Okay, Jack, you go.

So I wanna tell you guys a little story from a book I read, uh, an AI book, but this is not an AI story.

Jeff Woods, AI-Driven Leader.

He talks about how he basically sold himself to Gary Keller as being able to build a program around something called The One Thing, which is a book Gary Keller wrote, uh, with another guy, I can't think of his name right now, but K-Keller was the founder of Keller Williams.

And so when Jeff shows up to his office in Austin and he says that the first thing Gary tells him is, "The best part about your job, Jeff, is it's your job.

It's not mine.

If you bring anything to me, then I don't need you." The next thing he tells him is, "You're gonna take this product that doesn't exist, you're gonna build it, put it to market," and I don't remember the exact bogey you do, but something like, "You have to get this to $250,000 in sales in six months.

Nice.

Right.

So what they did and what Obama did right before he handed the reins over to Trump the first time was put in a six.

It was like six, 60 days of like a grace period that they get before they have to leave.

So they the only reason you would do this is a lot of them are getting laid off.

Right.

So that tells you that even these people that they're bringing all the way over from India and Pakistan and what have you to do knowledge work, those guys are losing their jobs and they're the lowest cost tier in the system.

And if they came in under since Trump made that huge change where it's much more expensive for the company to get jobs, A visa now, the reason they'll still pay the money to get them the visa is because they're prorating it over seven years.

Yeah.

but, uh, which, for you personally, which law would you say was the hardest for you to come by but thoroughly learned? [laughs]

Uh, so it would actually be from the first book, and it is to only take the advice of people who are proven competent in the area they're giving the advice in.

Um, because, and it's not because you don't know it, it's because especially as you're coming up in the world, you have all these things you wanna do, and so when you spill out your idea to somebody that you wanna do and they're like, "I don't think you should do it," or, "I don't think you should do it," that way you don't wanna hear that.

And if you're following that law, which totally comes out of Richest Man in Babylon, that's where I lifted it from.

I would say that's where I've lifted the altered version from.

So the genesis of that law is from my father.

And he said, "Never take the advice of anybody on anything unless they're doing better than you." And as I got a little older, a little more temperance in me, I go, "Well, that's kind of egotistical, 'cause what does that mean?" Like, you know, are you a better podcaster than me? Maybe not, but if you're way better at writing and you give me advice on writing, I'm gonna take that.

But yeah, break that one down for us, Jack.

[chuckles] Well, let's start with what's the transition from the first to the second book?

So the first book, I honestly wrote it because people harassed me to write a book for fifteen, sixteen years, and I think everybody expected I would come out with a book on survivalism since I host the Survival Podcast.

But my show's really always been about lifestyle design, and, you know, when I look at my past, I'm an incredibly blessed person.

I feel so grateful for everything I had.

I, you know, I thought about these things I used to throw out onto my audience all the time, and I'd be like, "Spirko's Laws of Life number twelve," right? Or whatever.

And that actually came from the movie Cocktail.

Remember the guy had all these laws, right? The guy that was, like, the teacher.

... and, and apply it in a way that's practical?

Ooh.

800 square foot steel outbuilding.

Uh, 2,500 square foot house, and I paid 205 for it, right? So I mean, like, when you find that-It had some things that needed to be done, but when you find that in this area, that's a steal.

So we, we settled on this property, but nothing would grow.

When I say nothing, I mean I literally threw out plantain and dandelion seed that did not grow.

[chuckles] It was, it was desolate.

There are places where there is two inches of soil and then it is rock slab.

This is what I wanna do"?

Jack, how about you? How'd you get your first five customers?

That's kind of convoluted given the way a podcast works.

In the first six months, I didn't have any paying customers.

I had listeners, which I gained primarily through exposure through like Apple iTunes and using SEO and some paid advertising.

Like there was a thing called StumbleUpon back then.

My first customers, I guess, were actually sponsors before I had the membership program.

So that simply happened by putting out consistent content to where people that were in adjacent industry started reaching out to me and asking me if they could do something with us.

It's just the numbers are not what we were told or at least he is saying that nothing he found supports anything that we've been told through government school history classes.