SPECIAL: The Key Question to Reframe an Argument

alright what's happening in my first million listeners this is sam par we have a quick episode where i'm gonna show you a handful of pieces of content i've consumed over the last week and that made a big difference on my life hopefully you'll enjoy it i enjoy content discovery and that's what this episode is all about i think you'll will too i'm currently filming this recording this out of a townhouse an apartment in a townhouse that i'm renting in ka hill brooklyn this place is lovely i love ka hill this is my and summer here god it's it's it's wonderful it it looks like the it looks like the c show if if you're old enough to remember that where it's like a street in brooklyn that's covered in trees with in a in a pretty small street it's freaking off so my handle on twitter's the sam par if you're nearby holler at me maybe we'll do a meetup or something alright let's get into some of the pieces of content that made a big difference in my life this week the first there's this guy named ben mu his he's got a youtube channel so it's ben the word ben b e n space m u l l a h now this guy he he changed my perspective right away but at first he he's just the my perception of him is just one thing and the reality is a little bit a little bit different and so he's just like big old fat guy i mean he might be three hundred and fifty four hundred pounds he's huge and he's like six foot five he looks and he films himself in florida doing real estate deals and according to some of my research and according to what he says he's legitimate he's got about two hundred and fifty million dollars in real estate and has this like pretty meaningful size empire in florida but he basically uses this big old fat guy he smokes look what looks like cheap cigarettes all day he's drives in a kind of a ga bentley and he's pretty obnoxious he cuss a lot he uses a lot of just weird phrasing and on the surface you're like oh my god this guy's hideous he's discussing like his personality is just obnoxious gosh this guy turned me fast i'm a big fan of be mu so his stories that he started as like basically he's like a poor jewish kid new york he bought some real estate property in new york i believe queens for like ten twenty thirty thousand dollars when he was younger fixed them up sold them and just kinda part that into a bigger thing a bigger thing and a bigger thing and now he's probably in his fifties and he's documenting his life you know he's already relatively successful and i learned something really major from him that i'm wanna tell you about but first let me tell you about some of this guy's titles i'm he's got a whole bunch of youtube videos that it's a youtube channel ben the youtube channel and some of his titles are so obnoxious but so interesting and that's originally how i found him so a few of them are the cost of living in a thirty deal thirty million dollar mansion process of buying a five million dollar yacht how much a two hundred fifty million dollar man is losing during covid so kind of obnoxious titles but again the reality is a little bit different he he he's very charming this guy and i'm gonna tell you what i've learned about him particularly there's this video where he talks about negotiating i believe it's called be how to how to negotiating and he walks into this bentley dealership and it's a pretty quiet upscale place i mean they sell two hundred and fifty three hundred thousand dollar cars and he starts talking really loud he comes in with this camera and he goes what's up everyone bent here i'm i'm here to buy a car if someone plays to come and help me and then he is just like walking around like he owns the place and then he looks back at the camera and he goes let's live in this place up so you could tell right away that he has a plan like his this the plan was to come in loud and and hot and that's exactly what he's doing and he starts negotiating with this guy it goes i want this car you know let's talk about it and they spend about five minutes talk about the car and he pulls up his cell phone and he goes look this is how much they're selling it here this is how much they're selling it here and needs all all these other places where they're selling the exact same car for cheaper because i want it for this price and the guy goes no to no but those cars don't have a warranty they're different model they're they have different features and he starts like hassle the guy he gives him like a fake punch to the stomach he starts putting his arm around him he starts hugging them he starts telling him how he loves them and how he hates them and he and he's doing this like slaps comedy bit almost it's it's kind of like again the way i'm describing it it sounds obnoxious and and frankly it is a little bit but the guy's laughing and laughing it up it and it seems like genuine i mean this guy ben he he's just hassle this guy the owner of the dealer ship comes over it starts talking and ben just goes you remind me of mister rogers you're you're so soft he says it right to this guy's face but here's what i learn what he's saying is it's kind of obnoxious it's a little bit defensive but this guy is controlling the energy of the place his energy is a little bit higher than the people he's working with and he has zap the energy of the place and it all went to him and then now he's like dishing this energy out to each individual person and once they catch hold of it they love it they start laughing at what he's saying it and and it seems like actual genuine laughs there they're they're i think they're a little bit uncomfortable but they're still genuine laughs and he's dictating the the energy of the room and thus winning the negotiation winning the conversation and it's pretty charming when i saw him i i started laughing and i was like oh man like this guy maybe when you leave the dealership you're like i can't believe i just sold the car for at this price i wish i wouldn't have done that but in the moment he does have some into energy and it's really interesting to watch so his name's ben mu at the end of the at the end of this particular episode he goes i would have bought that car from them regardless of what they sold it for because they've always been nice to me and they've always taken care of my cars and i brought it here but i just had to get a deal