SPECIAL: A Breakdown On Why Most Startups Take Longer Than You Think To Build (with examples)

"Most people underestimate what you can do in 10 years". In this episode we give examples of great startups that took longer than you thought to build. Then, we give tactics on how to overcome this...how to keep going through years of hard work. This is a very special episode. Tweet Sam (@thesamparr) if you want to see more of them. --------- * Want to be featured in a future episode? Drop your question/comment/criticism/love here: https://www.mfmpod.com/p/hotline/ * Support the pod by spreading the word, become a referrer here: https://refer.fm/million * Have you joined our private Facebook group yet? Go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion and join thousands of other entrepreneurs and founders scheming up ideas. --------- Show notes: * (1:02) Intro to episode * (5:56) Tim Westergren on Pandora's origins * (7:56) Sam's commentary * (10:48) Vlad Magdalin on Webflow's struggles * (12:44) Sam's commentary * (13:45) Steve Jobs on Passion * (14:27) Sam's commentary * (18:46) Tim Westergren's speech * (19:54) Sam's commentary * (20:52) What drove Vlad to keep trying * (22:13) Sam's commentary * (24:04) Chris Sacca on Travis Kalanick's competitiveness * (25:09) Sam's commentary * (26:43) A story about Travis' first business * (27:13) Sam's commentary * (29:19) Marc Cuban on focusing * (29:53) Sam's commentary * (34:21) What drives Chamath * (36:12) Episode close

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Shaan Puri?

  This episode is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. But what is the HubSpot Podcast Network? That's right. It's a new thing by HubSpot. They started with our podcast, and now they're branching into more and more podcasts with experts in different business areas. So you might have a podcast about marketing, or sales, or operations, or customer service. And we're going to go over through the different podcasts on this network. Some are more entertaining, some are more informational, some are a good mix of both. That's what we try to do here. And HubSpot's goal here is to have on-demand mentors. So if you're an entrepreneur, you're a startup, or you're scaling up, you're going to be able to hear practical tips and inspirational stories by listening to the different podcasts on their network, which by the way, I think this is a smart idea. Too many brands just try to sell you their thing.

• 0:44Shaan Puri?

  HubSpot, I love their approach here. They're like, let's put out great valuable free content and help more companies succeed. And the more companies that we help succeed, the more we'll eventually come back to us, sort of like a good karma kind of thing. So listen, learn, and grow with HubSpot Podcast Network, hubspot.com/podcastnetwork.

• 1:02Sam Parr?

  Most people underestimate what they can do in 10 years. I've always been obsessed with time. I've thought about that quote for a while. I've always been obsessed with, can you get done 10 years worth of work in six months? What would happen if you dedicated 50 years to something instead of three to five years, or however long a lot of people look at the typical time it takes to start a company? And in today's episode, I'm going to do something a little experimental. I'm going to go over examples of people who took longer than you thought to start something, why that matters, why you should do the same, but also I'm going to give you very specific tactics and strategies

• 1:43Sam Parr?

  for dealing with going through a long time, going through that period where you're just getting something going, and it stinks for two, three, four, five, six years. I'm going to show you examples of people who dealt with that and how to actually get through that. This episode, it's an experiment. I threw this together because I studied this on my own. And if you like it, let me know. My Twitter handle's theSampar, and I'll do some more. But let's get into this first one. And actually, before we do, this podcast, I'm not, I'm not here to tell you not to start something or not to do a project. Instead, I'm here to convince you that it is likely going to take longer than you think to start your business to

• 2:27Sam Parr?

  Well, accomplish most goals. I think it takes longer than you than you might think. And that is okay. I'm not trying to tell you not to do it. I'm trying to tell you the exact opposite. I'm trying to tell you to do it. I'm just trying to normalize that instead of having a six month plan. I think you should still have that, but you should also have perhaps a 10 year plan. And in my line of work, in my own life, you know, I, because we post HustleCon and because we have this podcast, I see a lot of people who have multi-billion dollar companies who are by traditional standards, successful financially at least. And

• 3:06Sam Parr?

  when you do something for years, it really builds up, but it just doesn't feel like that. And I want this podcast to show you what the things that you likely admire, or at least the people I admire, what it was like earlier on and how it seemed like the same hell that you're going through and how things just take time to do. And so I want to normalize things taking a long time. Things that succeed, often they succeed slowly and then it feels like it's all happening all at once. And I'm going to show you examples of that. Admittedly, a lot of my examples are tech companies and and we're talking five or 10 year span. Sometimes I think that's even too short. I think I can show you a lot of examples of companies taking 50, 60, 100 years, which is great as well. But a lot of my audience is tech folks, so we're going to start there.

