I chose to be broke for a year

the biggest risk you have is spending your life trying to do a really good job at the wrong thing yeah maybe is the real yeah yeah for any person with high potential because it'll sap you sap your will sap your team sap your resources slap your energy sap your belief yourself this is sean p he sold his company to amazon and twitch for millions and he now runs one of the most successful business podcasts in the world with millions of listeners i know this because i spent ten years doing things only for like oh if this work it'd be amazing the work has to be the win yeah the win can't be some future hypothetical will pay off because you enjoy it you do it all the time because you do it all the time you get really good at it because you get really good at it you do get the results right that's the flywheel in this episode we talk about what it takes to be successful how to work armada not harder and how to live a good life i think her is over is it's probably maybe the fourth or fifth most important variable mh you know i think the very first one is i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a day he's all on a roll alright today's is a special episode because i'm the guest of today's episode normally we have guests on and we asked them all about their life their philosophy is how they work how they did it how they made it but this time i'm the guest because my former intern ba created his own podcast he used to work for me when he was i don't know eighteen nineteen twenty years old he was in college and he's gone on to create a cool podcast and he asked me to come on and so i went on i'm one of the first episodes of his thing and i watched it and i was like this is actually a really good interview and the reason why is because it's a lot of information about before we ever made any money so you know how i was thinking when i was in my early twenties the ups the downs the indecision the uncertainty of drag i go this way or this way and how i thought about it i think it's gonna help a lot of people specifically people who are you know you haven't quite made it yet maybe you're young maybe you just haven't it hasn't all clicked for you yet i think there's some very useful philosophies in here so hope you enjoy this an episode i got interviewed by my former intern walter you had a great life seemingly so why did you end up moving and what was that year of being strategically broke right yeah strategically broke yeah what i called it yeah i think most of was just call it unemployed but you know why not i i i put a luxury brand on it so basically what happened is i graduate from college and i get a great job i got a job paying me a hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year to go work in a boring industry that i knew nothing about didn't really care about mh kind of stumbled into a a a a job that i thought was too good of money to pass up yeah so i go and i worked for this guy and sure enough i'm like pretty bored actually i'm like oh you know what like i can do this job but i'm fairly bored and at and it was a fork in the road because before i took that job me and my friends had had this business idea mh the idea was to create a sushi restaurant chain called sa sushi it's the supposed to be the chipotle of sushi so the way you have subway for sandwiches and chipotle for burritos the idea was we were gonna do that for sushi k and we win this business plan competition so on one hand we get twenty five thousand dollars of prize money mh that the three of us are gonna live on or i could take this job for a hundred twenty thousand dollars so i take the job within a month i'm like this is lame i just looked at my life and i was like this is i made a lame choice yeah and the good thing about me is i don't really make great decisions but i make great reversals of decisions once i realized that i've made the wrong decision i'm not one to linger in it right mostly because i just can't like tolerate it anymore like if i was dating somebody i remember i was dating this girl and i realized like alright she ain't the one i like just call and broke over the way record oh you know ten minutes later i after thinking about it like i what am i supposed to if i go hang out with now this will be unbearable now that i've i know what i can't un uncheck what i've seen yeah i can't un know what i know and so i'm pretty quick to cut things off when they're not working so i i quit my job after a month and a half i tell them hey i'm gonna go work on my sushi restaurant like what okay so i fly back and i meet up with my friends and so we got twenty five grand three people so we're basically eight eight thousand dollars each for you for it to live for a year and i was like i don't know that i don't know how much i don't even know how much life cost i'm a college kid right when you're in college everything this is provided for you right like you swipe this thing and you get meals yeah things just like happen i like my parents paid for the for the dorm or something i you pay up upfront i just didn't understand like you don't know what it's like to pay rent bills and laundry and all that stuff mh so i i like i through laundry it's like dollar dollar twenty five a week or something so i don't only know even how much eight thousand but i know it's low right because all of my friends got good jobs and nobody's making eight grand a year so i just said okay i'm either gonna everyday wake up and feel worried and shitty about money mh or i'm gonna commit and say i'm gonna try to spend this year strategically broke so instead of being i looked at my friends like investment bankers and they were money rich time poor yeah and that's what i was when i had took that job i was money rich time poor so i was like okay if i'm gonna be money poor i'm gonna be i'm gonna make a choice to be rich in other areas so it's like i need freedom and flexibility of my schedule and i'm gonna be time rich i'm gonna be adventure rich like i'm gonna travel with my friends we're gonna do fun stuff yep i'm gonna be learning rich so it's like how do i learn if i'm making ten times less twelve times less here i gotta be learning twelve times more than i would on the job there right now the good news is that's not that hard of a bar you don't learn that much on your like entry level jobs mh you know or if you learn you learn kind of the same task yeah you're learning like a wide breath of stuff right whereas with the business that we were doing i'm learning about sushi and restaurant operations and how margins work what a p and l is and i'm learning to pitch investors and we're negotiating at lease and i'm figuring out what how the real estate works i'm looking at learning learning how i don't remember we went to the city like the city area and we were looking up liquor licenses and while i was there i learned that if you have a liquor license your leases on file so that i found the i found where we were negotiating i found one place with the liquor license mh i knew how much they were paying so that i went back to the negotiation i was like we're only gonna pay this she's like no away we could ever do like you're you are doing that in these four locations so i know you could do for us she was blown away so we were just learning all these little things a little little like core skills so sales marketing brand building design we're were editing videos we were doing whatever it took we're blogging we were doing just random stuff but high high action yeah and we just decided to have a shit ton of action and do diy just do it all ourselves hiring firing learn as many lessons as i could and so that year strategically broke was about learning how little you need to live on like sleeping on air mattress i put a photo so you you see yeah we can we can pull one there yeah it's like like we didn't even like garbage bag just just hammered a garbage bag onto the wall like with a nail it's like just hanging there yeah you know we would just drink out of this gatorade cooler that we had gotten for free from some gym you know and then to make some side money i would like coach basketball at this like school for autistic children and i would tutor kids in tutor college students nearby in stats mh and i was like cool i'm i'm learning and then teaching them and i'm making you know twenty five thirty bucks an hour but i only i i calculated like the minimum amount i need to earn mh in order to have ba freedom which like now that i look back that was actually a very smart thing to do even though i was very dumb at the time and da came on our podcast a billionaire founder of hubspot he said the same thing by his first business he goes i did all this random stuff for my first business not knowing anything mh then in my second business i thought well i now i know the proper ways to do things and then you like screwed up that second business he's like to the first business was more successful than the second and he realized he goes just because i was ignorant doesn't mean i was wrong right so just because you don't know what you're doing making it up as you go doesn't mean you're always it doesn't mean you're wrong on all of and you might actually got a bunch of things right and i think one thing i got right was realizing that money was some sort of tool for freedom and instead of trying to just stack as many dollars in the bank account when you're young the better thing to do is optimize for freedom optimize for learning optimize for adventure and fun and just calculate the minimum amount of money you need students to be able to do that and i'll still do that like with my companies i'll calculate the minimum amount of funding we need just to get to that next like get to that thousand customers who love us mh or you know