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

you know i i have a soft spot in my heart for immigrants you do love immigrants dude yeah like korean store owner energy so it's almost racist how much you love immigrants yeah yeah i feel like i could rule the world to i know i could be what i want to put at all in in like a day's off on a less travel never lived dude what's going on i haven't seen you in about two weeks yeah i had a baby and so i took about two weeks off you were doing some family stuff what's going on let's talk about your baby first because it's much happier i went to my grandpa's grandfather's funeral so let's not start with the the saddest news possible tell me about the baby you yeah so like we were due i think on the twentieth on the thirteenth or the twelfth or something like that my wife was like i don't wanna freak you out and it was ten pm at night she's like my water just broke dude what an unbelievable sentence she didn't wanna freak you out she's so considerate as her water broke that's unbelievable that's the most sarah thing i've ever heard and so we went to the hospital we gave birth she gave birth it was don't put don't bring that we shit in here okay there's a space for real it was great for me no big deal i was exhausted and i complained about it for week but i took i i took two weeks off and it got me faking before we get the i needed to know birthing situation which what's your role what are you doing are you a hand holder are you a coach are you off to the side are you the cameraman what are what are you doing she had to get a c section so like i don't do anything you're out of the room yeah so i i eventually came in the room and she was like they give they give her medication that like makes her shake or whatever and so i was basically just like rubbing her face and calming her down but my wife is very stoic so i've been lucky i don't even know how to do things like that like sometimes put this situation i'm like oh i need this is where i'm supposed be comforting and i'm like i realized i've never once done that and so you don't like to like when you swing a tennis racket your the pressure's all off you don't really know like how much force to apply how much not to like why my hands so sticky right now like it's terrible when i got engaged i was like i like started to put my knee out of the ground like out of the back will be fine seriously it's like the little things that you've never practiced that that lunch and then talk giving a speech upwards it's this is like a very strange stage yeah it's like she'll his handshake hey put her there yeah we did a pinky promise and that's held true my brother law when my sister was giving birth she's like had like a longer labor like it was like so i was like taking a while and then you know she like looks over at one point and he's like a he's like napping on the couch in the room and she was like hey he did your ass he's like oh sorry i'm just so so so stressed it's fired and she was like years so stressed and just the like diva venom pure venom in that situation and it was too much for him yeah there's this funny joke it's like i'm so happy that within have to go through hours and hours of labor and paying they can finally experience the pain that a man feels when he has cold but like i've we have two children now i've experienced this that basically you know we are all built for things and sometimes we rise to the occasion and women just somehow like in fight like being tired and in pain whereas i'm just gonna complain if i get anything less than seven hours a night of sleep so like yeah women kinda become like superheroes during that those moments and and i'm happy that she did that so everyone's healthy and happy i'm feeling great i took two weeks off and i was like chopping at the bit to get back to it after like honestly four days like i need a zoom call someone what be with zoom call today well when we chomp at the bit to do exactly like you know the your a newborn child doesn't do anything they just sleep and i'm still happy be you're bored yeah yeah like so happy i get the experience for there but then in this particular case we have an a a two year old and so i i got to spend time with her taking her to her classes and being like just so you know i love you so much and like you're important even though all this new stuff is happening and so that like touched my heart and i'm so happy i had that but i didn't need more than two weeks two weeks it's more than enough did you agree yeah hundred percent here here's again this is this is zone of truth so here here's that let's let's let's clip this this is gonna be a rage bait clip that's gonna go viral on a tech pros opinion on maternity leave go let me tell you how it actually is childbirth from the man's perspective first of all i would say a couple things there's seems like there's two groups of people there's the people who touched their baby hold their baby for the first time and the life is changed and the endo kick in and there's like this entire like you know inner spiritual awakening didn't happen for me doesn't happen for a lot of people took it takes me like fifteen months to love a baby i care for the baby before then i wish the baby well i want no harm to be that of the baby but do i crave like holding and touching and like you know doing the things my wife loves about it baby she's like oh the smell i'm like the smell i don't smell the baby what you mean why are you for the baby save you you love your baby but you may not be in love with them i mean that i have might be generous alright i was just trying again get your wife i'm cared for the baby i wanted to love the baby but i didn't actually feel anything for like fifteen months but then by the way like after that it's a all in it's an incredible experience and like my kids are i have a one and a half year old four year four year old to six year old and like you know i can't get enough now but but that same i can't get enough feeling i didn't have that as newborn but kinda normal from the men's perspective i i think the second thing is pate maturity leave little bit confusing what i actually think is useful take the week off before birth to like do little stuff around the house just be there be a calming presence and like kinda like i don't know take the take the load of everyday life off of you know your your your partner before birth i think that's actually really useful then you know the first week or so the first few days just you wanna have the calendar clear because you never know what's gonna happen and of birth like you don't you never even know what's going up after that you're really kinda like not that not particularly useful i would say are like i felt this way i wasn't particularly useful and kinda wish and and i i ended up doing this with my other kids like you know plan time that's like more intermittent other intervals so there's like let's say the two weeks kinda week before the birth week after birth that's a good window then there's kinda like two weeks let's say around month month three or four where sometimes you get a sleep progression or you get other things and so spreading out the maturity i think is very useful when you just sit there sort of like at this the baby's an an ina object at the beginning and doesn't really do a lot nap and like assuming you know health went well knock wood there's not a whole lot to do so i kind of agree with you that initial pate opportunity leave is a lot of like nervous energy and not a lot of like productive help yeah and that made me realize that like taking time off and like vacation and going somewhere is kind of like lame compared to taking time off and just sitting at home and walking around your town like that's actually kind of like a special feeling it honestly felt like a like a a week mini retirement because i was like i were like putter around in the morning and not rush right alright i read a ton i would say almost a book a week and the reason i read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is i wanna see what works for the winners that i love and what strategies they use and then i wanna see what mistakes were did they all make where were the common flaws that they all had and i just wanna avoid that and so hubspot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in two thousand twenty five and i did that so i listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life and i explained what the difference that they had on me or what actions i took because of the book and then also i listed out my very particular ways of reading because i'm pretty strategic about how i read and how i read so much and how i remember what i read and things like that and so i put this together in a very simple guide it's seven books that had a huge impact on my life and you can scan the qr code below if you wanna read it or there's a link guys know what to there's a link in the description just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide that i made so it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far and then also how i'm able to read so much so check it out below dude have you ever read have i told you about aristotle like i've been interested in some of his work lately you haven't told me about aristotle go ahead go on so stoic gets a lot of the credit right now stoic quite popular yeah a lot right now yeah so yeah marcus aurelius is is is the it guy at the moment but aristotle is one of the folks who influenced a lot of these guys and i'm probably couldn't get a lot of it wrong so spare me in the comments but basically like when i'm obsessed with this idea that he has is this idea of flourishing and so i think the greek word of it is uni and it's this idea of that like there's like twelve or fourteen virtue and so like in order to be