One thing that I don't think anybody really talks about, it's kind of touchy-feely, but every single successful person I know has a story like this. I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to. Put my law in it like a day zone. So let's try my own life.
All right, Sam, I want to do a SWORC episode that is about one specific topic, believers. So a lot of founders I know are interested in getting investors, getting advisors, I'm sure you get hit up a lot in your email for either, hey, will you invest in this, will you advise in this? So I think everybody needs somebody in their career, usually in your early 20s, that believes in you more than you believe in yourself at the time. They just have an irrational belief.
You're a penny stock, but they see you as a blue chip. And they want to buy up all your stock. And they do that by spending time with you, by spending effort with you, sometimes investing you, sometimes advising you, but it's not the advice, it's not the money that actually, now in hindsight, when you look back, is what mattered. The thing that really mattered was, this person believed in you more than you believed in yourself at the time.
And that they were, they almost treat you into believing in yourself or to just going forward and overcoming that initial hesitation or doubts to just get going to where finally your evidence will start to catch up. And eventually you're fueled by your evidence and you're fueled by your own self belief. But it's like jumping, jump starting a car. There's people in life who do that.
I've never talked to you about this. I know a couple of people in my life said to this, I want to hear, did you have this? I had this with a couple of people. First of all, my wife, I felt like she was like, the same thing when I met her.
She was like, pick it stocks. And she picked a good one, I hope. Yeah, I had two. The first one was Scott Belsky.
So Scott Belsky currently is the chief product officer of Adobe, soon to be CEO, I think. And he's probably a billionaire because he's started and sold a bunch of companies. And I cold emailed him when I first started my company, the hustle asking him to invest. And he said no.
And then about six or eight weeks later, he was on our daily email and I got an email from him in particular when I was having a horrible day. And he goes, these emails are just so good, I have to join. And he gave me like $15,000 or something like that. And I only met with Scott in person one time.
And like, Scott has always been, he was a big deal back then. He's a big deal now. And he had one meeting with me where he taught me, I had never heard the word steward. You know, steward, like you were a steward of this capital.
You were a steward of the brand. And he gave me this pump up talk. And he's like, you are so, I could tell, you were gonna be a steward of the hustle, like a steward of my money and anyone else's money, your customers, you have this. And I remember thinking it changed my life, back that Scott fucking Bells D believed to be.
And he used the word steward, I was so into it. The second person was Tim Ferriss. So I have told this story before, but basically I met Tim Ferriss because he lived near me in San Francisco and we would walk our dogs at the same time and just talk about neighborhood stuff. Well, a few weeks after we first started talking, I get an email from Tim saying, hey, I know what the hustle is, it's looks really cool.
Could we meet and get dinner? And I can ask you a little bit about email because I wanna start a newsletter. And I was like, yeah, sure, let's do it, man. And so we go out to dinner in our neighborhood and I get down to sit at dinner and he goes, oh, you are the dog owners guy?
Like you were the same guy? And I was like, yeah, man, what's going on? Because I never told him what I did for work when we would walk our dogs together. Cause I wanted him to think, I didn't wanna bother him.
Cause he was like celebrity to me and I didn't wanna ruin that relationship. And it was awesome, the fact that this guy like wanted to meet with me. And he was like, what are you guys doing? He's so smart, so innovative.
And I was like, it's not that interesting. He's like, no, it is. And he like bought into me and he believed in me. And that was such a big deal to me that he gave me the time of day.
Just even just at dinner. It was like game changing where I was like, I'm the man. I'm the man. I'm the best.
And I had that energy because of those two meetings. And did you use that as, I guess, was it just like a temporary high that fades, 30 minutes later? Or do you feel like that planted some kind of seed in you? It planted a seed because then I would look at Scott and Tim's other endeavors.
They did some amazing stuff. And it felt good. You know how many go to a website? And you see someone who puts your logo on their website to brag that they use you?
You go to like Hubs.com and Nike, it says Nike, and I felt so much, I felt so much gratitude that I was one of the logos on their websites. Do you know what I mean? And I remember thinking that, I'm like, look, this person picks a bunch of winners. And I happen to be part of this basket.
