I Did Nothing For 2 Weeks. It Made Me Better At Everything.

I Did Nothing For 2 Weeks. It Made Me Better At Everything. Speaker 1: You know, I have a soft spot in my heart for immigrants. Speaker 2: You do love immigrants, dude. Speaker 1: Yeah, like Korean store owner energy. Speaker 2: It's almost racist how much you love immigrants. Unknown Speaker: Dude, what's going on? Speaker 1: I haven't seen you in about two weeks. I had a baby and so I took about two weeks off. You were doing some family stuff. What's going on? Speaker 2: Let's talk about your baby first, because it's much happier. I went to my grandpa's funeral. So let's not start with the saddest news possible. Tell me about the baby. Speaker 1: So like we were due, I think, on the 20th, on the 13th or the 12th or something like that. My wife was like, I don't want to freak you out. And it was 10 p.m. at night. She's like, my water just broke. Speaker 2: Dude, what an unbelievable sentence. She didn't want to freak you out. She's so considerate as her water broke. That's unbelievable. That's the most Sarah thing I've ever heard. Speaker 1: And so we went to the hospital. We gave birth. She gave birth. Speaker 2: Don't bring that wee shit in here. This is a space for realness. Speaker 1: It was great for me. No big deal. I was exhausted. I complained about it for a week. But I took two weeks off and it got me thinking. Speaker 2: Before we even get to that, I need to know, birthing situation, what's your role? What are you doing? Are you a hand holder? Are you a coacher? Are you off to the side? Are you the cameraman? What are you doing? Speaker 1: She had to get a C-section. So like, I don't do anything. Speaker 2: Get out of the room. Speaker 1: Yeah, so I eventually came in the room and she was like, they give her medication that like makes her shake or whatever. And so I was basically just like rubbing her face and calming her down. But my wife is very stoic. So I've been lucky. Speaker 2: I don't even know how to do things like that. Like sometimes I'm put in this situation. I'm like, Oh, I need that. This is where I'm supposed to be comforting. And I'm like, I realized I've never once done that. And you don't like that. It's like when you swing a tennis racket, you're the pressure's all off. You don't really know, like how much force to apply, how much not to. Like, why is my hand so sticky right now? Like, it's terrible. Speaker 1: When I got engaged, I was like, I like started to put my knee down to the ground. I was like, a pat on the back will be fine. Speaker 2: It's like the little things that you've never practiced that lunch and then giving a speech upwards. It's like a very strange thing. Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, can't we just handshake? Speaker 2: Hey, put her there. Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Speaker 2: We did a pinky promise and that's held true. My brother-in-law, when my sister was giving birth, she had a longer labor. So it was like taking a while and then, you know, she like looks over at one point and he's like a sleaze like napping on the couch in the room. And she was like, hey, get your ass up. He's like, oh, sorry, I'm just so stressed and tired. And she was like, you're so stressed and tired. It's just like the venom, pure venom in that situation. It was too much for him. Speaker 1: Yeah, there's this funny joke. It's like, I'm so happy that women have to go through hours and hours of labor and pain so they can finally experience the pain that a man feels when he has a cold. We have two children now. I've experienced this that basically, we are all built for things and sometimes we rise to the occasion and women just somehow can fight being tired and in pain, whereas I'm just going to complain if I get anything less than seven hours a night of sleep. Women kind of become like superheroes during those moments and I'm happy that she did that. So everyone's healthy and happy. I'm feeling great. I took two weeks off. And I was like chomping at the bit to get back to it after like, honestly, four days. Speaker 2: Like, I need a Zoom call. Someone hit me with a Zoom call today. What were we chomping at the bit to do exactly? Speaker 1: Like, you know, a newborn child doesn't do anything. They just sleep. And I'm so happy. Speaker 2: You're bored. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Like, I'm so happy I get to experience with her. But then in this particular case, we have a two-year-old. And so I get to spend time with her, taking her to her classes and being like, just so you know, I love you so much. And like, you're important, even though all this new stuff is happening. And so that, like, touched my heart. So happy I had that. But I didn't need more than two weeks. Two weeks is more than enough. Did you agree? Yeah, a hundred percent. Speaker 2: Here's, again, this is a zone of truth. So here's the truth. Speaker 1: Yeah, let's clip this. This is going to be a Rage Mate clip that's going to go viral on a tech pro's opinion on maternity leave. Go. Speaker 2: Let me tell you how it actually is. Childbirth from the man's perspective. First of all, I would say a couple things. There's seems like there's two groups of people. There's the people who touch their baby, hold their baby for the first time and their life is changed and the endorphins kick in and there's like this entire like You know, inner spiritual awakening didn't happen for me. It doesn't happen for a lot of people. It takes me like 15 months to love a baby. I care for the baby before then. I wish the baby well. I want no harm to be done to the baby, but do I crave like holding and touching and like, you know, doing the things my wife loves about a baby? She's like, oh, the smell. I'm like, the smell? I don't even smell the baby. What do you mean? Why are you sniffing the baby? Speaker 1: Can I save you? You love your baby, but you may not be in love with them. Speaker 2: I mean, that might be a little generous. I cared for the baby. I wanted to love the baby, but I didn't actually feel anything for like 15 months. After that, I'm all in. It's an incredible experience. I have a one-and-a-half-year-old, four-year-old, and a six-year-old, and I can't get enough now. But that same can't-get-enough feeling, I didn't have that as a newborn. But kind of normal from the man's perspective, I think. The second thing is paternity leave. A little bit confusing. What I actually think is useful, take the week off before birth to do little stuff around the house, just be there, be a calming presence. I don't know, take the load of everyday life off of your partner before birth. I think that's actually really useful. Then, you know, the first week or so, the first few days, just you want to have a calendar clear because you never know what's going to happen in a birth. You never know what's going on. After that, you're really kind of like not that, not particularly useful, I would say, or like I felt this way. I wasn't particularly useful and kind of wish, and I ended up doing this with my other kids, like, you know, plan time that's like more intermittent. Other intervals, so there's like, let's say the two weeks, kind of week before the birth, week after the birth, that's a good window. Then there's kind of like two weeks, let's say around month three or four, where sometimes you get a sleep regression or you get other things. And so spreading out the paternity, I think is very useful. When you just sit there sort of like at this, the baby's an inanimate object at the beginning and doesn't really do a lot. Naps a ton, and assuming health went well, knock on wood, there's not a whole lot to do. So I kind of agree with you. That initial paternity leave is a lot of nervous energy and not a lot of productive help. Speaker 1: Yeah, and it made me realize that like taking time off and like vacationing and going somewhere is kind of like lame compared to taking time off and just sitting at home and walking around your town. Like that's actually kind of like a special feeling. It honestly felt like a like a week mini retirement because I was like I really like put around in the morning and not rush. All right, I read a ton. I would say almost a book a week. And the reason I read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is I want to see what worked for the winners that I love and what strategies they use. And then I want to see what mistakes did they all make, what were the common flaws that they all had. And I just want to avoid that. And so Hubspot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025. And I did that. So I listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life. And I explained what the differences that they had on me or what actions I took because of the book. And then also I listed out my very particular ways of reading because I'm pretty strategic about how I read and how I read so much and how I remember what I read and things like that. And so I put this together in a very simple guide. It's seven books that had a huge impact on my life. And you can scan the QR code below if you want to read it or there's a link. You guys know what to do. There's a link in the description. Just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide that I made. So it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far. And then also, How I'm able to read so much. So check it out below. Dude, have you ever read, have I told you about Aristotle? Like I've been interested in some of his work lately. Speaker 2: You haven't told me about Aristotle. Go on. Speaker 1: So Stoicism gets a lot of the credit right now. Stoicism is quite popular. Speaker 2: Yeah, so hot right now. Speaker 1: Yeah. So yeah, Marcus Aurelius is the guy at the moment. But Aristotle is one of the folks who influenced a lot of these guys. And I'm probably going to get a lot of it wrong. What I've been obsessed with this idea that he has is