courageous which is one of his virtue on the right hand side is reckless like being reckless and then on the left hand side is basically being like a pussy i don't know the right word but like being soft timid yeah being timid and the middle part is courageous and then there's like fourteen of them which is like to be charitable you wanna you there's that's cool so it has the extremes where the the virtue becomes a vice on either side right like yeah they're over overdo it and then doing it okay like yeah and then there's like charitable on one side is like being like os and like giving too much and actually hurting people which is like like a lot of like rich rappers who would do like give all their friends like money and like enable your pos yeah and then the other one is like being like know can pussy again yeah the and so according to aristotle one of the ways to live a harmonious life that's full of flourishing which is the not trying to be happy but to flourish you have to like have these like fourteen virtue and also he talks about leisure time and how a lot of times people think of leisure time as a way to recoup from work but according to him perfect life a happy life a flourishing life and needs to have some leisure time where you get to reflect and the reflection is the goal not the time that you take to like refuel and i have been really obsessed with a lot of his his work because it's incredibly it's a incredibly practical philosophy a lot of like philosophical stuff is not particularly practical but i was like experiencing work recently and i was going i was so happy to go home to see my family i was happy to get up in the morning to work out and i was like why do i feel this way what's going on and i was like i am i'm fucking flourishing but that's how i felt i was like this is a this is this is like i don't feel happy necessarily like i feel like i'm working hard but at the moment stress does not equal pain stress equals growth and so i felt wonderful and so taking my two weeks off has just added to that where i was like i feel i feel refreshed but i i had so much time to reflect until like think about things and i love that and right the importance of being leisure and the importance of having un schedule time which i know you do i think you said twenty days a year and so what's interesting is that you you it seems as though you have come to a similar conclusion that aristotle has come to which is the idea of like leisure time just to reflect and just to think and we've heard bill gates talk about that he has one week a year i think for week or whatever here yeah yeah yeah i really like that i i think i'm pretty poor at one thing you said in there which is just making time to think like if i look at my calendar i do have a lot of leisure time i play the piano i'll go to a tennis and i'll go play basketball while i'll do my workout i'll play with my kids i do a lot of other stuff besides work so i'll get this kinda like you know fun life maybe harmonious life maybe a balanced life but what i don't do is i don't actually spend a lot of time in silence and like dedicated think time and i've been trying to get better at this but it in trying to you know when you try to get better at something you actually the first realization is how far you have to go like how how poor you actually are it's sort of like flexibility you know it's not really top of mind and until somebody says oh can you do this test and then you realize like oh my god no i'm not even close that's how i am about think time i don't know about you but like i would say if in the past decade the amount of dedicated time that i plan to think like i'm like oh i'm not i'm just actively not gonna do something right now i'm not gonna fill it with something else that was like zero i honestly think it was zero for like a dead the last decade of my life i don't think i ever actually consciously spent think time now i would think when i was driving i would think of something in the shower but this is like an accident it's a happy accident my my brain was probably like oh dude we've got these thoughts queued up we've been waiting to have a moment here where you're not stuffing in new stuff into your brain through your phone through your tv through your computer through a meeting through a through doing something through reading whatever it was and so dedicated thing time i think is is extremely underrated i i'm i think i'm at the beginning part of that curve where i'm just starting to do it and i'm just realizing oh man this is like so obvious and i really didn't wasn't doing this before i remember when we met tim ferris i asked him something like i was first due day today he's like dude this is like the question i get a lot like what is my daily routine and he's like i think people expect like a really awesome answer he's like actually been asked like for like a writer from some magazine like hey we wanna follow you for a day and write a profile or if we wanna film like a one day documentary of tim ferris day in the life and he's like i've always said no not just because i like privacy not he's like but because he would be incredibly boring he's like i he's like you know i wake up and i i sort of a stretch i'll drinks with tea you know i sit down like i kinda putter around for quite a quite a while and i have like long periods of time of inaction where i'm just trying to think of what is it that i really wanna do and what is it that i actually should do in this situation how do i wanna approach this do i really wanna do this and i actually like spend time with my thoughts i remember hearing that and they be like i do none of that stuff it's like gonna to hear like a really productive manager talk about how they like all the thoughtful things they do to manage their employees and you're like oh i just had a pizza party what like a month ago i thought that was good and i thought that was enough i think that you said something funny about shower thoughts i don't think a lot of people realize that you can help engineer breakthroughs i think that there's things in your life that you could do to yeah engineer breakthroughs and been thinking about what that is for me it's been slow mornings so i i tried my hardest to get up earlier than i actually have to because i'd like just like walk around and drink coffee and then i'll wake children up or then i'll exercise but like literally just thirty minutes to poke around i like working out so i had breakthroughs on i'm working i have breakthroughs when i'm journal i have breakthroughs when i'm reading and i have breakthroughs when i have organized times of talking with people but without an agenda so like i'll like have someone like interesting at my office because they're in town i'm like i don't know man just like let's just rough for thirty minutes what's your story and or like what you've done you had a breakthrough when you started the milk road after you went to a conference on a topic that had nothing to do with your interest yeah but like this is why conferences are great this is why i hope hampton is great this is why sometimes people like they because us a little bit through listening to our podcast where they like kinda feel like they're around us but like talking to other people and just listening to their opinion without an agenda i think is another great way to have a breakthrough yeah i've been right i told you i was writing this book and the premise of the book was i i got really it happened accidentally accidentally i started is it was embarrassing i was trying to be funnier as therefore i started studying comedy which is like not really pull i think funny person has ever done so probably not the best way to do it but i got really in the seinfeld and then through that i i was like wow this guy is not just about comedy but like this guy's got like a way of working that is really interesting an approach a mindset and on a date literally like a of daily habits that are pretty admirable and i started studying other great people like how do all the great ones work how do all of them actually like what are the habits of the great people who've done great things because i wanna be a great person who it does great things anyways a along the way one of the things that's surprised me right which i think when you're researching anything it's the surprises that you look for the one of things that surprised me was how much engineered rest matters i'll just give you like three like quick ones on this so aaron so who wrote you know wes wing and a social network like this great you know hollywood script writer or whatever when he's writing a script he takes eight showers a day he says like he will just keep showering he's like because i have my best shot thoughts in the there's all the science about why warm water and the relaxed environment and no distractions that's why this is actually like quite a good way to let your brain sort of you know let the muscles relax a little bit and how you come up with more out of the box ideas it's also just a reset like every time he gets stuck he goes to showers and it gets he quickly gets through the plateau because he does that of einstein used to dig about einstein's boat no no i i i wouldn't have paid einstein as a voter he was a prolific boat to the point where the coast guard had a lot of problems with einstein so what i'd said would do is in the middle of the day i said we're basically get on like a tiny little boat and he would just float it was a no motor boat he would just like float away into the in into the into the sea and he would stay there for hours and he would say there because he's like i do my best thinking out here in the sea and i would and he would do it aim in the afternoons and the coast guard was really worried because they're like dude you don't have a motor