Alex Banayan: How this college dropout caught the attention of billionaires

25:54And we actually did not even know the people we should be reaching out to, they would find us. Like so many of the people who've actually changed our career trajectory were people that were viewer number one out of 6 ,000 on a video that maybe didn't even do well, who were like, I really resonated with that video and I'm reaching out to you with something interesting. And we couldn't have even imagined, we didn't even know those people, right? So like, I find that as a young creative, you don't even always know. You have a misperception actually of how much those people will change your life, the people that you're trying to reach.

26:27Well, I think there's another important thing there, which is like, since you've written this book, as I thought about the world today, I actually think part of the third door today is making really good work online. Like the internet has opened up a third door that's really wild that like Colin's mentioning, a lot of our cold emailing didn't work because we were asking something and there was nothing, there was no like narrative or story or anything. But when we went internal and went, what is the story we want to put out into the world? And then how do we do work on a regular basis that is telling that story?

27:06Then all of a sudden the emails came to us and everything came inbound. And so we recognized was we were like putting out really good work is the best way to get in touch with people. and what's amazing about that is it takes a lot of self-confidence to do that because I relate to what Colin was saying, which is when I was starting out, and still there's a part of my brain that still functions that way, which is if I only can meet this person, everything that I want will be better, and the reality is that is my child brain creating an illusion of safety, an illusion of certainty that if I just meet this one person, everything will work out, And the reality is the way the world works is the more good things you put out that help other people.

27:53Because that's really what you're – tell me if you disagree. What you're saying is you're putting out content that is either so entertaining or so useful to others that they are moved to connect with you. Yeah. It's like every ancient religious text says the more good you put out, the more good you get back, right? You're saying the content version of that. Yeah, true. Yeah. Put out into the world where you want to receive. I mean, to answer the question of like how we got big guests on our show was most of them DM'd us saying they liked our videos. And that's opened the door then to be like, oh, great.

28:30Let's chat. And it turned them also into peers, which I never felt. Like I always felt like an imposter in this world, right? Uh, and to, to, for someone to reach out to you, it creates like this cool level ground, right? And then that starts, you start to gain confidence and start to understand yourself and where you fit into the world. Um, but I'm curious if you could tell us some of the, obviously the book is, is basically like a recipe of like the different ingredients of how to engage with, with people. Right. And there's so many great terms you use. like there's a term that you used, borrowed credibility.

29:12And that's really early in the book. And it's like such a, I'd never heard that term before, but it's actually something that applies to our world so much. But I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about some of the ingredients and then a more successful outreach that you had. I think what you said about ingredients is a very good way to think about it, which is if every single person's career as a content creator is a unique recipe. There are foundational ingredients that everybody needs to use, but they're going to use it in different dosages in different ways. And that's what makes a unique content creator.

29:48If anyone tries to copy the Colin and Samir recipe, they're now going to have a secondhand version of that. And the whole point of being content creator is to put out something unique into the world that's an expression of yourself that helps others. That's the whole point. That's why we're doing this. So you're right. There's lots of different ingredients. there's borrowed credibility, there's cold outreach, there's putting out quality content. If I had to say the one ingredient that every single person who I researched and interviewed had is something I call the inside man or the inside person.

30:24And that concept I learned from my research on Steven Spielberg's career. And if you want, I'm happy to dive into the story because to me it's the best case study I've ever seen about how to launch a career comes from Steven Spielberg. So a lot of people know that he's, you know, the most famous and accomplished director of the past century. What people don't understand is that when he was first starting out as a filmmaker, he got rejected from film school. He applied to USC film school, he got rejected. So of course he's very persistent. So he applied a second time and he got rejected again. And that's where most people would say, you know, maybe I'm not cut out for this.

31:04but Spielberg decided I'm going to take my education into my own hands. So he decides to sign up for a community college in Los Angeles so he can physically be around the vicinity, which by the way is a good insight there too. You want to physically be around the action that you want to be part of, right? So he moves to Los Angeles. He signs up for a community college, but he decides I'm going to take my film education to my own hands. So he goes to Universal Studios theme park, which has this famous ride, the tram ride, which takes you on the back lot of Universal Studios Hollywood. And it shows you where all the movies are made.

31:38And he's 19 years old, and the tram is going around the back lot. It stops for a moment. He jumps off the tram, hides around the corner, and the tram drives away. And he starts walking around. And about an hour later, an older gentleman stops him and sees this 19-year-old pimply-faced kid and says, who are you? What are you doing here? And he says the truth. You know, my name's Steve. I'm 19 years old. I've always wanted to be a director. I'm so sorry. And they end up talking for an hour. And that older gentleman, his name was Chuck Silvers. And he was the president of the Universal Television Library.

32:14And he looks at this kid and goes, how would you like to come back onto the lot the next couple of days? And he goes, wow, that would be a dream. So Chuck Silvers writes him a three-day pass. And Spielberg comes back the first day and the second day and the third day. and on the fourth day, he comes back up wearing a suit, holding his dad's briefcase and he walks right up to the security entrance, waves to the guard, goes, hey, Scotty! And the guard waves back and Spielberg walks right in. Amazing. And he ends up doing this for months. He's asking directors out to lunch and producers out to lunch and actors and actresses.

32:42He's sneaking into sound stages and editing booths. He's literally creating his own film school from scratch. A few months after that, Chuck Silver slowly becomes a mentor to this young kid. and Chuck Silver said one of the best things a mentor can ever tell someone, and it actually goes back to something you said, Samir. Chuck Silver's told Spielberg, there's a time where you have to stop schmoozing, stop doing cold outreach, and create something of value, of quality to show people, and Spielberg took that hard piece of advice to heart, and he spent the next few months spending grueling hours filming and editing a short film called Amblin.

33:25It was 22 minutes long. He comes back, shows it to Chuck Silvers, and it was so good that when he was finished watching it, a single teardrop came down his face. And Chuck Silvers reaches for the phone and calls the vice president of production of Universal Pictures and says, Sid, I got something you got to see. And the vice president goes, look, people tell me every day there's something I got to see. And Chuck Silvers says, no, if you don't watch this tonight, somebody else will. And the vice president said, do you think it's that important? And Chuck Silver says, yes, it's that damn important.

33:57The vice president watches it that night. The next morning, 19-year-old Steven Spielberg gets a call from the vice president's office saying, we need to see you immediately. Spielberg drives over and on the desk is a contract making him the youngest major studio director in Hollywood but history. And what's so remarkable about that story is there's so many, again, you talked about ingredients. There's so many ingredients. I could spend hours dissecting that story. There's so many things that worked. I'd say the most important is that he was extremely talented. You can't even, that's your ticket to the game.

