Controversial Business Lessons From Napoleon, Edison, & Hitler (#369)
Conquerors, Charisma, Hitler, MrBeast, and Action - October 1, 2022 (over 2 years ago) • 35:33
Transcript:
| Start Time | Speaker | Text |
|---|---|---|
Ben Wilson | That is what all of them did. That's what Napoleon did. That's what Hitler did. That's what Caesar did. It's like taking tons of resources and focusing them on a very small target.
Hey, my first 1,000,000 fans! This is Producer Ben. I'm subbing in this week because Sean is out with some family stuff.
For One Question Friday today, Sam and I sat down to discuss how to take over the world. I shared some things that I have learned from studying the lives of great achievers and conquerors throughout history. Sam and I just got to talking about history and great people in our own lives and what we've learned from them.
So, it's a little bit of a more random and less focused One Question Friday, but I think there's some really good stuff in it that you'll really enjoy.
| |
Sam Parr | So, I asked you about the traits of conquerors. The reason I'm thinking about that is I just finished this epic book. It's about 1,400 pages long. It's called "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." Have you heard of that?
| |
Ben Wilson | yeah mhmm it's it's kind of one of the seminal texts on hitler and nazism | |
Sam Parr | Yes, and it's crazy. I was reading it, and I was like, "This is nuts!" The reason I read it was that I wanted to figure out why a country would be so complicit with such bad things. I was like, "What on earth was it about this Hitler dude that convinced all these people to do all these bad things?"
So, I learned, and it was wild. Basically, it all kind of came down to the fact that he was in prison one time because he tried to, like, basically be a glorified protester. He kind of stormed the capital, like a type of thing, and he was arrested for it. In prison, he wrote his book called *Mein Kampf*. In the book, he wrote, "I've recently discovered that it is my obligation to lead the German people to greatness." He dedicated his life to that.
It was wild that there was a decision to be made, and it was almost perfect execution. I mean, you know, it wasn't in the end because he didn't achieve whatever he was trying to achieve, but he got so far—so far past what I ever would have thought.
At the time, when the Nazis came to power, they were the freaks of Germany. They had a lot of homosexuals in their crew, which was not looked upon nicely at that time. They had a bunch of artists, a bunch of oddballs—people who had a lot of antisocial behavior. They dressed funny, and people were like, "Who are these guys? They're a joke. No one's going to take these idiots seriously."
And it changed quickly. So, anyway, I thought that was fascinating about conquerors and these types of people and how on earth they came to be. I wanted to ask you, what are some common traits among those individuals?
| |
Ben Wilson | do you feel weird learning lessons from the life of hitler | |
Sam Parr | No, because I... well, I'm not necessarily learning a lesson that I want to emulate.
That said, I do think you can learn good lessons from bad people. You definitely can learn a good lesson from a bad person; there's no doubt about that. Everyone's bad in someone's eyes, but I can read about Napoleon and learn about war and strategy, then apply that to business.
So, I can always learn good lessons from bad people. But I just wanted to learn: why did we do this? Why did so many people go along with this crap?
| |
Ben Wilson | So, here’s the thing. Here’s a lesson I learned from Sean, Mr. Beast, and Hitler. Okay, there’s your head... oh my god!
But so, here’s the fascinating part. We’re doing this Camp MFM thing, and we’re at Cameron Indoor Stadium. They decide to do a half-court shoot-off between Sean and Mr. Beast for $10,000, right? And Sean... basically.
| |
Sam Parr | Mister Beast goes, "Sean, if you make a shot at half court, I'll give you $10,000."
And Sean goes, "Will you give me $10 in Bitcoin?"
He goes, "Sure, let's do it."
| |
Ben Wilson | So yeah, I think in the end, I told him that he'd give him $10, actually in pennies. I don't know if he ended up doing that or not.
So they're going to go start shooting at half court, and Sean turns to the camera and does his cheesiest, like he's joking around, Mr. Beast impression. He goes, "I'm about to shoot from half court with Mr. Beast, and whichever one of us makes it first is gonna make $10,000," right? Totally hamming it up, kind of poking fun at himself.
The funny thing is, when we posted the video, it actually popped off and went viral on TikTok. His little... really? Yeah, yeah. That was one of our videos that is, I think, in the millions of views, if not, it's in the hundreds of thousands of views on reels and on TikTok.