attached to your boat how are you gonna get back if the tide like pulls you too far and he's like the you know the further the better was basically like his quote what he wanted to do and that's where he did most of his quality thinking i was telling my wife this and she goes oh yeah at work we had this lady come in and this neuroscientist scientist and she told us you do your best thinking in motion or in water this is why so many people walk and why they swim pavel durham was on le treatment talks about how he goes for four hour swims because he does his best thinking when he's swimming and that's one of those like it's great i get fitness and i get thinking at the same time he's like guess what you can't be on your phone when you're in the middle of the lake for four hours like you know you just you're out there another one darwin darwin used to go for these walks and whenever he n on a problem i got a problem go for a walk which just i think not really how most people in today's age solve their problems i think they stare at the screen and like sit there and kind of just sit in a in a stationary position try to like get through it and you produce pretty low quality ideas when you do that what darwin would do is he would up he'd go for a walk and he used to walk these laps in every lap he would like kick a stone at the at the same spot he would like knock one stone off the bridge his starting point was and he would talk about his problems as like four stone problems five stone problems like he could measure oh that's fine difficulty of the problem by how many stones that took how many laps it took of him walking before he felt like he had like kind of like made headway on the problem and so this idea of engineered rest which looks incredibly unproductive when you're doing it right like taking a nap you know somebody many some many of the great inventors and artists did these like quick mini twenty minute naps there's all this science behind why that works and so you know these mini naps or going for walks or going for a swim it literally looks like you're not working it looks like you're being a lazy bastard but like if you look at how the great ones actually work this is part of their pro productivity routine and it looks completely unproductive six or twelve months ago you are debating on like a big project you're like i'm being pulled in a variety of directions and i can't decide what i wanna do but my heart is telling me to do something creative almost like a play and i was like oh that sounds pretty badass that sounds amazing and it sounds like i don't think a book on creativity was even on the list but that actually sounds even more badass ass and all these because you're describing this and i'm like i want this book i need this not the only way i want this i'm i have problems i should go for a a three stone walk and like give me more tips and tricks on how to solve my problems and now i can think better tell me about the book so how many pages like i is this is this gonna be like a two and three or four hundred page book or is this like no so the so the premise of the the premise of what i'm doing i guess this will be my bye announcement no we we'll do a whole podcast dedicated no i like i what i mean is like i can just go ahead and share so what i'm doing is i've created this especially a little bit like a franchise like a series and you know i have this problem with books where i buy a ton of books and i want to read a ton of books and i don't really read a ton of and if you look kinda like one of the reasons why books are long and slow and books are long and slow not because a three hundred page book needed to be three hundred pages that's really a relic of the publishing industry so like if you go talk to publishers and i've done this and you wanna publish a thinner book they're like oh but it's not gonna sell as well and they're like because people when they wanna spend whatever fifteen bucks they need to feel like they're getting value like they literally need to hold a heavier object and that was why whatever whatever the size of your idea was guess what we need two hundred fifty pages right because we wanna sell this book and it needs to have the sort of weight to it and i actually understand that i think there's like like a cool physical component of that but also how many books have you read were like that could have been a blog post you know like it's like how many meetings could have been an email like there's a lot of books that actually are not there you know a couple of great ideas and then there's like two hundred pages of fluff and like okay i got it i get it so it's one of my bet biggest pet peeve and when i studied this these how the great creative work one of the things they do really well is they pay a lot of attention to their irritation seinfeld said irritation is what breeds innovation so he said he used to hate used to get invited to go on late night talk shows it's like jimmy fallon or whatever he's like did hate it it was so formulaic it was so cookie cutter it was so like the same thing so that's why he created comedian and cars getting coffee right it was like what's the exact opposite of that talk show it's like me and my friend in a car driving go get coffee like the no audience no applause sign no any of that stuff like my i'll take all my irritation of this and i'm just gonna do the opposite and then that's what i'm gonna i'm use that as the like the the force and the energy to create something better and so i decided to create this series called one hour books and the ideas is can i create books that are you know if you read it it's a life changing book but you can read it in one hour a single sitting so you're like if you buy the book and you decide to read it in one sitting on a couch you'll actually like consume the whole and you'll get everything you needed to out of the book the whatever the books promise was and so i'm creating this series called one hour books and i'm doing it on different topics that i've been any topic that i've gotten obsessed with and so you know like if i have a period of time i'm really obsessed about value investing or warren buffett how these got how these great investors think i wanna basically take the most powerful ideas the best ideas that i got my research the things that surprised me that i actually like then started to use in my life and so like for example with this creativity book like it changed the way i'm approaching big creator right like i'm trying i worked completely differently that i did twelve months ago and it's because i basically stole shit from seinfeld and disney and rubin and pixar like all these people that i went in with went studied and actually trying to figure out you know a better way to work and so yeah the book's only gonna be like i don't know seventy five pages it's gonna be it's gonna be enough for it's gonna be the size of a book you can read in one sitting actually if anybody from the podcast wants to check out the book early and kinda gets the behind the scenes thing just go to one hour books dot c i'll put it on the screen and in the description but if you go to one hour books dot c i'm just gonna let anybody sign up and if you're fan of the pod i kinda wanna show you how i'm making the book the behind the scenes stuff and give you a free gift when it launches so go there if you wanna check that out and it's you can go through a publisher or self publisher i don't know yet doesn't really matter and all the matters right now is i make one amazing book i can't really like anything else doesn't really matter it's like one book that i am like ben if i read this this would go in my like kinda top shelf this would be like my one of my favorite books is it actually like you know resonated with me and the stories really dope maybe laugh you know that that's those are some of the goals with with how i do this if i had to bet this is gonna be the most successful thing you've ever done because my instinct and i don't wanna do this right now but is to like oh can you just tell me all of the things that you learned from group but all these people like it's like i want to apply this immediately yeah yeah i i i mean i could and i will tell you all those things but yeah i think it's gonna be great like i honestly like the way i the i have this really i try to when i do a project i try to find like a kind of three word almost like north star or campaign slogan for myself just like as i wander through the idea and you start to go down different little rabbit holes and you hit little bumps of bruises you sort of need something to come back to and mind for this is to create create the ted for books so like i don't ted today is not as cool as it was but when i was younger ted was the shit like who was ted talk said videos like those were amazing and and what they ted event going to a ted event was like like i just imagined myself like i'm gonna be h with like the president of america i'm gonna be like bill gates like it was like an honor and what they did was they created a format so they're were like yeah here's what we're gonna do eighteen minute talks that are on this kinda of beautiful stage and it's gonna be a certain quality of person who comes at you with one big idea one kind of like either counterintuitive idea or one powerful idea and then the mission was ideas worth sharing right and like i actually fuck with that i think that's actually like incredible and although ted is kinda fallen off it did help me because as i'm doing this i'm like alright well i'm trying to find the best ideas worth sharing and i wanna create a format that's consistent in like proposition i'm gonna spend literally ten thousand hours researching this and i'm gonna give you all of the best stories and ideas structured together in a one hour like ten thousand