34:32But if we're being realistic, don't you think there was other very talented people in Hollywood at the time who weren't getting that contract. So that's not the only ingredient. And if you look at other things, he had the courage to jump off that bus and to go and talk to Chuck Silvers and then spend three months going around and meeting people. If you look at all the different ingredients though, if there was one that if you removed it, the whole recipe falls apart, it was Chuck Silvers. That inside man, that inside woman, that inside person, anybody inside of the organization that you're trying to get in with who believes in you so much, they're willing to put their own reputation on the line to help you get in.

35:14And it doesn't matter if we're talking Warren Buffett's career or Bill Gates's career or Lady Gaga's career, there's always that inside person that turned everything around. And if there's one thing I can stress to someone who's, whether they're starting out or starting in a new part of their career, it's that if that inside person, that one inside person, more than 100 cold outreaches, that one inside person that changes everything. How do you find your Chuck Silvers? Because we get emails like that of like, would you mentor me? Or could I pick your brain? Things like that. And from my perspective, I have to want to want to do it.

35:55Right. No one could probably make me do it. That's my assumption. but we aren't the Chuck Silvers meaning like we aren't the Chuck Silvers like I would say Marilyn who's sitting over there if someone reaches out to her with a request for us it is she has the filter to understand how to translate it you're looking for the inside person and that may not be us but even so no one reach out to Marilyn

36:26but I would say similarly with Marilyn I assume you can't just make Marilyn in this context want to mentor you. Is that something that just has to happen organically? But correct me if I'm wrong. You're not talking about a mentor. But that's what Chuck became. A mentorship evolves. Yeah. So I would say part of your question is the answer, which is the biggest mistake that I've made in my career is I always thought the inside person, the person who would help me achieve my dream, was the most well-known person at that organization. The founder of this conference or the CEO or the YouTuber or – it was never those people ever, ever.

37:12Even when I met Bill Gates. It's actually Bill Gates' chief of staff that helped me so much navigate different things. I can just give you story after story after story how the person – Larry King changed my life, but his best friend, who most people don't know his name, was the person who changed my life 100x more. And I just have story after story after story. And it took me a long time to realize that the best inside person is not someone who is being flooded with requests. It's someone who actually has the time to spend with you to help you navigate your journey. Now, you talked about mentorship.

37:50The biggest mistake I made was thinking that you go and you find someone and that mentorship is sort of like hunting. You like make a list and you go and you track them down and you say, Mr. Spielberg, will you be my mentor? And it just never works. I did that a couple of times and people said no because they were just busy. And also it's just, that's like going to a bar and saying, will you be my wife? Like, like maybe that's worked once in the past thousand years. Like doesn't work today. Like I dare you to try. I don't know. You don't know me, but would you spend a lifetime with me? That's pretty much what, that's what asking, will you be my mentor is?

38:27Now, the best thing that I've learned about mentorship is it starts with a small ask. Hey, Samir, do you have any book recommendations of someone who wants to start out with their career? And by the way, I totally understand if you're too busy to reply. You'll be like, you know what, actually? Yeah, I'd reply to that. Yeah. You know what? You might like Shoe Dog. I just finished it. Yeah. And then imagine that person just sends like a handwritten thank you note saying, hey, it actually changed my life. And I just want to say thank you with no other asks. And then you run into them a year later at a conference and they go, oh, I was the one who you recommended Shoe Dog to.

38:55and you go, oh, how did you? It starts off very slow. And one of the best pieces of advice I got from this man, his name is Will McDonough. He was a vice president at Goldman Sachs. And along my journey, the third door, I asked him, what makes someone want to mentor someone younger? And he said what he's learned from his career is that there's three reasons why someone very accomplished will take on a mentee. And from my experience, these are the three best reasons I've ever, This is the best decoding of mentorship I've ever heard. And I don't take any credit from this. It comes from this man, Will McDonough.

39:31He said the three reasons someone takes on a mentee is, number one, there's something about that mentee that reminds them of their younger self.

39:43And it's normally an energetic thing. It's not an appearance thing. It's not a personality thing. There's an energy to it. there's an open-mindedness sometimes it's an enthusiasm sometimes it's a passion but whatever that is that reminds them of their younger self that's number one number two is they want to help pass on something they've learned to that person they actually they have an altruistic desire of wanting to help that person and sort of rub off on them but the third one is the one that's the most hard to understand at least it was for me which is the mentor wants something about that person to rub off on them.

40:27And that one's very confusing when you're starting out because it could be very confusing to think, why would a CEO or someone really accomplished want a personality trait of a 19-year-old? But the reality is a lot of times when someone is at the top of their game, they can feel jaded. They can forget why they got into this. they can lose the enthusiasm for the industry and there's something actually very uh it makes you feel alive when you're around someone who goes oh my gosh like your office is so exciting like how does this work and you go oh my and they go yeah it actually works like this and and then they're like oh so why did why did this video blow up on tiktok and the 19 year goes well you have to understand this trend that's really popular actually dates back to a trend from two years and they oh that's yeah and it could be very confusing to understand why a mentor would want to learn from you, but it's a huge part of it.

41:19So it's three things. Man, that is so accurate. Yeah. But sorry. No, it's just those three things. You remind them of their younger self. They want to rub off on you, but also they want you to rub off on them. Yeah. I think there's a bit of timing that also plays into this. And flattery. Thoughtful flattery. Yeah. And I'm actually saying not even like so over the top, but I'm thinking back to when Rohan first emailed us. This kid from UCLA, he was a sophomore, maybe a freshman at UCLA. And we were like, I mean, we had not figured it out yet. But he wrote a very thoughtful email kind of breaking down what we were doing and why he thought it was really cool.

42:01And so that from a timing perspective, it was also like, oh, that's cool. And he wanted to write a piece about us for his class. And so that was like, okay, I got time for that. That's interesting. I don't feel successful right now. So this kid's making me feel successful. Like he wants to write something about me. And basically that relationship grew over time. We had coffee together and he asked me all these questions about what we were doing. And exactly what we were saying, it made me kind of re-engage with what we were doing of like, oh yeah, this is the cutting edge of media. We are doing something interesting.

