Today's episode is about one word: excellence. Whenever I hear these stories about people who are excellent, or what it took to become excellent, or what it took to make something happen that was truly excellent, it makes me want to run through a wall for the rest of the day. So, that's the gift to a listener. If you're listening to this in the morning, you're going to want to run through a wall after you listen to this.
Sam, it's morning time. Would you like some FOMO pancakes? Because I'm about to drizzle some FOMO pancakes right in front of you.
For some reason, when you say the word drizzle, I'm out. You're out.
Yeah, I've never been able to pull that word off.
Yeah, I don't think anyone has.
We, as you know, we're hosting our annual event. Me and Ben host this annual event called Hoop Group with Mr. Beast, and we're hosting it in about a week. And I was just catching up with Ben. Ben takes the charge on everything in your life.
Yeah, doing the things. And I just keep lobbing in ideas, and then I'm basically the most annoying guy. It's like he says, 'Hey, here's everything we got.' And I'm like, 'Can't we just make it better?' He's like, 'Okay, well, how?' I'm like, 'I don't know. Just think big.' And I say generic things like that, and I'll be like, 'You know, I just got off the podcast with this guy. What would he do?' And he's like, 'I don't know. What did he tell you about?' Like, I don't know. Go listen to that. You get inspired. But...
By the way, you call it lobbing ideas. I said that to my coach the other day, and she goes, 'That's called swooping and pooping.' Yeah. When you fly in and you just leave a bunch of crap.
Exactly. They've been working hard, and then you just swoop in and you poop. But I do it in the name of high standards. And that's how you get away with anything. That's how you get away with being an [__]. You just say, 'No, I'm not an [__]. I have high standards.' But my standards have been exceeded by what Ben has pulled off with this event. I just need to tell you some things about this event. Okay. For those who don't know, for the last few years, every year we host a basketball camp. So, it's kind of like a basketball camp for billionaires was the idea, the dream. There's lots of different conferences. There's lots of different networking events. And I hate conferences and I hate network events. And despite me talking a lot on this podcast, I'm actually kind of an introvert. I don't really enjoy going to events. And we wanted to do something, but the idea of just creating yet another thing that was very much like everything else that existed was not appealing. Were you guys just sitting around? Are our conferences dub?
Well, it started with we should do one, man. We have a big audience. We know all these interesting people. What if we hosted an event? And it's like great, like a networking event. Yay. It's like, no, no, it could be like, I don't know, like people come and talk. And we're like, oh, a conference, yay. And so then I learned this from my first business. This guy told me like irritation leads to innovation. So back then it was a restaurant business, and he was telling me, I was saying how much I hate food delivery, and he's like, 'Well, that's the opportunity. Make food delivery not suck, and suddenly you'll take something that's really bad, and just by like making it not suck, the gap between where it normally is and where you are is really big.' And so similarly, the idea with this was, well, what would be a conference we would want to go to? And so we just started spitballing with like a, you know, childlike energy where it was like, I don't know, like instead of icebreakers, like what if we just, like what if it was based around sports? We love sports. What if we combine two things we really love: meeting interesting, inspiring business people, but then basketball. And so the idea became, we play basketball all day. What if we got an NBA trainer to come train us like a fantasy camp? And we invite people who are really, you know, successful and interesting, but they love to hoop. And so we all first we play basketball. It's the ultimate equalizer, icebreaker. People get to know each other. And then at night, you talk shop in the kind of like we all stay in a couple of houses and we all talk shop there. And you've been to two of these that we've thrown. So you kind of get the idea.
Yeah, it's great.
Here's just a snippet of the guest list. So, Mr. Beast, as you know, he helps co-host it. Shaq is coming this year. You're so American, you may not know this name, but Gerard Piqué, one of the great soccer players, one of the world-famous soccer players who was married to Shakira for a period of time, he's coming. The richest man in New Zealand is coming. Four different NBA teams...
Who's the richest man in New Zealand?