hours of my time for one hour of your time is like just an incredible trade that i think anybody should make because i'm like going all in on this since i've been working on this for like a year now and it's tough man it's says it's a hard thing to do but i think it's coming out pretty good what's mixed so i always hear people say writing a book as hard tim ferris was like i don't wish it on my worst enemy me and i'm like really i mean i've never done it but i'm like this sounds pretty great you just spend all this time thinking and writing wait and you get like two years to do it that sounds lovely but what are the downsides well oh the i mean there's a ton of downsides i you do you don't do this if you're looking for anything quick you don't do this if you're looking for a high chance of success so like the two things i think most want it's like a high chance of success and for it to happen fast i booker you they go the exact opposite way it's typically a one to two year process sometimes five you know george r martin and they're still trying to write a book for like thirteen years so you know these books are are they take a long time very low odds of success and even when they do succeed it's nothing compared to like if i went build a company or like in my portfolio right now there's things that are far more if far easier or far more valuable to podcast podcasts far easier far more valuable to do then than to write a book you don't write the book for other people you're write the book for yourself i think it's the only way to do it and i think one of the great things that happen when i talked to some people who who you know talk to people for advice is they gonna look a hundred people come to me because oh you wrote a best seller people wanna ask you about a book and they say everybody wants to have written a book nobody wants to write a book and so the very first things is you gotta figure out like do you want to have written a book or do you want to write a book that's why i chose a subject that basically is like currently fascinating to me and applies to i get to be the lab of doing the things that are in the book like using the actual principles because it's like what i needed it's the book i needed right now even though it's probably not the thing i know the most about or is the most relevant or the most marketable or any of those other possible factors there's this badass is so exciting and it feels i don't think you i've heard you light up about a project for a while well i was was looking for a challenge you know that i was looking for a challenge i was looking for something that's new that's something that's hard for me this is like the opposite my i'm a an improv guy i'm a quick guy i'm an un schedule guy i be like that's what i've known and that's what i've done well with so this is like very different like requires consistency we're buyers sitting down every single day and i don't miss a day type of mentality which is good it's also what i needed to get in shape it's also what i need to do to learn the piano like all the things i'm trying to do right now they all require the same set of muscles internally to go and actually succeed in them oh also the other thing that's a hard about it is when you do things that are like i'm gonna make a hundred of these any one doesn't matter but with a you're like i'm gonna make one i'm gonna make this one book it is gonna be what it's gonna be the level of internal pressure you put on yourself to make it great and to be like no i gotta get this right i don't get to it's not like i'll just get started and then we'll iterate from there doesn't really work that way you wanna put one great thing out there's a craftsman like nature to that and there's something cool about that constraint that you're only gonna make that you're only gonna really write this thing once so you better do it the best you possibly could because it's not something where you're gonna get a hundred shots on goal at the same idea i can never do this or maybe i would one day but like wanna the best books that i read like i think ron cher was one my favorite authors he wrote titan which is the story of john rockefeller he wrote hamilton which became hamilton and he's written one of mark twain and a and a couple others and it's these by their biographies he's a bio biographies same with robert greene if you have a rubber green it's like every sentence is packed with like every every sentence is very purposeful and it's not even the it's per and all those those two authors so not particularly easy to read but every sentence is full of stuff and it's like a thousand or eight hundred pages and i'm just like in awe it's sort of like when you go to yosemite for those first time and you see like half dome and you're like i can't believe that something is as big and beautiful and i don't even like the outdoors and when i read like they're every once and other i've read a book where i'm like this is like a religious experience not necessarily because of the content but because of how much effort this person put into it and it's just it's a marvel think about harry potter i'm like how on earth did this one lady invent this world she literally invented a language and i even like harry potter but i'm like in all of this that's another example of you get your best ideas in motion and water the idea for harry potter sort of drops into her head when she's on a train ride she's like in motion and sitting there and idle and doesn't have internet access and can't do ten other things there's nothing else you could do and he said on the train except to think and that's when your brain is open for for you know creative inspiration do you think that doing deep work is good is harder today than it was before the internet because when you're talking about writing a book i'm like i struggle to get people to quit messaging me and i like and i'm absolutely addicted to my notifications like i can't have an unread text message but then i have text slack twitter instagram linkedin email well let me give you let me give you one of the quotes i think there's gonna be the in the in one of the the first few pages of the book so sean rei who is you know a a prolific creator right so she's you know netflix gave her a hundred million dollars not for stuff she's already made but just to make new things like you're getting paid a hundred million dollars for your reputation your ability to create great great stuff in the future and she she created bridge tan and grey's anatomy and a bunch of other hit shows okay so lived did my little town of west really well she was talking about her process and she was like okay like you know they're like how does her creative process how do you work like the same idea how do the great ones actually work and here's what here's how she described like her morning and so she goes imagine a door five miles away and those five miles to go the five miles that's you writing crap and doo and just trying to have an idea then you sometimes are surfing the internet and you're hoping like hell you're not gonna get so distracted that you give up and worse those five miles that you gotta run they're lined with cupcakes and episodes of game of thrones and idris alba wants to talk to you and there's really great books you could go read and every time i sit down to right i mentally have to run those five miles past all that shit to get to the door it's a long hard five mile run and sometimes i'm almost dead by the time i get to the door and that's why i keep doing it because the more often i run the five miles the fitter i become the fitter become the easier just run and the less fresh and exciting all that stuff on the side of the road starts to seam i mean how long of those brownie he's even been sitting there and more importantly the fitter i run the faster i run the faster run i get to the door and behind the door is where all the good shit is that's where the great ideas lie is behind the door it gives me goosebumps i know right and so like when i sit down every it every day i wake up and i spend two hours i call it eating shit for breakfast it's like you're gonna make something that cut probably sucks today but you're gonna sit down and you're gonna make you're gonna do your five mile run you're gonna go and you're gonna ignore the distractions of the world you're gonna do deep work on the one thing that matters the main project your mount everest in your mind of that you're trying to create and all it takes is two hours first thing in the morning without any other distraction so i'm focused on doing that in this idea that like at the beginning when you sit down you start to do the thing your initial work kinda sucks your the first few sentences you write suck your first three ideas for that marketing campaign kinda suck it's all gonna kinda suck you just have to get keep going to get to the door behind the doors where the good stuff is and like if you have that mentality what ends up happening is you push password the sort of the amateur will give up the amateur will sit down and you know they'll start to do something and it kinda sucks and then they'll seek a reason to stop whether it's a distraction or it's talking to themselves out of it or it's settling one of many things you could do and you know what i thought was different about the pros for amateur so the pros just have better talent you know when they sit down they make good shit when i sit down i make bad it's like no actually the difference is when the process is down they make the same type of bad shit you do they just keep going and they go they go through the sit down your door yeah they sit down more and they stick with it they're able to face their own mediocrity and tolerate it much longer than you can paul graham got this amazing article on procrastination