What clicked in my mind when I saw that is, oh, like it's actually not that hard to figure out what you're supposed to do to be successful in this kind of stuff. Just very few people are willing to commit to the bit fully.
Right? Like Mr. Beast fully commits to the bit. Like he actually does that every time he looks at the camera. "I'm about to give $100,000 away to these people if they eat a cockroach," or whatever he says, right? And he fully commits to it.
Hitler is the same thing. Like you go and you watch those speeches, and he's ridiculous, right? He's gesticulating, he's yelling, he's screaming, but he fully committed to being Hitler, to like representing, you know, German greatness and the Aryan race or whatever.
But like he didn't care. He never thought he looked ridiculous outside of Germany, right? Like tons of people mocked and made fun of Hitler. He was very mockable, very easy to make fun of.
And you can easily make fun of Mr. Beast in the things he does. Sorry, Mr. Beast, for comparing you to Hitler, but like the idea of just throwing away your shame and embarrassment, whatever you're trying to do, just fully commit to the bit, and you're gonna be really successful. I think that's very true.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, I want to talk about other people and what they had in common. But, like, I was emotional reading this thing. So basically, Joseph Goebbels... is it Goebbels?
| |
Ben Wilson | goebbels is how you know it | |
Sam Parr | Goebbels was the head of propaganda, and if you Google him, he looks like the most evil person on earth. He was a horrible guy and wrote in a journal throughout this whole process; he was journaling like crazy. His book cited his journal and tells the story of basically how Hitler has just killed himself.
Joseph Goebbels and his wife had, I think, 5 or 6 kids. They wrote in their diary, saying, "Well, we're going to go and kill our kids right now, then we're going to kill ourselves because us and our children belong to the FĂĽhrer and to the Third Reich. If the Third Reich won't exist, we do not deserve to exist either."
I thought that was just like the worst crime. I mean, I don't know about the worst, because they committed so many horrible acts, but they went and killed their children—6 of them, all below 12 years old. This shows the power that charisma, or whatever it was, had over people. They committed, I mean, obviously, they killed 5 or 6 million people; it was horrible. But that act is even more intimate in some regards.
I remember reading that and thinking, "Holy crap! I cannot believe that this evil guy got all these people to do this crazy stuff." That was one of the more emotional periods of that book.
| |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, that's tough. That's tough.
Okay, let's talk a little bit about military strategy and good strategy. Let's pivot from the darkness a little bit.
So, common attributes of great conquerors... One of the things that I think is interesting: have you heard of *blitzkrieg*?
| |
Sam Parr | It basically is a German thing where it says, like, when they attack, they kind of go all out for short periods, right? Like the opposite of what World War I was, wasn't it?
| |
Ben Wilson | Yes, so it means lightning attacks or lightning strikes. The idea is that these are short, quick attacks before you know it. You shock the enemy and go faster than they expect.
What's interesting to me is that "Blitzkrieg" was sort of a marketing stunt. It wasn't anything that the Nazis talked about internally; it's really something like an American invention to explain German success. What the Germans actually talked about was this word... oh, I can't remember the word in German, but it essentially means gravity. I'm looking it up: **Schwerpunkt**. It means gravity.
So it wasn't just that the attacks were fast, although they were. It was actually about massed strikes. They attacked fast, yes, but they were able to sustain that attack and follow up on it for a long time, which is actually the same thing that Napoleon did.
In the Napoleonic Wars, before he came along, people were stretching out their troops further and further to try and flank their enemies. Then he thought, "Well, if everyone's going to do that, I'm actually just going to pack all my troops in the middle and then punch a hole in the middle of their lines."
I think, to go back to the Amazon example, that has big applications in business as well.
| |
Sam Parr | haven't you heard the phrase blitzscale | |
Ben Wilson | there you go that's reid hoffman right | |
Sam Parr | yeah | |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, it's not just about going fast, although speed is important. It's about focusing tons of resources on a small focal point.