Scooter Braun is coming. We got, there's just a crazy, and like some of our favorite, Jesse Cole from Savannah Bananas. 17 billionaires are coming to this event, which is pretty insane. So, I just wanted to tell you about, like, the first, just give you a little bit of FOMO because you couldn't make it this year. So, I wanted to give you a little FOMO on who's in the room.
I think the only two people that gave me true FOMO there. So, well, first of all, actually, wait, actually, hold on. Let me think. Jesse Cole is awesome. So, I like him. I'm fortunate that I've been able to hang out with him, so I have less FOMO, but he is amazing. He was probably the best person I hung out with there last year. But Jesse Cole and Nick Mowbray, is that his name? Nick Mowbray.
Probably those two guys. Those two guys is who I'd want to meet most.
Yeah, I also just want to see Shaq in person. I think that's just going to be incredible.
That I don't understand. Shaq doesn't seem like a guy who codes the sleepovers.
Well, he's coming to ours. All right.
Is he sleeping there or is he just popping in?
Yeah, he's coming. He's an attendee. Okay. And so I've bragged about how cool this event is, but there are a couple of downsides. The first is the event is not a roster of names. It's a vibe. It's how it actually feels to be there. And I'm really worried this year that we might have screwed it up by inviting too many kind of big-name people who are used to being the center of attention. We got, I think, pretty lucky the first couple years that all the most interesting people were also great hangs, just really down to earth, really fun to be around, which I don't think is going to be true for like your average billionaire, your average celebrity, right? Like I think people are just used to being kind of the center of attention and being a little standoffish. So, I'm really worried about that. I hope we didn't screw it up. I might be coming back on here in a couple weeks and say, 'Hey, look, you know, it was fun, but lesson learned. You know, too much of anything is a problem.' And the other thing is, you know, for everybody we got, you know, Ben reached out to maybe there's 20 people who said no. And just the effort that it takes to get people to come and to feel comfortable and excited to come to the middle of nowhere with people they don't even know. You've never heard of me. You never heard of Ben. You don't know who any of us are. So, I appreciate the people who took a leap of faith, but also like it's, you only ever hear about the hits and never the misses, but for every hit there's 19 misses on people that we wanted to come. So, I thought just to counterbalance it, that would be fair.
I'm eager to see where Shaq sleeps. What does his bed look like?
Bunk beds, buddy. He's on top. I'm on bottom.
All right, so this episode is all about excellence. A while back, I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life, and the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30-day operating system you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems it took me 10 years to figure out and shows how I actually use them day-to-day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So, if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now, let's get back to the show.
All right. So, I just want to tell you a couple of the philosophies that I think other people could steal to make cool projects or events like this for themselves. Okay. So, I kind of wrote down because this was a point of pride for us. I was like, man, this thing started as a pretty wacky idea that we tweeted out. Really didn't know where it would go. And now this is the fourth time we're doing it. And you were there the first year. I mean, it was like mostly just our friends sleeping in bunk beds. No like programming or like idea of what we're supposed to do in the event.
It was janky, but still very fun.
And it was still very fun. It was like there was a seed of something special, but it was pretty janky relative to like how it goes now.
It's funny, the things that were unimportant were janky. So, the accommodations, a lot of people think the accommodations need to be nice. No, they weren't. It was, I shared a room with four guys at a bunk bed. Perfectly adequate and fine.