this idea of flourishing, and so I think the Greek word of it is eudaimome, and it's this idea that there's 12 or 14 virtues. In order to be courageous, which is one of his virtues, on the right-hand side is being reckless, and then on the left-hand side is basically being a pussy. I don't know the right word, but being soft. Yeah, being timid. And the middle part is courageous. And then there's like 14 of them, which is like to be charitable. Oh, that's pretty cool. Speaker 2: So it has the extremes where... The virtue becomes a vice on either side, right? Yeah. The over overdoing it and then underdoing it. OK. Yeah. Speaker 1: And then there's like charitable on one side is like being like ostentatious and like giving too much and actually hurting people, which is like what like a lot of like rich rappers would do, like give all their friends like money and like enable your posse. Yeah. And then the other one is like being like, you know, big pussy again. Yeah. That's always the lesson. And so according to Aristotle, one of the ways to live a harmonious life that's full of flourishing, which is not trying to be happy, but to flourish, you have to like have these like 14 virtues. And also he talks about leisure time and how a lot of times People think of leisure time as a way to recoup from work, but according to him, a perfect life, a happy life, a flourishing life needs to have some leisure time where you get to reflect. And the reflection is the goal, not the time that you take to refuel. And I have been really obsessed with a lot of his work because it's an incredibly practical philosophy. A lot of philosophical stuff is not particularly practical. But I was like experiencing work recently and I was going I was so happy to go home to see my family. I was happy to get up in the morning to work out and I was like, why do I feel this way? What's going on? And I was like, I am flourishing. I'm fucking flourishing. That's how I felt. I'm like, this is a this is this is it's like I don't feel happy necessarily. Like I feel like I'm working hard, but at the moment stress does not equal pain. Stress equals growth. And so I felt wonderful. And so taking my two weeks off has just added to that where I was like, I feel I feel refreshed, but I had so much time to reflect and to like, think about things. And I love that and the importance of being leisure and the importance of having unscheduled time, which I know you do. I think you said 20 days a year. And so what's interesting is that you, you, it seems as though you have come to a similar conclusion that Aristotle has come to, which is the idea of like leisure time just to reflect and just to think. And we've heard Bill Gates talk about that. He has one week a year, I think, or a week or whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Speaker 2: I really like that. I, I think I'm pretty poor at one thing you said in there, which is just making time to think. Like if I look at my calendar, I do have a lot of leisure time. I play the piano. I'll go do a tennis lesson. I'll go play basketball. I'll do my workout. I'll play with my kids. I do a lot of other stuff besides work. So I get this kind of like, you know, fun life, maybe a harmonious life, maybe a balanced life. But what I don't do is I don't actually spend a lot of time In silence and like dedicated think time. And I've been trying to get better at this, but in trying to get, you know, when you try to get better at something, you actually, the first realization is how far you have to go. Like how, how poor you actually are. It's sort of like flexibility. You know, it's not really top of mind until somebody says, oh, can you do this test? And then you realize like, oh my God, no, I'm not even close. That's how I am about think time. I don't know about you, but like, I would say in the past decade, The amount of dedicated time that I plan to think like I'm like, oh, I'm not I'm just actively not going to do something right now. I'm not going to fill it with something else. That was like zero. I honestly think it was zero for like the last decade of my life. I don't think I ever actually consciously spent think time. Now, I would think when I was driving, I would think of something in the shower, but this is like an accident. It's a happy accident. My brain was probably like, oh, dude, we've got these thoughts queued up. We've been waiting to have a moment here where you're not stuffing in new stuff into your brain through your phone, through your TV, through your computer, through a meeting, through doing something, through reading, whatever it was. And so dedicated think time I think is extremely underrated. I think I'm at the beginning part of that curve where I'm just starting to do it and I'm just realizing, oh man, this is like so obvious and I really wasn't doing this before. I remember when we met Tim Ferriss. I asked him something. I was like, what does Tim Ferriss do day to day? He's like, oh, dude, this is like the question I get a lot. Like, what is my daily routine? And he's like, I think people expect like a really awesome answer. He's like, I've actually been asked, like for like a writer from some magazine, like, hey, we want to follow you for a day and write a profile or if we want to film like a one day documentary of Tim Ferriss, day in the life. And he's like, I've always said no. Not just because I like privacy, but because it would be incredibly boring. He's like, you know, I wake up and I sort of, I stretch, I'll drink some tea, you know, I sit down. He's like, I kind of putter around for quite a while and I have like long periods of time of inaction where I'm just trying to think of what is it that I really want to do and what is it that I actually should do in this situation? How do I want to approach this? Do I really want to do this? And I actually like spend time with my thoughts. I remember hearing that and being like, oh, I don't do none of that stuff. It's like when you hear a really productive manager talk about how they like all the thoughtful things they do to manage their employees and you're like, ooh, I just had a pizza party like a month ago. I thought that was good. I thought that was enough. Speaker 1: I think that you said something funny about shower thoughts. I don't think a lot of people realize that you can help engineer breakthroughs. I think that there's things in your life that you could do to, yeah, engineer breakthroughs. And I've been thinking about what that is. For me, it's been slow mornings. So I try my hardest to get up earlier than I actually have to, because I like just to like walk around and drink coffee and then I'll wake children up or then I'll exercise. But like literally just 30 minutes just to poke around. I like working out. So I have breakthroughs on working out. I have breakthroughs when I'm journaling. I have breakthroughs when I'm reading and I have breakthroughs when I have organized times. of talking with people but without an agenda. So I'll have someone interesting at my office because they're in town and I'm like, I don't know man, let's just riff for 30 minutes. What's your story? And or like what you've done, you had a breakthrough when you started the Milk Road after you went to a conference on a topic that had nothing to do with your interest. But like this is why conferences are great. This is why I hope Hampton is great. This is why sometimes people like they get us a little bit through listening to our podcast where they like kind of feel like they're around us. But like talking to other people and just listening to their opinion without an agenda, I think is another great way to have a breakthrough. Speaker 2: Yeah, I've been writing, I told you I was writing this book and the premise of the book was I got really, it happened accidentally. I started, it was embarrassing. I was trying to be funnier as therefore I started studying comedy, which is like not really what I think any funny person has ever done. Probably not the best way to do it, but I got really into Seinfeld and then through that I was like, wow, this guy's not just about comedy, but like this guy's got like A way of working that is really interesting, an approach, a mindset and literally like a set of daily habits that are pretty admirable. And I started studying other great people. How do all the great ones work? How do all of them actually like, what are the habits of the great people who've done great things? Because I want to be a great person who does great things. Anyways, along the way, one of the things that surprised me, right, which I think when you're researching anything, it's the surprises that you look for. One of the things that surprised me was how much engineered rest matters. So I'll just give you like three quick ones on this. So Aaron Sorkin, who wrote West Wing and The Social Network, like this great Hollywood script writer or whatever. When he's writing a script, he takes eight showers a day, he says. Like he will just keep showering. He's like, because I have my best shot thoughts in the shower. There's all this science about why warm water and a relaxed environment, no distractions, why this is actually like quite a good way to like let your brain sort of, you know, let the muscles relax a little bit and how you come up with more out of the box ideas. It's also just a reset. Like every time he gets stuck, he goes to showers and he quickly gets through the plateau because he does that. Einstein used to, do you know about Einstein's boat? Speaker 1: No. No, I wouldn't have paid Einstein as a boater. Speaker 2: He was a prolific boater to the point where the Coast Guard had a lot of problems with Einstein. So what Einstein would do is in the middle of the day, Einstein would basically get on like a tiny little boat and he would just float. It was a no motor boat. He would just like float away into the sea and he would stay there for hours and he would stay