Hello, everybody. It's Sam from the Financial Samurai podcast. And in this episode, I have a special guest with me, Srini Rao. He is the founder and creator of the Unmistakable Creative Podcast that was launched in 2010. And it has over 1,300 episodes. I can't believe it. That's about 10 times what I've got here on Financial Samurai.

So, Srini, welcome to the podcast. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's kind of fun to do this. I mean, I've known you since like we started the podcast. You're one of the earliest people I ever interviewed. No, you're right. I started in 2009. You started doing something in 2009, right?

Yeah. I mean, I started my first blog in 2009. Mainly, the irony of it was the reason I started the blog was because I graduated from business school without a job. And, you know, because 2009 was a terrible time to get out of any kind of school. And, you know, the job market was terrible.

And if you're submitting resumes, you were kind of done. Like, there's no way you're going to stand out. So I started a blog, ironically, as a way of standing out of the job market, which, you know, eventually that ended up just kind of becoming the job. But there's a lot of precursors that, you know, sort of people don't know about because you like at a certain point, like if you do something well, all the shitty things you did before kind of get hidden and buried.

I don't know if you can find them on the internet. But the first real blog I started was a website called 100 Reasons You Should Hire Me. And, you know, I couldn't come up with 100 reasons why anybody should hire me. So it was like, all right, this is because basically what I did was I saw somebody who had a really interesting website, this girl, Jamie Verone.

She'd started this website called Twitter Should Hire Me. And that was like hugely successful. She actually knew what the hell she was doing. Like she had real branding experience and design experience. I literally just threw up like a bullshit logo. I used to make this logo look like the Google logo with some logo generator.

And it was a blog. I mean, I didn't know what I was doing. But I think the value in those... The funny thing is that that project itself, believe it or not, like really actually informed the entire ethos of what I ended up doing because I was like, oh, I just copied what somebody else did.

No wonder this didn't work. You know, and that's like the thing I rail against the most because I mean, you know, I've seen it like, you know, in 10 years, like you see these people who will take an online course, they'll like go to a podcasting course and they literally try to replicate the exact thing the person who taught the course does.

And it's like, no, you know, like you're missing several things. Like the thing that people never get about all this is like there's one gigantic variable that throws off that entire idea. And that's you. Like look in the mirror, you know, like you and I could do the exact same things.

And it's like inevitable that we would get wildly different results just because we have different strengths, different personalities. You know, like there are certain things like so, you know, I started in 2009, right? Like there are things that you probably have done that are a lot smarter than I did.

Like for example, your email list is significantly bigger because you know, you were smart about prioritizing the business aspects of it. I was just creating endlessly and I wasn't really thinking about it from that standpoint very well until I got the book deal. You know, like and a lot of whatever I've accomplished has been very accidental and serendipitous, but it's also through a lot of like, you know, trying things and doing things endlessly.

So that first project was important, but it was a joke. It was laughable. But you pivoted. So you went to Berkeley for undergrad and then you went to Pepperdine for business school. You said you graduated during a difficult time and it costs a lot of money to go to Pepperdine too, right?

Yeah. And how did you decide to go finally all in on podcasting? Well so it's funny. I think that there's this sort of myth, right? Because what you see on the surface is not like the real story because you know, we put like this image for everybody in the internet is playing a character where they admit it or not.

Right? Like you have a brand. I mean, you didn't even reveal your real name for the longest time. Like I remember I had no idea what you looked like until I met you in person. You had that like bizarre avatar. Actually you have it on your. I still have it.

Yeah. So the thing is that, you know, like there's certain things about being a public figure where you have to be mindful about how you come across what you showcase. Because like nobody cares about your problems, right? It's not that I don't have problems that I don't have issues.

People want you to solve their problems. And at a certain point, as your presence becomes bigger and bigger, there's a sort of fine line you have to toe between what you're, what is for public consumption and what's for not. Now I'll be, you know, I'll be transparent with you.

Like I still have plenty of debt from business school, but going all in for me was accidental because I didn't have much of a choice. Like my job history is pretty checkered. Like I'd been fired from all my jobs. But I mean, when I got out of business school, like I looked at this resume and I was like, wow, the biggest problem with this resume is that it's not tangible evidence of anything I know how to do.

It's just a bunch of bullet points and like bullshit. Like I became the master of spinning bullet points and to bullshit. I was really good at job interviews. Like I could go into a job interview and I could charm any interviewer because there was a way to do it.

Like I don't remember, I don't remember, uh, vault. It was a website called vault.com. You would, my wife used to internet vault.com in New York. Yeah. Well, you're a finance guy. So you would know this, right? So vault had these guides on how to do interviews. And I remember they had this like formula called star.

I don't even remember what the hell the acronym stood for. So I memorized that thing and like looked at it so I could go into any job interview and I could impress the hell out of the guy who was interviewing me. But I was always terrible at the job because it was all bullshit.

Yeah. So I became like the master bullshit artist. And the problem with that was that eventually it just all caught up with me. So, you know, my job history wasn't impressive by any means. So like for me, this was almost forced upon me. I didn't really feel like I had much of a choice.

It was like, okay, I kind of know where it's going to head if I go and find a job. And so the thing is that I also made choices that, you know, like a lot of people don't have the luxury or freedom to make. Like you have a family that changes a lot of things.

Um, but I was, I was single. I still am. So, you know, I chose to live at home for God knows how long. I mean, you remember this like early days of the podcast and this past year I've been at home mainly out of choice, not out of necessity because my sister had an eight month old.

So I came home to spend, you know, that time with him and had so many family events that I was like, all right, my parents like, well, why would you move now? We're going to India for six weeks. I'm like, yeah, you're right. Why would I move now? We've got this, you know, six bedroom household to myself for six weeks.

So I'm like, yeah, I'll stay here. Um, and it's been great because like I got to travel this year, like I gotta do a lot of things that other people don't get to do, but I also, you know, there's always trade-offs. This is the thing that people don't realize that every decision you make in your life is a trade-off between freedom and security, right?

You trade off the, you know, freedom of being single for the security of family, but it also comes with all these other things like, you know, connection and love and, you know, all these things you trade off the, the freedom of not being a parent for the joy that comes with being a parent.

But guess what? Now you have all these responsibilities. And so there's always this trade-off, like we're always making trade-offs and you have to kind of decide like, what's the trade-off. And for me, the trade-off was okay, I'm going to live at home. And this is something that I realized was, you know, yeah, during probably the first three to four years, like my earnings were not increasing, but what was increasing was my earning potential, right?

Because you know this, like the way that you become, you know, more like, like, like your cable, your earning potential goes up, it's not linear. So you'll spend years doing all this stuff that basically seems like it's going nowhere. Then, you know, you get a book deal and before you know it, you're like, wait a minute, I just made $10,000 in one hour for getting on a stage and talking, you know?