Yeah. So, here's some of them. Okay. So, the first one is what I said, irritation leads to innovation. So take something that bothers you or you think sucks and instead of just writing it off as I don't do that, I don't like that, blah blah, being close-minded to it, just get playful with like, well, what version of this wouldn't suck, right? You just take that as a brainstorm and like I don't know, one out of every 10 times you might actually come up with something interesting. The second is what I call the yes test. So as you get older and more successful in life, you go from opportunity scarce to opportunity abundant. Meaning, when you're young, you don't really have a lot of cool opportunities or things you could say yes to. So, you just need to be in the mindset of saying yes to a lot of stuff. Oh, this person wants to get coffee. Yeah, I'll take a flyer on that. Hey, this person wants me to attend this. I'll take a flyer on that. I'll go speak at this event. I'll go do this. I'll go do this. And then the older you get, both whether for family reasons, your time gets a little more restricted. Or you just get more and more opportunities coming your way and you have to go the opposite way. You basically have to practice saying no. And so this creates what I call the yes test. And the yes test for me has become the following. Would I do this thing for no money or losing money? And the best projects in my life have been things where I've said yes to things that I would be willing to do for free or willing to lose money. This podcast is one of them. When I started this podcast, I wrote a Google doc and I said the stated plan was probably nobody will listen to this and I'm probably going to lose $10,000 this year in production costs, but I'll have, you know, 50 interesting conversations with really interesting people back when it was more of a guest-centric podcast. And that was the stated plan, but I was willing to go in and lose money doing it, which is a good signal for like there's probably a lot of other intangible benefits of doing this if you're willing to do it for a loss. This event, we don't charge anybody anything. We pay for it out of pocket. It's going to cost us maybe a couple hundred grand to throw this event. And so that's just cost we eat. And so the bad thing is you lose money. The good thing is the event has to be something you'd be willing to lose a couple hundred grand on. Like how good must that need to be for you to say yes to that? And it's sort of this forcing function of like, well, it's got like then we got to have a lot of fun, meet a lot of really interesting people. It's got to be a real core memory. It's got to be something unique to our brand. Like, you know, you have to get all these other benefits in order for it to be worth that. And so, when I think about the best things in my life that I've done, it's been things that I would say yes to even if I lost money. And so, this year, for example, playing the piano was a money loser, but was one of the best decisions I made. Coaching the high school basketball team here has been, you know, food for my soul. I've loved doing it. And I've, you know, I make no money, I lose money doing that. So, I wanted to share the yes test with you.
It's so funny because so many things in my life that I have been thankful for doing, I only did it because it made money or like I only did it because I wanted the end result. Like I don't want to lose weight. This sucks. I don't want to eat this food. I don't want to like exercise and I just want...
I call some of those win-lose, especially not things like losing weight or exercise because those are fully in your control. But let's say it's like a business, right? Those are what I call win-lose, which is, hey, if I get the result I wanted up front, then this was worth it. It was a win. But if I didn't, I'm going to be kicking myself, right? I'm going to feel like I lost. I wasted my time. And I think there are other win-win situations where you say, 'Well, at the minimum, I already win, right?' With the podcast, I was like, at the minimum, I'm going to have an excuse to go have 50 dope conversations with awesome people. I'm going to learn so much. I'm going to get to know them better. And so it's already a win even if nobody ever listened and I lost money. But then in the long shot, which was people started listening to the podcast and it started to make some money maybe from advertisers, well then I win double. Great. So my two options were I win small or I win big. And I just think that that's generally a better place to be when you actually are excited about the small win. Not like a moral victory or like, 'Oh, I guess, you know, could be worse,' right? Not that I'm saying you're genuinely excited even about the basic win. But then you'd leave yourself room for the upside.
So, can you remind me, the pod was started I think in July, some type of like late summer of '19, right?
And I'm almost positive I don't think it made more than six figures for the first year and a half if I remember correctly.
Yeah, probably not. I remember doing the first ad read, and the first ad read was, 'This episode is brought to you by nobody. But think about it, this could be you.' Because I needed to sell one ad, you know, to pay for, I was renting a studio, so I was like, can I pay for the studio time? $100 an hour.
I don't remember. I think it was like it didn't make any money for like a year and a half and then it made kind of a lot of money and then a lot more. But which is pretty funny. Okay. And what are the second two?