there because he's like, I do my best thinking out here in the sea. And he would do it aimlessly in the afternoons. And the Coast Guard was really worried, because they're like, dude, you don't have a motor attached to your boat. How are you going to get back if the tide pulls you too far? And he's like, the further, the better, was basically his quote around what he wanted to do. And that's where he did most of his quality thinking. I was telling my wife this, and she goes, oh yeah, at work, we had this lady come in, this neuroscientist, and she told us, you do your best thinking in motion or in water. This is why so many people walk and why they swim. Pavel Durov was on Lex Freeman, talks about how he goes for four hour swims because he does his best thinking when he's swimming. And that's one of his routines. Like, it's great. I get fitness and I get thinking at the same time. He's like, guess what? You can't be on your phone when you're in the middle of a lake for four hours. Like, you know, you're just you're out there. Another one, Darwin. Darwin used to go for these walks and whenever he was noodling on a problem, oh, I got a problem, go for a walk. Which is I think not really how most people in today's age solve their problems. I think they stare at their screen and like sit there and kind of just sit in a stationary position trying to like get through it. And you produce pretty low quality ideas when you do that. But what Darwin would do is he would get up, he would go for a walk and he used to walk these laps and every lap he would like kick a stone at the same spot. He would like knock one stone off where his starting point was And he would talk about his problems as like four stone problems, five stone problems. Like he could measure the difficulty of the problem by how many stones it took, how many laps it took of him walking before he felt like he had like kind of like. We've made headway on the problem. And so this idea of engineered rest, which looks incredibly unproductive when you're doing it, right? Like taking a nap. You know, so many, so many of the great inventors and artists did these like quick mini 20 minute naps. There's all this science behind why that works. And so, you know, these mini naps or going for walks or going for a swim, it literally looks like you're not working. It looks like you're being a lazy bastard. But like, if you look at how the great ones actually work, This is part of their productivity routine and it looks completely unproductive. Speaker 1: Six or 12 months ago, you were debating on like a big project. You're like, I'm being pulled in a variety of directions and I can't decide what I want to do, but my heart is telling me to do something creative, almost like a play. And I was like, oh, that sounds pretty badass. That sounds amazing. And it sounds like I don't think a book on creativity was even on the list, but that actually sounds even more badass than all these because you're describing this and I'm like, I want this book. I need this. Not only do I want this, I'm like, I have problems. I should go for a three stone walk and give me more tips and tricks on how to solve my problems and how I can think better. Tell me about the book. So how many pages? Is this going to be like a two and three or four hundred page book or is this like a... Speaker 2: No. So the premise of what I'm doing, I guess this will be my... Speaker 1: We'll do a whole podcast dedicated to the announcement. Speaker 2: I have this problem with books where I buy a ton of books and I want to read a ton of books and I don't really read a ton of books. One of the reasons why, books are long and slow. And books are long and slow, not because a 300-page book needed to be 300 pages. It's really a relic of the publishing industry. So like, if you go talk to publishers, and I've done this, and you want to publish a thinner book, they're like, ooh, but it's not going to sell as well. And they're like, because people, when they want to spend whatever, 15 bucks, they need to feel like they're getting value. Like they literally need to hold a heavier object. And that was why Whatever the size of your idea was, guess what? We need 250 pages, right? Because we want to sell this book and it needs to have this sort of weight to it. And I actually understand that. I think there's like a cool physical component of that. But also, how many books have you read where you're like, that could have been a blog post? It's like how many meetings could have been an email? There's a lot of books that actually are not, they're a couple of great ideas and then there's like 200 pages of fluff and you're like, okay, I got it, I get it. So it's one of my biggest pet peeves and when I studied This is how the great creatives work. One of the things they do really well is they pay a lot of attention to their irritation. Seinfeld said, irritation is what breeds innovation. So he said, he used to hate, he used to get invited to go on late night talk shows like Jimmy Fallon or whatever. He's like, dude, I hate it. It was so formulaic. It was so cookie cutter. It was so like the same thing. So that's why he created Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, right? It was like, what's the exact opposite of that talk show? It's like me and my friend in a car driving, go get coffee, like no audience, no applause sign, no any of that stuff. Like my, I'll take all my irritations of this and I'm just going to do the opposite. And then that's what I'm going to, I'm going to use that as the like the force and the energy to create something better. And so I decided to create this series called One Hour Books. And the idea is, can I create books that are, you know, if you read it, it's a life-changing book, but you can read it in one hour, a single sitting. So like, if you buy the book and you decide to read it in one sitting on a couch, you'll actually consume the whole book and you'll get everything you needed out of the book, whatever the book's promise was. And so I'm creating this series called One Hour Books, and I'm doing it on different topics that I've been, any topic that I've gotten obsessed with. And so, you know, like, If I have a period of time where I'm really obsessed about value investing or Warren Buffett, how these great investors think. I want to basically take the most powerful ideas, the best ideas that I got, my research, the things that surprised me that I actually like then started to use in my life. And so like, for example, with this creativity book, like it changed the way I'm approaching being a creator, right? Like I'm trying, I work completely differently than I did 12 months ago. And it's because I basically stole shit from Seinfeld and Disney and Ruben and Pixar, like all these people that I went and went and studied and actually tried to figure out, you know, a better way to work. And so, yeah, the book's only going to be like, I don't know, 75 pages. It's going to be enough for you. It's going to be the size of a book you could read in one sitting. Actually, if anybody from the podcast wants to check out the book early and kind of gets the behind the scenes thing, just go to 1hourbooks.co. I'll put it on the screen and in the description. But if you go to 1hourbooks.co, I'm just going to let anybody sign up. And if you're a fan of the pod, I kind of want to show you how I'm making the book, the behind the scenes stuff and give you a free gift when it launches. So go there if you want to check that out. Speaker 1: Are you going to go through a publisher or self-publish? Speaker 2: I don't know yet. It doesn't really matter. All that matters right now is make one amazing book. Anything else doesn't really matter. It's like one book that I am like, oh man, if I read this, this would go in my top shelf. This would be one of my favorite books because it actually resonated with me and the stories were really dope. It made me laugh. Those are some of the goals with how I do this. Speaker 1: If I had to bet, this is going to be the most successful thing you've ever done because My instinct, and I don't want to do this right now, but is to like, Oh, can you just tell me all of the things that you learned from Rick Rubin, all these people? Like, it's like, I want to apply this immediately. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I could and I will tell you all those things. But yeah, I think it's gonna be great. Like, I honestly like the way that I have this really, I try to when I do a project, I try to find like a kind of three word, almost like North Star or campaign slogan for myself. Just like as I wander through the idea and you start to go down different little rabbit holes and you hit little bumps and bruises, you sort of need something to come back to. And mine for this is create the TED for books. So like TED today is not as cool as it was, but when I was younger, Ted was the shit. It was the best. Ted Talks, Ted Videos, those were amazing. Speaker 1: Going to a TED event was like, I just imagined myself like, I'm going to be hobnobbing with like the President of America. I'm going to be like Bill Gates. It was like an honor. Speaker 2: And what they did was they created a format. So they're like, yo, here's what we're gonna do. 18 minute talks. That are on this kind of beautiful stage and it's going to be a certain quality of person who comes at you with one big idea, one kind of like either counterintuitive idea or one powerful idea. And then the mission was ideas worth sharing, right? And like, I actually fuck with that. I think that's actually like incredible. And although Ted has kind of fallen off, It did help me because as I'm doing this, I'm like, all right, well, I'm trying to find the best ideas worth sharing and I want to create a format that's consistent and like a proposition. I'm going to spend literally 10,000 hours researching this and I'm going to give you all of the best stories and