So, like to go back to the Amazon example, it's starting with bookstores, right? Starting with just books. I'm going to take tons of resources and just focus on this tiny place. Then, I’ll follow up on that victory. I'm going to win with books first, and then I'm going to follow up on that with other marginal victories.
| |
Sam Parr | yeah yeah yeah | |
Ben Wilson | And so, that was interesting to me. That is what all of them did. That's what Napoleon did, that's what Hitler did, and that's what Caesar did. It's this idea of taking tons of resources and focusing them on a very small target. Taking lots of gravity and kind of narrowing the focus. So, that was one interesting takeaway for me.
| |
Sam Parr | What else did they have that a lot of conquerors had? I don't even know how we would define a conqueror, but there are stereotypes, like Napoleon. I don't know, what would be a good American leader example of this? But whoever we describe it as, what else do they have in common? Or even the business people, like Edison or something.
| |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, I mean, for me, the number one... you mentioned Edison, and the one I think of is **total obsession**.
The big thing that clicked for me was that he was inventing so much that he was basically not eating. He was super skinny, super gaunt. He wasn't washing his clothes; he smelled bad. He was barely sleeping. He would invent and tinker until he fell asleep at his workbench, and then he'd wake up in the morning and start inventing again. His family was worried about him.
I was like, "Oh man, like substitute inventing for meth or heroin, and it'd be very clear that this guy was an addict, that he was a junkie." That's when it clicked for me: all of these people who are super successful have **addictive personalities**. It just so happens that they're addicted to something that is considered positive.
| |
Sam Parr | was he born that way you think or realize people are they born this way | |
Ben Wilson | I think so. If you look at the numbers, people who achieve a lot, like CEOs, you'd think that they don't have problems with substance abuse, right? Because these are highly functioning people.
But it actually turns out that they have higher rates of addiction and substance abuse than the general population when they study it. I think they are born with this propensity to addiction.
They're the kinds of people that could end up, you know, conquering a vast European empire, or they could get hooked on laudanum when they're teenagers and end up a junkie on the streets. They're going to end up addicted to something. Let's just hope it's something positive.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, have you ever read or heard of this book called *The First Rate Madness*? I think that's what it's called.
So, this author has this premise where he suggests that in times of stability, a non-mentally ill leader is needed. But in times of turmoil—like the American Civil War, or when someone is trying to dominate and conquer, or during the Civil Rights Movement with figures like Martin Luther King Jr.—a mentally ill leader is actually ideal. They tend to be better.
The author explains, "Well, first let's define mentally ill." It's described as a propensity to be addicted to drugs and alcohol, or experiencing huge bouts of depression. In Lincoln's case, he actually tried to kill himself two or three times before he became president. Churchill also mentioned, "I've thought about killing myself a ton, but I'm just too big of a sissy to do it." He was an alcoholic as well.
So, they basically discuss how many of the great leaders during troubled periods have had mental illness.
| |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, and this is something, again, to go back to Mr. Beast. I actually don't know if I... I'll just say this and we'll see if I should cut it or not.
But I was talking with him, and he was like, "Yeah, I can't really gamble because I'm kind of a gambling addict." He talked about, like, I don't know what to say, the name of the game—a highly addicting crypto gambling site that he would be wagering like tens of thousands of dollars on.
| |
Sam Parr | Yeah, man. I, well, that's no secret though. Like, people who are... who get there, they are.
| |
Ben Wilson | And that's what I realized: for him, YouTube is another form of gambling. You put out a video, and who knows how it's going to do? Then you get that dopamine hit of, "Oh, this got 50,000,000 views!" It's very similar to that variability. The way that the algorithm can pick it up and make anything go viral is just like a gambling addiction put into something positive.
So, I think that's very much exactly what you're saying. For a lot of these people, in normal circumstances, they can't just chill and be happy and be normal. They have to be running at such a high level. They have to be running at a 10 at all times. That's not good in any circumstances, especially not in normal circumstances. | |
Sam Parr | I don't even want to talk about Mr. Beast that much because we've kind of done that plenty.
But I remember at around 11 PM, someone mentioned basketball and how excited he was to play. Jimmy goes, "Let's just go right now!" and we're like, "What, dude? It's 11 o'clock!"
He goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, let's figure it out." As he said that, his assistants were calling high school gyms, trying to wake up the principals and being like, "Hey, I'll give you $5 if we can come play basketball right now."
I was like, "What? No, dude, I don't want to do that. It sounds like hell." But he was serious; he wanted to go do it.
