The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 178: Sol Orwell - CEO, Digital Nomad, Vulnerability As A Leader

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

Episode 178: Sol Orwell - CEO, Digital Nomad, Vulnerability As A Leader Sol Orwell is an entrepreneur and business developer, most known for his work as the co-founder of Examine.com. He was recognized as a 2014 Game Changer by Men's Fitness and profiled by Forbes as a seven-figure entrepreneur. Sol describes himself as semi-retired, which allows him to travel three to four months out of the year. He does not take investment money to retain control of his companies and free time. He has stepped back from an active role in Examine.com to focus on other projects. He blogs about business development in the context of making money online on SJO.com and serves on the advisory board for Schwarzenegger.com as a health and fitness expert. Episode 178: Sol Orwell - CEO, Digital Nomad, Vulnerability As A Leader Subscribe on iTunes  or Stitcher Radio The Learning Leader Show "I did what any normal person would do – I gave the company to my #2 to run, paid him more than I paid myself, and basically became a digital nomad." In This Episode, You Will Learn: Common themes to sustain excellence = "A deep level for creating creativity." Why Deep Work is so critical to Sol's success A typical day: 2 minute cold shower The 5 Minute Journal A 10-15 minute walk -- "Get the brain started" Get to work Done with work by 2:30 every single day Friday's are always no work days... Just "reading days" The specific process Sol has taken to build a life around "creating businesses around my interests" The process of purchasing Examine.com for $41,000 (and why he did it) Putting his #2 in charge so he could travel the world and be a "digital nomad" The Picasso Principle How to create this lifestyle: Have no ego, create a blueprint, execute, trust others Creating a "Side Hustle" -- A how to Why you must "Get Started" The #cookielife Vulnerability is "when you don't know what the response will be when you put yourself out there." 1,000 true fans Why Sol does not take VC money Changing his name to Sol Orwell... Why? How travel can create empathy and why that's so important for a leader... Being grateful Learning Leader = Constantly learning. Have self-awareness. Take criticism, and foster the spirit to accept it "Luck is a function of observation" "I think a big part of entrepreneurship is to realize that you can trust other people. You can be rewarded for trusting other people. You don't have to necessarily look over their shoulder." Continue Learning: Sol's website: Examine.com Follow Sol on Twitter: @sol_orwell To Follow Me on Twitter: @RyanHawk12 You may also like these episodes: Episode 078: Kat Cole – From Hooters Waitress To President of Cinnabon Episode 071: Nate Boyer - Green Beret, Texas Football, The NFL Episode 073: Jay Bilas - World Class ESPN Basketball Broadcaster, Toughness, Fixing The NCAA Episode 107: Simon Sinek – Leadership: It Starts With Why Did you enjoy the podcast? If you enjoyed hearing Sol Orwell on the show, please don't hesitate to send me a note on Twitter or email me. Episode edited by the great J Scott Donnell The Learning Leader Show is supported by  Mizzen and Main: Performance fabric menswear. The most comfortable/durable dress shirts you will find on the market. I personally own 22 of them. To get free shipping, use the code "ryanhawk" -- To get $50 off when you purchase three shirts, use the code "ryanhawk3" -- Thank you for your support!

So for those who don't know over the Picasso principle, as the story goes, at least in my retelling of the story, there's a woman who's at an antique store. She's basically antiquing, which is looking at some cast irons. And she looks up and, whoa, lo and behold, there's Mr. Pablo Picasso. So she's a big fan. She runs over and pulls a napkin out of her purse and says, Mr. Picasso, I'm a huge fan of yours. Will you please draw something for me? So he, you know, he sketches on it for like a couple of minutes. Give the door and it says, that'll be 20,000 lira.

And the woman is like, gas, right? She's like, 20,000 lira, it only took you two minutes to do it. This is crazy. And he's like, sure, it only took me two minutes to do it now, but it took me 30 years to get to these two minutes, right? And it says, I'm a big, big fan of experience because it'll give you knowledge that cannot be replicated. Are leaders born or are they made?

Our host, Ryan Hawk, believes that leaders can be made through determined, focused work on learning the art and science behind the makeup of other successful leaders. Now it's time to inhale knowledge and exhale success. You're listening to the learning leader. Show with Ryan Hawk. Hey, and welcome to the Learning Leader Show. I am Ryan Hawk.

Thank you so much for being here. I just love this featured leader tonight. It's Saul Orwell. I originally met Saul out in Ohio, California. Jason Gainard's Mastermind Talks in early 2016. We went hiking together, had a few meals. I found him to be one of the most interesting

people I've ever met. His story is incredible. He went deeper into it during this conversation. From a business perspective, he has started 10 companies. Three of them have been, of hit the seven figure mark, and to hear him describe how he's done it is fascinating. A few of the other topics we got into, how he's able to build businesses around what he likes. Then why he changed his name, fascinating story there too, and how travel can positively impact your life and why we all should do much more of it.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, it's Saul Orwell. All right, Saul, man. I'm so pumped to have you here. This has been in the works for a while ever since we are in Ohio together, and we had so much fun. Even on the bus ride, and I don't know what we'd call that, climbing the mountains, if you can get those mountains. Trail hiking, but we'll go climbing the mountains. We'll go climbing a mountain. We climbed mountains together.

And now, so it's been in the work since we were in Ohio together earlier this year. So I'm excited to have you, man. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Dude, thanks for having me. I'm excited to be on. I got maybe a question to make you think a little bit to start this off. You have designed an incredible life for yourself through work, through, I think, being an intelligent guy, through networking properly with great people. I'm curious, when you've, through all your world travels, through all the people you've met, the success that you've had, and we'll get into what that exactly is for the people who don't know yet.

But I'm curious, what are some of the common themes you've pulled out of characteristics of people who you found who have been able to sustain excellence over an extended period of time? What are some of the themes and characteristics they possess? I think there's a deep level of pursuit for creativity, right? I know so many people who, I mean, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk's great. I talk about grit and grind and going for the hustle, but I don't think most people can do that, right? They don't have the personality. You look at someone like Steve Jobs and, oh, he's amazing. but I don't think most of us could have done what Steve Jobs had done,

even if we're given the exact same tools that he had, right? So I think a lot of it that I found is that when people take the time to indulge in their creativity, and that can be so many different things, right? People overestimate or, sorry, they make it too niche of what is creative. It's not just creating art or painting. You know, dance can be creative. Exploration can be creative, just letting your mind want to be creative. Even reading can be creative, right?

if you're reading some fiction or even nonfiction or biographies. There's so many different things to indulge in your creative side. So I find that if you're not just always singularly focused on one thing, if you can distract yourself with other things, you find a lot more interesting, be it again physical, mental, emotional, I find that's a big key in being able to sustain yourself in the long term. Interesting that you said to not focus? Did I hear that right when you said to have maybe a varying degree of what you're

going after, that seems to be different from what I typically hear. Right. So one of the more popular memes on the internet now is called shower thoughts. And the idea is, you know, have these profound thoughts within the shower. And previously that used to include the throne, right? We'd have our time on the throne, people that have time to think. But now we're always distracted, right? We're always having a smartphone, someone sending us an email, there's an update I need to do.

Someone's texting you, be it work later or not related. So when I say distracted and not focused, I mean at the, that moment in time. You don't always, like, deep work is critical. Being focused on what you're doing is absolutely critical. But I think it's almost equally critical is to give yourself that downtime so your brain can almost subconsciously maybe be churning it, but you're not busy worrying about it. Do you, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I think it's really important that. So one of my favorite new words I've learned is conciliants, which means that you arrive at the same kind of conclusion using two or multiple different ways of getting there.

