My First Million - We Tested Our Grit (And Were Humbled Immediately)

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Episode 562: Shaan Puri (https://twitter.com/ShaanVP) and Sam Parr (https://twitter.com/theSamParr) get into the economics of personality tests–including the most famous one which is used by 89% of Fortune 100 companies. Want to talk to Shaan? Text “hi” to 650-334-0790 Want to see Sam and Shaan’s smiling faces? Head to the MFM YouTube Channel and subscribe - http://tinyurl.com/5n7ftsy5 — Show Notes: (0:00) Intro (1:00) Data mining the basketball court (7:00) Origin of Myers-Briggs Test (14:30) Formula for Grit (16:00) Sam takes the Grit Scale Test (23:00) Cognition Labs, a math nerd's wet dream (34:00) Be willing to walk backwards (39:50) Speedrunning: 3 Founders Who Repeated the Playbook (42:00) Don't explore, exploit (49:00) $600M protein bar in 4 years — Links: • Grit - https://angeladuckworth.com/grit-book/ • Gallup - https://www.gallup.com/ • Lunchclub - https://lunchclub.com • Cognition - https://www.cognition-labs.com/ • Gold-Medalist Coders article - https://tinyurl.com/tc65a2vc • David Protein - http://davidprotein.com/ — 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 — 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 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 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. — Other 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

Now, the grit score goes, I think it's zero to 10. I want you to guess my grit score. 10 is super gritty. Gritty as it gets. I would say, I would put you six, six, seven. You're pretty gritty. I appreciate your faith in me. I scored a 2.5 on this grit test, bro.

A two and a half out of ten. 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. All right, Sean, you're back. How was the trip? My trip was great. Me and Ben went to Phoenix. And I'm not going to share all the details, but it was a dope experience. Dope life experience. I think one great thing to share, by the way, when's like, Sam, what's the last dope life experience you had? Something you didn't have to do,

but you did anyways. Probably Camp MFM two years ago. Don't let that happen. Don't let too much time go by. I think like everything. three months or so, she tried to do something that's a little extracurricular, if you know what I mean. Just something that's outside of the routine, outside of what you have to do. So I did that anyway.

So we went to Phoenix because Matt Ishpia, who is the owner of the Sons, the Phoenix Sons, the basketball team there, we had gotten in touch with them and he was like, hey, if you guys ever want to come check out a game, come hang out. So we go down to Phoenix and we meet Matt, we meet the team. We get to go court side,

do like live life as an NBA owner, which is awesome. because I always dreamed of doing that. Now, what I want to tell you, though, it's not about Matt. What I want to tell you about is actually much more in the weeds. So here's a little in the weeds, a little in the weed story. So I think Ben emailed him when he bought the team and was just like, hey,

congrats, buddy. And then I was like, thank you. Thank you, Ben, Levy. Goodbye. And that was the first touch point. Second touch point was we invited him to Camp MFM. We're like, hey, he used to be a college basketball player. So he was a college basketball player.

Now he's a multi-billionaire who owns an NBA team. Well, that's a mix of basketball and entrepreneurship. That's who we try to invite to the camp. And so we invited him. He was like, oh, I'd love to come. Couldn't end up making the dates. But his kind of make good was, listen, sorry, I couldn't make it. But if you guys were ever in town, let me know, we'll hang out.

We'll check out a game. Hey, what do you know, Matt? We're in town. What are you in town? Because that's when we're in town. And so we worked with this assistant to be like, when do you think we should be in town? And we did that. So this is the rule of reciprocity, by the way.

You offered someone something. And regardless if they take you up or not, they now owe you. We should just host events that aren't ever going to happen. And we make sure we follow the person online, like, oh, they're out of town that date. They're already busy. Let's ask them. Ah. We're hosting a charity event honoring you.

So, so yes, we did that. Now, the funny thing is, well, the background here is that, what's the randomness here? Ben used to, Ben is a diehard Phoenix Suns fan. He loves the Phoenix sons more than you love your child. He loves the Phoenix sons with a deeper passion than Romeo loved Juliet. And he was a ball boy for four or five years. So literally was with a team every day, volunteer ballboy, basically. Just to give you a sense of this guy.

So every year when there's an all-star games, the way it works in the NBA is the fans vote on who gets to be named an all-star. So Ben supporting his guys, being the loyal, supportive guy that he is, takes literally 100,000 ballots home, forces his family every night to sit there and punch the ballots to vote the Phoenix Suns guys in. And himself, over the course of a couple months, they churned through 100,000 ballots to try to support the team.

The players didn't care. They didn't know about this. He just did it because he's that big of a diehard fan. So that's ridiculous. Ben obviously does a lot for me. I was like, can I, what's a, how can I make a Ben appreciation weekend? And that's what this was.

I was supposed to go and kind of let him live a childhood dream out. So he goes down there. We watch the game. It's all good. One of the cool things was, and this happens all the time, by the way. You think you're there to meet the famous person, but it's actually this other thing that's really interesting. That's more accessible.

That ends up being the fascinating thing. You wouldn't have known it until you showed up. So similarly, we go and we have this great conversation with one of the guys in their kind of like data department. So it's like analytics, data. That's become a big part of sports. And so Ben is grilling the guy. Ben's like, the guy came down to say,

nice to meet you, and Ben's like, cool, I have 1,000 questions for you. Have a seat. And he's like, in the year, 2013, you picked this guy, why? I'd like to know, what's telling you that?

What are the metrics that matter right now for us when we play a game? Obviously, besides the score, like, you know, what leads to the score? And he's asking all these detailed questions. And when Ben asked questions, sometimes I've noticed the person won't even finish. And he's like, I got what I need next.

Like, he's just like. And he's great because. everybody needs a place where they're shameless. Like for me and you, like I'm shameless about like, I'm a monologue, okay? I got something interesting to say.