ideas structured together in a one hour book. Like 10,000 hours of my time for one hour of your time is like just an incredible trade that I think anybody should make. I'm going all in on this. I've been working on this for a year now. It's tough, man. It's a hard thing to do, but I think it's coming out pretty good. Speaker 1: I always hear people say writing a book is hard. Tim Ferriss was like, I don't wish it on my worst enemy. I'm like, really? I've never done it. But I'm like, this sounds pretty great. You just spend all this time thinking and writing and you get two years to do it. That sounds lovely. But what are the downsides? Speaker 2: There's a ton of downsides. You don't do this if you're looking for anything quick. You don't do this if you're looking for a high chance of success. The two things I think most people want is a high chance of success and for it to happen fast. Books go the exact opposite way. It's typically a one to two year process, sometimes five. You know, George R.R. Martinson, they're still trying to write a book for like 13 years. So, you know, these books are, they take a long time, very low odds of success. And even when they do succeed, it's nothing compared to like, if I went and built a company or like, in my portfolio right now, there's things that are far more, far easier, far more valuable to do. Podcasts, far easier, far more valuable to do than to write a book. You don't write the book for other people. You write the book for yourself, I think is the only way to do it. And I think one of the great things that happened when I talked to some people who, you know, I've talked to people for advice, is they go, look, a hundred people come to me because, Oh, you wrote a bestseller. People want to ask you about a book. And they say, everybody wants to have written a book. Nobody wants to write a book. And so the very first thing is you got to figure out like, do you want to have written a book or do you want to write a book? That's why I chose a subject that basically is like currently fascinating to me and applies to my, I get to be the lab rat of doing the things that are in the book, like using the actual principles because it's like what I needed. It's the book I needed right now, even though it's probably not the thing I know the most about or it's the most relevant or the most marketable or any of those other possible factors. Speaker 1: This is badass. This is so exciting, and it feels... I don't think I've heard you light up about a project for a while. Speaker 2: Well, I was looking for a challenge. You know that. I was looking for a challenge. I was looking for something that's new, that's something that's hard for me. This is like the opposite of my... I'm an improv guy. I'm a quick guy. I'm an unscheduled guy. I'm like, that's what I've known, and that's what I've done well with. So this is like very different. It requires consistency, requires sitting down every single day and like don't miss a day type of mentality, which is good. It's also what I needed to get in shape. It's also what I need to do to learn the piano. Like all the things I'm trying to do right now, they all require the same set of muscles internally to go and actually succeed in them. Also, the other thing that's hard about it is When you do things that are like, I'm going to make 100 of these, any one doesn't matter. But with a book, you're like, I'm going to make this one book and it's going to be what it's going to be. The level of internal pressure you put on yourself to make it great and to be like, no, no, I got to get this right. I don't get to, it's not like, oh, I'll just get started and then we'll iterate from there. It doesn't really work that way. You want to put one great thing out. There's a craftsman like nature to that. And there's something cool about that constraint that you're only going to really write this thing once. So you better do it the best you possibly could because it's not something where you're going to get a hundred shots on goal at the same idea. Speaker 1: I could never do this or maybe I would one day, but like the best books that I read, like I think Ron Chernow is one of my favorite authors. He wrote Titan, which is the story of John Rockefeller. He wrote Hamilton, which became Hamilton. And he's written one on Mark Twain and a couple others. And it's these biographies. He's a biographist. Same with Robert Greene. If you ever read Robert Greene, it's like every sentence is packed. Every sentence is very purposeful. And all of those two authors, they're not particularly easy to read, but every sentence is full of stuff, and it's like 1,000 or 800 pages. And I'm just like in awe. It's sort of like when you go to Yosemite for the first time and you see like Half Dome and you're like, I can't believe that something is as big and beautiful and I don't even like the outdoors. And when I read like every once in a while, I've read a book where I'm like, this is like a religious experience, not necessarily because of the content, but because of how much effort this person put into it. And it's a marvel. When I think about Harry Potter, I'm like, how on earth did this one lady invent this world? She literally invented a language. And I don't even like Harry Potter, but I'm like in awe of this. Speaker 2: That's another example of you get your best ideas in motion or in water. The idea for Harry Potter sort of drops into her head when she's on a train ride. She's like in motion and sitting there and idle and doesn't have internet access and can't do 10 other things. There's nothing else you could do when you sit on the train except for think. And that's when your brain is open for creative inspiration. Speaker 1: Do you think that doing deep work is harder today than it was before the internet? Because when you're talking about writing a book, I'm like, I struggle to get people to quit messaging me, and I'm absolutely addicted to my notifications. I can't have an unread text message, but then I have text, Slack, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, email. Speaker 2: Let me give you one of the quotes. I think this is going to be in one of the first few pages of the book. So Shonda Rhimes, who is a prolific creator, right? Netflix gave her $100M not for stuff she's already made, but just to make new things. You're getting paid $100M for your reputation, your ability to create great stuff in the future. She created Bridgerton and Grey's Anatomy and a bunch of other hit shows. Speaker 1: She lived in my little town of Westport. Speaker 2: Really? Well, she was talking about her process. She was like, how does your creative process work? How do you work? Again, the same idea. How do the great ones actually work? And here's how she described her morning. And so she goes, imagine a door five miles away. And those five miles, to go the five miles, that's you writing crap and doodling and just trying to have an idea. And then you sometimes are surfing the internet and you're hoping like hell you're not going to get so distracted that you give up. And worse, those five miles that you've got to run, They're lined with cupcakes and episodes of Game of Thrones and Idris Elba wants to talk to you and there's really great books you could go read. And every time I sit down to write, I mentally have to run those five miles past all that shit to get to the door. It's a long, hard five-mile run. And sometimes I'm almost dead by the time I get to the door. And that's why I keep doing it. Because the more often I run the five miles, the fitter I become. And the fitter I become, the easier it is to run. And the less fresh and exciting all that stuff on the side of the road starts to seem. I mean, how long have those brownies even been sitting there? And more importantly, the fitter I run, the faster I run, the faster I run, I get to the door. And behind the door is where all the good shit is. That's where the great ideas lie, is behind the door. Speaker 1: That gives me goosebumps. Speaker 2: I know, right? And so like when I sit down every day, so every day I wake up and I spend two hours, I call it eating shit for breakfast. It's like, you're going to make something that probably sucks today, but you're going to sit down and you're going to make it. You're going to do your five mile run. You're going to go and you're going to ignore the distractions of the world. You're going to do deep work on the one thing that matters, the main project, your Mount Everest in your mind of that you're trying to create. And all it takes is two hours, first thing in the morning without any other distraction. So I'm focused on doing that and this idea that like, At the beginning, when you sit down and you start to do the thing, your initial work kind of sucks. The first few sentences you write suck. Your first few ideas for that marketing campaign kind of suck. It's all going to kind of suck. You just have to keep going to get to the door. Behind the door is where the good stuff is. If you have that mentality, what ends up happening is you push past where the amateur will give up. The amateur will sit down. And, you know, they'll start to do something and it kind of sucks. And then they'll seek a reason to stop, whether it's a distraction or it's talking themselves out of it or it's settling. One of many things you could do. And, you know, what I thought was different about the pros versus the amateurs, the pros just have better talent. You know, when they sit down, they make good shit. When I sit down, I make bad shit. It's like, no, no, no. Actually, the difference is when the pros sits down, they make the same type of bad shit you do. They just keep going and they go, they go through the door. Yeah, they sit down more and they stick with it. They're able to face their own mediocrity and tolerate it much longer than you can. Speaker 1: Paul Graham's got this amazing article on procrastination that kind of changed