• 3:50Sam Parr?

  And so we're going to get into some really fascinating stories. The first story is about Tim Westergren, the founder of Pandora, the music streaming service. They were one of the first apps on the iPhone. They recently sold a couple of years ago for like three or four billion dollars. It was quite big. It was a publicly traded company that made hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars a year in revenue. Very successful. Tim in 2015 spoke at my event HustleCon, which if you Google Pandora HustleCon, you could find this whole talk. And he told the story about starting the company and it's incredibly fascinating. So Pandora became quite popular in around 2005, 2006. Most people don't know is that the idea of Pandora, Tim started working on that in about 1998.

• 4:34Sam Parr?

  And then in year 2000, he raised a little bit of seed money and he started the company. And what they did at first was they hired a whole bunch of part-time musicians and they would go through and listen to hundreds and then eventually thousands of songs and they would assign attributes to those songs. And he created a pretty large database. I believe it was just on Excel at first and they would assign attributes to a song and then you could listen to a song or tell this database the song that you like and it would pop up with a variety of other songs that are very similar to that first song. And that's how it started, except it didn't work for like six years. So he started working on it in 2000 or 1998, raised money in the year 2000.

• 5:18Sam Parr?

  They hired all these people and then eventually after two years of raising that money, they ran out of money. And Tim actually had to convince his team to work without pay for two years, which is hell. And in this story, I'm gonna play a story or a clip about Tim explaining what that was like, but then also at the end of this podcast, I'm gonna show you the speech that he gave. I have a recording of that speech that he gave to employees to encourage them to keep going and it's, uh, it's pretty moving. So let's listen to this first story by Tim Westergren from Pandora.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  So we, uh, kind of forged ahead, uh, kept analyzing more songs and sort of refining the, the, the front end to this matching engine. This was not 2001 though, and, and everything had gone to hell in a handbasket. The dot com boom had collapsed. The music industry was on a complete shambles and AppServer was at its apex. Uh, and in our first efforts to go raise money, um, it was pretty clear that was not going to be easy to do. And so realizing we wouldn't have to make our money last, he began asking our employees in the course of 2001 to, to work for an ever smaller share of their salary. Uh, until by the end of 2001, we weren't paying employees at all. We called that salary deferral back then.

• 6:42Speaker 02

  Which incidentally is illegal in California, apparently. We couldn't afford an attorney, though we had no idea that we were breaking the law. And ultimately, about 50 people worked without salary for over two years to keep this thing going. And we managed to make it through the whole dot-com valley by essentially, you know, this group of people that sort of hung in there. By the end of 2003, I had 11 maxed-out credit cards. I think I owed like half a million dollars of personal debt. And we owed close to $2 million of back salary to all these employees, five of whom were actually suing us for having done that.

• 7:23Speaker 02

  I also had a personal obligation for five years on a large commercial office space in Oakland. And I was a musician, you know, so it wasn't like if it didn't work out, I'd go back to my lucrative band days and pay it all back quickly. It was gonna be Mexico for me, for sure. But we hung in there. And eventually, after I pitched Pandora 348 times, I found a Series B investor in 2004, March of '04, raised a $9 million round, which I still don't quite know how it happened. And we paid out $2 million of salary that day.

• 7:57Sam Parr?

  So, this was a minute-long clip, so it's easy to think that that...

• 8:04Sam Parr?

  Well, it was only a minute-long clip, but he's talking about six, seven years of his life. And it sounds easy, but just think about that. That's college plus some. That's an undergraduate degree and a graduate degree of being incredibly broke, of having to convince people on a regular basis that they should work without a salary. Having to give his pitch, he said he pitched 360 VCs, was constantly turned down. It's just a... It was a hard journey. And add that hard journey, but do it for like five years. It's crazy how long things, things take. Next, we're going to talk about Webflow.

• 8:48Sam Parr?