I know that's not how this is supposed to work, but I'm a monologue because I just need to get this off my chest. And trust me, you're going to like it by the end. Your thing is like, you'll just ask a blunt question. You'll just be like, well, dude,

you keep saying this. Like, what is it? How much? What's in your pocket right now? And they're like, I guess nobody's ever asked me that here. Here's the answer.

Ben's thing is that he's like, oh, we're, you know, we're supposed to be at dinner. I'm going to ask you all of the questions. My curiosity is endless. I don't care what the social situation is.

We'll be playing basketball and he'll be guarding a guy. And he'll be like, he'll be like, so like, what's revenue like nowadays? And I'm like, dude, you got to let it go for this moment and time.

Like just give it a rest, but he doesn't. He doesn't do it. Anyways, we're doing that with this guy. And one of the fascinating questions that he asked, we were like, what's,

you're the data guy. What's the data you wish you had that you don't currently have? Like, what data would help you do? this because he's showing us these cameras in the gym where if you're just shooting around, there's cameras now that will, it does facial recognition. It'll track. Okay, Sam is shooting in the practice session.

It'll record the length of the session, the number of shots, the exact arc on every shot, his exact field goal percentage without anybody having to be there to keep track of stats. So cool tech, right? Now, his answer was very interesting. So he was like, you know, we test for, we can, we know everything you've ever done on the court. But what we've learned, what everybody knows has been around sports. is that the difference between the Michael Jordans and the, you know,

Isaiah Riders or the Kobe Bryant's versus the Lenny Brooks. It's like, what's up top? What's in your mindset? And the guys who are completely obsessed, extreme discipline, they're able to work harder than the next guy. They don't take those days off. They are receptive to coaching and they're going to improve on their weaknesses. They're going to double down on their strengths.

They can keep their confidence even when something goes bad. It's all about the mental, right? Like every athlete, every great athlete you tell you how much of the sport is mental, but they have no way of measuring the mental. And so we said, interesting. What would be the way that you would want to do that? He's like, grit. Grit.

What do you mean? Great. He's like, well, there's this book that came out. I don't know. Have you ever read this book? Love it. Angela Duckworth. Duckworth.

Yeah, exactly. So I went down this rabbit hole after that. So that was just my segue into me going down this rabbit hole on these mindset tests. So first I actually want to tell you about a different test, which you've probably done in the past. and that's the Myers-Briggs test. Have you done this test? Yeah.

Do you know the backstory of this? You know where this came from? No, but is it even real? Are horoscope's real? Yeah. Our bomb reader is real. Like, there's a lot of bullshit in this industry, which is why I'm fascinated by it.

So let me, I'm not saying it's completely bullshit, but there's a lot of hand-wavy stuff. Here's the story. There's a woman, and her name is Isabel. Isabel, I think World War II is going on.

And Isabel's reading readers digested. She reads in Reader's Digest, this article about people sorting, people sorting. And basically it's how companies are using tests to do people sorts. And so she reads that Lockheed, Lockheed, the aircraft company, was using it to locate possible troublemakers. They're like, we need to do some screening so that we can identify who's going to be a troublemaker, who's going to have some mischief in them. Another company was using it for finding, you'll appreciate this one, hen pecked husbands. And they were basically, the argument was that if the man is under the thumb at home,

then he'll easily also be submissive at work. Fascinating, right? Like, people were legitimately doing this. They're like trying to figure out, like, who's got that alpha? Who's got that dog in them? And so, all right, well, so she writes to her mom, Catherine. She's like, this is fascinating. Companies are doing this, blah, blah, blah.

She's interested in psychology. Her mom writes back and says, you should make your own test. And you should do it. You're always telling me about that guy, Carl Jung. you should, Carl Young, young, I don't know how he's he's like, you should do it on those principles. So she ends up creating, and then their last names are Briggs and Myers, and she ends up creating the, I forgot what it's called the Briggs-Myers type indicator

or something like that, right? Like that's how this test started. And she creates a test and basically he had this theory, the psychologist had this theory that there's like, people branch out in this like decision tree. It's like you're either a thinker or a feeler. you're a perceiver or you're a judger. And if you just go down the tree,

it ends up with 16 possibilities. And they gave each of the 16 like kind of a positive affirmation name. So there's no bad, there's no bad score. Yeah, they give you a fortune cookie. Everybody gets a trophy. And so they were like, oh, you are an executive. You are a caregiver.

You are a scientist. You are an idealist. And they just had all these labels for the 16 categories. Now, of course, the funny thing is, if you end up taking the test, you'll get one score. and on average, if you take the same test weeks later, 50% of people will end up with a completely different label. So, yeah, I don't know how reliable these things are.

And people who criticize it, they say this takes advantage of something called the forer effect. Have you ever heard of this thing? The forerer effect? It's basically the same thing that astrologers, fortune tellers, and other pseudosciences use where they kind of cold read something general about you, like, you're the type of person who, you don't let everybody in, but when you get close to somebody, you really open up.

or like you're the type of person who, you know, sometimes when things get hard, you're able to really, you know, you're really to really stand up and, and make it happen. It's like,

I do have a little bit of that in me. You know, you're right. How'd you know? Here's some money. And so anyways, they create this test. It's not that popular at the beginning,

but it ends up getting picked up by, you know, fast forward many, many years. It gets picked up by a company called CPP, the consultant. psychologist press, CPP. And so they picked up the distribution rights and they're like, hey, we are going to market

this to American businesses. We are going to tell American businesses about this. When you say picked up, do you mean, was this a publication that promoted it or bought it? It was a publishing company. And they buy the licensing rights to market it. And there is about her mom are just going to get a royalty. And basically right as she dies, she dies at 82, sales start taking off. By 1983, almost a million people are taking the Myers.

Briggs test annually. Is it free? No. So the way it works is it's kind of a brilliant business model. So basically to take the test is somewhere between 15 and 40 bucks. So everybody who takes the test, you get, you know, let's say on average, 30 bucks from them. But then, well, you can't just take the test.

