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 the morning, you're going to want to run through a wall after this. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to. I'm from my law, then it's like a day zone.
For the road, let's travel. Damn, 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. 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 vet called Who 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, yeah. Doing the things. And I just keep lobbying in ideas. And then I'm basically the most annoying guy.
It's like, he said, hey, here's everything we got. And I'm like, can we just make it better? He's like, OK, wow, 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 do you tell you about? Like, I don't know. Go listen to that. You get inspired.
But you know, the way you're clapping, lobbying ideas that someone I said to my coach today, and she goes, that's called swooping and pooping. Yeah, what do you fly at? And you just leave it to crap. Exactly.
They've been working hard. And they 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 asshole. You just say, no, not an asshole. I have high standards.
But these 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. And 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, 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. What are you guys just sitting around?
Our conferences, Doug? Well, it started with, we should do one, man. We have a big audience. We know all these interesting people.
What are we all doing in an event? And it's like, great. Like a networking event. Yay.
It's like, 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 like, how much I hate food delivery.
And he's like, well, that's the opportunity. Make food delivery that doesn't 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 child like energy, where it was like, instead of icebreakers, like what if you just, like what if it was based on sports? We love sports. We would 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 successful and interesting, but they love to hoop.
And so we all firstly 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, that's great. 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 fun because you couldn't make it this year.
So I wanted to give you a little fun one who's in the room. I think the only two people that gave me true fun were there. So first of all, we actually called him let me think. Jesse Etsler is awesome.
So I like him. I'm fortunate that I've been able to hang out with him. So I have less fun, but he is amazing. He was probably the best person I hung out with there last year.
But Jesse Cole and Nick Mulberry, is that a thing? Nick Mulberry? Yeah. Probably those two guys.
Those two guys who I want to meet most. Yeah, I also just want to see Shaq in person. I think that's just going to be incredible. 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. OK. And so I 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 were used to being the center of attention. We got, I think, pretty lucky the first couple of 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 your average billionaire, your average celebrity. I think people just used to being kind of the center of attention and being a little standoff. 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 of weeks and say, hey, look, it was fun, but wasn't learned too much of anything is a problem. And the other thing is, for everybody we got, Ben reached out to maybe 10 to the 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 people who took a leap of faith, but also like, 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 that's not just a counterbalance that that would be fair. I'm eager to see where Shaq sleeps. What does this bed look like? Bump beds, buddy.
He's on top. I'm on bottom. He is the bad. 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. OK, 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 did it. We're doing it. And you were there the first year.
I mean, it was mostly just our friends sleeping in bunk beds, no programming or idea of what we're supposed to do in the event. It was janky, but still very fun. And it was still very fun. There was a sauce of there's a seed or something special, but it was pretty janky relative to 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 that are about that perfectly adequate and fine. Yeah, so here's some of them. OK, 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, but 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 brainstorming.
I don't know, one out of every time 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 scares 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 minds of saying yes to a lot of stuff. Oh, this person wants to get coffee? I'll take a flyer on that. Hey, this person wants to be that 10 this.
I'll take a flyer and 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 or 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 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 that 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 50 interesting conversations with really interesting people back when it was more of a guest centric podcast.
And it 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 good thing, 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.
Like how good must that need to be for you to say yes to that? And it's sort of the sourcing function of like, well, it's got like, then we got to have a lot of fun, 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.
You have to get all these other benefits in order for it to be worth that. 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 was one of the best decisions I made. Coaching the high school basketball team.
It has been food for my soul. I've loved doing it. And 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. 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 exercise. Well, 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 upfront, 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 from advertisers, well, then I win double. Great. So my two options were I win smaller, 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 a, I guess, you know, good or worse, right?
Not that. I'm saying you're genuinely excited even about the basic win. But then you leave yourself room for the upside. So can you remind me, the pod was started, I think, in July, some type of late summer of 19, right?