  Webflow is a website builder, but it's does way more than that. But that's kind of the, the, the gist of it. And they're worth something like two and a half billion dollars. It's, it's a wildly successful company. They make likely hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. They've raised hundreds of millions of dollars of funding and it's really fascinating company. And its founder, his name is Vlad. In 2019, he tweeted something that I've never forgotten. And he talks about his journey to starting his company. So listen to this. So the company officially, or the, the iteration that, that, or the, the type of the business that it is now, launched in 2014.

• 9:29Sam Parr?

  He actually started working on this as an idea and then like actually started working on it actively, like quit his job and working on it in 2004. But it didn't really notice any traction until 2014. Listen to this. He, he tweeted this out and if you Google Vlad, Webflow, Twitter, journey, you'll find this. 2004, which is a list of, of, of, it's like a, it's like a bullet pointed list of his journey. Listen, 2004, idea. 2005, first try, failed. 2006, married. 2007, second try, failed. 2008, third try, failed. 2009, kid number one. 2010, day job. 2011, kid number two.

• 10:14Sam Parr?

  2012, fourth try, YC, which is Y Combinator's incubator, says no. 2013, YC says yes, we get funding. 2014, hard work begins. Very fascinating, uh, story. And I went and found a one minute clip where Vlad is on Jason Calcanas's podcast. It's called This Week's in Startups. Listen to Vlad explaining that journey of building and how long it took and what, what he had to go through. Check this out.

• 10:49Speaker 03

  You started this company when?

• 10:52Speaker 04

  Uh, in late 2012.

• 10:54Speaker 03

  And you worked on it for a couple of years and then you were gonna quit because it wasn't working. Is this true?

• 11:02Speaker 04

  Uh, so actually, the, uh, this last attempt was the fourth attempt at, uh, having it, starting the company. So the first attempt was in 2004, I believe I'm getting the, the

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:14Speaker 04

  Timing right, then 2006, then 2007, uh, and then again, the last time in 2012.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  All the same corporate entity or they were just projects?

• 11:22Speaker 04

  All different entities, different co-founders. First two were just by myself. Second one was, uh, different co-founders, one of whom is actually working at Webflow now. Uh, this last time, hopefully last time.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  Last and final time, uh, was, uh, started in late 2012 and the, uh, like that's around the time where, um, so same co-founders as now, one of them is my brother, one of them is a, um, coworker at Intuit. Um, that's when I almost went bankrupt and the company went bankrupt.

• 11:48Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 11:48Speaker 04

  Because we, we first wanted to just bootstrap. We wanted to do a Kickstarter campaign and I only had like three months of family runway to like invest in the company. It ended up, so I kind of promised my wife like, oh, we're gonna get funding within

• 12:00Speaker 03

  No problem.

• 12:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, of course. I mean, not, not a big deal. Leave this, you know, well-paying job and, uh, just do the startup thing. Uh, but then we ended up going, uh, more than 12 months without funding.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Oh, wow.

• 12:11Speaker 04

  So that's where, and my

• 12:12Speaker 03

  On fumes.

• 12:13Speaker 04

  On fumes and my daughter ended up having, uh, really like critical, uh, surgery and it was like catastrophic health insurance. And so we almost, uh, kind of fizzled out about six months after founding. Um, this was like pre Y Combinator, uh, pre-funding and everything. We were like about ready to give up, go back to our jobs.

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Wow. You are a real Jedi Samurai.

• 12:35Speaker 04

  It didn't feel like it at the time.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Of course it doesn't. You go watch the Seven Samurai when they're in the mud. Go watch, you know, Luke Skywalker lose a hand.

• 12:45Sam Parr?

  Crazy, right? So, things take time and that time is multiplied by the struggle, which makes it seem even longer. Now, if we agree that things take likely longer than you think, how do you actually get through that? Well, I'm gonna actually show you a few examples and strategies that I think are worthy of your consideration. And this first one, this, this, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you a clip that kind of sets the stage here. Then I'm gonna show you three different strategies for getting through this. This first clip, which is gonna set the stage here, it's a little cliche. It's a Steve Jobs clip, but it's gonna talk about passion.

• 13:29Sam Parr?