there's a lot of things i could be doing right now to make more money but i don't do them because i'm not trying to optimize for that i'm saying how what's the amount i need where i feel really good but i get the most time i can have with my kids and all my projects and working out and doing fun stuff i like to do yeah and i think that principle is like really stuck with me i've talked before about the way that i know how to make money about how build of money making skill about how to leverage your time and energy and the team at house hubspot actually went through the video where i explained all that and turn it into a free downloadable cheat sheet on my four rules of how to make money now this is not you know get a quick advice it's just core principles foundational principles about building wealth things that i wish i knew when i you know just getting started and so if you wanna download it it's in the description below it's totally free you can go get it thanks to the folks at helps hubspot for doing the research making this document and make it available to all you guys alright back to this episode i love that so much i think you you you mentioned a point where like you reverse decisions very easily i think that's a very hard thing to do i think most people consider like that there are two way doors and i think they actually aren't that many because of how hard most people myself included to have it to actually reverse that decision so figuring that out early on the do you mean by that like what's so have you found it hard to reverse this decision yeah definitely i think so like you if you commit to something or example so i i think you know moving moving to a place right like so i i lived in san francisco for a month a year ago i know that i wanna move out of europe by even though now deep down the side but because i've got family or these are the reasons i tell myself right because i've got family at home my friends are there you know it's it's hard to get a visa things like this to keep me sort of from from the moving now i've got a place at at in the netherlands you know i'm renting like you know it's it's all these reasons to not go that are really just excuses yeah so i i think maybe i'm just speaking for myself but i think it's harder to to reverse those decisions yeah yeah i think it is i just wonder why like in your case i don't think you're this a therapy session yeah it doesn't seem like you're trying to reverse a decision it it seems like you have yeah you've you've i think you probably have made the decision where you wanna be mh but you probably have just like some fears holding it back like i don't know what the fears are but like maybe it's fear of leaving family behind or how you're gonna afford to live in a really expensive city or know any but i don't know what it is but it's almost always fear right like if you just ask why often enough you'll end up with like i'm afraid we try not to say we're afraid but we are right adults have all these code words for fear like stress like you're allowed you're allowed to say i'm stressed out yeah or that's really stressful right but if you say i'm afraid it's like like what you do you're you're growing your baby what's going on i'm like but of course stress is just the code word for for fear right what you what are you stressed out about things going wrong things not happening okay then what yeah then people won't like me what then why yeah yeah you're just all reasons afraid you're afraid of rejection and you're afraid of embarrassment afraid reconciliation a failure it's one of those things always underneath it and so i think you know that fears what holds people back more so than anything else yeah i think that's also why people don't reverse decisions right because they're afraid of looking stupid yeah looking stupid or like you know what if i quit this job and the other thing not better right what if i break break up with this girl but there's nobody else or the next person is not better yeah right or then i'm alone and that's gonna suck and i don't wanna feel that yeah i'd rather live in pain than go go towards an unknown yeah you know take a known pain versus an unknown yeah i think people get trapped up in those too much i'm happy that that's not one of my like weaknesses yeah i got my own but that's not one for me no i that i think tim ferris has said like people to rather live in discomfort than uncertainty exactly which i think is exactly what we just described i i think and i'm the opposite by the way like there might be others which is like discomfort sucks like oh no like what if this sucks like take me out of pain yeah i'm not saying i'm tougher i'm saying i'm actually less tough like got so less tolerance for for pain and so then i just make a decision i'd alright maybe the uncertainty is less pain and go there but you're just honest about it yeah that's hard i i think what's really interesting as well is with you moving to san francisco and this is something the more i talk to people like yourself who i think i've made it because you know you set out in life just like what do i want out of life and you're sort of just going for that like i love that i think the the benefit of moving to a place like san francisco is the proximity you get with other people and the blue blueprint you're seeing like i think that's a big reason i wanna do right like selfish the reason i wanna talk to is like you seem to have figured out in the way you want to and i wanna steal and learn from you and i think you've mentioned that proximity is something that i can do that for you right it can give you these blueprints yeah so talk me a little bit about that about that and i also wanna hear you talk about a story about one of your classmates you said this before who's his father you know had a great job but you know never saw saw his daughter yeah tell me about like how how can we learn from other people and you know under the idea of figuring out what you wanna do in life you know like what do he actually what do you know like what what what do you get energy from like how do you pick up on that well i think what you're talking about is this phrase proximity is power yeah and i got this from tony robbins i went to tony robbins if and he said that it clicked for me and he was talking about for himself mh he's like we all heard these phrases like you know you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with very true by the way like you lit let's say you hang out with a bunch of people who are super into working out yeah doesn't matter if you didn't work out before you're gonna be you're gonna end up working right like your or you're not gonna end up paying out with them that much right it is very hard to resist that flow it's like in the it's like in a a biological cell osmosis like the water will just cross the membrane mh it'll just go it'll flow in that direction so so i like that i like the pull not push push is hard push takes energy i gotta motivate myself to go work workout every day i gotta i gotta convince myself to go do this or i'm pulled into it because all the people i like and respect to do this we hang out all the time this is what their normal schedule looks like it's almost easier for me to just do it versus like resist everything so that same principle is just true no matter what your pursuit is when i wanted to get good at playing poker i looked around and the people who got good at playing poker they all lived in a house with five other people who were equally obsessed with playing poker somewhere we're better somewhere we're a little worse but they just immersed themselves amongst five people literally lived in a house with them and then that's all they did they eat sleep and breathe poker they would talk poker over dinner they would review hands they would do all of that all the time mh and they got better way faster than people who are not it's like you can learn spanish on duo right you can learn spanish with a tutor or you can go move to you know mexico and you can live there for three months like which one's gonna work better total immersion yeah and so proximity getting near the thing you want is is ironically an easier way to get what you want it's like the the the easiest decision you can make it's like you know to move the needle to furthest in your progress bar yeah is just get around other people who already are doing the thing you want or have the thing you want or also chasing the thing you want that's that principle mh that's why i moved to san francisco i wanted to do startups i was living in australia at the time no many sun it's not a lot of start there i asked the guy i was like hey who's the most impressive founder you've met like this guy like can i meet no doesn't live her anymore he's like happened three times hey where where are all those guys where they move to yeah they moved to san francisco of course that's where the people who are serious about start right the what the hell am doing here right and it feels weird to move i gotta break a lease i gotta i gotta i i don't know anyone there or where am i go it's unknown right but it's like alright well am i serious about this or not yeah and like i decided to be serious about it like yeah wanna do that okay so i would literally change my phone number give a like a san francisco area code well you commit commit yeah and i started telling people i'm moving to san francisco i had no plans yet i didn't know anything i'm moving to san francisco i started job hunting only in san francisco i started looking at places sign a so i found a place to live and i just flew here on a one way ticket and i said this is where i wanna be in order to make that happen so i think that's the kind of proximity power idea principle yeah i i think