i kinda changed my life and so according to paul graham who's the founder of yc one of the most successful business incubator of all time maybe the most successful he said there's three types of procrastination the first type of procrastination is you just don't do the thing that you're supposed to do which is like the most common the second type of procrastination is incredibly common amongst ambitious people which is they say to themselves i'm researching or i'm running it to do list or i'm doing these things that are have professional sounding words but in reality it's procrastination you know it's completely worthless and then the third type of procrastination that's the best type of that's a good type of procrastination he goes i'll explain what it is but first everyone has this idea of like the forgetful scientist the albert einstein who has two socks that are like different colors or he has a showered and he looks kind of dirty that type of procrastination that's actually the good type of because if you do your life's task do the work that you're supposed to be doing that means you have to ignore other things and sometimes that means we have to ignore things that the world thinks is really important like having two socks that matches and like thinking like oh i have to do laundry so i could look at a certain way he goes but the reason people would make fun of like bill gates at mark zuckerberg i when they're were young because they would wear hoodies all the time and wear pajama bottoms all the time and be like why aren't you wearing a suit why aren't your clothes nicer and they didn't have a good answer at the time but the reality was is that they were focused on your their life's work they weren't focused on how to look good at how to appease at the people but they were actually doing the best type of procrastination and that's what it requires to be great is you have to do that you have to avoid the first two types and you have to focus on third type of procrastination and that's gonna be annoying for a lot of people it's gonna piss off a lot of people but that's the way you do your life's work i love that i mean this type of stuff just fires me up so like that's great i love that it's great man i like when i read that i was like so was like you just might've got yourself quoted in the book my friend yeah i was like hey if you actually google sam park procrastination i wrote a i wrote an article about it but i was like to my wife i was like yes sarah like all my back when my life's work over here she's like you're on twitter repeat after me sarah life's work not take trash out it didn't land just it doesn't printed it off his article i slid at her way during dinner out of like read that that's amazing today's episode has brought you by hubspot because you're using only twenty percent of your business data is like dating somebody who only text you in emojis first of all that's knowing and second you're missing a lot of the content but that's how most businesses are operating today they're only using twenty percent of their data unless you use hubspot that's when all your emails your call logs your chat messages just to turn into insights to help you grow your business because all that data makes all the difference learn more at hubspot dot com i do wanna share a thing that i think you'll appreciate i didn't plan to share this but i i think you'll you'll appreciate it i'll i'll i'll say so i got my grandfather died he'd ninety eight years old with the in america in america he lives in dc and so i flew to dc and we go to the funeral and funeral sir they are what they are they're they're sad but you know i think ninety eight years old he had a great life he was healthy for almost all almost till the very end are indian funerals like traditional american funerals or do you guys like ham up they do cremation and there's also some like i don't know parts that you're like is this what we're supposed to be doing right now like they basically have like the cass is kind of too much info but like they have the casket and whatever and i think like in american i don't know really exactly happens at american funerals but i would assume like you sort of you go you sort of give your thoughts and prayers whatever you maybe put a flower down or something like that and if you're right before they they have the kind of the send off the the final thing right before cremation i like breaks out like gal and a milk a bunch of like food and like you basically pour all this stuff on top of the body it's like it feels like completely bla and i was i like put like a drop you're no the whole gallon and i was like grab thirsty shot pouring the milk call over this man this is ridiculous so that part was a little bit strange but the rest was i would say you know normal and people gave you know their eu and whatnot so my dad goes up and gives us it gives a speech and my dad told me the story before and i you you just had a kid so this is kind for all the dads out there so the best thing my grandpa ever did as a dad which i'm gonna steal and i think others should steal it too so my my dad and my family my my my dad's family grew up like dirt dirt poor india like middle of nowhere it's like you know you go on google maps you got gotta like zoom in pinched to zoom three times to even see the little town that my dad gru up and like somehow my dad like you know was born there and now like sixty something years later he's got like a man mansion in san francisco and like an iphone and his i was like kinda like crazy that like that that kid ends up doing this so doesn't really make a lot of sense okay so like imagine your dad being like my son is going to be a famous youtuber in america you're gonna be like or he's gonna be writing books on creativity like it's a long dollars to talk because like it doesn't make any sense so how do you get from there to there and so he was he was telling the story he's like you know we grew up like we couldn't afford anything like you know we it's like i hadn't seen a movie to yeah movies existed i haven't seen on until sick team and you know the day we went we got one bottle of coca cola and split it amongst like the you know four kids type of deal like it was like that was like a highlight of my childhood to like i still remember the memory hey anyways one of the things that he says that his dad did form him he goes by my dad gave egos goes he didn't have money couldn't give me fancy anything right couldn't send me to a fancy school he didn't we didn't have a lot of toys he didn't give me anything in that area right he goes with the one thing he did give me was he gave me this belief from the very beginning he brain me that i was special and he goes there was no evidence i didn't do anything special but he just felt like i'm such and he just kept saying it he's like he would say it in public so he's like he would take me to his job like my grandfather worked i think at like a kinda like a government like almost was like a a like a weapons factory basically for the government and he would take him there and like the boss his boss the manager of the factory would be like oh like there's the little one there's my guy hey here where the hard hat like you know someday you'll you can be here you you can run this you know the this this place and my grandfather would be like to go to his boss but like no way he goes this this boy my boy he's not gonna work in a factory this boy special you don't know this boy special he's gonna do incredible things he's gonna be in america he's gonna be doing incredible things someday he's not gonna work in a factory and so just like he kinda breathe this this belief into him and he just he's like he always said it he never had he never explained why he believed it or what what how it would happen but he was just so sure that i became kinda sure and i just started to believe that about myself and so like he goes that was like almost like in inject that he gave me like a magic bean and this being it was like my belief for myself and see this all the time with my kids where it's very easy to criticize kids because kids to dump stuff all the time it's very easy to like tell them off for not doing things the right way it's very easy to you know like mix sort of this praising criticism but my brother all has been doing the same thing with his daughter who showed a little bit of talent and soccer and then he like went all in and was like he created a instagram account called raising ronaldo when he's like i'm raising ronaldo right now i'm not this is not my daughter this is the next ronaldo and he's puts posters up and he just continues oh when you're playing pro i'm gonna be in the crowd i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do that is this aaron aaron yeah he's been saying this for like eight years now she's ten you know like she's like you know she's young she believes and she works like somebody who is the next like she's training like you know seven days a week no days off on vacation they take the ball they go do a hundred you know like when they keep the ball their juggle like a hundred juggle in a row like they don't do breakfast before that like it's incredible and it reminded me of i'm gonna read you this into it is the is is brother aaron daughter into it and by the way like she's into it which makes it sound like oh that's easy my kid wouldn't be it well i was there and like it's not as black or white with a kid like some days they're into it some days they're tired and cranky some days they have a heart he puts her she only plays basically against boys and so it's harder to play against boys boys that are you're or too older than her and sometimes she doesn't get to dominate and she you has a tough game or whatever and like on those days guess she doesn't wanna go do it again