  But I'm gonna tell you something after this clip that might surprise you about my opinion on, on passion. But first, let's listen to what Steve Jobs said. Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, you likely know who he is. You know, I don't have to justify why he's worthy of, of, of listening to. Check it out.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  People say you, you have to have a lot of passion for what you're doing, and it's totally true. And the reason is, uh, is because it's so hard that if you don't, any rational person would give up. It's really hard and you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don't love it, if you're not having fun doing it, you don't really love it, uh, you're gonna give up. And that's what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at, at, at, at the ones that, uh, ended up, you know, being successful, unquote, in the eyes of society and the ones that didn't, oftentimes it, it's the ones that are successful loved what they did so they could persevere, you know, when it got really tough. And, and the ones that, that didn't love it, quit.

• 14:28Sam Parr?

  So he talks about passion. You have, you have to care about what you're doing.

• 14:34Sam Parr?

  I believe that to be true, but I think that there's a twist here. When a lot of people hear this, they think you actually have to care about the product that you're making. So if you work in, um, technology, if you work at, if you started Airbnb, you, you probably should care about travel or, or helping people with extra space make money. I think you should, or at least I think that's one strategy. And that's people who care about their product or their mission of the company. But it's my opinion, that's only one way of going about this. I do agree that you should be passionate about what you're doing. I don't think you actually need to be passionate about the product. I think you can, that's one way to do this.

• 15:19Sam Parr?

  I would say the second way is there's caring about the journey is about finding love and meaning in the grind. If you start a plumbing company or electrician, you may not care about plumbing or electrician or electricity in people's homes, but you could actually care about creating jobs for blue collar folks or making customers happy or just building something.

• 15:45Shaan Puri?

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• 16:30Shaan Puri?

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• 16:38Sam Parr?

  And I'm going to show you examples of people who you know and admire who have said that's what keeps them going. And then the third way, and there's many ways, but I'm only going to talk about three. The third way that you could find passion. Is you can actually, and a lot of people I know don't agree with me, so and I'll acknowledge that, but you can care about the end. So you acknowledge that what you're doing is just a means to an end, but the end is so important to you that you're willing to keep going. And I'm going to show you a wonderful example of about that. So I'm going to show you two examples ish for each one. So let's start with this first one, caring about the product and mission. Let's go back to Tim Westergen from Pandora. So what I

• 17:19Sam Parr?

  didn't tell you was prior to Pandora, Tim was a musician. He loves music. I've hung out with Tim a bit and he talks about music a lot. He loves it. He also cares about helping musicians make a living. When Tim was a musician, he was a pianist and he helped write background music, I believe for movies and he didn't really make a lot of money. And so he was fascinated with the idea of helping musicians make a living. He was also passionate about using music to change culture. So in the earlier bit, you heard about how he convinced people to work there without salary for two years. Well, at HustleCon, someone asked him to give that speech that he gave to his employees on a weekly or monthly or annual

• 18:01Sam Parr?

  basis to convince them to stay and work there. And he does something interesting. He goes, wow, this is so stressful. I was so scared to do it back then all the time. Let me close my eyes and see if I can get the moment. I'm going to give you that speech. And I was in the audience at this talk and it moved me. I was like on whatever he, when he gave it, I was like, I'm going to work there. I'm on board. Check this out. Check out Tim's Westergen speech. This is what he gave when he was trying to convince people to work at Pandora without a salary. And in this talk, you could actually hear why he's going to continue going with this mission. You could hear in his voice how attached to this mission he is and why someone who care, like it's very obvious, someone who cares this much would keep going. And you could hear in his tone of voice how much he cares. Check this out.

• 18:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think all the questions have centered around how you convinced 50 people to not take salary for two years. Will you just imagine this crowd as the 50 employees and give that pitch that you gave and also talk about how, how you evolved that pitch over time?

• 19:04Sam Parr?

  Fuck, that's hard. I do that now.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  That pitch, you know what? If I go back to that time, I'll start shaking and sweating and get all nervous and my heart will pound.

• 19:19Speaker 02

  I might not give the whole pitch. Let me tell you what I would focus on. I would say that we all know here that what we have created is unique and it's solving a gigantic problem. No one on Earth is going to do what we've done. And when you use this product, we all know how magical it is. It will find its home. Everybody on the planet loves music. There are millions of musicians that produce great music and they can't find each other. When this thing finally finds its home, it's going to change culture. And how many times in your life do you have a chance to do that? That's what this is about.

• 19:54Sam Parr?