And I think conciliances is very nurtured when you give yourself time off from the task at hand. Do you create your days to have moments of just pure downtime where you maybe that that festers the creativity in your mind? Oh, absolutely, man. Like after, so I work out on weekdays, I work out three times a weekday, right? Wait, so let's actually, let's go through your typical day. I mean, you probably don't have a typical day, but let's just go through it. Sure. So I just recently wrote about my morning routine, which is relatively simple.

Basically, you know, I get up at roughly, let's say, 8 o'clock, 7.30, 8.30, hop out of bed. I read some politics while I'm on the throne. Then I take an exactly two-minute cold shower. I found that's just the limit I can take. Okay. And I usually put on some like some dance music, maybe some scrylicks lately. And I'll dance in the shower, man.

I'll enjoy myself. Why not? And so after that, I'll do the five-minute journal. Okay. So for those who don't know, it's a great way of expressing gratitude for what you have and kind of what you're looking forward to. And then I go for like a 10, 15-minute walk. So if it's not freezing outside, I'll grab a Coke zero. If it is, I'll grab like a green tea.

And I'll just walk. And I have nothing going on actively in my head. I'm almost oblivious to my thoughts. I was going the same little path. But it's a way from my brain to almost get started, to almost get that engine going, right? And so by the time I get back home, I am now chomping at the bit to get to work. I'm like, what are the emails I have to crack today? What's my task at hand?

You know, what happened overnight? It's almost like a level of excitement to say, oh, I'm finally on my computer. Let's kick ass now. And so in terms of then, you know, and then I'll do my work. And usually I'm done work by like, let's say, 2 o'clock. I'm not big on working for too long. I'm a big believer that you focus on the damn task at hand. You kick ass.

You do 30 minutes to a 90 minute block and you move on. And so for the rest of the day, pretty much, I try. try to be disconnected. Hmm. I try to spend maybe some time dick around on Facebook, but I try to be disconnected. No more emails, no more work

because, again, I'm a big believer in this downtime. It's almost like, you know, if you lift weights, you still need to get your eight hours of sleep because that's when the real muscle growth happens, right? The muscular potential and all that. The other thing I do is I take my Fridays off. I call them reading days.

So people will send me interesting articles over the course of the week. I've got this reputation of it. I'll seek them out and I'll pop them all into an evernote. And then on Friday, I'll head off to my favorite cafe, which has got the legendary best cookies I've ever taste. And we'll get into that too, obviously. And either I'll read these articles or I'll meet random humans of interest. So, you know, that's kind of, I mix my networking along with my reading,

along with my cookie eating. And what's awesome is I'm reading these interesting articles. And as awesome people are coming in, I'll tell them about the articles I've read and, you know, what do you think about this? What do you think about that? So our bond is more than just, hey, what do you do? hey, this is what I do. It's more like, hey, I read this really interesting article, for example, one I read recently was about the Miss America page in Atlantic City. And had nothing to do with Trump himself more in terms of what the operations ran and all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, this is fascinating. So we talked about beauty and what is considered beauty and what's considered beauty nowadays or how do you be beautiful or like how I lost weight, blah, blah, blah, right? So,

and then weekends, no work. I refuse to work on weekends. Again, I cherish my downtime. This is why I'm an entrepreneur. I'm not an entrepreneur to be famous. I'm not an entrepreneur to be rich. I'm an entrepreneur to control my life. And work is not my life. And so, again, on the weekends, I'm off. And by the time Monday it comes, man, I've got like 10,000 ideas.

I'll write notes. Like if something comes to my mind, I'll write a quick voice note down. But otherwise, man, once Monday comes, I'm just ready to kick ass again. So that's kind of how I do it. So for the people who are listening now, Saul, who don't know you, they're like, what? How does this guy make money? What does he do? Like, who is this guy, Ryan?

They're thinking about that because he wakes up and, and has a solid morning routine. He finishes his day by 2 o'clock. And so for the average person listening, for most of us, they're saying no Friday work, no weekend work, done at 2 o'clock. So I have to ask, Saul, and maybe you can explain it. A couple things. One, financially, how are you, I know you've done very well. So how have you been able to acquire money to live this lifestyle? And two, what exactly when people ask you what you do, how do you answer?

All right. So I'm going to answer the second to get to the first. So when people ask me, what do you do? My answer is always, I build businesses around my interests. And so I've now been doing this for 17 years. I started this in 1999. My first, I've had multiple businesses, more than multiple. I've had like half a dozen, if not even more actually, by now.

And three of them hit seven figures. And the first one was in online games. I helped facilitate virtual currency sales in massively multiplayer online games, such as World Warcraft, EverQuest, those games like that. The second one that did really well was in local search. So I got into the local search space just as the help was coming out. That was just when Google Maps had just been released. We had badges before ForceCrow was even an idea.

We had user reviews, user rankings, all up here in Toronto. And then we went a little bit more generic and more on the data side. and expanded into North America. That was more on a B2B play. And then five and a half years ago, I created a company called Examine.com. So I gained a lot of weight. I used to live in Argentina and Argentina.

And Argentina, the ice cream there is just crazy, right? And you can order it online, so I get a leader of Dos de Lecheca on Brownie every day. And then, you know, you can't burn in the freezer because then it gets freezer burns, so then you need some more again the next day. And it's just a perpetual cycle. So I gained, I was quite a lot heavier.

and as I lost weight, I realized supplement companies are ripping us off. And so that's what I got. Yeah, supplement companies, right? They're misrepresenting science. And so what Examine.com does is we analyze scientific research in nutrition and supplementation. And the way we monetize it is we have no donors, we have no sponsors, no advertisers, no supplements that we sell.

We only sell education. So every single business I've talked about online games was because I immigrated to North America and I was overwhelmed by, you know, North American culture from where I come from. online games or my refuge. Local search. It was more of an itch for myself. You know, supplementation again.

So what I do is, you know, I find these frustrations of mind and I build a business around them. And I've always built it around the world of virtual items or virtual products. I've never done anything physical. I find marginal cost is so much better. And the beauty of that is once you have ample amounts of traffic, right? At the end of the day, the two metrics we focus on is we either increase the dollar per user

or we increase the number of users we get. And as long as one of those is going up, it means we're making more money. So that's kind of how I do it. Now, in terms of why do I not work, you know, such long hours, one of the things I've always done is I've always put someone else to become the face of the company. I've always made someone else famous in that industry. Even if you go to examine.com's about pay. So just to give you contact, like examine.com, we get about 60,000 visitors a day. We're pretty much at almost 2 million visitors a month.

We've been quoted not only in like men's health and men fitness, but in the mainstream, right? anywhere from New York Times to The Guardian to BBC, Mother Jones, all those, right? We get quoted everywhere. And so if you go to our About page, you'll see that we're actually the seventh person, or sorry, I am the seventh person listed. I'm like director of strategy or something, right?

