649: Sam Lessin - Type 2 Fun, Voluntary Hardship, Joy as a Competitive Advantage, Long-Term Thinking, & Life Lessons From Dad (Lessin's Lessons)

22:41I had actually worked closely with my dad and had been his lead, I think one of his lead investors, if not his lead in six degrees, which was kind of the precursor and social networking. I had a lot of thoughts and perspectives on the stuff. It was really exciting. And so I almost went and worked for Mark. The other job offer I had was the most boring job offer in the world, which was Bain & company, but it was the gold checkmark, right? Like people wanted the Bain job. No one wanted to go be an entrepreneur. People wanted the Bain job. And so it took me an extra few years of going getting gold stars.

23:08I still was on the I need gold stars. I need to prove that I can get gold stars thing, even though like I was very torn about it because in my heart of hearts, God, I love the innovation and the internet and what was going on. I think I understood a lot more and had a ton more exposure than most people at that point. By gold star, you mean like someone telling you like you're smart you're good sam yeah you want the adults to tell you you're good right because you don't you don't believe it yourself enough yet or you've worked too hard effectively and like been too trained on gold stars and it's it's one of those things where it's a really hard balance i know plenty of people who have no gold star instinct and some of them are wild some are really successful a lot of them aren't because they just do not care Then you have this other class of people who like really care about good grades, right?

23:54They really care about like traditional measures of success Candidly, like they just don't ever do anything interesting And so there's this interesting like yin and yang balance. I think you need and for me It took a few extra turns of like get the gold star do the thing you're supposed to do from the adult perspective You know the funny part is I think bane really broke me of that That was kind of the final straw and ever since then i've just been kind of doing wild things but you needed it though. You needed to get that out of your system. I needed to get out of my system. I needed one more turn of the crank of being told by adults I was good.

24:25So two years go by on the dot and you decide it's time for me to start something. Yeah, I mean, so reality is a little more complicated than that, but yes, the upshot is, while I almost quit three times during Bain and had really interesting job offers from all sorts of interesting stuff, including very early founders fund before when I was just getting started, et cetera, I did stick it out. and then like quit on the dot with a friend from Bain and we started a company in Brooklyn. All right, what was that company? It was called Drop.io. It was a file strength platform. And it was basically, if we're being honest, it was basically a Dropbox also ran.

25:01Was Dropbox out then? You know, Box.net, Dropbox and Drop.io were all founded relatively similar timeline. I actually don't remember exactly, but it was like somewhat concurrent, it was what I would say. and for us the big thing for me was i was really excited about aws and the idea that you could build businesses on top of the early aws it was kind of funny there's another place you end up in rooms where you had no business being is when they first formed the amazon web services customer advisory board i was on it it was like the cto of the mlb and like all these very fancy senior people and then me and like i would because i like represent i was actually we're spending a lot of money with them and like we were kind of kids in brooklyn with a startup which was a weird thing then.

25:44And so, you know, you talk about wandering through life into weird rooms. That was a funny one. And then so how long until you mentioned Mark, Mark Zuckerberg decided to, it sounds like Aqua hire you, but what happened there in that story? Yeah, I mean, basically, it's always a bunch of things intersecting. But you know, Mark and I, I've always thought the world of him. We knew each other, we weren't super close in college, we became closer over time, just socially, in a lot of ways, we always talked about the internet and what was going on and what was most important. And I think it was in early 2010, the basic tone of it ended up being kind of coming to the conclusion that Facebook really mattered in the world.

26:22And what I was doing just didn't, right? It was not a terrible business. We were growing, we had customers, it wasn't like a nothing. It wasn't on a trajectory to be like an important thing, right? And Mark was just like, just come run the profile team. I really want to like reinvest in profiles. What had happened is newsfeed had become like the only thing that mattered in Facebook. And Mark wanted to like reinvigorate other services. And so at a certain point, watching these things and knowing how much, you know, I do believe, I believe in particular in the importance of digital identity and where that was going, it was kind of like one of the things like, okay, fine.