Yeah. 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 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 a year and a half.
And then it made kind of a lot of money and a lot more, which is pretty funny. OK, and what are the second two? OK, I actually 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 different and you're less interesting. And actually, the harder it gets to people to get less to 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. We're 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 is why? Why would I come? There's nothing special about this.
This is sort of a business, too, by the way, the bigger 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, people that have like, you know, one name recognition. I'm only able to get them because we're doing a unique thing, but because we're doing anything 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, I'm not sure. Mr. Beast was like kind of the tent pole anchor. The anchor.
Yeah. How did you get in touch with Shaquille O'Neal? Cold email. Really?
Actually, sorry. Shaq was through a kind of a cold request. Ben saw. So the guy who started Ring doorbells coming and Ben doing Ben miracle things that only Ben does.
He was like, who are the investors in Ring? As he goes, he looks and who's the first investors in Ring saw that Shaq was early in the best Ring and presumably made a bunch of money off of the Ring investors. He's like, Hey, Shaq would want to come to this thing. Like, I was like, Hey, let me find out.
And so it kind of made the intro and then went from there, but Jamie 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 was a ball boy too. Just got this camp and 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 and I was like, trying to figure out what to do. Check this company. This is this and I was just mentioning it to my trainer and 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? You have to think before you go on the podcast like, Oh, how should I act?
And what should I know? You're just, 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 push out. And that's what resonated with people, right? That's the one that that that clicked. And then he was showing me like in another project that we did, he's like, that's just, that's like you pushed out again.
And so with the camp, the camp is basically like basketball, which is something I mean, I'm obsessed 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, I even my Twitter, I was like, I do, I do like that's the thing that I get off on the most is like the sharing of ideas and like wisdom, like picking up these nuggets from each other. And the thing Ben loves to do is curate really interesting people and get him in a room together. Like Ben is a, he's not like a network or say, 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 anyway, I think finding something that's basically if you just look at the product, you say that's me productized. I feel like the hustle for you was in many ways you productize big time and 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.
So, which I think that have you ever done this with the company, where you build a project and then you go to dislike the people and the culture, like not that they're bad. But for example, if I, when I started doing it, I was 24, 25, and then by the time I was 28 or 930, I was like, well, I'm a little bit different or I care about slightly different things or whatever. And it's not a good or bad, but have you really built a project that was like your own prison? Yeah, you can outgrow.
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 you don't notice, you don't know.
It's like, it's too late, right? And where did that poor decision? Where? 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, 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, nor 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, Airbnb, they appears though they started as a missionary and they remain that way where they are all they're down for the cause and they refuse to bend or in 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 oftentimes, 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 how I gave into it. 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 just sort of a painful feeling. So that's kind of like a bad outcome.
But it was a commercial success. It's a good outcome. Yeah. 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 you feel is like the type of thing that you sort of organic to you? If you have good taste, correct? If you have a taste.
For me, I'm like, if I can, again, one is a win-lose and the other is a win-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 to music school or it's a school that has a big music department.
I knew so many people that were like, they're 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 talked to them and they're kind of bums and they regret the decision. So 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 then 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 and saying like that. And he was like, now my advice is the exact opposite. Take the money when you can take the money. And so I guess this is 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 were called dialectics. It's like two opposite two 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, patients 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 patients, in patients comes from the vault where he says, in patients with action, patients with results. And you're like, ah, that's it. Exactly. Because if you're patient with your action, you just don't do shit.
If you're impatient with your results, you give up too easily. You get frustrated. It leads you to make short-sided 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 writes it 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 is this, 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 compromised it because I've now done both. Now, I 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 story.
Now you have the skills, 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. I was interested in them because of their market potential. I was like, Oh, napkin, math.
This time, this time, this equals. That's not that's not wrong. I mean, that's fine. I don't think it is ideal, right?