  I love that. When he gave this talk, I was like, that's how you do it. It was great. Now, let's go back to Vlad from Webload. When Jason in This Week in Startups asks him why he kept going, he goes, there's two reasons. The first reason was blind optimism. I just always felt like we were right on to something. And he talks, he's going to talk about that for like 30 or 40 seconds. And then the second part, Jason cuts him off a little bit, so it's a little bit shorter. But he just says, well, since 2003 or 2004, since college, I was obsessed with no code. So no code, I mean, I like it, but I don't like care about it that much to dedicate years of my life.

• 20:36Sam Parr?

  You can just hear, even though it's short, he was like, I just, I couldn't stop thinking about it, about how that could change the internet. And that's why he kept going. He actually cares about the product. He cares about the very niche, specific industry that he's in. Let's listen.

• 20:53Speaker 03

  What kept you at it in those moments? What is it about you and your team that you just would not give up?

• 21:04Speaker 04

  Two things, uh, one of them, blind optimism, like in the moment, it just felt like, oh, it's right around the corner. This is going to work out like it didn't to my wife. It didn't feel that way. Uh, but God bless the spouses. I mean, they Yeah, the, the amount of commitment, um, that's required is just nuts to think about. Especially not seeing like everything, like all the, all the potential promise, like the vision I had in my head for, you know, for this product, for this movement, et cetera. So that, that's part of it. Sort of like blinds you to reality, uh, and make you, has you, uh, make like pretty dumb financial decisions. Like I pulled out almost all of my money from 401k, which is like a huge penalty when you do it. Yeah. You gotta pay tax on it. Exactly. Um, which, you know, I wouldn't advise friends to do, but you know, in the moment

• 21:49Speaker 04

  it's like, all right, it's just like another place to get money, uh, to pay the bills, et cetera. The second part I think is, um, you know, what you mentioned around like the impact of like this, this vision of what no code can do. This started in 2004, when I wrote my senior project on, on this idea, because I was working at an agency and I saw what, I was an intern that was translating designs into productions.

• 22:14Sam Parr?

  So you hear that short bit at the end where it is only a few seconds. He talks about how he's just was obsessed and he cared about no code. And that's interesting. If you care about what you're doing, you know, I, I know I've got friends who care about dogs and they create dog companies. I've got friends that care about travel. They have travel businesses. If you care about it, it keeps you going. But that's not the only way to go about this. So another way to, to be passionate and to keep going through, through, uh, years of heartache and years of pain to achieve what you want to achieve. I actually think that there's some people that just love the journey. They love the grind. And the first example is Travis Kalanick. Travis,

• 22:59Sam Parr?

  Travis Kalanick started this company called Uber, which you definitely know. And prior to that, he had a bunch of, uh, other businesses, but I'm going to show you two clips. The first clip is by Chris Sacca. This is, uh, at a, uh, a conference. If you Google, uh, Chris Sacca, Travis, Travis Kalanick, you'll be able to find this clip. Um, it's at the Unbounded, oh, sorry. It's at the Collision Conference. And it's a great clip. And in this video, it's a video clip. So you can't see what they're doing. But Chris Sacca is telling the story of this time, right when Uber started. They were in Tahoe at Chris Sacca's home. And Chris Sacca's dad, Mr. Sacca, was there.

• 23:42Sam Parr?

  And Mr. Sacca and Travis played Wii, Wii table tennis. It's like, or Wii tennis. It's like a video, you know, a video game where you're like playing tennis against one another. And Travis is using his left hand for most of the game. But then he goes, I have a surprise. And he switches hands. He goes, I'm not actually left-handed. And you'll hear Chris describe that. It's a, it's an amazing story. Check this out.

• 24:05Speaker 07

  So it's New Year's Day, 2010, I believe. Travis is CEO of Uber. And we are, we are sitting around my house. We're a little hungover from the night before. And my dad challenges Travis to a game of Nintendo Wii Tennis. And Travis is like, okay, Mr. Sacca. And so my dad's up, like, taking swings and, you know, like, working up a sweat. And Travis is holding a remote and just doing this. And he's beating up on my dad. And my dad's like, what the hell is this? And like, after a couple of games losing, my dad's visibly frustrated. He's like, I'm sorry, Mr. Sacca. But in like a princess bride moment, he's like, I'm not actually right-handed. And then and my dad doesn't score another point again. And he's like, what the? And Travis, bleary-eyed, is literally like,

• 24:49Speaker 07

  okay, Mr. Sacca, here, bear with me for a second. And he pages over to the global leaderboard. And Travis, while being CEO of Uber, is ranked number two in the world at Wii Tennis.