my life. And so according to Paul Graham, who's the founder of YC, one of the most successful business incubators of all time, maybe the most successful, he said there's three types of procrastination. The first type of procrastination is you just don't do the thing that you're supposed to do, which is like the most common. The second type of procrastination is incredibly common amongst ambitious people, which is they say to themselves, I'm researching. Or, I'm writing a to-do list. Or, I'm doing these things that have professional-sounding words, but in reality, it's procrastination. It's completely worthless. And then the third type of procrastination, that's the best type of procrastination. That's a good type of procrastination. I'll explain what it is. Everyone has this idea of like the forgetful scientist, the Albert Einstein who has two socks that are like different colors, or he hasn't showered and he looks kind of dirty, that type of procrastination, that's actually the good type of procrastination. Because if you do your life's task, if you do the work that you're supposed to be doing, that means you have to ignore other things. And sometimes that means you have to ignore things that the world thinks is really important, like having two socks that matches and like thinking like, oh, I have to do laundry so I can look a certain way. He goes, but the reason people would make fun of like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg when they were young, because they would wear hoodies all the time and wear pajama bottoms all the time and be like, well, why aren't you wearing a suit? Why aren't your clothes nicer? And they didn't have a good answer at the time. But the reality was, is that they were focused on their life's work. They weren't focused on how to look good, how to appease other people, but they were actually doing the best type of procrastination. And that's what it requires to be great, is you have to do that. You have to avoid the first two types and you have to focus on the third type of procrastination. And that's going to be annoying to a lot of people. It's going to piss off a lot of people, but that's the way you do your life's work. Speaker 2: I love that. This type of stuff just fires me up. That's great. I love that. Speaker 1: It's great, man. When I read that, I was so good. Speaker 2: You just might have got yourself quoted in the book, my friend. Speaker 1: Yeah. I was like, hey, if you actually Google Sam Parr Procrastination, I wrote an article about it. To my wife, I was like, yes, Sarah, get off my back. Speaker 2: Doing my life's work over here. She's like, you're on Twitter. Speaker 1: Repeat after me, Sarah. Life's work. Not take trash out. It didn't land. I just printed off this article and I slid it her way during dinner. I was like, read that. Speaker 2: That's amazing. Today's episode is brought to you by Hubspot because using only 20% of your business data is like dating somebody who only texts you in emojis. First of all, that's annoying. And second, you're missing a lot of the content, but that's how most businesses are operating today. They're only using 20% of their data unless you use Hubspot. That's when all your emails, your call logs, your chat messages, they turn into insights to help you grow your business because all that data makes all the difference. Learn more at Hubspot.com. I want to share a thing that I think you'll appreciate. I didn't plan to share this, but I think you'll appreciate it, so I'll say it. So as you know, my grandfather died at 98 years old. Speaker 1: Was he in America? Speaker 2: In America. He lived in D.C. And so I flew to D.C. and we go to the funeral. And you know, funerals are, they are what they are. They're sad, but you know, I think He's 98 years old. He had a great life. He was healthy for almost all, almost to the very end. Speaker 1: Are Indian funerals like traditional American funerals or do you guys like ham it up at your weddings? Speaker 2: They do cremation. And there's also some like, I don't know, parts that you're like, is this what we're supposed to be doing right now? Like they basically have like the casket, this is kind of too much info, but like they have the casket or whatever. And I think like an American, I don't know really exactly what happens at American funerals, but I would assume like you sort of You go, you sort of give your thoughts and prayers, whatever, you maybe put a flower down or something like that. And if you're right before they have kind of the send-off, the final thing right before cremation, The guy brings out a gallon of milk, a bunch of food, and you basically pour all this stuff on top of the body. It feels completely blasphemous. And I put a drop. He's like, no, no, no, the whole gallon. And I was like, what? Speaker 1: Grandpa's thirsty, Shaan. Unknown Speaker: Pouring milk all over this? Speaker 2: Man, this is ridiculous. So that part was a little bit strange. But the rest was, I would say, normal. And people gave their eulogies and whatnot. So my dad goes up there and gives a speech. And my dad had told me this story before and you just had a kid and so this is kind of for all the dads out there. So the best thing my grandpa ever did as a dad, which I'm going to steal and I think others should steal it too. So my dad and my family, my dad's family grew up like dirt, dirt, poor India, like middle of nowhere. It's like, you know, you go on Google Maps, you got to like zoom in, pinch to zoom three times to even see the little town that my dad grew up in. And like somehow my dad like, you know, was born there. And now like 60 something years later, he's got like a mansion in San Francisco and like an iPhone in his pocket. It's kind of like crazy that like that, that kid ends up doing this. It doesn't really make a lot of sense. Okay. Speaker 1: So like, imagine your dad being like, My son is going to be a famous YouTuber in America. You know what I mean? He's going to be writing books on creativity. It's a wild journey. Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense. So how do you get from there to there? And so he was telling this story. He's like, you know, we grew up, like, we couldn't afford anything. Like, you know, we, it's like, I hadn't seen a movie, you know, movies existed. I hadn't seen one until I was 16. And, you know, the day we went, We got one bottle of Coca-Cola and split it amongst the four kids type of deal. That was a highlight of my childhood. I still remember that memory today. Anyways, one of the things that he says that his dad did for him. He goes, he didn't have money, couldn't give me fancy anything, couldn't send me to a fancy school. We didn't have a lot of toys. He didn't give me anything in that area. He goes, but the one thing he did give me was, he gave me this belief from the very beginning. He brainwashed me. Speaker 1: That I was special. Speaker 2: And he goes, there was no evidence. I didn't do anything special, but he just felt like I'm special. And he just kept saying it. He's saying it in public. So he's like, he would take me to his job. My grandfather worked, I think, at like a government, like almost like a weapons factory, basically, for the government. And he would take him there. And like the boss, his boss, the manager of the factory would be like, oh, like, there's the little one. There's my guy. Hey, here, wear the hard hat. Like, you know, someday you can be here. You can run this, you know, this place. And my grandfather would be like to go to his boss and be like, no way. He goes, this boy, my boy, he's not going to work in a factory. This boy's special. You don't know. This boy's special. He's going to do incredible things. He's going to be in America. He's going to be doing incredible things someday. He's not going to work in a factory. And so just like you kind of breathe this, this belief into him. And he just, he's like, he always said it. He never had, he never explained why he believed it or what, how it would happen. But he was just so sure that I became kind of sure. And I just started to believe that about myself. And so like, He goes, that was like almost like in Jack, he gave me like a magic bean. And this bean was like my belief in myself. And I see this all the time with my kids where it's very easy to criticize kids because kids do dumb stuff all the time. It's very easy to like tell them off for not doing things the right way. It's very easy to, you know, like mix sort of this praising criticism. But my brother-in-law has been doing the same thing with his daughter, who showed a little bit of talent in soccer. And then he like went all in and was like, he created an Instagram account called Raising Ronaldo, where he's like, I'm raising Ronaldo right now. This is not my daughter, this is the next Ronaldo. And he puts posters up and he just continues, oh, when you're playing pro, I'm gonna be in the crowd, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Speaker 1: Is this Aaron? Speaker 2: Aaron, yeah, he's been saying this for like eight years now. She's 10. She's young. She believes and she works like somebody who is the next. She's training seven days a week, no days off. On vacation, they take the ball, they go do a hundred, when they keep the ball in their juggles, a hundred juggles in a row. They don't do breakfast before that. It's incredible. And it reminded me of, I'm going to read you this story. Speaker 1: Is she into it? Is Sharon's daughter into it? Speaker 2: And by the way, like, she's into it, which makes it sound like, oh, that's easy. My kid wouldn't be into it. Well, I was there. And like, it's not as black or white with a kid. Like, some days they're into it. Some days they're tired and cranky. Some days they have a hard, you know, he puts her, she only plays basically against boys. And so It's harder to play against boys, boys that are a year or two older than her. And sometimes she doesn't