Yeah, it was weird. It was crazy. Who have you met besides him that you'd put in that category of these obsessed, almost conquer-type personalities? Whatever we're calling this personality type, who have you met that kind of has that gene other than him?
| |
Ben Wilson | You know, I think you kind of have a screw loose in that way. Look at the way you approach fitness; you have trouble dipping your toes into things.
| |
Sam Parr | yeah that's for sure | |
Ben Wilson | and you've talked about your you have an addictive personality as well | |
Sam Parr | I do, but yeah, I think I definitely am crazy. I think, though, that I don't have the drive. I am a little bit more self-aware, where I'm like, "No, I don't want to do that. That sounds too hard." But yeah, I'm definitely crazy in that obsession regard.
| |
Ben Wilson | yeah yeah | |
Hubspot | Our software is the worst. Have you heard of HubSpot?
See, most CRMs are a cobbled together mess, but HubSpot is easy to adopt and actually looks gorgeous. I think I love our new CRM. Our software is the best.
HubSpot: Grow Better.
I'll give you one... yeah, give me one. Do you know who Tucker Max is?
| |
Ben Wilson | yeah | |
Sam Parr | So, Tucker Max is this author. He's my friend; I haven't talked to him in a while, but I used to be buddies with him. He's an author who wrote "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell." Now he has a company, and lately, he's taken kind of a fairly right turn, or I don't know what you want to call it, where he writes these articles predicting that the world's going to end.
I don't agree with anything that he says about that type of thing. I mean, I agree that, okay, cool, prepare and be self-sufficient, but I don't think the world's going to end. I disagree with so many of his views.
Whenever I hang out with him and I hear him talk, in my head, I'm like, "I think you are wrong. I think you are wrong. I think you are wrong." Yet, I find myself fighting against buying into what he is saying. Logically, I'm like, "No, I don't believe that. That's not true for these following reasons." But when I get around him, I'm like, "Dude, you are so confident. You are such a good storyteller. You have such strong energy driving you in one direction; it's sucking me in."
I would find myself having to pinch myself, like, "Oh dude, you gotta snap out of it." Tucker Max has that hardcore energy, and if you read his writing, it comes through. You'll read something and think, "Oh, this guy's totally right." Then I have to go and read something that's the opposite to be like, "Oh, well, there are counterpoints."
| |
Ben Wilson | yeah yeah I I so I just thought of one that's a little like | |
Sam Parr | I guess off the wall his name | |
Ben Wilson | Is Dallin H. Oaks. He was on the Circuit Court of Appeals and was one of the highest judges in the United States. He was on the short list to be on the Supreme Court for Reagan but then didn't become a Supreme Court Justice. He ended up becoming an apostle for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and is now the number two person in the church, set to take over probably in a few years.
What I found interesting is that I think that was the first time I met him when I was about 16. That was when I encountered true charisma, and it felt different than I thought it would feel because when I talked...
| |
Sam Parr | to him he talked to | |
Ben Wilson | He charmed me for like 10 minutes. I couldn't believe it! The impression I had coming away was, "Wow, I'm so smart," because he was so good at... I don't want to say manipulating, but at playing on my feelings. He was just like, "Wow, that's really interesting," you know? He got me to feel comfortable and divulge information about myself while focusing all his attention on me.
I came away thinking, "Man, I'm super special." I think that's what truly charismatic people do. People think that it's like inward magnetism, but it almost goes in the opposite direction. Somehow, they're able to make you feel like you're the special one, and then you get almost drunk on that feeling.
| |
Sam Parr | Totally! I've been... I used to work for this guy named John Copps. John ran a company called Apartment List. They bought my other business, and I don't know how big they are now. Maybe it's like 100 employees. They've raised maybe $100 million to $200 million in funding, and they're probably going to go public.
I was only 22 when I worked there, and he would give these talks at the office. I remember thinking, "Oh my gosh, I believe that I am..." We weren't even doing anything interesting. It was just like a Zillow competitor, which is not exactly the most sexy thing. We're not saving the earth; we're not going to the moon. It's just a cool money-making scheme and a slightly better way to maybe find an apartment in some cities.
I remember hearing him talk and thinking, "I am so on board with this. We are democratizing housing. We are making people's lives so much better, and we owe it to the world to do this." He showed me that it is possible.
You begin to think that rules don't apply to you. You say, "It's us versus everyone," which is a common tactic in a cult. You should always do this in a good company: you have you, and then you have the enemy. Everyone's out to get the enemy side, and it's us versus them. You have to create that dynamic.