It's not right and wrong. There's like, you know, there's good, better best, right? Like, for example, I think Mr. Beast is like, I don't, I actually, that's an interesting question.
I don't know if he cared. Does he care about making movies or is he cared? Just like this was the game that was set in set fourth and now I want to win. Well, he is interesting, right?
Cause it's kind of both. He was clearly, he clearly loved to make content and wanted to be a YouTuber, almost like an identity level more than anything. That's why for six years, nobody's watching and he just keeps making videos a year after year, 12 years old, 13 years old, 15 years old, 16 years old, 18 years, nobody watched until he's 19. And so and even that is not like it was huge or small, even at that stage.
But he kept going and he had said upfront, like, OK, I'm either going to be a famous YouTuber or I'm going to die making YouTube videos, like I'm going to try, I'm going to die trying. And so, you know, in that way, he was pretty mission driven and I don't think he was, there was a lot of user ways to make money if you 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 he obviously found interesting.
At the same time, you know, I think his, I think more than being an artist about like, what is the what is the most artistic video I can make? Right? I think he's basically saying I want to make the best new to 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 a hundred million views in a few hours. And for some reason, Mr. Beast video has never popped up my feet, 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 shit like that. Did you see that? Yeah, what's that one?
That's crazy. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out four fifths of the pages.
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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, but what can't they buy? Right.
And so we rent out the stadium for the final game of our tournaments 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 wait, check. Come here, your ears. So that's all 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 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 photo out of the podcast. Yeah, which is a very, very great touch.
We stole it from K Academy Coach K. This is and they have that there. And so we're like, oh, that's a great idea. So little things like after the final game this time, we're 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 like we bring out the child, like energy in these people? And so we were taken to the locker room, and, you know, like in sports, like when you went to championship, you 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. It's 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.
It was cool 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 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, OK, 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 down just in six weeks.
Is this was us what you will focus 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. So here's like, here's some ideas.
Here's what I thought was good last time, bad last time. Here's some ideas. Then goes and does things. And then he brought on some of that organizers to help us this time.
And then every couple of weeks we just sort of check in on like he's not doing it full time either, but like, you know, big truck this time. Well, the hard part is just the inviting the right people and getting to say, yeah, what I was doing. So I told you I was trying to write that book. So I basically become that family guy meme.
I don't know if you ever seen that episode of family guy where Brian's been writing a novel and Stewie's just trolling. He was like, how's that novel going? Yeah. You got some pages?
That's the 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 intimidating him. And so I've had this idea to write this book. I've been 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 were pretending. Yeah, 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.
It'll be the last day of printing. Is it any good? 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 his phrase.
He goes, peers aren't just the people around like near you. Like the guy you see to you, 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 shit.
But then you're all on social media posting and 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 is like the biggest month of January, 2026 might be the biggest month of your professional career in the last five years. Definitely the most productive. Um, I mean, nobody tries to write a book.
I gave myself two weeks and 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 pulled all nine or seven days and pulled it off. You want to tell me a cool story about excellence that I think is actually related to this? Yes. And it's probably the only time that the sports that I'm interested are going to overlap with this, well, sports in general.
I mean, you might be interested in this sport, not involve a ball or a goal of any kind. No, it's the only sports that they do are people beating each other up or running away from each other. It's chasing someone or what you do when you catch them. So which one is this?
Is it running or 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 and last night and I really wanted to bring it up with you because I think you maybe heard of it.
I don't know if you knew all the details. So in the 1960s and 1970s, there was this coach. 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 just 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 most?
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 six feet tall, you're going to take this many steps per mile and if I can reduce the weight of the shoes by only one ounce, that's going to save you 50 pounds 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 twenties, but they came over for brunch and the wife, his wife, those wife has made it 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 and 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 what I'm talking about, right? Yeah, Nike. Must be Nike. Yeah, Bill of Arman.
