Best of This Week: Jan 28th
Hey, welcome to My First Million. This is Ben Wilson here to bring you another best of episode. This time we're going best of the week, and I think we're gonna try and do these things going forward. It's just 20 to 30 minute episodes where we pull some of the highlights from the week in case you weren't able to hear absolutely everything. So we'll put these out on Fridays, but let us know what you think, whether you like this new format. You can holler at me, Sam, or Sean on Twitter. Okay, so for our first clip, we're bringing you a conversation about what it takes to be a billionaire. Sam's hypothesis is that just about anyone can grind their way to a few million dollars, but it takes a certain personality to become a billionaire. And he explains what that personality is.
We have a buddy who texted me yesterday. He's— you don't know him as well, but I think we can mention him. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say his name because it's a funny, funny quote.
Well, say it, say it, and then say his name, then bleep him. We'll bleep it out.
Texted me and he goes, you know, he texted me, he's like, you know, I just expanded the vision for what I'm doing. He goes, this is eventually going to be the next BlackRock, bigger than BlackRock. I think I can be a trillionaire in the next 50 years.
Oh my gosh.
And I was like, he says it with a straight face. He's not like joking, which is amazing and delusional and amazing again. Right. That's like, that's my, that's how my brain goes. I'm like, wow. Then I'm like, wow, that's delusional. Then I'm like, Well, you know, great. You know, good for you.
That's what gets you done.
Is he capable? Is he capable of pulling it off? Yeah. Like I said this early on, I met him when he was like 19 or 20. And I said, of all the people I've ever met, if I had to bet my life, which one of these people who today is worth less than, you know, $5 million will be a billionaire, I would have put my life on the line on him. Because I was like, he's singularly focused on just that. So it's like, you know, Michael Phelps woke up every day and swam like for fucking 3 hours and then ate 18,000 calories and then did that for like 12 years straight and didn't take a day off. So it's like, yeah, when you devote your life singularly to a pursuit, whether it's swimming laps in a pool or it's becoming a billionaire, you know, that already cuts you away from 99% of the population that wants to be wealthy but also wants to be, you know, in a good relationship and also wants to be this and also wants to have fun with their friends and go out on the weekends. It's like he cuts out all that. So, you know, I think it gives him the odds on top of being a very smart, capable guy, right? Like he's already amongst the like high IQ people. Then within that, he's got an obsession on money that very few people have.
Let me, let me play devil's advocate, or as my other favorite podcast calls it, devil's avocado. Let me play devil's avocado here for a second. Who says that? So Michael Bisping said it at his old— he goes, "Double avocado." Yeah. So two things. One, I'm reading this book, or I already read it, called Sport— recently called Sports Gene. And they basically talk about genetics and they're just like, look, like the closer you live to the equator, the longer your limbs are and the shorter your torso is. And that just makes you like 15% better runner. And what that means is like, if your legs are longer and your— that just means that if we all work the same and the best people from who don't have long legs and short torso So some of them definitely can compete, but like you have a 15% edge. And when you're talking about gold medals and being the best in the world, that 15% is like a world—
tenths of seconds on things, you know, that helps.
Yeah. They're like, that's just, it's like, it's like, it's like a giraffe versus a hippo or, you know, something like that. Like that just matters. And so one, becoming like a billionaire, which is an outlier, like I actually think that like you can kind of sweat your way to like maybe 5 or 10 million in a lifetime, but becoming a billionaire and this huge outlier, I think it takes like a particular type of skill. Like you're just genetically predisposed to have it in your favor. And I think that matters here. Not saying this kid does or does not have it, but I think that it's more important than just like training for 12 hours a day. I think that just being gifted genetically is more important than hard work. To be the best though, you need both. Second, you, you know, like I definitely believe like the whole pull yourself up by your bootstraps thing. But in order to be like, let's just call the threshold a billion. In reality, it's probably like $200 million, $100 million. Like there's so much luck that needs to be involved. On a macro level, it's like, which country are you born in? But on a micro level, it could be just like, well, like, did you just meet, happen to do a good impression? Yeah.
Who's your roommate in college?
Yeah. Or are you able to stay healthy? Did you not fall in love and meet someone? Like, you know what I mean? Like there's all these tiny, like, luck things that really matter. Like Jeff Bezos, like, did his mom— I think, wasn't he adopted?
Yeah, he's adopted.