It has to be given to you by a practitioner. Well, the practitioners have to pay $2,000 to become a certified practitioner. That's the only way you can take this test. And so like last year, they enrolled 5,000 practitioners who each paid, you know, about $1,500 to $2,000 each, $8 to $10 million in revenue off of just the practitioners. And then each of the practitioners

then distributes the test and they get paid by distributing the test. It's kind of like a multi-level marketing scheme, right? The practitioner makes $30 a test. And then the extra royalty, the extra $10 on top goes back to the parent company, to the publisher. And so this thing,

they don't know the revenue because it's still private. It's been private for like whatever, you know, since the 80s. and they once said their number was over $20 million in revenue. I suspect it's higher than that. There's been millions of people who have taken this test. And Myers-Briggs is that company, CPP. It's their biggest earner.

It's that. That's their cash cow. That is insane. Dude, it's used by the government. It's used by 200 federal agencies use this. You know, just the EPA itself, they use it on a quarter of their 20,000 employees. I think 80% of the Fortune 5, 89, or 89 of the, Fortune 100 use this test.

89% of the Fortune 100. Is that insane? There's a few things that are insane about it. One, to create something, so when did she create it in 42, 1942? Yeah. So we're coming up 80 years now. We're going to be close to 100 years soon. That's amazing to create something that lasts that long.

I mean, it's such a reputable brand, even though I think it's nonsense. But many people think it's reputable. At this point, it's an annuity. So you just like, it's predictable revenue. all the time. We talked about, was it Gallup? Gallup pulling, and they own Clifton Strengths, which is famous for Strengths Finder 2.0. And I tried to find how much revenue they did, and I could not find anything. I believe Gallup, we did this two years ago, so I don't remember, I believe Gallup does something like a billion a year in revenue or hundreds of millions. But if you go to

the Strengths Finder website and you look at their traffic, it's huge. It's a huge, huge thing. And it costs the same thing, $20 or $40 for one of these tests. I loved this business because the test business is so fun because you're desperate to know. Like when you're in a hard time, you're desperate to know. You just want affirmation that things are going to be okay. And I loved it. I loved it. And I used to do these all the time.

And I would even game them. I'd be like, well, that's not right. I should take it. I should take it again. I probably answered a few wrong. So check this out. So I read about that. Now, when we meet this guy and he tells us,

me about the mental makeup, the grit, the mindset, the mindset, and being important. I'm like, he's totally right. The mindset thing is super important. And so I'm like, what was that book, Grit, Angela Duckworth, what was that all about? I believe it's, you could put off desire. What's that called? Or you could put off a reward. Delayed gratification is like the big one.

I think that's a part of it, but the ones I think they had is basically, it's ability. So like your talent, basically your ability times zeal, which is like your passion or enthusiasm about something, times capacity for hard labor is the formula for success. And with what with grit specifically, it's around zeal and the perseverance. So it's, you know, basically your, your enthusiasm, your passion, times, times perseverance. Okay. So here's what's interesting about this thing. So he tells me about this.

And I'm like, all right, Doug, like, what's my grit score? Let me go, let me test it. Now, the grit score goes, I think it's zero to 10. I want you to guess my grit score. 10 is super gritty. Gritty as a Gitts. Who's the, who's a 10? David Gagins is a 10.

I would say, I would put you six, six, seven. You're pretty gritty. I appreciate your faith in me. I scored a 2.5 on this grit test, bro. You should have took it again. I am in the bottom 10 percentile of grit. So what were the questions? So check this out.

I'm going to read you some of the test. And this is why I was like, this is bullshit. Why is this bullshit? Okay, so here's the claims. She writes this book and becomes a bestseller. You see Keith for boys, they'd be like, oh, grits the most important thing. And all these CEOs are like, grits the most important thing. They're not wrong.

It's just that like many of these bestselling books, it's like pop science, right? Like the principle's not wrong, but the depth of the evidence is actually quite shallow. And so here's what it says. So it says, so she starts off by saying, well, showing up, you know, what's that old quote, 80% of success is just showing up? And people realize, well, yeah, like, I guess if you give up, that almost guarantees failure if you give up. And they looked around and they said, well, 50% of soldiers quit the army during this election process. 50% of marriages end in divorce. 25% of students drop out of high school.

Sales jobs, 50% of people will turn over. every year in sales jobs. And they noticed that, like, there were, what's the counterpoint? The counterpoint is basically what they looked at was West Point. And I don't know if you know much about the school, West Point, but it's got a pretty like pretty high bar, right?

It's like being a guest on this podcast. It's a high bar. And so what they do is they say, to get into West Point, you don't apply when you're a senior in high school. You apply when you're a junior. You apply in 11th grade. And you don't just apply with your test scores or whatnot.

You have to be nominated by a member of Congress to get into West Point. So you have to hustle your way to get a Congress member to vouch for you in order to do this. You have to do a leadership interview. You have to do a fitness test. And out of 14,000 applicants, they'll select like a thousand people to come join this thing. And even after they filter with all that, like, you have to run through walls to get here. 20% drop out during the seven week orientation period. That's called the beast. Is West Point free? I don't think so. So you got to pay money to do all this and then go to the Army? Like all the best things in life. All right.

The Beast is a rotation of calisthenics, marching, classes, weapons training, athletics. You go 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. with no breaks, no weekends, no contact with family or friends. And you have to be subscribed to this YouTube channel in order to get in. And so if you're not going to do all the other things, you should go to YouTube right now, my first million, and you should subscribe to our podcast. All right. So basically, grit was a higher predictor with this grit score. They said it was a higher predictor of West Point success than your SAT score,

that your high school rank, then the leader. interview than all the other things. And so anyways, here's the grit test. I can even just give it to you. So here's some of the questions they ask on this thing. It says, new ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones.

Basically, do you get distracted by new ideas and projects from your current one. Does that very much like me, mostly like me, somewhat like me or not at all like me? Guess what? That's very much like me. Okay.

