Listen To These 40 Minutes To Unf*ck Your Life

22:46And it's irrelevant at that point, whether it happens or doesn't happen. Because you're just going to keep making stuff. And eventually, popular starts to pay attention to the guy who's making a lot of stuff. We talked about Rocky in the last episode, the story of Sylvester Stallone. So after the episode, I went and did a deep dive on it. I went and I watched Rocky last night and I watched all of his old interviews from the 1970s. And I really got into it. And there was so many good parts. But the one thing that he said, he's being interviewed by this guy. And the movie's come out. It's been a success at this point.

23:13But it's like a year in. And he says, so they offered you a lot of money for this. And you needed money. We talked about how he had to sell his dog because he had a big mastiff and was eating too much. He's like, either I'm not going to be able to feed the dog and not feed myself or I sell this dog. And then I can feed myself and hopefully the new owner will be able to feed my dog. and as much as it killed him to do it, he's like, I have no choice here. So he was like down in the dumps. And the way he says it, he goes, I had$106 in my bank account. I had a$300 a month rent and I had a pregnant wife.

23:42And he goes, the wolf was at the door. I love that phrase. He goes, the wolf was at the door. Why did you? Because they're like, how did you write it in three and a half days? The V1 of the script. He goes, the wolf was at the door. I had no choice. And so he, and they were like, but then they offered you money for this, like a lot of money for this. He goes, yeah. They go, how much did they offer you? He goes, well, first they offered me about$100 ,000. And I said, no. And then they came back with$150 ,000. They're like, why'd you say no? He goes, well, they said, we'll take the script. But like, you know, you go away.

24:11We will go get Burt Reynolds to be Rocky. Like, we don't need you to be Rocky. We like the script. No, that's who they went to. They went to Burt Reynolds. They went to three or four guys who were big at the time. And he's like, no, I only want to give you this script if I'm going to be Rocky. And they were like, oh, God. Okay, forget it. Then they came back. 150 ,000, but you're not Rocky. No. The final offer was$265 ,000, but you're not Rocky. And he says, no. And they go, he goes, how did you say no to$265 ,000 when you had$106? That's like 800 grand now. Yeah, exactly. It's like a million bucks basically.

24:45And they were like, how did you say no when you had$106 in the bank? He said a couple of lines. He goes, he goes, it's not, it's not that hard to say no to money when you've never had money. You don't if you've never ridden in a rolls royce you don't mind bumping around in a volkswagen it's all you know he's like i goes i didn't have a frame of reference for that he goes i did want to get out of some misery he's like my landlady was a a big just beast of a woman and she would you know she would show up at my door every month and her she was so large she cast almost like a shadow at the door he's like and i just remember being afraid of that shadow all the time he's like but i you know my goal was rent my goal wasn't 265 000 i didn't need all that but and he He goes, did you ever have any doubts?

25:30He goes, yeah. He goes, before, when I was telling them no, I was saying, are you kidding me? Burt Reynolds, that guy? I can outact all these people. I will kill this role. I will be so good in this role. You guys have never seen anybody act like I act. And then as soon as they finally relented, and they were like, cool, you can do the movie. By the way, the deal they ended up doing was a million dollars of production budget, which was very little at the time. The big movie at the time, King Kong, was like$25 million. Rocky 1 only had a million dollar budget. He produced the whole thing for$960 ,000 and he like casted his brothers and his uncles and like you know they did one take on everything and like if they couldn't get something like there's a scene where they're supposed to be ice skating on a date but Rocky he didn't didn't know how to ice skate like you don't have time to learn.

26:15So they just changed the scene where he's walking and she's ice skating and they like made it they just changed the script to why that would make sense. And they just brought cameras to an ice rink and stuff like that probably like to get his dog back he cast that guy in the movie plus gave him money it was like are you gonna be in the movie so the guy's in the movie for like one line so anyways he's making this movie for for less than a million bucks uh they go well now you've made a lot of money right he goes he's laughing he goes i'm about a four hundred dollars more than i had before this they go four hundred dollars he goes i mean i had a lot of bills before this and you know that landlady casting that shadow she showed up for the rent and then taxes and then all this he goes he goes but you know what he goes he goes i basically paid myself the stage actors guild minimum the sag minimum so he made six hundred dollars a week doing the movie and i think he owned like some percentage but it was going to be on the back end so he didn't have the money yet and so he goes uh he goes but you know what the money never mattered he goes i would have done this whole thing for a donut and a tuna fish sandwich the money meant nothing it was always about the opportunity i had to prove my to myself that i wasn't a liar that i wasn't living a life of disillusionment because that's very difficult because I thought of myself as a creative person and I told myself that I was a great actor, but I had never had an opportunity to go figure out, am I any good or not?

