33 Brutal Truths To Stop Wasting Your Potential - Alex Hormozi
CChris Williamson
ManagementAdult EducationMental Health
Transcript
00:00:00Welcome back, man. Another speed running podcasting booty call.
00:00:04That's the hope.
00:00:06Do more hard things every day is a great mantra, but it should be less about ice baths and more
00:00:12about making that decision you've been putting off for three months.
00:00:18Yeah. I think that there's been a big misconception around hard stuff, which is just that
00:00:25like running a marathon necessarily means that you can have a hard conversation with your wife.
00:00:30By saying, I do hard things, but those hard things don't necessarily generalize.
00:00:35And so I think domain specificity is much more narrow unless you decide to generalize to an
00:00:41identity label of like, I am the type of person who can do hard things because I ran this marathon
00:00:45or because I do these ice baths. And then as a result, I can then generalize that label to other
00:00:49behaviors. But if you can make that label and identify with it, then you don't need to run
00:00:53the marathon in order to do the hard thing. You just need the label.
00:00:56What are the hard things that people should be focusing on more? What are the step change
00:01:01function, hard thing, capacity skills that people should focus on more?
00:01:08I think it's being cognizant of what outside forces are influencing your behavior in a way
00:01:18that is aversive or against your goals. And so if you're like, I want to start a business,
00:01:24but I am afraid of what other people will say, then it means that we are allowing those other
00:01:30people to control your behavior. And I think when you say it in really plain terms like that,
00:01:33you're like, wow, I didn't know I was giving them that much power for my life. It's like,
00:01:36I am not doing this because of them, which means they control me.
00:01:40And to me, like the hard thing is in some ways, just not allowing that control to persist or keep
00:01:46going.
00:01:47It is interesting how many people can do hard things physically, but can't do hard things decisively.
00:01:52I have, so I have, you know, our security team and whatnot. And this is a discussion that I've
00:01:57had with probably each of them at different times. We've seen combat and death and all that kind of
00:02:00stuff. And what's funny is that like the amount of risk that they are willing to put their physical
00:02:07bodies and like literally their lives at stake, but that's how that doesn't necessarily translate to
00:02:11being able to have a, like call it vulnerable conversation with a wife, spouse, lover, et cetera.
00:02:18It's just interesting. And this is again, back to like, these things don't generalize. They look
00:02:23good, but they do not mean the same thing.
00:02:26It's weird that we publicly admire the obvious hard thing, even if that isn't the one that actually
00:02:35makes the biggest difference to people's life direction. It's not predictive of being a good
00:02:39friend. It's not predictive of being the best partner. It's not predictive of being a successful
00:02:43business owner, but because it's more obvious, because it's more publicly laudable, uh, you can
00:02:51flex it online and you can tell people I ran a marathon as opposed to when my partner asked me a
00:02:56difficult question, I didn't shy away from it. I told them the truth.
00:03:00And to be clear, I think that those things are laudable in and of themselves. Like you go fight
00:03:03a war, you go do like, you go run a marathon. I think all of those things are praiseworthy.
00:03:08It's just the generalizable component of that hard being, oh, I can do all hard things is really the
00:03:14misconception. But I do think that if you, if for whatever reason you tell yourself a narrative that
00:03:18you, because, because you did this hard thing, you can do all hard things, then that's amazing. And
00:03:22by all means, if someone's like, I started doing jujitsu and it completely changed my life. It's like,
00:03:26that's awesome. But it probably isn't because you learned how to do guard better. Uh, it's probably
00:03:31because like what guard, what learning to do guard meant for you changed these other series of
00:03:35behaviors down the line. How correlative do you think it is people that do hard things
00:03:41physically versus people who develop the capacity to do hard things that matter?
00:03:45Can you say that again? Let's say that doing hard things electively versus doing hard things
00:03:51decisively. The big difference between the two to me seems to be decisions that require emotion
00:03:55and decisions that require effort. That seems to be one of the big delineations here.
00:04:02So, so it's like the called hard conversation versus hard physical tasks.
00:04:06Yeah. And how many people who develop the skill to do hard physical tasks as a transformation?
00:04:10How many of those do you think carry over into being able to do the hard thing emotionally?
00:04:14Probably the same in the opposite direction. The guys who are like, can have quote,
00:04:19hard conversations, the attorney who can get through all these complex ideas and have whatever
00:04:23then sucks on at jujitsu or sucks at in the weight room or doesn't try hard. I think, um, I just think
00:04:30that skills are more specific unless you generalize them.
00:04:33How do you generalize?
00:04:34I think it's, it's, it's creating labels and identity with personality. And so if we, if we,
00:04:38if we identify, if we define personality by, um, the aggregate of how you behave in all conditions,
00:04:45right? So all these conditions, how you act is your personality. The label we ascribe to that
00:04:51personality would then be the identity. And so if we decide to change that label,
00:04:56then that label, this is getting a little technical, but basically becomes a global
00:04:59reinforcer for your behavior. Like I am this, I am honest. And so we make this label and then
00:05:05honest has a lot of sub behaviors underneath of it that we then act because we believe that honest
00:05:10is good. And so we want to act in accordance with this global reinforcer for ourselves. And so
00:05:14when we enter a new situation, we think, okay, what is in alignment? What behavior is most aligned
00:05:19with this label? And then we do that. And then when we don't do, when we don't act that way,
00:05:24then we feel guilty because we broke our own rules of behavior.
00:05:28So the big lesson here is just because you're doing hard things in one domain does not mean
00:05:33that it crosses over into all domains, unless you purposefully try to make your identity wrapped up
00:05:37around it.
00:05:38A thousand percent. When I went to college, I wanted to pledge a fraternity and it was in the SEC
00:05:48and they're known for hazing and whatnot. And so I called my dad and I was like, hey, this might be
00:05:53like bad. I might have to go through some stuff that's hard. I don't know. And my dad's given me a lot
00:06:00of lasting gifts, but one of them, he said, think about every hard thing that you've gone through
00:06:04up until this point. He's like, there is nothing that they can do to you that is worse than that.
00:06:10And that actually was incredibly empowering. And I remember when there were more hardships that were
00:06:14going on, I just immediately went to the worst things that I had gone through. And I was like,
00:06:17oh my God, this is nothing. And so I was able to like go through this relatively hard thing where
00:06:21there were people who were like cracking and crying and all this stuff. Like, I want to say grown men,
00:06:25but I would say adult boys next to me. And I was able to stand tall because it was just like,
00:06:32there is nothing that these other 21 year old guys can do to me that I have not suffered through.
00:06:36It's a good justification for doing hard things that Rogan's got this line. The worst thing that's
00:06:41ever happened to you is the worst thing that's ever happened to you. And if the worst thing that's
00:06:45ever happened to you is somebody misspelling your name on a Starbucks cup, that's a big deal.