So you're looking scrolling, you're like, oh, who's this tool? Let's keep going. And so the way I set it up is Kamal Patel, who runs Examine.com, he knows that his audience will never be as big as it will be viaexamine.com. And Examine.com knows that he is an, an amazing dude who knows this stuff more than I will ever know it. And so why don't we make him famous? Why don't we make him the guy? And so that's how I can not work so hard in a manner of speaking is I know he runs the ship. He's the one in charge. He gets the fame and glory

that's fine. But at the, you know, in the back, I'm kind of the guy helping guy, the company along. So that's kind of how I found my balance. Now, admittedly, this is not something you can just dive into and go, oh, I only work till 2 p.m. and whatever. But the other thing is also, you know, my one hour of throughput is the equivalent of someone else's like, let's say, five hours of throughput, just because I've done it for so long, right? When you and I were on that bus and we're talking about SEO, like if you and I started with the exact same, like I told you exactly what to do, I would still do it roughly three times faster than you just because I've done it for so long, right? So that's why I'm really big on deep work, get in, do your work really well,

and then move on and enjoy your life. I think you mentioned the Picasso principle. Yes. I read an article about that. You mentioned it. I think it's entailing exactly what you're talking about right now, correct? Yeah. So for those who don't know with the Picasso principle, as the story goes, at least in my retelling of the story, there's a woman who's at an antique store. She's busy antiquing, which is looking up some cast irons. And she looks up and, whoa, lo and behold, there is Mr. Pablo Picasso. So she's a big fan. She runs over them, pulls a napkin out of her purse and says, Mr. Picasso, I'm a huge fan of yours. Will you please draw something for me? So he, you know, he sketches on it for like a couple of minutes. Give the door and it says, that'll be,

20,000 lira. And the woman is like, it has, right? She's like, 20,000 lira, it only took you two minutes to do it. This is crazy. And he's like, sure, it only took me two minutes to do it now, but it took me 30 years to get to these two minutes, right? And it's this, I'm a big, big fan of experience because it'll give you knowledge that cannot be replicated, right? You can give me all the theoretical information you want. I can tell you everything I know about SEO. But until you start getting into it, you would be like, whoa, I didn't think about this or I didn't think about that. Or Saul didn't even tell me this because he thought it was so mundane, but I never considered it.

So yeah, you know, my four hours of work. And the other thing is not distracted work, right? I don't have Facebook open. I have no social media on my phone. There's nothing trying to take away my attention. I put on my meditation music. I do my work for 30 to 90 minutes and done. That's it.

And then move on. So do you, I don't know, I know since you're very, you do a good job of meeting others and trying to help them and explain it. Like, yeah, I was a complete stranger when we were sitting on the bus and then climbing mountains together. But you described a lot. of what you did to me during that, you know, half of a day. And I was, that's why I was, I was so excited to continue this dialogue because it was fun learning about your lifestyle.

And I think we also, was it a breakfast or a lunch where you just, you talked about, uh, changing your name as well, which we'll get to. But, but I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm curious for the, for the people listening in, in, in, uh, that are saying, wait a second, like, how, how is he able to do this? Is there a way that I, is there like a blueprint, maybe that you've, you've published or put out there, not necessarily on. each of your businesses, but on how you've been able to create this lifestyle. Sure. I mean, so at the end of the day, I think there's a few things.

One, people overcomplicate things. And two, the businesses about their ego, not about what the business is. And so that's why I've been very big about not putting my name on the business, not making it about me, because they're so busy trying to make themselves famous or getting pressed for themselves. Listen, the mainstream media doesn't do shit for traffic unless some superstar shares it or Forbes puts the article on their front. page, you know, it does not move the needle at all. It's great for social proof and that's all fine. So in terms of a blueprint, it's funny you mentioned. So I haven't written anything per se, but my next project is in the pet space. So sometimes next year, I've already bought the domain pet.org. I'm going to get into the pet space. And all I'm going to do, pet.org? How much did

that cost? That one was only 20,000. I think examine.com was 40,000. In terms of, we can even just one second take attention to domain name. Domain names are more of an opportunity cost and a sunk cost. So even though I spent $42,000 on an exam, I know I could have sold it immediately for $30,000 to $35,000. So my sunk cost was more about $5K, but my opportunity cost was a bit higher, right? Same thing with pet.org, right? I can sell it for $15,000 within 24 hours if I want,

so it's more of an opportunity sunk cost again in 5K. And so when we do pet.org, literally all we're going to do is I'm going to find one topic. So I know in the back of my head, let's see I'm going to sell a guy, on training, right? I have a dog. I know what's going on with, you know, what's the biggest headache that I have personally? So I'll write an article very, not me, I will hire somebody. I'll find a vet or somebody.

They'll write a very long, in-depth article on, let's say, you know, why do dogs like rubbing their backs on the ground, right? You've seen it. Dogs, they go ballistic and they love their, and they do it, right? And so when we write this article, we're going to write the best article. I find that a lot of people over-complicate things. They do too much content. or like, oh, I got to write about this or what should I write about?

Instead, write about one thing, but write it as the best thing anyone will ever read about on that topic, right? And then what I'll do is while we're writing this and while we're doing our research, I will email other people who've written about something similar or something related. And I'll say, hey, listen, I have found your article on this. And this will take a long time. You know, I found your article on this. I like this or I didn't like this.

Or hey, what about this thought? I'm doing research on this topic. I'm writing about this right now. would you like me to let you know when I publish it? So that's all I'll do. And once we publish it and we'll let them know, hey, oh, you know, they'll let us know. And we'll let them know and we will spend time to build these relationships up. And we'll get anywhere from 1,000 to 10,000 visitors almost guaranteed.

And from then we can build up our email list. And from having people in an email list, we can sell. Now, in terms of a real example, I wrote about readability last December. I wrote it literally five days before Christmas. and I emailed, I think it was 77 people, and this was pure cold emails, right? And it took me, this is the hardest part. It took me 24 hours of like actual time, eight hours across three days to contact 24 people. Oh, sorry, to contact 77 people, right?

So 24 hours. I had a 69% response rate to a cold email saying, hey, I'm writing this article. They had no idea who I was. I was nobody in the industry, right? But all these people responded. And when I actually sent them in the article, I think we had, 15 people end up linking to it on their own websites. And I think we got like 70 tweets out of it because it got retweeted and blah, blah, blah, blah,

right? And people with much larger audiences. One of my favorite examples is one of the guys I contacted was a web, was the guy who ended up, I didn't know this, being one of the editors at sitepoint.com. Sitepoint.com is one of the largest webmaster sites. It's been around since like 20 years. He then asked me to write for an article for them about, you know, things I've learned over my, you know, 17 years.

And that brought in separate traffic. So all I did was write this. And so if you look at this, it's incredibly replicable, right? You spend a couple of weeks writing an in-depth article. You spend one week contacting people and just say, hey, this is what I've been studying or analyzing researching. I read your articles. You know, and this is what I thought was interesting. I'm writing about this. And then one week's promoting it. That's it. Right. And you will get 100 plus emails or 50 plus emails from almost every single article you write because you spent the time to make it amazing. And you built up the rapport with these people. And what's amazing is next time you write something, you've already contacted all these people. They already know you're not a crazy person, right? And so when you contact them again, you're like, oh, hey, you know, I wrote a new article. I'm like, why do dogs noses turn from black to pink as they grow old? Or why do they lick their nose? Let's make it even more specific, right? Done. That's it. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like, people think they need a trademark and they need a fancy logo. Man, when we start Examine.com, we didn't even

have a logo. It was just text saying, examine.com. Right? They think they need to have a trademark logo. They didn't have all this legal stuff set up. They need to have this set up. They need a merchant account. Man, none of that is needed. You just need to put out some content, get some emails, figure out what the people on your email list want and then make it for them and sell it to them. So it's a combination of creating the great content.

