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 twenty to thirty 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 friday but let us know what you think whether you like this new format you can holler it 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 know 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 i you you you don't know as well but think you could mention him i don't know maybe i shouldn't say his name because a funny funny quote well say it say it and then say his name and bleep him okay it up so text me and he goes you know i he text me he's like you know i just expanded the vision for for what i'm doing he goes this is eventually gonna be the next black rock bigger than black rock i think i can be a trillion in the next fifty years oh my gosh and i was like he says with a straight face he's not like joking which is amazing and delusional and amazing again right that's like those that's my that's how my brain goes i'm like wow then i'm like wow that's digital then i'm like well you know great you know good for you that's what gives he capable is he capable pulling it off yeah like i said this early on a met when he was like nineteen or twenty 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 five million dollars will be a billionaire i would put my life on the line on him yeah because i was like he's singular focused on just that so it's like you know michael phelps woke up every day and swam like for fucking three hours and then eight eighteen thousand calories and then did that for like twelve years straight and didn't take a day off so it's like yeah when you devote your life singular to up pursuit whether it's swimming laps in a pool or it's becoming a billionaire you know that already cuts you away from ninety nine percent of the population that wants to be wealthy but also wants to be you know in a good relationship it 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 into on top of being a very smart capable guy right 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 please play devil's advocate or as my other favorite podcast calls it devil's avocado let me play let me play devil's avocado here for a second who says that so michael biz said it at his result he goes devil's devil's avocado yeah so two things one i 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 lens are and the shorter your torso is and that just makes you like fifteen percent better runner and what that means is like if your legs are longer and your is that just means that if if we all work the same and the best people front who don't have long legs at short torso so some of them definitely can compete but like you have a fifteen percent edge and when you're talking about gold medals and being the best in the world that fifteen percent it's like a world it's so seconds some things you know that helps yeah they're like that that's just some it's like it's like it's like a draft versus a hip or you know something like that like that that just matters and so one becoming like a billionaire which is an outlier like i actually think that like you can kinda sweat your way to like maybe five or ten million in a lifetime but becoming a billionaire and this huge outlier i think it takes like a particular type of skill like you 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 twelve hours a day i think that just being get gifted genetically is more important than hard work to be the best that you need both second you you know like i all i definitely believe like the whole pull yourself up by your bootstrap thing but in order to be like let's just call the threshold a billion when reality is probably like two hundred million a hundred 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 do depression made in college you know yeah or are you able to stay healthy did you not fall in love and meet someone like right you know what mean like there's all these tiny like luck things that really matter like jeff bezos i was like did his mom i think wasn't he adopted yeah he's adopted so like that is like eight 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 mean those would have been successful no matter what but there's a difference between the sky made ten or thirty billion dollars 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 yeah has a lot to do with luck but that's why i saying you know i'm i'm creating a a a funny hypothetical which is of people who already are not already in a good position to financially like under five million net worth let's say they they're not they don't have some edge there where they're just gonna invest the 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 gonna bet 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 in owl 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 and he's super smart also right like they're still in the top one percent iq or whatever that's gonna have a good outcome i believe that but you're kinda betting that this guy's luck your this his magnitude of of a success is gonna he's gonna have more luck than this guy and i think you could tell who's gonna get lucky or who's not but it's really hard to pay place it like who would you bet if i 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 alright if i had to say he was gonna become a billionaire in my life this is who i would pick i mean when i met moe ali he didn't he had sold a company and he probably was worth less than five million dollars and immediately took a few days of meeting him like oh your a shark yeah shark is a good word what what made you feel that way he was had a singular focus i mean he was customer focus but singular focus he's like in really high intensity very high intensity singular folks is folks uncomfortable intensity i'm uncomfortable 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 screwed this up and so when him that i thought was hilarious he has he's great one liners he always said something that was like you you know like i know some people were put you see you saying bolt and you say like i was put on earth to run you see this person they were put michael phelps you see his body he was put on earth to swim him i was put on earth to do one thing increase earnings per share he always he he like what time he told me he goes you only my worst the worst phrase i hate on earth is would i hear it it it makes me cringe and i run the out run the other way blue chip stocks you know you wanna talk about words that i love what did he call distressed assets dis 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 amazing one liners what 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 what google search away for being copying their company because he's like the formula