Another one, setbacks don't discourage me. I don't give up easily. Okay, I scored well on that one. I set a goal. but later choose to pursue a different one. I am a hard worker.

Like, come on, this is not science. This is, this is what I call nothing. That's what this test is. No, there's some stuff here. I finish whatever I begin. So for example, bro, do you trust people's self-assessment of this? No, here. Do you have any unfinished Lego sets in your home?

I don't even have a Lego set. No. But if I did, I would. I got a box of unset up furniture right over here. I have a half, half written book over there. Yes, of course, yes. I do fail this test. And so you, but the thing is,

I can think of 10 examples where I'm not like that. I can think of 10 examples where I am like that. This is, you know what, I'm low in grit. I'm high in honesty. And to somebody who's like, I'm really high on the grit score, I'm like, is this real? Like, is this honest? Is this an honest assessment?

I think you're butt hurt. I think that you got, I think change comes from within, brother. I think that you got to be you got to you want to you stages I'm in denial right now yeah bargaining yeah is there like grits anonymous you need to like go and go through the 12 steps my friend you're you're in step number one if there's anyone else out there what's the opposite of grit by the way just like yeah just cream cheese soft damn soft is the soft is the the marshmallow scale um so yeah well you know what I want you to take this uh test actually just take it right

Now, let's take it together. Let's see what your grit score is. All right. It's 10 questions. Okay, here we go. All right, I'm going to give you the grit test. Okay, Sam, you have to just say true or false, basically. Yeah, very true, very false.

So new ideas and projects sometimes distract me from previous ones. False. All right. Very false, would you say? Not much like me, false. Not much like me. Setbacks, don't discourage me. I don't give up easily.

Is that very much like you? you don't give up easily or not at all like you. I don't give up. I don't give up easily. I often set a goal, but later choose to pursue a different one. Mostly like me. I am a hard worker. Somewhat. I have difficulty maintaining my focus on projects that take more than a few months to complete. That's not much like me. I finish whatever I begin. Very much. My interest change from year to year. Not much. I am diligent. I never give up. Somewhat. I have been obsessed with a certain idea or a project for a short period of time.

and later lost interest. Somewhat. I have overcome setbacks to conquer an important challenge. Not much like me. I've not had that many setbacks. I'm just so good. It just works. I just try easy stuff.

Wow. All right. That's a grit score of 3.5. Correct. Okay. So you got a 3.5. Okay. So I had it wrong.

The scale is to 5. You're a 3.5 out of 5. You scored higher than 40% of Americans. What does that mean? I'm in the 60th. percentile? No, you're in the 40th percentile. Right? I don't fucking know. I'm between 40 and 60 percent, so I'm not that good. You're like above average. No, wait. You scored higher than only 40 percent. So you're actually average to below average grit. Yeah, that sucks. This stuff is stupid.

It would have been a lot better if I was a four or something. Yeah, the segment needed you to be amazing and me to be terrible. Instead, you're pretty average and I'm way below average. So anyway, Go back, take your grit score. You just go to Google search grit score and take this thing and then post it in the comments on YouTube. I want to know who is the grittiest YouTube commenter of them all. It's probably the spammers that never go away, that keep impersonating us and being like to everybody who comments. They're like, DM me. That's not us.

We're not telling you, we're not trying to sell you something like that. If we try to sell you something, you'll know it. Trust me. That's not the way we would do it. I want to tell you about someone who would score a five out of five on the grid score. Can I tell you about this person? Tell me. Do you remember a few years ago in 16 or 17, I think, there was this company called Lunch Club.

It was basically like the social platform where you, I guess, meet up with people for lunch. I thought it was really dumb. I used to do that. When I moved to San Francisco, that's how I made friends. I joined the lunch club and I would go get lunch with random stranger tech bros. I thought that that was a stupid idea. I thought it was very stupid. I never used it. But not, I was alone on that one. I think that a lot.

When you didn't have setbacks, you're like, I always have friends and I never have setbacks. Yeah, I scored low on this one as well. But here's the thing. Not everyone else thought it was a dumb idea. In fact, they raised $30 million from Medriason Horowitz and all these like really smart people. And I don't think it ever became that big of a company, but they raised $30 million at $100 million valuation. I have no idea what happened to it today because it's not really relevant anymore. However, The guy who started it is amazing. And this is just proof that smart people sometimes do, they've got silly things that are just stepping stones until the real thing. And so the guy who started it, his name is Scott Wu. And recently, I think yesterday it was, he launched something that's pretty amazing. And we're going to do another episode where we talk in depth about what he launched.

But basically what it is is it's called Cognition Labs. That's the name of the company. The product is called Devin. The summary of it is you just tell Devin, make me a website that looks like Yelp, except it's just for agencies or something. Or make me a website that's like Airbnb, but for cars. And what Devin does is it gives you a checklist of all the things it's going to do. And then it does it.

And it builds the website for you. And this is like game-changing technology because it basically makes coders obsolete. It's an AI software engineer or a programmer. Yes. And many really smart people, Patrick Collison, the CEO of Stripe, They're basically saying, all right, this is the first time I've ever seen anything like this actually be as good or better than a human. And it's amazing. Whatever. The product's awesome. We're going to talk all about it. But what's more interesting to me is Bloomberg did this article on the three. It's basically three co-founders. And then they have the main CEO. His brother also works there. They did this amazing profile on the 10-person company that created this. And they are magnificent. Everything about these guys are beautiful. The magnificent 10, should we call them? Yes, the magnificent 10.

Everything about this company is the greatest thing I've ever seen in my life. So check this out. It's 10 employees. They've raised $21 million. Amongst the 10 employees, they have 10 gold medals that they've won from top coding competitions. And many of the people on Twitter, when they came out with this, they go, I remembered Scott. Scott was the guy who was winning all of the math competitions that I used to go to as I sat in the crowd wondering how on earth this guy did this. And this one guy named Bai, Bai, Bai Fan, his name, he tweeted out this thing.