00:06:49But if the worst thing that's ever happened to you is a thousand times worse than that.
00:06:53I think one problem we have is recency bias, that if you haven't been through a tough time
00:06:58right now, your memory of being able to deal with hard things, you kind of get velvet prison syndrome.
00:07:05And sometimes you can forget, like, I guess chicks would say, I'm still that bitch.
00:07:11I'm, you know, I've still got that capacity. Sometimes we forget.
00:07:16Yeah. I think one of the strongest frames that has gotten me through those harder times is that
00:07:19this is the story I will one day tell. And so it just like almost the more bad things that happen,
00:07:25it's like the more epic the story becomes. And so, I mean, and the main beneficiary of the stories
00:07:29that we tell is ourselves, because we're the, we're the, the giver and the receiver of most of the
00:07:33stories by, by percentage of stories told we are, we are the biggest receiver of the stories.
00:07:38And so I think that's, that's actually been, I think just such a powerful frame for like,
00:07:41of course this, this terrible thing will happen. And like, doesn't that make the story so much better?
00:07:45Sure. Yeah. What's cool is I think when you say we're talking in narrative story, personification,
00:07:51arc, hero's journey, it all sounds kind of wishful in a way, mythological, irrational,
00:07:58symbolic, but that's the way that humans brains work. Like we work in story. And even if it's
00:08:10not strictly the way that the neuroscience behind how the medial prefrontal lateral cortex works in
00:08:18order to make us a tougher person, if you are the kind of person that tells yourself the story that
00:08:22you're the kind of person that can get through this, that is functionally exactly what you're chasing.
00:08:27Like what you're after is the story. And by putting that on the front end and going, okay,
00:08:34I'm just going to keep on building stories that I'm going to refer back to in future.
00:08:37I think you're actually being more direct than if you were trying to
00:08:40take a more rational view of exactly how behavior is put together. Like the story is the rational
00:08:46view of how your behavior and your identity are put together.
00:08:52There's a lot there. I think like with the neuroscience and the brain labeling and all that
00:08:58stuff, I have no idea. So that's, that's above my pay grade. But yeah, I just think about all of our,
00:09:04all of our behavior is just in aggregate. We do what we've been rewarded for doing. And it doesn't mean
00:09:08we get a cookie. It could also mean the bad thing goes away. There's a lot of different types of
00:09:11reward. Um, and so if we remember a story, um, so like, let's say you have that story of you went
00:09:19through this hard thing and then you survived, then it basically serves as a reminder of the
00:09:24reinforcer of the behaviors you did to get through it. And so it's almost like, um, with a kid who's
00:09:30smaller, if you're like, Hey, remember last time you did this, you got ice cream. Um, if you remind
00:09:35them of that reward, then they're more likely to repeat the behavior. And so I think we basically
00:09:38use that narrative as a reminder to in the short term, increase the relative value of a reinforcer.
00:09:44And so if we think about like, what is motivation in general, that's functionally what you're doing.
00:09:48If you motivate someone, like if you sell someone something for the short term, you increase the
00:09:53relative value of a specific reinforcer. You didn't wake up, uh, wanting to buy cologne, but you see an
00:09:59ad and for the short period of time that the ad goes on, it increases the relative value of smelling
00:10:04good. Uh, and so as a result, it changes your behavior and then you buy. And so I think stories
00:10:09function in that same way where we use them to motivate ourselves in the short term to do the
00:10:13desired behavior that might be less comfortable in the short term, but we're reminded about the larger
00:10:18reinforcing event that we had in the past. How many people do you think are doing hard
00:10:23things publicly in order to not need to face the lack of capacity they have to do hard things privately?
00:10:31I don't know them. So I don't know, to be honest with you. That's my honest answer. I don't know.
00:10:36I think some people really do hard things and that's what they capture online as a fraction of
00:10:40what they really do. And I think there are people who 100% of the hard things they do online and
00:10:44they're not even that hard. Yeah. Yeah. And they're not even that hard because they've got a
00:10:47squad of people behind them. Like I always, I think there was a meme around this for a moment. I was
00:10:52like, but you had a camera there. It's like girl collapses because of crazy news or something like
00:10:59that. It's like, but you had a camera there. And so you, so there's just this, this, you know,
00:11:04this element of, you know, mistrust performative nature. Yeah. Yeah.
00:11:08The three step process of how to win. Number one, realize no one is coming to save you.
00:11:14Number two, take responsibility for your current position.
00:11:16Number three, be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you want to be.
00:11:26I think that those three is really all about power. Um, and the realization. So the probably in
00:11:33sequence, probably the first one should come first, which is you own everything. It's like, okay,
00:11:38if I own everything, then you could still hope that someone saves you, but it still relies on someone else
00:11:43to change your condition. And so it's like, okay, I own all these outcomes. Um, I'm not going to rely
00:11:48on someone else to change my condition, but you're still there, which means you have to take the third
00:11:52step, which is that I have to sacrifice. I have to give up, um, something in order to get something
00:11:56else. And I think, I think where people actually stay stuck the longest in their careers from an
00:12:01entrepreneurship perspective or just from a personal development perspective is, um, the trades that
00:12:06that we are unwilling to make, it's basically the desire to have everything at the same time.
00:12:10And, and the easiest analogy I have is like, it is totally reasonable to want to have a mountain
00:12:18view and to be on the beach and be walking distance from a Whole Foods. Um, but you probably will not
00:12:25find a place that has all three of those because they are all at apparent contradictions or, you know,
00:12:32apparent odds. And so there, but so, so what happens is we just stay in this paralysis of indecision
00:12:40because we feel like all paths are settling. And I think there's this movement or narrative around
00:12:45like never settle and things like that, but people mistake, never settle for never make trades.
00:12:51And so we have this obsession with optionality or optionality maxing, but options are only valuable
00:12:56when taken. And so when we never take the option, which means we don't cash in the option that we
00:13:03have available, um, like some options need to be taken and when they are taken, other options disappear
00:13:09because just having maximum potential does not mean maximum reality.
00:13:13Because you need to commit, you have to commit, which is the elimination of alternatives.
00:13:17And so like there, I mean, show me anything that was worth doing that did not require commitment,
00:13:22which is an elimination of alternatives, a trade-off. Um, and so in the beginning of our lives,
00:13:27when we're younger, we are, we are praised for maximizing our potential, right? How can we have
00:13:33as many colleges accept us? How can we have all the best grades? How can we have all the paths in front of
00:13:39us? But I think many people know people who are really successful earlier on,
00:13:42by for maximizing potential, but not realizing potential. And I think the gap between the
00:13:48maximization of potential and the realization of potential is the commitments that we're willing
00:13:52to make, which is the trades, the elimination of the alternatives, when we have to start cashing
00:13:55those options in and realizing that some of them are never going to come to fruition because we can
00:14:00only have one life. And some of those trades are permanent. You can only not have a kid until you
00:14:05have a kid. And then at that point you have a kid, right? There's no going back, right?