you touched on something else as well as where you know if you wanna go san francisco like you know you're boss telling like that's all the series people who are interested in startups so actually wanna do it and you're telling yourself like oh asking yourself that question like am am i serious about this yeah like i think that's very underrated those people are not serious no this is actually like a really important point yeah most people are not serious i'll tell you two stories around this at that tony robbins event they play this little game i they do these little alike kind of like warm ups before tony comes out mh just trying to get the crowd active get you vibe it so that you're ready to go sometimes it's like the hit a beach ball around people are it sometimes it's music it whatever so then this guy come out and he's like we're gonna play a game of simon says and just just at the scene we're in an arena there's ten thousand people in this arena it's like a basketball or actual basketball arena he is full so ten thousand people all gonna play simon says and he's simon mh so he's says stand up or and he's like the winner is gonna come up on stage and get something special alright cool winner out of ten thousand people so he starts those the first one he's like alright everybody you know stand up every stands say you're off hey he's like it's so he's like keeps going he's just eliminating like tons of people really quickly and by the you know within ten minutes it's down to like the last five people and he's like come up on stage and he says he gets the winner and he's basically like alright the the final five he's like you're the five on ten thousand people who are at the end here yeah and he and he's like did you think that you were gonna win and they were like you know i didn't i their honest answer was like you i i didn't know if i was going win but i definitely gonna try i really wanted to win i really wanted to it yeah thought i was gonna win no i wouldn't have imagined it but you know here here i am one one guy was like that right four of them were like yeah i actually like i really wanted to win and so i was like i'm gonna try and he goes on one hand it looked looks like so he he asked the question that then he goes to the audience he goes raise your hand if you actually believed you were gonna win almost nobody raises their hand like maybe fifty people out ten thousand yeah nothing and he goes you know the five people on stage it looks like you're competing with ten thousand people you're not you were actually only competing with these fifty you had a one in ten chance of getting on stage not a one and ten thousand and i i remember that really stuck with me by the way there's like loser youtube comment type of people who are like but actually forgetting that's is what's the story of a point shut up the point is a lot of life is like that things seem really hard really unlikely really challenging but most people are not serious yeah most people are not trying to seriously do anything and if you are serious you're already in that final like you know five out of fifty type of type of format and you gotta one in ten chance and so like your odds are much better than you think to give you a second story that supports us we've become friends with jimmy donaldson is mister beast on youtube and jimmy like when you're hanging out with him he meets a lot of people in fact just like at his headquarters at a studio all these youtubers just come like almost like a mecca like a pilgrimage it's just like connor his they just come just to see it right and they come and they and they're always jimmy you know like hey you got a few others love to just talk talk you about my channel give me any advice yeah to grow my channel i need advice on how i could be successful youtube please jimmy please tell me how it could be successful on youtube and it's so funny because first of all all of his videos are public so you can see audience secret right so all everything's doing is visible for you every single video is public yeah but okay beyond that and by the way that's from the beginning of time like because he all of his videos yeah ten years you can see his videos and so we said well and and he says the same thing to him every time and he goes here's what you wanna you be you win yeah you wanna be successful to youtube yeah absolutely okay here's what you're gonna do you're gonna make a hundred videos the hundred videos it yeah you're gonna make a hundred videos one at a time right make a video when you make the next video pick one thing you're gonna do better a better intro a better caption a better out outflow better music better pacing better editing better whatever one thing every time four hundred videos just do that mh and when you're done with the hundred come talk me i'm gonna tell you exactly what you need to do next like okay great i'm like jimmy does anybody ever come to you what do you tell him when they come back it's like they never come back what what are you mean he's like well he's like nobody's is willing to do a hundred videos right they all wanna be mister beast they don't wanna they don't wanna be jimmy who started doing videos and he's twelve yeah and at thirteen nobody watched fourteen nobody watched fifteen nobody watched nobody watched sixteen has anyone ever gonna watch seventeen still nobody watching eighteen oh my god a couple of people watch nineteen finally somebody watch seven years through hell right like so it's like nobody's willing to do even a hundred videos out in seven years and he's like by the way for the very few people the kind of that one percent of people who are serious and do it he's like by the time they get to a hundred they don't need me dude they're flying they they forgot of all about me they're so full of stuff to do because they have so much momentum because they made a hundred videos and they try to make one thing better every single time that idea that rule of a hundred it applies to basically any pursuit not just youtube and the funny thing is nobody serious so nobody does it yeah and so like you know you just all you have to just like if you just decide i'm serious about this i will be serious i'm a serious person not like like other people how they're not gonna approach this they're not gonna take this very simple idea seriously mh you're already ahead of the game yeah you only committing with us fifty people today's episode is brought to you by hubspot did you know that most businesses only use twenty percent of their data that's like reading a book but then tearing out four fifth to the pages point is you miss a lot and unless you're using hubspot the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business the insights that are trapped emails call logs transcripts all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more you grow more and so if you wanna read the whole book instead of just reading part of it visit hubspot dot com pull from examples from how you did this so i think proximity is one thing where if you're just seeing more lifestyles or activities that people are doing in and around the subject that you find interesting you'll be able to foot follow more blueprint and sort of figure out what you're actually going to do a hundred times over but in in someone's like daily regular life like what things can people do what things did you do to sort of figure out how can i lean more into my inner a nerd well one thing is other people are very good at spotting it before you are i remember neville was like one of my favorite people to learn from follow whatever he says a great story he's like when i was a kid i wanted to be a physicist i thought like in the apex of like awesome people physicists were on top yeah physicist scientists inventors and he's like that's what i'm gonna be and he was telling everybody's gonna be that and his mom was like no you're gonna be a business person he's like what what are you talking about like business cool but like i wanna be a physicist she's like no you're naturally a business guy and he's like what i never talked about business like i never told you that what do you mean and she goes well you're always talking about it just so you never say i wanna pay a business guy but you're always thinking about business he's like when you we used to walk by that restaurant you would always point out things that they're doing that they should be doing to like make more revenue or be more profitable or like how they should change their menu you're always doing that you're always trying to figure out how to fix a business or how to improve a business it like comes very naturally to you and she's like does physics come naturally to you he's like he's like no he's like it's like brutal like i want it because i i think they're so cool yeah but he wasn't naturally as inclined and then when he's so he realized that he's like leaned it leaned the business more so i've seen this many many times where other if you just talk to other people who know you will you know you can ask them a couple of questions that i think are good at su this out one such question is what's my superpower like what do you see that comes easy to me naturally to me that does is harder for other people mh is there anything like that do that you've seen bud costing yeah so like you know telling stories or whatever it is another thing that you might do is you might say where is it that you might ask yourself where do i spend time doing things that for me feel fun but to others would feel like a grind yeah so it's play to you work to others for me it's like i'll be up at eleven twelve at night and i'll be google searching and randomly reading like today i was i literally before we got here i was reading the annual report from the state