I felt this with him whenever he would give these talks. On Fridays, we used to have this thing where at 4 PM, he would give a talk. I remember thinking, "Rules don't apply to us."
I've heard stories about Travis Kalanick at Uber. People were breaking laws, and they thought, "These laws shouldn't exist; they are wrong." We need to prove to them that they are wrong. You know what I mean? I remember hearing that, and you just get intoxicated with it.
| |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, you know who's pretty good at this? I found that from Camp MFM is Sully, your friend.
| |
Sam Parr | you think so | |
Ben Wilson | Yeah, just like when I was talking to him. I think he kind of *brain raped* me a little bit. Like, why? At the end, I don't know. I just, at the end, he was so interested in me, and then I was just like, "Did I just tell Sully everything about my life?" and like everything he... | |
Sam Parr | does that yeah and like and he won't tell you a thing about his | |
Ben Wilson | No, yeah, I was like, "How is it that you're the multimillionaire? You have this successful business that you sold. You've done all this impressive stuff, and we just spent 20 minutes talking about me. You know everything about me, and I don't know anything about you at the end of this. How did this happen?" He's so good at it. I don't know, it's...
| |
Sam Parr | Too bad he's good at it. So is Ben Levy, Sean's partner. Sean, he's really good at that, man. I always call Ben a shark, but he's not actually a shark because he doesn't mean... he's not gonna like harm you. Probably. Well, maybe. I don't know. I don't think so.
But he's so good where I'll have to stop myself and be like, "Dude, shut the fuck up. You don't need to tell this guy all this shit." Like, it's good to be private about some stuff. And he's so good at getting stuff out of you. He's really good at that.
Yeah, so those people, they are good at that. Another guy is someone I find myself getting like intoxicated with. There are a couple of people. Sam Bankman-Fried, you know, the guy from... what's his... what? The... you know, Bitcoin. That dude... what's his company called?
| |
Ben Wilson | ftx ftx | |
Sam Parr | What is it? FTX, and there's another one, I think. Anyway, when I hear him talk about FTX, I just think, "Oh, you're right about everything." I don't want to... I can't have... It's hard for me to understand anything other than what you believe because you've just logically shown me that this is all true.
Even though I have to remind myself, like, this guy's just a 29-year-old smart guy, which is cool and all, but he's just a dude. He's still figuring it out just like I am. But I will hear him talk, and I buy into everything he's saying.
Another good person is Malcolm Gladwell. If you ever read a Malcolm Gladwell book, you'll think, "Oh, everything you're saying is facts." In reality, a lot of it is just theories. He'll say, "This is just my theory based off of the data. Who knows if I'm right or wrong? This is just an idea."
But I'll read his stuff, and I think, "Oh, this is just how the world is." My takeaway from that is storytelling is so important. It's so important.
| |
Ben Wilson | I think that Malcolm Gladwell is full of crap. Most of his stuff is of little to no value. Anyone who asks me how to do storytelling, I'm like, "Just go listen to Malcolm Gladwell's podcast and analyze every single sentence."
It doesn't matter what you think of what he has to say. I think he's this generation's most gifted storyteller, and it's not close.
| |
Sam Parr | dude he's so good he's so good | |
Ben Wilson | he's unbelievable he's unbelievable | |
Sam Parr | He gets you intoxicated, is what he does. You feel this intoxication, and you feel like, of course, this is the answer. What you were saying is true, and I have to purposely go and seek out other opinions to be like, "Oh, well, you know, I gotta remind myself this isn't necessarily true. It might be, but maybe not."
| |
Ben Wilson | David Ogilvy has this great quote. He was a very famous copywriter and advertiser. He said, "The job of the first sentence is to get you to read the second sentence, and the job of the second sentence is to get you to read the third sentence."
If you read Malcolm Gladwell with that lens, that framework in mind, he's such a master. The first sentence of every podcast is independently extremely engaging and interesting. It gets you to listen to the second sentence, which is itself extremely engaging.
Every single sentence is a masterpiece that encourages you to move on to the next sentence. Everyone should read it. Everyone should read and listen to as much Gladwell as they can. | |
Sam Parr | if they're interested pod I forget it's called something history | |
Ben Wilson | revisionist history | |
Sam Parr | Yeah, it's good, man. He does a really good job of voice inflections. It doesn't sound like my voice, which is fairly aggressive. His voice is soft, welcoming, and warming.