And if you think about that versus before, I didn't make that in three months at a day job, you know? Like, so that over time it increases. So, you know, going all in was kind of accidental, but then, you know, bit by bit, I was really fortunate in that I had an amazing mentor named Greg who really kind of took me under his wing.

Then we raised a round of money in 2018, I think, from Podfund. They had started a venture fund for podcasts. So, I mean, it's had its ups and downs, man. Like the thing about, you know, Unmistakable that's kind of weird, we're this anomaly in that we started long before everybody else, but our audience is smaller and we grew slower.

But what we do have are loyal and raving fans. You've seen our iTunes reviews. Like, I think it was like a thousand five-star reviews and none of those were people we coerced into giving us reviews, or like participated in, you know, review exchanges or any of that bullshit. Like those were all legitimately earned.

And then there are a few, you know, handful of like reviews of people that hate us and I'm like, great, then unsubscribe. That's just the way it is. Yeah, dude, you just wrote a, you know, I'm sure like anybody who's ever written a book that reaches a lot of people, they learn pretty fast that it's a really bad idea to look at your reviews.

Like there's nothing that will trigger your insecurities more. Well, I think you just have to manage expectations when you're a creative, you put yourself out there. Try not to take things too personally. Just accept that maybe 10 to up to 20% of your reviews will be bad. That's just the way it is.

Well, the thing is the more people you reach, the more likely you are to reach somebody that you hate. Right. Or that hate you. Yeah, exactly. So go look at Mark Manson's book, right? The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuckin' Go look at the one star reviews. I mean, that book sold what, like 20 million copies?

Of course, there are going to be one star reviews. Right. You know, it's like some religious person might be like, oh, I hate this book because he used the F word in the title, which has nothing. And often you look at the reviews, they have nothing to do with the actual content.

Or like Amazon's packaging. Yeah, people will be like, oh, this thing didn't show up on time. I'm like, what does that have to do with the product? Nothing. Yeah. You know? And so as a creative, you know, we put our heart and soul into the things we believe in and then we want people to listen.

We want people to read. And it's just so sensitive. And then when we get smacked down, it's like, oh, man, why'd you got to smack me down? And then some people just quit. So here's the thing that I realized about feedback, right? Is you've got to be really mindful about whose feedback counts.

And this is the other thing. I mean, like even when I was at the beginning of this, right? Like I get people in my family questioning my sanity. Like I had a cousin who told another cousin of mine that, you know, what I was doing was a waste of my education.

And then the day that, you know, my book came out, that same person who said that congratulated me on my book launch. And I told my mom, the joke is like, this person is off the wedding for, you know, like my wedding invite list for the wedding that hasn't even been planned yet.

But the thing is, like what I realized from that is that you have to think about, you know, when you think about these critics, it's like, OK, who's going to live with the consequences of your choices? Them or you? So and you know what? All creative work involves risk.

Like there's always a risk that somebody's going to hate it, whatever it is. I like the Seth Godin attitude of this might not work because then you kind of go in sort of detached to the outcome and you focus on the thing you can control, which is the process.

And that I think is really where a lot of creatives get derailed. They put so much sort of value and attachment to, OK, how are people going to respond? Like all these things that you have absolutely no control over. You know, like when we rebranded, for example, we thought we were out of our minds.

They're like, why would you change the name? Blogcast FM, it's such a good name. Can you imagine? We would be obsolete today if that that we had to listen to that advice. And we you know, we didn't even bother to serve in the audience about changing the name. We're like, we're just going to do it like, you know, because one issue we were running into, we said if you go back and look at early reviews, there are a lot of people would say this show is not actually just about blogs.

It's about a lot more. But a lot of them wouldn't tell their friends simply because of the name. They're like, my friends won't listen to this because they're not interested in blogging. And so we looked for sort of the anomalies and the outliers instead of looking at the masses to determine what we should do.

Got it. You know, what I hear from you after graduating is that you kind of fell into this and you kind of had no other choice. But to produce thirteen hundred episodes over a 13 year period is quite impressive. So how do you how do you keep on going?

What was your driving factor? Well, there are a couple of things. Right. So let's look at this from sort of I'm not going to give you the sort of inspirational bullshit answer. I'm going to give you the straight up behavioral science answer. So the thing is that, you know, the greatest source of motivation for all of us is visible progress.

Right. So and this is based on the work of Teresa Amabile, who's a professor at Harvard who wrote a book called The Progress Principle. And so this is why if you look at sort of that whole don't break the chain method, people who put those calendars up stick to workout habits, you know, savings habits or whatever it is, because when you start to see yourself making progress, you are motivated to keep going.

You know, like if you see that chain, it's like, oh, OK, I actually have maintained 30 workout days. Like, well, now I'm motivated just because you don't want to. You're so motivated by what you see in front of you. The problem is that people measure progress with outcomes they can't control.

And that's where they get into trouble. Right. So because I remember some podcasts are asking me about this. He was like, you know, probably 50 episodes in. And I'm like, OK, well, you could measure this in one of two ways. You could say, OK, how many people are listening to this thing which you have absolutely no control over?

Or you could say how many times how many episodes have I created? And so the other thing that happens is when you have progress, progress leads to momentum and momentum increases motivation. So you basically just get into this sort of virtuous cycle. Yeah. That basically eventually hits sort of escape velocity.

Right. Because if you go back and look at a lot of the bloggers who started when we did, you'll see these inflection points that happen for people like you and I, where it was like, boom, boom, boom. We're just like consistently, consistently, consistently nothing special. Like it wasn't like you were, you know, Wall Street Journal bestselling author or whatever it is.

I mean, look, you got your book deal two years ago. And I remember when you said to me, oh, wow, that's cool. And if you think about it, the same thing kind of happened to me. Right. It was like 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013. In 2013, people call that, you know, it's like overnight.

Trini came out of nowhere and had this self-published book that became a Wall Street Journal bestseller. But what they forget is like, by the way, there are a thousand blog posts that came before that. And even after that, before I even got a book deal, like I didn't get a book deal for two years after my Wall Street Journal bestseller.

Like that didn't attract the attention of any publishers until probably February 2015. Yeah. Why is that, you think? Well, OK, so self-publishing is kind of weird. One thing, if you self-publish a book, you can't be on the New York Times bestseller list. Because remember, I told you the week your book launched, I was like, hammer your email list.

I don't care if you get subscribers. Like I remember that. I remember you sending me an email. I'm like, all right, dude, send one last email. Don't you think that's a little too much? I was like, don't you want to hit the Wall Street Journal bestseller list was my response.

And you did. So you can thank me for that. You're going to send me half your advance on the next book. OK, sounds good. So the thing is that but the thing is, you get to a certain point where you hit momentum. And so my mentor, Greg Hartle, taught me about this concept called a momentum window.

And this is something that if you play your cards right, like you just did it. And what you've just experienced in the last year and a half is probably a fantastic example of this. Right. So the thing is that when you hit a momentum window, if you play your cards right, like think Mark Zuckerberg at 100,000 Facebook users, right?