00:14:08Um, you know, some decisions in life don't have refunds. Um,
00:14:13and, and I, I think, I think that is what I would say maybe in the earlier part of my,
00:14:19my career, especially single guys, because I think a lot of that's like really prevalent
00:14:22in social media right now. Um, it's just options maxing. Um, but we just, even,
00:14:28even in the attempt to options max, you still close off other options, which is that like,
00:14:33you will not have the benefits of let's say a committed marriage early on because you've
00:14:39kept your options. Right. And like, you will not have the benefits of like a very large business.
00:14:43If you try to pursue five or don't pursue any, because you want to not make commitments.
00:14:49And so I think that commitment is actually a really strong signal for maturation and growing up.
00:14:54Lots of mistakes were made by standing still. Like people think
00:14:58that inaction isn't a decision, but it is totally. I mean, your conditions change through an action
00:15:04still like doors close. Uh, there are moments where you have opportunities where you have to act or
00:15:09they will go away. Yeah. Um, and so I think it's like being able to seize those opportunities. And
00:15:13that means that you have to actively say no to something that you might want or might want a lot.
00:15:19And I think those are the traits that we, I think, I think being willing to make those trade-offs clearly
00:15:23and trade them for the things that you want more, um, is how people can progress through life and
00:15:29get more of what they want. The pain of having to accept trade-offs holds a lot of people back.
00:15:34A hundred percent. And then they end up getting nothing. And I think that I honestly think that
00:15:38is like at the crux of why so many people are not realizing any potential at all. Um,
00:15:43is because they are unwilling to make any trade and then make the biggest trade of all.
00:15:46Hmm. How do you think about overcoming that decision paralysis? Lots of good options in front of you,
00:15:54spent a lot of time trying to maximize surface area of, of available options. And it's insane to say,
00:16:02but it's functionally true for humans that more options make you more miserable, not happier.
00:16:07Super true. And also we probably know someone, I mean, I can think of people off the top of my head that
00:16:12didn't have many options, but the option that they had was very clear. Like this guy is a super nerd
00:16:18and just loves coding. And it was very clear, straight on. And so there was a lot of things
00:16:24that weren't available to him physically, probably wasn't going to be the sports star, maybe even in
00:16:28super great shape, but like, it was almost like that path was predetermined. But then when you fast
00:16:33forward, it's not like they're less successful. It's that because they just already knew what they were
00:16:37going to do, they got to start pulling the future forward down the one path and start walking.
00:16:41And so there's again, this, this like fetishes fetishization of having options and seeing that
00:16:48as a proxy for status. When the reality is that you, they're all blank checks. You haven't cashed
00:16:52any of them in. Yeah. And so, um, I think the original question ladders to like
00:16:59people get stuck because they don't know what they want. And I define what you want by what you're
00:17:03willing to sacrifice to get something. Take responsibility for your current
00:17:07position. What's that mean? Um, it's identifying yourself as source.
00:17:13And to be clear, it doesn't mean that like your position in reality is 100% because of you,
00:17:19but from a, so this is a validity, this is a, uh, invalid, but useful, more useful way of going
00:17:25through life, which is that it absolutely might not be your fault, but it is still your problem.
00:17:29Since you are the only one who you can influence directly, then you are the one who is source.
00:17:34And because like, you could still be correct in saying that, like, because I insert
00:17:39grievance, insert, you know, trauma, insert genetic predisposition, insert zip code I was born in,
00:17:44um, or language or poverty level or whatever it is. Um, all of those things could be true.
00:17:50And yet you still have to take action as the only source that can change it.
00:17:55No one's coming to save you. Yeah. Which goes back to the first one.
00:17:58The interesting thing about no one is coming to save you also means no one is coming to stop you.
00:18:05I think some people might.
00:18:09I think actually as soon as you start, I think the, the lobster or crab analogy in the bucket is,
00:18:13is so true. I actually think that the, the hardest, I mean, I think, I mean, for me again,
00:18:19like the hardest part of entrepreneurship was the first set of friends that you have to relinquish.
00:18:23Because once you do it the first time, you realize that you will still survive.
00:18:25You'll still make it through. You'll find new friends. But like in the first time it's,
00:18:28it's sacrificing everything you've known and loved for something that you've never experienced
00:18:33and hope will happen and have no idea if it actually will. So the cost is known, the payoff isn't.
00:18:39And that is why I think it is the riskiest and why so many people struggle to make the job.
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00:19:37modern wisdom, a checkout. The world will reward you in proportion to your courage,
00:19:43not your intellect. The most dangerous person in the world is the one who continues to show up every
00:19:47day, even when the rewards are not guaranteed. Your potential is determined by the amount of
00:19:52uncertainty you're able to tolerate and how long you can tolerate it for. You can beat 99% of people
00:19:58if you can master the shame of rejection, the boredom of repetition, and the pain of feedback.
00:20:02I was asked, if you could transfer only one trait to your son, what would it be?
00:20:13And I really thought a lot about it and I was like, all the traits, what would I transfer?
00:20:17And I think it's courage. Because if you don't have courage, nothing else matters. Like you can't
00:20:25take any action, you can't do anything worth doing, you can't stand for anything because you have no
00:20:32courage. Um, and so I think that's why it's, it's so much more preferable to be a failure than a coward.
00:20:41And I think that I would hope that I could transfer just that lesson and try and reinforce as many
00:20:45times as I can in his upbringing that like, you have to, you have to take jumps and you have to lose and
00:20:54you have to be willing to lose and then realize that losing doesn't actually make you a loser because
00:21:00losing is the, is the, is the, is the first signal on the path to winning, but like not playing is the
00:21:06actual signal for, for a forever loss.
00:21:09Really good question. I needed to find it better. Um,
00:21:24being willing to take action where there's a large short term cost
00:21:37with an uncertain delayed benefit.
00:21:44So if you want to start a business and you think that you're going to get made fun of or
00:21:51snide remarks or like, oh yeah, you're doing your podcast thing again. Oh yeah. Don't, don't, don't,
00:21:56don't miss out. Right. You know, don't miss Friday. It's your big podcast. Um, you know,
00:22:00you're going to suffer that short term, that's a known cost. And then the payoff is delayed and
00:22:07uncertain. Like not only will it come later, if it were guaranteed, if you knew you were going to make
00:22:11a million dollars doing a podcast, then you'd be like, whatever, fuck it. Like it, it takes significantly
00:22:17less courage, but I think it's the fact that it is unknown and delayed. So you basically have to be
00:22:22willing to get kicked in the nuts and multiple times and sometimes for extended durations before the hope
00:22:29that you will get something. But I think the only way to, to, to get through that kind of kicked in
00:22:35the nuts period for however long it's going to be, um, is realizing that you have two paths, one that is
00:22:43guaranteed, which is that the press you're currently on will not get you where you want to go. And the other
00:22:48path, it is not guaranteed to get you where we want to go, but it's the only one where you have a shot
00:22:53where you do. And that's where your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty
00:22:59you're able to tolerate and how long you can tolerate it for. And I think that also goes to
00:23:02the bigger the games we play, right? Like the longer the game you play, the bigger the game you play.
