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Watch These 40 Minutes To Unf*ck Your Life

Name: Watch These 40 Minutes To Unf*ck Your Life
Uploaded: 2024-06-19T12:35:17Z
Duration: 46 min 4 s
Description: One host uses the Lehman Brothers play to illustrate how a business drifts from selling goods to purely financial dealings, and ties it to his own habit of taking opportunistic pit stops instead of the fulfilling path.

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Sam Parrhost

Jun 19, 202446mWatch on YouTube

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Transcript

55 min read · 10,966 words

0:00 – 4:56
The rise and fall of the Lehman Brothers
1. SPSpeaker
  So the quote is this. It says, "Most of us have two lives: the life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands the resistance, more powerful than a locomotive and harder to kick than a cra- a crack cocaine habit. And here's the biggest bitch: we don't even know what hit us." [upbeat music] All right, Sam, I gotta ask you about this. So I was watching that Lehman Brothers play. I don't know if you remember, I was telling you, I went and saw the Lehman Brothers play, and there's a line in there, there's a part that stuck with me. The, the point of the play is it's talking about the generations of the Lehman brothers from the great-grandfather to the grandfather, and I don't know if you know this story, but basically they started out, they're, they're German immigrants, they come to America. They, they land somehow in Alabama, and they open up a small little store selling fabrics. Okay, so somehow they went from German immigrants who had nothing selling fabrics in Alabama to the fourth or fifth biggest investment bank in New York in like-
2. SPSam Parr
  Wow
3. SPSpeaker
  ... a couple hundred years. So how did that happen? The story is how did that happen? And l- the transition goes they're selling fabrics for, you know, for clothing in their store in Alabama, and then they realize they could just buy the raw cotton. So then they start going to plantations and buying the raw cotton and selling it to the guy who makes fabrics out of it. So then they become the largest buyer and seller of... They become a middleman, and they kind of like, they... In the play they said they invent the idea of middleman. I don't think so, but like they really popularized the idea of being a middleman, where they weren't making the cotton, nor were they making the fabrics. They were just in between brokering the deals. And so then somehow that, that ladders up, and eventually they become a bank. And so y- it's like generation two or three. So what they show is it's realistic. Like, one of the kids that took over was really smart, had new ideas. He's the one who turned it into a bank. But there's other kids who was, like, maybe a little bit more of a gambler and a bit reckless, and that put them in positions that, you know, maybe they shouldn't have been in. They got a little too greedy, a little too aggressive, which ultimately in 2008, Lehman Brothers falls, and it's the biggest bank collapse in the history of the country. It's because of, you know, some decisions that were made along the way, the seeds that were planted by, you know, the heirs, heirs to the throne. So in one of the scenes, it's the, the kind of the older generation and then the younger generation. They're both in the boardroom. And at this point, the older generation's kind of the figurehead. He sits there in the boardroom, but he's not the guy. He's not the guy making the decisions. His son is the guy making decisions. And so I forgot who it is. Somebody asked them, some, some bank or someone else comes and asks them, they say, um, "What is your secret recipe? What are the ingredients that let you do what you do?" And they think long and hard and, and, you know, I forgot what answer they give, but it's something like, "It's the people," or, "It's the, the trust that we have. That's what... That's the special ingredient." And then the son comes up and he goes, "In our... Uh, you know, when we're baking, our flour is money. Some people use money to buy things. We use money to make money. Our flour is money." And, like, that was, like, one of the big transitions where they became a bank versus becoming... B- before they were merchants who were, like, buying and selling products, buying and selling commodities. A- and it shows that, like, once they have that realization, like, they never go back.
4. SPSam Parr
  Right, right, right.
5. SPSpeaker
  Meaning they just get more financialized, more financialized, more financialized, where they're trading on computer screens and they're trading these subprime mortgages, and they're never, they're never issuing the mortgage. They're not living in the house. They're not... They're just... It's numbers in a spreadsheet from there on out, basically. And, um, and we've talked about this idea of, like, what is it that you sell, and it kind of comes down to, like, the way I think about this is there's many moments in my life where I'm choosing between two paths: the path that's opportunistic, meaning I see green on the other side, I see money on the other side, and then maybe the path that's more interesting or fulfilling.
6. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, art versus money.
7. SPSpeaker
  That's a good way of put it. Uh, but for others it might be... others it might be impact. It might be, like, making a difference in the world. Like, that might be the f- fulfilling path for them. So and as much as I could hear the advice, like, you know the answer. The answer is go do the fulfilling thing. However, me and many people like me out there are just wait. Let me just br- make a quick pit stop over here. And those pit stops add up. You add one pit stop after another, where you choose the opportunistic thing. After, after I make this money, then I'll go do the thing, or well, this is too good to pass up, right? And I do that many, many times. In fact, I am still doing it today. Even as I, I am ashamed to admit it, I do that all the time. And so I wanted to talk a little bit about people who choose one path or the other, yourself, people you know well, and see if I can get a little bit of wisdom on this. Um, so do you have any stories on this, or I, I can share maybe something I'm reading right now that, that really stood out to me. But-
8. SPSam Parr
  Well-
9. SPSpeaker
  Wh- where do you wanna start?