He's no longer dealing with the problem of, you know, hey, you know, like we're having issues with servers in our dorm room or whatever it is. From that point forward, he's in a momentum window. And if he plays his cards right, he never will be back down at the same level of again.

Like if you think about the growth of Facebook from that point forward, with the exception of the last year, like just let's discount that for now, because that's not the point of this story. It just basically was exponential from that point forward. Facebook just grew endlessly, because if you play your cards right in that window, then you'll never go back down to the same level of again.

But if you fuck it up, I know this because I did. Then you basically have to start all over to build up momentum. Momentum is incredibly hard to build, but it's incredibly powerful once you do, and it's very hard to get it back when you lose it. And so that's basically what's happening when you think about sort of progress.

So, you know, as far as what motivated me to keep going, yeah. Did I want some of those external accolades? Absolutely. Like anybody else, I, you know, I was somewhat driven by those things. But the irony of my book deal was what led to the book deal was me giving up on getting a book deal, because I realized I was like, I have no control over this.

I'm just going to do one thing. And I mean, you've probably seen this article, like Julian Smith turned me on to this habit of writing a thousand words a day. And I was like, OK, you know what? I can do that. Like I'm already doing close to that. But like if I just do this one thing consistently, let me see what happens.

You know, and six months into that, I self published two books, one sold a thousand copies. The second became Wall Street Journal bestseller and led to a six figure book deal. And I kept that habit up for almost four years. Like I've changed that now because of the sort of new systems that I've learned for writing and knowledge management.

And we can talk about that if you want. But the reality is that like, you know, if you are measuring progress, let's take another simple example of like weight loss or going to the gym. Right. You can't necessarily control how quickly the pounds are coming off. And if you're going to measure by the scale, then you're going to look at the scale every day and be like, OK, I still weigh the same that I did every day.

And then yesterday, you know, I got to hell with this. I'm going to not go to the gym. I'm going to sit around and eat ice. Yeah, that's kind of me. Yeah. Yeah. But if you if but the thing is, if you say, OK, look, I'm going to just measure how many days in a row that I go to the gym, then you see progress.

Yeah. Like the progress starts to appear. And the funny thing is that outcomes are usually delayed. Like positive outcomes for good habits are almost always delayed. There's you know, you have sort of habits with delayed consequences and we have good and bad habits with delayed consequences. Right. Like smoking is an example of a bad habit with a delayed consequence.

Like, you know, you and I could be smoking cigarettes from the time we're 20 to 30 and probably we'll be OK, you know, during that time, even if we quit. But that might come back to haunt us when we become 70. Yeah. But the thing is, that's whereas the same thing occurs with positive habits, right?

Like this thousand word a day habit. So if you look at sort of the outcomes of this habit. Right. So the first six months I did it, you know, the first three months it got me invited to speak at a conference. The fourth month it got me to write, you know, self publish a book that sold a thousand copies.

The fifth month or sixth or seventh. I don't remember what month it was like. It led to the self published Wall Street Journal bestseller month something like 18 on the habit. It led to a six figure book contract. And from there, if you look at sort of like the earning potential that went public.

So from there was like speaking gigs. So suddenly this one like simply simple little habit that took an hour every morning literally probably has generated close to half a million dollars in income for me. Right. Like indirectly, indirectly. Right. Right. Right. Wow. So with with this knowledge in mind, why do people give up?

Why not just keep going instead of giving up? Why quit? Well, so so here's the thing. Like so one is, you know, the the progress thing. Look, there are times when it makes sense to quit. Like true. True. You know, like so why do people quit? One, because there are times when it makes plenty of sense to quit.

And like, but you should know, like, am I quitting because I'm, you know, like frustrated or am I quitting because I know this is going nowhere? So there are certain points where you can say, like, all right, look, this is actually not going to lead anywhere. You know, it's so the irony of me starting a podcast and getting a book deal, the publisher, you know, I started the podcast because since of our told me I wasn't a good writer and he was right.

Like, honestly, I don't disagree with that assessment. And I still don't disagree with that assessment, because like if you look at just the sheer numbers, right, is that if you compare the number of people who read my writing to the number of people who listen to my podcast, like the writing pales in comparison.

So the numbers kind of are a pretty clear indicator. Like, if you like I said this on a podcast before, if you got readers of mine and Mark Manson, and ask them, who's the better writer, they would all say Mark and so would I like and I wouldn't be offended by that, right?

So that's one thing. The other thing is people don't give it long enough to see progress that they quit before they hit the inflection point. They don't realize that, by the way, just because you can't see the progress and this takes us right back, I realized this is going to feel some of the circular.

But part of the reason is that people are impatient. That's another reason they quit. They want they basically like I want to start a blog today and I want to be in New York. I mean, you saw this with me, man. Like, I guess I'm pretty sure you called me out on it in one of your blog posts.

Yeah, I wasn't pretty. I wasn't nice. But I was I was befuddled at the time. I didn't name names. But I was like, but here's what you went to Indonesia or somewhere you're surfing or Costa Rica and you're like, I lost a year like since of our made a good point and he was right.

I don't disagree with that assessment. Don't get me wrong. That was actually a very important point because it did actually inform a lot of the writing I did later on. So you don't always know, like how it's going to help. Like that actually ended up being a very instrumental sort of part of this entire journey.

But on the on the flip side of that, since of our studies, like I think that like living in Costa Rica for six months cost you a year in terms of progress. And so that's the thing, right, is that like you look at the people who do this. The other thing is like at that point, my ego was way too fragile to hear the things I needed to hear.

I only wanted to hear what I wanted to hear. Yeah. Whereas now like I'm giving feedback to a friend on a book and I told him I was like, look, you know, you and you guys want feedback on a manuscript. Just know that I don't have any ability to sugarcoat.

I'm not going to tell you anything good. I'm going to probably tear this thing to shreds. And he's like, that's exactly what we want. And you've been through this process. You know what that's like. It's it's like an it's like an emotional root canal to have an editor work with you on a book.

Yeah, because you have to learn to separate the feedback, you know, on you, like from feedback on the work. And because I had a writing coach and she had edited books for Seth Godin, this woman didn't sugarcoat shit like literally the closest thing I ever got from a compliment for her in two books was good.

That was good. Most of the comments were lazy. Try again. Wow. Lazy. Try again. Ooh. Yeah. The thing is, well, here's the and I specifically chose her for that reason because I knew that she would hold me to a high standard like, you know, and that and even my mentor, Greg, like he rode my ass and you know, uh, there were times when I hated him for it.

And I realized what he was doing was he was preparing me for higher stakes situations where I would have to be able to handle myself mentally. Isn't that interesting though? When we are younger, you know, we're less experienced and our Eagles are, I guess perhaps more fragile, but that's when we need the most amount of feedback and criticism to get better.

And that's when we're the least open to it. Yeah. Yeah. So we think we know everything. I might have to write something about that. That's kind of like a, well, so I wrote this piece, um, titled advice to freshmen based on a conversation I was having with my cousin's friend's son who was starting college this year.