26:54This is clearly the right thing to do. He acquired the company, I moved out, took over the profile team originally, ended up building the identity team and reporting to him and running a bunch of the product groups. So 2010 to 2014, it was a huge growth period for Facebook. Wild period. Wild period. You're right in the middle of it, making it happen. What are some like leadership lessons you learned from working for Mark? I mean, Mark is an incredible guy. I mean, I can go in so many directions on this, but I think the upshot is I had a blast working at Facebook for him in that period. I had a blast building teams and like I'm very proud of who we've recruited and a lot of the things we did.

27:30For Mark specifically, look I think there's a few things that come to mind one is I'll go back to joy the guy is joyful right and like people I think miss this about it it's like he loves what he's building he loves the game of it he loves the whole nine yards like it's not you know people are always like well Mark she's gonna retire me like I don't think so like I think Mark actually loves what he's doing and I think he has a lot of fun with it I think he's deeply competitive he's deeply joyful and like that is infectious. And that style of leadership, I think is amazing. And so I think that's like a really important, authentic place to lead from.

28:05I think that Facebook in that era was probably one of the greatest concentrations of talent in like the history of the world, right? I don't mean this myself, you know, I got to be along for the ride, but you just look at it, there's all these factors that came to play that had to do with the dot com crash and kind of the early internet and things like that. It's like, you just looked around the room, you're like, it's, Mark is an incredible leader, but one of the most important things is the setup, which he obviously put together and leads. This is an incredible team. I think that's something you just can't undercount when you're working at that scale.

28:38You mentioned the word joy a number of times. You, your dad, the people you like to hire. With that said, there are a lot of examples of people who have this healthy chip on their shoulder. maybe not healthy actually, but they have a chip on their shoulder and that propels them to win seven super bowls like Tom Brady or to Kobe or MJ getting cut in his hall of fame speech. He's just talking about all the slights and he's the greatest ever. I know I'm leaning on sports, but this happens in business too. So how do you mix this dichotomy on one side, this joyful person who does it out of love and care and joy, but maybe cause I sense Mark maybe has both, but, and maybe you do, I don't know others.

29:19I sense more joy out of you. What about like having that chip say, I'm going to prove you wrong. I can do the thing that people don't think I can do. Again, as I said, there are seasons for things. I think it's pretty hard to argue that Mark has to prove anything to anyone at this point. Right. Is what I would say. So I think, again, like, I think that's like the joy is the long-term one that keeps you in the game in a lot of ways. Like, look, I love a competitive chip. I think revenge companies can be great. But like, let's talk about like, I would argue that like Rippling is probably one of the world's great revenge companies.

29:48Right. Parker. Right. I don't know if you know the story. Oh, yeah. I know the story very well. Yeah, my wife actually works there. Got it. So, like, Parker's awesome. You know, Parker? Parker's a joyful guy, right? Like, and I actually think that's kind of one of the great tricks of a lot of these things. I actually, it's not clear to me that competitive spirit chip on your shoulder thing and joy can't go hand in hand, right? There might be places where, like, one dominates. And, like, there are companies that are, I think, you know, I'm not going to name names, but I think you can look across the universe and be like, that seems like kind of like a mean company, if that makes sense.

30:22Like that's a company that's run out of like anger and fear versus one that's run from like a place. It's like, you know, this is like Star Wars 101. It's like the light side and the dark side of the force. But there's some like deep truth to it, which is like the anger is very powerful in a moment. Michael Jordan can come up with reasons that his immediate enemy like in a game, like slighted him that are ridiculous to motivate him like with a little bit of extra pizzazz, fine. But I just don't think it's like sustaining. And so I think for me, it's like the long-term success is sure you can have chips and be competitive there's nothing wrong with wanting to win in fact i actually think you have to you have to come up with reasons why you want to win that are outsides or you just like life's too big and long like i face this personally like i like there's a body that's been successful in you know i'm proud of a lot of the work i've done but like it is a question of like what am i doing right now you know what i mean like i can try to find another solana that'd feel nice but like does that really matter like you know what i mean like what are you Like, how do you think about that?