the next day he doesn't force her to do anything but he like never he never wave in his conviction and that like has over time it is overwhelmed through it is completely brand watcher in the positive direction i wanna read you this story from this soccer player marcel marcelo so this mark this guy marcel marcelo basically told the story about his grandfather and he goes they were talking about like what does it feel like you're this star player for i think it play for real madrid like the one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world you're make millions of dollars you're adored by fans everywhere like you how does it feel he goes this is the quote because you have to understand where i come from brother he goes i can see the scene like it's a movie in my head still i'm eight years old my family had no money in yeah brazil we couldn't even afford gasoline in our car to make it to practice so my grandfather i didn't know this but he made a sacrifice to change my life he sold his car just to get like you know in a bad deal got a little bit of money but that was enough to take the bus every day so he takes me to training every day on the public bus side by side every day on the crowded four ten into he side by side all the way across rio d jane aero and every day no matter how i play it he tells me you're the best you are marcel one day you're gonna be playing for brazil one day i will see you in the stadium and he goes i could still see this that that talk like every day in four k in my head i can smell the inside of that bus he goes my grandfather gave his whole life for my dream his friends used to tease him that he was broke and he would tell his friends he would take out his pocket show that it's empty and say hey look me man i don't have a single penny but i'm the happiest mother effort in the world he believed in me we were partners in this endeavor and he talks about like in his village how there was his grandfather who did this for but also the shop keeper he couldn't afford a a ball and so he goes to the local shop and he asked he's like hey can i have a ball and the guy's like yeah cost as much he because i have the money but when i'm a professional player when i grew up i'll come back and i'll pay you he's like eight years old seven years old at the time the guy just laughs and he's like i take a you deserve it he's like make sure you pay me when you when you become pro right like just you know he it kinda pulls on the hurt strings and so when it became a pro he came back and basically like bought like unlimited balls for every kid in the town like forever growing up and was just like ed okay will have that you know that problem now it's i hear these stories and it just kinda reminds you of like the power that either a father or a grandfather can have in the the kind of shaping of a kid it actually like the best thing you could give them is like fundamentally a belief that they're gonna be great and people will rise to your assumption if they don't have a strong assumption about themselves and that kids don't have strongest assumptions about themselves yet and so you can give them a stronger frame that they will they will live up to where did your grandpa paul for we got well want the link to this one but sean has this amazing story about his mother coming to america and like seeing a playing for the first time it's like i think about that story weekly actually it's pretty amazing where did your grandpa end up like so he made it to america with his family did did your father come first and then your grandpa gives my my my dad gets a son to go in like kind of a crazy set of circumstance you know what it is it it's like the indian institute it's like the indian technical college right or the important universe university in india but then didn't your dad go to berkeley no so so he went to it india which is basically like at don't it's like harvard for india so even harder to give into to is because there's like a billion people trying to get to the one like top top brand he gets some there by happens again when you believe something about yourself you'll take chances that the other people wouldn't so he he doesn't even know what it is he doesn't even know he's you're supposed to be taking entrance exams he sees a guy hey his friend is on a scooter he's like hey you wanna complain and the guy is like no no i gotta go take this test and he's like what test and he's like i'm gonna trying to get into it it's the best and that's how you get if i get and he's like why you who why do you care it's so far away why would you wanna go to school there go school here because if i get in there i can go to america again his grandfather told him you're gonna be in america someday so he's looking for he hears that and he says so he literally hops on the back of this dude's scooter and goes and takes the test blind now my dad was a pretty like good student because again like when you don't have anything else you don't have tv you don't have anything like all he had was his books for from textbooks from school so he's a good student so he ended up getting into it i think you've rank like thirty ninth at all of india like something crazy like that and so he goes to through it he gets a scholarship to come to study at a boulder university in colorado arrives in the dead of the night becomes a pot had a week later he well well could have easily because he arrives dead of night he had a scholarship that's the only way you could go there and when you come from i don't think people realize you're not allowed to bring in like assets not that my grant my family had assets but you could only bring in like some crazy small amount of money like six dollars or something like that so my my dad had six bucks and he came to america basically how had to figure out he's like don't worry like i have housing and tuition paid by the school but he arrives in december like the admissions office is closed for winter break so he's literally just like outside in the cold and winter in colorado he's like what like what do i do again never been on a plane before like everything's new some french dudes see some student there who's a french guy another international student who wasn't home for holidays sees and he's like dude what are you doing he's like trying to get into this place trying go to school yeah so that guy just takes him he's come stay with me he just lives with this guy so you know again somebody somebody helps out along the way anyways my dad brings my grandfather over when he gets here how it's wait hold so your father was like college twenty five twenty and he okay so he was only twenty one and he brought his father over brings us over to over the next few years he brings his father over brings his brother over but gets everybody over right that's like the the goal look the the role of that kind of the eldest son is to like so your dad was the shit well yeah i mean what he did yeah changed like the direction of the kind of his tribe you know and so my grandfather comes over and i remember when i was a kid like we used to go with him to his vending he was like a vending machine side hustle we would go collect all the quarters added of like four vending machines that he was like running at the time then he opened but any he upgraded he got a like a little stack shop in the in the in the office building and we used to sit at the cashier they're doing that all day like he basically just kinda had some hustle but you know the other thing that i i thought was kind of admirable was when he was like in his seventies or eighties like whatever the computer came out and like i don't know if remember we had like a computer room in our house like one desktop computer for the whole family he would come in and he would try to learn how to type like i imagine was like a seventy five year old eighty year old guy doing like the you know and but he's not just like trying to use the computer he's literally just saying i wanna learn how to type like a skill i was like what do you planned what do you could do with all this typing he didn't carry he's like up this is the new thing i'm not gonna basically never gave up on himself he's like never too like too old where you know like most old people just literally are like that's too bad that's too complicated that's for young people and like he never had that attitude it was like if it exists like it's for me like he worked at circuit city in the dvd section when he was like eighty years old and they were like dude do you know anything about movies or music american movies and music he's like no and he's like it would joke like they can't fire me though because i'm so old like it would be discrimination it's hilarious they're too afraid to fire me even though i don't know anything about this job and like circuit city had to go a bankrupt before they could get rid of him like you know he's he was kinda good stubborn in that way he would like never take medicine like even at the end he the last month he broke his femur because he felt and like breaking your femur look like the biggest bone in your body is a pretty rough break but like even when he was in the hospital he was like i mobilized he would be doing like arm exercises he's like oh i'm gonna be back and when i i gotta keep my body active you know like that was always his mentality so yeah a lot of things that i kind of admire that i you know i'll always remember about him how did you get to dc when they came over like where are we gonna live they live with us for a while in colorado and then when it was like okay that's enough living with us now thank you it was like here's dc like where some some of the other siblings live so that we got them a house there they live there i've been thinking about like we've been thinking about like some logos or not logos