It's on, on medium. And I think it, like I open it by saying, you have no idea how full of shit you are right now is like the whole sentence. Because think about who you were when you were 20 something versus who you are now. And think about how many things have changed, how much your perspective has changed.

Cause I remember asking you about that blog post in which you called me out and even you admitted, you're like, yeah, I could have handled that better. Right? Like the, cause like, I remember at first I was like, ah, I'm like, you know, I was just like, cause I remember I used to think it was like, like I remember there's this long period probably here.

I was like, Sam is a, the biggest dick. And then I remember the portfolio book came out and I was like, all right, you know what? You're part of the same imprint. And I was like the fact that you got a book deal with these guys, I'm like, I need to read this.

And you know, like, and the funny thing is like, again, part of that was my own ego as well, you know, and probably part of that was yours. I need to give some background cause I don't think listeners know what we're talking about. So I wrote this post called, uh, are there really people who work 40 hours a week or less and complain why they can't get ahead?

Okay. And I was right. I think I wrote it in 2009 when I was personally dying, uh, working 60, 70 hours a week, I was just getting pummeled and my stock portfolio and real estate portfolio were getting pummeled. So it was really more of a frustration and reflect a representation of how I was feeling.

Like I was frustrated and I heard people complain like, wait, why don't I have more success and everything while I was just dying at in the office. Yeah. But you weren't wrong. That's the thing, you know, that's the best part is that you weren't actually wrong. Well, I mean, I definitely could have been more cordial, but you know, that was just kind of like me being young and being frustrated.

But again, this is actually one of those interesting things about the way we create, right? Like you could have been more cordial, but you could have just done what you did, which meant it was more authentic. And you know, anytime you're going to create something that resonates, it's inevitably going to, like most polarizing things are usually the most resonant.

Yeah. I mean, the post did do well. It did well, but it made no friends. It wasn't like, oh, Sam, come on my podcast. You know, it's like, so be careful people because I mean, you can be irreverent like I was and probably still am, but you got to be really confident in your ability if you're depending on whatever your creative endeavor is to grow.

Well, not only that, like, you know, as you become, you know, as we talked about, as you become more and more of a public figure, everything changes. So like I wrote this entire piece about the psychology of building an audience on Medium. And like, it's probably the one of the most popular pieces I've written.

And it was, it hit pretty hard. Like I didn't sugarcoat anything because I was like, look, I'm like building an audience is not just an exercise in marketing. It's also an exercise in your own mental, you know, psychology and how you come across. Like if you're a public figure, how you come across matters, right?

You have to be able to control public perception. So you like, you think about the difference between somebody like a president tweeting, you know, versus you and I, like if what you say basically gets shared or heard by millions of people, you have to be mindful of how it can be twisted and misinterpreted.

Like it's, you know, it's like this giant game of telephone where everything goes wrong. Cause like, I remember meeting Glenn Beck, you know, for the first time and like, this is something I learned from, we just asked, you know, watching him. I mean, Glenn has a, as a reputation that honestly he kind of brought on himself.

Like if you go back and look at some of the things that he said, I asked him, I was like, you know, my audience kind of hates you. But I was like, but I was open minded enough to meet him. Cause I was like, clearly you and I agree on something.

You loved my book. So why would I not want to talk to you? I remember that time. Yeah. You know? And I'm like, I didn't even know Glenn Beck was until then. Like literally I was like my dream media appearance of the daily show, which is literally the opposite of Glenn Beck.

But you know, I just looked them up and I was like, Glenn Beck, I'm like, Oh, this guy worked at Fox news. And I just went to his like, you know, email form and I was like, Hey, I heard you mentioned my book on your show today. Thanks. I've always wanted to sell a thousand copies of a book.

I really appreciate your shout out. I literally had no idea who he was. It's pretty random. He just picked it up. And then I remember I emailed a friend of mine, my friend Angela, and she was like, Srini, I don't think you realize how big a deal this is.

She was like, go look at your Amazon dashboard. And the book had sold a thousand copies in one day. I was like, okay, wait a minute. And then he wrote back and you know, the whole media circus unfolded. But because I asked him about this, like, you know, you have this sort of persona and everybody who creates media in the public eye has a persona and there's always a gap between who you are on the internet and who you are in real life.

Because listen, there are things that I will say to you off the record are off air that I would never in a million years say on a podcast, things that would basically be a PR crisis in the making. And so that's what you kind of have to realize. Like all of us have this persona when you're in the public eye, how you come across matters.

And this is something I also learned from the whole Netflix reality TV thing. I mean, I know about that, right? Yes. Indian matchmaking. Srini was on episode, season one, episode one? Episode two, yeah. Or yeah, season one episode. But you notice the girl they matched me with, how much like negative press she got, right?

Oh, she was kind of... Well, that's the thing. What that indicates in a lot of ways is her lack of self-awareness. Like, "Hey, I'm on camera. Millions of people are going to see this." There's a big difference between being genuine and authentic and just shooting from the hip and saying whatever comes to your mind.

And I was already a public figure at that point. And when you're in the public eye, there are a lot of other things that come into play. So even you, for example, right? Now you are a portfolio author. So everything you do in the public eye reflects on your agent, it reflects on your editor, it reflects on portfolio.

So suddenly your actions have consequences for other people. And that's what changes with growth. So if you think about famous people, the thing about the same stupid scandal that Justin Bieber has or Britney has, if you and I went and did whatever stupid shit they did, nobody would care.

Or if you went and punched a random guy at an awards show, nobody would say a damn thing. But if Will Smith does it, the whole world knows because he's Will Smith. Like these things matter a lot and people don't really think about that. Yeah, it's something that I really don't like the limelight.

I don't like any of that. The main reason why I came out to have a public face during the pandemic was because of all these incidences of Asian hate. And that really bummed me out. Yeah, I think that was a good reason. And I was like, "Let me show my face.

Let me be more representative of the Asian community. Let me try to provide some value to people and maybe that'll provide more love and empathy for Asian people in this country." Yeah. Yeah, I mean, again, there's this guy, Steve Goldstein, who wrote a book. I don't remember the title, but the subtitle is How the Most Powerful People from Washington to Wall Street to Hollywood Get People to Like Them.

And he had been a producer for Oprah and it's a really good book. It's one of the best books I've ever read. If you want to build a brand, anybody who's building a personal brand should read that book. Because there are a couple of things I took away from that book.

It was like, okay, one, the public doesn't want to hear about your issues, right? Why does your audience turn to you? Because they want to be inspired. They want advice. They don't want to hear that, "Oh, I had a rough day because my kids are misbehaving." They don't give a shit.

Yeah, unless there is a lesson in there for them, they don't care. And this is something ... There's this fine line between vulnerability and airing your dirty laundry and being a train wreck. And a lot of people don't know where that line is. Because it's really easy to get attention on the internet by being a train wreck.