get to dominate and she has a tough game or whatever. And like on those days, guess what? She doesn't want to go do it again the next day. It doesn't force her to do anything, but he like never, he never wavers in his conviction. And that like has over time, it has overwhelmed her, it has completely brainwashed her in the positive direction. I want to read you this story from this soccer player, Marcelo. So this guy, Marcelo, basically told a story about his grandfather and he goes, they were talking about like, what does it feel like? You're this star player for, I think he played for Real Madrid, like one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world. You make millions of dollars. You're adored by fans everywhere. Like, you know, how does it feel? He goes, this is the quote. He goes, you have to understand where I come from, brother. He goes, I can see the scene like it's a movie in my head still. I'm eight years old. My family had no money in Brazil. We couldn't even afford gasoline in our car to make it to practice. So my grandfather, I didn't know this, but he made a sacrifice to change my life. He sold his car just to get like, you know, in a bad deal. Got a little bit of money, but that was enough to take the bus every day. So he takes me to training every day on the public bus, side by side, every day on the crowded 410 in the heat, side by side, all the way across Rio de Janeiro. And every day, no matter how I played, he tells me, you're the best. You are Marcelinho. One day, you're going to be playing for Brazil. One day, I will see you in the stadium. And he goes, I could still see that talk like every day in 4K in my head. I can smell the inside of that bus. He goes, my grandfather gave his whole life for my dream. His friends used to tease him that he was broke and he would tell his friends, he would take out his pocket, show that it's empty and say, hey, look at me, man. I don't have a single penny, but I'm the happiest mother ever in the world. He believed in me. We were partners in this endeavor. And he talks about like in his village, how there was his grandfather who did this for him, but also the shopkeeper. He couldn't afford a ball. And so he goes to the local shop and he asked him, he's like, hey, can I have a ball? And the guy's like, yeah, sure. Cost as much. He goes, I don't have the money, but when I'm a professional player, when I grow up, I'll come back and I'll pay you. He's like eight years old, seven years old at the time. The guy just laughs and he's like, all right, take a ball. You deserve it. He's like, make sure you pay me when you when you become pro, right? Like just, you know, it kind of pulls on the heartstrings. And so when he became a pro, he came back and basically like bought like unlimited balls for every kid in the town, like forever growing up and was just like, no kid will have that, you know, that problem now. And so I hear these stories and it just kind of reminds you of like the power that either a father or grandfather can have in the kind of shaping of a kid. And actually like the best thing you can give them is like fundamentally a belief that they're going to be great. And people will rise to your assumption if they don't have a strong assumption about themselves. And kids don't have strong assumptions about themselves yet. And so you can give them a stronger frame that they will live up to. Speaker 1: Where did your grandpa... We'll have to link to this one. But Shaan has this amazing story about his mother coming to America and like seeing a plane for the first time. I think about that story weekly actually. It's pretty amazing. Where did your grandpa end up? So he made it to America with his family. Did your father come first and then your grandfather came? Speaker 2: Yeah, so he gets my dad. He gets his son to go in kind of a crazy set of circumstances. You know what IIT is? Speaker 1: It's like the Indian Institute. It's like the Indian Technical College, right? The important university in India. But then didn't your dad go to Berkeley? Speaker 2: No, so he went to IIT India, which is basically like, I don't know, it's like Harvard for India. It's even harder to get into because there's like a billion people trying to get into the one like top, top brand. He gets in there by happenstance. Again, when you believe something about yourself, you'll take chances that other people wouldn't. So he doesn't even know what IIT is. He doesn't even know he's supposed to be taking entrance exams. He sees a guy, his friend is on a scooter. He's like, hey, you want to come play? And the guy's like, no, no, I got to go take this test. And he's like, what test? And he's like, I'm trying to get into IIT. It's the best. And he's like, why do you care? It's so far away. Why would you want to go to school there? Go to school here. He's like, because if I get in there, I can go to America. Again, his grandfather told him, you're going to be in America someday. So he's looking for, he hears that and he says, so he literally hops on the back of this dude's scooter and goes and takes the test blind. Now, my dad was a pretty good student, because again, when you don't have anything else, you don't have TV, you don't have anything, all he had was his books, textbooks from school. So he's a good student. So he ended up getting into IT. I think he ranked like 39th in all of India, something crazy like that. And so he goes through IT, gets a scholarship to come to study at Boulder University in Colorado. Arrives in the dead of the night. Speaker 1: Becomes a pothead a week later. Speaker 2: Well, could have easily because he arrives at the end of the night. He had a scholarship. That's the only way he could go there. And when you come from India, I don't think people realize this. You're not allowed to bring in like assets. Not that my family had assets, but you could only bring in like some crazy small amount of money, like $6 or something like that. So my dad had six bucks and he came to America basically. He had to figure it out. He's like, oh, don't worry. Like I have housing and tuition paid by the school. But he arrives in December, like the admissions office is closed for winter break. So he's literally just like outside in the cold in winter in Colorado. He's like, what do I do? Again, never been on a plane before, like everything's new. Some French dude, some student there who's a French guy, another international student who wasn't home for holidays, sees him. He's like, dude, what are you doing? He's like, I'm trying to get into this place. Speaker 1: I'm trying to go to school. Yeah. Speaker 2: So that guy just takes him and he's like, come stay with me. So he just lives with this guy. Again, somebody helps him out along the way. Anyways, my dad brings my grandfather over when he gets here. Speaker 1: Hold on. So your father was like... College age. 21, 22. Okay, so he was only 21 and he brought his father over. Speaker 2: Over the next few years, he brings his father over, brings his brother over, gets everybody over, right? That's like the role of that kind of the eldest son is to like... Speaker 1: So your dad was the shit. Speaker 2: What he did, yeah, it changed the direction of his tribe. My grandfather comes over, and I remember when I was a kid, we used to go with him to his vending, he had a vending machine side hustle. We would go collect all the quarters out of four vending machines that he was running at the time. Then he upgraded, he got a little snack shop in the office building, and we used to sit at the cashier there doing that all day. He basically just had some hustles. The other thing that I thought was admirable was, When he was like in his 70s or 80s, whenever the computer came out and like, I don't know if you remember, we had like a computer room in our house, like one desktop computer for the whole family. He would come in and he would try to learn how to type. Now imagine a 75-year-old, 80-year-old guy. Speaker 1: He's doing like this. Speaker 2: But he's not just trying to use the computer. He's literally just saying, I want to learn how to type, like a skill. I was like, what do you have planned? What are you going to do with all this typing? And he didn't care. He's like, no, this is the new thing. I'm not going to. He basically never gave up on himself. He's never too old. Most old people just literally are like, ah, that's too complicated. That's for young people. And he never had that attitude. He was like, if it exists, it's for me. He worked at Circuit City in the DVD section when he was like 80 years old. And they were like, dude, do you know anything about movies or music, American movies or music? He's like, no. And he's like, he would joke like they can't fire me, though, because I'm so old, like it would be discrimination. It's hilarious. They're too afraid to fire me, even though I don't know anything about this job. And like Circuit City had to go bankrupt before they could get rid of him. He was kind of good, stubborn in that way. He would like never take medicine. Like even at the end, last month, he broke his femur because he fell. And like bringing your femur, the biggest bone in your body is a pretty rough break. But even when he was in the hospital, he was like immobilized. He would be doing like arm exercises. He's like, oh, I'm going to be back. And when I got to keep my body active, you know, like that was always his mentality. So a lot of things that I kind of admire that, you know, I'll always remember about him. Speaker 1: How did he get to D.C.? Speaker 2: When they came over, it was like, where are we going to live? They lived with us for a while in Colorado. And then when it was like, OK, that's enough living with us now. Thank you. It was like, here's D.C. like where some of the other siblings live so that we got them a house there. They live there. Speaker 1: I've been thinking about like we've been thinking about like