00:23:06And so if you want to create rockets that go to the moon, you have to be able to deal with uncertainty
00:23:11for just an absolutely absurd amount of time compared to most humans on any endeavor.
00:23:16There's a line at the end, pain of feedback. I'm interested in that.
00:23:20Um, I mean, rejection hurts, uh, failing hurts. And I think
00:23:31when you, when you, when you give it your all, and then the market side of the universe,
00:23:35whatever determines that you are still not enough, that is very painful. Um, I think that in time
00:23:43you learn that feedback is fuel rather than failure. And once that new association gets paired,
00:23:52I mean, you've had plenty of incredibly successful people on this podcast. And I would say many of
00:23:55them have the same kind of, I would call it lesson is like, it's not, it's not failure, it's feedback,
00:24:00or it's not failure. Um, but it just means that like fundamentally they have a different pairing
00:24:05for losing. And so everyone has to go through this because like, like losing, losing is good and feeling
00:24:13bad about losing is good because it forces you to change. And that change means that over time,
00:24:19as long as you're changing in the correct direction, you get better.
00:24:21Or else you would continue to do the strategy that caused you to lose last time. And you would just
00:24:26run it back again. And this is why I have this, like, I actually, I thought on the way over here,
00:24:31I was thinking about this and, um, like, I think one of the big losses or failures of society right
00:24:39now is that we are trying to castrate the teeth from the pain of loss. We're trying to not allow kids,
00:24:47people, the feeling to feel bad. It's like, we have determined that feeling bad is bad,
00:24:54but feeling bad is not bad. Feeling bad is a signal so that we need to change because if no one
00:25:00feels bad ever, then it means that everyone is doing what they want to do all the time. And that is
00:25:05not how functioning society works. Sometimes people do stupid and need to know and feel bad for it.
00:25:10Eventually reality is going to come into contact with your decisions.
00:25:13Yes.
00:25:14And the more that that's put off, the less likely you are to come up with
00:25:17a way to avoid that reality coming into reality.
00:25:19And so, so the way that, you know, right now what's going in, this is probably the more
00:25:24frightening part about like some of the media that's out there is like trying to just redefine
00:25:28reality and create a fantasy where you losing and you feeling bad isn't true, but it doesn't change
00:25:36reality. It just changes someone's perception of it for the short term. And then they have to pay
00:25:40reality back with interest in time. And like the check always comes due. It's just like the interest is
00:25:45much bigger. And so, um, in light of, you know, my son, my child that I have in the future, like
00:25:53I want him to experience the pain of loss so that he can learn because like, how else can you learn?
00:26:01You have to, otherwise it's just, it's everything's quote, you know, going by feeling. And then also
00:26:05somehow thinking that feeling bad is bad. And also that feeling good is good. And there's tons of
00:26:12things that you can probably do that feel good, that are not good. And there's tons of things that
00:26:15you can do that feel bad, that are not bad.
00:26:16Well, what a gift to give somebody to say you can feel bad and not feel bad about it.
00:26:24Yeah. It's in like, and that's okay. Like you lost what we learn what we do next time. Great. Do it again.
00:26:32That feels like resilience. Yeah. As opposed to any time that you feel this emotion, which is negative,
00:26:38that is worthy of rushing in and panic and control and distance that that's almost like a formula for
00:26:46fragility. So laddered onto this, I know we haven't talked about, so this is, this is fun. Um,
00:26:53is the idea that we need like that because you, because you feel bad, it means that the path that
00:26:59you're on, like you need to change something. And so it's equal opposite, which is like, okay,
00:27:04if we know that we're on the path of getting kicked in the nuts right now, and I know I'm on my
00:27:0717th or a hundredth podcast and I'm still not like a millionaire yet.
00:27:14I, I have not achieved what I want yet. It does not mean that I have to change course.
00:27:20But earlier on, you said that bad feelings, feeling bad are important to update the way
00:27:27that you're approaching this situation. So how do you distinguish between the two?
00:27:30No. And that's, and that's, uh, and I'd say what you, what you hit on is, is the, is the crux of it,
00:27:34which is judgment, which is like, and this is one of the hardest ones is like, how do you help someone
00:27:38recognize patterns of when you need to basically it's the eternal question of when do I push and
00:27:45when do I pivot? Right. When do I push through the hardship versus when do I adjust?
00:27:48Am I giving up on this set in the gym because I'm being a pussy or am I giving up because I'm
00:27:52about to injure myself? Yeah. And so I pivot. I like that.
00:27:55Yeah. And I've, and I've worked with this a lot because it's a pretty classic
00:27:57entrepreneurship issue of like, do I have product market fit or like, do I need to keep pushing?
00:28:01You're like, you know, where am I just trying to push up a hill? Um, is that if one of the fundamental
00:28:06assumptions that you began your quest with has been proven untrue based on the feedback,
00:28:12then that is where pivoting makes sense. So if you said like, I think that I'm going to create,
00:28:16um, a doggy skateboard, because I think that, um, a lot of dog owners will want to buy skateboards
00:28:24for their dog. Um, we'd be like, and I believe that the percentage, like, and I wouldn't make a,
00:28:28you know, a billion dollars doing this. Um, that would mean that there's the size of the market.
00:28:32This percentage needs to be the take rate in order for me to get that, that market share.
00:28:35It's like, okay, if, if I talked to a hundred dog owners and none of them want to buy my,
00:28:40my doggy skateboard, I would not say that is a push situation. I would say that is a pivot situation
00:28:45because our fundamental assumption that we started this quest with is false. And so we need to take
00:28:50that feedback and then pivot. If as we're going through, they're saying, uh, I maybe, but like,
00:28:58I don't know what you have in your hands. What the hell is that? So it's like, the assumption's not
00:29:01proven, but it's more of an execution issue. And so it's like, okay, I just need to get better.
00:29:05I need to push through, but I'm saying it is definitely one of the harder, um, lines to,
00:29:10to know, like where, when should I push? When should I pivot? Uh, what lesson do I learn from losing?
00:29:17Because losing, losing teaches you shit and we just need to make sure that we learn the right thing.
00:29:25Like teaching will occur. Yes. Whether you take it away or not is up to you.
00:29:30It's the, it's the, um, I, I hired my first employee and he was a fuck ass. Therefore all employees suck.