4:56 – 9:13
The life we live vs the unlived life
1. SPSam Parr
  I wanna hear the story 'cause I think you're reading a book that I've always wanted to read, but I've refused to read it so far because I know what it's gonna tell me, and I don't like that answer.
2. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
3. SPSam Parr
  Because it's all... Because it's hard. It- it's a hard thing. So you're reading, uh, is it The War on Art by Steven Pressfield?
4. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, The War, The, uh, War of Art, so it's like the opposite of, of The Art of War-
5. SPSam Parr
  Yeah, yeah
6. SPSpeaker
  ... uh, the Sun Tzu book, so it's The War of Art. And I wasn't gonna read this book, and then yesterday I, um, I asked Diego, my, my guy, I was like, "Diego, you read books?" [laughs]
7. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
8. SPSpeaker
  He goes, he goes, "Not really, but I'm reading this one book right now, pretty good, called The War of Art." And I said, "Give me the what's, like, one thing that stood out to you?" And he just screenshotted this passage that then I went and ran and tweeted out.
9. SPSam Parr
  Wait, hold on. So you're not actually reading the book. You've just-
10. SPSpeaker
  No, no
11. SPSam Parr
  ... been inspired by one excerpt.
12. SPSpeaker
  This is how it started. This is the trigger.
13. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
14. SPSpeaker
  I'm just giving you the whole story here. So I got the excerpt first, which is actually a great way to, to decide to read a book. Then I read half the book last night. So it's a very fast read. All right, so the, so the quote is this. It says, "Most of us have two lives: the life we live and the unlived life within us." Between the two stands the resistance. Just like every sun casts a shadow, a genius's shadow is resistance. Resistance is faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and harder to kick than a cra- a crack cocaine habit. And here's the biggest bitch. We don't even know what hit us. I never did. From the ages of 24 to 32, the resistance kicked my ass from the East Coast to the West Coast back 13 times again, and I never even knew it existed. I looked everywhere for the enemy and failed to see it right in front of my face.
15. SPSam Parr
  That makes you sad, right?
16. SPSpeaker
  Well, n- uh, that's one reaction to it. I felt the other way. I felt like a inspired rage. I was like, "No, I'm not gonna have the unlived life within." So I pick up this book and I start reading, and there are a ton of just, like, banger passages that are, uh, [laughs] they're just so good that I wanted to, I wanted to, you know, talk a little bit about with you.
17. SPSam Parr
  Keep reading a few more. What are the other good ones?
18. SPSpeaker
  All right. So the premise of the book, if you didn't get it from that, that, is basically we have the thing that's our calling that we kinda know that we should do or the direction we know we should go, and then there's us not doing it. And that's maybe choosing what to work on, but then there's just the day-to-day. So he'll point out, like, you know, "Hey, you got that diet that you haven't stuck to? You got that, that book that you haven't written? You got that, uh, that, that startup you wanna go start? You know, of course you'll start it after you, you know, just save up a little more money." And he goes, you know, fast-forward the clock, you're 40, 50, 60 years old, and you're that great author that never wrote a book.
19. SPSam Parr
  And he gives tips as well. So he was like, "If you're gonna be a writer, you must write every day. You don't not write because you don't feel good, just like you don't do this other thing because..." Like, y- if you are just, like, feeling bummed, you still gotta go to work.
20. SPSpeaker
  He, he calls it the difference between an amateur and a pro. He goes, "An amateur l- they do it because they love it." That's what people think. He's like, "Oh, they love it so much that they only do it once every month? They love it so much that they never stick with it?" He goes, "You know who loves it? The pro. The pro who wakes up and shows up to work like it's, like it's a job. Like, treats it like it's a job. You don't not show up to your job. You do it every single day, and you do it whether you feel like it or not. You don't just wake up and decide, am I gonna do the thing or not today?" And so he talks about being a pro and how the pro sits down and, quote-unquote, "does the work." And the work is, he's like, "I don't care what it takes." You know, you basically, you sit down and it, you know, y- it doesn't matter how long you sit there. It doesn't matter if you wrote three lines. It doesn't matter if those three lines suck. You did the work today. And as s- s- uh, soon enough, if you just do the work often enough, those three lines turn into 30 lines, turn into 30 pages, and those 30 pages turn into, you know, terrible, just mindless drivel to, you know, your best work. And the only way it gets there is by actually sitting down day by day and doing the work.
21. SPSam Parr
  All right, look. The question that Shaan and I get asked constantly is what skill set did we develop early on in our careers that kinda changed our business career? And that's an easy answer. It's copywriting. We've talked about copywriting and how it's changed our lives constantly on this podcast, and we give a ton of tips, a ton of techniques, a ton of frameworks and, throughout all the podcasts. Well, we decided to aggregate all of that into one simple document so you can read all of it. You can see how we've learned copywriting, but you can see the resources that we turn to on a daily basis. You can see the frameworks, the techniques we use. It's in a simple document. You can check it out in the link below. All right, now back to the show.