like slogan and stuff for hampton and i've been obsessed with this idea of building what out you and so like build what out outlets you it's like like this phrase that i've been obsessed with and that doesn't mean business necessarily it could mean but what's interesting is that your grandfather so far has been the best example of building what loves you and so like telling her a story about how like he gave his father this or his son this attitude which then my father gave that to me you know you speak it at my father to me and i'm like that's the best example of building something that lives you which is just a positive attitude is what out lived him and i find that to be very fascinating and frankly i find that to be the most admirable thing a man can do is to build what out loves you and it's legacy and not legacy in the sense of your name is gonna be on the building or whatever it's just that i live a certain way because this guy live a certain way because this this guy lives a certain way and because this grandfather live a certain way i now treat people wonderfully and that's the that's the most beautiful example of building what that leads you yeah do you do you know like your family history like i've heard this sometimes when people are like my great grandfather did this or we were we were actually warriors and therefore and then people really take that as like so that's in my blood and it really gives him a lot of belief i don't even know like i didn't know half to shit about my grandfather until the funeral when they were telling the stories about like his upbringing no frankly i did not have this and where i'm from in the midwest like it's just like my people had been here for forever in saint louis all my grandparents are dead by the age of three for me and so i lacked a massive sense of belonging and so i remember meeting a jewish guy and like him him telling like the traditions of like judaism and like going to like like having this friday night meal i'm like oh my god i crave this tribe i was like i crave this so much or like i remember like moving to san francisco and walking around on the stanford the stanford campus and i'm like oh my god i would love to have this stanford logo on my in or whatever just so i can meet other people who share these values like i've been desperate my whole life for like a sense of belonging because i never had that as a as a as a kid this is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue because around this point that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company and you realize two things one you've done something great but you're still a long way from your final destination and two you look around and you realize i am all alone i've out run my peers which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself and that is when mediocrity can creep in my company hampton we solve this problem by getting a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are gonna hold you accountable call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way because the fact is is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there and they're hard to find the biggest risk is not failing you have a company and it's working you're gonna be fine but the biggest risk is waking up ten years from now and saying shit i barely grew in business and in life and for people like you who are ambitious wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid we have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and i know this stuff actually works it can change your life to change mind and i know it will change yours so check it out join hampton dot com can i tell you when you talked about books earlier can i tell you this idea that this like very interesting business that i had never heard of so i've ever heard of little blue books no what is it little okay so check out what i have in my hand you see this this is a little blue book it's not blue by the way just but it is tiny so for the whole listening i googled it and sean just showed it it almost looks like you pulled the cover off of a book yeah it's a little paper back i mean not even paper it's just paper so like staple together literally this is staple on the side and it's like a three inch high book and the these were called little black book little blue books guess how many copies of little blue books sold i have no idea i don't just take a guess my god i just saw the number oh my god oh my god really okay so there there's been something like a low end estimate is two hundred million high end estimate is five hundred million copies of these books were sold did you take your idea from this or did you like no idea and you telling i was telling craig clement about my idea for one hour books and he was like do dude you know about a little blue and i was like he's like oh dude you gotta check this out oh my gosh and the titles are the best yeah so like this one and right now i'm holding by the way just for reference like you know harry potter sold like something like six hundred million copies so this is like a harry potter level phenomenon that existed you know a long time ago so this one the title is the gentle art of making enemies oh my gosh you telling me the subtle art of not giving an enough didn't steal from that right or it'll just be like this one proverbs of turkey they're about popular shakespeare quotes a rapid calculator how to make rapid arithmetic arithmetic calculations in your head here's one call look about doing mental math how to dress on a small set salary the psychology of leadership the puzzle of personality man and his ancestors yes so they fuck they have they're good at titles good at copywriting that the books of themselves by the way not actually good i i spent like an afternoon trying to read these because i was like oh i found this hidden pearl of wisdom from the past personally didn't really love any of the books but did craig like this because of the marketing yeah he was just like this was a i mean this was like a phenomenon you should study this and just steal something from this thing that happened you know such a long time ago the reason i bring this up is and why this is related to what you talked about so why did these things succeed because i thought well maybe they were just incredible fairly popular we're to well well written whatever no they're not really right like this today seems like you this could be an instagram account maybe or you know something something so simple the reason worked was basically back in the day but before this was like before they were like public libraries so books were actually rare they were not something that the average person could afford or had access to and so you had an access problem and they were lin supply and so they came out with these and these things would cost nothing they would be like a nickel to buy the book so you could buy this for five cents you could carry it around in your pocket it was so small so it was portable it was affordable and it became ubiquitous they would sell it at like you know every news newspaper stand in the corner store anywhere you can still put this thing anyway anywhere it's so small basically a podcast episode exactly it's it's like youtube videos and so what i found interesting was man in a time where that scarce this can sell five hundred million copies because information was scarce back then it was actually hard to get information you couldn't go on google or youtube couldn't even get a book from a library couldn't afford a lot of this information so where would you get that information about how to dress on a small salary or you know the quotes from shakespeare or proverbs of of aristotle right i would hope that your dad would tell you correct but like you know most people don't so that became incredibly valuable now today fast today information is ubiquitous it's like running water or you can get it anywhere you get all the information you'll ever want instantaneously in whatever style you want and then sometimes it's even if you go to your feed like instagram or tiktok you'll get information you didn't even for but might be interesting to you curated by this sort of all knowing algorithm okay so information is now abundant so something like this i don't think could ever work today now what scarce today is became it became the interesting question in my head because if information was scarce thin and then there was a need for little blue books what scarce today and i think it's what you just said now this is i hate even saying the word belonging but basically you know get being a part of a tribe i think is incredibly scarce today in america at least or in the life that i see around me me and my life's around me and i think this is you know organized religion did this for a lot of people i think group exercise classes like crossfit and soul cycle did this job for a lot of people now run clubs are incredibly popular book clubs are getting more and more popular which seems really counterintuitive to the trend i think people need this sort of in person tribe with rituals and a tribe leader and a banner and rituals that you you attend i think that is what is scarce today and i think people are people crave it and those who properly build that are gonna prosper in the future and i think you're doing it but hampton by the way yeah i'm trying to do it i met this guy he came my office here that a pop anthony pop the uno introduced me to this guy and he was like you had did you just drop that just like that is there a davey to pick up because i just dropped did i just dropped that your democratic president the anthony that he was like you gotta i call anthony by the way it's like oh on all sometimes the like they they were referring to the sec chairman and they're like yeah look tim do did a great job so my