31:16Right? Yeah. Can you tell the Solana story? It was like a 2 ,000 % return or something insane like that. What happened there? I put in about$400 ,000. I was the third person to send them a check. Was this individually done or was this with the fund? I would be insanely rich. I was going to say, nice if so. But anyway. It's still done just fine. I wouldn't worry about it. But yeah, I mean, that was a great example of$400 ,000. You know, we exited two RLPs who at some point you have to pay them back. about 2 ,000 times their money. If you held it, it'd be a lot more. But basically, we put it and call it on a 20 post that things worth$100 billion today in five years, or whatever the timeline is.

31:55It's pretty wild. Here's the thing about that. You've got to ask the question of, these things are all serendipitous in a lot of ways. The way I ended up doing that deal was the intersection of two very distinct things at the same time. One was just the idea of, I really believe there's room for an ETH killer, right or something that's not ETH that's going to win you know I've been around the crypto world since a relatively early period I was a personal seed investor in Ripple I had done Bitcoin very early personally you know I had been the first investor and really the only investor for quite some time in Venmo so I had some experience and like perspective on the payment space but then you know you think about these narratives we hit this point I was like there's gonna be something that takes some of the ideas of Ethereum and does it better and so we were looking for that right And I was looking for that.

32:40And Solana wasn't the only one we did. We also did Algorand early and a few others, a lot of which were successful, but nothing like Solana. And then at the same time, people and relationships matter. And the reason I ended up doing Solana was actually because of Raj Gokul. And Raj is someone, believe it or not, I had originally met because I was trying to recruit him to work at Facebook years and years earlier. I really liked him. It didn't work out, but I followed him through three other startups he did, right? All over the place. And I was like, you know, we never invested. I never invested in them.

33:10I wasn't quite there, but I really liked him. And then I would run into him at a crazy crypto meetup. And he's like, I have a new company. And it's the theme you love. And I've always liked Raj and believed in him. Right. And it kind of all came together in like a really serendipitous moment. And so you think that's kind of, you know, how that one played out. And like, it wasn't a straight line. I think this goes back to the whole like, be joyful, but it's always an ups and downs. Like I remember running into the founders, you know, a little before they launched or right after even. And they had launched the thing.

33:37They didn't know what it was for. It was like all this. And like they'd gained a bunch of weight. They look like shit. It was like clearly a very rough moment for them, but they're fundamentally joyful people doing a joyful thing and expressing ideas they're excited about. And you know, it's not the only factor, like there's a bunch of other stuff at play, but it matters. So I want to reference an interview you did. I don't remember how long ago it was with something that I've picked up after doing this podcast for 10 plus years. I'm asked frequently, maybe during Q and A's of keynotes or something like, what is the one thing you've learned from all of these brilliant people.

34:08What is it? And you know, it's, it, there isn't one thing. There's a million things, right? I've written multiple books about those things, but if you force me to say one of them, I'll say, you know what? And this isn't going to be as inspiring as you're hoping. Nobody knows what they're doing. We are all figuring it out as we go. And I know you've said something similar to this. Now that you're more into the world beyond Bain, I just love to hear you kind of riff on that. I mean, I couldn't agree more. That was the thing for me at Bain is I, you know, you go and I still had reverence for these big things.

34:36And like, you know, you worked to, you're not supposed to say the names, but like I went and like optimize the peanut M &M line in Hackettstown, New Jersey. And you work with these big fancy companies and you're like, you guys have no idea what you're doing. And like, that's very freeing. Cause like once you realize no one. It's inspiring. It's very inspiring. Well, you can take it one of two ways. You can take it very cynically. That's the wrong lesson to take. The other would be like, oh wow, that means I'm good. I can figure this stuff out. And the people who are really successful, you know, look, it's tough because you don't want to say it's all random.

35:04It's not right. Like it's not random. The people who are the most successful people in the world, it's not like they just got lucky. That's not the right way to think about it. But if you spend enough time in rooms with them for long enough, you realize they're wrong about all sorts of things. They've got all sorts of weaknesses themselves. That's cool. That's being human. But there are a few key traits where like it's a tough thing to balance. So, you know, I'm like a professional seed investor, right? Like what I do is I want to go and find things super early, help people form the businesses, be their first check.