9:13 – 12:54
How Jerry Seinfeld puts in the work
1. SPSam Parr
  Do you follow Jerry Seinfeld at all? Because he's, he talks about the, about this topic all the time. He's one of the few comedians and actors and, uh, whatever you would describe him as that actually gets into the tactical stuff, uh, of, like, what it goes through day to day. And he's like, "I have a, a big pen and a yellow notebook, and I, and I write jokes, like, all day." Uh, not all day. He said, "I'll do, like, an hour a day, but I try to get it done just a little bit every day." And he goes, "Most of the time it's garbage." And then he talks about when he was writing Seinfeld. He was like, "I would go into the office. I, I would go to my office and I would sit down and I would actually write things out. And then I had a process." And he's like, "A lot of times I didn't wanna do that, but I just did it anyway 'cause that's my job. And I wanna, and I, and I need to be great." And so anyway, he's a really good guy to follow because he gets really specific about the tactics, uh, behind this stuff, which people rarely discuss.
2. SPSpeaker
  Have you ever seen the clip of him at a comedy club talking to a struggling comedian who's, like, asking... He just caught Jerry backstage and asked him for some advice about how to make it.
3. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. What's he say?
4. SPSpeaker
  And it's just like you get to a point, you're like, "How much longer can I take it?"
5. SPSpeaker
  Well, what, what is time running out? Are you out of time?
6. SPSpeaker
  Getting older.
7. SPSpeaker
  Please.
8. SPSpeaker
  I'm getting older.
9. SPSpeaker
  It's not-
10. SPSpeaker
  It's not... You can... Listen, I'm, I'm 29. I feel like I've, I've sacrificed so much of my life. I, the last 30 years of my life.
11. SPSpeaker
  You got something else you would rather have been doing?
12. SPSpeaker
  Uh, not-
13. SPSpeaker
  You got other appointments or other places you gotta be?
14. SPSpeaker
  Not necessarily.
15. SPSpeaker
  No, not necessarily.
16. SPSpeaker
  I, I see all my friends are making a lot of money, a lot of money on Wall Street. I see, like, you know-
17. SPSpeaker
  What?
18. SPSpeaker
  I just see that, like, my friends are, you know, they're, they're moving up and I don't... I'm worried-
19. SPSpeaker
  They're moving up?
20. SPSpeaker
  They're moving up.
21. SPSpeaker
  Are you out of your mind?
22. SPSpeaker
  No, I'm not out of my mind. I just, uh-
23. SPSpeaker
  This has nothing to do with your friends.
24. SPSpeaker
  I'm upset. I'm, I'm upset.
25. SPSpeaker
  No, no. You-
26. SPSpeaker
  This is a special night
27. SPSpeaker
  ... I, this has nothing to do with making it or-
28. SPSpeaker
  Did you ever stop and compare your life and go, "Okay, I'm 29. My friends are all married, all having kids. They all have houses. They, they have some sort of sense of normality." I, I agree.
29. SPSpeaker
  So what do you tell your parents? What do you, you know, how do you deal with that?
30. SPSpeaker
  What do I tell my parents?
12:54 – 21:45
You don't have to save the world
1. SPSam Parr
  I'm gonna remind you of something that we did. So in February, I think it was the Lego episode. So if you Google My First Million Lego, at the very end you had said something of like, I forget exactly what you said, but it was something where I remember the energy being, "I own this company, um, that I'm not sure if it gives me purpose, uh, and it's not really related to my main thing." And I said, uh, "Well, you know, the, the product that you're selling doesn't necessarily have to be, uh, something you're passionate about. You could be passionate about creating great jobs, or you could be passionate about, uh, creating a, a, a wonderful place to work, making it so your employees can afford a car, whatever. You know, that it doesn't always have to save the world." And I think that kind of helped you a little bit, and I was reflecting on it because I talked to Brett Adcock the other day when you weren't here. It's gonna go live after this episode, I think. So Brett Adcock, uh, started, she, uh, Figure. It's a humanoid robot company that like is one of those companies that you would peg as like it's gonna change the world, whatever. He did two things that were interesting. The first thing is I tried to nag him a little bit to get like some good content out of him, and I go, "Brett, you know, you're doing this world-changing thing now, but before this you had a company called Vettery, which basically is just like a glorified job board." And he laughed, and he, he knew I was just giving him a hard time, and it was a $100 million company. It was a great exit. And he had explained how Figure is changing the world and how he was thinking about doing, uh, artificial meat, so meat that you grow in a lab. He was like, "I was worried about these really big problems." And I go, "Well, Vettery was not a big problem." And he was like... He kinda laughed, but then he got serious and he goes, uh, "Well, the way that I thought about it was that, you know, you spend 50 hours, 40 hours a week away from your family with a company. You should be spending it on something that you really, truly love and enjoy and that you get value out of." And I was like, "You did it again, man. You just, you wove this story around something that makes it really inspirational and world-changing."
2. SPSpeaker
  Is he saying that the job board is helping people find that? That's what he was saying? Or he was saying he got, he got that out of it?
3. SPSam Parr
  He got that out of it.
4. SPSpeaker
  Okay.