version of that is anthony anthony yeah so he was like i gotta meet this guy i said yeah whatever sure could've of been the like if you're in town code to my office man i met him and i was like what's your deal he's does italian guy with a thick italian accent and he's got this company that's basically making a hundred million dollars a year curing loneliness so it's called but they're doing it in a very unique way so if you go to we road dot com the business is crazy so the company let me tell what the product is the product is basically it's traveling for twenty thirty and forty year old professionals and so what they do is if you wanna travel the issue with a lot of young people is like they wanna travel alone but they don't literally wanna be alone when they travel like they don't wanna team team up with the friends they wanna do what they wanna do but with other people who wanna do it with them and so it's basically eighty percent women twenty percent men is like their customer base and so it'll they have categories so it's like adventure it's nature it's historical they got a bunch of categories and you pick a trip that you wanna go on and then seven to maybe fifteen other young people like you are gonna go on that exact same trip and you're gonna have a tour guide leading you along each trip so this for example i click pat trek through argentina and chile there's beautiful photos of like i this just looks like unbelievable and then it's a thirteen day trip you pay three grand and you're gonna go with a group of eight to fifteen people you know twelve nights in hotel or guest house your breakfast are included and you get a domestic flight to buenos aires from from bun if you get to buenos aires from there to the like start of the of the adventure and it's and then they have like day day one here's what we do day two here's what we do all the way to day thirteen this company i think it was started in two thousand and twenty it's only about five or six years old this year they're gonna do a hundred and sixty million in revenue last year they did a hundred million in revenue and their gross margins he said i could say all this are thirty percent i've never heard of this amazing right i've never heard of it either so on a hundred million in revenue after they pay the hotels and the the con the person leading the tour guide they keep thirty percent so a hundred and sixty million in revenue what's that that's like fifty million bucks in like net revenue to their company absolutely astounding that this company exists it's one of these ideas that you told me about it and i'm like yeah that sounds like a cute little hobby they've totally crushed it and i've been and i was asking him i'm like why why do people like this he's like well because people are lonely and they don't wanna be alone and we're just one example of how you can solve loneliness this because you go along this trip with strangers and you're gonna come home best friends i he was like and in a lot of cases sometimes people come home as boyfriend and girlfriend that happens a lot and so i thought that this was an absolutely amazing product to solve like it's it's like there's these macro trends so you talk about this macro trends of like physical experiences things like that and loneliness and then there's like how do you package that into a solution that you could sell i'm trying to do it with hampton in one way this is a a totally other way of doing it it's crushing me so that was probably this is a this is a a very a very nice way to package it it would be nice if i could have my company do a hundred and sixty million in revenue in five years but isn't this pretty cool and they do something that looks way more fun and they like hook up so it's like basically better in every dimension that i care about yeah yeah this is i mean my parents do this my mom does this with like seniors do this as well so her and her siblings two to three times a year take these guided tours basically basically groups of seniors you know it's just all and because they're like we don't have to right they're gonna organize all the sightseeing seeing all the hotels all the food all the everything they keep you safe if they have the insurance like they do all that stuff and then you're with a group so you know you can grow with a group or you can kinda make friends inside the group because you know traveling when you're young and your friends maybe not all not all being able to synchronize a trip together or you don't have enough friends like that's one thing the other is you know your empty nest your seniors and like you have way more time and money on your hands but travel is you know still you know a little bit difficult and daunting yeah it's pretty amazing like i did it when i was in college or high school maybe like an ef tour is that what what's called educational tour it's like the company called ef tours it's like a multi billion dollar company that they do there for students everyone knows they can do this do are they the ones who have like incredible on campus marketing like a machine where they basically have like kind of affiliates and then they do a vest it's like an ml basic it's it's like started by like a swedish guy who's like a rec but he like owns a whole bill of business that he does like five billion in revenue it's like one of these things where you you're like you don't realize how bad it is i was i was too dumb at the time to like pay attention to what was happening but now that i look back with like my business lens now that thing was brilliant so ef tours does eleven billion a year in revenue good if i'm if i'm one of these like who's like the travel youtuber that's popular if i'm the travel youtuber that's popular i'm like the we had a fun adventure type of youtuber i would create something like this know i mean this is very hard to create to be clear but like i would steal operators from these companies and be like you're gonna build this you but you're gonna use my my brand my face to like spin up because these are these don't really have a strong brand and the these are way overdue interestingly this this guy actually has a s connection so the guy who started ef tours i i didn't research this in advance so i'm just kinda looking at wikipedia he started ef tours in the nineteen sixty five they now have fifty two thousand employees and his last name is holt h u l t the whole international school business that's the whole school in s f which was i think down by fisherman wharf but anyway crazy way of solving loneliness so drew this was a fun episode i'm happy we got to like catch up but i'm also i i i think that there's times on this podcast sometimes we're like maybe you don't wanna talk about something personal because you're like i don't know if people gonna like enjoy this or be like if they can get like entertainment or education from like my little personal story but i gotta say that i'm actually like incredibly impacted by that story of your grandfather you know i i have a soft spot in my heart for immigrants and so i love hearing the story of your mother i've never heard their story of your father i love immigrants steve you love it i love immigrants like i i you know i kinda categorized like first born in america you know son of them immigrants as immigrants as well and in that regard every one of my friends is is an immigrant it's almost racist how much you love immigrants just play but seriously just shut up about about dude i married into immigrant family about it that's one of your like phrases that stuff like a lot of people will when they email me like for an opportunity to the bike i got that korean what is it korean russia what is it korean corner store owner energy or something like that like i got that immigrant mentality yeah like korean korean store owner energy so because in new york you basically there's like the corner like markets and they are all owned by asian families so it's typically like a vietnamese family and i i like to go and like to talk to these families and i literally just like ask them with their story and then the smaller ones are usually owned by it's a lot of indian families but it's also a lot of like arabic families and it's very interesting how and then you go to like dunkin donuts and that's always indian right and so like i love going to these like or you go to mattel always indian and i love going and like just like i'm like wanna learn like what's going on and so i love like like learning about those stuff i think it's so fascinating because immigrants have this like us versus them mentality which i've always crave you i always wanna be the us turns out turns out turns out of the them of the of the against them yeah yeah you know like i'm iceland in the muddy ducks like i'm the bad or i'm like the bad guys like you will like go to stall over here yeah yeah i'm the them i wanted to be the ass i'm them hilarious alright i good lot for us alright that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rule where i know i could be what i want to put at all in it like a day's off on a road travel never looking back hey let's take a quick break i wanna tell you about a podcast that you could check out it is called the science of scaling by mark robe he was the founding ceo of hubspot and he's a guest lecturer at harvard business school the guy smart and he sits down every week with different sales leaders from cool companies like cla and van and open ai and he's asking about their strategies their tactics and how they're growing their companies as you know head of sales or chief revenue officer if you're looking at to scale a company up if you're a cro or a head of sales just looking to level up in your career i think a podcast like this could be great for you listen to the science of scaling wherever you get your podcast