And then I think the hustle comes in after of being willing to contact people in some cases cold or a lot of cases cold emails and say, hey, here's what we did and then promote and push. So it makes me think, could people do this? on the side. Could this be a, could, could people try to emulate some of your work initially on the side and not have to just burn the boats and get something started by following maybe this little mini blueprint you've just kind of laid out and then see what happens? Oh, man, I know so many people, literally dozens of people who've done this as like a side hustle. Yeah. And it's worked out great from because all it is is right article or it's like like right slash read article. I'm sorry,

what I'm going to say? Write in research article. Contact the people who've written about it. It's let them know you've published it done, right? And you can, you can do that all and you can compress it into a week, you can press it in six months per article. There's no rush whatsoever. So then the next follow-up for it naturally is that's great and people read it and let's say it even goes mini-viral. How do I make money? So man, I don't even like this viral thing that people obsessed over. I don't even care. At the end of the day, so now, now there's two sides of it. Once you've written an article and you want to have something that people opt in. to, right? So let's say I wrote about like, why are dogs on their back? And then I might, right,

you know, what's the sign up and I'll let you know, you know, what to do next or, you know, what they're really letting you know, or whatever, right? And then through your email list, you survey them and you find out what do they really want, what they need. And so whenever we survey, we ask in a very generic matter. We basically say, like, what is the frustration you're having? Or what do you wish you had help with? Or, you know, what's something you're looking for a solution for, right? And people will literally tell you what to sell them. They'll say, hey, you know, like for Examine.com, again, easy example. Two years ago, we released our Examine.com, Reasons Digest. We analyze six scientific nutrition studies every month and we break it down, right?

So a lot of people were basically saying, I was, hey, listen, you guys are the best for supplement research, but what about nutrition? Or what about this study that came out? What should I think about that? We're like, all right, it makes sense. So now we have about 2,500 subscribers at 30 bucks a month paying us for this research analysis and the only reason it ever came about was because we surveyed our users. That's it. Nothing magical to it. Now the other side that I was saying was, you know, as you are building up these relationships and as people are linking to it, your SEO starts kicking in, right? Just by building up links, the mere fact that you have links are already literally ahead of 95% of your competition, you will now start getting traffic. People will start, you know, as you get

these more and more links, Google starts sending you more and more traffic. It might not be huge gobs of traffic, but it's sustained traffic that's coming in every day of the week. You don't have to have something go viral. You don't have to write something new and profound every single day or every single week. People are searching for this stuff and it's going to keep coming. The next stage on that is you then update the article every six months or every year, every year. Like people always think you have to make something new. Go back, edit the existing one, add some images, make it sexy and make it a little bit more expensive, hit up the same. same people we had hit up earlier and research and hit up new people and be like, hey, listen,

I wrote this a year ago. It got 10,000 visitors. People loved it. And, but they said, hey, what about this thing? So now I updated it even better. People will link to it even more now, especially because you've got that's got that look at all the comments I've got or look at all the people that visited already. Done. Did you talk to James Clear much in, or in Ohio? I've known James, actually from before. I actually didn't get a chance much to speak of an Ohio, but I've known in full while. Yeah. One of the things he talked about, because he's at James Cleaver.com, he's built up an incredible list and he's done some great work. His articles, it's kind of like you describe. He does an immense amount of research, great writer and publishes them and then shoots it to us a list. And I know he's working on a book now, I believe. But James also publishes, or I think at the beginning of when he was getting this thing started, he published on other sites, whether it was like Huffington Post, Inc, LinkedIn, whatever it may be.

Do you, is that something you believe in as well as posting literally the exact same articles on essentially a copy and paste on other other sites as well? So I'm not the biggest fan of doing an exact syndication because that's syndication because another domain will likely outrank you. I mean, Google for all of it's smarts, it still does a lot of stupid things. And you can get tripped up by what will appear to be the obvious thing, but it's an algorithm, right? So they can't just tweak it for you. They have to go in and fix whatever it is. So I'm not a big fan of duplicating your content because Google can think they are the original and then think you're the secondary. I am a big fan, though, of using guest posts on reputable sites to help build up your authority, to help build up your back links so that you are getting more links from them so that you do end up getting more search engine traffic.

For those who don't know or don't know much about searching an optimization, there's almost two tracks to it. To simplify this, there's almost two track to us. One is you have to get a lot of links or you have to get quality links. But the other thing is something called authority rank, which basically says, are you a real brand? Right. And by their measurement of brands, it's like someone like, let's say Forbes mentioning you, maybe not linking to you, but mentioning to you. So if you can get into Forbes, an entrepreneur, fast company, all these organizations, you may not even get a link. But, you know, Google, even Bing, to use that as an example, will notice that you were used as a brand and will trust you a bit more, which is all SEO is just building trust with Google, that they can trust you that if someone searches for, let's say, for us,

Apple creating and they come to our website that the person will be happy with what they find. Yeah, and I noticed an increase in people and fans once a Forbes article came out about my show and me as well as David Berkus, our fellow colleague from Ohio, wrote an ink article about my show and Jordan Harbinger's show for ink, which really was helpful to get more exposure. and I'm guessing it helped from an SEO perspective. I didn't really think of it. You just mentioned it from an authority by Forbes and Inc. As having what I think Dave's was the top five podcast to help you lead smarter.

And Forbes is more of a kind of a future story on the show. And you've had some similar things about yourself. Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, at the end of the day, the other nice thing about it, too, to add another part that people forget is social proof is important. Right? nowadays, even compared to last year what I was talking about, I'm now verified on Twitter. I'm now verified on Facebook.

I have a Wikipedia page. So if I contact anybody, and I've had this now, when I contact people, they will obviously Google me or they'll search for me. And the first things they see are, oh, you know, Salisbeen for Forbes and an entrepreneur, blah, blah, but he also verified is also on Wikipedia. They're a lot much more likely to trust you. So it's really important. It almost, it all comes together, right?

It's like there's nothing siloed off. Your brand, your reputation, it all feeds into each other. Yeah. And so, yeah, absolutely, like having mentions on Forbes and whatnot, it all, it all, it all, it all comes together at the end of the day. Yeah. And I think the other, I think the initial reaction when people hear this is they're saying, yeah, but, you know, usually that's like Tim Ferriss's name is using these. Yeah, but he already has a platform built. And my, my response to this always is there was a time when you had zero platform. There was a time when I had no platform. There's a time when Tim Ferriss had zero fans, no platform. So you have to start, right? And there's no better time to get going. If you don't start, I promise you won't ever get the platform. But if you do start and you work hard at, you do the research, you put in the time, at least you're going to give yourself a much better chance to build that up. But it's not going to happen if you don't get started.

Yeah, I mean, I hate to use that cliche phrase, but it's like, you know, the best time to start was yesterday. Otherwise, today, right? So, I mean, even look at me, right? Like, I've been doing this for a while. But my personal brand, I've literally only spent about 12. well after 13 months on it. Yeah, I mean, again, it was easier relatively for me because I have the experience, because, you know, if someone comes across me like, okay, so I was done this, this, this, this. But I have built up my thousands of followers. And again, we can get into the

cookies and all that jazz, that ridiculousness that it is because I finally did it, right? Instead of saying, oh, I need the perfect time, right, need to be in this perfect spot, is eventually just like you go for it, you do it. But I think the other important thing that people often often often forget is that you need to remember no matter how much smoke is blown up your ass, you're still not that amazing. Right? We all go to the bathroom. We all have our problems.

We all are nasty when we get our flus and whatnot. And I think sometimes people forget that at the end of the day, we're all the same. Why? What's the obsession with the cookies, man? So the cookies thing is, you know, I've always, I used to be a lot heavier. I love chocolate chip cookies. They're just so damn tasty. People need to go and check out the before and afters online.

They're all over. If you just Google, if you just Google your name, which, we're going to talk about your name too, but anyway, let's go back to the cookies. But you see it before and after, it's like, that's two different people. You know, it's like dramatic change. It's a bit of a change. But, yeah, so the cookie thing, man, it was all a bit of a lark, right? Basically what happened was there's this one cookie place.

