figure it out along the way. Because virtually everything, not everything, but almost everything related to a project is reversible. So you should always start. And so you should always just like just make it happen and always have a bias to action because it also is intoxicated. Right, right. Dude, have you ever sold anything on the internet? No.

So, like, people talk to me about, like, how do I do this? How do I do that? I'm like, dude, just whatever you do, build it so you can get it live tomorrow. And so then you can get just $1 in revenue in the first five days. Because the second your phone goes, kaching, because, like, I have this thing on Shopify that goes, Kaching, every sale I get. the first time you hear that, you're like, oh, I need to feel that again. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. It gets you amped up when you hear that.

And so that's why whenever people talk to me, they're like, which platform should I use for my new blog? I'm like, it doesn't matter. Just go to Substack right now and make your blog post live tomorrow. And then the second you see traffic on the analytics, you're like, oh, I like that. That tastes good. I like how that feels. I got to do it again. I need more. I need to take another bite. And that's why whenever people talk about anything they want to do, I'm like, if you're a nub, launch right away immediately. If you're like, I have this guy named Brett Adcock

who sold the company for two or three billion dollars and as the next company, it's like a robot business. He's investing $200 million in like five years of research. I'm like, all right, that's cool.

You're a proven hitmaker. Like take your time and like perfect this thing. But if you're like a rookie, you got to jump right in and get that taste of dopamine immediately. Otherwise it will never happen or just fades and you just aren't interested anymore.

So it's interesting. What you're saying reminds me a little bit of like the difference between the Greeks and the Romans. So the Greeks like masters of the Mediterranean. Ah, yes. The old Greeks and Roman. Okay, okay, okay. Hear me out, though.

Because here's the thing. The Greeks were like much better academics than the Romans. They knew geometry. They knew algebra. They knew like philosophy, right? And the Romans were basically dumb jocks. They didn't know any of this stuff. And it turns out that Roman construction and bridges were actually much better than Greek ones.

Why is it? Because the Greeks would sit down and try and figure out the geometry of the best way to build a bridge. The Romans did not. The Romans just went out and built a bridge. And then it kind of crumbled. And then they're like, oh, what if we did this? And then they rebuilt it. And then that didn't work out so well.

And then over the generations, they just went out and did stuff until eventually they had like the perfect way to build a bridge that would stand forever. Did they ever know the math behind it? They literally never did. They just went and tried stuff until they found the thing that worked best. and that was what let them take over the world. And so that just backs up what you're saying of like, you actually don't need to know why this stuff is working. You don't need to know the math behind it.

You don't need to do the research. You just literally need to try stuff until you find out what works. John, what? I was going to say, I think, you know, two things I just heard was one. And this is all kind of wrapping this back up to how this applies to like podcasting. I heard bias towards action, which is just like go, go, go. And I also heard, like, be very methodical with how you tell stories like Malcolm Gladwell ask. So like, let's just say you're starting a podcast today, zero to 25,000 downloads, biased towards action.

25 to 100,000, let's just say you're really dialing in the storytelling component of it. And then, but it sounds like you're flipping back to, okay, just bias towards action. Go, go, go. So like, I don't know, I think it could be helpful to go from like, at this stage, you want to focus on just making shit happen versus being more methodical. with how to actually level the podcast up, that kind of stuff. Can I use an example? Like Danny Miranda, you were on his podcast a few days ago, Sam. And I don't think he's figured out his niche very well.

He needs to work on that. He hasn't figured it out yet. But guess what? He's in a really good position to figure it out because he just got started. He's been doing great interviews. He's super action-oriented. And he's going to figure it out. And he's got the data, right?

And now he can pivot and he can try different stuff. You can think about different ways to position it versus the person who is just like, no, no, no, Danny's not doing it the right way. I need to position my podcast perfectly. No, just start with action. You can figure out your niche and exactly how to position your podcast later.

Dude, it's way better to execute a bad plan than it is to execute no plan. And because you can change it, you can change a bad plan into a good plan in most cases as you go, but you can't, you know, you're up shit creek if you're doing nothing all day. Yep.