of nevada about the the the revenues and and expenses of the casinos on las vegas strip for twenty twenty four compared to twenty five three yeah like who's doing that for fun yeah nobody's when i for i was doing different for i was really curious i was like are we in recession i wonder there's this thing where the the the vegas strip no first do they know first watch probably be able to check vegas revenues last year versus this year and that might be a leading indicator oh wow this is cool this is a pdf download pdf searching through the things making my notes for what dude nobody asked me your question you know like the teacher didn't call on me this wasn't my my pro by a science assignment but i'd always been like that yeah i always been doing things like that and before i didn't really notice that that was a thing i didn't really see how that could be special or useful just seemed like i know i just want these random little mh business rabbit hole these little d tours but then when i did the podcast and the podcast is us shooting the shit about business suddenly i had this like giant library in my head of a little facto toys and stories and and nuggets and this knowledge that was very very useful in the podcast so i found a fit for it yeah later and so i think other people are good mirrors i think looking at what you do in your five to nine mh like you have your nine to five that's your job what's your five to nine mh what do you do and specifically in your five to nine what do you do beyond what's rational right the person it's gotta either look like a work or a grind to other people or it's gotta look like oh like yeah i like video games too but you're like practicing your aim on this aim simulation for four hours a day yeah like that's different that's you know now you're in this other territory or like you're not just like you know for example i used to play this game nba 2k you played of course i never played the i never actually played the games yeah i just went to the franchise mode i started simulating i'm the gm and i'm scouting players and i'm building this franchise and i'm like i literally like this since i was a kid sixth great fifth grade i was doing this and it's like well guess what that is that's being a manager like i was literally like building this being a ceo it's like i'm like upping the concessions prices and i'm scouting these like the eyes i'm making these trades and i'm i got more joy out of the management of the franchise than playing the game yeah so like you know you start to notice these odd about yourself but instead of pointing at them or hiding them we're trying to like fix them because they're broken mh saying oh interesting like what superpower does that i give me where does that let me thrive what in what scenario would this be extremely useful or valuable yeah you know yeah it turns out the one you're in right now i'll give you another example my wife yeah my wife's kinda ocd and r crafts yeah since the kid loved arts crafts also ocd drives your nuts like that wire is out and crooked like she needs to she can't do this podcast guys just to get up and go fix that wire right so she she started like for herself she started like kinda like as a just like boredom girly thing to do like bed dazzling her you know phone when she was in ice or whatever and she but she got really good at it right she like leaned in she didn't like shy away from it she got curious about it she started buying ross crystal she started trying to arrange them perfectly she started seeing if other people do this how she can make a better design suddenly celebrity started hitting her up when she's in college she's a freshman in college just celebrities are hitting her up asking for them to make custom things for their parties in hollywood and whatever and she's making thousands of dollars a month as a college student that wasn't an option if you're not people right that's the her pushed out yeah right so that is it didn't even seem like a thing in fact it seemed like this like kind of useless waste of but it wasn't it looked like a grind to other that was fun for her so she found a way to make that useful over time that's an amazing story i love that so much i think that kind of goes back to what what you mentioned earlier on in terms of just leaning into your own curiosity and i i think i think you said this somewhere where the only voice that actually matters is the one inside your head and talk talk to me a little bit about how do you block that out when you know you're going through life you know you have this sushi restaurant you you're you're picking things up you know you're you're working at this job in australia before that how do you pick things up as you're going along when you're super unclear on that aspect and know how do you sort of focus on that in a in a voice and really be true yourself like i think that takes time i think i don't think most people at least took me time i don't think most people could do that right away yeah you know you gotta ask yourself a question who's the most important voice of my life mh is it my mom is it my teachers is it my boss is it society is it the media who's voice do i care about who's who's number one yeah and the in reality the voice that is both you know shaping here is the little voice in your head the one nobody else can hear mh it is the director of your life movie it's the one that tells you where to stand what to say what to do next how to react in this situation that's what the director does and you have a little director in your in your head right now and so once you realized that you say okay i want to like i want spielberg up there right like i want sc i want tara like i i want this to be a great movie yeah you know like and what type of movie is this gonna be like a tragedy it's gonna be a thriller is this gonna be like a romantic comedy like what what kind of movie you're trying to have right now mh and how do i tune that voice in my head so that's what i meant by that that comment and that's i think what what works when you go internal is like you you decide that look my opinion of myself matters more than anyone else is opinion of me easier said that none for sure but if it's true that's something that's worth that that's a weak muscle that's worth working on you know do i believe that the most valuable opinion of my life is my own opinion alright well what what is my opinion on what do i admire what do i think is not cool you know and how how do i develop that taste for how i wanna be and then practice doing it and like notice those moments where other voices say x but my voice says why i'm gonna go with y i'm gonna do it here might be uncomfortable but i'm gonna do it and that's me getting stronger that's be becoming that dude for whom that is the default right like you know you just do that over a number of years did you remember anything specifically like any moments in time there was a lot of resistance in what that inner voice was saying and what the outside voices were telling you definitely waiting to go to a sushi restaurant thing i remember that were your parents not on board with that or when you was i mean all your friends are getting your high paying jobs like i mean everything thought it was like a little bit silly but yeah know i'm gonna they don't really care it's not their life so they're like whatever right yeah do it you know like like friend at a party like yeah push rewarded foot in there like you know whatever he just wanna see somebody like you know yeah wreck themselves you want their own entertainment all the people who care take my parents my dad who his credit was very it was a great dad moment he was like i think you should do it i'm like you think the sushi thinks a good idea ideas like i think a terrible idea why do you think i should do it goes because look at you like you're so switched on now yeah because he's like you i've seen you your old life you never used to be there this you never used just wake up you never used to just like have this like this drive this motivation this like burst of energy like what could you you're like working all the time now used to be lazy you know you're really excited about this i could see you developing your speaking skills like i could see you developing skills i can see you like really switched on you see him energized like and he this great phrase he goes a lot of times in life we want to have the right direction first mh wouldn't it be nice if we knew exactly which way to go but life is not like that it's like you're standing on a beach it's foggy outside you wanna get to paradise but you don't know where it is you can't see you can't see through the fog so he's like you have two options either you just stand there and wait for the fog to magically clear and then suddenly you could see is paradise that way or that way or you take your little crappy bow and you start pad and as you get out there you might see it you might see as oh oh it's not this way it's actually that way he's like i can guess what once you're in motion it's a lot easier to change direction yeah like people think it's really hard to change no you have momentum you can actually shift course very easily if you see a better place to go so he said you know sometimes life is about motion not direction mh and he goes i don't think this is the right direction per us like i don't think you're gonna create the next chipotle in but i don't think you should be going into the restaurant industry but i can see so much motion that i'm sure you'll figure out the direction like at some point at some point it's better than than was totally right there that was like a a really wise thing for him to do yeah that's a beautiful phrase i think most people probably i think like i think