some logos or not logos, like slogans and stuff for Hampton. And I've been obsessed with this idea of building what outlives you. And so like build what outlives you. It's like this phrase that I've been obsessed with. And that doesn't mean business necessarily. It could mean. But what's interesting is that your grandfather so far has been the best example of building what outlives you. And so like telling you the story about how like he gave his father this or his son this attitude, which then my father gave that to me. You know, you speaking at my father gave it to me. And I'm like, that's the best example of building something that outlives you, which is just a positive attitude. This is what outlived him, and I find that to be very fascinating, and frankly, I find that to be the most admirable thing a man can do, is to build what outlives you, and it's legacy, and not legacy in the sense of your name is going to be on the building or whatever. It's just that I live a certain way because this guy lived a certain way because this guy lived a certain way, and because this grandfather lived a certain way, I now treat people wonderfully, and that's the most beautiful example of building what outlives you. Speaker 2: Do you know your family history? I've heard this sometimes, people are like, my great-great-grandfather did this, or we were actually warriors, and people really take that as like, so that's in my blood, and it really gives them a lot of belief. I don't even know. I didn't know half the shit about my grandfather. Until the funeral when they were telling the stories about like his upbringing. Speaker 1: No, frankly, I did not have this. And where I'm from in the Midwest, like it's just like my people have been here for forever in St. Louis. All my grandparents are dead by the age of three for me. And so I lacked a massive sense of belonging. And so I remember meeting a Jewish guy and like him telling like the traditions of like Judaism and like going to like like having this Friday night meal. I'm like, oh, my God, I crave this tribe. I was like, I crave this so much. Or like I remember like Moving to San Francisco and walking around on the Stanford campus and I'm like, oh my god, I would love to have this Stanford logo on my LinkedIn or whatever just so I can meet other people who share these values. I've been desperate my whole life for a sense of belonging because I never had that as a kid. This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least $3 million a year in revenue because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company and you realize two things. One, you've done something great, but you're still a long way from your final goal. And two, you look around and you realize, I am all alone. I've outrun my peers, which means you're now making $10 million decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company Hampton, we solved this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are going to hold you accountable, call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way. Because the fact is, is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there. And they're hard to find. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're going to be fine. But the biggest risk is waking up 10 years from now and saying, shit, I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid. We have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and I know this stuff actually works. It can change your life. It changed mine and I know it will change yours. So check it out. Joinhampton.com. Speaker 2: Can I tell you, we talked about books earlier. Can I tell you this idea that this like very interesting business that I had never heard of? So have you ever heard of Little Blue Books? Speaker 1: No. What is it? Okay. Speaker 2: So check out what I have in my hand. You see this? This is a little blue book. It's not blue, by the way, but it is tiny. Speaker 1: So for the people listening, I googled it and Shaan just showed it. It almost looks like you pulled the cover off of a book. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a little paperback. I mean, not even paper, it's just paper, like stapled together. Literally, there's a staple on the side. And it's like a three inch high book. And these were called little black books, little blue books. Guess how many copies of Little Blue Books sold? Speaker 1: I have no idea. Speaker 2: Just take a guess. Speaker 1: Oh, my God. I just saw the number. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Really? Okay. Speaker 2: So there's been something like a low-end estimate is 200 million, high-end estimate is 500 million copies of these books were sold. Speaker 1: Did you take your idea from this or did you like come up with your idea and you realized... Speaker 2: No, I was telling Craig Clemens about my idea for One Hour Books and he was like, do you know about Little Blue Books? And I was like, no. He's like, oh, dude, you got to check this out. Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. And the titles are the best. Speaker 2: Yeah. So like this one right now I'm holding, by the way, just for reference, like, you know, Harry Potter sold like something like 600 million copies. So this is like a Harry Potter level phenomenon that existed, you know, a long time ago. So this one, the title is The Gentle Art of Making Enemies. Speaker 1: Oh my gosh. Speaker 2: You're telling me The Subtle Art of Not Giving an F didn't steal from that, right? Or it'll just be like this one, Proverbs of Turkey. They're about popular Shakespearean quotes. A rapid calculator. How to make rapid arithmetic calculations in your head. There's a book about doing mental math. Speaker 1: How to dress on a small salary. The psychology of leadership. The puzzle of personality. Man and his ancestors. Speaker 2: Yes. So they're good at titles. They're good at copywriting. The books themselves, by the way, not actually Good. I spent like an afternoon trying to read these because I was like, oh, I found this hidden pearl of wisdom from the past. Personally, didn't really love any of the books. Speaker 1: But did Craig like this because of the marketing? Speaker 2: Yeah, he was just like, this was a I mean, this was like a phenomenon. You should study this and just steal something from this thing that happened, you know, such a long time ago. The reason I bring this up is, and why this is related to what you talked about. So why did these things succeed? Because I thought, well, maybe they were just incredible, incredibly popular, incredibly well-written, whatever. No, they're not really, right? Like this today seems like, you know, this could be an Instagram account maybe, or, you know, something so simple. The reason this worked was basically back in the day, this was like before there were like public libraries. So books were actually rare. They were not something that the average person could afford or had access to. And so you had an access problem. And they were in low supply. And so they came out with these. And these things would cost nothing. They would be like a nickel to buy the book. So you could buy this for five cents. You could carry it around in your pocket because it was so small. So it was portable. It was affordable. And it became ubiquitous. They would sell it at like, you know, every newspaper stand, corner store, anywhere. You could put this thing anywhere. It's so small. Speaker 1: It's basically a podcast episode. Speaker 2: Exactly. It's like YouTube videos. And so what I found interesting was, man, in a time where that's scarce, this can sell 500 million copies because information was scarce back then. It was actually hard to get information. You couldn't go on Google or YouTube, couldn't even get a book from a library, couldn't afford a lot of this information. So where would you get that information about how to dress on a small salary or, you know, the quotes from Shakespeare or Proverbs of Aristotle? Speaker 1: You'd hope that your dad would tell you. Speaker 2: Correct, but like, you know, most people don't. So that became incredibly valuable. Now today, fast forward today, information is ubiquitous. It's like running water. You can get it anywhere. You get all the information you ever want instantaneously in whatever style you want. And then sometimes it's even if you go to your feed like Instagram or TikTok, you'll get information you didn't even ask for, but might be interesting to you, curated by this sort of all knowing algorithm. Okay, so information is now abundant. So something like this, I don't think could ever work today. Now, what's scarce today became the interesting question in my head. Because if information was scarce then, and then there was a need for little blue books, what's scarce today? And I think it's what you just said. Now, this is, I hate even saying the word belonging, but basically, you know, being a part of a tribe, I think is incredibly scarce today, in America at least, or in the lives that I see around me, me and the lives around me. And I think organized religion did this for a lot of people. I think group exercise classes like CrossFit and SoulCycle did this job for a lot of people. Now, run clubs are incredibly popular. Book clubs are getting more and more popular, which seems really counterintuitive to the trend. I think people need This sort of in-person tribe with rituals and a tribe leader and a banner and rituals that you attend. I think that is what is scarce today. And I think people crave it and those who properly build that are going to prosper in the future. And I think you're doing it with Hampton, by the way. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm trying to do it. I met this guy. He came to my office the other day. Anthony Pompiliano introduced me to this guy. Did you just drop that just like that is there a name you need to pick up because I just dropped did I just drop that Your Democratic president The Anthony was like you got a I call him Anthony by the way It's like on all in sometimes like they were referring to the SEC chairman and they're like, yeah, look Tim's doing a great job My version of that is Anthony. He was like, you got to meet this guy. I said, yeah, whatever, sure. If you're in town, come to my office, man. I met him and I was like, what's your deal? He's this Italian guy with a thick Italian accent. And he's got this company that's basically making $100 million a year curing loneliness. But they're doing it in a very unique way. So if you go to WeRoad.com, the business is crazy. So let me tell you what the product is. The product is basically, it's traveling for 20, 30, and 40-year-old professionals. And so what they do is if you want to travel, the issue with a lot of young people is like they want to travel alone, but they don't literally want to be alone when they travel. Like they don't want to team up with their friends. They want to go do what they want to do, but with other people who want to do it with them. And so it's basically 80% women, 20% men is like their customer base. And so they have categories. So it's like adventure. It's nature. It's historical. They got a bunch of categories and you pick a trip that you want to go on. And then seven to maybe 15 other young people like you are going to go on that exact same trip and you're going to have a tour guide leading you along each trip. Speaker 2: So this, for example, I click Patagonia trekking through Argentina and Chile. There's beautiful photos of like this just looks like unbelievable. And then it's a 13 day trip. You pay three grand and you're going to go with a group of eight to 15 people, you know, 12 nights in a hotel or guest house. Your breakfasts are included, and you get a domestic flight to Buenos Aires. If you get to Buenos Aires, from there to the start of the adventure, and then they have day one, here's what we do, day two, here's what we do, all the way to day 13. This company, I think it was started in 2020. It's only about five or six years old. Speaker 1: This year, they're going to do $116M in revenue. Last year, they did $100M in revenue. And their gross margins, you said I could say all this, are 30%. Speaker 2: I've never heard of this company. Speaker 1: Amazing, right? I've never heard of it either. So on $100M in revenue, after they pay the hotels and the person leading the tour guide, they keep 30%. So $160M in revenue, what's that? That's like $50M in net revenue to their company. Absolutely astounding that this company exists. It's one of these ideas that you told me about it and I'm like, yeah, that sounds like a cute little hobby. They've totally crushed it and I was asking him, I'm like, why do people like this? He's like, well, because people... We are lonely and they don't want to be alone. And we're just one example of how you can solve loneliness because you go along this trip with strangers and you're going to come home best friends. And he was like, and in a lot of cases, sometimes people come home as boyfriend and girlfriend. That happens a lot. Uh, and so I thought that this was an absolutely amazing product to solve. Like it's, it's like there's these macro trends. So you talk about this macro trends of like physical experiences, things like that, uh, and loneliness. And then there's like, how do you package that into a solution that you could sell? I'm trying to do it with Hampton in one way. This is a totally other way of doing it. It's crushing me. So that was probably this is a very, a very nice way to package it. It would be nice if I could have my company doing 160 million in revenue in five years. But isn't this pretty cool? Speaker 2: And they do something that looks way more fun and they like hook up. So it's like basically better in every dimension that I care about. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, this is cool. Speaker 2: I mean, my parents do this. My mom does this with like seniors do this as well. So her and her siblings two to three times a year. Take these guided tours, basically groups of seniors, you know, it's just all because they're like, we don't have to think, right? They're going to organize all the sightseeing, all the hotels, all the food, all the everything. They keep you safe. They have the insurance, like they do all that stuff. And then you're with a group. So, you know, you can grow with a group or you can kind of make friends inside the group. Because, you know, traveling when you're young and your friends maybe not all being able to synchronize a trip together, or you don't have enough friends, like that's one thing. And the other is, you know, you're empty nesters, you're seniors, and like you've got way more time and money on your hands. But travel is, you know, still, you know, a little bit difficult and daunting. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty amazing. I did it when I was in college or high school maybe, like an EF tour. Is that what it's called? Educational tour? It's like the company is called EF Tours. It's like a multi-billion dollar company that they do that for students. Speaker 2: Are they the ones who have an incredible on-campus marketing machine where they basically have affiliates and then they do events? Speaker 1: It's like an MLM, basically. Yeah, it's an MLM. It's started by a Swedish guy who's a recluse, but he owns the whole business and he does $5 billion in revenue. It's one of these things where you don't realize how big it is. Speaker 2: I was too dumb at the time to pay attention to what was happening, but now that I look back with my business lens now, that thing was brilliant. Speaker 1: So, EF Tours does $11 billion a year in revenue. Speaker 2: If I'm one of these, who's the travel YouTuber that's popular? If I'm the travel YouTuber that's popular, I'm the fun adventure type of YouTuber, I would create something like this. This is very hard to create, to be clear, but I would steal operators from these companies and be like, you're going to build this, but you're going to use my brand, my face to spin up. Because these don't really have a strong brand. And these are way overdue. Speaker 1: Interestingly, this guy actually has an SF connection. So the guy who started EF Tours, I didn't research this in advance, so I'm just kind of looking at Wikipedia. He started EF Tours in 1965. They now have 52,000 employees and his last name is Hult, H-U-L-T, the Hult International School of Business. That's the Hult School in SF, which was, I think, down by Fisherman's Wharf. But anyway, crazy way of solving loneliness. Dude, this was a fun episode. I'm happy we got to catch up. I think that there's times on this podcast sometimes where maybe you don't want to talk about something personal because you're like, I don't know if people are going to enjoy this or if they can get entertainment or education from my little personal story. But I got to say that I'm actually incredibly impacted by that story of your grandfather. You know, I have a soft spot in my heart for immigrants. And so I love hearing the story of your mother. I've never heard the story of your father. Speaker 2: I do love immigrants, dude. You love it. Speaker 1: I love immigrants. Like I, you know, I kind of categorize like first born in America, you know, son of immigrants as immigrants as well. And in that regard, every one of my friends is an immigrant. Speaker 2: It's almost racist how much you love immigrants. Speaker 1: But seriously, shut up about it. Dude, I married into an immigrant family. Speaker 2: That's one of your phrases that stuck. A lot of people, when they email me for an opportunity, they're like, I got that Korean corner store owner energy or something like that. I got that immigrant mentality. Speaker 1: Yeah, Korean store owner energy. Because in New York, there's the corner markets and they are all owned by Asian families. The Vietnamese family and I like to go and I like to talk to these families and I literally just like ask them what's their story. And then the smaller ones are usually owned by, it's a lot of Indian families, but it's also a lot of like Arabic families. And it's very interesting how and then you go to like Dunkin Donuts and that's always Indian. And so like, I love going to these like, or you go to Mattel, always Indian. And I love going and I like just like, I'm like, I want to learn like what's going on. And so I love like, like learning about this stuff. I think it's so fascinating. Because immigrants have this like us versus them mentality, which I've always craved. You know, I always want to be the us. Turns out, turns out, turns out I'm the them, I'm the against them. Unknown Speaker: Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1: You know, like I'm Iceland in the Muddy Docks. Like, I'm the bad or I'm like the bad guys. Speaker 2: Like, you know, like Gunnar Stahl over here. Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm the them. I wanted to be the us. I'm the them. That's weird. Speaker 2: All right. Unknown Speaker: That's a good spot for us. Speaker 1: All right. That's it. That's the pod. Unknown Speaker: Hey, let's take a quick break. Speaker 2: I want to tell you about a podcast that you could check out. It is called The Science of Scaling by Mark Roberge. He was the founding CRO of Hubspot, and he's a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School, the guy's smart. And he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like Klaviyo and Vanta and OpenAI, and he's asking about their strategies, their tactics, and how they're growing their companies as, you know, head of sales or chief revenue officer. If you're looking to scale a company up, if you're a CRO or a head of sales that's looking to level up in your career, I think a podcast like this could be great for you. Listen to The Science of Scaling wherever you get your podcasts.