Okay. Actually, I have three more. So one is the bigger you go, the easier it gets. So there's a fallacy that people have, which is that going for big things is hard, is difficult. So going for smaller things will be easier. But actually whenever you're doing something that is like a new product, an event, anything that needs differentiation, if you think smaller or you play more reasonably, you actually are less differentiated, you're less interesting. And actually the harder it gets to people. Let's just take this event. Let's say this event was not about basketball. It was just a normal meetup or event. And let's say the guest list was a bunch of people you never heard of that were easier for me to get in. Well, it would just make it harder for me to do everything that I'm trying to do with this. It would be harder to get the next guest because why would I come? There's nothing special about this.
This is true for business, too, by the way. The bigger your idea, the better people you can recruit.
Exactly. And then the better people you recruit, the easier it gets to do the thing, right? That's the third part, right? And so having a bigger thing where it's like, yeah, we're going to get the most interesting people that have like, you know, name recognition. I'm only able to get them because we're doing a unique thing. But because we're doing a unique thing and we get some of them, it makes it easier to get more of them, which makes it easier to do a more unique thing because now you have all these really special people coming.
And in your case, Shaq or not Shaq, Mr. Beast was like kind of the tent pole.
The anchor, the initial anchor. Yeah.
How did you get in touch with Shaquille O'Neal?
Actually, sorry. Shaq was through kind of a, it was like a cold request. Ben saw, so the guy who started Ring doorbell is coming, and Ben, doing Ben miracle things that only Ben does. He was like, who are the investors in Ring? And so he goes and he looks at who's the first investors in Ring, saw that Shaq was an early investor in Ring and presumably made a bunch of money off of the Ring investment. So he's like, hey, you think Shaq would want to come to this thing? And the guy was like, hey, let me go, let me find out. And so kind of made the intro and then went from there. But Jamie had never been himself. So it's not like he could do like a hard vouch for it, but it ended up working out. But he cold emailed a bunch of people that like, you know, the founder of Airbnb came because he cold emailed him and he knew, hey, I know growing up you were a ball boy for an NBA team. So like, I'm guessing you love hoops just like I do. I was a ball boy, too.
You should call this Camp Ben. I mean, that's what this is. Good job, Ben.
That's one of the principles is basically the product is you pushed out. So, my trainer told me this one time when I was like trying to figure out what to do. Should I start this company or this? Should I do this or this? And I was just mentioning it to my trainer in passing and he goes, he goes, 'What do you mean you are the product?' I go, 'What?' He goes, 'You are the product.' He goes, 'The product is just you pushed out. So, just do you, but like turn the volume knob up.' And so, he's like, 'Look at the podcast. What's the podcast? Do you have to think before you go on the podcast? Like, oh, how should I act and what should I... No, you're just being you, right? You and Sam, you just get on there and you hang out like you and Sam would normally.' And he's like, 'So the product is you pushed out.' And that's what resonated with people, right? That's the one that clicked. And then he was showing me like in another project that we did, he's like, 'That's just you pushed out again.' And so with the camp, the camp is basically like basketball, which is something me and Ben obsess over. But it's basically the mix of like on my end, it's like my version of like a TED conference because we do these little mini talks every night. And that's kind of like, even my Twitter bio says I'm an idea dealer. Like that's the thing that I get off on the most is like the sharing of ideas and like wisdom and like picking up these nuggets from each other. And the thing Ben loves to do is curate really interesting people and get them in a room together. Like Ben is a, he's not like a networker per se, but he just loves to meet interesting people and he just gets lit up when he meets somebody who's done something interesting who's cool. And so anyways, I think finding something that's basically, if you just look at the product and you say that's me productized. I feel like the hustle for you was in many ways you productized big time in your writing voice. But also the sort of punk rock attitude, the hustle, the name Hustle, the conference that you did, like a lot of that was just your DNA. But you want to know where I screwed it up? I built something I disliked. And so which I think that, have you ever done this with a company where you build a company or a project and then you grow to dislike the people and the culture? Like not that they're bad, but for example, when I started doing it, I was 24, 25, and then by the time I was 28, 29, 30, I was like, well, I'm a little bit different or I care about slightly different things or whatever. And it's neither good or bad, but have you ever built a project that was like your own prison?