actually in life this scariest thing is standing there and then realizing like eighty nine years like like shit i didn't move at all yeah yeah just i i just sat down actually and like you know i stayed here yeah so enjoyed the sin yeah yeah alright let's take quick break because i gotta tell you a story let me tell you about the first time i tried to run payroll for my team i was using a traditional bank and you know the type it's got a jan interface it's built like a two thousand and two tax form and it was open only during business hours and i hit send in ne froze they flagged the transaction they locked my account they put me on hold for forty five minutes and then they told me i gotta visit my local branch and that was the day i started looking for a new banking solution after asking a few founders what they were using i found out about mercury and so now my payroll is two clicks i can wire money i can pay invoices i can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard that's why you use it for all of my companies and so do two hundred thousand other startup founders and so if you're looking at a level of your banking head to mercury dot com and apply in minutes mercury is a financial technology company not a bank bank the services are provided through choice financial group call them m a and evolve bank trust members fdic when you when you were selling your company when you when you're selling be was that a like you know when you that was sort of a little bit of a change or not a a big change in direction right how did you go about in that process i imagine that would be quite hard you know you're you're you're making a pretty big decision to try and sell this company you know you maybe you realize you don't wanna be doing this specific project anymore sort of when you're working on a project and you're starting to feel like okay it's time to change direction to to get to that path like what was that process like for you and what sort of things happened to to make you come to that realization well i was lucky you have a very good friend my buddy sw he we were out at a casino down here in south texas francisco so you go to like chinese casino basically it's like a bunch of like degeneration playing like pai guy or something and then and then there was us they were playing and then you're like whatever this we're done we go to the like buffet or you know whatever just sitting at to buffet like one am and he said to me something he was like he just said like i forgot how we got there he goes i don't get what you're doing mh i was like we mean like it's pretty clear he's a very good friend he knows you know exactly what i'm doing i talked to about all the time he's like no i just i just don't get it yeah i'm like what do you mean he's like i still get the whole thing i was like what what like you know not just like one part of our strategy like the whole thing and on the surface what i had looked really great mh which is kinda one of those like voice versus external perception we had probably the nicest office in san francisco because my main thunder like the guy who basically was funding the lab was like a billionaire there so you like the nicest office ever cisco we had a private chef we had a masse on fridays friday we had a bar built into the office we had everything that you would want it was designed but this guy ken focus like this fancy so if you walked in you'd be like wow these guys are super successful this is going great who wouldn't wanna work here as paradise all my coworkers were super smart so i had a great team great office great team well you must be constrained or not mid letting your you know your wings fly no no total freedom you must not have the resources the funding your your strap right no no blank check yeah fund as much as you want well what's the problem and i'm like what you mean you don't get it i have paradise yeah well what don't you get he's like well like you've been there for six years you and you're the project you're working right now it just seems like it's not like gonna hit in the way you wanted to hit it's also not gonna fail where you'd would be like this is an obvious failure it's like okay he's like i don't get while you're working on something that's okay and so we as we start talking he basically just like you know i think you you came into this wanting one thing mh and now you're so far in you're doing this other thing and i don't think he would be doing that thing had you not already be doing it so what do you mean he said in physics is a concept of inertia like the object in motion will stay in motion unless there's a forced to resist he was that forced that night yeah and i had just been this object motion staying in motion and he goes inertia a bitch dude like you know you will keep doing it because you're already doing it thought experiment if the lab closed tomorrow would you is this business idea so good that you would tomorrow pick up the phone called the same people you're working with and say let's do the same thing yeah of course we're gonna keep doing this this is the best thing we could be doing it's perfect for us it's the j opportunity i don't wanna be doing anything else yeah and i was like no way right i i would call this people like i like the people but we would definitely not work on this yeah so then why are you doing it because you're already doing it it's like oh this is silly right and so and you know this is not a perfect test like you know you might not always be like this is it's not saying this is the best opportunity out of all the trillions of possible things i could be doing in my life that's a little overwhelming but if you know like nah i would probably say no and i'd probably try to find something else mh then you know you're doing the wrong thing right and so i realize i was doing the wrong thing so how do we get to sell the company so the next day i talked him quick cutting this off next day i go and talk to my founder i say i think we should call it i was like i think we should try to sell the company and if you can't sell it i think we should end the company you like end the company what you talking about i'm like i just think we should be doing someone else what what i don't know something else i need to shake it up i was like i didn't know anything more i just knew i needed to shake it up long time and ago by six years i gave it like a a long run we've done ten different products right some them were doing good some were doing bad but like i had like a lot of time trying this model with these people in this space and i told him i this idea that we're doing we're only here because we just pivoted pivoted pivoted i don't think this is the idea i would do tomorrow if i wasn't already doing it right so i don't feel right about it i don't wanna just pivot again for the eleventh time like i'd rather just get a clean slate i went to the investor and i said hey give me forty five days to try to sell this company oh sorry i said give me thirty days try to sell this company or you could just like have it i'll walk away you could take all my equity you could decide what you wanna do with it he's like okay and then we ended up selling the company forty five days later which like absurd like you don't you don't sell if you don't go time whether there was still diligence afterwards but like forty five days to a signed definitive agreement is pretty pretty fast but kind of once i had that that intention you know i really went for i think that's you know i think steve jobs famously ask himself every everyday day like looks himself in the mirror and says do i wanna this is my last day what i still be doing and if there's enough days in the row where he said no like he'd make a change it's sort of similar to the questions silly asked you like what you know what are you doing yeah yeah what would you be doing this if you wanna do doing that i think that's just like a very simple way of looking at it yeah you know and i think if that answer is not a i think it should be a hell yes as this that ideal and maybe you say maybe you're just a couple tweaks away like yeah it would be a hell yes but i hate my commute or it would be a hell yes but i wanna stretch my wings to start growing in this other way too right that's fine those are tweaks well whatever the answer is it's the answer but you know i think asking the question is the more important thing you know elon has this thing about like how do you do like do how do what's your engineering process how do you build such rockets and electric cars and giant super gpu clusters bubble i one of his core principles is the biggest waste of time is doing something well that need have been done at all and i think that's true for everybody's life like you the biggest risk you have is spending your life trying to do a really good job at the wrong thing yeah thing you'd don't even wanna be doing or she shouldn't be doing in the first place yeah that's that's that's what brings me to this thing where you know being okay or having this place in life right where you've got this business where it's it's okay it's sounded kind of like not where you'd wanted it to but it's it's not the end of the world like that's potentially more dangerous than anything else like i talked to ben wilson about this you know you you'd rather blame out than burnout out you would rather go all in go for the thing you really wanna do than than burning out how did you you know you've you've talked a little bit about is the real yeah yeah for any person with high potential failure is not the risk the risk is you get stuck in something that's just okay right it's too long because it'll sap you sap your will sap your time sap your resources slap your energy sap your belief in yourself yeah over time