He goes, I want to show you all some Tiger Mom porn. And it's basically this young guy, I guess, judging off his name, I guess Scott Wu, I guess he's Chinese. There's this video of him when he's like 12 or 13 years old and he's at a math competition. Sam, we got to do this. We got to do this test. Sorry, I have the thing. Here's the question. The question says, if the pattern continues, what is the letter in the 2000?

and 10th position. And it just says, math, athlete, math, athlete, math, and it says dot, dot, dot. What letter will be the 2000 and 10th letter in this sequence? And he goes, boom, A? Dude, you know how, like in Jeopardy?

And by the way, he looks like he's like 12 years old in this video, by the way. He's a child. He's a kid. And then you know how in jeopardy, they show you the question as they're reading it so you could read along with it? He answers one of the questions where it's

like what's like 352 to the fourth power times like this other 384 to the eighth power. He answered the question before the announcer finished reading it. Like he literally hit the beat. All right. So same, the digits one, two, three, four, and five can be arranged to form many five digit positive integers with five distinct digits. And how many such integers is the digit one to the left of the digit two? Two such integers include 14,352 and 51,234.

go ahead, just to walk me through your thought process here. I feel like an integer is like an appetizer I ordered last night with a little bit of Parmesan cheese on top. It sounds like an influencer mom on Instagram, like coming up with a cool name for their baby. We have Bronx and Integer. They're going to map today. It sounds like an amazing roller coaster ride at Six Flags. I don't know what an integer is.

I can't even answer this question. But these guys were crushing it at these questions. And there's three of them. And so listen to the third. Listen to this segment from the article. So this guy named Ashley Vance, he's the one, I think he wrote the biography of Elon Musk. He wrote this article and he goes, the third co-founder, he's currently the CPO. He asked me that I not explicitly say what his current status is, his enrollment status at Harvard is,

because he doesn't want his parents to fully understand what he's done. Basically, the CPO, the co-founder of this company that now is worth hundreds of millions of dollars has yet to tell his mother that he's dropped out of Harvard, even though he's now worth tens of millions of dollars because he's too afraid to break her heart. And in the article, the author goes, I just want to let you know you've raised a wonderful son, and this can work out wonderfully.

It's okay if he's me or may not be enrolled in Harvard anymore. And this article, it's the greatest thing I've seen. I just Google the guy's name, Scott Wu, and the top it is a Reddit post from 18 hours ago. in the subreddit, R slash next fucking level, which is an amazing subreddit, by the way,

I go there, I go there all the time. It's just next level shit. And he goes, here's Scott Wu, the CEO of Cognition Labs in a math quiz 14 years ago. It's a clip.

This thing has 5,000 up votes. And the first, first reply is, if anyone's wondering, here's the tricks that they used here, you know, for question three, the standard permutations of 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,

blah, and then the top comment of that is, it took me longer to read your explanation than it took him to actually do it and answer the question. It's ridiculous. I just said read, not even understand what you just said.

So anyway, these guys are ridiculous. And it's just amazing that, A, there's young people that are like self-gathering. This is like to me, like truly like that Facebook shit. Like that movie of Facebook when they're just in the dorm room doing it. These guys are doing it right now. They range between ages 20 and 27. It was so inspiring to read about these guys. And I'm so happy that freaks like these.

guys exist. It was an awesome article about this company. The company, I'm sure it's great. The story behind these guys is even better. This is like the American dream to me. Yeah, I don't know if it's the American dream or like the robot dream or like the math wet dream. I don't know what this, what dream this is, but it's the Chinese mother. It's the Chinese mother dream. Yeah, it's the Chinese tiger mom dream for sure. Except for the dropping out part. Exactly. Yeah. You know, it's not too late, son. You can still go back. That's what they'll say after this article. Harvard should launch a Tiger Extension School, which is

you get to remain a student, or you get to graduate, or it's dropping out by graduating early because we're like, you're done here. Your mom will be fine. We just get 0.1% equity in your company. Thank you. And all they have to do, and we get 0.1%. And what you get

son is you get a photo of you wearing that gown and we're going to go get one of our teachers to shake your hand on we have this guy, Charles, he'll shake your hand. He looks like the Dean. And we have a green screen here. It'll look like you graduated and your mom, it'll make your your parents proud. This is the Harvard version of a fake idea of some guy running a scam. Anyway, I wanted to bring that up. I thought these guys are amazing. What do you got? You have a thrill

of a shill right now, don't you? Oh, I have something cool I'm doing. Okay. So this is not really a shill. It's just a thrill, to be honest with you. This is actually costing me a lot of money. It is not making me any money. So I have an idea, which is, wouldn't it be amazing? If you like this podcast, you like listening to us. Maybe Sam, you were at a meetup last night. That's cool. People got to meet you.

Would anybody like to text with me? Because I got a number that you could text. And if you text me, I'll text you back. And so what I'm going to do is I create a number. So all you got to do is just text me. You just go 650 334-0-7-90. I think we got to work on that number. But if we do that, 650-3-4-0-7-90,

I'm just going to send out texts of stuff that we're doing that's cool. I'm going to share stuff that's on my whiteboard throughout the day, like just random stuff that I think is interesting. Or let's say the main thing I wanted to do, the reason we had this idea was after every podcast, you don't know this. After every podcast, Ben Levy's usually not listening on the recordings,

but he was usually like really curious like, oh, oh yeah, you guys had Gary V on. Like, what did he say? But he doesn't want the full hour long podcast. He's like, can you send me like a voice note of like the two or three most interesting bits?

And so I do that. And I've been doing that for like three months now where after every episode, I'm like, oh yeah, me and Sam talked about that, that company, uh, that's doing the AI software engineer and how that dude,

the founder actually is like this mass genius. And I also shared like Myers Briggs does 20 million a year and how it was, how it's kind of bullshit. We did that. I'll just give him a two minute voice note of the thing. And so he loves it. He's like, dude, he's been telling me for months. This needs to be like a thing.