00:29:36Right. So like losing will teach you something. It's just want to make sure that we learn the right
00:29:40lesson. I feel like this is a justification for making early decisions as right as possible to try
00:29:47and avoid that PTSD of it's far easier to learn something than it is to unlearn something. Probably
00:29:54a hundred times easier to learn something than it is to unlearn something. If you've drilled a particular
00:29:59habit, particular bad habit, if you have come up with a, a mode of interacting with your employees
00:30:04or the world, because all of your employees, the first three employees, you get all of them
00:30:07fucked you over. And then finally you get to the fourth. You have to unlearn all of the compensatory
00:30:12mechanisms that you built on the first three. Now that you've got someone who's worthy of that
00:30:16and you're restricting their progress, you're slowing everything down. You're being hypervigilant.
00:30:19It doesn't feel like a good place to work. Try and make your early decisions, right?
00:30:23Yeah. Changing a behavior with a long history of reinforcement is harder than changing one
00:30:29with no history of such a hardcore behaviorist. Yeah. Well, I mean, it's the only thing that's
00:30:33made sense to me in the world. Like it's, I mean, it's, it's skin upheld.
00:30:38I mean, it's just, I don't even, it's just my reality. So I'll say it differently. Like
00:30:47many people do not get what they want. They look up at their lives and they're like,
00:30:51this is not what I want. And so if you don't have what you want, it means that the model that you view
00:30:56the world through is incorrect, or you have the correct model and the incorrect variables or
00:31:00insufficient variables. It's basically all it is. And so for me, the more I have looked purely at
00:31:08inputs and outputs, the more I've gotten my predictions correct. And so I have been super
00:31:14reinforced for using this style of, of, of thinking. And so I do it more. And so it's just,
00:31:20and like, I, I, I read some of my old stuff and I'm like, oh man, like I could have said this in
00:31:24half as much words if I, now I, cause it's understanding why like at the most basic level,
00:31:30it's just understanding why. Um, I'll give an example. And I think this is why the vast majority
00:31:34of the world like walks around confused, which is, I don't have what I want. That didn't go the way
00:31:39I expected. She took that worse than I thought. So you're, you're constantly surprised by reality.
00:31:44And so in, in a simple sentence, like Johnny stole because he's dishonest, right? Most people would
00:31:50nod their heads and be like, yeah, Johnny stole because he's dishonest. But we say, look,
00:31:53what does dishonest mean? Dishonest means it's a label, right? That we ascribe to somebody who does
00:31:59a series of different behaviors, one of which is stealing. And so if we were to restate that
00:32:04sentence with the broken down definition, it would then be Johnny stole because he's the type of person
00:32:08who steals, which is circular and makes no sense. Because the real reason that Johnny stole is because
00:32:14he's been reinforced for stealing in the past, or he saw someone who got reinforced for stealing
00:32:19and then modeled their behavior. That is why Johnny stole. And so because of that basic
00:32:23misunderstanding, most people have these words that they use to explain the reality that they
00:32:27don't actually understand. And as a result, reality fools them more often than it should.
00:32:31He was rewarded for it or he was punished for doing the opposite of it.
00:32:33Exactly. And so, um, that basic that like, and that, what I just explained is,
00:32:39is the difference between description and explanation, um, which is relatively heady and I think
00:32:45difficult sometimes to grasp, but is at the most basic level, like my worldview.
00:32:50This is what happened. This is why it happened.
00:32:52Why? Yeah. And so from that one kind of basic understanding, everything else can kind of pretty
00:32:58much get laddered up. And so, um, said differently, if, if I wanted to tell a child, get good at
00:33:10basketball, right? Um, I would not tell him get better at basketball because a five-year-old would
00:33:18be like, I don't know how to do that. What does that mean? So I'd be like, okay, well, let's break
00:33:22it down. We've got dribbling, passing, shooting. Okay. Do that a little bit closer, but they still
00:33:27probably don't know how to, if I say go get better at dribbling, passing and shooting, still can't do
00:33:31anything with that until eventually be like, okay, passing. So I want you to take a step with your left
00:33:35foot towards the person. And I want you to extend your elbows and finish with your thumbs down. Um,
00:33:41and if the ball goes towards them in the direction that they're running and they catch it, you've
00:33:45passed successfully. And then I would repeat that chain of events until eventually they would
00:33:48understand that that chain of behaviors equals passing. And if they do it a lot and they hit
00:33:52the target many times, they would be good at passing. And we'd repeat that all the way down
00:33:55until they're good at passing dribbling, shooting, et cetera. And then eventually would describe them
00:33:58as a good basketball player. But that basic unbundling and rebundling of terms is why I think
00:34:04the vast majority of people are wildly, um, confused by what's going on around them is that someone says,
00:34:11why don't you love me? And he's like, what are you talking about? He's like, I pay the bills.
00:34:15I take out the trash. Like, you know, like, what do you want from me? And she says, uh,
00:34:21like, you don't tell me I'm pretty. You don't hug me. Uh, like, you don't listen to me when I, when I,
00:34:26you don't never, never ask me how my day's going. And it's because for her, she defines love in these
00:34:32behaviors and he defines love in these behaviors. And so then they fight forever rather than just
00:34:36saying like, what does that mean? What does that mean? Um, we had, uh, we had two employees
00:34:41that are arguing about something, uh, at acquisition. And one was like, Hey, can you, um,
00:34:45I would be fine if you were just like kind and polite to me. And, um, I was like, okay,
00:34:50what does that mean? And, uh, there was obviously a moment of like hesitation there. Cause it's like,
00:34:56okay, so you want the other person to guess what you think in your mind means good behavior,
00:35:00but you've never articulated it. And so you want them to guess and somehow get it right.
00:35:03And so finally it just was like, can you ask more questions rather than making more statements?
00:35:07And the other person was like, yeah, sure. And it's like, great. But that basic thing now,
00:35:11and they're fine now and everything's great. And so, but like, this is why I, I view the world and
00:35:16behavior because I have wanted things, but I didn't know how to get them, which is happens in reality.
00:35:24And so as long as I live in reality, I prefer to define things through reality. And then reality
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00:36:50I want you to do this. I want you to do this, but I didn't tell you. It's that Neil Strauss line,
00:36:56unspoken expectations are premeditated resentments.
00:36:58Yeah. Right.
00:37:01Why didn't you do this thing that I didn't tell you to do?
00:37:03Yeah. Probably not deliberately because I think a lot of people do it not on purpose.
00:37:07Of course, but it's unconscious premeditated resentment. The investment that you are making
00:37:13will be a resentment in future that you aren't aware is about to come about.
00:37:16Yeah.
00:37:17Another thing on the people's map of reality is inaccurate. I think one of the most obvious
00:37:25realizations that you can have when you hear somebody who complains a lot is that their
00:37:30framework of reality is incorrect.
00:37:33Oh, by a mile.
00:37:34A complaint is you saying, why is reality not delivering that to me, which I anticipated?
00:37:39Yeah.
00:37:40And reality doesn't care. Reality is just going to continue to deliver to you that which it is giving.
