So can you tell me a little bit about how did you even get that opportunity?

Yeah.

So I'll paint a picture for you first of what I was like as a kid, which is I grew up with a single mom just north of Charlotte, North Carolina.

The environment we were around was very upper middle class.

We were very not upper middle class.

We didn't have much.

And I was in a world that no one really looked like us.

And I think

Tell me more about that story.

If there's anything I know how to do is I know how to rip the phones off the wall.

Actually, my job before Stanford Business School, I was at Norris Venture Partners on the growth equity team.

And in that sense, we went after very profitable growing companies.

And when you know growth equity in that sense, in that stage of private equity, I was a 24-year-old kid trying to convince a 40-year-old founder entrepreneur who was doing $100 million to EBITDA to take our money.

What value do I have that I could give him? And what does our money mean? And so I got really good at sending dozens of cold emails and just being super hungry to get after it.

I say all that to say, I think I've learned the value of a cold email when well-written to the right person can really genuinely change someone's life.

I mean, that's definitely a little bit different than what your resume suggests.

Can you talk about that?

Yeah.

And I can also teach people how to do this even more successfully with AI.

In a second we can walk them through how I do it in my own flows and how all of our top creators are successful using some of the AI tools that, uh, and workflows we've built.

Um, but I want everyone to think through this.

So now you've chosen whatever piece of content you wanna make, like broadly the topic.

Now you're probably like, "Well, what the fuck do I make?" Right? "What, what, what do I make? How do I make sure it looks good? How do I do all of this?" So the easiest way to do this is to recognize that the best artists steal.

Like, do you even have like a recommendation of what someone should consider for their first offer?

What are some of the tips and tricks or mindset... frameworks that you've learned from being around people with that big of an audience?

I will give you a specific learning I've learned from Steven, a specific learning I've learned from Gary, and then I will give you the meta learning that I've learned across all the most successful people I've ever met.

So Steven, more than anything, has taught me actually two things.

Number one is to not afraid to be obsessive.

As in, when you start to succeed over time, you start to...

There are moments where society will make you feel bad about who you are.

So my example of that is I actually realized I, in this season of life, I actually really genuinely enjoy working.

Where do I start?

[laughs]

Escape competition through authenticity I think is the greatest form, uh, uh, doctor to understand what we're all saying, which is there are a million people that would do fitness content.

There's only one person who is you and has your unique stories and your unique values.

And what the algorithm is doing is just connecting you with the million other people, 'cause there are eight billion people in this world, who fuck with you and your specific story.

Um, the second mental model I would give specifically back to Sammy is you're in a more professional grade industry, and so being thoughtful around portraying the news while also bringing in your person, there's like, you can look at political commentators and decide what you wanna do.

At the end of the day, the next mental model I would give is, like, we are all just new s- new age media of old school media.

And so in a world, I would ask myself, who are the old school anchors, so whether it's Katie Couric or what have you, that I look up to the most, that I envy the, like, that I, that I think have the most successful careers that I personally respect.

[laughs] Gotcha.