But we didn't know how to do it. And so everything we looked into was like, you could try to create a giant telegram group, but not everybody uses telegram. I was like, just the way I get it where I just, you just text me this as a voice note or as a photo. That's what I want.

What did you use? So we're using this app that will let you do it. It's really expensive. And so I kind of just want to limit this. And so maybe I don't know exactly what the it is, I'm thinking just like the first thousand people, I'm going to cut it off because this is going to cost me tens of thousands of dollars a month to do this, but I think it's going to be great.

So the number is 650-334-0-790. That's right. I'll put it in the description so you can just tap it and send a text. You just have to say hi. You just have to say hi to the thing that'll ask you your name. And then it shows me. So when you reply to me, I can see, oh, it's Jeff from Cincinnati or whatever it is. I can see who it is and I can reply back.

and so going to try this out. I want to try it with a thousand fans. I'm looking for, don't do it if you're just like super casual with it. Like, if this is your first time to listen to this, except don't bother. But like if you're like all about MFM

and you've been listening to this for years and you know, you're cool, do this. That's so funny. This costs me a lot of money. So please only do it if you really care. I only like a thousand people do this. I don't really want more than that to do this

because it's quite expensive. But you know, whatever. Leave it to me to cut it off at a certain point. Tell me about your friend. walking back, you have on here, walking backwards and speed running. Isn't speed running just sprinting? No.

So we did a pod with Gary V yesterday and it's not going to come out for a couple of months, two months I think, it's going to come out when his book comes out or whatever. But he said something very interesting. I don't know if this stood out to you, but you had asked him a great question. You go, Gary, you started with like a family business, mom and pop, or actually before that, you were just flipping, you know, baseball cards as a teen. Then you joined your family business and it's like a family shop.

And then as you started to grow your brand now like you have all these business owners who listen to you. But also your brand has grown so much. You now get to, you know, rub shoulders. Is it rub shoulders? Elbows. I don't know what people rub. You rub against.

You're rubbing. You're rubbing chest to chest with a bunch of billionaires. And you were like, what I want to know is have you observed any difference between the guys who end up, guys and gals who end up making it to the to the highest tier of the of winning in business, the billion dollar club, let's say, versus the small business owner, the convenience store owner versus the solopreneur, whatever. What do you notice is the biggest difference?

He instantly answered something that I thought was not what I would have expected. He goes, the willingness to walk backwards. We're like, what do you mean? And he said it, and he didn't fully explain it, but he explained two things. He goes,

number one, the great ones always reinvent themselves. you can look at Elon Musk. Elon Musk starts out doing Zip 2, and then he creates PayPal, and he's like, he's like, he's like this internet entrepreneur.

And then after that, he was willing to walk backwards and go back to zero. And he was basically like, cool, I'm going to now try hardware, which is a completely different game. It would have been easier for him to just stay with PayPal, keep growing that or do another software company,

internet company, but he was willing to walk backwards. And so he started a rocket company, something he didn't know anything about at the time, but he's like, I'm going to start from zero, today I can't tell you how to build a rocket and then fast forward to today

he's got self-landing rockets that can go up and come back and land on themselves, right? It's kind of amazing. He was also willing to walk backwards financially. So he invested everything that he made from Zip2 and PayPal into Tesla and SpaceX to the point where it would have gone to zero if those companies that fail, which they almost did.

So the willingness to walk backwards both in terms of where you're at in the mountain, can you go back to being a beginner? And the second thing is, can you go back can you are you willing to risk it? Gary told us that his he has a safety net. You were like I have a safety net some amount of money that I just don't touch. If everything else goes to zero, I always got that. He's like, me too. And you're like, how much is it? And he, what did you expect that he would say? And what did he say?

I expected, I mean, he seems pretty wealthy. I expected 10 or 20. He said one million. So he said a $1 million. He said a safety net was $1 million, which if I had to guess, that would cover his life expenses for like less than six months. Right. His current lifestyle. Yeah, exactly. I was like, safety net, that's a safety floss, my friend. That's a thin thread you're going to land on there. Obviously, it's a lot of money in the grand scheme of things, but like relative to his level of success and wealth,

that's a lot less than I would have expected. But he's like, that's all I need. And he's like, that's all I need is safety. I'm willing to roll everything else. And I thought that was very fascinating. Then I've seen, so I thought that's cool. And Naval has said a very similar thing. He goes, one of the hardest things to do is you start to climb the mountain.

And when you're in your 20s, you don't know, you don't know anything. So you just start going up whatever the trail that you see is. And you start going up. The problem is, let's say your ambition, your dream is to get to the top of the mountain. But halfway up, you learn that the trail you're on is not the path that gets you there. And so what do you do? He's like, the reality is that most people, you're now 33 years old. You've realized that the path you're currently on is not the lifestyle or the path.

or the path that you want, but it is very hard to say, I'm going to walk back to the bottom of the mountain and pick a different path. And what most people do is they just settle. They say, I guess I don't need to get to the top. This is high enough. And they're not saying it because they actually want that. They're saying it because the thought of starting over is so hard mentally. But the great musicians, the great actors, the great entrepreneurs, the great scientists,

they reinvent themselves. They go into new fields, new buildings. new studies, new beginnings, and they start again. And so I find that pretty inspiring. And I've seen that so many times in the people in my life that people who aren't willing to walk backwards, aren't willing to go back to being a beginner again. It's really tough. I've met multiple people who have started something and sold it and then went back to

college, Darmesh being one of them. He started HubSpot in college after he'd already made. Say the name. Same the name you want to say. Say the name you're dying to say. Brett Adcock did the same thing. Our friend Siava did the same thing. That's right.

And it was hard at the time when your whole friend group is doing one thing, when your own success does one. I mean, I've even felt it in the smallest ways. This podcast does pretty well. I know that if I come on here, we're going to put out some content. A lot of people are going to consume it.