failing it's a bit of a quick and pain and painful thing but it's over and you bounce back and it keeps your most precious ass at your time yeah still at your disposal it's the thing that's just okay that is gonna take all your time away yeah you don't want that no it's again to your point like for inn like you know usually the thing that is mediocre you're in it just because you're doing it yeah i'll put differently some i've who said there's some some whatever someone said for anybody who's sufficiently smart the biggest cost is opportunity cost right yeah so once you know that that your biggest cost is not your taxes or your expenses it's your opportunity cost then you gotta think about that yeah yeah when you're when you're choosing to do a project now you know you're optimizing it for a lot of lot more different things than earlier on what sort of trade offs to your point like opportunity cost like what do you look at now and yeah i have a very simple rule now am i doing this for a result or am i doing this because i like doing it mh so i no longer will do something for an x for some future payoff mh not saying i don't wanna make money in the future or that those things can't happen is that am i doing it am i suffering today for some better future right or am i doing today where the the reward is doing thing reward is doing the thing yeah right the work has to be the win yeah the win can't be some future future hypothetical pay off of some work that i wouldn't have otherwise wanted to do yeah because if you do it that way then you win win right you for sure wind by doing it and you might win double triple ten x from some result but if you do it the other way we're you're just doing things opportunistic and i know this because i spent ten years doing things only for like oh if this work to be amazing mh but then when it doesn't work which most of the time things don't work mh it's like damn that's kind of a not a waste totally but like but it feels like that i wasn't you know i was basically not enjoying myself to the extent that i could have been again the opportunity cost the opportunity cost i could've have just been working on something that the work itself was super rewarding mh the act of doing it was was the reward and not the future off do you think if you had a focus on that earlier on you still have gotten to the point where you are now well like say your your you're doing the suits sushi restaurant and end ends not working out but then you pick something else consistently each time where we're like i don't care what any else things like this is just the project i'm doing because it seems curious but it it might not make any money or things like that do you still think you'd be in this position or yeah i think it'd be further ahead now yeah yeah that's awesome yeah just because you would've have figured it never know right yeah impossible to say you don't you don't have the the around the ab b test in life but maybe for maybe that's the way it's supposed to be yeah i i mean i think i still would be the guy am today i think i would just be i think i would have found the things that are more enjoyable to me really which would made yeah it's a very it's a flywheel right because you enjoy it you do it all the time because you do it all the time you get really good at it because you get really good at it you do get the results right that's the flywheel so you know but if you don't really enjoy the thing then you only work on it to the extent that you have the motivation or willpower to do it or energy that you force yourself to do it then you only get so good at it and because you're only so so good at it you know you get it you get a so so result yeah there's no flywheel there's no flywheel no believer in that flywheel and i think if i just started doing that when i was you know i did it at points of time not not like i did it none i didn't do it zero but if i had been all in on that i think it would be yeah further ahead yeah you you've written a blog about not working hard like that's actually working hard as overrated do you think applying that principle back i i know you we can't ab test life like just looking back do you think if you have applied that principle you would have found those things quicker like the things that what you push i think there's a few different ideas yeah working hard is overrated mh that doesn't mean it's useless right alright okay it's big difference so overrated means when successful people talk and like what's the key like hard work why did they say that sounds good sounds good it also sounds like we all had an equal shot i just worked harder right it's a decision that you made they yeah my dad was a billionaire but like i it is hard work they got me right like yeah you can you can use hard work gives you a lot of air cover yeah it's the can't can't disagree who can disagree with that yeah me basically i'm the only thing i dispute that so so i think her work is over is probably maybe the fourth or fifth most important variable mh you know i think the very first one is project selection mh choosing what you what you work on is far more important than how hard you work i know this because i've worked in the restaurant industry and picking the restaurant industry it doesn't matter how hard you work you're quite limited and and like you know your your results or your outcomes and and what your life is gonna be like right so what you work on matters a lot who you work with matters a ton mh then i would say there's like you know sort of the third fourth fifth right timing log there's like other other variables of which hard work is one of those so maybe it's three maybe it's four maybe it's five yeah that's what i've seen yeah that's awesome i i do think by the way the one thing hard works good at is it's good at developing skill right and it's good about being serious so like when you're in your twenties it's easy to for hours at the problem mh you don't have good judgment so whatever spend more time yeah as you get as you have less time because you get older you have more you have kids you have less energy whatever mh your judgments gotta make up for your lack of time that you're willing the throughout the problem now i think early on like i wouldn't have not like i would've have just like done nothing that's not what i would that's not what i mean by like you know how works overrated mh i would've have just been really intentional a project selection about people selection who i work with and then lastly like you know i would work hard and i'd focus on the skill building part of working hard because most projects fail but the skills stick with you right like my sushi thing failed but randomly while we were doing that we were blogging and making like video content like i learned i learned i after effects i learned imovie moved i learned photoshop just enough to be dangerous i'm not great at it yeah but those serve me really well when i went to silicon valley and i could actually like mock things up myself sent it to the designer yeah like the skill stuck with me the project that had left me behind right so i think skill building is really important and also that guys you can apply the skills the things that you would have been more naturally interested in doing anyway right like i think you know you mentioned the skills you've built on it pick a better project right i still got that skill exactly and you did this you did this exact same thing when you applied to monk inferno like yeah you probably applied a lot those skills in the way you actually got that job totally totally and like you know think so i think that's the i forgot somebody said this i think it was who's the the of the the skill mass oh derek si to this he goes i think skills are the most valuable thing because they can't be inherited they can't be bought they can't be taken away from you yeah like it can only be earned and seinfeld kinda says the same thing basically like skill is really the thing worth having yeah well all the things like the skill is the thing like what could you choose you want to like what could you choose you can choose like more resources you could choose whatever you could choose achievements but like skill is the thing the mastery of a of a thing is is the thing you really want yeah it's the key that unlocks infinite number of doors right right i think there's also something to be said for going that extra mile and trying to acquire the skills like there's is such a service area of lock that increases when you do that like you know you you can open up an ability to do something else you didn't even know was an option just because you've unlocked this skill in interest totally we have this company we invested in i don't know if i should the name maybe i i won't say the name yeah the founder used to work in like a e commerce d brands mh small dc brands you never heard of just kinda like there's like two worlds just like tech silicon valley where you raise millions of venture capital you hire the best people and you go for a billion dollar and then there's like e commerce dudes who like basically you're like you're on alibaba and then you have like where your mom is your warehouse at the beginning and you're like drop shipping and you're trying to figure out like google ads and facebook ads and tiktok so usually those two worlds are very separate right this guy hop from one to the other like you know like is this how covid would started like from the bat to like humans or whatever that's what that's what he did so what he did was he developed in e comm mh this like marketing skill around paid ads when he went to when he started this venture backed company that's a b software company mostly guys in there are like a summer between a zero out of ten to a six