5. SPSam Parr
  And he was like, "And, and, and it, it's not really a job board. It's significantly more complex than that." But I wanted to like just give him a hard time to get, get, get him to come out of his shell. But he was saying like... He's like, "Well, no, it's not just a job board. Like, we weren't just helping people get jobs. We were helping them find value in their lives and helping them find passion." And he did such a good job of telling himself a story that I also believe. I believe his story to be true. And the other thing... And, and anyway, it inspired me of like telling myself a story. The other-
6. SPSpeaker
  These Lunchables aren't just crackers with cheese. If you think about what makes a sandwich, you must ask yourself, "Do I need all of it, or could I reduce it in size? Could I have... Could I do more with less? What is enough?" And that's what the Lunchable stands for. [laughs] It's a reminder of what is enough.
7. SPSam Parr
  That's exactly what he did-
8. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
9. SPSam Parr
  ... and I thought it was great. But then he's got this new thing. So his new thing, uh, it's called Cover. So if you go to cover.ai-
10. SPSpeaker
  It says, "Cover is a AI security company developing concealed weapon detection systems. Cover's technology scans students' backpacks," I think, "for concealed weapons in K through 12 schools. Our goal is to prevent school shootings by identifying concealed weapons inside of bags and underneath clothing. Apply to work here."
11. SPSam Parr
  Listen to this. So he had just sold one of his companies... Or no, sorry, one of his companies went public. It was called Archer. It was, uh, basically, uh, an electric helicopter. Big deal. It's a big deal. And he was thinking, "What am I gonna work on?" He had three ideas. Idea number one was meats grown in a lab, which we've talked about, which is like it's pretty insane that you have, have to have all these cows in order to get ground beef. Is there a way that you can make real beef in a lab? He was really fascinated by that, and he read a bunch of research and he's like, "That, that, that's on my shortlist, but that's not what I'm gonna do." The second idea that he had was robots, where he was like, uh, "We just can't get enough j- uh, warehouse workers to fill these jobs. I wonder if a robot can f- uh, fulfill this, uh, demand." That's what he ended up doing. The third one that he didn't do that he was very close to doing, he read this study. He read this study that was done I think, or a research paper done in 2014 or '12 or something like that, and basically it was about NASA creating this technology that could use not exactly X-rays, but almost like a, like a cellular phone, like, uh, like cell phone rays, and from 50 meters away, so about 150 feet, this thing that looks like a video camera can... You, uh, a human being can walk in front of it and you could see if they have a bomb on them. You could see if they have a weapon on them. You could see if they have anything underneath their clothes or in their backpacks. And he goes, "That's amazing. I wonder what we could use that for." He saw this graph about school shootings where basically there's something like a school shooting a day. And I'm not talking necessarily school shootings where it's like predetermined where I'm gonna go and I'm gonna like, you know, ha- have, be overly violent to 30 children. I'm talking about like kids who just have a gun in their book bag at school and someone says something rude to them and they freak out and someone gets hurt and shot. And he was like, "That's what we need to solve that. Uh, we need to solve that problem." And so he didn't end up taking, uh, and running with that idea. He did Figure. However, Figure's kinda working a little bit and he has a little bit extra money, and so he went and cold called the NASA guy who created this research report that explained the technology, and he convinced the guy to let Brett come and check the technology out. He has now since licensed it, and he's funded cover.ai with $10 million of his own money, and he's hired a team of NASA engineers to build technology to build this stuff out. So eventually they're gonna start with going to stadiums so you could see if someone's coming into a stadium with a weapon, and then they wanna like give away that technology to schools to prevent school shootings, 'cause schools don't exactly have money to afford this software. And he was telling me this story, and I'm like, "Who wouldn't wanna prevent school shootings?" That's like the greatest thing ever. Uh, that's a, that's a really hard thing to compete against when I'm recruiting an employee to come and join-
12. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
13. SPSam Parr
  ... a newsletter business-
14. SPSpeaker
  Right [laughs]
15. SPSam Parr
  ... versus like, you're gonna like literally save lives. And it got me thinking of what, what, what I was saying to you about, well, a company doesn't have to be X, Y, and Z. I felt that was a cope. I felt that when I heard what Brett was doing, I felt solving big problems and going after your passion and not exactly caring about how big of an opportunity is, in some regards, in some ways, that is better than doing it the way that we- you and I tend to do it.
16. SPSpeaker
  Well, I, I think that, um, what Brett's doing is pretty awesome here. He, he did it as a, uh, you know, we talk about one-chart businesses. And, and-
17. SPSam Parr
  That's exactly what I told him on the podcast. I go, "Shaan's gonna love this."