is nothing and he that was like that was the first line that he said he he is really he's he's a poet for our next clip we have our guest val c of 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 one do you think that you find this weird stuff and why don't you hire people two different questions how on earth do you find this type of stuff you know it's it's it's funny like i know how i see how organized you are right like you make your goals you la out on paper right you're you're very organized then you could think about it you ask people for feedback i'm totally opposite of that i just kinda go with where like i like to test things and i'm i i guess i'm very curious and and i and i 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 occurs but sometimes a blessing and 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 when i so the the way i actually came across this thing was because i felt that that there was it was 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 don't wanna rely on any one thing so i started looking outside of page search for supply and i came across these music sites and i actually started testing rh on them because i had such a good deal with wraps it was like me start marketing outside of search and they're okay and i had these you know started building these relationships with the music sites and then then then i kinda tested a ringtone on service and it just crushed like it was not even close like it did three times is better and i like wow this thing is the three times better than rh and that ring provider was just covering us just like one or two music labels and like two carriers out of four i i had four there were four major carriers at the time i was like hold on a second it's already doing three times as well what happens if i start integrating everything globally right so that's how ring ringtone match came about was there when you launch stuff what's your first version like junk like you get the idea when it's can in twelve hours it was a kidd script i wrote this you know guy was kind of freelancing for me a little bit i just i i didn't even wanna tell him about the idea he's actually a cto of one of my companies now he was like fifteen sixteen years old and i did and tell the idea so i said hey how do you script this how do you script that so i script myself and and so yeah so it was pure junk it was literally just a bunch of if and then statements on and and asp there's we were running windows windows server on asp infrastructure so i i i had a bunch of redirects that we're just doing a bunch of if and then statements in and and redirecting people based on certain parameters wouldn't 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 i can say joe one my best friends and so i have like his attitude you and joe have the same attitude which is like he's really won't laid back than he just 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 and 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 you have this like i don't know if it the right word is like hot spa if the right word is like i don't know what the word is but it's almost like things i've i've heard we're gonna get to the rest of the stories because because 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 you know what whatever i'll just we'll just go a little bit further and then we'll see what happens and then if it if it sucks a bail you know what i mean like you have this like all shu 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 go to jail what is going on like oh it's almost like i would have most people would have self destructive tendencies when they see this like going so well yeah that 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 perfect one thing which by the way we'll still have a you know sixty percent failure right and that one thing that you just over thought i'd rather test ten things about within that same time period and i will likely have i have a better accuracy or i i'll have a better chance of hitting it out of the ballpark with one of those ten things and maybe even more than one of those things alright our next clip is just a short clip about rock and is booming tequila business it's a classic skew from sean i love it when he gets on a role making fun of something and that's what we get here did you see this this funny thing to have this kind of tangent did you see this so austin re tweeted out the guy that guy from morning bro he tweeted out you know hey you know the rock is gonna become a billionaire off of his tequila did you see the tweet yeah and then the rock replied so i'll explain yeah so he goes ro become a billionaire from from this tequila and he goes you know ryan oh who was oh george clooney george clooney casa ami goes was sold for one point two billion and was doing like a hundred seventy thousand cases the rock is already doing like whatever i don't know if it was like three and a half times that so you know the rocks doing whatever no public math x x more the cases he's gonna 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 to pull pull ben pull that tweet up by the way this ben screen sharing thing in the words of sam park can you say game changer so make that a little bigger and we think we need a name you know like powerful young jamie we need you know like powerful mormon band we need like some so some killer nickname for you so he gets a 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 too i can speak to other parts of this tweet blushing smiley face like the rock is flirting with him and he goes our projections to one million cases is pretty mind boggling and ex ex which i just like when he said ex ex i was so funny i was right on a left field and he goes big excited big come exciting terra announcement coming next week stay tuned man picture emoji of the earth and then emoji of his proud which i don't is that the symbol of terra i don't know that's a weird but life 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 impostor 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 i basically run a simple filter which is would i do this for free and doesn't mean i'm gonna do it for free it's would i do this for so for ben and 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 this guys he's gonna learn for 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 gl calls have you done anything i i used to i think that was paid a thousand dollars an hour yeah exactly i set my rate at the max that they let me to do which is now two thousand two thousand two thousand it was and and dude i'll get paid two thousand bucks to just do like a forty minute call with some re like first of it's kinda funny because they're like it is this like weird underground