• 25:00Speaker 08

  So is there like a common trait? And are they, are they all the kind of people that could kind of annihilate your dad and tennis?

• 25:05Speaker 07

  Can I ask you, would you ever want to compete with Travis Kalanick after hearing that story?

• 25:10Sam Parr?

  Isn't that awesome? That's a good story. Now, it's clear what motivates Travis is competition. He likes to win. Not everyone may care about winning as much as he does, but that's what drives him. That's why he wanted to go. So when he faces a challenge, he goes, I just want to compete and I just want to win. And he did it with Uber. He did it with table tennis or tennis on Wii. And later in that story, Chris actually says that he did the same thing with Angry Birds. He was ranked really high with that. But This is just how he's always been. In fact, prior to starting Uber, he had, when he was a kid, when he was 18, he had an SAT business where he would teach kids how to succeed on the SAT. And I found this speech that he gave years and years ago, and it's a long talk.

• 25:55Sam Parr?

  It's like a 45-minute talk, but I remember listening to it and there's literally a 15-second clip where he mentions his SAT business. And the way that his voice inflects and the way that his voice changes, it was like, wait a minute. The most exciting thing of this whole talk was him bragging about how he got so good at the SAT that he could finish a 30-minute segment in eight minutes. And then later, he actually talks about his, how he would get a perfect score. But just listen to his voice when he explains his SAT. Now, in this part of the story, he's talking about what he was doing prior to Uber, and he just brings up this SAT and even laughs at himself because he realizes how silly and nerdy he is. But

• 26:39Sam Parr?

  I just found the fire in his voice to be incredibly inspiring. Check this out.

• 26:44Speaker 09

  Okay, so brief history. So I started as sort of like a hobbyist hacker coder dude. My first company was when I was 18. It was actually a company called New Way Academy. It was SAT prep, old school, no technology. I burned out on filling out bubbles, you know, with a pencil, A, B, C, D, etc. But man, I can kill the SAT. I've been timed eight minutes on a half-hour math section. Okay, okay. All right, sorry.

• 27:15Sam Parr?

  How funny is that? I wish, you gotta see this video. This is from Techno Media. So if you go to YouTube, Travis Kalanick, Startup Lessons from the Jam Pad. It's at 1210, 1220 in the video. It's amazing how he lights up about this. It's funny. It's fascinating. And when I heard that, I was like, oh, my gosh.

• 27:40Sam Parr?

  You remember at 18 that you could do eight minutes in an eight-minute SAT section. Like you're just, you're fascinated with winning. And that's cool. That's what motivates him. And not everyone's actually focused on, on winning. Some people, they, they, they like the different, a different part of the grind. So Mark Cuban, Mark Cuban started a company that made him a billionaire. I believe he started it when he was about 38. But he, it was called broadcast.com. He sold it for billions of dollars or made him a billionaire. And prior to that, he actually had a company called MicroSolutions. It was an IT integrations business, which basically means, um, I believe he started this in the nineties, or actually late eighties, when companies wanted new software.

• 28:25Sam Parr?

  It was an ordeal and he would help them pick software and he would help them install it. So he didn't make the software necessarily, but he would master it and figure out how to install it. And with that business, he ran that business for seven years. So, uh, from his mid twenties to his early thirties. And when he sold it, he made about $2 million, which is a lot of money. But he had a business for seven years and he eventually became a billionaire. I mean, that took a long time. And when asked about that, he gave an amazing answer. So this is actually a really short clip from, uh, the podcast, How I Built This. So if you Google, How I Built This, Mark Cuban, you'll, you'll be able to see it.

• 29:04Sam Parr?

  And in this clip, he's talking about how he would kind of be a workaholic, um, early on. And the host, Guy Raz, I believe his name is, asked him why he would do that. And Mark explains, let's check this out.

• 29:20Speaker 10

  And you gotta realize that, you know, my, my personality is such that I, I would start learning software, or working on a, an application that I was writing. And I'd start working on it and I'd look up and it'd be 36 hours later. You were just a workaholic? I, I didn't, not even a workaholic. It's just when, I didn't look at and say, okay, I'm going to try to work 24, 36 hours or whatever. I looked at it as saying, okay, this is, this is fascinating. This is intellectually challenging. I want to solve this problem. And if I don't do it, I'm not going to get paid and I'm going to lose all this time. So solve the problem and, and that's what I would do.