I've met over 200 entrepreneurs now there over the last, like, three years. And I was telling everyone how this cookie is amazing. No one was believing me. And eventually because of the person I am, we had a chalk chip cookie off. So there was 18 cookies. There was like a cardamom cookie, like a miso cookie. It was crazy. But what's hilarious about it, and this is where it gets fun, is once I posted this picture online, people started saying, hey, I can make better cookies.

And in most cases, that's where the story ends. Everyone was like, oh, one day I'll try them or yeah, yeah. I was like, all right, prove it to me. This is my mailing address, send me your damn cookies. And so all it took was one woman to send me cookies. And what's awesome is she actually lived in London, Ontario, which is like two and a half hour drive away from Toronto. And she's like, oh, I'm not coming to Toronto anytime soon. And I don't want to mail them because I want you to have them fresh.

And I was like, don't worry, I got you. I got a friend of mine coming over next week. They didn't know each other. And she's like, I'm like, why doesn't she come over to your place, pick up the cookies and come here? And she was like, okay, fine. So I had a friend pick up cookies from a stranger for her, bring them over. I had them, they're delicious.

I posted them on my wall. And I said, like, look, you know, Laura had the guts to do it. Where is everyone else talking a big game? And lo and behold, this year alone, I'm now at like 60 or 70 cookies. What? I mean, just yesterday alone, I mean, you can see this right now. I got this. So someone sent me, miniature cookie monster.

But I had three different batches of cookies. Sorry, sorry, that that's not true. I had two different batches of cookies and someone sent me jams and sauce from, like, their hometown. Like, it's famous for this jam called Bakeapple Jam. But leading it back to it, what makes this so hilarious is, you know, all these entrepreneurs, it becomes so busy or so obsessed to becoming thought leaders or look how great I am, look how amazing I am, that they forget that, listen, at the end of the day, we just want to know, that the other person's a human, right?

That the other person's got their awards, got their enjoyment. And so I think part of the reason why I've been successful building on my brand or whatnot is, you know, I've embraced, I love cookies. I think raisins are disgusting. I think cargo shorts are ugly. And if you're wearing them, you're above 20 years old, what are you doing with your life? But I own those opinions, right? People usually don't own their opinions or they backtrack really quickly.

But I do like, listen, that's who I am. You don't have to like it. That's cool. I don't have to like you about that part. That's cool. But we can still bond over 20 other thousand different. and things, right? So I think that's kind of what the cookie life really shows people is, you know, you don't have to be this perfect human being. You can have your weird, weird interest, but still

be, you know, someone who can teach someone else. I'm really glad you brought that up. I wasn't going to go here, but I think there's a, there seems to be a, I don't know the right word for it, but it may be a fascination with people to be extreme. I know I fall into this bucket too, Saul, so this is maybe more I'm projecting here. But maybe. I think people are, they really want others to like them for lack of a better word. Absolutely. And they're fearful of potentially being polarizing or making the comment about cargo shorts, which I agree with you, 17 million thousand percent.

They don't, they're not in my closet anymore. But anyway, I think, and so, but we're, I'm curious because I'm, I'm always thinking that every skill, everything that we do, there's a way that we can develop it, the way that we can get better, the way that even if maybe it's not inherently part of we could make it part of us. And so when you talk about not really being fearful of putting your opinion out there, even if people disagree, where do you think that comes from? Or can that be developed?

Or do you think that's just innately within you? I don't think it's innately within me. Like I was this, you know, again, fat, super shy, community nerd. It's something I've developed. I think the reality and just a bit of a tangent is, you know, it's super popular these days to talk about how you're going to be vulnerable. But real vulnerability, and I got this from a buddy of mine, we had this epic three-hour lunch on Friday. I love these deep conversations.

But he basically said vulnerability is when you don't know what the response will be to what you put out there. So if I say, and I don't want to, you know, if I say like, you know, I'm being really vulnerable, I have this genetic condition and I've had seven surgeries. This is true, right? And I'm like, oh, this is me being really vulnerable. Not really, right? No one's ever going to go like, oh, man, you suck. You've got to generate.

Sorry, you're the worst, right? No one's going to give me grief for that. Everyone's going to be like, oh, you know, you work so hard. Oh, you're in good shape or blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, that's not real vulnerability. Right? So that's been one of my things is like, you know, we all give it lip service, but what is true vulnerability?

And it's a gradient, right? So the other thing is I found in, I keep forgetting his name. He has a blog at KK.org. And he talked about a thousand true fans. Kevin Kelly. Yeah, that's like Kevin Keller. That's right. And you wrote about a thousand true fans, right?

And then Tim took it to another level. And he's like, I'd rather have 10,000 people who just love everything. I do, then 100,000 or whatever, a million that are just kind of interested in me. And that's my same kind of volition, right? If we get really dark for a second, and you can see this, but other people can't see it. I have a tattoo that says honor, and then if you flip it upside down, it says valor. It's an ambigram, right? And honor valor means respect and courage.

And the reason I got that tattoo was, so I was married and I told my parents were very concerned. I used to be a very conservative Muslim, and they were very concerned Muslims. And I said, listen, I'm going to marry this white redhead. And eventually when it came all to it head, my father basically said, you know, you either pick, you choose us or you choose her. And I'm like, well, she's not going to make me choose. So that's kind of a no-brainer of a decision. And again, I was myself a very conservative religious Muslim man at this time wearing a redhead, but whatever. Religions to each their own kind of thing.

But the lesson I got to and then I got to that. And so the lesson I got to that with the respect and courage was that, you know, I have to be who I am. I can't make my parents happy. I can't make my my ex-wife happy. I can't make anyone else happy but myself. Right. And so it's from that that I learned, you know, that listen, you know, if I put out and if I say, you know what, I think flip clubs are disgusting and I do, I don't need to see your toes.

Why are your toes on display? But if I put that out and someone is like, I think Saul is the worst, I mean, in the back of my head, I'm like, did I ever really want to associate with somebody who simply because I said I think flip clubs are the worst? And obviously I'm not being that serious if you're saying it's the worst, right? Yeah. If they think that my statement that I think that flip off are the worst, they think they write me off, do I really want to associate myself with that kind of person, right?

Is that someone I really want in my life? And so that's kind of been a big thing for me. It's like, listen, I have all these opinions. I have my reasons why I have these opinions. You don't have to agree with them. That's cool. But I'm not using Facebook or because I'm not on Instagram or Snapchat, right? I'm not using Facebook as a, look how amazing my life is.

or look at these inspirational quotes I'm going to give you because somehow that's going to change your life. No, man, I'm going to be like, listen, this is the weird human being I am. You may see things about it that you like, but you'll see things about it. You're like, this guy is crazy or this guy is such a crotchety old man or he's a complainer or whiner even. Like, let's say it that way. But I think that's okay. I think that's what makes for real friendships, right? That's what makes for real interesting human being or sorry, human connections.

And I'd rather have that than say, look at me, I've got 20,000 followers and they're all kind of blasé about what I do. Yeah, you have the true fans that are that are obsessive most about it. Exactly. Like, I would like to think, I would, and sorry, this got into a bit of a rant, cool. I would like to think that we're creating an army more than just followers. And I think the army mindset is really important because you're like, listen, I'm in this little army, I am the general.

And this is how we do. And if you are down with that, that's awesome. If not, that's cool. No problem whatsoever either. What's your relationship like with your parents? So eventually what happened was I lost my religion and my relation with my parents is now full disclosure. So on Fridays, I do my full disclosure Fridays. And now I just tell them everything.

And they can handle some of it. They can't handle some of it. So be it. It was actually my own parents who told me that, you know, until the age of 18, we are your parents. And once you hit 18, we are your friends. And it took them, it was easy for them to say it took them a while to be able to actually do it. but I think they've finally got into the stage where they're like, you know what, Saul, especially with the name change, right?