Yeah, you can outgrow a project. I think it's generally usually an insecurity leads you to make a decision that's not in line with who you are and therefore you end up, you do that six times and you end up in an almost unrecognizable spot. And it's sort of like boiling water, like you're in lukewarm water and it just is slow.
It's like it's too late, right?
And where did that poor decision, why did you start making those turns down the wrong roads? And usually the root of it is some insecurity. So for me when I've done this thing you're describing, it's I'm so afraid for this thing to fail and I so badly wanted to win. I badly want to make money that I start just like trying to conform into like maybe that will work, maybe this is the thing, maybe this is the thing. And then suddenly I've built a live streaming app for Twitch streamers. I do not stream video games. I don't play video games. I don't even watch Twitch. And yet here I am. How? It's like kids, you might be wondering how did this happen? That's where I ended up out of that insecurity of I just want to be successful.
I don't think that's bad by the way. Like you were a mercenary, right? And in a way I felt like I started as like a missionary where I was like this is my life. This is what I'm all about. And then it started working and I was like okay well I have to hire some people and this person's good and you sort of become a mercenary some of the time. And so I still am envious of the people. So, for example, one of the reasons why people are obsessed with Dyson, who you were joking about, why is everyone obsessed with Dyson is he and Brian Chesky, another guy at Airbnb, they appear as though they started as a missionary and they've remained that way where they are all down for the cause and they refuse to bend and sacrifice. But the thing is is that you can get mildly or very successful even by bending and sacrificing. You don't actually have to stick to your values all the time in order to be a commercial success. And often times bending your values and doing what you think is expected of you, not what you want to do, is actually significantly more profitable. And so there's been many times where I've made that sacrifice and I maybe got what I wanted financially, but I was pretty upset with what I gave into. And in turn, the reality is I probably would have been significantly more profitable had I stuck the whole time. It just would have been more painful. Does that make sense?
Well, you're saying both things, right? You're saying I built something that I didn't even love which is sort of a painful feeling. So that's kind of like a bad outcome but it was a commercial success so it's a good outcome.
And so can you make a commercial success while being mercenary about it? Absolutely. Can you also make a commercial success while doing something in line with your mission or something that lights you up or something that you feel is like the type of thing that you sort of, it's organic to you?
If you have good taste, correct. If you have good taste.
But to me I'm like if I can again one is a win-lose and the other is a win-win. If win-win is possible then I'm going to pursue that.
But it's not always that, dude. My point is it's not always that. I have so many, I went to Belmont University. It's a music school or it's a school that has a big music department. I knew so many people that were like, we're going to be musicians. This is the stuff we're going to play and it's like mildly interesting but it's not like a pop hit or anything. And now we're all the same age. I talk to them and they're kind of bums and they regret their decisions. They're like I wish I would have chased the money. Casey Neistat has this funny thing. Casey Neistat, did you know that, so Casey Neistat got famous I believe when he started vlogging every single day I think in 2015. He did not turn on ads on YouTube. He thought that that was ruining the art and he refused to do it. And he did a talk recently about a year ago where he goes, 'How foolish of me. That would have added up to like $15 million or something insane like that.' And he was like, 'Now my advice is the exact opposite. Take the money when you could take the money.' And so I guess this constant tension between like doing art and doing what's cool versus taking the money. And so I think what you're saying is true and also it's maybe not true for everyone. So in that example you're giving I think that, so what are these called? These are called dialectics. It's like two opposite things at opposing ends of a spectrum which can both be argued to be very true. And so you would think how is that possible that two things on the opposite end of the spectrum. So for example, patience is a virtue but at the same time a lot of entrepreneurs would not be successful if they weren't very impatient at the same time saying six months how do we do this in six days, right? So like you have these opposite things and then you find the way that they link together. So like my favorite one with the patience impatience comes from Naval where he says impatience with action, patience with results. And you're like ah that's it exactly because if you're patient with your action, you just don't do [__]. If you're impatient with your results, you give up too easily. You get frustrated. It leads you to make short-sighted decisions. And so that's the right combo. And I think there's a version of that here with like to what extent do I build a thing that I think is interesting that I think is cool that is more natural to what I want and be mission driven maybe to the impact I want or the type of thing I want to build the type of company I want to build the type of product I want to build and also realizing that the more commercially successful it is the more interesting people you're going to be able to hire which will make the product better which will let you do this for longer which like right so there's a way where like Disney said you know we don't make movies to make money. We make money so we can make great movies, right? And so you want to basically realize like, oh, this money thing is important and we have to understand where it's going to come from and how this is going to work. We can't be blind to that. At the same time, that can't be the north star. If it is, we're going to build something that's, you know, compromised in a way. And I made that mistake. I think I made that mistake of compromising because I've now done both. Now, it might be argued that you do the compromise first and that gives you the freedom to take a bunch of shots on goal or gives you the confidence or gives you the, or now you have the skills or whatever. I don't know. But if I could rewind it, I would go back and advise myself to just be like, 'Hey, you should just keep building the things that you find most interesting.'