because that's what i love so his name is ben mu check it out the video i'm referencing is called how to negotiate this guy when you see them you'll understand what i mean i mean he just he does not come off grade at first but he's very charming and and basically if you control the energy of a situation you're gonna get the outcome that you want he makes these guys smile the whole time and they dig it it's very interesting so bam i started watching his videos a while ago but this week i dug in i can't turn it off he's got twenty minute videos it's so fascinating the second one it's guy named michael francis so michael francis sees his father his father's named sonny fran he was a his father was a really big mafia guy he helped kinda get the mob going his i i believe his father worked with a guy got a lot of guys like b siegel lucky lucia those types of folks you know these like mafia guys who move are made about and michael his son he's i believe he's seventy one now he joined the mob as well or the mafia i don't i don't know what the correct term actually is but and he tells stories about what it was like and it's bad the mob is bad right they kill they steal to commit crimes and and that's not great but there's something about this guy that screams honor that screams loyalty and even though that this guy michael i think he's redeemed himself he went to prison for a handful of years i don't think he ever killed anyone i'm i'm certain he he talks about like kind of shaking people down a little bit and he talks about you know being friends with murderers so you know he wasn't that great of a guy but he went to prison for like five or ten years ish he spent a lot of time in solitary confinement which is hell and now he's like he talks a little bit about being a christian he doesn't rub it in your face if that's not if you're not into so you don't to worry about that but he talks about how he tries to be a good guy now and he's trying to make up for all a lot of the stuff that he did in the past that wasn't great and it's really an interesting channel if if you're on youtube just search michael mafia his name is michael fran it's hard to spell but you you'll you'll find it and one of the stories that his tells is that basically in the eighties i believe he had the scam where he would buy oil from a wholesaler and then sell it to gas station and when you do that i guess in the state of new york and in new jersey maybe it's throughout the country there's like a three a three or four four or five cent difference would that supposed to be paid in taxes and so let's say you have a gallon of gas for a dollar you sell it for two dollars five cents of that dollar profit that you just made has to go to the government it's some type of like oil or or gas tax and he basically created hundreds of different entities and he would sell the gas to the gas station with a different entity and then just close it down and go bankrupt up and just for some somehow the way it worked i guess he he just never had to pay the government taxes because it wouldn't come after them and he would just do that hundreds of times and inevitably he was like i knew they're gonna come after me but you know i'm a criminal i was i was i was doing a a scheme i i i was gonna try and make as much as i could while the get was good and over the course of a handful of years it made something like a billion dollars in revenue for for the mafia and he said that at one point for a little while him him personally he was making something like two million dollars a week in personal income and he owned a jet he invested in movies he owned a mazda dealership it's a really fascinating story and there is a little bit of a honor even though they're these guys are committing crimes even though michael ended up i don't think he rat on anyone but he is talking about the mob which i guess you're not supposed to if you're been part of it so you could definitely make the case that well he's not that honorable if he's did all this but there is you know every great man or is also a bad man but i think a lot of them can be great too you know you could be good and bad at the same time and and there's a lot of really interesting traits that this guy has and i think you guys should listen to it because i've actually learned a lot when he talks about being in solitary confinement you know solitary confinement as hell i i i love crime stuff and i listened to a lot of crime podcasts and i love prison stories for some reason that's always fascinated me solitary confinement i think i'd rather in in some cases i'd rather be killed and go to solitary find it and he talks about being in there for years and he talks about the mental fort that he had to have and i think that while my day to day is pretty easy a lot of years imagine compared to being solitary confinement is pretty easy you know there's stuff that pisses me off about the day stuff that i don't wanna do and stuff that makes me anxious and i think about kinda how he describes how we got through solitary confinement it kinda inspires me to build be a little bit stronger so really really fascinating the third thing i actually can't remember where this quote came from but i'm gonna tell you about a quote that i read that actually kinda changed the game from me for a little bit so basically last week sean and i and a bunch of our friends are i'm not friends with all of them but they we invested in this company called home which basically sells testosterone replacement therapy which i like and not everyone agrees with that and i understand that and i shared that i invested into it and i got a lot of trash a lot of a lot of criticism from a guy named nat who actually known nat and and i've had dinner with them and i like them but he criticized my deal and investing in them and and he criticized the company and that's cool that's fine everyone can have their opinion and i'm sure he's got great points but we i started like wanting to argue with him and i think he was gonna argue with me i mean we're and we're we definitely we're we're dug in and i asked a question that i stole from someone i'm not gonna i'm not i'm telling you about my story with this and i don't know you think i've made this up i stole from someone but but i don't remember what it was but basically the question that i asked was what new information would