The Hustle Ep9: Who are your true friends

Hey, guys. Calvin here from Young & Wildly Successful. Hope you’re doing super-well. Just sitting here on the beach in Sri Lanka. I’m taking a ten-day break in-between conferences and events to do a bit of travel and to see a different part of the world and then really just to come away and to reflect and renew and to read and just to enjoy life.

In this video, I want to share with you what I’m calling now the wheel-of-cheese test and it’s something that I learned recently from a book by Elon Musk. In fact, it’s actually by a gentleman by the name of Ashlee Vance, but the book’s about Elon Musk and this video’s all about whether or not, it’s a great litmus test to see if your homies have really got your back, if your friends are really your true friends.

Because there’s so many people that come in and out of our lives over the days and weeks and months that we spend in pursuit of our goals in life. And so often we get disappointed when our friends don’t have our backs, so often we get disappointed when our friends don’t back us or believe in us, and there’s a really great metaphor that Elon shares in the book…it’s not a metaphor, it’s actually just a real story…but it’s a really great metaphor that I want you to take from the book and that is the wheel-of-cheese concept.

So let me paint a picture for you. Elon Musk is the guy that created Tesla and SpaceX and also created SolarCity, as well as PayPal, just to name a few of the companies he’s involved in. And bit of a crazy guy. He’s the sort of guy that his friends would reflect about how they’d be at the Hard Rock Cafe in Los Angeles eating burgers and he’d be reading a dusty, moldy old Soviet Union rocket magazine and manual about astrophysics and talking about how we could put people on Mars. Just a crazy guy.

But one time he was having a conversation with one of his friends…and actually an investor inside of SpaceX now today but back then they hadn’t set the company up…and he’s sitting there and he’s talking to his friend about how he wants to, originally before the intention was to put a man on Mars, his intention was to fly mice and rats up in outer space into Mars, get them to land on Mars, and then see if life could be sustained. And this was the original test that Elon had set about.

So he’s having coffee. His friend was talking about it and he says, “He started talking to me about space.” And he says, “I thought he was talking about office spaces,” he says, “Would you want to rent some?” He says, “No, I want to go to outer space.” He says, “What do you even mean?” He says, “I want to take a group of rats and I want to put them on Mars.” And he says, “He pulled out a piece of paper and a pen then and there,” he says, “And on back of an envelope or a napkin, I think it was, and he wrote down some rough calculations of how much it was going to cost to put mice or rats on Mars.”

And he says, “It was going to cost about $15 million U.S. at the time.” This is back in the early 2000s but today it’d be worth much more than that. He says, “Do you think that’s possible? Do you think that that’s crazy?” He says, “Are the mice going to come back?” He says, “No, the mice are going to stay there.” He says, “Well, then that’s batshit crazy.”

And this became a bit of a joke because then what he realized was that Elon was actually really serious about this idea and while he thought it was absurd to spend $15 million to fly rats to Mars, he believed in his friend that much that he went out and he says, “Look, if these rats are going to make it, if these rats are going to make babies and actually reproduce so that we can have a rat colony on Mars, they’re going to need a lot of cheese.”

And he went out and bought the biggest block of cheese he could find, this big wheel-of-cheese like you see in the movies, this giant roll of cheese and got it delivered to Musk’s house as a symbol of his support. Because even when he had the most absurd idea of spending $15 million on flying rats to Mars, $15 million on flying rats to Mars, his friend still had his back. And, guys, what I think is really important is that we understand that when we have crazy ideas, it’s important that our friends have got our back.

And if you’re the sort of person that comes up with crazy ideas, like you want to get started in a new company or you want a new job or you want to start a new relationship and your friends think you’re batshit crazy, explain that story to them and if you find that you have a roll of cheese on your doorstep one day, you’ll know that they’ve got your back. Because we need our friends when things are good and we need our friends when things are bad and we need to know who’s really with us. And if your friends believe your ideas are crazy, that’s fine. They don’t have to believe it’s possible. But they do have to have your back.

For example, I know a lot of our clients that watch these videos are in network marketing and you get a lot of hate because people start to go, “Oh, I don’t want to know about it.” They don’t have to be part of your network marketing business to be your friend. They don’t have to be part of it. A lot of my friends are not part of my business. But that doesn’t mean to say they don’t support my business and they would never say anything bad about it and they’d never have a go at me for it.

They’d challenge my beliefs, that’s what great friends do. They’d want me to succeed. But at the same time, they’re going to keep me grounded and if you want to have great friends like Elon Musk has, you got to be willing enough to have people around you that are going to challenge you. But when they know you’re serious about it, they’re going to rock up with a roll of cheese to be able to help you spend $15 million and put mice on Mars.

So guys, hopefully that message sits with you and maybe it’s just a case of a catalyst for you because I’m just reflecting on this as well. If you’ve ever seen the movie The Matrix, there’s a scene in The Matrix where Morpheus comes back down to…I can’t remember the area that they used to stay, like the safe haven…he comes back down to the safe haven and the commander of the fleet scolds him and he says, “What were you doing? You directly disobeyed my command when you were up in the Matrix,” he says, “You didn’t come back. You risked the whole shit.” He says, “Well, I did it because of the prophecy of Neo becoming the chosen one.” And he says, “Morpheus, not everyone believes what you believe. Not everyone believes what you believe.” And Morpheus turned to him and said, “My beliefs don’t require them to.”

You’re starting a business because you believe in it. You don’t need everyone else to believe in it. You just need to believe in it. And people get hung up about the fact that their friends don’t believe in it. What they’re really getting hung up on the fact is that they’re not quite sure and they need their friends to validate it. You shouldn’t need your friends to validate your existence. You shouldn’t need your friends to validate your good ideas. You either know it’s a good idea or you don’t. But that’s now time for you to get out of your own way and your true friends are the ones that’ll think you’re batshit crazy and will still support you.

So guys, I want to wish you all the very best. I want to continue to encourage you to live strong and live a passion, to make today and every day a phenomenal, life-changing adventure. If you enjoy these videos, please subscribe and share. Please make sure that you are tagging friends that are in this, people that would give you a wheel-of-cheese. And here in Sri Lanka, I’m not sure you can see this but on the beach, the sun is setting. I just want you to remember above all else to live life on your terms.