So like, that is like a— it's a big decision, but it's like a relatively small, like, decision. It's a yes or no decision that changed everything. Totally. Or did you decide to go to Princeton versus Stanford? Like, it's—
and you know what I mean? Those would have been successful no matter what, but there's a difference between this guy made $10 or $30 billion in his lifetime versus became at one point the richest man on earth or the richest man ever to walk the earth or whatever, you know, like there was a, the variance. So to me, success is very, success has success itself. The yes or no has very little to do with luck. The magnitude of success has a lot to do with luck, but that's why I was saying, you know, I'm, I'm creating a funny hypothetical, which is of people who already are not already in a good position financially, like under $5 million net worth, let's say they're not, they don't have some edge there where they're just going to invest their way to success of those people who haven't already made it. Who would I bet is most likely to make it? Well, I agree with you that if it was the field versus him, I'd take the field. But what am I going to bet on? I like, for example, I think you could say, like, our buddy Jack Smith. I think you could say, you know, Jack is a quirky, curious guy who's actually not obsessed with money at all, but just is like really into what he's into, and it's usually off the beaten path. That's gonna usually win in a way. And he's super smart also, right? Like they're still in the top 1% IQ or whatever, that's gonna have a good outcome. I believe that. But you're kind of betting that this guy's luckier, this— his magnitude of success is gonna— he's gonna have more luck than this guy. And I think you can kind of tell who's gonna get luckier, who's not. But it's really hard to place it. Like, who would you bet if I said— if I told you that same situation? I don't know if you have a name, but before somebody had a bunch of money, who in your life did you run into that you're like, all right, if I had to say who's gonna become a billionaire in my life, this is who I would pick.
I mean, when I met Moiz Ali, he didn't— he had sold the company and he probably was worth less than $5 million. And immediately it took a few days of meeting him, like, oh, uh, you're a shark.
Yes, shark is a good word. What made you feel that way?
He had a singular focus. I mean, he was customer-focused, but singular focus. He's like, and really high intensity, very high intensity, singular focus.
Uncomfortable intensity. I'm uncomfortable when I talk to him.
Yeah, uncomfortable. And also he like, he was a lawyer from Harvard. So like top of the top of the top.
Yeah.
And then his brother is uber successful. So I'm like, there's no reason why you should screw this up.
And so when I met him, that I thought was hilarious. He has these great one-liners. He always said something that was like, um, you know, like, I don't know, some people were put on, you see Usain Bolt and you say that guy was put on earth to run. You see this person, they were put on, Michael Phelps, you see his body. He was put on earth to swim. I was put on earth to do one thing. Increase earnings per share.
He always— he, he, like, one time he told me, he goes, you know what my worst— the worst phrase I hate on Earth is? When I hear it, it makes me cringe and I run the— run the other way. Blue chip stocks. He goes, you want to talk about words that I love? What did he call it?
Distressed assets.
Distressed asset. That's what he said. He goes, he goes, the two most beautiful words of the English language, distressed Assets. And he said that, I was like, oh my God. And then one time I, one time I heard him—
Amazing one-liners.
One time I heard him, one time we met with this person who has this vitamin company that's doing really well and he was being really cordial and nice and everything and just saying hi. And then this person walked out the room and he looks at me and he goes, that person's business is one Google search away from me ruining it. He's like, that's one Google search away from me copying their company. Cuz he's like, the formula is nothing. And he, that was like, that was the first line that he said. He is really, he's a poet.
For our next clip, we have our guest Val Kotyev talking about testing. He says that the thing that sets him apart is his curiosity and ability to test out many new ideas. So he talks a little bit about what that process is like and how he does it.
Why do you think that you find this weird stuff and why don't you hire people? Two different questions, but how on earth do you find this type of stuff?
