Our Most Impactful Learnings From 2025

Most people live their life like this.

They build a well and they start to pump

water. And at the end of their lives,

after a lifetime of pumping, they see

they are still thirsty. They spent their

whole life pumping rather than drinking,

which was the reason they started

pumping in the first place.

What up, Sam? I wanted to do something a

little different today. End of the year.

I was doing a little Slack cleanout and

I was looking at I had this one channel

for like the best stuff I read this

week. I call it my content diet channel.

It's basically what were the vegetables,

what were my whole foods that I consumed

cuz I consume a lot of junk, but this

stuff was actually good. And I was just

kind of browsing through what really

stood out or resonated with me and I

have a couple. I don't know. I And I

wanted to know yours because you read a

lot more than me and I think we read

totally different things. So I I'm

curious if anything comes to mind for

you on that topic. Yes. Um, for me it's

a lot of books and so like for example

the the topic that I got obsessed with

this year was presidential

assassinations. I went deep on the four

different presidents who were

assassinated and it that interested me.

But you know I'm a huge history fan and

so I could talk to you all about history

which which I I can like say some of the

most amazing stuff that I learned. I

feel like we did a whole bit when the

Trump assassination thing happened on

presidential assassinations. There's

some crazy stories, right? There's like

the guy who had his speech in his pocket

that like blunted the blow and so he got

shot

>> and he survived.

>> Roosevelt and he gets shot by his car on

his way to his speech doesn't die cuz

the speech is so thick in his pocket.

>> Gives the speech while bleeding.

>> Yeah, that was Roosevelt. There's only

been four presidents that have been

successfully assassinated and three of

them happened between like 1865

and like 1905. And like pretty much up

until Andrew Garfield was assassinated,

which I think was like around 1904, any

human, any American, it was like

customary, you can just go to the White

House and schedule an appointment with

the president. And the idea here was

that they were supposed to be like a man

of the people. And I think that's

ridiculous. And the Secret Service, even

up till 1963, 64,65 when JFK was shot,

it was only like 300 people. And so like

basically was non-existent. And so I'm

like obsessed with that uh about how

like something became an institution

even after four years or sorry four

deaths happened. And so I've been

obsessed with that. I've also been

obsessed with leadership and the idea of

speeches. Have you ever studied any of

the great speeches of American or world

history?

>> Not in particular. What you got?

>> So in particular uh Winston Churchill.

Have you ever seen the movie Dunkirk?

You've never seen it, right?

>> No, I haven't.

>> Okay. The idea is like early in the war

of England, this was when like the Nazi

Germany had just invaded France and it

was like clear that Nazi now was Nazi

Germany was officially bad. Before it

was like, "Yeah, they're horrible, but

like they're going to stay themselves."

They start evading other countries and

people start freaking out. They go

through France and everyone's like, "Oh

my god, I can't believe uh you know,

imagine today. Imagine like France

getting taken over."

>> France.

>> Yeah. It is it's just like insane. And

so England, which is nearby, they were

like, "Oh my gosh, now they are coming

to us." And so they start officially

getting in get into a war and have

skirmish in Dunkerk where Nazi the Nazis

surround a part of England and they

surround like I think it was like 50,000

or even 100,000 soldiers and basically

if those people died the war would have

been over and it was a magical moment

where hundreds of ships that were just

fishermen but also the uh British Navy

they raced over and they grabbed these

guys off this island and they saved

hundreds of thousands of lives.

Whatever. Whatever. [laughter]

But that's not the important part of my

story. But up until that point, England

was like fearful. They were very

fearful. They're like, "This is

horrible." Like they were imagining all

the worst things that that was going to

happen. Winston Churchill who was in

power was a very fearful fearful person

and he was very nervous. But then he

goes, "Screw it. We're not going to take

this. We're going to get after it." And

he gave this speech and at the end of

the speech, he does this in like I

forget what their I think it's the House

of Parliament Parliament. It's like

their like physical setting where like

everyone's watching him and he was like,

"We're going to fight in the beaches.

We're going to fight in the trenches.

We're going to fight in the land. and we

will never ever give up. And he like

gave this like amazing speech that

basically changed the entire morale of

the country. We were talking about tens

of millions of people and it just like

I've always been very fascinated when

there's one person who can exert a

relatively small amount of energy and

get everyone else to change their

energy. So like if you ever been to a

concert, I used to love watching these

Oasis concerts. They'll be literally

they're famous. They they they were

famous for helping create like this idea

of like a mega concert. They would have

250,000 people in the audience and

they're relatively high energy band, but

it's just one or two guys singing into a

microphone and they get 250,000 people

to like light up and like push that

energy back to them. And I'm obsessed

with what is that one thing that person

has and how do they leverage that amount

of energy to impact potentially hundreds

of thousands or in the case of Winston

Churchill, tens of millions of people.

And so I'm like uh like try to figure

out like what words does someone have to

use? And like if you think about Winston

Churchill, do you know what he looks

like?

>> Uh yeah. I mean I've seen photos of him.

>> Like he's a a short fat kind of

drunkard. Like he's not like he's not

like a good-looking guy. Like he doesn't

have like the traditional movie star

good looks or anything like that. And so

what I've been trying to study is how

people do that

>> because you want to just deliver this at

work or what's the like connect the dots

for me.

>> Yeah. Because I do want to become a

better leader. like once your company

gets so my company we're only at like 25

or 30 people but I'm getting to the

point now where I'm not doing a lot of

the work and I am having to not motivate

people because all my a good employee is

already motivated but in order to make a

good employee a great employee you do

need to inspire them right

>> and so I've just been trying to figure

out how to become a better leader and so

I've been studying some of the

>> we're going to advertise in the banner

ads we're going to advertise in the

podcast we're going to advertise

everywhere we will advertise you know

what do you what is the like rally cry

that you're trying to trying to get to

that What would be like what would be an

example? Have you done it yet? Have you

tried?

>> Yeah. Like so so right now AI is

everywhere and I just it's making me

sick that I am like having to talk to AI

all the time and I'm not having a lot of

like relationships in real life. I'm not

having what you call these