His inflections aren't like when Sean and I talk, and then we get down low and then we come right back up. It's way more subtle. In everything he says, it's like a kind of whisper. He knows how to use empty space and silence, and then he knows how to come back in and lead you down, getting you to come a little bit more. Then he'll break it to you, you know what I mean?
I like to call it the "slippery slope." The slippery slope is my name for that copywriting concept where the first sentence is to get you to read the second, which is to get you to read a third. That's a slippery slope. I want to pull you down that slope because the further I pull you along, the more bought in you get.
If you read a Tony Robbins book, he'll say, "I'm about to tell you about one thing that's going to change your life," and he'll spend the rest of that chapter saying, "We're about to get to it. We're getting to it soon, but before we do, I need to tell you why it's important." Then there's a reveal at the end, and oftentimes that reveal is a little bit anticlimactic. But you're so deep down the slippery slope that you're bought in.
That's what Malcolm Gladwell does wonderfully. He gets me to go down this slope and pulls me down. A lot of the great dictators, CEOs, and leaders—both good and bad—were awesome at being auditors, which is something we don't really talk about anymore. But like Obama was like that. I heard Obama talk, and I was like, "Dude, whatever you say, yes!" | |
Ben Wilson | it's seductive almost it like really is | |
Sam Parr | It's seductive. It's seductive. The root of all this is learning how to write well and how to tell a story. Then, if possible, how to speak it.
| |
Ben Wilson | can can I talk about one more attribute that actually you and sean have done a good job with recently on getting me on me about is this idea of like biased action so for me my favorite story about this is napoleon comes into command of the french army in italy and it's just been sitting there for months and the reason is they have they don't have enough guns they don't have enough ammunition they don't have enough shoes they don't have enough clothes they're like horribly undersupplied the morale is low and so the general before napoleon is like we cannot they're fighting the austrians we cannot go give battle to the austrians like this we're in a horrible state and napoleon comes in and he's like okay so today I'm going to take account of everything that's happening in this army you're gonna give me an accounting of exactly how many shoes we have the status of everything and tomorrow we're gonna march to go fight the austrians and they're like this is a horrible idea like you should not do this this army is in no shape to fight and he's basically like yeah isaac newton an object at rest stays at rest an object in motion stays in motion and so like I don't care we're going to go attack and so they go out they attack they score a cheap easy victory and then they're just rolling right and then they roll through italy and kick the crap out of the austrians in like a matter of weeks and so I you know I've been talking to you and sean about doing better how to take over the world and and getting bigger and I'm just like man I have all these problems I need more researchers I need more writers because I have to do all this research and both of you were just kind of like bullshit like no you don't just put stuff out like just put out more episodes what's wrong with you just put out more episodes and and so that's something I've been focusing on is like it's so easy to focus on all the inputs on like getting everything ready on planning on preparing and this bias to action of like no no no no every single day you need to be taking steps that have measurable outcomes that advance your goals forward you need to be doing and you need to have a bias towards doing those things rather than planning and preparing | |
Sam Parr | Dude, a good example of that is like, only six months ago or something. We were fairly popular. Sean, for some reason, because he's always a little disorganized, his microphone wasn't working. He's like, "Fuck it, I'm just gonna use my AirPods." I'm like, "Alright, fine."
He puts his AirPods in, and only one of them worked. The other one didn't even work; for some reason, it was out of battery. He goes, "We're just like screw it, we're gonna record this, Sean, with just your webcam and your one AirPod." So that AirPod is gonna be your microphone and how you could hear me talk. He's like, "Yeah, let's do it."
Versus waiting 20 minutes for it to get charged, we're like, "No, we can't wait. We have to do it right now. We have to go."
I think that is the way to go. The world wants you to be vanilla. The world wants to make everyone vanilla, and they want you to be safe. That means planning. So many people write down their goals for the day. I bet you there's a lot of people listening who have one task today that says "plan workout" or "plan, you know, like business" or "how I'm gonna launch this," like plan something.
It's like, that's what you do, and that's really just kind of self-masturbation. It's a bullshit way to make you think that you actually are doing something when instead you should just start and figure it out along the way.
Because virtually everything—not everything, but almost everything related to a project is reversible. So you should always start. You should always just make it happen and always have a bias to action because it also is intoxicating.