00:37:46Why is there all of this traffic on the way to work? There shouldn't be all of this traffic.
00:37:49I didn't anticipate all of this traffic. I assumed there wouldn't be traffic. Reality disagreed with
00:37:55me. Reality is not wrong.
00:37:57It's undefeated.
00:37:58Reality is undefeated, yeah. It's a million and O.
00:38:02A million TKOs.
00:38:06So, this is really, I mean,
00:38:09I can talk about this as long as you want. You know this.
00:38:11Of course.
00:38:13So, what this becomes really interesting is how often this misconception of reality
00:38:21causes people to get fooled and keep the wrong people in their lives and keep sometimes the right
00:38:28people out of their lives. And so, I call this malicious benefit or well-intentioned harm.
00:38:37And so, on one hand,
00:38:42if there are a number of people who make, let's say, negative videos about you,
00:38:47they intend to harm you. But when you look at your media and the way that you are compensated through
00:38:55the impressions that you earn and the amount of relevance that you have, you make more money.
00:39:01And so, though they intended to hurt you, they have taken their time and effort, which you normally
00:39:07have to pay people for, and then for free promote you. What a gift. It just means that they are
00:39:14incompetent at doing harm, which is wonderful. You want all your enemies to be incompetent in their harm
00:39:19So, that's what I'm doing. On the other hand, you have somebody who loves, I'll use this in quotes,
00:39:24right? Loves you, means you well, but is also incompetent. And as a result, whenever they enter
00:39:31your life, your life gets worse. They cause negative consequences to occur. And so, a lot of people
00:39:38care a huge amount about intention. And this was one of the larger shifts that I think happened in my,
00:39:43I'll call it career, but just my life, was completely stripping people of their intentions and only
00:39:51looking at their outputs. And that made navigating relationships significantly easier for me, because
00:39:58it allowed me to remove the noise from the signal of the person. And so, there are some people like,
00:40:07I mean, honestly, the reason that one of the, this is like, probably the very beginning of this kind of
00:40:12thought change was with Layla. Like I had a, an advisor, if you want to call it that at the time.
00:40:18And I was like, I'm not sure if I want to marry this girl. I don't, you know, help me, you know,
00:40:22make this decision. And he said, well, just look at your stats. He's like, are you in better shape?
00:40:26And I was like, well, yeah, you know, she eats healthy and she goes to the gym. So, you know,
00:40:29I go with her and he's like, okay. Um, so you're, you, you're exercising more, you're eating better.
00:40:34Okay. Are you drinking as much? I was like, no, she just really doesn't drink. And I like drinking.
00:40:38I'm probably a bad influencer. He's like, okay. So she decreases
00:40:41this kind of negative thing. Okay. Got it. And he's like, what about, what about business?
00:40:44So I was just like, oh, I'm, I'm making more than I've ever made. And then she's helping me do that.
00:40:48And he was like, okay. And so he just went down the list of all these different kind of components
00:40:52of my life that I could measure. And he's like, it seems like your life is significantly better
00:40:55with this person. Um, and when I contrast that to some of the relationships I had in the past,
00:41:01it was almost the opposite. Like I would get into the relationship and all of a sudden I like,
00:41:04I wouldn't work out as much and I wouldn't eat as healthy and I would go out more and, uh,
00:41:07my business would suffer. Um, and so like all the things that I cared about would go down.
00:41:12And so even though I don't think that person had any malicious intent,
00:41:14I think they had good intent, but they had well-intentioned harm.
00:41:18And so that, that, that lens has helped me make so many decisions in, in a way that removes a lot of
00:41:25the emotional weight behind them, which is like, oh, I, I absolutely believe that you are well-intentioned
00:41:29person. I was like, I just think you're very incompetent at doing at doing good for me. Like,
00:41:33you do not have the skill to help me. I'm not prepared to be the collateral
00:41:37damage of your good intentioned errors. Yes.
00:41:40Um, as you spin around trying to give me a hug, but by accident, punch me in the face.
00:41:45Yes. Like it's, you're driving down the street and because you didn't mean to, but weren't paying
00:41:51attention, you ran somebody over functionally. The difference between that person being dead
00:41:55because you didn't mean to, because you were texting on your phone or because you're a bad driver
00:42:00and you swerving off the street to hit them. The outcome is the same.
00:42:04And this is something that our society actively disagrees with because if we look at how our
00:42:10laws are written, we try to tease out intention and we change punishment and consequences based on
00:42:15intention. Is that not important to a degree? It can be, but I'm just more saying, um, I'm not
00:42:21saying should or shouldn't, but I'm saying in terms of how you navigate getting what you want out of life.
00:42:27If you were the one who got hit, you're dead either way. And so when any N equals one,
00:42:33I would look at the signal what happens rather than the intention a hundred times out of a hundred.
00:42:38Is there any space? It sounds like, uh, for as long as this person in my life benefits me,
00:42:48it's good to keep them in, in the moment that they stopped benefiting me. Then I get rid of them to
00:42:53some people that would come across as a very transactional view of relationships.
00:42:56I think it assumes a binary of benefit, not benefit. And most people have many things that they do.
00:43:03Like, let's say somebody, let's say you're like, I'm married to somebody. What happens when that
00:43:05person stops serving me? Well, it's very unlikely that tomorrow someone stops, goes from, I help you
00:43:11in these hundred ways. Do I either hurt you or help you in zero? It's more common or more likely that you
00:43:17had a hundred ways. And now 10 years later, they help you 70 ways. And maybe 10 years later,
00:43:21they help you 40 ways. But if you're at least cognizant of the hundred ways that that person
00:43:26helps you, then it allows you to articulate, hey, when you do these things, it helps me a lot. It
00:43:30would really mean a lot to me. - Reinforcement again.
00:43:32- Yeah. I mean, and, and, and, and I appreciate the, the, yes. Um, um, but like in different terms,
00:43:40I was going to, I was going to put my, my Chris hat on. It's just, it's just good communication.
00:43:44Right? Like how, how do I know what you want until you tell me?
00:43:46- And I think that people say what you just said, which is, um,
00:43:50people would see this as transactional. And then I would say, and
00:43:57yes. And why is this wrong? Why have you decided that having an exchange is incorrect? It's how
00:44:03society works. All of capitalism, which is the best societies have been built on exchange,
00:44:07voluntary exchange. - I think some people would feel icky about applying that exchange,
00:44:12capitalism dynamic inside of friendships and intimate relationships.
00:44:16- I think that exchange happens either way. They just don't want to say it.
00:44:19If, if you have a friend and you are like, oh, we're, we're ride or die. It means you have a long
00:44:25history of reinforcement, which means you have a long extinction curve. It just means that you've been
00:44:28reinforced many times for this friendship, which means that you were willing to deal with blips,
00:44:32but the amount of blips that you're willing to deal with is proportional to the history of
00:44:35reinforcement. If someone new comes into your life and has almost done nothing good and then does a blip.