You know, it's funny, like I know, I see how organized you are, right? Like you make your goals, you lay everything out on paper, right? You're very organized and you could think about it. You ask people for feedback. I'm totally opposite of that. I just kind of go with where, like I like to test things and I guess I'm very curious. And I could be very, very focused, but if I get distracted, I get very easily distracted, right? So it could be like, sometimes it's a curse, but sometimes it's a blessing. A lot of times it's a blessing, and I come across these interesting things and my curiosity just takes it further. So when I— so the way I actually came across this thing was because I felt that there was a point of my life where I was seeing Google was just too dominant part of my business. And I didn't like that because I didn't want to rely on any one thing. So I started looking outside of paid search for supply. And I came across these music sites and I actually started testing Rhapsody on them. 'cause I had such a good deal with Rhapsody. I was like, let me start marketing outside of search. It did okay. And I had these, you know, I started building these relationships with the music sites. And then I kind of tested a ringtone service and it just crushed. Like it was not even close. Like it did 3 times better. And I'm like, wow, this thing did 3 times better than Rhapsody. Ringtone provider was, uh, just covering US, just like one or two music labels and like two carriers out of four. I think I had four— there were four major carriers at the time. I was like, hold on a second, if it's already doing three times as well, what happens if I start integrating everything globally, right? So that's how Ringtone Matcher came about.
Was there— when you launch stuff, what's your first version like? Junk. Like, do you get the idea and it's online in 12 hours?
It was a kitty script I wrote. This, you know, guy was kind of freelancing for me a little bit. I just— I didn't even want to tell him about the idea. He's actually a CTO of one of my companies now. He was like 15, 16 years old, and I didn't tell him the idea. So I said, hey, how do you script this? How do you script that? So I scripted it myself. And, um, and, uh, so yeah, so it was pure junk. It was literally just a bunch of if and then statements on— and, and ASP. It was— we were running Windows, um, Windows Server on ASP infrastructure, so I, I had a bunch of redirects that were just doing a bunch of if and then statements and redirecting people based on certain parameters.
When, and when you're doing it, are you like, see, every time I've hung out with you, the reason I like hanging out with you and Joe, I consider Joe one of my best friends. And so I have like his attitude. You and Joe have the same attitude, which is like, he's a little more laid back than me and you. I think he is, he is, I've never seen him lose his temper. He is very calm. And I'm like, hey, this didn't work out for this reason. He goes, oh. That's okay. Like he's super calm, but you have that too. I think, I think that like, I think that what it is, you have this, like, I don't know if it, the right word is like chutzpah, if the right word is like, I don't know what the word is, but it's almost like things I've heard, we're gonna get to the rest of the stories because, cuz there's like this jewelry business that you started, which is like, seems like even bigger than all of the other things that you've done potentially. And. You like do these things where I'm like, but like, Val, you don't know anything about that. And like, you don't even have any employees. Like you don't know anything. And, but you just are like, yeah, but I, you know, whatever. I'll just, we'll just go a little bit further and then we'll see what happens. And then if it sucks, I'll bail. You know what I mean? Like you have this like, aw shucks attitude. Like, oh, you know, yeah, we'll see what happens. It's very interesting. Whereas like if I was doing. What you were doing and I started seeing those results, I'm like, is this illegal? Am I breaking the law? Am I going to go to jail? What is going on? Like, it's almost like I would have— most people would have self-destructive tendencies when they see this like going so well.
Yeah, look, I see that all the time. I feel like people tend to overthink things and spend a lot of time like analysis paralysis. And the reason I think a lot of people are successful, like especially somebody like me, is while somebody's thinking about making, perfecting one thing, which by the way will still have a, you know, 60% failure, right, on that one thing that you just overthought, I'd rather test 10 things by, uh, within that same time period, and I will likely have, I have a better, um accuracy, or I'll have a better chance of hitting it out of the ballpark with one of those 10 things, maybe more than one of those things.
All right, our next clip is just a short clip about The Rock and his booming tequila business. It's a classic skewering from Sean. I love it when he gets on a roll making fun of something, and that's what we get here.
Did you see this, this funny thing? They have this kind of tangent. Did you see this? So Austin Reef tweeted out the guy, that guy from Morning Brew, he tweeted out, you know, hey, you know, The Rock is going to become a billionaire off of his tequila. Did you see this tweet?
Yeah. And then The Rock replied.
So I'll explain it. Yeah. So he goes, The Rock's going to become a billionaire from, from this tequila. And he goes, you know, Ryan— oh, who is it? Oh, George Clooney. George Clooney's Casamigos was sold for $1.2 billion and was doing like 170,000 cases. The Rock is already doing like whatever, I don't know, it was like 3.5 times that. So, you know, The Rock's doing whatever, no public math, x more cases, he's going to become a billionaire off this business. And The Rock replies, which is kind of amazing because The Rock is one of the most famous people on social media, period, like in the world. So pull, pull that, pull that tweet up. By the way, this Ben screen sharing thing, in the words of Sam Parr, can you say game changer?