Right? Dude, have you ever sold anything on the internet?
| |
Ben Wilson | no | |
Sam Parr | So, like, people talk to me about, "How do I do this? How do I do that?" I'm like, "Dude, just whatever you do, build it so you can get it live tomorrow." Then you can get just $1 in revenue in the first 5 days.
Because the second your phone goes "ka-ching"—I have this thing on Shopify that goes "ka-ching" with every sale—I get this rush. The first time you hear that, you're like, "Oh, I need to feel that again! Let's go, let's go, let's go!" It gets you amped up when you hear that.
So, that's why whenever people talk to me, they're like, "Which platform should I use for my new blog?" I'm like, "It doesn't matter! Just go to Substack right now, get it live tomorrow." Then, the second you see traffic on the analytics, you're like, "Oh, I like that! That tastes good! I like how that feels. I gotta do it again! I need more! I need to take another bite!"
And that's why whenever people talk about anything they want to do, I'm like, "If you're a noob, launch right away! Immediately!"
If you're like, I have this guy named Brett Adcock who sold a company for $2 or $3 billion, and his next company is like a robot business. He's investing $200 million in like 5 years of research. I'm like, "Alright, that's cool! You're a proven hit maker; take your time and perfect this thing."
But if you're like a rookie, you gotta jump right in and get that taste of dopamine immediately. Otherwise, it will never happen, or it just fades, and you just aren't interested anymore.
| |
Ben Wilson | So, it's interesting what you're saying. It reminds me a little bit of the difference between the Greeks and the Romans. The Greeks were like masters of the Mediterranean, and then all those came along.
| |
Sam Parr | the old greeks and roman | |
Ben Wilson | Okay, okay, okay... hear me out though. Here's the thing: the Greeks were much better academics than the Romans. They knew geometry, they knew algebra, and they knew philosophy, right? The Romans were basically dumb jocks. They didn't know any of this stuff.
It turns out that Roman construction and bridges were actually much better than Greek ones. Why is that? Because the Greeks would sit down and try to figure out the geometry of the best way to build a bridge. The Romans did not. The Romans just went out and built a bridge, and then it kind of crumbled. Then they were like, "Oh, what if we did this?" and then they rebuilt it. That didn't work out so well either.
Over the generations, they just went out and did stuff until eventually, they had the perfect way to build a bridge that would stand forever. Did they ever know the math behind it? They literally never did. They just went and tried stuff until they found the thing that worked best.
That was what let them take over the world. So that just backs up what you're saying: you actually don't need to know why this stuff is working. You don't need to know the math behind it. You don't need to do the research. You just literally need to try stuff until you find out what works.
| |
Sam Parr | well john what | |
Jonathan Barshop | I was going to say, I think you know, two things I just heard were:
1. This is all kind of wrapping back up to how this applies to podcasting.
2. I heard "bias towards action," which is just like "go, go, go."
I also heard to be very methodical with how you tell stories, like Malcolm Gladwell.
So, let's just say you're starting a podcast today. From 0 to 25,000 downloads, you should have a bias towards action. Then, from 25,000 to 100,000, let's just say you're really dialing in the storytelling component of it.
But it sounds like you're flipping back to, "Okay, just buy a storage action, go, go, go."
So, I don't know. I think it could be helpful to go from, like, at this stage, you want to focus on just making things happen versus being more methodical with how to actually level the podcast up and that kind of stuff.
| |
Ben Wilson | Can I use an example? Like Danny Miranda, you were on his podcast a few days ago, Sam. I don't think he's figured out his niche very well. He needs to work on that; he hasn't figured it out yet. But guess what? He's in a really good position to figure it out because he just got started. He's been doing great interviews, he's super action-oriented, and he's going to figure it out.
| |
Sam Parr | it out he's got the data | |
Ben Wilson | And he's got the data, right? Now he can pivot and try different stuff. He can think about different ways to position it versus the person who is just like, "No, no, no. Danny is not doing it the right way. I need to position my podcast perfectly."
No, just start with action. You can figure out your niche and exactly how to position your podcast later.
| |
Sam Parr | Dude, it's because it's way better to execute a bad plan than it is to execute no plan. You can change a bad plan into a good plan in most cases as you go. But you can't... you know, you're up shit creek if you're doing nothing all day. Yep.
|