42:35I also remember something that mattered to me was it wasn't that he asked both of us to come to coffee together. He actually asked me separately too. There was a time when I went and separately sat with him for an hour. Smart guy. I was like, that's interesting because normally we come as a package. Or Samir is just a lot more outgoing and he'll take these types of meetings. But I was like, oh, you're interested in me? All right, yeah, I'll meet you at Blue Bottle. Let's do it. And that relationship grew to the point where he started, he offered a lot of value to us. Basically exactly what you're saying, he became our TikTok translator.

43:10He started explaining to us what was happening in like newer forms of media that we didn't understand. And then he became a brainstorming partner with us. And then over time, something really interesting happened. I got a call from Mr. Beast being like, I need someone to help me with short form. And I was like, there's a kid I knew who's the smartest kid I know about TikTok. And today, almost four years later, he's the head of short form content there. And it's like a crazy - That not the perfect third door story though. It's a - He executed that. All the ingredients that we just talked about are right there in that story.

43:46Totally. And I will say that like urgency is a really, it can be a good ingredient and a detrimental ingredient at the same time. Like I think you have to operate with some level of urgency about the thing you want to make happen. But I do think urgency when you don't have a thing is really uncomfortable. I don't know if that makes sense. I think you can understand what I'm saying. But like today, now that we have a show and a format and a, you know, something, if we go out and meet someone, right? Like let's say we meet someone we want to have on the show. then the momentum is really important to go off of that positive experience we had to get them booked to be on the show that is a very important element of urgency because we haven't asked we have a thing we have social proof we have credibility we have all these things all these ingredients that urgency matters but when we didn't have a thing and like when we went to go to collins uh high school to go see casey neistat we didn't have a thing and so we had so much urgency with him but there was no thing it was just like it's so sweet yeah we're just like no way for him to interact there was no ask ask there was no understanding there was no credibility there was none of the other ingredients existed to create anything positive out of that interaction but the misnomer was like if i have this interaction everything will change uh and i think that's like that's something that when i look at at rohan and how we engaged with each other.

45:17It was like very slow. Like between everything I just told you was over the course of like three or four years. Like it wasn't how it works. It wasn't every time three months. It was a very long time. I mean, to close the door on the Casey and I said story, we had 45 seconds from the time that he finished his talk until he left and walked out the door. And so we walked with him out the door. We told him everything we possibly could about who we are and everything we've done. And he looks at us as he's standing in the doorway and he says, congrats on all of your success and shakes our hands and we were left like those are the only words distraught yeah we're like no wait that's not that doesn't feel right yeah like we were looking yes i guess we were looking to be validated by him but that that's not what we were after yeah because we're not the successful ones here yeah and it was very bizarre and it shook us for like a couple of days and we had to reframe what we were doing.

46:14This might sound like BS, but I truly believe it. There's nothing he could have said to you that would have been better advice than you doing exactly that, falling on your face and never doing that again. Yeah. Because now that interaction is ingrained in your nervous system. Yeah. And you're going to remember that for the rest of your life. We couldn't believe that we didn't say just thank you for making all the videos you've made. They had a huge impact. Yeah. Or even just recognizing like, yeah, we want to meet this guy, but why? Like, I think also zooming out and being like, what do you expect this interaction to be?

46:50What is going to happen? What's the successful outcome from this interaction? You know, and I think there is, even now when we meet people who watch our show, there's almost this uncomfortable feeling like they are expecting us to change their life. and i and like we can't you know we can't it's not something that we there's no version of that interaction where we can change your life and i used to think that is uh that was what i was expecting out of people too right i was expecting that if i got a meeting with someone it would change my life like it would change it would accelerate my trajectory it would make me successful it would do all these things that person would become our champion yeah and tell the world about us yeah yeah it's a it's a beautiful part of the experience of every single experience where you just have these dreams and you chase them and sometimes the dreams are exactly what you wanted and more and sometimes they can leave you completely empty and it's actually all of that is data in you being a bit more thoughtful towards your future so i relate to what you guys said a lot.

48:01Now, I think about a lot of creators talk to us and we talked to a lot of creators about the difference between having representation, like having an agent or a manager or someone who essentially becomes your inside person to the industry, right? And to telling your story to brand partners, telling your story to other creators, to platforms and going out and representing you. And when you're lucky enough to get to a place where you have that, it's really awesome and beneficial. But for years, we didn't have that. And we were our own representation. So when you're representing yourself, you have to send cold emails.

48:38You have to make asks yourself. How do you do that? How do you successfully make asks? I love this because this has been my obsession on the research in a big way. Anyone who's doing any cold outreach, by the way, in theory, should be everyone. the most successful people at the top of their game are still sending cold emails out because they know the secret which is no one can do it for yourself better than you now if i had to create a hierarchy of the best ways to reach out to someone the hierarchy would essentially be the most human interaction to the least human interaction so the most human interaction would be meeting someone in person and getting introduced through an inside man nothing's better if i want to meet Colin, then Samir walking me up to Colin at a party saying, you got to meet this guy, Alex.

49:27All of a sudden, we're sort of vibing out, right? Whether you like me or not, one of your best friends and business partners just introduced. So that's the most human type of interaction. Obviously, that takes years to maybe develop. And then it just goes down, right? And then there's the inside man who makes the warm intro over email. And then you work your way down. I would say the handwritten letters are great if you can actually get it in front of the person, which is tricky. But if you work your way down, the lowest part of the totem pole is a cold DM or a cold email. So the question though, most of us, I can say for myself, when you're starting out, that is the only accessible option.

50:08So how can we optimize that so we can make the best of it? Because I want to be realistic that that's how most people get started. As I mentioned, one of the people I interviewed in the beginning of my journey was Tim Ferriss, the author of The 4-Hour Workweek. And he got his start by doing lots of cold outreach and cold emails. So when I interviewed Tim, I asked him, I said, did you have a template that you used that got the best results? And he shared with me a template that I've used over the years that's helped me get mentors, land partnerships. And what's amazing is that once I published it in the third door, readers started using it themselves.

50:44And I've heard that some readers used it to get in contact with the CEO of Apple. One of the readers of the book was a big financial advisor at Merrill Lynch. He told me this story about how he was trying to land this big blue chip client for six months, not a single reply. Decided to just throw a Hail Mary and copy paste the cold email template verbatim, just almost as a joke to see what would happen. Got to reply and close the deal the next week. So it works. And if anyone listening wants to use this, feel free to write this down and use it yourself. This is yours to use. So this is the cold email template.

