I talk to Ben about creating luck, his barbell method, plus 6 half-baked business ideas

**Shaan Puri** (0:00)
All right, we got Ben here, and this is the real deal, Ben. This is Ben, the business partner. If you listen to every single episode of this podcast, you hear me two hours a week. I probably talk to Ben 20 hours a week.

**Ben Levy** (0:09)
Yeah, pretty much. I feel like you have a hundred times more great stuff that never makes it anywhere. It just goes into our text thread and dies immediately. We gotta bring it out.

**Shaan Puri** (0:29)
Ben, I was counting before we started this episode. So together, we've been working together for five years now. We've created nine different things. I don't know if you've seen this. We've created nine different projects that have made more than a million dollars each. So the very first thing we did together is the All Access Pass, which was a pretty batshit crazy idea where I was like, what if listeners of the pod could actually see what I'm doing every day to build a business? And I basically was like, for three months, I'm 90 days, I'm going to send an email every day, just showing you what I worked on each of those days while I try to do X thing, whatever the thing I was going to try to do was like, one of them was like start an e-com brand, one of them was raise a fund, one of them was start a course, whatever. And so that one did over a million dollars.

**Ben Levy** (1:15)
The craziest part about that one is you were basically like, hey dude, I just met you or we barely worked together. I wanna do a 90 day sprint where we just figure out what we're gonna do and then tell everyone in the world what we're doing. But we've never, we basically never worked together before then.

**Shaan Puri** (1:27)
We've never worked together. Also we have like the, what's the opposite of a romantic comedy? First meeting, you know like in a romantic comedy, they're like walking down the street, then they like bump into each other and then the papers fall on the ground and they scoop up, they look, they make eye contact and they're whatever. They're like, it's a thing. Ours was completely different. I think you were just a listener to the podcast and I was testing out an idea that was like these CEO mastermind groups. So I basically, I said, hey, I need five or six people who have a business that does over a million dollars a year, come join this group, which basically became Hampton, by the way. Sam ended up turning that into a real business called Hampton. I did one group and you were in it. And the funny thing was you had a business that was doing over a million dollars a year. And Ben, how many customers did you have in that business?

**Ben Levy** (2:13)
One, one customer.

**Shaan Puri** (2:15)
Ben had a business with a single customer that paid him a million dollars a year. Can you say, it's over now, you can say who it is.

**Ben Levy** (2:21)
Yeah, it was Anheuser-Busch at the time, Budweiser.

**Shaan Puri** (2:25)
So Ben is basically like, yeah, my customer is Budweiser. There are no other customers. They pay me a million dollars a year to do this like very simple thing where you were like, I don't know, you were like building their SMS list for them or something like that. But you seemed bored out of your mind. And also like you seemed bored out of your mind. And I was trying to do new things. And I was like, hey, I like this guy. He's got a good vibe. You want to try some stuff with me.
Is that the summary of how it went down for you?

**Ben Levy** (2:51)
Pretty much. I mean, the only other thing is like peak COVID. I specifically remember like it was those masterminds and watching the Jordan doc. And those are the highlights of the month basically.

**Shaan Puri** (3:01)
Why did you say yes? Because you had a business that was doing a million dollars a year. I was not offering you more money than that. Why did you say yes to the offer, by the way? I think there's something, you have good instincts. And I think there's, I've never asked you this, but why did you even say yes to begin with?

**Ben Levy** (3:14)
I mean, at the time, I felt like I had tried everything to figure out how to grow that business. And I just had zero answers. I'd been like, you know, it had been a year and it was like, I've tried literally everything I can think of. Not one thing is working. Like, this is kind of going nowhere. I'm running, I'm hitting on the wall every time. That was one. And then two, you know, I thought you had a ton of juice. And I feel like I text you this all the time, which is TMJ. I just feel like you have too much juice, which I felt then. I feel now, which is like, you know, this guy is a beast. This guy is like, you know, the next Joe Rogan.