Were you not interested at all? And I mean, it's so funny. You didn't play games.
I was interested in them because of their market potential. I was like, 'Oh, napkin math. This times this equals this.'
That's not wrong. I mean, that's fine.
I don't think it is ideal, right? There's not right and wrong. There's like, you know, there's good, better, best, right? There's different grades.
Like, for example, I think Mr. Beast is like, I don't actually, that's an interesting question. I don't know if he cares, does he care about making movies or does he care just like this was the game that was set forth and now I want to win.
Well, he is interesting, right? Because it's kind of both. He clearly loved to make content and wanted to be a YouTuber almost like at an identity level more than anything. That's why for six years nobody's watching and he just keeps making videos year after year. 12 years old, 13 years old, 14 years old, 15 years old, 16 years old, 17 years old, 18 years old. Nobody watched till he was 19. And so, and even then it's not like it was huge. It was small even at that stage, but he kept going and he had said up front like, 'Okay, I'm either going to be a famous YouTuber or I'm going to die making YouTube videos.' Like, I'm going to try die trying. And so, you know, in that way, he was pretty mission-driven. And I don't think he was, you know, there was a lot of easier ways to make money if he needed to make money, right? Like over time he could have given up and gone towards other things and also the types of videos he made were videos that, you know, he obviously found interesting at the same time. You know, I think more than being an artist about like what is the most artistic video I can make, right? I think he's basically saying I want to make the best YouTube videos and best is defined as what people want to watch. I like making things that entertain the masses that people want to watch. That's the version he likes, you know.
I think the video he did the other day got like 100 million views in a few hours. And for some reason, Mr. Beast videos never pop up in my feed, but this one like it had like all celebrities in it. I didn't realize he was doing that. 30 celebrities fight for a million dollars and it's like Paris Hilton and Kevin Hart and [__] like that. Did you see that?
Yeah, I watched that one.
That's crazy. Did you have a third or a fourth?
Yeah, I got two more quick ones. One is everybody, it doesn't matter how rich you are, everybody's a little kid. So last year, for example, you know, you've got this room full of people who can buy anything that they want. What can't they buy, right? And so we rent out this stadium for the final game of our tournament at the camp and they walked in and there was jerseys printed with their names and like everybody was so excited like a little kid. And so it's these little moments in between the big things that actually create the feel of the event. And so, for example, this year we're doing this little touch where we play basketball in the morning.
We got to tell, wait, Shaq, cover your ears.
So, we play basketball in the morning and then we go to the house for lunch or whatever. And at the house, you'll already see on the TV screen like photos from that morning's game, like little videos and photos.
Were you inspired by Steve Bartlett? I heard he does that where you record a podcast with him and then when you're done with the podcast he hands you a book and it's a photo album of the podcast.