51:20So it starts off with, you know, dear so-and-so. I know you're incredibly busy and probably get a lot of messages, so this will only take 60 seconds to read. That's it. That's your opening line. That's it. And by the way, you better actually keep it to under 60 seconds. That's not just a trick. It has to be honest. I've made that mistake. So that's your opening line. Boom. Next paragraph. two sentences max of who you are and why that's relevant to the person which means that every cold email is going to have a different second paragraph it's not your life resume it's not every video you've ever been part of right it is a specific tailored two sentence bio that will be of interest to that person so for some people it might be i grew up in this hometown that you know is relevant to them, or I went to this school, or I actually made a video with this person because you know they follow that person.

52:17You want to be really thoughtful about those two sentences. Boom. Next paragraph, again, two sentences max of a very thoughtful, specific question for them that they can answer on the spot. So it's not, what's your life story, or what advice do you have for someone just starting out? It's something very specific, whether it's, do you have any book recommendations for someone starting out in the industry or so-and-so. You want to sort of write your question with the mindset they're probably reading your email on their phone as they're walking through a parking lot. Can they respond with one hand on their way to their car?

52:56That's a pretty good framework to write your question. And then the final line of the email, the final paragraph is the clincher. I totally understand if you're too busy to respond. Even a one or two line reply will completely make my day. All the best, Alex. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at goodtoknowfacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients.

53:40Visit goodtoknowfacts.org. Yeah, that last part's really nice because it gives me the permission to not reply. Yeah, it's humble. It's thoughtful. It lets you off the hook. Yeah. Actually, I would say like me being off the hook for a reply will make me want to reply more. Right. Yeah, that's good. I like that. It's worked so well. A question I get a lot is around subject lines. My personal experience, the shorter the subject line, the better. If you can keep it under a few words, even better. If it's a question, it's even better.

54:23Samir, dash, your advice, question mark. Three words. The worst subject lines are the bait and switch subject lines. If you write a really good subject line, Sometimes, and I'll get cold emails, where the subject line was really good. It made me click on it. And it had nothing to do with the email. And it was clearly like a clickbaity subject line. Or you open it up and it's not to the point. Yeah. And it's a whole page. You're like, oh, even if this is related to the subject line, which got my attention, now I don't want to read this. I'll also say that in Gmail, there's a preview of the actual email.

55:00Yeah. So like I also, when I'm scanning through our emails, I'll look at the subject line and I'll take a quick glance at like what the beginning of email is. And typically what I'll say is I'm more likely to open if that first line references something that we've done that shows that you are paying, you're like paying close attention. Right. And that something, you actually have something specific. And never, well, you tell me. Yeah. Is there a huge difference between someone saying, I loved your most recent video last week of Mr. Beast, or the video you made in 2019 about this, I've watched six times and it changed my entire approach of being a creator.

55:36So I just want to say thank you. Those are really different, obviously, I think for sure. But I think there's also specificity that is an additional layer of like, hey, you asked this question at this point and it made me think of this. And you're like, oh, wow, you're a part of our work in a way that I think is – it feels like you respect the thing that we do and then immediately I'm leaned in a little bit more. So I do think specificity matters. Oh, yeah. And the cold email that changed my life, that introduced me to my biggest mentor that changed the trajectory of my career, I had spent – minimum two weeks reading everything i could about him online to write one email yeah and there's this great anecdote oh man i never share that's what i was about to say i never share this but it's just the reality i always think about this but i never get the opportunity to share it because i i just love it but there's never a space to share it but i think you guys will appreciate this i once saw this anecdote wow i don't know why this makes me so happy but i love this anecdote so much there is this fable of a lumberjack you know the most famous strong muscular lumberjack on earth.

56:57And then there's this young kid, aspiring lumberjack, who challenges the main lumberjack to like a lumberjack contest. Who can chop down a giant tree faster? And the main lumberjack goes, ha ha ha, like I'll beat you in a big crowd forms and they have this big competition. And they start going. And they're going and they're going and they're going and they're going. and an hour in, like the kid lumberjack disappears for like, walks away for like 20 minutes. And the big lumberjack like laughs, you know, kids these days, no work ethic, you know? And then the kid comes back and they go and they go and they go.

57:36And then again, like an hour later, the young lumberjack walks away and disappears for 20 minutes and comes back and they go and they go and they go. And finally the first tree falls and the young lumberjack won. and the big lumberjack goes what the hell how did you win you kept taking breaks and disappearing and the kid goes i was just going to sharpen my axe and i think the reason that story resonates with me so much about anyone starting out in their career is sometimes it feels like the more quantity pitches, the better. But I'm a big believer that if you can just like pause and spend a little, if you can go 150 % on the quality of your content, the quality of your cold pitches, it makes such a difference.

58:33And if you can sharpen in your acts. It just differentiates you that 2 % that can change everything. So a tangible, I love that. A tangible version of that in our career was we were really struggling to book brand partnerships. And we were making pitches via email. We were trying to work with agencies. We were trying to figure out how to get people to sponsor our videos. And then we took a step back and decided to spend a lot of time building a pitch deck of like, how do we storytell and make this ask properly? And we made these realizations that we needed to very clearly explain our audience, our mission statement.

59:19We needed to explain what the show was. Then we needed to make it very clear what the product was you were buying, how you bought it, how much it costs. And then we needed to have the next few actions also fully done. Meaning what's the insertion order? What's the contract? How do we invoice? Right. And so we were like, oh, we've just been out there being like, come on, sponsor a show, sponsor a show. But we'd actually, none of it is planned out. None of, none of this is our ax is not sharp. And that's what we then took like a few weeks to, to do that. And then we started getting yeses because it was like, oh, now we have a whole, we have a system.

1:00:01Everything's ready for you. We're making it way easier for you to say yes now. That's a great question to ask yourself. How can I make it easier for them to respond? How can I make it easier for them to say yes? That's a great, that's just a great question at any point in your career. How can I make it easier for them to say yes? Ooh, that's good. I should use that in my life. That's when empathy is like. I think the way you're describing that cold email template, that is to get advice from someone. How does that change when you're asking for something, when the ask starts to get bigger, when it's dollars or extended periods of time?

1:00:38How do you think that changes, or is that all predicated on more of a warm human relationship? There's other ingredients that are required for that. I do this myself a lot. I do a lot of cold outreach still. the line I like to use is essentially if this resonates with you are you open to connecting to see if there's a way we can work together like keep it really low pressure are you open to connecting on the phone for 15 minutes to explore if there's a way for us to work together and again it all depends on who you're messaging if you're messaging someone that's sort of your peer level it's very different and then if you're reaching out to, I would never email the CEO of a Fortune 500 company saying, hey, are you open to playing some paddle tennis and talking this out?