35:34You're analyzing the people and the space and not much else. And you know what the thing is about seed investing? You're mostly wrong. You mostly lose money. It's the only type of finance in the world where you're usually losing money. It's a very interesting discipline as a result. And I think when you do that enough, what you start to realize is there is a random walk to it. 100%. You can't control everything. You shouldn't even try to. That can make you quite cynical. goal. It's almost like playing a sports game where like you score goals, but the number of points you score is almost random, right?

36:09Like, and so like, and someone's like, oh my God, that person has a hundred points. You're like, yeah, like they scored a goal that happened to be a hundred point goal. Like they're not better. So this is weird thing of like competing in something with so much randomness in it, if that makes sense. But if you can embrace that and embrace what it is, it's, it's great, you know, but it is a tough thing to kind of balance, right? To be like, I want to work hard. I care about it. It's not all random, but there's a lot of randomness to it. You want to be the first check. You want to be in super early.

36:39What does your day-to-day look like? Because you can't just follow the crowd or the other institutional investors. You're getting in before all of those guys get in. What does your normal day look like? And I'd say not only that, but I'm a real snob about it, Ryan. Which is like, if other people want to do deals, I don't want to do them. It's an ego thing as much as anything else. I'm like, well, just go get the money from them. They'll pay more. I think one of the most insulting things you can call someone is like a market participant. Yeah. Right. It's like incredibly insulting. But yeah, I mean, like, what does that mean?

37:10I spent a lot of time programming in the last month and I've been having a lot of fun doing it. I write a lot. I've come to the conclusion that one of the best ways to learn things is to post wrong things on the internet and let people correct you. Right. I think it's like this constant conversation and exploration trying to find interesting people and interesting ideas. And that's kind of how I look at it is I almost joke sometimes that I feel like a tenured professor of capitalism, right? Which is like, I'm responsible to make a lot of money over the long term by being very right every once in a while with permission to be wrong all the time.

37:46It's really fun. There are ups and downs to it, of course. There's challenges to it. But I think, you're like, what's my day? I meet with some people, read some stuff. I write some stuff. I come up with an idea and explore how to do it or program it or design something. It's a very weird job that way. Are you partially while you're shipping work online? I mean, I've read a ton of it. Really good writer. Not surprising given just the way that you've operated. Are you just trying to draw people to you? Is that part of it? Are you trying to create this magnetic effect for drawing the types of people that are down with your style of writing and ideas to come to you with ideas?

38:27Or how does it work? All of the above. I mean, I think one of the important things is like, it's not just about drawing people to you. In fact, I actually think it's just as important to push people away. Yep. I'm not trying to be like David Beckham. I don't want to be loved by everyone, right? Like, in fact, I'd really like to be not liked by the people that I don't want to work with because it's just too much volume. Like the internet's infinite. And I think the way you do that just by being really authentically yourself and like being unafraid. And then, you know, the beauty of the internet is it's so big, the right people find you and the right people engage you and you kind of go back and forth with them and that leads you to other interesting people and you just have to be like voracious and open.

39:04I'll be totally honest with you, Ryan, like one thing I've had a little bit of a struggle with, I think recently is in some ways, like because some of the stuff I've written over time or whatever has gone more viral, it's actually made my screening harder because all of a sudden there's a bunch of people who like want to chat who like maybe aren't perfect targets. We're like having a slightly more specific profile in the venture capital community. So I'm trying to figure out how like navigate that, right? Like all of a sudden, like my DMs are like destroyed in a way that they weren't destroyed two years ago.

39:37It's a solvable problem to be clear, but you're like, what are you writing? Why are you writing? It's like, there's a bunch of stuff I do explicitly and implicitly. And yes, I do want to attract the right people that get it and make sense for me. They're going to provide the type of engagement that's going to be professionally rewarding and personally rewarding. But yeah, man, it's also about explicitly pushing away the other stuff because otherwise, you can't find it. Well, I wonder too, I like to hear the stories behind the naming of things. And when you think about Silicon Valley or being out in San Francisco where you are thinking about speed, like let's go fast, move fast and break things.

