How Ben Wilson Quit His Job and Took Over the Podcasting World

**Ben Wilson** (0:00)
At one point, you look around and realize that everything in the world was made by someone who's no smarter than you. That combination of that pain and that excitement is that rocket fuel. The happiest place you can be in life is either succeeding taking life by the balls or live the life of a detached beach bum. I couldn't sleep and I was taking sleeping pills and then I'm having weird dreams. And just like I really felt like I was going downhill in life. It was a slow realization that I can't go on like this. It's better to flame out than is to burn out.

**Wouter Teunissen** (0:27)
What do most podcasts get wrong?

**Ben Wilson** (0:29)
Number one, you want to default towards being ten times more valuable than your nearest competitor. Fuck.

**Wouter Teunissen** (0:39)
All right, I'm here with Ben Wilson, founder of Podramp and host of the How to Take Over the World podcast. Go listen to it. If you're listening to this, you'll probably much more enjoy that one. It's much further along. We're here to talk about, you know, your founder journey, your life, and just see if we can distill some insights. So I appreciate you taking the time to do this with me.

**Ben Wilson** (0:57)
I'm very glad to be here, and nice to meet you in the flesh.

**Wouter Teunissen** (0:59)
Yeah, definitely. It's been a while. Let's just dive straight in. I want to talk about your childhood. Great place to start. I feel like a therapist right now. You've talked a little bit about your family having a reputation, right? Like your dad running the local church, your brother being a bit of an athlete, a star athlete. What kind of pressure did that put on you, or what sort of expectations did that put on you when you were young? Like, what sort of experience was that like?

**Ben Wilson** (1:24)
You know, I actually feel like I had a very idyllic childhood. It's interesting. I was at this event with a couple, a panel with a couple other podcasters. There were three of us. And the first question that the host asked us was, what was the hardest lesson that you ever learned from your father? And the first one was like, oh, my father pushed me so hard. He would like hit me. And it was like, and it really like drove me to be successful.

**Wouter Teunissen** (1:54)
Right.

**Ben Wilson** (1:55)
And the second one was like, I learned from my dad, don't do cocaine. You know, he was just like a total mess up. He was a drug dealer and like overcoming this just gave me this drive.

**Wouter Teunissen** (2:05)
Yeah.

**Ben Wilson** (2:06)
And I was just sitting there like, all right, my dad went to Harvard. He loved me. He went to all my basketball games. You know, like, what do I say here? It really got to me. I was like, I don't know. Yeah, I had nothing to say.
And it is interesting because actually father son relationships among the people I study tend to come in sort of two dimensions. One is the very, like, controlling father who you can never do enough to satisfy them. And that, like, kind of motivates people or the absent father who the example you don't need to follow. Yeah, exactly. And so I didn't have either one of those. I had, like, a great father. But I guess I've found ways to stay motivated anyway. It's not maybe the typical background of success.

**Wouter Teunissen** (2:52)
Yeah. Do you think that actually... I mean, that's really interesting, though. Like, do you think that helped a lot, just like putting your priorities down or, like, seeing what was actually important early on, like a lot of social pressures or, you know, things that actually don't matter in retrospect, like you perhaps had a better understanding of in the moment?

**Ben Wilson** (3:06)
Yeah. I mean, I do think it just gave me a good pattern for life.

**Wouter Teunissen** (3:09)
Yeah.

**Ben Wilson** (3:09)
Right. My dad is someone I do want to be like.
And I had a great, again, I said it's idyllic. Like, I just had a very, very happy childhood. I wouldn't replace it with anything. I probably would be more driven if I had a father who was very demanding that way. But it's not like I wish for that.

**Wouter Teunissen** (3:28)
Probably a lot more unhappy.

**Ben Wilson** (3:29)
Yeah, exactly. I'm happy with the way it turned out, I guess.

**Wouter Teunissen** (3:32)
Yeah. I think you've done well. You were, I don't want to say high achiever, but you know, you were pretty active growing up though. I mean, you had piano lessons.