I feel honored. And so I would use that for a long time. I'd go to his crunch base profile. He lists the hustle as an investment.
I remember thinking like I was so special and I used that for fuel for a long time. That's a great story. Have you done that for anyone else? Do you think?
Yeah, look, you and I have done it together on this podcast when we call people out. And I think like, for example, Michael from Our Future, this kid who was probably 20 years old, when he called email to UNI to make videos for us. And we loved his energy. But I think that like you and I both bought into him a little bit.
We're like, you're energy so good. Or same with Dylan and Henry. Like, yeah, I think you and I have done it together. Who bought in?
Who bought yours? So I'll give you three quick examples. The first one is a woman named Lisa Kiester. Lisa Kiester is a professor at Duke where she was at the time.
I have no idea what she's doing now. It's a good reminder to look up and drop a note. I took a class my last year at Duke. I was a pre-med student.
I'd taken the MCATs. I was ready to go to bed school. And my last semester I said, I should take a class and my two best friends. Crazy with friends through college.
We lived together. We'd never take a class together. We decided let's take the easiest class we can. I was so burned out from studying for the MCATs.
And she wanted something that was the easiest class. We looked it up on right by first.com. And it was the easiest class called Getting Rich. Sounds good.
Good title. And she was just clickbaiting us. It was a personal finance and entrepreneurship class. Getting rich sounds a lot better.
She was a woman who she had a crazy story. She graduated from Duke with a degree in Mandarin. Because that's what she was interested in. She just followed what she was interested in.
And she told us. She's like, I remember the time feeling completely clueless with what the hell I'm supposed to do with my life. Because all my friends were going to law school, banking, whatever. I didn't want to do those.
But it just felt like school was just giant. Like pipe. I just dumped you out in New York or LA or San Francisco and one of these tracks. And I wasn't on one of the tracks.
And I felt bad about myself. And I realized, people are like, what the hell are you going to do with this Mandarin degree? And they're like, look with that. And she's like, I bet I can figure something out in China.
So she just moves to China one way ticket. Ends up building a great business. They are connecting Chinese companies with American companies. Because she spoke with languages.
Anyway, she got super rich in the process. Retires by 30 comes back to Duke to teach. And so the reason she bet on me or believed in me early was she was not an investor. She really wasn't even an advisor.
She was a believer. We had this terrible idea to start a sushi restaurant chain. We were like, why isn't there a Chipotle for sushi? And we were like, we'll do it, even though we had no restaurant experience, no sushi, or something.
And everybody I talked to, every adult, every grown up that I looked up to was basically, like, restaurants, equal fail, doing a startup versus going to med school. Like, I don't know, man. Like, are you sure? You just got it.
You just got it. You just got it. You just got it. And you should just go.
And she was the only one who was like, this sounds awesome. You guys should totally do this. And at the time, I took that as she believes in our idea. We have a good idea.
And I wish I could say that she believed in us. But she didn't even really know us that well. She was actually just such a big believer that if you just do the most interesting thing and like the most exciting thing and ambitious thing for you in your life at the moment, shit works out. She was just a believer in the path or there'd be even us.
But at the time, I interpreted it as she thinks we can. We're going to win. She thinks this is a good idea. And this is going to work.
And so even if we'll also believe we'll work, if we were in Jin for a while, not only if we'll just believe, but just her one conversation with you, which she does not remember. And at the time, she was like, what I'm saying is not important. This is no big deal. And conversations like that make such a big impact, everyone.
So you don't mean it's like when your kid draws something and then they show it to you and it looks horrible. And she's like, this is awesome. Oh my god. Did you, how did you think of this or like whatever?
Like, are those two colors that is because of this? And you make them feel like they're a fucking artist. She did that for me, except I was 18 years old. I was 22 years old or something, 21 years old.
And she looked at my shitty business plan. And she was like, that's awesome. You could totally do this. And I fueled me.
And so at least it was the first one. And she, it was genuine by the way. There was no BS in it. I think she genuinely had that level of enthusiasm and excitement about it.
And it was contagious. It cannot be faked when somebody's genuinely excited for you. The second person was this guy named John Pendergras. So we got into some accelerator.