The thought of doing TikTok, which A, I didn't even know how to edit a TikTok. B, I'm not like good at that style of content. C, I got zero followers over there. But I was like,

all right, well, like, I need to be somebody who can go back to the beginning. So TikTok is like your Tesla. Exactly. Now you get it. And I'm just like Elon. So what about these guys?

Then there's the opposite. Speedrunner. So I'm going to tell you about, I saw this story and I want to tell you about three friends. So the story I saw was that the founder of RX bar. Speed running is such a better term for sprinting. For running. Yeah.

So speed running. What is speed running? Speed running is the opposite. speed running is where you don't go back to that beginner's mind you don't go back to the bottom mountain you literally hike the same trail again and now you know that trail so well you can do it so much faster they do it faster it's a video gaming term i don't know if you've seen it but like there's people that they don't play the new video game they don't buy the new the new the new uh you know the next the next edition of whatever fortnight or whatever they play mario that was released in whatever

1985 they play the first level and they play it over and over and over again to where they can flawlessly sprint through the level hopping on all the Gumbas heads and they could finish the level perfectly in like 32 seconds. And that is like the actual fastest that a human being could do this. And they do it. They're called speed runners. And people love to watch them because you're watching absolute mastery over something that, you know,

has been around for a while that they can just keep replaying until they absolutely master it. Like that Giro guy who just like packed sushi for like 50 years and like didn't change, right? Exactly. He's not trying to make the new shit. He's like, spicy tuna roll. This is what we're going to do. And so I've noticed that I have friends that are the beginners and I have friends that are the speedrunner.

So let me tell you about the speedrunner. So first I noticed that the RX bar founder who built RX bar ended up selling it for $600 million, came out with a new bar. And it's called the David Bar. Did you see this? No, but that must mean that it's not compete ended like right then. Yeah, yeah, exactly. He sold his company in 2017.

and so now it's you know, whatever, yeah, I don't know how many years. I don't know what year it is. It's been eight years or something like that. It's, he could start a new bar.

So he started this thing called the David Bar. It's just like epic protein bar that he's doing. David Protein.com. Looks sick, by the way. It looks awesome. Look sick name. And the macros are also pretty insane.

Like, just look at the macros. Do you see it on there? No, 160 calories, 28 grams of protein, sugar-free. That's amazing.

Pretty impressive. I'm in. Yeah, I'm in. So I want to tell you a couple things about this before we finish. Actually, I'll finish the speed running point. I want to tell you some RXBarr story. So anyways, speed running. We have three friends.

I think you know at least two of the three people. I can't say their names. But let's just call them e-commerce friend number one, two, and three. E-commerce friend number one sold their first e-commerce company. So the company, let's say one, the first time they played the level for hundreds of millions of dollars, almost $500 million. And then they decide they're going to start a new company. Do they go into AI? Do they create a space company, a satellite company?

No. They're like, I'm going to start another e-commerce company in almost the same niche. And I'm going to do it again. I'm going to speed run the same level because the first time I was an idiot. I didn't know what I was doing. I figured it out along the way. Now I figured all this knowledge out. Why not just do it again?

And so they say they're going to start a new company. They are talking to somebody and they go, yeah, I think if I think if I Actually, they weren't even planning to do. They go, I think if I started one today, I can hit a million dollars a month in revenue in three months. And the other person goes, no way. No chance, dude. Bullshit.

Like, you think that, but that's not true. Challenge accepted. Only for that reason, this person starts a new company. And how big are they now? Month two hit a million dollars a month in revenue. You know, they're a couple months in. And, you know, they're going to do probably two to three. million dollars this month in revenue and less than six months old.

Can you can't even say the category? Nothing. I can't say a word. I might get shot just for saying what I said already. So that's the first. And who's person two? Person two. Person two.

Sold another company. Also for nine figures. Nine figures means $100 million or more. Doing literally the same company again. Doing the same company in the same category. Obviously there's like a 10% twist. But like back to e-commerce, back to the same. category, back to the same playbook.

How big are they now? Doing phenomenal again, right off the bat. I don't have all their exact revenue members, but I know it's like tracking faster than it was the first time. Friend number three, friend number three was friends with person one and two, saw them run the levels, helped them a little bit along the way. And then friend number three had an experience that triggered them also, a little chip on the shoulder moment.

So they were invited by a very successful company to come to their annual like, come check out the office, come to our annual retreat. And they go and they are watching, they go through the office. Like, wow, this is really impressive. They go to the annual like company conference or something like that. And they're like, wow, this is really impressive. But the problem was that the people invited them, you know,

there's like a good faith way to invite someone, which is like, hey, check this out. You'll really, like you'll enjoy it. I'd love to show you what we're doing, blah, blah, blah. And then there's, hey, you want to see my car collection? Oh, my God. That's what was going on. It was you want to, can I brag to you real,

quick and they were arrogant. They were incredibly arrogant the whole time. And my friend told me, they said, friend number three told me, they go, you know that scene in the big short where these bankers are talking about how they're giving loans and they don't have to do any, they like, don't have to do much, much of a credit check. And they're able to do. But talking about giving strippers like five houses. Yeah, exactly. And the guy, the main character's like, why are they, why are they confessing? And then his friend goes, they're not confessing.

They're bragging. And he goes and he's like, short this. We need this short mortgage, back to do it, whatever. My friend says, same feeling.

Walked out, I was just like, why are they, why are they bragging about all this? And it's like, and he's just got turned off. He's like, okay,

you showed me, you showed me exactly how big this market is. You showed me exactly how lucid if this is. You shouldn't be how arrogant you are. You show me how bloated your company is. I will come out with a lean, mean, fighting machine doing the same thing, that company gives him 10 million plus and profit a

year, personally, just 10 million and profit in your bank account every year. And this is less than five years, raise no capital, raise no external capital, all that stuff, right? Amazing, amazing, amazing story. And when I was talking to this person, I was like, I was talking to one of the friends, and I said, this is amazing, number one, but it's also kind of lame. They're like, what do you mean? And I was like, you're playing the same level of the game again.