Bill of Arman 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 on an entrepreneurship class. 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 into the Nike actually start saying, Bill, let's actually just make the shoes that you're already making, but they were partners. Okay. So they were in parallel. Phil Knight is trying to start a shoe company.
Yeah. And this is like what is it called? Blue Ribbon or what's it called? Yeah, they're basically importing Japanese shoes and called it Blue Ribbon.
So we import other people's shoes and Bill separately is coach is experimenting tinkering with shoes and then they come together. So what's the come together story? You know, is there a Well, Phil Knight was 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 like 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 me to track me.
And 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 burpees, but it doesn't. Capital overnight. OK, so that's not the story that I want to actually bring up. What I really want to talk about was steep, pre-fontane.
Do you know who steep, pre-fontane was? So he was a runner also. Was he like the first athlete he broke some record? He's wearing a Nike?
Is that his story? Sort of kind of. You're in the ball. You lost the leg or that's the Canadian guy?
That's Terry Fox, who I made fun of once in Canada and they booed me on stage. He's like, Terry Fox is this guy who ran across Canada with one lake that he lost a cancer and I saw a sign or like a statue for him like all over like Canada and Sean and I did a live podcast. Blyed podcast. I was like, who the hell is this?
Terry Fox guy? These everywhere. It did not land. The definition of punching down.
Yeah. So Google Steve pre-fontane. We were talking about like punk rock and not compromising. He's a hunk, right?
Is this guy the hunky of stuff? Hunk. So Steve. I think by the way, hunk pretty underutilized.
I think we can think we should own that word. Is that what you want to be known for? Is a bunch of you things. I put that top five.
Steve pre-fontane, he was born in like a small fishy town called Coosbe and he was bad ass. He was bad ass in high school where he just like crushed everyone. And at the time when he was, this was in the late 1960s, Bill Bowerman actually basically pioneered the word jogging in America. So running was not even a thing.
Bill Bowerman was like, everyone, you should run. It's good for your health. And that is when like housewives started running. He has previously people would see someone running in the streets.
This was my mind. By the way, this is not that long. What do you say it was like in the 60s or something? Wasn't it like the jogging revolution was in the 60s and that's when steep.
And then yeah, it's like, you know, my dad is like a teenager or something. That's a jogging seems like it's just been around since it's previous. No, it wasn't a thing. That's an incredible marketing story, how they got like America to jog.
Do you know what? What inspired Bill was he was in World War II and he they were surrounded by Germans at one point and Bill was in was an outdoorsman. He was in a physical fitness and hiking and he noticed that the more fit soldiers who he was around, they were able to survive longer. And he eventually like overcame this German there was a German that somehow he conquered them and made them surrender.
But it was at that time where he's like, I realize how important fitness was. And jogging is a really good example of how to get fit. And so he's popularized jogging. He wrote a book called Jogging and it went viral.
It was on the cover of Sports Illustrated in the 60s. That's how I seen a newspaper article that was like, this strange phenomenon taking place in the suburbs of America. People are going outside and running. Like something's come over to these people like an alien invasion has happened and people are doing the strange behavior now.
That was Bill. So Bill popularized this and that's one of the many reasons why when Steve Prefontaine was in high school running, obviously not very popular now, unless occasionally you get like a freak like you saying, Bolt and you're like, that's really cool. Well, Bill Barman was sort of that guy in the 60s and 70s where people like this guy invented jogging how cool he's kind of neat. But then it wasn't like a cool thing, but it was like a neat thing.
But then this kid named Steve Prefontaine and he was the exact opposite of Bill. And I'll explain in a minute, but he just crushed all these kids in high school and then he got recruited to the University of Oregon to run for Bill. Now, Bill is a very methodical scientific guy. And what that means is that he hated front running.
His whole idea was it's your goal to win the race. Your goal is not to look cool. It's not to lead the whole time. It's to do the least amount of work to get the desired result, which is to win.