So I'll give you an example. I saw this post that this girl put on Facebook. She walked in on her boyfriend cheating on her and she literally posted it like 20 minutes after it happened. And of course, there's this outpouring of attention. The problem with that is that that doesn't serve anybody.

And Danielle LaPorte actually had a really good way of describing it. She said that, "I don't write about or talk about a difficult experience until I finish processing it and there's something of value that I can pass to my audience from it." Yeah, makes sense. Yeah. I mean, it is interesting that nobody really cares because everybody's got their own problems.

But at the same time, people like to be entertained. That's why reality TV shows ... Well, okay. Reality TV is not reality. Let's be honest. Reality is pretty boring. Because if it was like reality, anybody actually filmed the day-to-day reality, it's like, "Here's Srini brushing his teeth. Here's Srini taking a shit.

Here's Srini taking a shower. Wow, this is really not that interesting." Reality TV is all made by editing, man. Yeah. No, I totally agree. I was on a reality TV show for one episode of My House is Worth What on HGTV. Yeah, and it was pretty interesting. Eight hours, seven hours of filming for like six, seven minutes.

Exactly. I mean, I was in Houston, I think, for two days and you saw probably 20 minutes. But I also knew ... I had a cousin who told me, I asked him about this. He's like, "Look." He was like, "In reality," he said, "no matter what the media really says, he's like, 'Anybody can make you look like a jackass with the way they edit.' He said, 'But you got to remember the only thing they can use is what you give them.'" Right.

Right. And you gave them good stuff. You didn't look like ... I gave them nothing that they could do against me. That's because I understood how to play it. Right. Right. Man, it's just such a crazy world. It's kind of ... The more attention you can get, if you're a creator or a business person, generally there's a correlation with revenue.

And it's just how do you ... Yes and no. What? No? Yes and no. So, okay. I think that ... Here's the thing. I wouldn't necessarily say that attention equates to revenue because you know what? You and I could go just ape shit and you could be like, "All right, Shringy and I are going to go out and do cocaine.

We're going to film the thing. We're going to go to strip clubs. We could put it on Facebook, Instagram." Okay. We'd get millions of views. I don't think that would do much for either of our bottom lines. So, attention directly doesn't correlate to revenue because there are different types of attention.

You can get attention for being a train wreck or you can get positive attention. There are varying degrees to that. It's nuanced. I wouldn't say it ... Unless it's like, "Hey, I own BuzzFeed and I'm going to basically publish these bat shit crazy stories of people like Shringy and Sam going out and doing all this crazy shit." They would be the ones making the money.

You and I wouldn't. Or like Gawker, but then Hulk Hogan sued Gawker and then they went out of business. So, that's not good. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's nuanced, right? So, that's the thing. This is why context matters a lot. And this is, I think, the thing that was so sort of overlooked by almost everybody in a lot of ways.

I always jokingly say that my first book, Unmistakable, could have been called Everybody is Full of Shit, even though I'm sure Penguin wouldn't have been ready to publish that. But I have been working on a book about cognitive biases called Everybody is Full of Shit, including me. I think that would be a fascinating read.

Well, if you think about it, in various contexts, this is something that I will say to your audience that I've said over and over to people on podcasts is that you should consider the possibility that every single thing I have said up until this point is potential ... like complete bullshit, because in the context of your life, it could be.

You change the context and you change the results that you get. All prescriptive advice is context dependent, right? So let's just take the example of like a ... so let's take a podcasting course as an example. Two people sign up for the course. I sign up for the course, let's just assume it's 2009, which is already one major point of context, right?

I have people come and say, "Well, you teach me how to start a podcast." I'm like, "I don't know the first thing about growing a podcast. I started 15 years ago and I was lucky. I don't know jack shit about marketing a podcast. I literally plugged a microphone into a laptop and I had a 10 year head start on something that was a gigantic cultural trend.

I know the things I've learned from people, but let's say you take me and we put me in a podcasting course. As you know from knowing me, I'm fairly outgoing. I like to talk to people. Then we bring in this introverted visual artist who's really great at making visual art and some friend of hers is like, "Oh, you got to get on this podcast bandwagon." Who do you think is going to be successful regardless of the ...

even though we're taking the same course, we're doing the same things, I'm going to absolutely obliterate her because of the fact that the context is different. I'm coming to it with a different set of strengths. Granted, now let's say we reverse the situations. We're signing up for an online art class and I'm like, "Okay, everybody should start making their own art and posting it on Instagram." So I sign up for the class and she's this incredibly talented visual artist.

Guess what? She's going to obliterate me in that case because the context matters. We don't like the idea ... there are a lot of things people hate in self-improvement. One of the big ones being genetic determinism. That's nonsensical. Your genes matter. I'm sorry to say that. You and I are not going to the NBA.

No matter how hard we work out, you and I are not going to be competing with LeBron James. He wouldn't even play a game of pick up with you and I. Unless you gave him a shit ton of money, which you might have in your bank account, but I don't.

Yeah, I was looking at becoming a video coordinator for the Warriors. That would be fun. Just get on the plane with them. That would be a fun job, right? Yeah. I remember when Eric Spolster, Miami Heat became ... the only reason I know these things is because I play NBA 2K.

That's how I've learned all these random facts from video games. I didn't even realize the Denver Nuggets were the champions until a night ago. My cousin was like, "Oh, the Nuggets won the championship." I was like, "Really? I didn't know that." Talk to me about the business of podcasting because it's grown huge, but it seems like there's step functions.

How does one get sponsors? How does one make money from podcasts? The way that all media makes money. Media makes money ... Generally, if you look at media from the get go, let's just go back to the early days of media, pre-internet. How did radio shows make money? How do television shows make money?

Why is your cable $20 a month? Because somebody is always subsidizing it. No matter ... even if you consume something for free, somebody is always paying for that. That's why when people bitch about ads, I'm like, "Great. Then send me the check that comes from my advertiser and we'll get rid of the ads." I'm like, "Otherwise, stop complaining about it." You can't complain that you're getting something for free.

Why are people complaining about free content? Why? Don't get me wrong. That's a whole other rant. Think about it. Even the people who ... Let's talk about this from the standpoint of your newsletter so people have a better context. All the people who read your newsletter for free, who've never bought your books or done anything, guess what?

All the people who buy your books are subsidizing their ability to consume that content. They're the ones that are paying for everybody else. That is at a foundational level kind of how media works. Somebody is always paying for you. There's no such thing as content that's free. Somebody is always paying for it.

Except for this podcast so far. I have no advertisers. The thing is, you have an email list. Those same people who basically bought your books, whoever has made ... Anybody who's ever paid you any money, or in this case, you might be the only person subsidizing it, which for a lot of creators ...

Let's say you start a newsletter. You're the one subsidizing people's ability to consume that free newsletter. That's sort of the base level. We need sort of a foundation to start with. Now, of course, how does media get measured? With impressions. If you think about why is a Super Bowl ad, God knows how much, a million dollars for 30 seconds?