40:14You worked at that company, right and yet the name of your company is the opposite of that right it's slow what made you choose slow ventures well i'll start with first of all the thing about like move fast and break things move fast and break things was an awesome marketing message because it definitely attracted who you wanted not who you didn't a lot of people who back then would be like i don't want to break things great you shouldn't work at facebook in that era right maybe maybe now maybe when it's build solid infrastructure i was like a different evolution what they need but like Like Slow Ventures, look, there's a reason the name is stock, which is it's funny, right?

40:47Like we have a growth fund that you can call slow growth. Like that's hilarious, right? And if like you think that's funny, then like that's good. If you think that's stupid or like don't get the joke, then like we don't want to talk to you, right? It's the same thing like if you've gone to our, I'm very proud of our website. Every once in a while, someone joins our team and they're like, we need to change the website. And I'm like, absolutely not. you don't get it, which is the website is like me and my two partners. And we're all in Texas. And it looks like a law firm website. That's on purpose.

41:20Like if you don't think that's funny, then like you're not who we want to invest in. And so I do think that those are like kind of the types of things you have to do. And that Slow Ventures as a name is just like, yeah, that's hilarious. Well, I like the idea of taking the work really seriously, but not yourself. And part of, you know, had one of your fellow employees, Jack Raines on the podcast. Hilarious guy. And right. And Jack's, I'm guessing you probably learned of him through Young Money, maybe reading some of his blog posts. And he's really, really funny. And it's hard to do that. And so I'm guessing your website, your ethos, the way that you guys are, you was attractive to him and vice versa with his LinkedIn trolling type posts and all of that stuff almost seems like a perfect match.

42:07Yeah, there's a lot that's there. I mean, I think also it's just in especially in venture capital, the amount of work you do has like nothing to do with how good you are and the outcomes. Right. And so like there are these people out there who like they emulate hustle porn culture or they're like, I'm a VC and I'm working so hard. And you're like, you're missing the point. That's not how this works. Right. And so again, it goes back to understanding how it does work and being on the inside of that and being confident enough to exude that and put that out into the world. Well, also part of Slow Ventures is you've written on your website that big things take time.

42:51They do. And it shows, I assume, your willingness to be with you, right? You talk more about that ethos of we have this understanding that it's not going to happen tomorrow that this stuff takes time. Yeah. I mean, look, every once in a while, once a decade, something just clicks and it actually does happen very quickly. Right. You know, I would argue like, you know, Facebook was my closest experience to that. Like we were just like, oh my God, this just works for a whole bunch of, even that was an incredible, you know, ride from the early days, having watched it, you know, from like a privileged seat.

43:24But look, that was like a pretty pure win from that perspective. You know, most things, you know, I was very involved in like the founding of Venmo. Venmo like was brutal and took so many turns of the crank right early. And there was, you know, you know, I'm actually working with one of the co-founders of Venmo now on a new app, right? Which is like 16 iterations in the making. And like, I'm excited about where it is. We'll see how it goes. This is why, again, the joy and enjoying the journey is so important because I think that is part of the whole ethos is very few things. You can't bank your life on like the quick win, right?

43:57you do kind of have to put it on like it's great people we're exploring a theme you know we're gonna figure it out and there's a difference between that and just straight grinding like one thing i see a lot online it's a subtle distinction but i think an important one is again there's this like we're gonna grind it out culture that i'm actually less down with if that makes sense it is possible to sometimes grind out success at great cost right if that makes sense you're not that good the thing isn't that right but you're just gonna do more meetings and work harder than everyone else i respect it as like an athletic achievement but i actually think it's a kind of shitty way to like grow businesses what i think is much more it's like almost like sailing if that makes sense which is like you get in your little boat and you gotta find the wind and you gotta tack around a bunch but then once you find it once you've experienced an actual tailwind pull from a market, a thing that matters, like things clicking, you have to be patient about finding that moment, right?

44:57And sometimes I think, you know, if anything, I think you can take that's the wrong lesson from a slow venture or how long success takes is just the idea that like, look, if you're doing the wrong thing or running the wrong experiment, just stop. Like, don't grind it out. Like, that's brutal. And like, you're kind of missing a bigger opportunity that's two doors over, right? Like, it's almost the way I would look at it. You again brought up joy, loving the process and this may be way wrong but how much of this focus on love and joy and embracing kind of like the day-to-day love of the process is the fact that your dad died way too young that's an interesting question here's what i basically say to that is one i would say that again you know i didn't experience this firsthand obviously but what he had actually several very close call death experiences throughout his life.