1:01:34You want to be a bit more thoughtful?

1:01:38So I like keeping it very low pressure. They're smart. They can intuit what's going on here. For the record, I'm open to paddle tennis. If you were to reach out, I'll be there. Podcast successful. One new friend locked in. I do feel like in my experience, when I look back at like, how did we get some of those first initial sponsorships? It was through like everything we were trying to do was to get to a human interaction. Yes. Like it was just, can we get on a Zoom? Can we get on a phone call? Can we tell this story in a human way? Yeah. Because the yes for asking someone for a large sum of money or something like that if you're going outbound is going to happen through, I think, a human interaction and them understanding that you understand them.

1:02:32When we first got yeses was when we started to understand what was the problem we were solving for them and how could we make it really clear that we understood the problem and that we were the solution to that problem, but also not overstep to be like, we are here to solve your problem for you. But just like, there's the, again, the implicit ways of explaining to someone that you can solve their problem, right? One of those is clearly defining your audience to them and recognizing that their job as the CMO is to reach that audience. So you've actually just established that you have a solution to the problem that you know they have without saying, I know you are having trouble reaching this audience.

1:03:18You don't have to say that. I did that and it backfired so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't do that. Even in that process, though, I can't emphasize enough how important generating a relationship in person has been. Yeah. I think a lot of people think with our industry, so much of it is digital and you're landing deals digitally. You're doing these ad integrations digitally. But our biggest partnerships always come from generating a real life human relationship where we are top of mind for that partner and they are putting us top of mind, we're putting them, like it's a symbiotic relationship and they're thinking about us and they're thinking, I want that person to do well because I know them now, right?

1:04:01Like I think people don't think about that and especially young creators who think like, I can do all these deals in my emails. One of the best pieces of advice I got from Larry King is he said, technology has transformed exponentially over the past 50 years. Human nature has not. That's really good. Yeah. Human nature has not. And Colin, what you just described is how does human nature work? People go, oh yeah, who should I partner with on this new activation? Oh, how about those two guys I met last week getting a tuna sandwich? They seem nice. Yeah. Human beings are really, simple. Totally. Absolutely.

1:04:42Yeah. And I think the most powerful version of that is when you're pairing that being top of mind for people and having real human relationships with the people in your industry, you pair that with social proof and credibility and real work that you're doing. So if you're doing good work, that work is resulting in social proof, which is bringing you credibility, which is, and then you're top of mind. That's like, then that's where the momentum starts happening. And when people start seeing someone who's experiencing an overnight success, That is what has just happened. They're doing good work, which is leading them to social proof, which is leading them to be able to drum up enough momentum and they have real human relationships or they have representation who has real human relationships.

1:05:24I think that's like, when you witness that, those are the things that are happening. Yeah. Overnight success is essentially just staring at the tree branch the day the fruit blossoms and going, oh my God, it happened in the past 24 hours. You're essentially missing the whole nine months or sometimes nine years that it took that tree to grow before that branch even existed. Yeah. During our career, the thing that I sometimes didn't realize when I was making an ask was I was just making the pure ask. Hey, can we come film this thing? Hey, can you come on our show? Can we collaborate? But when you zoom out, what you actually have to do is tell a story about what you are doing before you make the ask, right?

1:06:08Or some compelling story about yourself that tells that person who you are. You have one of those stories about how you funded this whole operation. And I think in the book, you talk about this learning from your mentor, Elliot, which is a whole thing I'm sure we'll dig into here. But I was wondering if you could tell that story of how you dropped out of college to do this. And I think for any young person, there's always the question of, well, how do you logistically do that financially? And you have a fantastic story of how you did that. I appreciate those kind words. At the time, it didn't seem like a smart thing to do.

1:06:54It seemed at the time like the dumbest possible avenue to go. But a lot of my life accidentally feels very forest gumpy where I feel like I'm an idiot stumbling over myself. And in hindsight, people are like, that was so smart. And I'm like, no one told me that at the time. They told me I was an idiot. So, you know, the part you're referring to is in my freshman year of college. So I had this idea at the time to go out and interview all these people I looked up to, essentially to go interview them about what mindset they had to achieve their biggest goals. Now, the biggest issue was I didn't understand how hard it would be to get all these interviews because I was 18, but I didn't know it would cost money to go travel and interview these people.

1:07:36And I also knew my parents weren't going to help me with any of it. Not only were we like in debt because of student loans, they wanted me to be a doctor. So I didn't even tell them fully what I was up to. This was sort of like my secret double life. So I had this idea to write this book, you know, third door. I don't have the money. I don't know how I'm going to pull it off, but I'm just like thinking every night, like there's got to be a way to get some quick cash. and two nights before final exams, I'm in the library my freshman year of college doing what everyone does in the library right before finals at the time.

1:08:10I was on Facebook and I saw somebody on Facebook post free tickets to the game show The Price is Right. And as most people know, it's the longest running game show in American history and I was going to college in Los Angeles, not too far from where the show filmed and the tickets were for the next morning. And my first thought was, well, what if I just go on the show and win some money to fund this book? You know, not my brightest moment because I'd never seen a full episode of the show before. You know, I'd seen bits and pieces of it my whole life growing up. It was the only thing to watch on TV when I was in fourth grade, but I'd never seen a full episode before.

1:08:48So I told myself it was a dumb idea and to not think about it. Well, I don't know if any of you have ever had one of those moments where no matter how ridiculous of an idea, for some reason, it keeps clawing itself back into your mind. So almost to prove to myself this was a bad idea, I remember I'm sitting at this round wooden table in the corner of the library, and I take on my spiral notebook, and I write best and worst case scenarios to prove to myself this is a bad idea. And I remember writing worst case scenarios, fail finals, get kicked out of pre-med, lose financial aid, mom stops talking to me, no, mom kills me, there was like 20 cons.

1:09:27and the only pro was maybe maybe win enough money to fund this dream and i still you know to this day can remember it feeling like somebody had like tied a rope around my gut and was pulling me in a direction so that night i decided to do the logical thing and pull an all-nighter to study but i didn't study for finals i studied how to hack the price is right and i went on the show the next day and did this ridiculous strategy. And I ended up winning the whole showcase showdown, winning a sailboat, selling that sailboat. And that's how I funded the book. And that's how the whole journey set off.