You'll have to fact check. I think it's much more now. It's just a random number. We're just doing this for the sake ... Because it's based on the number of people who watch the Super Bowl. That's why. The flip side of that is what has happened as a byproduct of the internet is that the media landscape has become much more fragmented.

What has happened is that people like you and me with damn near free or low cost resources, tools, and distribution channels can get on the air, have a conversation like this, and you can send it out to 50, 60,000 people. That is like a game changer. Now, what that creates, of course, is massive fragmentation in the media landscape because basically, I think Seth Godin put it well.

He said you went from 500 channels ... Because if you think about it, before the internet, what did we have? We had sort of 500 channels maybe maximum to consume content, whether that's TV, radio, newspapers. You went from that to 500,000 and at this point a million. So inevitably, there are two things that have to happen.

One is that standing out in that sea of noise is not a matter of success. It's a matter of survival. That was one phrase that I'd said over and over in blog posts. I was like, "I really wish I had actually got that phrase into the book because I thought it sounded so punchy and I never managed to." But it's true.

You have to be able to stand out in the sea of noise. That's why this whole "Let me do what everybody else does and make it work" very rarely works. You bring a unique perspective and unique voice. You brought your perspective. Perspective is really important. Point of view is the thing.

Justine Musk put it well. She said, "If you have a bold and compelling point of view, it's probably going to piss somebody off." That's okay. It has to. You have to be willing to do that if you want to stand out. So now you have this fragmentation issue. So with fragmentation, what changes here is something different.

Loyalty becomes a lot more valuable than reach. Sam Altman put it well. He was talking about this in the context of startups. He said, "It's better to have a small number of people who absolutely love what you do than a large group of people who are lukewarm." Because the thing is that small number of people who love what you do is way more scalable over the long haul.

You want fanatics, not followers. And that's the thing. You want the people – so think about it. An email list – I'll give you another example. I have a friend who started his business long after I did. It was like three or four years ago. We had an email list of 6,000 or 7,000 people.

He had an email list of 200 people. First product launch, I think, generated something like $25,000 or $30,000. And why is that? Because those people were very specific, qualified people for the thing that he was selling. So these are 200 people who want to hear from him every week.

So you're better off with 5,000 people who open every email you send than 50 million who don't open half of them. I mean, inevitably, those numbers will change as you grow. But the thing is that – and I realize you asked me about the business of podcasting, but you kind of can't talk about the business of podcasting without talking about the business of media at large.

So if you think about sort of what has happened, right? Over this time period, as this media landscape has become fragmented, it's not just people like you and I who are also trying to figure this out now. The big media companies, the biggest threat to them is people like you and I.

Like the fact that Joe Rogan is more popular than some well-known media pundit who's been working at CNN for 30 years is very telling. And so one of the things that happens – and there are a lot of people who are like, "Oh, I want to be the next Oprah." And I was like, "That's absolutely not a smart goal.

It's in fact a stupid goal. One, because you're not going to be the next Oprah. But two, the reality of our media landscape – and WBEZ did a podcast about this called The Making of Oprah, and one of the producers of Oprah herself said there is no way there will be another Oprah because the media – because think about when Oprah started.

Like you didn't have the internet, right? She predates the internet and by the time the internet came around, Oprah was already Oprah. And so when you have such a fragmented media landscape, there's just no way that's possible in this environment. But loyalty on the other hand scales very well.

So then how do you monetize that? Ads – unfortunately, ads basically depend on one thing and that's numbers, right? And so advertising for the most part is a pretty shitty business model for independent creators. We just happen to be in a position where we can generate enough off of ads to make a decent living, but there's no way I could depend entirely on ads.

Like I have an online – like I've started a completely separate business which is like a knowledge management business. That will – my guess is in – it's like a knowledge management and AI consulting business. Within the next year, I'm pretty sure the revenue from that will dwarf the revenue from Unmistakable Creative unless we hit millions of listeners.

So it depends. Like if you're Jordan Harbinger, yeah, I mean he's probably banking $60,000, $70,000 a month easy, maybe more. Trevor Burrus: Who's Jordan Harbinger? Patrick Shephard: Jordan Harbinger runs a podcast called The Jordan Harbinger Show. It's like wildly popular. He's got – I think he actually signed a $2 million or $3 million contract with Podcast One or one of these big like podcast networks just because he had the audience.

He had the numbers. So if you have those kinds of numbers, then you can support yourself with ads. But for the overwhelming majority of people, especially people who are starting out, it's just not viable. You also want to think about, "OK. Is this really the best way to monetize my skills?

Is this the channel where I'm going to shine?" Why did I take the podcasting? Because Sid Sivar said I was a shitty writer and he was right. Like I'm a much better interviewer than I am a writer and I know that. Like I'm aware of that. That's why I have no like issue saying – like I didn't get another book deal after my books came out.

I was like, "You know what?" Like I came to terms with the fact that I write for myself if my audience happens to like it, great. But the podcast is what I do for my audience primarily. Trevor Burrus: Right. So it sounds like a tough road to make enough money from a podcast to provide basic living expenses.

So for those who are thinking about – I mean so I guess one, how can listeners support us creators, us podcasters? And two, should people start their own podcast? Steven Wooten: Well, let's talk about supporting creators. Like I think that they're really sort of different forms. I mean you can support people by supporting them financially.

Like buy Sam's book if you haven't bought it yet. So shameless plug for Sam's book. Trevor Burrus: And Trini's too. Steven Wooten: Yeah. But the other thing, the big one really is tell other people, right? Because your audience is like your ideal marketing channel because they don't cost as – it's like if you're going to consume this for free, help us spread the word for free.

That is what I would say is that – and it's not easy. Like look, you and I probably – I mean how much content do you and I consume that we never share? Let's be honest. Like I probably read hundreds of articles. I don't tweet those articles, share them with my audience or anything like that.

Trevor Burrus: Sure, sure. That makes sense. Yeah. Steven Wooten: It's not easy. I mean we're – but the thing is like share with somebody who you actually think would benefit from it. So that is one thing I do do is like I share with friends and family members. When I read something interesting, I'm like, "Oh, OK.

Cool." Like this person would find this interesting. That's actually how a lot of our growth happens is like we have people who – like if you look at some of the writings reviews, like one woman is like, "My entire family listens to the show." That's what you want, right?

Those are really – that's a huge form of support. Spreading the word is literally the most supportive thing you could do that costs you nothing other than a few seconds of your time. Trevor Burrus: And how valuable or invaluable are reviews? The number of views, the level of reviews?

Steven Wooten: So there's – the iTunes algorithm for podcasts is kind of a mystery like everything else at Apple. It's like the Bermuda Triangle of information. Rumor has it it actually has more to do with the number of weekly subscribers, new subscribers than it does reviews that determine like where you go in the rankings.

