00:47:28 · Ty Morse, Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:47:28] S0: How hard can it be? [00:47:29] S1: I'm gonna just do things. I'm gonna be high agency and design my own sushi roll. And the waitress is like, okay. I'm like, here I go. And I listed, like, stuff I like. And I just made a list of things that I like. And she was like, Okay. [00:47:45] S0: We will put this together. [00:47:48] S1: Highly inadvisable. It was like that pizza that has like the M and M's and the rotisserie chicken. That was my sushi roll. I ate like half of it. The plating was [00:48:00] S0: beautiful. The [00:48:02] S1: preparation was very skillful. But no amount of skill no pair of skilled hands could have saved the list that I gave to that waitress and could have overcome like my judgment. And so the cartoon of Waldo from Where's Waldo Sitting at a And he's like, nobody ever asks, how's Waldo? People are always asking, what podcast can we go on? How do we get our message out? How do we make our tweet go viral? And very rarely do people ask, what are we trying to say? And if your message sucks, the ingredients are bad, and the dish is inherently not good, right? If your message sucks, you could have a two minute Super Bowl commercial, you could go on Joe Rogan, you can have a billboard in Times Square, and nobody is going to care because it's not about distribution if your message is not good. [00:49:00] S0: Yeah, there's also this amazing... Did you ever watch the Simon Sinek talk where he was talking about the why, how, and then what? [00:49:07] S1: Yeah, the start So it's of
00:49:09 · Ty Morse
[00:49:09] S0: just this amazing... So basically, like these concentric circles, and at the center, it's the why. And like, why do you do what you do? And then it's how, how do you do it? And then what are you actually doing? And he said the best storytellers, like Steve Jobs, he's like, he starts with a why, and he's saying, you know, this is what, you know, like, this is why we do what we do at Apple, which is why we wake up in the morning. We are, you know, for Elon, it's like, we are making life multiplanetary, that is our mission, that is why we wake up in the morning, and then it's like, how do we make life multiplanetary? That might be we build rockets that are reusable and all this stuff, and then it's like, What do we do? And it's like, I'm, you know, soldering something. And I think most, you know, when I have most interactions with people at, like, a party, I will say, you know, Who are you? And they will basically start with the what. They will be like, I am building AI spreadsheets, and I'm like, I don't really care. If you start with, and then the best storytellers, like, they don't do that. They start with, Here's why, like, I am not doing a podcast, I am trying to help. You know, if I look at like my mission, it's like, I want to help the highest leverage people in society, our founders. And so how do you get more founders to start companies in the right companies? And it's like, Okay, we need, you know, for me, it's I want more people to even realize that they can start companies, is the first thing. And then two, I want the people that do start companies to work on more important missions. And so then it's like, okay, well, that's our why, then we're gonna probably do a bunch of interviews that are not, like, directionally they won't get a million views, but they do kind of show like, okay, go work on nuclear reactors, or go do cloud seeding, or all these other things, because that is, like, directionally correct. And over time, you'll just build this brand of, you know, there's all these other podcasters, and then there's like Relentless, and they're like celebrating, you know, great founders and great companies. And like, if I'm directionally, you know, associated with that, and I believe in the idea that we want great companies and more great founders, then I like, I'm aligned with Relentless.
00:51:02 · Lulu Cheng Meservey, Ty Morse
[00:51:02] S1: A lot of people have within them a really special secret truth that only they know. Right? It's like something that should be done, something that is actually possible, and people haven't realized it yet. And it's a secret truth within. I think what sadly happens is that the vast majority of people assassinate that within themselves. Because they look around, and it doesn't seem like others have it, and they gaslight themselves into believing that it must be fake. Sometimes people will trust themselves over the world, which is very hard to do, to trust yourself over millions of others and people who are smarter and taller richer and more important, you know, to say like, I'm right over them. [00:51:48] S0: Mean, you're the village with 200 other people you go off on your own, and you don't listen to the rest, and you're like, I'm going go pave my own way. You die very quickly. So this is kind of designed. [00:51:59] S1: This is true. This is true. And we have to sometimes be able to overcome that. People are on autopilot most of the time. Here's the thing that I did. I was working for JPMorgan in New York. And one day for no real reason, I made these signs, and I got them laminated. And the signs, I put them in the bathrooms. [00:52:29] S0: Go on.
00:52:29 · Ty Morse, Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:52:29] S0: Go on. [00:52:31] S1: I made these signs, I laminated them, and I put them in the bathrooms. And the signs said, times are tight, everyone has to do their part. We ask that you participate in the cost of maintaining this bathroom. Every square of toilet paper so stupid. Every square of toilet paper costs $0.10 Every pump of soap costs $0.15 Every paper towel costs a 0.25. What's that? [00:53:00] S0: Someone smells woke. [00:53:02] S1: Well, and then I put these like collection boxes. I didn't want you know, I wasn't trying to get $0.45 or whatever. I just wanted to see what would happen. And I went back the next day. I waited till after hours, and I put these up everywhere. I went back the next day, and there was like real money inside. [00:53:23] S0: Like a few $100 or something? Or like a few tens of dollars? [00:53:26] S1: A few tens. [00:53:27] S0: And
00:53:27 · Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:53:27] S1: it's like this completely nonsensical request. What are we Americans or what? Like, what do you mean you're going to look at this sign that requests you to pay for your toilet paper? There's like absurd on its face, undignified, and completely unnecessary requests from JPMorgan, the corporation. Like, nothing about it made sense. And yet, people put money into the box, which makes me feel like people have an overwhelming bias to just do the thing they feel like they're supposed to do. And that is actually a pro social instinct. Like, we shouldn't be trying to decide our own Bart fares or something. But then when the moment calls for it, and you, as a founder or as a cult leader, see that there is just a quarter turn to be made that leads us to a more glorious future, but everybody has to get on board, It is your job to look inside your mental dictionary of language and identify 500 to 1,000, it's not that many words in the right order, that is going to jailbreak people and reprogram them to come and join you off the path. And it's very doable. And it has been done again and again, in big ways. And in small ways. It's been done to convince an entire nation to continue fighting a war. It's been done to convince racists to consider the possibility of allowing civil rights. It's been done to inspire a nation to go to the moon. I mean, these things, we've seen them, we just don't really recognize them for what they are, which is packaging 1,000 words in the right order in combination with the right curation, and delivering them such that they jailbreak people at scale. It's so doable.
00:55:25 · Ty Morse, Lulu Cheng Meservey
[00:55:25] S0: So like the Napoleon situation, where if you give the facts, you are going to go guard this place. And these cannons are going to shoot at you. And every single person that has previously gone here has gotten shot. And if you give those facts, probably not very many people are like, Yes, I want to be suicidal. But then suddenly, give it in slightly different order, and people are lining up, you know, voluntarily joining. What other examples are there in situations that you've seen, where people rephrased a set of facts, and like, not even facts, but almost feelings and reasons for doing things, [00:56:01] S1: in [00:56:02] S0: order to get people to take irrational action?