1:10:02And you have to understand, I was 18 years old as a freshman in college, and I sold that sailboat for about$17 ,000, which when you're in college is$1 million. I'm taking all my friends out to lunch at Chipotle, free guacamole for everybody. I thought I was a baller at that point. And that's how the whole journey set off. And it ended up taking, to my surprise, two years to finally sit down with Bill Gates. It took three years to sit down with Lady Gaga. But that is essentially how I got my initial start to go on this journey. That story, the full length of that story in this book says so much about you.

1:10:42That is what I'm talking about is like when you are engaging with someone like and you're trying to drum up momentum to get to an ask like actually just telling a great story is the best path to get them to lean in right to lean in a little bit more and I think understanding like it's very hard because it's about yourself but taking a step back and being like what is my story and how do I tell it is a really important piece of this puzzle because Colin and I both have some cold emails that are completely insane. Like for us to refer to ourselves as storytellers, I think is, is unbelievable that we've gotten to where we are.

1:11:22When I look back, there's a cold email that I wrote to, not a cold email, sorry. It was a follow-up to a meeting we had at WME. Okay. Very early on. Do you remember this? Very early on. This was one of those meetings that I thought was going to change. Change our lives. Oh, I've been in that meeting and I fucked it up. I was like, Hollywood has taken note of us. Wow. Here it is. Got an email from WME. Oh no, we didn't even get a cold email. It was one of my high school friends had a friend who was an agent at WME and they had breakfast and he was like, one of my friends is making YouTube videos.

1:11:54And the guy was like, I'm kind of interested in YouTube. Maybe we should sit down with them. Sat down and I was certain. I was like, we're signed. Show business is calling. We are it now. Like we made it. And we have the breakfast and I'm pitching the shit out of ourselves. Like, I don't even know what I'm pitching, which is the important part. I go home and I start drafting a follow-up email. And as I go back and read this email, it lists every single thing we've ever done with no direction. It's just a list. It's like, hey, it was great connecting with you. Like, we're on our path to becoming like big storytellers.

1:12:31Here are all the things we've done. And none of them are connected. it's just vomit of every it's like 14 media buffet it's like it's whatever you want we probably did it it's like every youtube video we've ever been involved in like a huge long list it's like you want a long-form documentary we've worked on that one time you want a short-form piece it's right there you want this and like no cohesion to our story at all just here's everything please save us yeah hey we have no idea who we are yeah but if you know who we are like take your pick yeah Whatever you want, we'll go for it, which is obviously the worst way to go.

1:13:08It is, but call me crazy. Okay. You're describing a lot of trial and error, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I can say from my perspective that you guys have done extremely well. The bridge from messing up nine out of ten times to being in the position you are in, the bridge is called making mistakes. Right. Yeah. there's no there's no you didn't go to a secret layer where like mr b sat you down and said you've now earned the right to know the secret to being a creator well we can't tell that story right right the ground will drop and you're here uh but the bridge is called making mistakes it's just i wish there was some other secret that i could pass on to someone i think the bridge is called making mistakes and you guys did it man and you guys did it and you learned from it and And the best advice I ever got over the course of the third door is that your mistakes are your greatest gift.

1:14:08So if I'm to look at the steps that it took for us to get here, the first step, which took us a really long time to figure out, was create something of value. Have a thing. Create something of value. Have it be a consistent, repeatable thing that then when you make an ask, the ask is really clear, right? That's like if you're trying to get to a clarity of an ask, you need a thing. And that was something that was really important. The next piece was if you're making a thing and it's good enough, you might have the opportunity to get some social proof. Someone going, hey, that thing is good and publicly saying it or being an inside person for you and turning to someone else and going, no, they are making a good thing, right?

1:14:53So that like social proof and credibility was the second piece. then you get to the point where you're like, what is compound interest and what is momentum? And when do I capitalize on momentum? When do I turn around and sit in my studio and keep making my thing? When do I go to the dinner? What do I say at the dinner? How do I drum up momentum at that dinner? Like you have to make all these evaluations on momentum and asks. And when you're ready for an ask too, when you can fulfill and make that experience after you make the ask so good that then that person becomes an inside person for you, right?

1:15:29Like it is such a, that's, I would say, this like four-step process of how we built this show. What's so beautiful about what you're saying is what's being implicitly said, which is it took so much time. Yeah, it took a lot of time. It took so much time. And if I could inject one thing into every single person in our generation, It's the idea that everything of value takes so much time. And all of my frustration, whether it was in writing this book or starting my speaking business, every frustration I've ever had came when I was upset it wasn't happening on my timeline. And my timeline was so delusional that I was banging my head against the wall.

1:16:23because we grew up in a generation that was unlike any generation in human history. When we wanted to learn a fact about Napoleon, we could Google it. Every single one of our parents and ancestors, even our grandparents, had to walk to a library, go to the Dewey Decimal System, find the encyclopedia, open it up, oops, they picked the wrong encyclopedia, go back to the Dewey Decimal System. It was a multi-hour endeavor to find out what year Napoleon was born. Yeah. If they wanted to eat something, they had to plant a seed nine months before and hope it rained. That's how they ate. There was no grocery store 500 years ago.

1:17:07Our generation has been blessed by so many things, but the underlying curse is we don't understand how time works in the human experience. And what's so beautiful about the story you just said, the steps you laid out, What was so beautiful about the Rohan story, you said it, Rohan spent three years slowly, calmly cultivating a relationship without you even knowing he was. And I have never, even, and what's tricky about being a creator is it's so easy to look at someone else's account and see all of their numbers and go, how come it's not happening to me without knowing that Addison Rae, I'm just making this up because I don't really know, but Addison Rae has been dancing and perfecting her dancing skill for 10 years before she had a TikTok account.

1:18:00There's so much that isn't shown on our social accounts that go into it. And if there's one thing I can just inject into everyone listening, it's that you're doing fine. it takes longer than you know just keep going i would say too especially when it comes to inside people if you find yourself at a dinner even if it's not the dinner that you think is the dinner that's changing your life treat it the same way as if it is like for us there are people who we met during our first channel during the lacrosse network who were able to work with us five years later in some way, shape, or form. The deal that essentially really helped our company that we got with Samsung was through a relationship that was fostered like three years before.

1:18:50There was no strategy behind that relationship. There was no plan to utilize that relationship three years later when we needed it. It's just we treated that relationship the same way we would treat any other relationship. Providing value, listening, going to the events that that person put on. And it paid us back. and being a kind person. Yeah, totally. I think it's so underrated. My sister always jokes that the most underrated thing is being nice. Yeah. Like everyone wants to be cool. Everyone wants to be successful. No one's out there trying to be nice. And nice people are fucking awesome. Yeah.