• 29:54Sam Parr?

  So you'll see, Mark didn't talk about necessarily winning. I mean, I, I, listening to him, I, I think he cares about that. What he talked about what drove him back then was he just wanted to solve the problem. It was fascinating. It's just a puzzle. That doesn't exactly resonate with me, but it resonates with a lot of people. My wife's that, uh, that way. She just loves having a challenge. I, I, I have a friend who's an accountant and they just love finding the air. They're obsessed with that. I'm obsessed with, uh, things similar to that. I just, if I start something, I just have to get it done and I feel so proud of myself. I just love that, that part of doing it. And I don't care if it's painting a house, if it's building a company, I don't care what it is, it just, I'm driven by starting,

• 30:35Sam Parr?

  having a middle and then finishing. I'm obsessed with that. I can't go to bed unless I've done that. In this case, you heard Mark say the same thing. He's obsessed with just solving that problem and mastering that. So that's the second way that you deal with passion and going through long periods of time of hard work, you, you, you have to actually enjoy, not necessarily the work, but the act of going through that work. And you don't necessarily need to enjoy the programming or the, the product or the mission of the business, but you can enjoy the grind. Now, the third way is a means to an end. Now, I, I think a lot of people won't entirely agree, agree that the means always justifies the end. That's okay. We don't have to agree about that. But what we can agree on, I think, is that for many people, that's a motivating factor.

• 31:20Sam Parr?

  Is that they are willing to put up through hell for a long period of time because they have a bigger purpose and a bigger journey. I'm going to show you a great clip by Chamath, um, and I'm going to explain that in a second, but two older examples of this are Andrew Carnegie and, uh, John Rockefeller. I've read their biographies, a big fans of them. And Andrew Carnegie, he started, um, a steel business, uh, US Steel, I believe, and he was a kind of an asshole to work with. I mean, he was known for his efficiency, which means he wouldn't put up with unions. He was a union buster. He worked as people really. Hard and a lot of people think that he was kind of evil for doing that, but he ended up

• 32:02Sam Parr?

  writing about even at an early age like 32. He's like, I just want to get wealthy so I can give it all away to people in need. And of course, that's like some weird dichotomy because like maybe if you treat people poorly in the process, but then give it all away, is it worth it? That's not important, but that's what he thought. And he did. That's why there's a Carnegie Mellon University. There's most libraries in the country. He's probably had a little bit to deal to do with that because he gave so much money for libraries. Same with John Rockefeller. John Rockefeller at a young age in his early twenties. John Rockefeller started Standard Oil, which was the largest oil company in the world. He was the richest person to ever live in by a

• 32:37Sam Parr?

  if you like add up the money with you know, historical inflation, things like that. He he goes, it's my duty. He goes, I'm skilled at making money. It is my duty to make as much money as possible so I can give it away. And in fact, he did. The Rockefeller, John Rockefeller is arguably the largest philanthropist of all time. He did. He gave it all away and that's what he was motivated by. I don't think he actually cared about oil. Well, he said, he's like, I don't really care about oil. I just like the act of building, but then also I just want to give it all away. I because he was a devout Baptist. He thought it was God's will that he make all this money and give it all away to people in need and and he did. Now I'm going to show you. I obviously unfortunately don't have clips of Carnegie and Rockefeller saying that, but I do have this great clip from this

• 33:22Sam Parr?

  famous investor named Chamath. Chamath started at AOL years and years ago. Then he started working at Facebook where he made a he became very wealthy because he was early at Facebook. And then he started this VC fund. And this VC fund, it was called Social Capital. I believe it's still called Social Capital. And now they they've done a lot of crazy stuff and not everyone agrees with them, but he's done like pretty spectacular bold moves to make to make money. And in a great clip that he gave at Stanford, if you Google Chamath Stanford, the they they hosted this great talk. He explains his mission and he says, my whole mission is to get as rich as possible and accumulate all this capital.

• 34:06Sam Parr?

  And then deploy it in the way that I want to. And later on, you don't, you're not going to hear it in this clip, but he talks about he actually cares most about climate change. That's what he cares about. And he goes, I just want to get as rich as possible. And impact and put it towards climate change. Check out this great clip.