45:47He almost died when he was 39. He had a terrible stroke. He had Hodgkin's in his 20s. And one thing he would always say is that when you have kind of these near-death experiences, when you're supposed to die and you don't, it does make you reevaluate life in a way that's just very hard to experience if you haven't had that. Again, I haven't had that, thank God. But I believe it. It makes sense to me. And so I think he did kind of really embrace that, like, how do you think about enjoying the moment and the day and things like that? you know so i think that's probably part of it but it's also like look it's it's it's i don't know that that's like a complete answer is what i would say i don't like he wasn't like always a joyful person like no one is you know what i mean like he's a human like i think it's a really important thing to propel you this thing i'm trying to remind myself of too because like you know like you go through cycles like this this sucks or like this is like not you're like wait a minute life's great enjoy this you know like this is like and that is kind of it's not just because it's a better way to live, right?

46:43It's also just, I think, how people are more successful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the optimists are the ones who change the world, right? Pessimists want to sound smart and sound right. And sometimes they are. I don't want to be around that, man. I sense you'd be the dude you want to hang out with. He's really smart, but also is not going to take himself too seriously, but will work hard. But then what's the point, dude? What's the point if we're not going to try to enjoy this thing? You know what I mean? I'm with you. it's funny if you did a poll around town i think i am considered in certain things like somewhat of a cynic on things and i do think your line is right people say this a lot which is like the cynics are right but the optimists have more fun that's totally true the cynics don't change the world though they don't make change happen do they i think it's the the believers of crazy ideas that are willing to go do it the problem with that i agree with you but i do worry especially in this moment that people have almost embraced that mentality too much in certain places to a fault for instance there's a whole generation from my perspective of people right now who are like see the future of everything in ai right and before that it was like the metaverse and before that it was like and i kind of get it because i think one of the things that again timing is everything we were born at like the most unbelievable moment in history i lived right before the internet and i kind of vaguely remember it but like we were like the internet native generation right like a oil dial-up yeah the world completely changed as we were coming up and like we're maybe actually a little bit like honestly i'm like five years too young actually to like have hit it perfectly peter teal is probably exactly the right age right like i'm like a little young, like, but the generational thing is real.

48:29I think you look at that, you're like, oh, my God, in our generation, in our kind of professional careers in this space, literally everything changed in a profound way. And if you're born younger, you just missed it to some degree. And so then you basically are looking for that thing all over again, like everyone wants every successive wave to like, everything changes, the deck is reshuffled. And you're like, if you're being disciplined about it, that's actually not what's going on. So it's a tough one because you want to be an optimist. You want to be in it. But I do think in a lot of places, people try to manufacture that where it's not to their detriment and to society's detriment.

49:02And then you have people like Elon who are so complicated, right? Because on one hand, they are the ultimate marketers of this mentality and vision. And there's power in it and value in it. On the other hand, they do it in non-credible ways, which I actually think is like a detriment to everyone. SpaceX is an unbelievable company, but we're not that close to going to Mars. He knows it. And there's a cynicism to overusing optimism as your tool for excitement, if that makes sense. Yeah, I get what you're saying. I think more broadly, I just want to be around a group of people that have belief, that have joy, that have confidence, that are just into the thing that they're doing and they can pour their whole heart and soul out into it.

49:49Not to like the fake it till you make it types, but the ones who have optimism just in themselves and then people around them that we're going to go and enjoy this thing and get after it, have fun, not take ourselves too seriously. That's really like, I want to be surrounded by that. Yeah, and it's a cultural thing too. I mean, I think the moment we're in right now, there's so much anger and fear and some of it's justified, honestly, but I think big picture, it's like the wrong vibe for great things. Agreed. Agree. Oh, yeah. 100%. One more before we run, man. Let's say you're meeting with somebody who was like you a while ago, recent college grad, they want to leave a positive dent in the world, but they're not really sure how yet.