27:33And so when you ask me, should I take the money or should I take the opportunity to find out, am I living the life of a liar or not? I had to get that answer because if not, it would have eaten at me for the rest of my life. He goes, I think of myself as a creative person. I didn't want to wake up and be 50 years old and realize that I'm this creative person who's never done anything creative. That would be terrible. I'd be living a lie. It would kill me. Dude, is he our new kind of crush? Move over, Brett Adcock. Yeah. Sylvester Stallone's my guy now. And he looks great still. He's still yoked.

28:05He's amazing. Dude, these interviews are so good. I'm going to make a separate YouTube video just as an homage to Sly because he's got so much swag, which I didn't realize. He's very funny. And by the way, This is another thing I love about the guy. He not only did all this stuff, but he kind of overcame the adversity, right? So the reason he wasn't getting cast is because he talks funny. Well, why does he talk funny? Do you know the story? Didn't when he was born or no, didn't he hit his face or he was born with like no nerves on one side of his face, right? When he was born, they used forceps to get him out.

28:38Forceps damage the nerve. And it's the nerve in your mouth that when you go for a dental procedure, they numb you. And you know, you're like, your tongue doesn't move right. You can't talk right. imagine that for your whole life. That was his whole life. And so because he was really jacked and because he talked with kind of a slur and like a sort of mouth, part of his face, part of his mouth is paralyzed. People assumed he was dumb. This guy was incredibly intelligent. He was very well read. He wrote the script for this. He is a very creative, eloquent person. He's a great writer. And people just thought of him as this action hero, like this, like, you know, like an action figure, basically, oh, you got abs and muscles.

29:14And that's why you're, while you're doing these roles, but that's not it at all. This guy was a very deep and interesting person, but he was sort of masked by this. Maybe my doctor used forceps and shit because I slur everything and I have abs as well. And I'm kind of smart. Yo, Adrian. Yo, Adrian. That was pretty good. I think my doctor also must use that same tool. Was I born in New Jersey as well?

29:40Hey, quick message here because you know that feeling when you send a wire and it actually works? No friction? Well, I've used Mercury for years now and let me tell you, it just works. And that's why I use it for not one, not two, but eight of my companies. From credit cards to invoices, I have everything in one place. There's no janky dashboard. I'm never told, please visit a local bank branch. None of that tomfoolery. And a few months ago, I landed a big client. And the first thing I did, I sent them a clean branded invoice. Boom, deal closed, cash in the door. That's the kind of banking experience I want.

30:09And that's why I use Mercury. So if you're running a startup and you want banking that feels like it's built in this century, well, go to mercury.com and get started in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bankless services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column A, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC. I want to tell you a story about an interesting person I hung out with, but before I get to that, this is kind of the inspiration episode, it seems. And we've talked, you feel inspired, you know, but sometimes it's hard to feel inspired when it's 105 degrees and I'm sitting in Austin, Texas, sweating my ass off.

30:44What would you do, Sean, if you wanted to feel inspired? Maybe write a book. Maybe get away from it all. What would you do? Writing a book seems like I'd get away. But where would I go? I think I would wander. Today's sponsor is wander.com. We like wander. So go to wander. Am I even saying that funny, by the way? Am I saying that with a weird accent? You didn't Stallone it. You're good. So wander.com. It's a really cool website where they operate really luxurious, high-end properties. They're awesome. If you go to their website, you'll see every photo they take is inspiring. Like all these beautiful beaches, like a cabin in the mountains.

31:22It's just like high-end stuff and they've got gyms and work from home. Sometimes I don't even take the trip. I just go to wander.com, just look at places. And I get like 10 % of what it would feel like to go on vacation right now. And it's like, okay, well, that just took me 10 minutes. That was great. Yeah, my wife wanted to go to Greece. And I was like, hey, let's just look at Google Earth and look at the parking lot. Like pretty dope, right? uh yeah that's what i do with uh with wander.com so check it out they're today's sponsor they're an awesome company um i want to tell you a quick story about what i did the other day so i get this text this guy michael just joined hampton and i become became friendly with him and he's like hey are you free on tuesday at six o 'clock i was like yeah sure what's up he goes do you want to go fishing uh i was like yeah okay whatever uh i like i'm currently uh right outside of new york city so i'm like where do we get like do we fish like is it gonna be like sewage water where do you fish?