• 34:22Speaker 11

  Here's the thing, there's about 150 people that run the world. Anybody who wants to go into politics, they're all fucking puppets, okay?

• 34:32Speaker 11

  There are 150 and they're all men that run the world, period, full stop. They control most of the important assets, they control the money flows. And these are not the tech entrepreneurs. Now, they are going to get rolled over over the next five to 10 years by the people that are really underneath pulling the strings. And when you get behind the curtain and see how that world works, what you realize is it is unfairly set up for them and their progeny. Now, I'm not gonna say that that's something that we can rip apart, but first order of business is I want to break through and be at that table. That's the first order of business.

• 35:13Speaker 11

  And the way that I do that is by proving that I can do what they do as well as they do it. And then do it better than how they do it. Because at the end of the day, they are commercial fucking animals, okay? And they'll open the door out of curiosity and they'll let me stay because I add value. And then once I'm there, I can open the door for other people who can try to do the same thing. So my entire goal now is that, is to be in a position to aggregate enough of the capital of the world to then reallocate it against my worldview. And I'm not saying my worldview is the best or right, but it is mine. And at the end of the day, there are 150 other fucking guys with their worldview and they don't give a shit what you think about their fucking worldview.

• 35:58Speaker 11

  That's the truth. And so why not me?

• 36:03Speaker 11

  Why not? Why not one of you? Why not? And so in my life now, I'm just kinda like, why not? Why the fuck not?

• 36:12Sam Parr?

  In that clip, you'll hear that he's clearly also motivated by some type of chip on his shoulder and wanting to prove people wrong, which is a whole nother conversation. But you'll hear he very blatantly, unapologetically says, "I want to get incredibly rich so I can do, I can use that money for the way that I want to use it." Later on, like I said, he says climate change, but that's what motivates him. That's what kept him going for, I mean, he's had a very long career and he's still like, he doesn't have to work anymore, he's already a billionaire.

• 36:46Sam Parr?

  But that's what motivates them and keeps them going through years and years of hard ass work. And so I've just showed you examples of people going through hell and taking a long time. And this episode started with me talking about time, but then it also starts about going through like hardship. But it's all rooted in this idea of I'm trying to personally elevate my own perspective and I'm doing it. Uh, by doing podcasts like this, I'm just teaching what I'm learning.

• 37:15Sam Parr?

  And I'm reading a great book. Um, I, there's this author named Robert Greene. He's got this great book called The Laws of Human Nature. And he's got this chapter called Elevate Your, Your Perspective, The Law of Short Sightedness. And it really hit me. So I started reading more of his books. He's got another great book called Mastery. And I want to read something about this, uh, about this book, which, and the idea of mastery is in order to be great, in order to be great at anything, business, art, anything. It takes time and you need to become a master.

• 37:47Sam Parr?

  And it's challenging. I mean, it's really hard to do this, but you have to actually care about what you're doing. And you have to dedicate a ton of time to do it. So let me read some stuff that he talks about. So

• 38:00Sam Parr?

  2,600 years ago, an ancient Greek poet wrote, become who you are by learning who you are. What he meant is the following, you are born with a particular makeup and tendencies that mark you as a piece of fate. It is who you are to the core. Some people never become who they are. They stop trusting in themselves. They conform to the taste of others and they end up wearing a mask that hides their true nature. If you allow yourself to learn who you really are by paying attention to that voice and force within you, then you can become what you are fated to become, an individual and a master. He goes on to say, "You must engrave deeply in your mind and never forget your emotional commitment to what you are doing will translate into your work.

• 38:43Sam Parr?

  If you go at your work with a half heart, it will show in the lackluster results and in the laggard way in which you reach the end." If you are doing something primarily for money and without a real emotional commitment, it will translate into something that lacks a soul and has no connection to you. You may not see this, but you can be sure that the public will feel it and they will receive your work in the same lackluster spirit in which it was created. If you're excited and obsessive in the hunt, it will show in the details. If your work comes from a place deep within, its authenticity will be communicated. So that's the episode on time. I hope you liked it.

• 39:25Sam Parr?

  My Twitter handle is the Sam Parr. Also in the reviews, you can leave a comment on iTunes and let me know if you like this and I can do more of these. Please share this on your Twitter, Facebook and Instagram feed so we get more views and I appreciate you listening. Talk soon.