50:28What are some general pieces of life slash career advice you'd give to them? So the only career advice I consistently, I get people all the time who are like, I want to be a venture capitalist. And first I'm like, maybe like, I know it looks good on paper. Like, yeah, let's talk about it. My only real advice is write publicly. I just really believe in this partially like you got to record the journey. It's partially you need the intellectual receipts, right? Like people like what's the resume and like someone's like I want to work at a venture fund. I'm like, cool, what have you written? If you can't write the check, write me the thesis and timestamp it, right?

51:01Like and like, I just think like it's an incredibly important calling card in terms of like, what do you believe and where do you stand and how do you think about the world? Like writing is thinking if you can't write, you can't think. So like, that's really important. And then I guess the third factor to the way I'm like, really, you should write things down is like people just lie to themselves constantly. It's not like malicious. You will forget or get it wrong. Like human memory is not actually designed for accuracy, right? It's designed for self-justification. And so I think there's like a real factor to being like writing things down, putting them in public space, standing behind them.

51:33You're going to be wrong all the time. It's okay. And like learning that muscle. I think, I think for what it's worth, it's also just like, we talked before about experiencing pain and training on pain and being okay with it. Look, until you've been like deeply flamed on the internet by everyone over something, you're going to fear that, right? Like if you put stuff out there, eventually you're going to say something that people are going to lose their shit about, right? And like, I think even that is another form of just experiencing that's important. I got to get blown up by like the whole internet hating me at least once a year.

52:04Well, I think there's so many things I could talk about when it comes to writing, but one, it makes you a clearer thinker. Putting yourself in the of being a teacher is how you learn. It's the greatest learning tool in the world is to teach. Writing is a great form of teaching. You don't know what you think until you get out of your head onto the page. They're fuzzy thoughts. Then you write it and you understand it. Then you publish it and it works as a way to sometimes draw people towards you, push other people away. There's a million good things that could happen from doing it. I push every leader I work with, the ones in groups, one-on-one, all of them.

52:34Write, write, write. I'd love for them to publish too, but write. Get it out there because you need to become a clearer thinker if you want to be an effective leader and people don't want to do it because it's really hard and it's worth it. If there's anything out there, man, it's so worth it to do it. That's the main reason I sign up for books and sell a deal to a publisher because now I'm on the hook. And now you got like, wait, I thought I knew what I was talking about. No, I don't. Now I got to try to write a whole book about that thing. Wow, this is worth it. What a tough project. So anyway, I could go on forever.

53:04Sam, this is awesome, dude. I really appreciate your time together. Is there anywhere you'd like to send people to learn more about you online i'm like at lesson most places my website is w lesson.com i don't know find me but only if you're like if you i don't know or don't this is great dude i would love to uh continue our dialogue as we both progress maybe record around two and a little bit we could even bring jack on that could be a fun thing to do at some point in the future. It'd be fun to do, man. Love it, man. Super fun, Ryan. Nice speaking with you. Thanks, man.

53:37It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Sam Lesson. A few takeaways from my notes. The advice Sam gives to everyone. Write publicly. You don't know what you think until you get your thoughts out of your head onto the page. And if you publish them so that others can read, you have a record of the journey. Also, you might attract someone to work with. That is how Jack Raines, who was guest on episode number 539, a really good one, caught Sam's attention.

54:20And now they work together at Slow Ventures. And then I loved the through line of this whole conversation about his dad and working exceptionally hard and having joy and excitement for the journey. And maybe it was the near-death experiences that his dad had that led to this mindset. But regardless, it's something we can all learn from. We want to be around optimistic people who have joy and love for what they're doing. And if we want to be around those types, we need to be one of those, have joy and love. And then remember, one of the things that Sam said that we've both learned over the years, nobody knows what they're doing.

55:03We're all figuring it out as we go. You'll never learn unless you go out and actually do the thing. So figure it out as you go, but you got to get started and then iterate, learn, try again, fail, learn, and go again and again and again. It's the only way to get something done. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Sam Lesson. I think he'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that and you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcasts and you subscribe to the show, really important.

55:43And you're rated, hopefully, five stars. You tell all of your friends that by doing all of that, you are giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talk to you soon. Can't wait.