So make that a little bigger.
And we need a name you know, like Powerful Young Jamie. We need, uh, you know, like Powerful Mormon Ben. We need like some, some killer nickname for you. So he gets— so Dwayne Johnson replies and says the following: Cheers, Austin, emoji of a tequila glass. I don't know about that first line, LOL, but I can speak to part— to the parts— to— I can speak to the, the parts of this tweet, blushing smiley face. Like, The Rock is flirting with him. And then he goes Our projections to 1 million cases is pretty mind-boggling and expedient. Just like when he said expedient, I thought it was so funny.
I was like, yeah, he writes like a weirdo.
Left field. And he goes, big, exciting, big comma, exciting Tarimana announcement coming next week. Stay tuned, man. Picture emoji of the earth and then emoji of a fist pound, which I don't— is that the symbol of Tarimana? I don't know.
That's a weird, weird reply, but that's cool.
So funny to me. Like I lost it.
Our last clip features yours truly. I was presented with a unique consulting opportunity and suffering from a little imposter syndrome, and Sam and Sean talked me through it.
Sean, do you get asked to consult and like do this type of stuff?
I get asked. I'd never consult anymore, but, uh, I basically run a simple filter, which is, would I do this for free? That doesn't mean I'm gonna do it for free. It's, would I do this for free? So for Ben, in Ben's case, Ben's like, oh, this sounds like a super interesting guy.
And he did do it for free.
I'm gonna learn as much from this guy as he's gonna learn from me. If not more. So, you know, I'm happy to, to do my— do this with my time. So that, that's one thing. And then the second part is, dude, you get paid crazy money for doing this type of shit. Like, Sam, you do these GLG calls. Have you done any?
I used to. I think I was getting paid $1,000 an hour.
Yeah, exactly. I set my rate at the max that they let me do, which is now $2,000.
$2,000, that's what it was.
And, and dude, I'll get paid $2,000 to just do like a 40-minute call with some rent— like, first of all, it's kind of funny because they're like, It is this like weird underground dominatrix shit where it's like, I'm a hedge fund manager. I can't tell you the fund. I can't tell you what I'm looking at. I can't tell you my name, but I like, it's like a one, it's a one-way transaction. It's like I'm the masseuse and they're laying face down. I can't see who they are. And, um, and then they're like, okay, say the word metaverse. And I'm like, tell me, tell me who's going to, who's, which stocks you know, because of the metaverse. I'm like, dude, I don't fucking know. And they're like, what? And I'm like, yeah, but I could tell you, you know, here's some things I think.
Well, whenever I do those things, I talk really slow.
Yeah, you need an hour to pass.
Yeah, I always talk really slow and I'm like, wait, hang on, let me get my headphones.
Yeah, the better way— I can't talk slow, it's like I'm too nervous. Like, like I said with Ben, you feel a tremendous amount of pressure. It doesn't really matter how much money you have when somebody's paying you something. I would never pay someone $2,000 for a phone call, even though I'm sure there's an economic case where it makes sense. It's just a big number to me to just pay for somebody to talk to me. Uh, I'm so, I'm so, I'm so not used to it that when I'm on the other side, I'm getting paid I'm like, I need to deliver this guy like some insane insight that they've— and I put this weird pressure that just is unachievable. But I'll be like, I'll say my point and I really only have one point and I'll be like, another way of thinking about it is I'll repackage the same idea with like some metaphor or some analogy just to fill airspace. Because like, like in reality it's one idea that, that's worth it for them or not. And I don't have like 10 amazing ideas. I have one around one topic, you know, I don't have 10.
There's a— there's— that's why Ben's shtick is amazing, because Sean, well, you can only consult on your life experience, and you, like, you can't live that interesting of a life all the time. And whereas Ben can just steal— he can just read a book a week and he's gonna have, like, you know, 52 new ideas a year.
The thing that this guy was trying to sell me on was that I should come up and speak to his bank. Um, and he's like, you could get paid like easy, like $50 grand a pop to come up and give me—
sure, that's speeches.
Um, how many of those you do?
I, I did one recently, it was $25,000, but it was in person.
Yeah.
How many of those Zooms a month? How many Zooms a month do you do? More than one a month?
Not even one a month. One every two months probably is the, the current.
That's pretty sick to me though.