18. SPSpeaker
  Yeah. It's a, it's a one-chart business because, uh, we've, we've talked about this before, which is some businesses, the best businesses really, are so simple that you could just put up a single chart on a screen and say, "That's why we're doing this." And the example we gave before was that the rise of, uh, cremation. So cremate- uh, cremated funerals has grown from like, you know, less than 10% of the market to over 50% of the market. Now, the majority of funerals, I guess, in the US are, are cremations, which is surprising to me still. Uh, but if you're creating a business that's around that, which we, we, we met these guys, um, I think After was the name of them, and like they had a whole deck and I s- told them, I was like, "You didn't need to send the deck. Just slide three was enough. All you had to show me was that and say, 'We enable this. We make it easier to do a cremation.' Like, look at this rise. That's what we're doing." And so the best businesses are one-chart businesses. I know a lot of people that did D2C brands, and if you ask them about their D2C brand, they'll tell you this and that about the market that they're in and about the business model, about the direct relationship with the consumer. All they needed to show was time spent on Facebook. That's all these markets were based on was time spent on Facebook, at Facebook, and the CPM on Facebook. [laughs] That's a... You know, a single chart would've told you that, hey, there's a new way to reach customers and it's called Facebook Ads, and we're gonna just work backwards from Facebook ads and start selling products via Facebook Ads. That's really what happened in D2C over the last 15 years. And anyway, so when I asked Brett about, like, this idea, I was like, "Oh, so give me the pitch. What's the thesis around this? What are you, what are you excited about?" He goes, "Oh, it's this." Google Image, and he just searched school shootings per year, pulled up the chart, and he goes... And it's just a, it's like a up and to the right exponential like, it's like a s- it's what you want a startup growth curve to look like, you know? It starts really small and it starts getting bigger and bigger and bigger, except it's school shootings, so you want it to go in the opposite direction. And, uh, 'cause I was like-
19. SPSam Parr
  And, and-
20. SPSpeaker
  ... "Dude, how do you have the time? Don't you just wanna go take a nap? Like, you wanna be with the kids, but like even if you're not with the kids, fuck it, take a nap, dude. Like, why do you, why do you... You're already working doing one insane thing competing with Elon Musk. How dare you go start another hard thing?" And he's like, "Well, I have to. I feel like compelled to."
21. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. And when I think about like, uh, you know, this isn't actually realistic, but when I think about a company trying to compete with Brett when you're recruiting someone, it makes it really hard. And I asked him, I go, uh, "Why do you do these big things?" And he goes, "Well, I think big things in many ways are easier. Uh, it's easier when I have this crazy awesome mission to get employees, investors, customers. Like, it just, it's just actually easier." And it kind of, it messed with my mind a little bit.
22. SPSpeaker
  So my takeaway from that, by the way, is not that you have to go solve a really gnarly problem in the world to be doing something. Um, I think that is definitely one path, and the way I think about it instead is instead of saying, "What should I do?" a better question is, "What
21:45 – 23:27
“What would I work on if I wasn't afraid?”
1. SPSpeaker
  would I do if I wasn't afraid?" Like, if I wasn't afraid, what would I go work on? And usually you're afraid of failure. Usually you're afraid of it not working out. Usually you're afraid that it might be too har- like, so for some people it might be starting a humanoid robot co- company might be the answer. But you're not doing it because you're too afraid that, like, it's too hard, I don't really know how to do that, it's gonna take too much money. What if I can't raise it? What if I do this? What if I do that? I'm competing with Google and, and Elon and all these people. And so they wouldn't do it. And for other people, like for me, it's a creative endeavor, right? It's to say, well, what... Like, I don't know. I think the thing I really wanna do is go write this killer book or go make a TV show or go do something really, really interesting, and the reason I don't do it is 'cause it might fail, right? I might spend a couple years writing a book and it comes out and people are like, "Yeah, cool book, man," and that's it. That would be disappointing and that would be the failure. And I think one of the good things about, um, about this book that I was reading, The War of Art, and, uh, some other stuff I've been consuming is you, you really separate the, like, choice of what you do and the result of what you do as two different things. And like, you know, you control the controllables. The thing you can control is did you spend the time doing the thing you really wanted and did you give it your all? You cannot control the outcome. And if you go listen to Rick Rubin talk, he says the exact same thing. He goes, "Your job is not to make it popular. Popular is not something you do. You don't make popular. You make stuff, and you make a lot of stuff, and you put your best stuff out there, and you do your best job doing the best stuff you can. And popular, I mean, that's not even something you think about."
2. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
3. SPSpeaker
  "That just happens or it doesn't happen and it's irrelevant at that point whether it happens or doesn't happen 'cause you're just gonna keep making stuff. And eventually popular starts to pay attention to the guy who's making a lot of stuff." Um,
23:27 – 30:10
Sylvester Stallone and the wolf at the door
1. SPSpeaker
  we talked about Rocky in the last episode, the story of Sylvester Stallone, so after the episode I went and did like a deep dive on it. I went and I watched Rocky last night and I watched all of his old interviews from the 1970s and I really got into it, and there was so many good parts, but the one thing that he said, uh, he's interv- he's being interviewed by this guy, and this is... The movie's come out. It's, it's been a success at this point, and he, but it's like a year in. And he says, you know, "So they offered you a lot of money for this, and you needed money." We talked about how he had to sell his dog 'cause his do- he had a big, like, mastiff and it was eating too much. He's like, "Either I'm not gonna be able to feed the dog [laughs] and not feed myself, or I sell this dog and then I can feed myself and hopefully the new owner will be able to feed my dog." And as much as it killed him to do it, he's like, "I, I have no choice here." So he was like down in the dumps, and he, the way he says it, he goes, "I had $106 in my bank account, I had a $300 a month rent, and I had a pregnant wife." And he goes, "The wolf was at the door."
2. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
3. SPSpeaker
  I love that phrase. He goes, "The wolf was at the door." Yeah. Why did you... 'Cause they were like, "How did you write it in three and a half days, the, the, the V1 of the script?" He goes, "The wolf was at the door. I had no choice." [laughs] And so he, um... And they were like, "But then they offered you money for this, like a lot of money for this." He goes, "Yeah." They go, "How much did they offer you?" He goes, "Well, first they offered me about 100,000, and I said no. And then they came back with 150,000." They're like, "Why'd you say no?" He goes, "Well, they said, 'We'll take the script, but like, you know, you go away. We, we will go get Burt Reynolds to, to be Rocky. Like, we don't need you to be Rocky.'""
4. SPSam Parr
  Burt Reynolds.
5. SPSpeaker
  "We like the script."
6. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
7. SPSpeaker
  No, that's who they went to. Uh, they went to Burt Reynolds.
8. SPSam Parr
  That's insane. That's insane.
9. SPSpeaker
  They went to, they went to three or four guys who were big at the time. And he's like, "No, I only wanna give you this script if I'm gonna be Rocky." And they were like, "Oh, God. Okay, forget it." And then they came back, "150,000, but you're not Rocky."
10. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
11. SPSpeaker
  "No." Then the final offer was $265,000, but you're not Rocky. And he says no. And they go... He goes, "How did you say no to $265,000 when you had $106?"
12. SPSam Parr
  Which is the equivalent... That's like 800 grand now.
13. SPSpeaker
  Yeah, exactly. It's like a million bucks basically. And they, they were like, uh, "How did you say no when you had $106 in the bank?" [laughs] He said a couple lines. He goes, he goes, um, "It's not..." He goes, "It's not that hard to say no to money when you never had money. You don't even know what money is." He goes, [laughs] he goes, "If you've never ridden in a Rolls-Royce, you don't mind bumping around in a Volkswagen." [laughs] "It's all you know."
14. SPSam Parr
  That's awesome.
15. SPSpeaker
  He go- he's like... He goes, "I didn't have a frame of reference for that." He goes, "I did wanna get out of some misery." He's like, "My landlady was a, a big just beast of a woman, and she would, you know, she would show up at my door every month. And her... She was so large, she cast almost like a shadow at the door." He's like, "And I just remember being afraid of that shadow all the time." He's like, "But I... You know, my goal was rent. My goal wasn't $265,000."
16. SPSam Parr
  Right.
17. SPSpeaker
  "I didn't need all that." But... And he goes, um... They go, "But you know..." They go, "Did you ever have any doubts?" He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "Before, when I was telling them no, I was saying, 'Are you kidding me? Burt Reynolds? That guy? Like, I can out-act all these people. The... I will kill this role. I will be so good in this role. You, you guys have never seen anybody act like I act.' And then as soon as they finally relented and they were like, 'Cool, um, you know, you can do the movie...' They ba- " What, by the way, the deal they ended up doing was a million dollars of production budget, which was very little at the time. Like, the big movie at the time, King Kong, was like 25 million at, at the time.
18. SPSam Parr
  Rocky I only had a million dollars.
19. SPSpeaker
  A million-dollar budget.
20. SPSam Parr
  Wow.
21. SPSpeaker
  He produced the whole thing for 960,000.
22. SPSam Parr
  Wow.
23. SPSpeaker
  And he, like, casted his brothers and his uncles and, like, you know, they did one take on everything. And, like, if they couldn't get something... Like, there's a scene where they're i- they're supposed to be ice skating on a date, but, uh, Rocky, he didn't... [laughs] Sylvester Stallone didn't know how to ice skate. They're like, "You don't have time to learn." Um, so they, they just changed the scene where he's walking and she's ice skating, and they, like, made it... They just changed the script to why that would make sense.
24. SPSam Parr
  And they just brought cameras to an ice rink and stuff like that probably.
25. SPSpeaker
  Like, to get his dog back, he cast that guy in the movie plus gave him money. [laughs] It was like-
26. SPSam Parr
  That's the best
27. SPSpeaker
  ... "Are you gonna be in the movie?" So the guy's in the movie for, like, one line. So anyways, he's making this movie for, for less than a million bucks. Uh, they go, "Well, now you've made a lot of money, right?" And he goes... He's la- he's laughing. He goes, "I, I have about $400 more than I had before this." They go, "$400?" He goes, "Yeah, I mean, I o- had a lot of bills before this. And, oh, that landlady casting that shadow, she showed up for the rent, and then taxes, and then all this." He goes, he goes, "But you know what?" He goes, "It do- " He goes, "I basically paid myself the, um, Stage Actors Guild minimum, the SAG minimum." So he ba- made $600 a week doing the movie. And I think he owned the, like, per- some percentage, but it was gonna be on the back end, so he didn't have the money yet. And so he goes, uh, he goes, "But you know what? The money never mattered." He goes, "I would have done this whole thing for a donut and a tuna fish sandwich. The money meant nothing. It was always about the opportunity. I had to prove my, to myself that I wasn't a liar, that I wasn't living a life of disillusionment, because that's very difficult, 'cause I thought of myself as a creative person, and I told myself that I was a great actor, but I had never had an opportunity to go fi- figure out am I any good or not. And so when you asked me should I take the money or should I take the opportunity to find out am I living the life of a liar or not, I had to get that answer. Because if, if not, it would have eaten at me for the rest of my life." He goes, "I'm, I think of myself as a creative person. I didn't wanna wake up and be 50 years old and realize that I'm this creative person who's never done anything creative. That would be terrible. I'd be living a lie. It would kill me."