32:11I don't know. So I go to this guy's house and I get to know him. And so I sent you his house. I sent you a link to his house. So you'll have to look at it. Don't say the address or anything. But I pull up to this house. It looks like I'm at a high school or an art museum. He's got this massive, beautiful home that's built on a peninsula. And the boat to get into the Long Island Sound, which is like a body of water around here, it's right on his front porch. and we're basically 30 minutes outside of New York City. You see the photos of that house? This is incredible. It's an incredible house. More than 30 rooms.

32:46More than... It was one of the most spectacular things that I've ever heard of. And so we go out fishing and I get to know him a little bit. And I had to tell you about this guy. So he's really fascinating because he's one of those guys who you would know his products, but you may not have ever heard of him. So have you ever heard of Fog Creek Software? It launched in 2010. So Fog Creek Software launched in 2000 And it was sort of like an agency where the internet was just getting started. And these guys were like the early nerds amongst the nerds. So if you wanted like some development work, they were the guys.

33:17Their mission early on was like, you know, we want to work with programmers and we want to create a great place to work for programmers. And they start this little agency or consultancy. But like a lot of consultants, they're like, just doing service work kind of sucks. Let's create some products. And so they create a handful of products. The first one being Fogbugs. So Fogbugs was like a bug tracking software. And after 10 years, it does all right. It's like in the eight figures, so 10 million plus in revenue. It's doing pretty good. But it kind of stagnates a little bit. And they go, let's spin off some more stuff that we've been working on.

33:51So I don't remember which order it was, but let's just say the first one was Trello. So they spin off Trello and they fund it with a little bit of money. So Trello, it's an Asana competitor. It's a task management software. They grow this business. They raised only$10 million. It gets started and they grow it a little bit. Then they raise$10 million. They grow this business and they eventually sell it to Atlassian Software for$450 million, I believe. And if you look at Atlassian Software stock, I think when they sold, the stock was$17. And when it eventually peaked last year or two years ago, when everyone went crazy, it was like 20x that.

34:31And so they got a combination of stock and cash for this deal. So huge hit. This guy just made it. Well, it turns out they spun off another company as well. And that other company was called Stack Overflow. So Stack Overflow was basically like, it still exists. It's kind of like a message board, but originally for developers. And eventually you can make one of these message boards for a variety of topics. It's huge. Did you know that that company sold? This wasn't in the news too often, but did you know that company sold for$1.8 billion? Who bought it? a European publishing company process process I don't know are you you have it up no I don't have it here but that's okay just some traffic by the way they get almost like 200 million monthly visitors a huge site and so I was talking to this guy and he was like yeah and then we also sold sold Fog Creek software and I made a little money there so he's like I've had a hat trick and so this guy has done all these amazing things and so just like learning about his story how he's pretty low key in the sense that like he doesn't have twitter he doesn't really use social media and he's like giving me all this like interesting intel on growing their companies and making them huge it's called process uh according to ari um and he's like yeah i sold that one we sold that one for 1.8 we sold this one for you know 400 and something but the stock like appreciated a ton so who knows what the actual price was and i was like what are you doing now and he's like just fishing just thinking and so he goes fishing on this boat like every day during work hours.

35:58And he's like, show me a tour of his home. And he's like, yeah, this is where my office was, but I don't really open up a laptop anymore. Did you know this guy or why is he inviting you fishing? I met him in Hampton and we just started talking and he just was like, do you want to, do you want to come over? And I guess this is, look, when you're, you look like a guy who likes to fish. Like, well, I thought, here's why this guy was cool to me. He's like an outdoorsman in basically New York City. And he's like living a very unique life. And he just, but he's very zen-like. He's super zen. And he was telling me stories about how he overcame certain things at the company.

36:30The whole time he's telling me stories, he sounds very zen and calm and low-key. And I thought that this guy was one of these people who deserves a little bit of love because super under the radar, as successful as anyone we've talked on this podcast, but does not have a big mouth. So I'm kind of blowing up his spot a little bit. But I asked him if it was all right that I said all this. And super interesting guy that you should looking to. Michael Pryor is his name. He's awesome. What was anything cool from your conversation? Anything you learned or an insight or an observation you had that made you think?