Saul's a bit of an idiot, but he's our idiot and that's okay. So when I got, and you also have to know how to play your parent, right? So when I got my tattoo, which is on my arm, I know my mom's going to flip out, right? I know she's going to lose her mind. And so when I call my mom about it, I was like, listen, mom, I got a tattoo and I got a nose ring. And so when I showed up at our house at my parents' place, I'm like, hey, look at my tattoo. my mom batted my arm away and she's like, where's your nose ring? Like, let me see your nose.

And I'm like, ha, psych, I have no nose ring. Now the tattoo doesn't seem so bad. She's called me walked away. So I think it's also like you eventually, you foster this relationship where they kind of don't see you as just a kid. I mean, I will always be a kid. But I think they finally accepted that I'm an adult and I've got my weird decisions that I make that they'll never agree with, but that's okay.

Little tangent. That reminds me solo of the story of like, you probably have heard this. like the 10-year-old girl who really wants a dog. And so she goes to her parents and says, mom and dad, I really, really want this pony so I can ride, ride the pony or the horse around.

And I really do. It would be so great. And they're like, what are you crazy? There's no way. And she goes, okay, I'll settle for a dog.

And they're like, oh, that's so much easier. And then she gets the dog. So it's like similar with your tattoo and your nose ring, you know? Absolutely. I mean, at the end of the day,

right, you have to know what kind of relationship. you have and you just have to utilize them that way. But again, it was, and even to my own parents, right? I learned from that. It was very much like take it or leave it. Like, this is who I am. I'm not going to pretend not to be that.

But, you know, and thankfully they were like, they kind of wizened up. Whatever you want to use? Whatever phrase you want to use? And they're like, all right, you know what? We don't have to agree with them, but such as life. So why did you change your name? Why did I change my name? So I am, if anything, I'm fiercely independent.

You know, that's why I've never taken VC money. That's why even I was always in the background so that no one could harass me about anything. And one of my favorite books is Freakonomics. And one of the chapters in Freakonomics is about the power of name, right? Like something like blacksmith or whatnot. And I've always really appreciated, you know, it's a common cliche again to say that, you know, the most beautiful word in the world is your own name. And I was like, I didn't get to choose my name.

And part of it is also, is, you know, I'm ethnically Kashmiri, which is what Paxson, India keep fighting over. And we immigrated here when I was 14, but I've lived in the West since then. I mean, and West includes like South America, right? And so I have this name that comes from another realm in a way. And I don't really associate myself with that realm. And the other thing is, so my last name was my father's first name. So in our culture, it was more you would say son of and the person's name.

If you have heard in Arabic, Ibn, Ibn means son of, right? So it's like Saad Ibn Abdullah means that Saad is the son of Abdullah. So there's no like family lineage for me to, you know, cherish or, or, you know, carry around. And so eventually it was just like, you know what, I didn't get to choose this name. I don't really care for the name. Why don't I just change my name? And it was really fun because what happened was for about a year, I'd go around to a party event or whatever. And I'd just pick a new name.

I'm like, hey, I'm Hank or hey, I'm Joe or George or whatever. And so inevitably it would come out that that's not my real name. And because, you know, let's say I said I'm Joe. And they're like, oh, like, and eventually they're like, hey, Joe, you know, where's your background? I'm like, oh, you know, I'm Kashmir. You know, I was born in Pakistan. They're like, oh, like, are you like a Christian Pakistani? I'm like, no, no, no, you know, that's not my real name.

I'm changing my name. So inevitably, a circle would form and everyone would be like throwing their name suggestions at me. So it was almost like a version of an A-B testing of like what name really, really fits me well. And at the end of the day, Saul, which is actually short for Solomon, but I only kept the S-O-S-A, oh, sorry my God, S-S-O-L part. that was the one that just worked out the best for me. And then your last name? So Orwell, actually, my family, part of my family has a side of politics out of it. And what was amazing about Orwell was it wasn't 1984.

I mean, if we get into a bit of a little philosophical side, right? In 1984 and we're talking about direct control, that the government was always looking at you, which kind of is true, but also that they directly controlled what information you got. I would posit that Huxley with his brave new world was a little bit more accurate because he suggested, or his book said that basically we would be overwhelmed with information. We wouldn't be able to discern what was important and what wasn't important, right? And so even stuff like to simplify, you get like something like Kardashian, you're so overwhelmed with the brutality of the real world or what's going on that you're like, oh my God, you know, let's worry about Kim Kardashian getting robbed, for example, right? So it wasn't 1984. It was actually animal farm. And I don't really care much for quotes, but one of my favorite quotes is all animals are created equally, except some animals are created more equal than others.

And one of my big sticks is, you know, I'm an immigrant. I came in I was 14. I have, and all my family members are all still back in Pakistan, India, right? Only my parents and my brother and my sister are here in North America. And so I've always been like, you know, the number one reason why I'm successful is I was born to the right pair of milk-chalkity parents that happened to move to the West that let me have all these. opportunities. I mean, dude, as an example, in Pakistan, YouTube was blocked

until last year. Wow. Right? Like, imagine having access to no YouTube, no lessons, no, no videos, nothing. And not just YouTube, right? Vimeo, wistia, all of them, all blocked, right? And so Orwell, with this animal farm, it really gave me an appreciation of, you know, it's so easy to say, hey,

you know, you had an opportunity or you had this, but there's always a little bit more underlying truth to it. You know, even like I love biographies, Barbara Walter's biography, she talked about, you know, she came, she was poor and then her family got super rich and then she got poor and then, you know, she did her show. But one of the things that she did was, um, she interviewed, uh, I think it was like a senator, but the, and like it was, he was a hot story. But the only reason she got to interview that

senator was because she knew the senator's wife from when she was in this super, super, super exclusive middle school, right? And so you're like that and you can, you know, you can look at the face and you're like, you had every single opportunity that Barbara Walter was in and she's a woman and she was able to pull that off. Why couldn't you? And I'm not getting into like making excuses, but I'm just saying like it's it taught me a lot about empathy not about like hey what about me or woe is me or pity it's more about empathy like hey listen you know maybe it's because I this this this that I was successful you know maybe it's it's not for me to judge about what is someone else doing or why aren't they successful or why haven't they done this are they so stupid

so that's kind of where uh side i went into a little spiel there too no that's that's the cool part about the show I think it the empathy is a really interesting topic um I think that's something I've learned a lot over 160 plus of these, especially when talking to people who have gone through some really tough times. I think back to, I had a conversation with Maurice Claret and not sure how much you follow American football, but he, he's a great player for Ohio State played for one year in the NFL. And it really opened my eyes because it made me almost be appreciative for the fact of how much my parents have helped me because of how little of that he received. So when you see, let's say, a professional athlete go broke and let's say

they made $20 million and everyone says, wow, what an idiot. How could he do that? Well, you have to take a step back and think about maybe his upbringing or her upbringing or his background, her background, and then realize that maybe you were a lot luckier than they were growing up to have a dad who, in my case, who is very well-educated when it comes to finances, has helped me my entire life. when maybe a guy like Maurice Claret hasn't. So it kind of makes you, I think, be more empathetic, be less judgmental of other people when they've gone through tough times, when they've maybe blown through money or they buy stupid cars and things like that.

You know what I mean? I think it's a great trait to, I think, develop. And one way to do it is to have interesting conversations with people and to put yourself out there to learn from their upbringing and how it's different from your own. Oh, man. We can go into so many tangents from that. I mean, one of my favorite examples was this guy, I know, you know, he's selling stuff. He seems to be heavily selling stuff, right?