28. SPSam Parr
  Dude, is, is he our new kinda crush?
29. SPSpeaker
  Move over, Brett Adcock.
30. SPSam Parr
  I'm gonna... [laughs] Yeah. It's... [laughs] Sylvester Stallone's my guy now.
30:10 – 39:29
Low Key Billy of the Week: Michael Pryor
1. SPSpeaker
  I wanna tell you a story about an interesting person I hung out with, but before I get to that, this is kind of the inspiration episode, it seems. And-
2. SPSam Parr
  Hmm. I feel inspired
3. SPSpeaker
  ... we've talked... You feel inspired. You know, but it's sometimes it's hard to feel inspired when it's 105 degrees and I'm sitting in Austin, Texas-
4. SPSam Parr
  [laughs]
5. SPSpeaker
  ... sweating my ass off. What would you do, Shaan, if you wanted to feel inspired? Maybe write a book. Maybe get away from it all.
6. SPSam Parr
  Hmm.
7. SPSpeaker
  What would you do? I, I, writing a book seems all right. I'd get away. But, but where would I go?
8. SPSam Parr
  I think I would wander.
9. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
10. SPSam Parr
  And today's sponsor is wander.com. We like Wander, so go to Wander. Uh, am I even saying that funny, by the way? Do I... Am I saying that weird-
11. SPSpeaker
  No, no
12. SPSam Parr
  ... with a weird accent?
13. SPSpeaker
  You didn't, you didn't Stallone it. You're good.
14. SPSam Parr
  Um, so wander.com, um, it's a really cool website where they operate really luxurious high-end properties. They're awesome. If you go to their website, you'll see every photo they take is inspiring. Like, all these-
15. SPSpeaker
  Exactly
16. SPSam Parr
  ... beautiful beaches, like a cabin in the mountains. It's just, like, high-end stuff, and they've got gyms and work from home.
17. SPSpeaker
  Dude, sometimes I don't even take the trip. I just go to wander.com and just look at places.
18. SPSam Parr
  Yeah.
19. SPSpeaker
  And I get, like, 10% of what it would feel like to go on vacation right now, and it's like, "Okay. Well, that just took me 10 minutes. That was great."
20. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. My wife wanted to go to Greece, and I was like, "Hey, let's just look at Google Earth and look at the Parthenon."
21. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
22. SPSam Parr
  Like, [laughs] pretty dope, right? [laughs]
23. SPSpeaker
  Yeah.
24. SPSam Parr
  Uh, [laughs] but that's what I-
25. SPSpeaker
  Did that do it for you? [laughs]
26. SPSam Parr
  Yeah. That, that's what I do with, uh, with wander.com, so check it out. They're today's sponsor. They're an awesome company.
27. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
28. SPSam Parr
  Um, I wanna tell you a quick story about what I did the other day. So I get this text. This guy, Michael, just joined Hampton, and I become, became friendly with him. And he's like, "Hey, are you free, uh, on Tuesday at 6:00?" I was like, "Yeah, sure. What's up?" He goes, "Do you wanna go fishing?" Uh, I was like, "Yeah, okay, whatever." Uh, I, like, I'm currently, uh, right outside of New York City, so I'm like, "Where do we go? Like, do we fish, like... Is it gonna be, like, sewage water? Where do you fish? I, I, I don't know." So I go to this guy's house. It looks like I'm at, like, a high school or an art museum. He's got this massive, beautiful home that's built, like, on a peninsula, and the boat to get into the, the Long Island Sound, which is, like, a body of water around here, he... It's, like, right on his front porch, and we're basically 30 minutes outside of New York City. It was one of the most spectacular things that I've ever heard of. And so we go out fishing, and I get to know him a little bit, and I have to tell you about this guy. So he's really fascinating because he's one of those guys who you would know his products, but you may not have ever heard of him. So have you heard, ever heard of, uh, Fog Creek Software? They launched in 2010.
29. SPSpeaker
  Of course.
30. SPSam Parr
  I was like... So Fog Creek Software launched in 2000, and it was sort of like an agency, where the internet was just getting started, and these guys were, like, the early nerds amongst, amongst the nerds. So if you wanted, like, some dev- dev- development work, they were the guys. Their mission early on was, like, "You know, we wanna work with programmers, and we wanna cr- create a great place to work for programmers," and they start this little agency or, or consultancy. But like a lot of consultants, they're like, "Just doing service work kinda sucks. Let's create some products." And so they create a handful of products, the first one being FogBugz. So FogBugz was, like, a, a bug-tracking software, and after 10 years, it does all right. It's, like, you know, in the eight figure, so 10 million-plus in revenue. It's doing pretty good. But it's... kind of stagnates a little bit. And they go, "Let's, like, spin off some more stuff that we've been working on." So I believe... I don't remember which order it was, but let's just say the first one was Trello. So they spin off Trello, and they fund it with a little bit of money. So Trello, uh, it's an Asana competitor. It's a, uh, task management software. They grow this business. They raise only $10 million. Uh, it, it gets started, and they, and they grow it a little bit, then they raise $10 million. They grow this business, and they eventually sell it to Atlassian software for $450 million, I believe. And if you look at Atla- Atlassian software's stock, I think when they sold, the stock was $17, and when it eventually peaked, uh, like, last year or two years ago when everything, when everyone went crazy, it was, like, 20x that. And so they got a combination of stock and cash for this deal. So huge hit. This guy has just made it. Well, it turns out they spun off another company as well, and that other company was called Stack Overflow. So Stack Overflow was basically, like... It still e- exists. It's kind of like a message board but originally for developers. And eventually, you can make one of these message boards for a variety of topics. It's huge. Did you know that that company sold... This wasn't in the n- news too often, but did you know that company sold for $1.8 billion?
