The Exchanges

Q sure there's also the upside, right? Like, it's not just what mistakes, but like, How did they make their greatness happen? I think that's actually more of what people care about. How do they make their greatness happen? And then kind of draw parallels to my own life of like, yeah, I, I am just like Edison and the Rothschilds and Disney after all, you know, uh, so similar, right?

A I think, you know, like for Mr. Beast, I think the parallels are super easy with Walt Disney. The thing, the only time that Walt Disney slowed down in his career was for like a decade. And it was because Well, I'd love to be working on a new thing, but a certain point everyone convinced him like, oh, actually you have this enormous multimillion dollar animation studio. Now you just need to be working on pumping out more full length animations. And like when he did that, the whole thing kind of went downhill and then he goes crazy and he starts obsessing over little toy trains and like really going off the rails. But those, those model trains, Then get bigger and bigger and becomes Disneyland. And that is when he comes out of his funk and starts innovating again. And so for Mr. Beast, it's just like the, don't let anyone convince you that you need to be working on the reasonable thing. Like you need to follow your unreasonable passions because some, somehow great things are going to come out of that.

AI assessment note: “you need to follow your unreasonable passions because somehow great things are going to come”

Q It's amazing. Uh, yeah, this basically was like, bring, bring back someone from the dead technology. Ben, do you have anything to add? You're a, you're a history guy. What did this, like, do you have anything that you felt when you, when you watch this?

A I really agree with Sam. It made me oddly emotional, uh, listening to it. It also scared me a little bit just cause I thought of the application of like, well, what if like you did this to my grandpa and like, what emotions would that bring back? And then that like frightened me of like, oh, I don't know if that's a good thing to be able to experience, like. Is representation my grandpa that would feel like the real thing, but isn't right. Like where are these thoughts coming from? So it's equal parts, like really compelling, really cool as like a treat to be able to hear. Well, I think it's like a pretty accurate representation of how Steve Jobs would approach some of these things that are happening today, but then also just like scary to realize, but it's not really him. And what is it really?

AI assessment note: “It made me oddly emotional, uh, listening to it. It also scared me”

Q Uh, it basically is a, it's a German thing where it says like when they attack, they, they kind of go all out for short periods, right? Like, uh, the opposite of what world war one was, wasn't it?

A Yes. So, uh, it means lightning attacks or lightning strikes. And, uh, the idea is it's these short, quick, like, uh, attacks, uh, before, you know, you shock the enemy and, and, uh, go, go faster than they expect. What's interesting to me is that Blitzkrieg was sort of a marketing stunt. It wasn't anything that the Nazis talked about internally. Um, it's really something like an American invention, uh, to explain German success. Um, what the Germans actually talked about, uh, was this word, um, Oh, I can't remember the word in German. Um, but, um, it essentially means gravity. Uh, looking it up. Schwerpunkt. Uh, and it means gravity. And so it wasn't just that the attacks were fast, although they were, but it was actually like massed strikes. So they attacked fast. Yes. But they were able to sustain that attack and follow up on it for a long time, which is actually the same thing that Napoleon did. So in the Napoleonic Wars, before he came along, People are stretching out their troops further and further to try and flank their enemies. And then he's like, well, if everyone's gonna do that, I'm actually just gonna pack all my troops in the middle and then like punch a hole in the middle of their lines. Um, and I think like to go back to the Amazon example, like, I think that has big applications in business as well.

AI assessment note: “Yes. So, uh, it means lightning attacks or lightning strikes.”

Q Was he born that way? You think realize people, are they born this way?

A I think so. And if you look at the numbers, people who achieve a lot, CEOs, Uh, you'd think that like they don't have problems with substance abuse, right? Cause these are highly functioning people, but it actually turns out that they have higher rates of addiction and substance abuse than the general population when they study it. And so I think they are born with this propensity to addiction and they're the kinds of people that like they could end up You know, conquering a vast European empire, or they get hooked on Laudanum when they're like a teenager and end up a junkie on the streets, right? Like they're going to gonna end up addicted to something. Let's just hope it's something positive.

AI assessment note: “I think so. And if you look at the numbers”

Q Well, well, like, yeah, I mean, what did you guys talk about?

A Uh, we talked about a lot. Like, it was, you know, it was just like a personal conversation, so I'm not gonna share everything that we talked about, but, um, I mean, for me, the coolest thing he did was, Yeah. I've, I've known for a long time that I need to take my podcast to YouTube and I got to ask him like, okay, so how should I do this? And he basically walked me through how he would do it. Um, and how would he do it? General game plan. Uh, basically I was saying, you know, should I do segments? Should I do, uh, clips? Should I, um, animate it? Should I do me on the screen? And what he said is do the full episodes. Uh, you probably want to edit the scripts a little bit so that it's not quite so casual. Uh, cause podcasts like you listen to as you're washing the dishes, like it doesn't matter that it's not gripping every second of the, of the audio, but for YouTube, like it does need to be gripping every second, like really needs to pull people second by second. So he said, you need to edit your script a little bit for video, do animations, do it highly produced and do the full episodes like 45 minutes to an hour long. That was the basic strategy, and then he gave me some comps, some channels that I should make it similar to, and, uh, some homework to study up on.

AI assessment note: “he basically walked me through how he would do it. Um, and how would he do it? General game plan.”

Q myself thinking like, well, Ross did do it. And I'm like, no, no, no, that's fucking racism. Like, you gotta like, it's gotta be the same either way. You can just because he's like this, like just cause he's doing it on the internet. You know what I mean? So anyway, uh, we'll talk about that. So let's start, start with the background. Do you want to go first, Ben?

A Sure. So, uh, he starts in year old stopping grounds. Uh, he starts in Austin. Uh, he was kind of a science guy, uh, in college. He studied, um, I want to say it was something like neuroscience or something like that, but what was more of a sciency guy before he decides that he wants to go, uh, down more of the business road. Um, and so has this kind of flash of an idea, uh, and he, he kept a diary, which turned out to be not a great idea for him. Uh, if you keep a diary, keep the bad stuff out, uh, keep yourself covered. But he wrote down basically everything in his diary. Uh, he wrote quote, Uh, the idea was to create a website where people could buy anything anonymously with no trail whatsoever that could lead back to them. Uh, he'd been studying the technology for a while, but needed a business model and strategy. So he kind of goes into his bunker. Uh, I read like a thing from his girlfriend at the time that said he became increasingly withdrawn and was just like in his room, 24, seven programming, coming up with the business model, coming up with this whole thing for what would become silk road and silk road is this Essentially a marketplace where you could buy or sell anything initially. They do end up putting some restrictions on it, like no child porn. Uh, you had other stuff written there. What else could you not do on Silk Road?

AI assessment note: “he starts in Austin. Uh, he was kind of a science guy, in college.”