1:19:23Because when you're in a bind, who do you want to call? The nice person. When you're deciding between two job candidates who are perfectly suited for the role, who do you pick? The nice person. Yeah. And being like you guys, Samir, I've known you for what? almost 10 years now. I just remember you being super nice. And it's something that's so underrated. We always want to optimize for our numbers and for our skills and for our morning routines. But we're almost never sitting down and saying, how can I be a bit nicer today, a bit kinder? And I think part of being kind is empathizing with the other person's experience.

1:20:01And I think that's something that even, again, I remember early on when you want to make it so bad, You're just thinking about the opportunities for you. And I think being opportunistic is both good and bad at times. Like I know when we were sitting with Mr. Beast, we were joking about how, you know, obviously for someone like him, the biggest creator on the platform, like he's going to get a lot of people trying to get him in a video, right? Like if he's in the video, then maybe the video will blow up and then maybe they'll gain a ton of subscribers and new people will discover their channel.

1:20:34and then maybe they can have a career. And so it's almost like you just see him as the path to your career. And so people were making him like absurdly sized gifts to make like a video being like, I delivered an oversized thing to Mr. Beast, right? And he's just like, I don't want any of that. That's not good. Like that doesn't do anything for me, right? Like, and there's no empathy of like, what is his experience like when I'm doing this? And I think that's the disconnect is like the lack of empathy for the other person's actual experience when you're doing this thing. And if you think about the lack of empathy, which by the way, I am an expert in because I had so many experiences where I had a lack of, you know, hounding Warren Buffett for six months is a case study in my lack of empathy or self-awareness.

1:21:19So I am like, hi, I'm Alex Benayan. I am a empathy lacquer at times, right? And it's just the reality. That's when I start. And that's how I learned. So again, I'm not, I have no shame around it. It's just the reality. If I have to reflect on my own experience. I'm not talking about anyone else's, but if I just have to look at why I did big mistakes, the Tim Ferriss mistakes, the Warren Buffett mistakes, the Mark Zuckerberg mistakes, they were all grounded in the single same soil. Fear. Every single time I made a giant mistake, I was terrified without even knowing. the reason someone sends Mr.

1:22:02Beast a giant refrigerator or someone tweets you 36 times until you have breakfast is they don't even understand how deeply terrified they are of not succeeding of not being able to put food on the table of being seen as a failure of not being accepted by the people who love them and I can speak from experience every mistake I made big mistake not little mistakes but big mistakes were because my fear had grown out of proportion and one of the greatest skills or tools anyone can learn in order to be like rohan and take that's a good book title by the way be like rohan be like rohan but i mean that seriously i was so moved by that story because he sounded like i'm sure he experienced fear but it was right-sized.

1:22:58The story you said was not someone whose fear was driving the car. The fear was in the passenger seat, maybe talking up a storm, but the fear wasn't driving the car. And one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself is not to eliminate fear. That's like saying, I'm going to cut off my left arm. Fear is a part of the human experience, just like joy is, just like sadness is. So the goal is not to eliminate fear, it's to right-size it so it's no longer driving the car. yeah i think there's a lot of self-worth stuff wrapped up in in that as well as that i can speak from from experience of like i need to meet this person because i'm i'm not a value myself right so if i put myself next to them then maybe i can elevate to some level of value right or like as a creator you're like i can't make an idea that's interesting by myself i need to make a oversized refrigerator and get him and get Jimmy in the video because then it'll be a value.

1:23:53So there's a lot of interesting evaluations of value. You just said something about Mark Zuckerberg. Can you tell that story? What was your Mark Zuckerberg mistake? Oh, that's a bad one. This is so embarrassing to think about. It's just the reality. I email Mark Zuckerberg. I keep checking my inbox every single day for a response. He was speaking on an event in two weeks that I wanted to meet him at. I didn't get a response. So a couple days before the event, I emailed the person who introduced us and saying, hey, do you mind if I just send another message to Mark? I don't want to be over persistent, but do you mind if I send another message?

1:24:27And he goes, what are you talking about? Mark responded to you like a week ago. How come you didn't reply? And I was like, that's impossible. I've been checking my inbox every day. And I go to my spam folder and it's Viagra, Viagra, Viagra, Mark Zuckerberg, Viagra, Viagra, Viagra. Like even Gmail thought it was impossible for Mark Zuckerberg to actually be responding to me. It got flagged as spam. And Mark's response was very kind. It was like, you know, it sounds like you're, you know, doing something very nice. You know, I don't have that much time. I'm happy to meet you backstage. You know, very kind.

1:24:59And I had read in like a sales book that you shouldn't like over close the deal. Once someone says yes, don't don't put too much effort into it after like play it cool so i don't respond he said yes so i like i'm like great i'm just gonna now go in and see him at the event i don't want to like i don't want to bog him down so i roll up to this event with this email from mark a real email and i showed to the event security and they're like what are you talking about like this this this email is clearly photoshopped i'm like no this is a real email and they like call mark's team and like do you have any record of this guy on Mark Scalch?

1:25:37I was like, no, we've never heard of him. And I'm like begging them. They're like, it's a real email. And essentially what ends up happening is they say, if you don't leave now, we're calling the police. So I blew the entire meeting with Zuckerberg. And it was one of those situations where you just beat yourself up morning after morning after morning replaying what happened. And the worst part was when I told the person who introduced us originally what happened, he said, why didn't you just call me? And I could have told Mark what was going on. But I was so afraid of being over persistent that I swung the pendulum the whole other way and completely dropped the ball and blew the game.

1:26:16That's a really tough one. Yeah. Did you ever reply to him? Oh. Did you ever send an email back? Multiple times. I responded multiple times. The person introduced us, he just didn't respond. Have you spoken to him at all since? No. No. Never. Wow. No. I tried to reach out. Wow. We've spent a lot of time on your failures i think we should shift into welcome to colin and samir unlock your trauma featuring like we should give you an opportunity to talk about like some of the good things about these interviews but i i wanted to to dig into like the actual substance honestly this made this a very honest conversation no but but but it's also the reality like it's just the reality of doing any of these things like if you want to do a thing and you're you're in it like you're in the game i i always thought about this guy grew up playing sports.

1:27:04I always thought about like, it was never my expectation when we played in a competitive game that the other team would score zero goals. Right. The part of the game is they were going to score on us. And our job was to score more than they scored. Right. Then we got scored on. Sure. And to bring that analogy into life and business, I think is really important where you're like, it's not like you're not going to lose. You're going to lose. Not only like, are they going to score on you? You'll probably lose full games. You might have a losing season. But the concept is that when you look back on all of it, you won more times than you lost.