Like, yeah, you're so talented. Like, you could do anything. And like, it's fun to win, and I get that. But it's also fun to grow. And like, I feel like you opted into fun to win with no growth. But you're so talented that you could get the growth and win. That was kind of my argument. But I might also just be that they're like, cool, my broker friend, thank you for the advice.

And so I wanted to get your take. Are you a walk backwards guy or are you a speed run guy? And where do you land in the philosophy of this? And I'm curious, actually for all the listeners, I really want to know, because both ways can win, but there's almost like a political opinion on this. I have a political opinion and a belief that walking backwards is the way.

It's the right way to do it in your life, not the speed run the same level again. For years, I thought if you have talent, you owe it to the world to almost be a steward of that talent. Like you owe it to the rest of us because you're so special to exploit your ability to the max. Now that I'm a little bit older, and I have a family, I think,

fuck everyone, do what makes you happy. Like, make your kids proud of you. And like, just whatever you think is exciting and fun, do that. You don't owe anyone anything. So not explore, exploit, basically. Like, you're not, don't wander out. No. What I think is, if it, if you, so like, for example,

I'll name drop him again, Brett Adcock. I was like, Brett, why are you doing all this complicated shit? You don't have to. And he's like, I just think this needs to get done. and I should do it. I love that attitude. I also love the attitude of, well, I'm just going to do the same thing over and over again

because I get joy out of it. And this is awesome, and I just love it. I think that is also a total win. I think both are wins, and I don't think that you owe it to the world to do anything unless you choose to owe it to the world. So let's say we're not telling other people what they should do. What do you, where do you land on that?

Let's say you could have started another newsletter right after the hustle. But it's not like I'm starting a huge, like, world. I'm just starting things. I'm doing new things. I'm doing new things because I do, I have a chip on my shoulder to prove myself in multiple industries or multiple business models, but I don't want to risk

everything and I'm not willing to. Isn't that so funny? It's like prove yourself to who. Is there anyone else? Sam's successful, but only in one industry. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I respect until he lands industry too. Like nobody has ever even had that thought besides you. Isn't that crazy? Oh, you

don't know anything about e-com, bro? So for me personally, I would say that I don't feel like I owe it to the world to explore and I don't owe it to someone who's less talented. Not that I'm particularly, I mean, I think I'm mildly talented, but when I see someone who's really talented, I'm like, you owe it to me because you were gifted this. Well, let me ask you this. Would you run it back? Let's say you were the RX bar guy.

Would you run it back and do another bar company? So I think when I run back newsletters, no, because that bores me. The RX bar, I think it's pretty dope. I think it was great for the world. I think that. So yeah, if I'm, if I'm him, I would. And there was actually an article written about him how he was retired and he was bored and he had nothing to do. And they had a picture of him. But they made this photo, the article of the of him really great, where it was him by himself on a lawn chair like in front of his mansion. And he was lonely. And they talked about his like, you know what I'm talking about that famous article that was. Captcha. Rock bottom. Yeah. It was like a cliner in front of a mansion. Well, and it was like in the middle of day and he was just like by himself. The whole article was like, he's looking for his next thing. And so for someone like that, I'm like, just do it again, man.

That was exciting. That was cool. I think that's awesome. And I think R is, so if I'm David, would I redo it? Yeah, I think I would. Also, I don't even know if his name is David. I think his name is Peter. So by the way, the RX bar story.

So he's obsessed with CrossFit. Do you know, do you know the story or no? No. So he's obsessed with CrossFit. He's like, they don't sell any snacks that are like paleo at the time. This is 2013. And he goes to his dad. And this is the best part.

This is the whole reason I only wanted to tell the story just to drop this one line. He goes to his dad. He's like, dad, do you know any investors? I want to start this like bar company. His dad literally says, you need to shut the fuck up and go sell some bars if you want to start a bar company.

He told him, you need to show the bug up and go sell a thousand bars. And so he's like, okay. And so he's like, and he talks about like, you know, he was in school.

He was not very good at school. And he's like, you know, so when I was failing with this business, I was comfortable. I was used to eating shit. I had been a failure. It was not foreign to me. I'd been a failure already at school. So, oh, great, I'm bad at that. I'm bad at this. He's like, I just kept going.

I didn't like doubt myself. I didn't like second guess it because I was like so comfortable in that, like the failure mode that every company starts with. His first business was in high school, selling weed, by the way. All right, let's see the next one. So his next thing was like, he's like, I thought raising money would solve my problems, but actually it was such a blessing that they didn't raise any money. So they sold for 600 million. I don't think they raised any money. They bootstrapped the whole way. And he's like, it was so good that because we were so forced on the one important thing selling the bars. That was the only way to continue the business. And so he's like, we would just sell. I would email. I would call it. I would give bars out on

consignment. We would do anything to just try to sell more bars. So in the first nine months, they did 600K. Then the first in the first year, they did two million. Year two, six million. Year three, I think they did 36 million. Wow. And then year four, they did 161 million. and then they sold to Kellogg for 600 million at that point. Wow. And then there's an article, that's amazing. There's an article making fun of the article I reference. And it says, Michigan Company pays guys $600 million, but he's kind of bored now.

This guy is awesome. The article was called What Happens When You Become a Millionaire overnight. Who wrote that second headline? That's amazing. It was just like a shitty radio, a local radio station because I guess David or whoever this guy is, he lives in Chicago. and so like a local radio station, like made fun of them. It's pretty funny.

That's a good. Dude, this guy's awesome. We should get him on the pod, right? Yeah. Peter, come on the pod. Tell the story. All right. I got to run.

That's the episode. Good one. 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 on. On a road, let's travel, never looking back.