Reviews are social proof though, right? Like I don't know about you. I very – even on Amazon, I almost never read the book reviews. I just download the free Kindle chapter first because like I don't care if somebody else hated the book. I want to know if I'm going to like it.

Now again, for certain products, like there will be certain things that I want. Like so for example, if I'm going to buy – like I'm trying to find – I've been wasting money on lattes at Starbucks and I don't really care that much about lattes. This is like one of those things.

It's like I should cut relentlessly on this because I don't give a shit. But I want a latte maker that I know will take as little time as possible in the morning because I don't want to sit here with a stupid – that I would actually go and look at the reviews to see if the function is there that I need.

I bought a tool, a microphone when I was traveling and I wanted to make sure that the sound was good. So I looked at the reviews for things like that. But like – so reviews – like reviews are social proof more than anything else, right? Like if you go into – and I will tell you this.

Like I've had people who try to email me and be like, "Hey, I have a podcast," and I go and look and I'm like, "OK, this thing has like two reviews." I'm like, "Nobody listens to this show." So it's like, "OK, if you see a podcast with 1,005 star reviews, it's like, OK, there's some cred there.

Like there's credibility." Oh, absolutely. That more than any – it's just – reviews basically – I don't know how – what impact they have on rankings. You will have to fact check me on this. But I think more than anything, they just shape perception. Like you're much more likely to subscribe to something if there are 1,005 star reviews than if there are like zero reviews.

Right. You know, one of the interesting things I've noticed about the creator economy is that there are people who don't seem to have the experience, the relevant experience and talk about things that it doesn't seem like they should be talking about. That's the entire internet, man. One of the reasons why I started Financial Timeline in 2009 was because I felt I needed at least 10 years of experience in finance before talking about finance.

So I graduated in 1999. So I was like, "I'm going to wait for 10 years." But before that, I was just – I was seeing people, how to get rich. So you noticed – do you notice the one topic that I very rarely talk about on anything I write is money?

Why? Because I don't have any credibility in that arena. Like I need to learn from people like you. Your evidence backs it up. Like you have experience. But I will write – like I don't think you could hold a candle to me when it comes to writing about creativity.

Like that's my expertise, right? And if you want to talk about building systems for productivity, like I would outperform you by a long shot on that. But again, to your point, like there are a lot of people – basically it was like the curse of knowledge. What is that – there's a term for this, the Dunning-Kruger effect where people think they know more than they do.

It's delusion. Yeah. But how do we help listeners and readers separate reality from fiction I guess? Or is it just entertainment because it just doesn't cost anything? Well, on the internet, you – so part of it is that. But you also have to be willing to question and like have skepticism about what you're hearing.

Like I told you, you should think – consider the possibility of everything I'm telling you is bullshit because you need to think about everything that you hear in the context of your own life. Like I remember some girl wrote this piece about the creator economy being a gold mine and I was like, "That's horse shit.

It's not." I'm like, "The creator economy is a developing country. It's ripe with inequality." Like you can't use outliers to make generalized statements. This is actually one of the big problems with success literature in general is that almost all success literature is based on stories about buyers. Like because you don't put people on the covers of magazines when they spend years working their asses off and amount to nothing.

Yeah. And so like if you read stories – and even Paul Graham talks about this in his essay on wealth which if you're just having read that, you should link that up for them. It's really good. But he says at the very beginning like people like Bill Gates are not good role models because he's an outlier.

Yeah. He said he's like Bill Gates, people seem to forget, was like the beneficiary of one of the most spectacular blunders in the history of business. That IBM selling him that operating system for 50 grand. He said from that point forward, all he had to do was execute. It's like would Bill Gates have been rich?

Yes. Would he have been Forbes top 10 rich? No. And so we forget that, right? So like the problem is that if you – or you look at Elon, right, as an example. It's like Granted, Elon has gone off the deep end but the problem is that – my mentor Greg used to talk about this.

He's like there's this distinction between probability and possibility, right? Like is it possible that you could achieve at the level of Elon or Bill Gates or you and I could get to the NBA? Yeah. Is it probable? Hell no. Especially the NBA thing. So that's where you have to really understand is the distinction is like, OK, and what determines the probability of your ability to accomplish something is the context.

Like context plays a big role in the probability of your success. So think about – go back to the podcasting example. You can't deny the fact that I had a 10-year head start and that was pretty damn instrumental in me getting to where I'm at. Like I wouldn't be where – like if I started today, nobody would know who I am.

I mean relatively speaking, nobody knows who I am. Like I always say I'm the most connected person nobody knows. Well, in terms of outliers, do you think we are outliers or we are just people who just kept on grinding to get to where we are? So you and I have some – we had outlier advantages, right?

So let's look at where we are outliers. One, we had a big head start on something that – like even blogging, we're well ahead of the curve. By the time – even 2009, we were kind of late to the game but we were way earlier than most people. Like it was a lot easier to build an audience back then than it is now.

Well, think about it. Right now, it's easier than ever to start and it's harder than ever to stand out. Like back then, it was pretty simple. It was just like you build a blog, you comment. I mean how did I meet you? I think it was because I commented on your blog post.

Like literally that's how we met and that was kind of part of the way you grew. You basically commented on other people's blogs and you just – and the same things that worked then wouldn't work now. So that plays a role, right? The other thing we have to think about is like look at our backgrounds.

I mean I don't know what your parents did for work but we came – They worked in the government. Yeah. So relatively speaking, we came from privileged circumstances. Like my dad being a college professor, there's no question whether you or I were going to go to college. So you can't basically say, "OK.

Well, why is the person who grew up in the hood getting shot at who has the same books that you and I do not getting the same results? Well, you and I didn't grow up getting shot at, watching people sell drugs on the street corner. That makes a difference.

Context matters a lot. So yes, in some ways you and I are outliers. Like maybe not – so we have to think about this outlier thing to varying degrees, right? Yeah. Are we Elon Musk outlier? No. But are we outliers? Yes. Interesting. It is interesting because the longer I go about the creative part of things, the more I think, "Well, if you just keep on going, something good will eventually happen." I feel that.

There is a grain of truth to that but again, context, right? So there are times when it would make sense for you to stop, to quit where you're like, "All right." So I'll give you an example. So when my friend Gareth launched his Airtable consulting business and I saw it like just blossom into this like wildly successful business in like nine months, I thought to myself, "Well, you know what?

I use Notion. I really love Notion and I don't even use Notion anymore. So I'm going to basically use his exact same model and I'm going to basically start putting these tutorials on YouTube for Notion." The thing that had happened by that point is I was so far like so late to the game for that.

There were already like a hundred people doing tutorials on Notion who were doing better tutorials than mine. But when Mem, the tool I use now, came along, I saw an opportunity and I was like, "You know what? I have an opportunity here to actually be the de facto guy." Like Mem, even the team at Mem calls me their product evangelist.