37:03Yeah. So he was... I just liked how low-key he was about everything. So he was basically the CFO of Stack Overflow. Stack Overflow, I don't know what their revenue was, but they sold for$2 billion. And I was like, are you like an accountant? Were you a CFO? He's like, no, I barely knew how to do any of this stuff. But the company needed a CFO when we started. He's like, I was a programmer. He's like, I haven't programmed in forever. But I just learned how to pay taxes. And I just had to learn how to pay taxes. And I had to learn how to do payroll. And he just rolled with the punches. And I think that...

37:36I was like, were you intense? He's like, no, I'm not intense at all. And we hear stories about how people are doing... What does Elon Musk say? Hardcore mode or hardcore. And this guy, he was like, I'm not, I wasn't really hardcore. He's like, we're smart and we worked pretty hard, but like, I would not describe what we did as intense. And we just kind of rolled with the punches. It was really cool to hear something that differs from the loudest people who are incredibly successful of being intense. You got to grind, you got to do this. That wasn't the vibe that I got from Michael and like the early founding of these companies.

38:09And I thought it was really inspiring. I thought it was awesome. I also think, and this is for anyone who wants to build a company, you have to look up his partner. His partner's the louder one. His partner is called, is named Joel. And he's got this amazing blog that I've read for years. It's basically like Paul Graham, but more a little bit, a little bit more hot headed a little. Yeah, well, it is. It's very tactical, but he also writes like he is a little bit more jokey. And it's a little bit more brash, which I appreciate is and it's called Joel on software. I think it's one of the best entrepreneur blogs out there.

38:38I don't even think he updates it anymore. But he has probably 1000 articles. And so it was awesome just like hearing little bits of like Intel from these guys. And so I wanted to shine a light on the sky. It was really fascinating. Yeah, that's amazing. That's cool. How's your fishing game? Dude, it was like an easy mode. Like the poles were like attached to the boat. And it was like, once you hear like a bell ring, you just go and grab like, you like grab the thing and just like barely crank it in. It's like the door dash of fishing. Yeah, like his boat like told me where the fish was. Like it gives you like a little alert.

39:12So it's like fish here. And you just like sit there. I'm just like sitting drinking water and it's like oh we got a fish I guess and so did you see the picture of it? It was three foot long this fucking fish. I saw that thing and I was like how the hell did you catch this? That was like a record setting fish. It was just like the fishing rod was just like in one of the holes on the boat and you just like barely touched the reel and it came up I mean it really there was really no glory in it It's like AI for fishing. It's like wait a minute Yeah like the boat. I don't know anything about boats A lot of people look at me and they think that I'm like an outdoorsman.

39:47I don't know shit about this stuff. And it has these sensors that tell you where the fucking fish are. There was no work involved. So this fishing shit's easy. I don't know why people are impressed by this. Let me ask you one more question. I'm always interested in what other interesting people are interested in. What was this guy interested in when he was talking to you? What kind of questions did he ask you? We talked about being popular. So basically, a lot of people who are... Why do you ask you? Good question. I think I was the tallest midget here. I was the only one that he could talk to, whoever, who has even a slight popularity.

40:31So I found it odd that... And I don't think he actually envied me at all, nor does he want this type of thing. But a lot of rich and successful people who are low-key are curious what it's like to have an audience. and what I tell them all the time, and I don't know if you feel this way, I go, hey, I will trade you my audience for your net worth any day of the week. I'll gladly make that trade. And of course, none of them would ever actually want to do that. But I think it's funny. And I'm not talking about him, but people in general, that they're into what it's like to have an audience and be internet popular or something like that.

41:07And I always remind them, I'm like, it's really just like me in my bedroom just or on my toilet, just typing out stupid tweets. And like, there's like not that much joy in it. And I would, I would much rather have a$2 billion company. And so don't get like, don't actually envy this or think that it's awesome. And so a lot of these people are curious what it's like to be like a popular internet person. Let me ask you a question. Hypothetical. How much would somebody have to pay you to never create content again? Delete everything on this podcast, delete your blog and never, you never get to publish again.

41:41no twitter no social media no nothing how much would you have to get paid 30 million dollars what about you a really specific number very quick and specific number well i had to think about it i had to think about what it's worth for half a second well i had to think about what you know what it's worth what would you what would your number be i think a hundred no i think more than a hundred i think it would have to be like yeah i think it would have that is so dude you You are not Sylvester Stallone. You are not Sylvester Stallone. You don't have... The landlord's not here. You've tasted the nice life.