You're supposed to get assigned with a mentor, which is like, the most fake way you can get a mentor is like, it gets assigned to you. And this guy put in a request. He goes, I want these guys. And it was because he himself, although now he was in some FinTech company, his first business was a franchisee of Boston Market.
And he was like, oh, these guys are going to a restaurant thing? I can help them out. And he helped us out in two ways. The first was he gave us real talks.
So he took us into the Kennedy's office. And he was like, so what's the plan? We told him to help us. We'd get him to the pitch.
We'd practice a million times. Then he goes, is this going to work or not? And just him asking us that way, like, jard me. And I was like, I have no idea, which is like not what you're supposed to say when you're pitching or investors or employees or anybody really.
So let's just say, of course, it's going to work. Here's the research. Here's the study. Here's why I just plan.
I was like, dude, I have no idea. And he goes, so you probably shouldn't sign a lease that person will guarantee you a lease, right? If you don't know if this concept's going to work? He goes, how can you figure out if the concept's going to work?
He just asked a better question. Like, instead of where should we launch, what location should we go for? He's like, how do you figure out if this is even worth doing? People want this.
And he got us think that he got us to do like a cloud kitchen. And so he helped us that way. But the thing he did afterwards was much more valuable. After we talked to us for about an hour.
And the bad news was we were dumb. The good news is we knew we were dumb. Whereas there was a lot of 21-year-olds who were dumb, but they think they're smart. The one asset was we thought we were pretty dumb.
And so when somebody told us a good idea or somebody seemed smarter than us, we actually took them up on it. And so he told us to do these three things, or think about these three things. So we just immediately went and did those three things. And then four days later, we were like, hey, John, we did those four things.
Here's what we learned. Here's what we're going to do next. And so he was like, this is great, which is now that I'm in the position where sometimes I give people advice, that never happens. Like it seemed like the obvious thing to do, but actually that rarely ever happens.
Rarely do people ask a question, genuinely want the answer, then take good advice and act on it and come back and say, here's what happened. They closed the loop and say, here's what happened. Here's what we're going to do next. And so he wrote this blog post.
And what he said in the blog post, I don't believe was true at all at the time. But dude, that was like a gust of wind in our sails. He goes, I met these founders, and I've met a lot of founders, probably 100 founders, and I've given a lot of advice. He goes, these guys, they took what I said, they acted on it immediately violently.
He goes, one of the most important things for an entrepreneur is a high bias for action. He goes, and these guys, he named us, and he goes, they have the highest bias for action of anyone I've met in the last 10 years. I didn't even know that phrase, it's kind of like you're talking about Stewart, I didn't even know her bias for action. That was not a phrase I'd ever heard.
But I was like, fucking put that label on my back. That's me now. I was a blank canvas before that. I was an empty vessel.
And him giving me that label became kind of like a calling card. So I don't know what the right act of what the right answer is, but I know that how I do things is I have a high bias for action. So I'm just going to take a shit ton of action and I'll figure things out that way. And so he gave us like a real gift in that moment, which was again, not really true, but it didn't matter.
It was like true in my mind. And therefore, he gave me something to strive for, which reminds me of your Belsie story. So check this out. So John is an entrepreneur, I guess.
I think it's a podcast too. I found, I won't say too much, I don't know if people see this. I found an old Sean website that is basically your resume. And on your website, and on this website, it has references.
And you've got one from John. I would bet on these guys in almost anything. They have the highest bias to action of any entrepreneurs I've met in the past few years. And it links off to this blog post that he wrote about you, which is insane.
In the blog post, he has a conversation that you guys had together. And it's pretty funny. Exactly. So that was the second one.
And the third one was Michael Birch. He was the guy who was what I wanted to be. He was a Silicon Valley billionaire. Built multiple successful companies.
Was living the life, had a cool office in San Francisco. And I moved to San Francisco to work with him. And so I worked with him. And eventually, he ended up promoting me.
He was the CEO at the time. I was the junior guy in the company. I was 24 years old, a young guy in the company. And he actually promoted me to CEO, which was insane.
This is like an 18 person company at the time. And it wasn't that he promoted me. It was the speech he gave. He goes, it took me off site.