Yeah. Which is a very, very great touch. We stole it from K Academy. Coach K does this and they have that there and so we were like oh that's a great idea. So little things like after the final game this time we were like how do we make it, how do we give you that moment that you can't buy? Like you know what's the fun thing that would bring out the childlike energy in these people? And so we were taking them to the locker room and you know like in sports like when you win a championship you like have champagne and like ski goggles in the locker room to do. So we have that set up. So it's like the winners are going to get to go do that like I don't know just like have fun. I think caring about these little details. Last time after the event we made this custom magazine.
With like photos of everybody almost like Slam Magazine back in the day and we sent it to each person. It took me a week to work on that. Like they were just like what do you do, you have a job? What do you do? You know, like you know me in life, I'm pretty not a man of the details. That's not where I'm from. But with this event, it's like pick and choose the few areas where you're not going to 80/20 in life. Pick and choose the areas where good enough is not good enough. Like, okay, this is one project where we're like, we're going to try to go all out to a ridiculous degree and they're going to feel that. They're going to know that we went all out for our own amusement and for our own like just to see what we could do if we really create something that's special. And so I'm excited to do that.
Have you been working on this all year?
No, this is like the last six weeks, let's say.
Wow. That's a lot you get done just in six weeks. Was this what you focused on the whole time? The whole six weeks?
No, I'm not focused on it really at all. I just meet with Ben at the beginning. Say, here's some ideas. Here's what I thought was good last time, bad last time. Here's some ideas. Ben goes and does things and then we brought on some event organizers to help us this time and then every couple weeks we just sort of check in on like, and he's not doing it full-time either but like you know a big chunk of his time.
Well the hard part is just the inviting the right people and getting him to say yeah.
What I was doing, so I told you I was trying to write that book so I was like I've basically become that Family Guy meme. I don't know if you've ever seen that episode of Family Guy where Brian's been writing a novel and Stewie is just trolling him. He's like how's that novel going?
How's it going? Got some pages? Some chapters, beginning, middle, end, little juxtaposition. And he's like, Brian's like classic writer who's like just stuck in the mud, like not making progress on this book. It's like too big of a thing. It's like intimidating him. And so I've had this idea to write this book. I did all this research, but I was like slowly, like I would draft chapters, but I wasn't like writing the book. I was just like drafting chapters, you know, randomly.
I was like pretending. So two weeks ago, I was like, 'All right, who am I? Am I the kind of guy who's talking about this book or am I going to write the book?' And so two weeks ago I decided I will have a prototype of the book. So like not the full book but like a cover, opening, intro, first chapter, second chapter printed physical book to show these people in two weeks. And in the last two weeks I wrote it. It's getting printed right now. It'll be printed, the last day of printing will be the day.
I threw myself into it. And it's good because it was such a good forcing function. And there's a lesson I was telling Ben, like Tony Robbins has this phrase. He goes, 'Peers aren't just the people around near you, like just the guy you see to your right. A peer is somebody who has leverage over you.' And it's like, 'What do you mean leverage over you?' He's like, 'A peer is somebody who you care about their opinion of you.' So, they have some leverage over you. And that can be a good thing or a bad thing. But like the good version of that is if you get the right people around you and you care about their opinion and they value the things that you value, well, you will sort of rise in accordance with wanting to be seen well by your peers. Like it's very hard to just become a monk and renounce, be like, I don't care what anyone thinks of me, right? Like everybody likes to say that [__] but then you're all on social media posting and trying to get likes. Like you know, come on. We all care what people think about us. The trick is to pick who's going to care about you and what those people care about. And so, you know, if you're a mom and you're around other great moms, then you're not going to want to look like a bad mom. And the result is good. It helps you be a better mom.
January 2026 might be the biggest month of your professional career in the last 5 years.
Definitely the most productive. I mean, nobody tries to write a book. Well, I gave myself two weeks and then I went to the printer and they were like, 'Hey, yeah, we need seven days.' I was like, 'Oh, good. I got seven days to write this. Fantastic.' I just pulled all nighters for seven days and pulled it off.