you need to change your mind that i said i tweeted adam you could probably find it i said you know instead of like arguing about this that just just let me ask you what information would you need to show that t is good or that this company isn't shady and i love that question i like i said i took it from somewhere but whenever i'm arguing with someone or i have a different opinion than someone i i love saying okay i hear you you know you like this political candidate you like this person you like this person what new information would i need to present to you in order to change your opinion that they are good and not bad and when you ask that question you change an argument from arguing to trying to have empathy and understand someone's point of view and it's a really great question i have found to ask to kinda solve problems as opposed to just debate so that's a good question so what new information would i need to present to you or would would you need to learn to show that your current beliefs are actually different or maybe wrong or or or maybe maybe you should actually agree with the point i'm making or what information could i provide you that could change your opinion that that question i think is great okay a few more steve mcqueen a biography i read this book this week i i guess i listened to it i didn't read it but steve mcqueen he's called the king of cool he was an actor in the fifty sixties and seventies a lot of young men who wanna dress nicely they love steve mcqueen because he just pretty cool he's a pretty good looking guy i read this book and i read it because i wanted to be a little bit more adventurous in my life and he was known for racing cars for for having loads of girlfriends he was you know the very typical like manly man type of thing and and that i read about as a kid and i was like well now that i'm grown let me read about let me learn about this guy this guy was awful this was not a good person i can't believe i looked up to this person he was an awful guy cheated on his wife and he would brag about cheating on his wife to his wife he mu off her when he was broke and she was making money as an actress and then when he started making it big as an actor he bailed on her and cheated on her and he would go to broth and stuff like that with his friends and he would be like i don't have any money can you spot me he he would show up to late for work hungover god this guy was awful i can't believe i looked up to him totally changed my perspective but there is a few traits that i liked for one and this probably only trait he love adventure there's a there's a really good story in the book about when he was sixteen he went to a circus i believe in missouri or arkansas something like that and he met the circus guys and they go yeah we paid this much money if you wanna you know join us and he goes hell yeah i'm in so he just left that day with the circus didn't even go home his uncle who he's living with at the time he didn't even know where he was he thought he died at first and then eventually steve came home like a month later when he realized he didn't like being in the circus and his uncle was very upset and i thought that was kinda funny and interesting the second thing the story that i remember reading about him is he was supposed to visit his wife steve was currently in living in new york his wife or girlfriend at the time was in la filming a video filming a movie and steve was on the airport to go visitor her after he told her that he was on his way met a guy on his way to the airport who was going to cuba loved the store and he goes f this i wanna go to cuba gets on the plane with the guy goes to cuba goes to cuba tells his wife eventually hey you know changed your plans i'm actually been in cuba for a week i'm sorry i didn't make it gets arrested she bail him out flies him back to la and i don't like how he did that because he was disrespectful to his wife he was disrespectful to his uncle but goddamn i do love that type of adventure and i think it is interesting you know people just throw caution to the win even though i don't like how we did it it's still kind of fascinating and lastly a great article by bank rate so right now with covid everyone's moving not everyone a lot of people you know the biggest states are california new york new jersey pa in michigan those are experiencing the biggest exodus according to bank rate and there's an interesting list that we put together of cities that are giving crazy incentives or people to live in it's then let me let me read you some of these some of these cities the first is baltimore is giving a five thousand dollar down payment for a house tulsa is giving ten k plus free c working space for people who stay for one year in two twenty about four hundred people took get advantage of that three cities in west virginia are saying that they're gonna give you ten k including a c working space and free rentals for outdoor gear maine and alaska also have programs maine is giving tax rebates transplants who earned a college degree since two thousand eight alaska is giving thousand dollars a year for three years to peak of kansas it's kind of funny they're giving ten grand if you move and buy a home five grand if you rent northwest arkansas two counties there they're giving ten thousand dollars plus a mountain bike and then wyoming has a few new laws that make crypto really easy so they can trap crypto people and then this is actually happening in another country so greece barbados bali italy all countries trying to lure remote workers i thought this was fascinating typically you'll see companies or cities recruit companies so they'll try to get amazon or whatever to move there these guys are actually going after individual workers and maybe they'll attract more and more of the company once they get a couple of the workers kinda of fascinating i thought if you're if you're young you're single don't have a lot of kids you don't have a lot of roots hey these are kind of fascinating northwest arkansas ten k in mountain mike that ain't too bad and i know that there's some scheme out there that's gonna pull michael fran so scam and and actually accept the money without living there anyway those are the top bits of content i read this week that made a big difference on me let me know what you think the sam and twitter talk to you soon