People are like, yo, what's this guy's deal? Like, why doesn't he chill out? Turns out, his brother used to play college football. He was on too much painkillers, didn't realize how bad he was. He got hit. He got messed up. He's a quadriplegic enough for the rest of his life. And so part of the reason why his brother is so hustling out there so hard is to be able to afford all of his medical bills.

And you would have never known that. You'd be like, oh, man, this guy is just so salesy or so push. But if you don't know that, you're like, okay, wow. You know, now that you know that, you're like, oh, it's not so bad. I think, you know what? Even going back to, like, leadership, like, empathy is so important to be a good leader, right? Some people need tough love. Other people can't accept tough love.

It's not the right way for them, right? So if you can really put yourself in someone else's shoes or understand their situation, or even something as a leader, even something as simple as just saying, like, may, how's your day going? Just showing that you give a little shit. Like, it makes such a difference, right? And I mean, at the end of the day, if we're trying to be better leaders, we're trying to enjoy our lives better. You know, empathy is so key for that.

And the last thing I'll add on that, man, it's really hard to be judgmental or be an asshole or think, you know, it's all hard work if you travel. And when I say travel, not to like a Mexican resort or, you know, some fancy, bougie plays. But if you go to like a place like Cambodia, man, Paul Pot and whatnot, and you go walk around and you see people all smiling and happy eating their foe for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, that's what they also eat there, right? Just like Vietnam and all that. You're like, yo, man, I'm incredibly lucky. And it makes you a lot more grateful for what you have, much less just empathetic to their plight.

You're so much more appreciative of, wow, man. Like, I have an amazing life. I was in a tin can and I flew across the world and now I get to see their lives and they eat their foods. And then I'm like, Sayonara, I can't deal with this life. I'm boom, I'm back, right? You're like, man, life is amazing. Let's be honest.

It's crazy. So anyway, I think all of it kind of ties together into being just a better human makes you enjoy your success, whatever it may be a lot more. Part of your, I think, obviously talking to you previous to this and reading about you is that you're willing to pass up

VC money, you're willing to pass up more money to live the lifestyle that you want to live. And a lot of what comes from that is traveling. And I know we were in Ohio and it's one of it's mastermind talks. And for me, it's one of the few events I go to a year.

And for you, I think it's just a regular week almost outside of the amazingness of the event. But for you because you're going to events, you're traveling the world doing this, talk to me about your philosophy and your view on travel, maybe a story or two of where you've been that has had an impact on your life. Yeah, man. I think, again, so just a quick version of my backstory. So I think like Kashmiri, I was born in Pakistan.

At the age of two, we moved to Saudi Arabia. for the grades two and three, I was in Japan, so two full years, back to Saudi Arabia, eighth grade in Houston, high school in a suburb of Toronto, university, I did computer engineering in Toronto, and then I retired after that, and then I spent five years in the States in Argentina before seven years ago I came back to Toronto. And then five years ago, I was going to move to Panama. I didn't even give it up my lease and everything, but then the recession hit one of my best friends living in Panama.

He ended up actually now living with his parents. He got knocked out, and so I didn't end up going back to Panama. And so to me, really, you know, people forget why they're in business. And I'm in business so I can enjoy life. And part of that amazingness is I get to hang out with awesome entrepreneurs like you, hear about your story, hear about what drives you. And to me, that's fascinating. Like, you can see my bookshelf in the background.

Like, most books I have are biographies. I love biographies, right? And so part of why I'm into entrepreneurship or even teaching entrepreneurship or talking about it is I get to meet awesome human beings. And part of the awesome human beings, I get to travel to interesting locations, right? Like, I was in Louisville, like, two months ago. Like, when else would I ever, ever go to Louisville?

Never, let's be honest, right? But I knew this, a couple there. We ended up going to their house, and a few of us other, excuse me, a few other of us also went over. And the guy had gone to Italy when he was 19, and so he had loved making pizza, so he had his own outdoor pizza oven. And so he made his pizza. His wife made us four different cookies.

One of them, she even made, like, pistachio ice cream. so she made these lemon lavender with pistachio ice cream, ice cream cookies or sandwiches. It was amazing, right? But all that gets afforded to because of that. So, you know, I think a big thing about, I mean, really why the traveling is, you know, we do it as a, or I do it as a form of this is what makes me happy. And, you know, if you don't like that, that's fine, right? Like, I do suggest you should always travel more to underdeveloped countries just so you can really appreciate what's going on. But personally, I try to travel about 30, sorry not 30, what I'm saying, about 90 to 100 days a year.

Part of it is for work. Part of it is not. My girlfriend and I, we travel every winter and somewhere at a minimum. We go some random place if we can, right? I mean, that's just what we do. So last August or like two months ago, we were in Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia. Right? Like, companies you normally never go to.

Why? Because we had one friend in Kosovo and she said, you guys should come. And most people go like, yeah, you know what? Maybe and shrug, right? Whereas I'm more about like, listen, I make money, I work hard. This is why I do it. Let's go. Right?

And then we met all these random people and we met the random stories. Like, for example, Kosovo is only 1.5 million people. And people think it's like war porn because of the Serbian Bosnian war, but it was actually relatively left unscathed. And it's like 100% white. And my girlfriend, she's a Chinese background. So everywhere we went, people stared, right? They're like, no talking to being with an Asian woman.

Like, this is crazy. This never happened. Like, they were just like, what's going? But what's crazy is also hearing other people's stories, right? So because our friend worked in the UN, she introduced to other friends. And this one woman, she had a, I think Chinese are a Thai background. And she's like, I get in a taxis. And the cab drivers go, I should take you home so you can give me a massage.

And it's not even sexual. It's just in their worldview, all women who have slightly squinty eyes give massages. And thus, they should take them home and give them a massage. And it's like, this is crazy, right? This is absolutely insane. but can you necessarily hold it 100% against them when all they get exposed to is through a movie or something and it's always a sensual Chinese woman giving you the sensual massage.

Anyway, so you take these weird tangents, right? But you take these little bits from everywhere you go around the world and, you know, I think it makes you a lot more interesting human being and going back to business or even leadership, right? It brings in all these little facets of understanding you would have never, ever, ever, ever considered before. And I think the number one of the number one, sorry, maybe not number one thing, but one of the top things as an entrepreneur is you need to know how to communicate. To be a leader, you need to know how to communicate.

And traveling teaches you how to communicate in a very effective manner because people will misconstrue and misunderstand so many different words and you learn or you understand how can I be most clear and concise with my language. Really interesting. Hey, by the way, have you read Phil Knight's book, Shoe Dog? man it's it's it's on my on the top left corner is my to do list and it's on my to my to my to read list yeah so zero to one of the two ones I've been old Peter Thiel yeah yeah both good so I'm in the middle not the middle I'm in like the 30% through Phil Knight's book and I can already tell you're going to love it because it's a combination of biography slash it's like and I don't know if you had a ghostwriter somebody help him it doesn't matter but it's really it's almost

written like a novel and Phil I didn't really know much about him other than the fact that you know I love Nike I wear a lot of Nike stuff um he you know when he was younger he got his MBA right after he did that he basically traveled the world and and the impact that that had on him really it's like similar to this conversation you and are having I'm like man I feel like I don't know I just need to implement more than into my life regardless of other responsibilities need to do more of that because it will impact you in such a way. But Phil traveled the world and to hear and he writes so, I mean, he took a really great journal entries.

That's how he's able to write this book. So the chapter, the title of the chapter is like 1962. And he talks about where he went, what he did, what was going on in his business in 1962. And it's incredible. I had no idea that he was so incredibly well traveled. But then he kind of leaves clues in his story to say what he did. this place in Greece, how that impacted Nike 50 years later.