out of ten at paid ads right you know the love like people were great at paid ads there were people who were like you know affiliate marketers and e comm people mh they are dialed in they know how to do that yep so he took that and he did it there he took that skeleton and he transferred it like just today they raised basically like three hundred or four hundred million dollar valuation within two years and the reason why they're growing so fast is because he got his teeth doing e comm you know like digital ads google facebook ads and he took that over here and he's like this like shooting barrel like now i have the super sticky product with a high price point you know mh instead of selling a widget for twenty bucks in e com i'm selling like a twenty thousand dollar recurring revenue contract yeah but it's the same thing and and nobody here knows how to do paid ads that the level i do right so this is great right and so you know that skill can like once you apply it to a better project can be a huge multiplier right do you think project selection as a skill is also something that that builds over time if you're intentional about it yeah like of course most people don't right most like i don't think most people really even know the word project be honest how many times have you even said that to yourself yeah probably zero people think about industries they think about careers they're like just atomic unit is a project so that's like yeah thing you're gonna do and i think picking projects and picking partners both have this huge like change in like your outcome and very few people know anything about how to pick big good partners very people know anything about how to big pick good projects but you can of course do those well those are skills and pay thanks to end intentional about it yeah i wanna talk about two things out that are really interesting one more interesting to me i have they're interesting on the project selection side things i you you once called me when i went to go work with you again instead of taking a sales job to go help you guys with clips for and things like that and it didn't end up panning out but you know the decision i had at the time i was like hey go go do the sales job you know like twelve grand a month which you know i'm like twenty two i'm twenty one like that but insane amount of money but i don't need that money and you said something to me that i still this day i was was outside because i made nine hours ahead and it was dark and you said you know dude you just wanna be another sales guy and i heard that i was like no you know like i don't wanna be that end bidding on you yeah it's was like i'm day you set it on you through slack yeah i felt it i felt it and you know because of that like i don't know if we'd ever even be here now because of that decision right so this so many things downstream of that project selection that i think are so important how how do you lean was that right by the way did how for you yeah dude i'm happy be with that i'm loving it like you know i still don't know exactly where i'm going like i'm in such a way you gut tells you i've moved in the right direction on a doesn't mean it has to have played out yet right what's it growing right you know like your gut is very strong at telling you that yeah i feel like i would've have been at that beach had i said no like stayed in that job now i'm like you know out here doing things i'm i'm less enough to be able to talk to you guys here right so that's not something that i would've have happened otherwise that's cool yeah so i appreciate that yeah you mentioned do you know project selection is really important but the other most important thing is who you're doing things with yeah right there was a mistake you made i offered you a role yeah i was like you to come work for me you're gonna learn a lot more you could do was shit yeah you went on your own which is always gonna skill building you'd probably i would say built a wider set of skills right because when you're on your own you gotta do everything right but you didn't opt into a network right this is the other thing i've been learning a lot yeah not to hijack your question oh it's great we just did a podcast with james career you know him yeah network explain to to sure james is like a silicon valley og he runs his fund called n equifax like a one point two billion dollar fund has sold has built multiple companies sold them basically like never lost it all for like thirty years yep so it's like alright great he's somebody i learned a lot from and he's like somebody i could consider like a mentor to me and he he's big on networks everything talked about his networks network was like too was like annoying he's like i do james i get it like you know hey if you pass the cheese he's like is it part of this it's like i do just give you the cheese so he he talks about this like with with very simple example is like you know where you choose to go to college that's a network you're joining right not just joining a college joining the alumni harvard alumni network or and some networks are really powerful and some networks are pretty weak mh when you move to san francisco you're joining the francisco network and you'll start to network in there and you'll connect with a bunch of nodes right and some of those nodes will lead to more opportunities and so you might say i don't wanna move it san francisco is the rent is two thousand dollars more but that one but being in that network is worth much more than that rent right or the taxes right he talks about like moving away just for taxes the decision because yeah you saved ten percent well you lost out on a ten x ten x more money you would have made by staying in the like the white hot center right of the tech and ai network is so much more valuable if you're good yeah for bad you're not gonna get any value out it but if you're good you should be in good networks yeah and so i think this is something that people i did wrong i think other people do it wrong which i think you did it wrong in this situation which is if you have a chance to opt into a better network right it's almost always worth more than the incremental dollar especially the earlier in your career because you're gonna have more time for that compound right right like the the actual network value to compound and so i think that that's a mistake that i probably made early on that i didn't really recognize and as i've talked to james i recognize recognized that more and more how valuable that is yeah i mean i'm that's why early conversation is probably a mistake i'm making now even just being in europe still not not no offense to to europe but you know it is much worse let's let's say on this little bit actually before going into to find like c founders and things like that because that's like a little bit more by way we just that one thing yeah you can win anywhere right you can win on your own you can win in any industry you can win in the restaurant she you can win it anytime we're knocking these it's not because that thing is so fatally flawed it's just you wanna make things easier not harder you wanna increase your probabilities of success not decrease them that's what do we mean with one that's it's better or worse yeah it's generally just like either as more fun it's easier or it increases your probability build yeah of course there's always outliers and exceptions and you can be one of them and more power to you but trade offs right and it's to a point way like if you're surrounded by five people go to the gym chances are you're gonna get rid increase your odds yeah not guarantee right and you could have of course done it surrounded by other people yeah why not increase your odds why not make things easier on yourself there's no bonus points for doing everything the hard way a hundred percent working for making your odds worse and i like why i like it be good for you but yeah yeah what's the point yeah what what other things being in a network and just in general like i i think being in a network as well and self selecting for that it's like a function where you know if if you're if even a small bad example maybe like if there's a subreddit for a specific bar team and you join that you're very active that you're self selecting for a community yeah sort of the same thing on twitter or you know what content you're listening to and following as well as which city you go to what what are some like other examples of that outside of like moving proximity wise like that you can they can self select to i mean you just named it your info diet right i know a lot of people that aren't on twitter are you opt out of that network or they're not on tank or whatever yeah these are networks you're opting into within them they're sub networks right sub clusters so your info diet right like the same way you know there's these economic studies right your income will end up being roughly the average of the five people you hang out with the most mh well it's the same thing for ideas or thoughts right like you're you're gonna average in you're gonna dollar cost average into the thoughts of that that that network that you're in right so whether it's the content you consume if you consume the same kind as everybody else you're probably gonna of the same thoughts as everybody else if you hang out with the same people you're gonna end up with the same people right you wanna make some changes or you wanna have up differentiation of some kind should probably differentiate your info diet right you should probably differentiate you know the people hang out with or your what you do with your free time like those are the simplest you know think those are the things that are upstream of a bunch of the results people want downstream right this is the