Can I tell you a cool story about excellence that I think is actually related to this?
And it's probably the only time that the sports that I'm interested are going to overlap with the, well, with sports in general that you might be interested in.
Let me guess. Does this sport not involve a ball or a goal of any kind?
No. The only sports I'm into are people beating each other up or running away from each other. Like it's either chasing someone or what you do when you catch them.
So which one is this one? Is this a running or a fighting?
It's a running one. More boring but way more inspirational. So I read this book a few years ago and I was watching a documentary on the same topic last night and I really wanted to bring it up with you because I think you maybe heard of it but I don't know if you knew all the details. So, in the 1960s to 1970s, there was this coach, his name was Bill. He was a track and field coach up in Oregon, and he was the man. He had served in the military in World War II, and he was this like tough guy, and kind of sort of had this like scientist way about him where he was all about efficiency. He loved efficiency, and he was like, 'What's the best way that I can get these kids that I'm teaching or coaching at the University of Oregon? How can I make them run faster other than making them train more?' And he got really nerdy on shoes and so he started taking apart different shoes and he started thinking how can I make these shoes better and originally like the lore or the story is that he was like well if you're 6 feet tall you're going to take this many steps per mile and if I can reduce the weight of the shoes by only 1 ounce that's going to save you 50 lbs per mile that seems like a big deal and so he's hanging out with his kids one day and his kids at this point I think are in their 20s but they came over for brunch. And the wife, his wife, Bill's wife, is making waffles for him. And he was like, 'I got it. I know exactly what to do.' So he steals the waffle iron from his wife and he pours liquid rubber into it and he folds it down. He folds it up and he's like, 'This is it.' And this was the sole for his new shoe. And so he used that and they called it the waffle for the shoe. And it kicked ass. And now I think you know who I'm talking about, right?
Yeah. Nike. It must be Nike.
Yeah. Bill Bowerman. Bill Bowerman was the co-founder of Nike. The more famous co-founder was Phil Knight. Phil Knight...
was actually one of his athletes at University of Oregon, and Phil Knight had a class, an entrepreneurship class.
So are they like age-gapped by like 20 years or something?
More, I believe, at least based off photos. I think he was probably in his late 50s and Phil Knight was in his mid-20s. He had created the idea of Nike as a college student, but at first, when he started the company in the 60s, he was basically just importing Japanese shoes. And he knew Bill liked to tinker with shoes. But it wasn't until about five or six years in that Nike actually started saying, 'Bill, let's actually just make the shoes that you are already making,' but they were partners.
Oh, okay. So they were in parallel. Phil Knight is trying to start a shoe company.
And this is like, what is it called? Blue Ribbon or what's it called?
Yeah. They were basically importing Japanese shoes and he called it Blue Ribbon. So he was importing other people's shoes and...
And Bill separately, his coach, is experimenting, tinkering with shoes, and then they come together. What's the come-together story? Do you know? Is there...
Well, Phil Knight was his athlete, and so Phil Knight wore some of Bill's prototypes.
But they were really rough. Like people used to complain that they were kind of rough, but they did work. But I think they would only work for like two races.
It's the shape of a circle from the waffle.
Yeah, it was weird, but it was really effective. And then so they teamed up and he was like, 'Let's import these shoes and then Bill, you give them to the Nike guys or to the Oregon team and we're going to go track meet to track meet.' And it wasn't... it was a company, but it was almost like...
It was almost like if I started a honey company and I started going to like farmers markets, like, and somehow that turns into burnt bees, but it doesn't happen overnight. Okay, so that's not the story that I want to actually bring up. What I really want to talk about was Steve Prefontaine. Do you know who Steve Prefontaine was?
So he was a runner also. Was he like the first athlete? He broke some record. He's wearing Nikes. Is that his story?
Sort of. Kind of. You're in... you're in the...
He lost a leg, or that's the Canadian guy?