And it's really interesting, and it makes you understand the importance of seeing other cultures and how that could potentially impact you at, you know, 20 years from now, or you never know at a certain point in your life. And you telling that story made me think a lot about Phil Knight in that book. It's great book, though. Oh, no, definitely on my list to read. I mean, you know, even speaking about what you're talking about, so Jason, who, you know, does the Mastermind Talks event in Ohio.

he loves the Steve Jobs quote and have it right here. You can't connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. And that's the kind of approach I take. Not to say that it'll ever even be like 2% of what Steve Jobs is accomplished, but it's more just like, you know, I'm putting all these random things together and I'm not necessarily thinking I have

some kind of master plan, but I know that they're making more interesting human being. And if we talk about legit life goal, my favorite kinds of books are biographies. And I would like to think that if I was to ever write my own memoirs, I'm 70, I'm writing my own memoirs, that younger me would read this and be like, that was an interesting biography. That's literally my number one driver in everything I do. And so, you know, that's kind of like, I think permeates into the company. But, you know, even when you're speaking about, about trying to travel more, like there's organizations like Tropical MBA and they do events all over the world. Or someone like Brendan Dunn, you know, fantastic and email personalization. Actually, I met him through James Clear.

He just did an event in Sweden. Well, I think it was Sweden or, yeah, I'm pretty sure I was in Sweden. So you use him as an excuse to be like, hey, you know, I'm going on this event. Let me explore Sweden. Like, that's usually what I try to do is I try to show up a few days early and explore the area, see what's interesting, see what's cool. So at least I can say, oh, I did some work stuff. But, hey, I got to explore and meet cool people and see what's interesting around there. So, you know, especially now as entrepreneurs, especially with how much things have blown up now,

it's become so much easier to be able to travel outside of North America and still go to a great event, still get amazing value out of it and still be able to say, man, I went to Sweden for work. Tough life. Yeah, man. Yeah, Saul, this is, I mean it. This is so good. I could talk to you for hours. I know it's just an extension of when we got to climb basically Mount Everest out there in California.

Pretty much. It's pretty much the equivalent. We're going to keep, but no, seriously, it was great then. and it's even better now, and I want to continue this dialogue. I really appreciate it. I do have a question. When you learned,

I'm big into speaking of names, right? And so when I was creating the show, I really thought about this a lot. I think it was Seth Godin told me that, trust me, like nobody really cares about the name as much as you do. So don't stress about it. But anyway,

I did. And so I'm curious, though, from your perspective, a guy who thinks about names, you obviously thought a lot about your own name and having some, you know, choice.

the matter. When you heard the phrase learning leader, what was the first thought that came to mind? Ideally, I was hoping that it is a leader who is learning constantly themselves. Not that someone is saying, look at what I've learned, blah, blah, blah, more like, okay, I'm here to learn, this is what I've learned recently. It may be applicable to you. You know, I think one of the biggest things to be a good leader is you need self-awareness. And part of self-awareness, and I wrote about this recently is you need to be able to take criticism and criticism is multifacet, right? One, you need to foster a spirit that people can criticize you in the first place. And then two, you need to be clear-headed and say, how can I apply this criticism? You know, some of it isn't valid, right? People will

have random opinions on random things, but other times you have to say, like, how can I incorporate what I've learned, still be true to myself? Like, if someone says, hey, Saul, you know what, I think you talk too fast or you need a really slow, you know, leaders are really slow with the words. I'm like, listen, I can maybe be a little bit slower, but in general, I'm a fast talk. Part of my persona, not just, oh, I talk fast, but, you know, I'm very animated with my hands. I'm very animated as a human being. You can't expect me to be someone like Ryan Holiday, right, which is like super stoic and I'm barely showing any about, obviously, I'm a robot.

I'm barely showing any emotions, right? You can't, you have to be like obviously a little bit selective about what the feedback is, but I find that it's so easy. And I'm not saying I'm any better. It's so easy to be defensive about criticism. But I think, you know, that's real learning going back to, right? That's what a real leader can do is take criticism and incorporate into their life. Yeah, I think when I was thinking about the name, it was about being in a constant state of understanding that you'll never have it quite figured out.

But you're going to keep striving in that direction and the quickest way for me personally to do it was to reach out and speak with really interesting people who understood why they've been able to sustain. excellence, not just, you know, you'll talk to some people who maybe there was a little luck involved and they really can't explain why. Whenever someone's having, let's say, for example, a really good year or two, I always like to ask them, you know, what specifically has happened that is, or that you've done that has led to that success? And it's really interesting to see how they respond. If they can't elaborate on how they've been able to have some sustained excellence, typically I'm a little bit fearful for the long-term or longevity of that success. I'm not always right, obviously, but I think that's part of it is understanding not only why

you fail, but certainly understanding why you've been able to have some success. And that's what the show is all about. It's about me and that journey. And then hopefully finding a way to impact others because, like you, you publish it. You put yourself out there, obviously open yourself up for criticism. But hopefully people can also see and hear the growth along the way and be, positively impacted, and that's the goal. And so I want to thank you, man, for for adding to that.

This is such a enjoyable conversation for me. It's great. I loved it. Where would you send my listeners to learn more about you online, man? You can learn more about what I do at Sjo.com. It then links to my Facebook. I'm very, I try to be very friendly on Facebook. Maybe I'm a bit of a, again, opinionated crumudgeon and crotchety old man, but that's

okay. If I can just add one little thing to what you said, I love what you said about you need to be able to elaborate on your success. I think that's awesome. One of my favorite articles ever, and I'll send it to you, is by the guys who created Basecamp. And so they're very well known to be. Jason Freight.

Yeah, Jason Freight and DHA. So I think Jason wrote this one. And he basically wrote that luck is a function of observation. It's the more observance you are, the more luckier you get. And he has great examples inside it. That is like, I totally agree with you that, you know, it's so easy to say we can make our own luck. But since I read that article, I've really been about also like you bring in, again,

all these different facets. and it helps open up your perception and everything else, and that is how you build your lucky life, right? Like in the last, sorry, I just ran so much. In the last month alone, I've connected with maybe like 20 writers for entrepreneur magazine, ink magazine, all that kind of stuff. And you may look at it superficially like, oh, this man's so lucky that, you know,

one person wrote about him, all these other people are. Not really, right? There was a level of observation that I saw people needed help with writing interesting articles. So I reached out to journals and I said, hey, listen, I know a lot of awesome people. They have awesome stories. I can help you find awesome stories. Dut.

Even the one I got in Forbes, right? I got 20 other people in Forbes since then, all because I was like, listen, I know you need awesome writers or you need awesome stories. I know them. Right? So it all ties in. But yeah, I think exactly what you said was key that you need to be able to elaborate on your success. I love it.

Can you repeat that quote? You, what, that you said you need to. The luck one. Oh, luck is a function of observation. It's a function of observation. Gotcha. Yeah. As an engineer, everything is a mathematically equation to me.

So I use an actual function sign when I say that on my head. Love it, man. So, again, thank you so much. Obviously, we're going to keep talking. I'd love to probably record another one or two as we both progress. This has been so much fun for me because I knew it was just going to be kind of a live riff. Obviously, I have some preparation done and some, the cool part is that we've got to hang out together in person too. That's right.

I'm really looking forward to continue this dialogue, man. For sure, man. Thank you for having me. All right, thanks, man. This episode of The Learning Leader Show is over, but we have plenty more to keep you locked in until next time. Head over to Learning Leadershow.com for more information and to request your favorite entrepreneur, CEO,

world-class athlete, or anyone else that inspires you. You can also talk to Ryan directly by reaching out to him on Twitter at Ryan Hawk 12. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time on the Learning Leader Show.