42:16You want more of it. You would do it for much less. No, no. I really wouldn't. So your official number is 250? 250. That's insane to me. I do not believe... Dude, that's like... You'd be... No. No, no, no, no, no. I think you are full of shit. I think you are absolutely full of shit. power of attorney and change my decision for me. I just don't like, sorry, my friend's an idiot. I'm going to change that number. Why? Why, why, why? Because I think I'm going to end up at a hundred to 200 anyways, doing what I'm doing and I like doing it. So it's basically, if I think I'm going to make that anyways, doing this, um, and I like doing it.

42:56So then you have to pay me a premium on top of, to make me stop doing a thing I like doing. And then there's the additional like time value of money that I get it all up front right now guaranteed, right? So I'm just kind of factoring that in and I would just rather err on the side of what's a number I would not regret? What's the number you could pay me that I'd... Okay, I'll go figure out some other hobbies. Well, would you still be allowed to do anything anonymously, like under a pen name? No. Your hands are taped. You can't type... You can't do any of that stuff. Yeah, maybe it would be higher then.

43:32If I could do something anonymously, I would do that. I think the anonymous thing is actually pretty cool. It might be better anyways. I think it's better anyway. I think the anonymous thing is cool. I'm really fascinated by these authors who use pen names. So we had Jack Carr on the podcast. That's a pen name. But was it a pen name because it's a stage name? Or was it a pen name because he wants to be anonymous in real life? I imagine the second one. Of course, he's not anonymous because we see his face. but yeah i think it's just a stage name uh which is different i don't know what you call it i yeah i don't know but i just know that's not his that jack car just sounds cooler you know i remember i was in a movie once my name rhymes with that why does his name sound so much cooler it's the c it's the k sound right k is the coolest letter everybody knows that um i was in a movie once and the main actor was cal penn and i was like oh man cal penn what a guy cal penn what a name sounds like a hero sounds like a hollywood star cal pen dude that guy's not do you know what his real name is he is his name is like culpen suresh modi that's his real name he couldn't get auditions and so they changed instead of his first name being uh culpen they changed it to cal pen and then all of a sudden he started getting auditions and he was telling me this like he was like embarrassed but not embarrassed by it but he was like it's effed up that this is what we had to do He's like, I didn't want to change my name.

44:55I just wanted to act. And the price of having to act was to change my name. And this is super common. Like Mindy Kaling, her name is not actually Mindy Kaling. Like a bunch of Asian actors, same thing. Like they all changed their name to sound cooler and more, you know, whatever. In fact, Leonardo DiCaprio, they tried to get him to change his last name. They wanted him to be like Lenny Williams was what they wanted his name to be. And he refused. And so we were almost robbed of Leonardo DiCaprio. He was about to be fucking Lenny Williams if he had listened to the suits. Lenny Williams would have been so much worse for him because Lenny Williams sounds like a 50-year-old who dates a 19-year-old.

45:32Leonardo DiCaprio is a 50-year-old who dates a 19-year-old. At least there's some suave or whatever. For some reason. Wait, is that illegal? No, he's kind of Italian, I think, so it's okay. Last name is different, so I guess. We're disrespectful if we question it. Lenny Williams sounds like a 50-year-old guy who watches softball on TV. You know what I mean? Yeah. He did the right thing. Leonardo DiCaprio, he pulled it off. Good job for him. Do we end here on this rambling, wandering podcast? I think so. I think that's it. All right. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

46:20I put my all in it like no days off On the road, let's travel, never looking back Hey, let's take a quick break because there's a quote that I love I want to read you. It's that we shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. And as an entrepreneur, if you're using a bank that was built in the 90s, you're operating like you're in the 90s. And trust me, I've been there. Clunky portals, random holds on your money,$50 wire fees, and then being told, please visit your local branch. Well, that's why I switched to a different type of banking solution, Mercury. It turns your financial chores into a smooth workflow.

46:56You can do wires, invoices, cards, reimbursements, two clicks, and I'm done. If you're already using Mercury, respect. If you're still using one of the old big banks, I got questions for you. So go visit Mercury.com and give it a test drive. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, Column N.A., and Evolve Bank & Trust members, FDIC.