And I thought I was going to fire it, because that's what I had seen in movies. And they take you out to coffee, because they want to shoot you in the head out there and not cause a scene in the office. So I texted my mom. I was like, oh, no, he wants to meet off site.
I'll be home for lunch. It's over. I had a good run. It was fun.
But whatever I was doing there, I went there. I went there. I did something wrong. He sat me down.
And same as wife. And he goes, when you meet somebody, sometimes you just know. And I think he's talking about his wife. And he goes, I bet a lot of people in Silicon Valley, I know now when somebody's special and they're going to do something special in their career.
Because you're either going to do it here or elsewhere. So I want to give you the keys. I have you to do it here. And I was blown away.
It was like a astrology reading. It didn't mean anything. There was no evidence. There was no logic.
There was no explanation. No rationale. But him just saying, you're going to do something special. That fucking fueled me.
I then failed for like six years straight right after that, which felt horrible because this guy believed in me. And I just felt like I couldn't deliver this billion dollar company that I was supposed to. But that fueled me for a very long time. Dude, this more than anything inspires me to give these speeches to other people.
Yeah, I'm wish I would have a Willy Millie maybe. Everybody's getting the fortune cookie from me from now. Can I just tell you one of the funnier things that I've seen this week? So on Shawn's, this looks like Shawn's like a year out of college.
He's 24 years old. On your website, which I assume is your resume basically, you have your height and weight listed. So it says, Sean Perry, 24 years old, 6 foot, 167 pounds, a pure hustle. Yeah, dude.
I didn't know how to do it. Twisted steel and sex appeal. Like you just like, you're listed. You're height and weight on your resume.
And you said, I live on a stage, run on fumes, and I'm willing to take big risks. Oh my god, that is so funny. When you're the greatest founder in the world, they don't call you the greatest founder. They call you Shawn Perry.
All right. Yeah. At least I didn't know how to make a resume. I didn't know what you're supposed to do.
So I just like thought from first time. So I was like, what would I do? And it was like half NBA draft scouting report, like my height, my weight. I did it.
You can see it on there. I did a thing that was like, you'll probably see this. I did like a skills bar, like an NBA 2K, where it's like, this person's like good at 3.3. Bad at dunking.
Like, and I remember I did this. And the guy in the interview was like, so I looked at your resume, if I can call it that. And he goes, hard work is only like halfway full. What?
Why would you say that you don't work hard? It's like, well, true. That's why. Dude, a lot of your stuff is accurate, by the way.
You did that 24. That's over 10 years ago. Negotiations was high. Design, medium, programming, nothing.
Public speaking, almost 100 out of 100. You had attributes, son. You knew exactly what you were on point. Right?
That's a high. This is such a funny website. This is so funny. Organization under 50, like on a scale of 0 to 100, my organization is a 40.
That's true. You know that. Where's my hard work with? Work ethic.
OK, I gave myself like a 70. Whereas like, you know, improvisation, I gave myself a 90. This is like an accurate. At least I told them all lies.
This is so funny. And then you have like a collage of all the stuff. And it says, how about the press? And it's a collage of all the time that you've been mentioned in media.
This is awesome. It's actually cool to see. I bet you a lot of people who listened to this. I did that in my final interview with the billionaire.
He scrolled down to the bottom. I had this little motivational poster. I mean, it's all cringe now, dude. Let's see the cringe.
It's all very cringe. But I'm like, it's like crowd cringe. Like when you look back and you're like, oh, that was a geeky high school. But like, you know, this is going places.
That's what I felt like I was going to buy. And I had one thing on here that got referenced. I was like, you know why? I like to resume the very last line under things that don't believe you're on bullshit.
I like that. And I resonated with the billionaire. And I was like, oh man, I was throwing shit at the wall. This whole thing was like 100 possible things that might resonate.
You're like, I actually did believe my own bullshit. And it works. Like I did for all this shit. And it got me here.
That's awesome. I like this website, by the way. Yeah. Believers versus advisors.
I'm on board. Be a believer for somebody. And if somebody believe in you, it's a good reminder to hit them up and thank them for it. That's the takeaway here.
That's it. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I can be what I want to. I put my law in it like a day's off.
So the road let's travel never looking back.