Yeah, it's great. It's, I mean, it's a gr— it's great money cuz, uh, there's this other thing, Ben, I don't know what this, what the history or psychology will tell us about this, but, uh, there's extra joy in making money when you can assign what that money gets to go to versus just generally making money and it's gonna go into a general pot of a bank account versus like, oh, 10 grand.
All right.
If I'm like, oh, I do these 2 speeches this week, this month, I'll go buy that car or I'll go get my wife this gift. And she's like, wow, that's great. That, hey, this, this work you did was awesome. And, uh, I don't know what the name for that metaphor is, but I abuse the shit outta that.
Consumerism, just consumerism.
So you guys can tell me if there's ever a moment— like, the reason I'm not doing any of this stuff is I just feel fraudulent, like going up there.
And that's normal.
But yeah, maybe I just need to get over it. I don't know.
100%, you need to get over it. Uh, like, the way you should think about things is most of your life you're basically underpaid. Um, you're underpaid and underappreciated. And, um, you know, the universe has this way of evening itself out where, like, um You know, Sam will make more money off of like some random investment he thought about for 5 minutes than he would have, you know, grinding some business that he— his apartment roommate finder business he did for 2 years or 3 years. And so like, you know, the inputs don't always match the outputs in life. And once you sort of acknowledge that, you accept that, that's like the first thing you have to acknowledge, which is like the level of difficulty for me is not what dictates the value for somebody else.
So that's number one. The effort is not in proportion to the output.
It's irrelevant. All that matters is the output. The The fact that you know input is a liability for you. It is a weird psychological liability. You would be better off not knowing how hard it was to say that one thing to that guy at that moment. The second thing is that Mr. Market will decide what it's worth. And you might get lucky once, you might get lucky twice, but if people consistently pay you for something, it's because that's what it's worth to them, if not being worth more, right? They need a positive ROI on that interaction. And so just let the market decide, and the market over time will balance itself out. Maybe, maybe one one-off, yeah, that was just a fluke, but if it happens consistently enough— and you should just expect it to happen consistently— then it works.
I, I think you should lean into this hardcore, because how much money are you making on ads for your— let's just say the numbers. Can you say the number? Do you want to do it or no?
Um, yeah, because I have one sponsor right now It's Cold Plunge.
Cold Plunge.
Shout out Cold Plunge.
Go to the top. I use too.
Really, Sam, Sam is the one carrying that sponsorship.
Use code Ben Wilson for, I don't remember how much off, $150 off, something like that. Um, and so I, I will say I'm making a 4, 4 digits per month, low 4 digits.
Okay. So 1 to 5,000 a month.
Um, by the way, also the hack, when somebody says how many digits, just take the bottom 3 numbers of that range. So if I say I make 7 figures, I'm saying $1 to $3 million. If Sam says we sold for 8 figures, it's $10 to $30 million. If somebody's right, like nobody— well, over half, you usually say it differently. Once you're— once you cross the— if you cross over $50 million, you would say over $50 million, not 8 figures.
Or like the figures can include the .00. Yeah, there you go. That's a figure. 9-figure exit, bro. Um, so I think you should go and do this, Ben. I think that you should include, I think you should go hard on this. So you have 100,000 listeners a month. You're making single-digit thousands of dollars. You would make like 6 figures a year for sure doing this.
You should do your own ad read, which basically says, look, you listen to this and I, you know, people who listen to this tell me they got a bunch of inspiration. They got, uh, you know, some strategies. They got, they filled in the gaps of something they didn't know about history and they can see their place in the world today through that, whatever, blah, blah, blah, some bullshit. And you basically say, I used to run ads for cold plunges. By the way, use code Ben Wilson at checkout if you want. But actually what ended up happening, and you just basically say, this is what ended up happening. Companies started hiring me to come in and talk to them about lessons from the greatest, you know, the greatest blah, blah, blah in history. And it's motivational for the executive team. It's a great addition to any offsite, blah, blah, blah. And so that actually ends up making me more money than the ads. So if that— if you're interested in that, you should contact me, blah, blah, blah. I bet if you do that, you'll get one of these a month and it will quadruple your current ad, you know, ad revenue for the month.
Dude, you got to do this, man. You've got to do this.
Alright, that does it. Again, if you want to let us know what you thought of the format, holler at us on Twitter. And that's it. Thanks for listening.