And I was like, "Okay." Because what was different? One, is I was first. Two, I had all this knowledge that I could apply to it. And three, the timing had changed. Like now AI is generative AI is huge. Like there's all these trends in generative AI. And I know how to use this stuff in a way that most people don't.

Like I know a lot about automation that I learned from my friend Gareth's Airtable consulting business. And largely because I built these systems for running my own business. So like all the systems I use for running my own business, I was like, "Wait a minute. This is a business in and of itself." But it was like a business that emerged organically.

And the way I went about it was very different from Unmistakable. Right from the get-go, I was like, "I'm going to create YouTube videos. I'm going to collect email addresses and I'm going to use those email addresses to sell these people a course and sell them consulting." I was like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

So it was very intentional right from the get-go. And I've spent $5 a day driving ads to these videos. And I think, I mean, relatively speaking, it's small, but we have about 2,000 subscribers on this YouTube channel now. Okay. And it sounds like this opportunity came about because you've been in the game.

Yeah. I mean, so that's the thing, right? So there is value to continuing going. So you kind of have to think about, okay, you can't let sunk cost bias keep you doing something that you shouldn't continue to do. It's worth having kill criteria where you say, "Okay, this is what any Duke wrote about this in her most recent book of the power of knowing when to walk away." And there is value in that.

It's like, okay, I'm going to give this to like X date, because otherwise it's very easy to just get into this sort of Sisyphean effort that leads nowhere. Like if you spent 15 years doing something and it's not getting you somewhere, then maybe you should call it quits. Because I think that that's the problem with a lot of prescriptive cliched advice is that it just gives you these nice motivational slogans like winners never quit, which is horseshit.

Like that's terrible advice. There are times when you should quit. Yeah. You know, you've interviewed so many creators over the years. What would you say the two, three attributes are that they have that maybe non-creators or just regular folks don't have? What makes them stand out? I think that the things that make them stand out are there in everybody.

They're just latent, right? So the first one I think is a really bold point of view and a willingness to express that point of view unapologetically. The second is the ability to overcome their social programming and basically write their own script, right? Because like if you think about it, all of us are the byproduct of inherited scripts that we've inherited from media, parents, peer society, whatever.

Like we've been told all these narratives our entire lives. So like this is what your good life is supposed to look like. But that's based on somebody else's script. Like that's not what your good life looks like necessarily. It's like, you know, Rameen talks about in Rich Life, he's like, your rich life should fit you like a velvet glove.

Like you and I probably have very different versions of what a rich life looks like. And we should. And that's one big problem on the internet is that people basically look at other people's goals as their sort of baseline. They think that they're their own goals, but the reality is like you're basically letting somebody else determine how you live your life.

So like even what you go back to this four hour work week idea, right? I was like, oh, is that really success on your own terms? I'm like, you've literally just traded in, you know, the sort of corporate America definition of success for Tim Ferriss's definition of success. That's not your definition of success.

So overcoming their social programming is one. And then I think the other one is just a relentless work ethic. You know, like every one of them works. Like I mean, to your point, like the funny thing is like I realized once, you know, reality set in and I knew that I wanted to really build a business like, like it's no coincidence that when I came back from Costa Rica and I started working and consistently busting my ass, the business changed for the better.

Like, you know, do I still want to like be able to surf for a couple hours every day? Yeah. And ironically, now I have more freedom to do that and I spend more time working. The success of work often is more work. So be careful. It's yeah. Be careful what you wish for because like the the other, oh, actually this is really actually probably the foundational thing at the core of all of it is the ability to manage their psychology.

Right. They don't like if you look at sort of high performers at every level, they like just were talking top of their game. And I never forgot this. This was like one of the most useful nuggets I got from the Tim Ferriss interview. Right. He was he was telling me a story about how he was with Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Atomic, the guy who created WordPress.

They were like Indonesia. Yeah. And apparently one of their data centers was down and somebody called that and he was like, OK, great. He was like, well, tell him we're on it. And Tim Ferriss looks at him and he was like, isn't that a big deal? Which you think right for WordPress, a data center being down is a big deal.

Yeah. And he was like, yeah, there's nothing I can do about it. People are working on it. And he said that always stayed with him. And so he had this sort of phrase that he would ask himself any time something crazy happened. He was like, what would Matt Mullenweg do?

And it's funny because I noticed that in myself, because I remember once when I was having a hosting issue, this is like in the day, like early, early days of blogging, like my site went down and I was because we had a post go viral or something like that.

And we're on go to stressful. Yeah. And but the funny thing is that like I had an issue with one of our online courses where people couldn't access the course for about two days. And I was like, yeah, guys, I'm on it. You know, like I was like, what is the point of me freaking out over that?

Because I realized like my mom is like this and I realized my mom would be a billionaire if she could take her energy and put it into non-trivial things. But she puts so much energy into trivial things like, oh, the towel needs to be hung like this. So it dries the shoes in the shoe closet need to all be symmetrical, which they never are.

I'm like, like if you would spend this energy and directed towards something important, then you could actually accomplish something. It's like they don't spend time, energy or attention on trivial things. And even on important things, they understand that like freaking the hell out over it doesn't change the situation.

So they really know how to emotional regulation and managing a psychology. That's the foundation, I would say, of all of them. We're really, really good at what they do. Like nothing really rattled. Like even if they're rattled, you would never know it. Yeah, that's I think that's so true.

And that takes us back to the public for you and I don't have the luxury of being rattled. So I'll give you an example. You know, I met this girl in India and she came to visit and, you know, it didn't work out. I mean, she kind of just blew me off.

And I remember the night before my brother called me. He's like, Yeah, man, are you OK? I was like, Listen, man, I don't have the luxury of like sitting here crying over some girl. I'm like, I have a speaking engagement tomorrow. I got to be on my game. That's the other thing.

You are never not on your game. Like that's just the reality of public eye. No matter what. The truth is that your personal life is basically like your own problem. When you're the guy, you cannot have meltdowns. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate that insight. I mean, the podcast is amazing.

Your endurance for 13 years recording all those episodes. I'm basically starting off on my interview journey. So I really appreciate you coming on. It's been wonderful. Yeah, man, this has been fun. I love conversation. It's like one of my favorite things about like the interviews. I rarely get interviewed.

Like I'm always doing the interview. But like I've walked away from this with like a, you know, you made me think about the outlier ideas like, Oh, I have like three different blog posts I could write based on this conversation. Well, that's awesome. Well, I hope we keep in touch.

Yeah, I'm always around. And I really admire that you've had so much grit to keep on going and grow your Unmistakable Media podcast and all your businesses. So it's been great seeing you stick with it. It's awesome. Yeah, well, I mean, people can find out about us at unmistakablecreative.com.

And that's where you can find the podcast. And then we have an online note taking course called maximize your output.com, which basically will allow you to use, you'll basically be like Tony Stark having your own Jarvis with your knowledge management system. That's awesome. And we'll link to those shows and products in the show notes.

All right. Thanks so much. Yeah. Take care. - See you later. ♫ music ♫