00:44:40- You don't have as much ballast in the system.
00:44:42- Exactly. You have no reason to. So the hope, the basically extinction curve is functionally just
00:44:46how long you're willing to hope that the good thing comes back.
00:44:49- You probably should have a degree of recency bias though.
00:44:52- Oh yeah. Because if the person's behavior has changed, yeah, for sure.
00:44:55- Yeah. - It's going to be, it's always discounted.
00:44:56- Someone that was 50% a good guy and 50% an asshole, the 50% that is closest to you is more salient
00:45:03than the 50% that started 10 years ago.
00:45:06- Oh yeah. If it was front half, back half a hundred percent. And that's,
00:45:08and honestly, and this is like, I think this is super relevant for a lot of people. Like
00:45:12people do change and that's okay. And you can be friends with the person they once were
00:45:17and no longer friends with the person they are. And that's okay.
00:45:20- Mark Manson dropped this unreal line that reminded me of you.
00:45:23- Okay.
00:45:24- Do hard shit, not because it's fun, but because the win actually means something.
00:45:30You bled for it. You broke for it. You earned it.
00:45:33- Easy wins are forgettable. Hard ones change you. That's the point. And it's your line.
00:45:40Everything is hard and no one cares.
00:45:42-
00:45:47- Um, I'm sorry accomplishing your dreams wasn't fast, easy, and risk-free.
00:45:53Like they wouldn't be dreams if they were, and you wouldn't call them wins if they were easy.
00:46:00Cause they would just be you tying your shoes. And what it was once a win when you were five is no
00:46:04longer a win when you're competent. And with increased competence comes increased stakes.
00:46:08You have to be willing to bet more, put more on the line to win bigger,
00:46:12which means like if you're a billionaire playing $10 hands of poker is a complete waste of time.
00:46:16- Uh, Gabe from I prevail, the drummer from I prevail.
00:46:20You will always think you suck. That's okay. It's okay to suck compared to your standards. As you grow,
00:46:27so will your standards. That doesn't mean you actually suck.
00:46:34Yeah. They could just be the actuality of sucking versus the perception of sucking.
00:46:39Correct. It's that as, as you increase in capacity, you increase in standards and given that your
00:46:46standards will always outstrip your capacity, there will always be this felt sense lack between where
00:46:50I am and where I want to be. But yeah, that Mark Manson line, I think is really important in sort of an
00:46:57era of AI because you can speed run or shortcut getting the outcome without putting in the requisite
00:47:05inputs. Now, because everybody's obsessed with leverage and trying to get as many outputs from
00:47:10as few inputs as possible, that does make sense. But when you begin to fully detach it from it and
00:47:15you don't focus on the journey that got you there in the same way, and you're not scrutinizing the
00:47:20outputs with the same level of finitude and resolution.
00:47:24It's just lower cost. Yes. And it's not just the outputs that matter. It's not just the output. And
00:47:32this is where the sort of leverage crowd doesn't fully come into reality. It doesn't come into
00:47:38contact with the way that humans are telling themselves the story of their life. If all,
00:47:44if you could come up with some sort of super quick code that would write a hundred million dollar leads
00:47:49for you, the entire project would feel different, your process of getting that. It could be word for
00:47:57word, the exact same. Take every word that I've written and create this book based on this brief.
00:48:00Dink. I would prove that AI knew a lot about leads, but not me. And I think that, I mean,
00:48:09I think this, this, this sits at the discrepancy between saying the output of your life is
00:48:16who you become and the aggregate set of behavior that you've learned over your life,
00:48:20or if the output of your life is the stuff that you, that exists as a result of you being here.
00:48:27And that is more of a philosophical question than I think it is a like right or wrong. I think you can
00:48:31make arguments for either side of like the person, the purpose of your life is what changed as a result
00:48:36of you being here, what you did or who you became. Yeah. Um, or the purpose of your life is all of
00:48:41the outside only existed to change the inside. And I think there's, there's arguments for both. I have,
00:48:46I'm, I would say I have strong affinity towards both definite definitions, because, um,
00:48:51I would say that when I go through harder times, I lean more towards like, this is happening for me.
00:48:56And when I'm going through easier times, it's like, I am, I am happening to it.
00:49:00Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I'm happening to reality.
00:49:04But the binary of that, seeing it as only one or the other will create a kind of fragility.
00:49:10If all that you're focused on is outcomes, then you're never going to think about becoming the
00:49:14person who can generate those outcomes because you're going to find shortcuts that don't necessarily work.
00:49:19And if you're only ever focused on inputs, you're never going to actually work out if all
00:49:23of this suffering amounted to anything. Show me something. George, uh, in the house last night
00:49:27was reading one of these books and he wasn't happy with the way that the author had put together the
00:49:33sentence. And he says, show me something I can drop on my foot. That was his line. Like I can't drop
00:49:39anything on my fucking foot with this. Show me something I can drop on my foot. It was wishy-washy,
00:49:44vague language. Do you remember the park bench scene in Good Will Hunting?
00:49:49No. Okay.
00:49:50I haven't seen it long enough ago. Yeah.
00:49:52Sound of park bench, Robin Williams talking to Matt Damon about love. And he has this line. He says,
00:49:57"Love is an active commitment, Will. It's a choice to value someone else's wellbeing as much as your own."
00:50:03If you watch the film, you'll know that he doesn't say that. He says this instead,
00:50:08you wouldn't know about sleeping, sitting up in the hospital room for two months because the doctors
00:50:13could see in your eyes that the term visiting hours do not apply to you. It's the same thing,
00:50:19same idea, right? Idea, picture, words. And that is the order. Not idea, words, pictures.
00:50:27Show me something I can drop on my fucking foot. That I can drop on my foot.
00:50:30It's clear language. Both of them, both of the examples.
00:50:48I think it's interesting because with the drop on your foot, it's like, I think the picture is obviously
00:50:53like more motive and because of that can be more motivating, more persuasive, etc. Where I think
00:51:03the drop on my foot part, where I have struggled as a human being is taking that idea and saying,
00:51:11"I want to do that. I want that type of love." And then saying, "Well, the person I love is not in
00:51:18the hospital and I don't have the opportunity right now to sleep standing up and have a doctor know that
00:51:24visiting hours don't apply to me. What do I do?" And so then it does go back to what I'm willing to
00:51:32give up in order to maintain something. It's interesting when there isn't that
00:51:36level of pressure. When you brush up against the grain of life, when you're swimming into the stream,
00:51:43it's very easy to see effort because the whole world is bearing down and you said there's an enemy to
00:51:47go up against. I think when things are easy, like, okay, well, what does love look like when things
00:51:53are easy? We're talking relational love? Yeah.