network selection yeah yeah that's yeah that's a that's a tough one why is that i i feel like there's back to your point earlier of like what your role like you're going in this direction inertia you know you're only doing it because you're doing it like if you're really honest with yourself like which networks do you wanna select into and i i think probably you know if if you stop bad example me right you you you stop listening to tiktok you stop watching tiktok right and everyone you knows telling you like sean i just saw this new tech you're like oh i i don't wanna to stick that i don't i don't know about that like i think that plays into lots of other aspects of your life where you have to be very intentional about it because otherwise you're you're gonna get overwhelmed then sort of not make that decision so i think it's it it plays into your life more and more than than one might think like even your info diet yeah it's true i mean i'm and look if you love a thing doing right it's like if you don't yeah or you're just like your open minded yeah maybe you like reading books more right maybe like doing certain some other things right maybe you just pick up a different hobby that opt you into a different network yeah right like i know a lot of people that do ji mh it's exercise but it's different than the elliptical you're gonna work out a different way you're gonna develop a skill you're gonna be in a part of a community you're gonna build your tough right you're gonna learn the mental resilience you're gonna learn about like leverage you're gonna learn so many things yeah out of that same hour of exercise yeah like so some people will could try that because it's gonna get you a different result than maybe you know that hour on the elliptical at you know in level seventeen in yourself i'd just do you and yourself yeah you're yourself yeah let's let's talk about the final thing in terms of network you've mentioned part you know project selection we've talked about is very important but also people selection and partner selection you've you've often talked about warren buffett sort of framework for and you've got a good one for it as well in terms of choosing who to work with and potentially even just doing project with right like so if you've got company a and b that are the exact same but they've got different people working and they're like how do you figure out what types of people you wanna be around talk to me about you know your selection framework for that yeah okay so you know buffett has a great one on this which is you know you select for energy mh intelligence and integrity right those are the three legs of the stool right if they have the energy and intelligence but no integrity great they're a smart crook and you're the school falls over right if if you have the energy and the integrity but no intelligence you're not gonna really get anywhere so you get the idea i learned for myself there's a fourth thing that really really mattered which is that having somebody who's down mh and i don't know a better word for this i just called it down because that's the way i would describe them like it's great he's down he's and down a couple of different things it's they're down to try it so he'll take a half baked idea and be like yeah let's give it a shot i need that and i think great things come from being around people who are down right i think they're down for adventures so like when they we could choose a safe path or a more interesting story path they're down for down for that and they'll lean that way with me yeah i think they're they're down to like buckle down and just grind and just do something that's hard for a while like they're not gonna run away from pain or difficulty mh so down means a bunch of different things to me and that's the best way i can explain it is having somebody who's down for me that's almost the the sort of the highest priority bit everything else is sort of secondary to that yeah you've talked about when you met ben you you know your your ultimate partner right now where he had assess that was doing i think a a million dollars year in profit had you know objectively great position and right he sort of took he was down enough to go on this random side project with you is there anything you can tell you know talks us about ben and sort of bring those three aspects you just mentioned to life yeah ben the most down right like he's you you said it perfectly he had a this is doing a million dollars year profit at the time and i was like hey you wanna spend your time doing like this random unknown thing with me that i think i think it'd be pretty fun i think it could be interesting yeah yeah i'm down alright okay cool i don't really know exactly what it is i have this rough idea you down with that yeah i'm down like i'm down to not i don't need it all figured out right okay cool we ended up doing this thing that for ninety days was like really intense like this is full on i'm down right this and he just carried on then we switched we did the next thing the next thing and we've done probably five or six different things together big more seven at this point every single one of them has been super fun every one of them has worked yeah a pleasure to work with them and that's a big reason why yeah that's so amazing let's let's go and start wrapping this up a little bit in terms of your story let's talk about twenty twenty five on the podcast you guys have talked about this this thing called can you explain what that is and tell me do you have one for twenty twenty five yeah yeah sure musk so musk i think is this concept jesse came on the podcast and talked about it's every year be a little be intentional with your time mh so it's very easy for one year to blend into the next time flies time flies because you're in a routine and that routine is often filled inertia yeah inertia it's it's filled with zoom calls and errands and you know weekly stand ups with your with with random people so that's gonna happen by default if you want anything else to happen you gotta do something about it i agree with him and he has this like intense like way of planning out your year need a podcast with you can go see it on youtube jesse i'd have a big twenty twenty five and one one of the central things this idea of a miss michelle you one grand challenge for the year a year defining thing that you will do yeah that is both hard and rewarding and memorable for you and meaningful to you and so for some people that's like do a iron ironman or climb everest or whatever whatever their thing is so that's the idea that's the concept mind this year is too us not doesn't sound like everest but it is important to be i wanted to learn how to jam out on the piano so i like i wanna learn a new skill i wanna learn the piano more specifically i wanna be able to jam out meaning i wanna be able to play the songs as i want and i wanna be able to play in like a dad band with other people like i think that would be a really fun aspect of my life that yeah to work in and i want my life to be fun and i wanted it to be interesting and i thought look i'm never gonna just have the time magically to do this mh but i was like yeah yeah that was the year that i like i learned that'll i'll play the piano and i could do that for the rest of my life i i when you're old eight i could be eighty years old i could be playing the piano and so i thought yeah that'll be year to it be the year i decided to do that and i made it happen yeah this is going well yeah going great so far i'm doing my thing that's amazing i think i'll i own a wrap it up by saying there's i've recently reread paul graham had to do great work and he says no it's similar to is phrasing for finding startup it is like don't don't look for it just do things you're naturally interested in and you know do something where at the end of it you'd say about that was pretty cool i did that right i think that's a great way to choose your as well like you know i think he says like let interesting this be the filter yes so is it interesting to you and if it's interesting to you then it's worth doing it you'll you'll be excited while you're doing it it'll be it'll be worth doing just because it was interesting yeah but also interesting in this like what's interesting to you is not interesting universally right so he talks about like it's also a good strategy because nobody can copy your taste profile mh so if it's interesting to you that's not gonna be issue to everybody so it's already gonna self select out a bunch of other filter out a bunch of other people and secondly if it's interesting to you you're gonna do it all the time same same that flywheel talked about you're gonna do it all the time rule of hundred therefore therefore you're gonna get good at it when you're good at it you're gonna get a good result yep says like that's why he says let that be the guide yeah because that that will lead you to the most interesting place you can and if the first one doesn't work doesn't matter they'll be you have so much fun doing it you just keep doing that it'll eventually land in a good spot yeah in in in a in and of itself it'll still be fun right yeah i love i i think that's it i i i had a couple hope ones but i think honestly like leaving it on this such such a high note i think this if i were to listen to this i'm gonna keep listening to this on repeat i think people are gonna be jacked up and you know ready to change their life after after that alright let's do it awesome alright thanks sean appreciate it and then happy i feel like i could rude world i know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a days off on a travel never looking back alright my friends i have a new podcast for 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