1:27:43And that really helped me reconcile with the mistakes. And still to this day, it helps me reconcile with the mistakes, right? Because you're like, this is the whole, this is, we're playing a game here. And of course, we're looking for this outcome. But part of that is going to be, we're going to miss. If I can summarize our entire conversation to this point, it's that if you're trying to start anything new, which is inherently the job of a creator, you're starting something new that someone hasn't done before. That journey requires a tremendous amount of setback and rejection as you figure it out.

1:28:20It's an inherent part of the entrepreneurial journey. And being a creator is sort of the wild west of the 21st century. You're doing things new. And the best creators do things that are so new that in the beginning, they actually might seem crazy. And they actually take a little time for people to sort of go like, oh, this is sort of genius. You are, the best analogy to think about it is a creator is not driving on a well-paved highway. That's someone with a nine to five in a cubicle, which by the way is fine, but that's a well-paved highway. Someone else has done that job. Many other people know what that job is like.

1:28:57it's smooth there's street lights the creator is driving a car on a dirt road in the middle of the night and i don't care how smart you are or how hard you work you're just going to hit rocks and potholes and tree branches along the way and to beat yourself up for hitting a tree branch is just extra pain that's unnecessary give yourself the grace that rejections and setbacks and failures are a beautiful natural part of your journey and i would say that some of those Those tree branches, though, and some of those rejections are going to come with consequences that are painful. Oh, yeah. You're talking about some of the consequences, like Warren Buffett.

1:29:36That's a real consequence. Mark Zuckerberg, that's a real consequence. Yeah. And it's not just like, hey, yeah, go out and experience rejection, and then you'll get to success and all good. Some of those are going to come with serious consequences that you will live with for long periods of time. But your job is to take those as signals. I would say, too, to keep using the car as an analogy here, Samir and I have been saying this often, that the more you do experience some wins again and again, of course you have some losses, but every time you get a win, it's like you get more gas mileage out of the car.

1:30:08Not that the career gets easier. You still have to drive the car through the dark, but you're getting more mileage every time you get in the car. It feels more stable. You can see that this is a longer-term career. one of the most surprising parts of my research for the third door was i was talking to these people who have achieved gigantic things is how often the billionaire entrepreneur still gets rejected i had this fantasy that okay you get rejected when you're starting out that makes sense but then finally you have an exit for a billion dollars and for your next startup people will go, whatever you think sounds good.

1:30:49Nope. Even my favorite example of this is Jerry Seinfeld just objectively created the most successful sitcom in television history. He then creates another show called Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee. And every single network says no. And now 15 years later, it's one of the most popular shows on Netflix. Wow. And to me, it's just a testament to life has no tipping point. It's a continuous march. I love that. Life has no tipping point. Is there a third door that you're knocking on right now at this point in your career? Being an author, a speaker, you're posting, you're just scrolling through your Instagram like you're an avid creator.

1:31:43There's a lot coming out. what's the door now?

1:31:54There's a lot. And if anything, I would actually say one of the things that I missed. So the third door came out a few years back. And I was a first-time author, so a big part of that journey was going on podcasts and going and doing lots of speaking to try to get the book off the ground. It's one thing to get the interviews. It's another thing to write the book. It's another thing to make anybody pay attention. The first few copies were bought by my grandpa, my mom, my cousins. I'm Persian. I have 20 cousins. That was like 20 sales. But after that, I was like, okay, now who buys the book? And I spent so much time pouring my heart into trying to get the book out into the world.

1:32:39I started feeling like I wasn't myself after like a couple years of doing that. And it goes back to your question was, I was like, oh, I forgot how much I love going on an adventure to learn something new. And even just in the past couple years, I've started like reaching out to people to learn about different topics that I'm passionate about and I'm curious about where I didn't really know where it would go. And there's something about that, like topics I'm really interested right now are around mental health. Like what does it take to heal? a lot of topics I'm interested on and that you guys are so good at is how do you actually tell stories visually in a way that helps people in a big way because that's a skill in and of itself that's very different than film or television you guys are again it's the wild west just learning about that something that I just love about the third door energy is it at least for me it gives me permission to essentially fuck around and find out like you don't really need It's not like becoming a lawyer or a doctor where you better have a clear path of what you're doing.

1:33:46At least for me, the third door energy is actually giving yourself permission to ask someone for advice or read a book that might not fit into your subject line. You know, Steve Jobs has a very famous story that the best class he ever took in his life was a calligraphy class in college that completely influenced the way Apple computers got its start. Warren Buffett talks about the best class he ever took was a public speaking Dale Carnegie course. And sometimes we think of the third door of just the outreach part, but a lot of it is also the learning part. Do you give yourself permission to learn things that make no logical sense of why you wanna learn it, but something in your heart says, I am gonna take that online course.

1:34:26I am gonna read that book. I am gonna listen to that podcast. I listen to the Conan O 'Brien Needs a Friend podcast all the time. It is not relevant to my work at all. Yet for some reason, it fills me up and makes me feel so damn good. And I guarantee you, in 20 years, I'll go, oh, that's why I was so obsessed with that podcast. It was teaching me something that I needed. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah, and Steve Jobs has that famous quote, you can only connect the dots looking back. You can't connect them looking forward. So you just have to trust that you're going out to the right dots. So I see the third door as more of a mindset of exploration.

1:35:06that you're allowed to leave the line and follow that inner whisper that's telling you, yeah, I am gonna make, I am gonna create a whole TikTok account that posts crazy cooking videos, even though that's, I'm a personal development influencer. Just because something inside of me, it gives you permission to try. Man, I feel like we could talk about this stuff for like hours and hours and hours because I think it is, although this story is very uniquely yours, of going on this journey. It is, when I look back at the past 13 years of us, you know, building a career, it is just, it's nice to know we weren't alone.

1:35:48That these stories of just, when you have an idea in your head and you want to make it happen, the stumbling, the failure, the rejection, the success, like all these different things that happen, it's just the nature of the beast. Yeah, it's a natural part of the journey. Yeah, and you can only connect the dots looking back. It is so true. That's it. that's it dude thank you so much for coming on i really appreciate it um i hope you wear a yellow shirt next time i i will i will bring one just in case next time sorry i told you not to wear yellow it was great and uh i'm just so grateful for you guys and all the work that you do to help other people appreciate it man yeah thanks for coming on awesome thanks guys

1:36:35Thank you.