That is not what Steve Prefontaine was about. He said he has the same as well. He was if I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it with style. And his whole shtick was that he would run the race from beginning to end as hard as you could.
He was short and he was to say that he wasn't gifted. He was very gifted, but he would kind of joke that he wasn't gifted and he would say to give anything less than less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. And he also had this other quote where he said, a lot of people run a race to see who's fastest. I want to race to see who has the most guts.
And that's what he was famous for. It was running all out as hard as he could. Honk. Honk, right?
Like in the book. Honk like attitude. Dude, it's even honkier in the book that I've read about him. They used to talk about his gaze.
I don't know if you could Google like steep. I'm taking a little too much now. Google's, well, hold on, Google's, this is important. It's actually about branding.
Google's deep pre-fung pain posters. And he's famous for this like gay. So he was like, stay really hard at things. And that poster is one of the most famous posters.
If you are like a nerdy high school kid who cares about running, like you have this poster. This guy was the boss and turns out in the 1972 Olympics in Munich, he did his front running thing where with like three or four laps to go, which there's still a lot left to go, he takes hold and he leads the Olympic race for the 5000 meters. And it doesn't work out. And at the very end, the other guy's out kick him and he gets fourth.
And tragically, he dies like a year and a half later in a car crash. He was drinking and driving. But he was Nike's first sponsored athlete. And what Phil Knight says is the, the, the, even though that Jordan kind of made Nike most famous, that's people know Nike now, they say that Steve Prefontaine was the sole of Nike.
This idea of like fierce independence of competitiveness. He goes, Phil was like, I didn't really have that. That was Steve. Everything Steve was about.
I took it from him and I made it into a brand called Nike. That's six. It's like if the man was a brand and then they basically don't like you in that, in that image, right? Like that attitude.
It's bad ass. Yeah. So before Nike was Nike, it was called Blue Ribbon Sports, then they changed it to Nike. And they're like, Steve is the brand that we're trying to be like.
And the reason I think this interests me is I love like these punk rocks, like Maverick Renegade's guy, Renegade guys. But I also am interested in like stealing from the past. So like finding good ideas. And so I was thinking about Bill Bowerman and his famous book called the Men of Oregon and Steve Prefontaine.
I was like, what can I steal about his branding? He has a bunch of really cool branding. So for example, when he was at his peak, he was kicking everyone's ass. Someone made a shirt that said go Steve, go or said, or sorry, I said, go pre.
And he made a different shirt that said, stop pre. Yeah. And he put it on a stop sign and these t-shirts got really popular. Stop pre.
Wait, why did he make the opposite? Because the first one's supporting him, but he just was like, no, it was a joke, but it was just kind of like, like, I'm so good that people have to stop me. And it's pretty cool. And so like that actually that t-shirt is really cool.
I love that t-shirt. And if you look at these quotes, look at this quote, no matter how hard you train, somebody will train harder. No matter how hard you run, somebody will run harder. No matter how hard you want it, somebody will want it more.
I am somebody. How good is that? So he's got so many of these quotes. And when you get this combo, like athlete poet and you get Ollie or you get McGregor or you get, you know, this is like Steve Prefontaine is the best.
And I think that you can have and so like a lot of times people don't realize this, but there exists certain personality types and attributes that supersede a sport or genre or niche. So this guy, I don't even care about running. You don't care about running. But I would buy this guy shirt.
Yeah, or like Lance Armstrong was another one. Like Lance Armstrong, you're telling me this guy's going to be the most famous athlete on earth for a couple of years via cycling? Are you kidding me? And even frankly, I don't remember exactly.
But when I was a kid, golf was a loser sport until Tiger Woods. Like it wasn't like that big of a deal. Same with Serena Williams and Venus Williams. It was like kind of interesting.
But then like that movie, Marty Supreme came out and it's about table tennis. And I remember watching that table tennis sport. Like, I'm like, Oh my God, this guy's punk rock. I love table tennis now.