39:29 – 40:58
Sam reflects on being popular
1. SPSpeaker
  Let me ask you one more question. I'm always interested in what other peop- what other interesting people are interested in. What was this guy interested in when he was talking to you? What kind of questions did he ask you?
2. SPSam Parr
  We talked about being popular, so basically, like, a lot of people who are-
3. SPSpeaker
  Why'd he ask you?
4. SPSam Parr
  [laughs] Good question.
5. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
6. SPSam Parr
  Uh, I think I was, like, uh, uh, the tallest midget here, like, where I was just-
7. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
8. SPSam Parr
  ... I was, like, the only one that he could, like, uh, talk to, whoever, who has even a slight popularity. We were talk... So I found it odd that... And I don't think he actually envied me at all, nor does he want this type of thing, but a lot of, like, rich and successful people who are low-key are curious what it's like to have an audience. And what I tell them all the time, and I don't know if you feel this way, I go, "Hey, I will trade you my audience for your net worth-
9. SPSpeaker
  For a bank account. [laughs]
10. SPSam Parr
  ... any, any day of the week. I'll gladly make that trade." And of course none of them would ever actually wanna do that, but I think it's funny, and, and I'm, I'm not talking about him, but people in general, uh, that they're into what it's like to have, like, an audience and be internet popular or something like that, and I always remind them, I'm like, "It's really just, like, me in my bedroom just, or on my toilet just typing out stupid tweets," and, like, there's, like, z- not that much joy in it. And I would, I, I would much rather have a $2 billion company. And so don't get, like, don't actually envy this or think that it's awesome. And so a lot of these people are curious what it's like to be, like, a, a, a popular internet person.
40:58 – 46:04
Sam and Shaan's "number" to walk away
1. SPSam Parr
  Um-
2. SPSpeaker
  Let me ask you a question, hypothetical. How much would somebody have to pay you to never create content again? Delete everything on this podcast, delete your blog, and never, you never get to publish again. No Twitter, no social media, no nothing. How much would you have to get paid?
3. SPSam Parr
  $30 million. What about you?
4. SPSpeaker
  [laughs] A really specific number. Very quick and specific number. [laughs]
5. SPSam Parr
  Well, I had to think about it. I had to think about what it's worth.
6. SPSpeaker
  [laughs] For half a second. [laughs]
7. SPSam Parr
  Well, I had to think about what, you know, what it's worth. What would you, what would your number be?
8. SPSpeaker
  I think 100. No-
9. SPSam Parr
  100
10. SPSpeaker
  ... I think even more than 100. I think it would-
11. SPSam Parr
  More?
12. SPSpeaker
  ... have to be, like, yeah, I think it would have to be more than 100.
13. SPSam Parr
  That is so dude.
14. SPSpeaker
  I think it would have to be, like-
15. SPSam Parr
  You are not Sylvester Stallone. You are not Rocky.
16. SPSpeaker
  It would have to be 250. [laughs]
17. SPSam Parr
  You are not Sylvester Stallone. You, you, you don't have... The landlord's not here. Like, you've tasted the nice life. You want more of it. You would do it for much less.
18. SPSpeaker
  No, no, I wouldn't. I really wouldn't. [laughs]
19. SPSam Parr
  So your official number is 250?
20. SPSpeaker
  250.
21. SPSam Parr
  That's insane to me. I do not beli- dude, that's, like... You'd be... No. No, no, no, no, no.
22. SPSpeaker
  [laughs]
23. SPSam Parr
  I think you're, I think you are full of shit. I think you are absolutely full of shit.
24. SPSpeaker
  Did you just take power of attorney and change my decision for me? [laughs]
25. SPSam Parr
  I just don't-
26. SPSpeaker
  Like, sorry, my friend's an idiot
27. SPSam Parr
  ... why?
28. SPSpeaker
  Uh, I'm gonna change that number.
29. SPSam Parr
  Why? Why, why, why?
30. SPSpeaker
  Because I think I'm gonna end up at 100 to 200 anyways doing what I'm doing, and I like doing it. So it's basically if I think I'm gonna make that anyways doing this, um, and I like doing it, so then you have to pay me a premium on top of to make me stop doing a thing I like doing, and then there's the additional, like, time value of money that I get it all up front right now guaranteed, right? So, so, you know, I'm just kinda factoring that in, and I would just rather err on the side of, um, what's a number I would not, I would not regret? Like, what, what's a number you could pay me that I'd, "Okay, I'll go figure out some other hobbies." [laughs]