dom shit where it's like i'm a on 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 like it's like a one it's a one way transaction it's like i'm the masse asus and they're laying face down i can't see who they are and and then they're like okay say the word med and i'm like car tell me what tell me who's gonna who who's what stocks you up because of the med i'm like dude don't fucking know and they're like what and i'm like yeah but i can tell you you know hear some things i i think well whenever i do those things i talk really slow you're just hour to pass yeah you'd you i always talk really slow and i'm like wait hang on let me get my headphones yeah the the better way i i can't talk slow it's like i'm too nervous like like i said with ben you feel it trying us on a pressure it doesn't really matter how much money you have when somebody's paying you something i would never pay someone to grand 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's to talk to me 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 un una unbelievable but i'll be like i'll say my point and i really only have one point and i'm like another way to think about it is i i'll read back it's the same idea with like some metaphor or some analogy just to fill space because like like in reality it's one idea that that's worth it for them or not and i don't have like ten amazing ideas i have one around one topic you know i don't have there the ten there's a there's that's why ben s is amazing because sean will 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 could just read a book a week and he's gonna have like you know fifty two 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 and he's like you could get paid like easy like fifty grand to pop to come up and give me that's speeches and i do ten grand for a zoom at home to give a speech to somebody now how many you those do now i'm like why aren't am not doubling my price like if they're not know to this i need to basically the pricing strategy is unless half of the people are saying no you're priced way too low and so right now everybody saying yes why not price double that i i did one recently it was twenty five thousand but it was in person yeah how many of those a month how many zooms a month do you do more than one month not even one a month one every two months probably is the the current it's pretty sick to me though yeah i it's great it's i mean it's a it's great money because there's this other thing ben i don't know what this what the history or psychology will tell us about this but 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 ten grand alright if i'm like i do these two 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 i don't know what the name for that metaphor is but i abuse the shit out of that consumerism and just consumerism so you guys can tell me if there's ever a moment well 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 i don't know hundred percent you need to get over it like the way you should think about things is most of your life you're basically underpaid you're you're underpaid and underappreciated fraudulent and you know the universe has his way of evening itself out where like you know sam will make more money off of like some random investment he thought about for five minutes than he would have you know grinding some business that he his apartment roommate finder business he did for two years or three years and so like you know the inputs don't always is match the outputs in life and once you sort of acknowledge that you accept that that's like the first thing you've to acknowledge which is like the level of difficulty for me is not what dictates the value for somebody else that's the the the effort is not in proportion to the output it's irrelevant all that matters is the output 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 the you know mister market will decide what it's worth and like you might be 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 it's worth not being worth more right they're they need they need a positive roi on that 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 i think you should lean into this hard because how much money are you making on ads for your pot let's say say the numbers can you say the number you wanna do it don't yeah i can say i have one sponsor right now it's cold punch cole punch shout out and cold bunch go to the too you sam sam is one carrying that sponsorship you k ben wilson perfect i don't remember how much off hundred fifty dollars off or something like that it's so i i will say i'm making four four digits per month low four digits okay so one to five thousand a month by the way also the hack when somebody says how many digits just take the bottom three numbers of that range so if suffice say i make seven figures i'm saying one to three million it's thousand we sold for eight figures it's ten to thirty million if something's hey right like nobody with you're over half yours you you usually say it differently once you're once you cross the if you cross over fifty million you would say over fifty million not eight figures or like the figures can include the dot zero zero yeah there you go that that's a figure nine figure exit bro so i think you should go and and do this ben i think that you should include i think you should go hard on this i so you have a a hundred thousand listeners a month you're making single digit thousands of dollars you you would make like six figures a year for sure doing should do your own ad rate which basically says yeah look you listened to this and i you know people who listen to this tell me they got a bunch of inspiration they got you know some strategies they got they you know they filled in the gaps something they didn't know about history and they can see you know their place in the world today through that what i blah blah simple bullshit and you basically say you know i used to run ads for you know cold plunge by the way use code ben wilson at checkout if you if you want but you know actually what ended up happening and you just basically say this what this what ended up happening company started hiring me to come in and talk to them about lessons from the greatest you know the greatest blah blah blah history and it's motivational for the executive team it's a great addition to any off site 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 i bet if you do that you'll get one of these a month and it will quadruple your current ad you know add add revenue for the month dude you gotta do this man you gotta do this alright that does it again if you wanna let us know what you thought of the format holler add us on twitter and it thanks for listening that's