00:52:02I think it's really, well, I'll just say more how I measure it. But I think it's just what you're
00:52:07willing to give up in order to maintain something. And so if I have a relationship and I have somebody
00:52:11that I love a lot, then I'm willing to give up everything, including my life, in order to maintain
00:52:14that relationship. Or for that person or for that idea, for freedom, for the country. If you love
00:52:22something a lot, you're willing to give up everything for it. And so when that person asks you to do
00:52:27something or doesn't ask you to do something and you think that they would still like it, then you are
00:52:33willing to inconvenience yourself to a large degree in order to do that. And I think that, like, the reason
00:52:39this stuff is so valuable for me is that, like, it allows me to both give the things that I think the
00:52:47other person wants or that they've told me they want, but also how to differentiate who is using words
00:52:52in order to try and manipulate me. And so I'm like, dude, you know, I love you, you know, if it was
00:52:58bromance, obviously. But then you could say, what have you given up in order to maintain this? In what
00:53:05way have you inconvenienced yourself in order to maintain this relationship? Because all of the
00:53:11actions you've taken, you've taken out of convenience. And this relationship has been only beneficial for
00:53:17you, which is fine. There's nothing wrong with that. But there will come a time where our needs are at
00:53:24odds. And in that situation, I would like to know how reinforcing was all the other stuff so that it is
00:53:30worth. Basically, it's saying, like, how much good was the good for you so that you're willing to deal
00:53:35with some bad? Can that lead to a situation where you almost purposefully try to seek out difficulty
00:53:45in an attempt to stress test relationships? Because not all relationships should have the glorious
00:53:51friendship would be seamless between you and another guy. And there's never anything you have
00:53:56to navigate. And it's all just beneficial and positive in both directions.
00:53:59I have a friend like that. I've been friends since sixth grade. And I don't think we've ever had
00:54:04conflict, which is great and rare. And that's why we're so friends. But no, I think that it's,
00:54:12it's okay for conflict to occur. It's okay for seasons of friendship to end. But you can measure
00:54:17how, how, how good of friends you are by how, and I don't know how much inconvenience you might be
00:54:22willing to deal with, with me, but we just, it just so happens that we really haven't had any need
00:54:28for conflict or competition. He's a, an FBI agent. And so his measures of success, like he has zero,
00:54:34there's no jealousy. There's no envy. There's no anything. It's just like, how many bad guys you
00:54:38catch today? And he's like, bro, you got to hear this one. And so we can just, and he's like, you know,
00:54:42then he'll just ask ridiculous questions about money stuff. Cause he just thinks it's funny.
00:54:45Yeah. So, and then, and that has worked out well, but most people have no idea where their
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00:55:55You're behind because you're in a rush and you're in a rush because you feel behind and you feel behind
00:56:01because you're in a different season than the people you're comparing yourself to. You're not behind,
00:56:07you're just early.
00:56:07Yeah, it's measuring the output difference without comparing the input difference. I think it's
00:56:17basically it. It's like, why isn't my podcast like Rogan's? And it's like, okay, well, he's got 10 more
00:56:23years. You would know the answer to that, right? 10 more years and however many more podcasts more.
00:56:30And so it's okay. Well, if I were to match that and have done it back in time, would I have the same?
00:56:35Would I be bigger?
00:56:36With the same scale?
00:56:36Yeah, all of that. And so it's, it's, it's, it's comparing outputs without comparing inputs.
00:56:41And I really just think it comes down to that at the most basic level. Now, most of the time,
00:56:44um, you are early because most people who make that, I would call it, uh, error in judgment are
00:56:50earlier in their careers. And I also don't think there's anything necessarily wrong. Like,
00:56:54a lot of people are like comparisons, the thief of joy. Um, I don't agree with that. I think
00:56:58comparison is how you measure things like this, this, this is the discrepancy labeling the
00:57:04discrepancy as bad as the thief of joy. Yeah. Comparison in general is how you can
00:57:08know what the discrepancy looks like between what you want and what you have so that you can fix it.
00:57:15So we should compare. Absolutely. You should compare yourself to Rogan. I'm just using you,
00:57:19but like, you know, I, I should compare myself to Elon, but of course I should. Um,
00:57:22um, so I could look at the massive discrepancy between, between me and Elon. Um, and that just
00:57:28gives me clarity on what things I need to do to try and decrease that. How do you think about
00:57:35getting rid of the label of bad? I think that the first, the first action you take when you have
00:57:45not been reinforced for an action you do through modeling. So, and this is why we do these types of
00:57:51podcasts, I assume. I mean, is that if you haven't done the hard thing or the hard thing that you
00:57:57want to do, or taking the better, taking the risk, we look for other people who have been the penguins
00:58:02who jumped off the edge first. And was there an alligator? Well, no alligators for penguins,
00:58:06but polar bear at the bottom, uh, to, to eat them, or did they swim and get to the next iceberg
00:58:12and then they found whatever. Um, so we look at other people. And so modeling is a very real way.
00:58:18It's how you learn everything when you're a child is you look at what other people do. Good things
00:58:21happen to them. Okay. I'm going to do that. And so in the short term, we model the long-term play
00:58:27is that once you take that first step, ideally you don't get eaten by a polar bear. And instead,
00:58:31you also get a fish and then you go up and then you get reinforced for that. And then basically every
00:58:34moment after that is your own experience becomes the loop. But the first jump comes from looking at
00:58:40whatever everyone else does and then takes the jump. Now, where that's so difficult to do is that
00:58:45you're looking at what everyone else is doing, or at least the people that you want to emulate,
00:58:47which is, you know, really important. Like, don't listen to people closest to you, listen to people
00:58:51closest to your goals. Um, which is not necessarily saying people often not, um, I want to listen to
00:58:56them on a look on a model of their behavior. Um, but then also still ignoring all of other people.
00:59:02So it's like, I'm listening to these people. I'm ignoring these people, but behavior is tough because
00:59:06you're still valuing other people a lot. Um, and so I think this is why so many, I would say,
00:59:12again, I come from the entrepreneur side, but like successful entrepreneurs have a very first
00:59:16principles approach of thinking because at some point no one has gone to the moon and you just have
00:59:21to say like, does physics prevent me from doing this? And then when you reason everything from the
00:59:26ground up, um, you're able to find discrepancies between what people believe and what's true.
00:59:31And that's obviously where opportunity exists.
00:59:33Hmm. You're David Deutschpild with that. Does physics prevent me from being able to achieve
00:59:38this? If not, then I just, yeah, it is possible. Yeah. I think one of the reasons that these episodes
00:59:46resonate is that
00:59:51a lot of people who want to do things aren't around people who know how to do them.
00:59:55Um, and the harder the thing is that you're trying to achieve, the rarer it is to find people who are
01:00:01able to support you in the doing of it or, and not even just support you, but give you legitimate
01:00:07advice about how to get that. I, I a hundred percent agree. And this is something that I've,
01:00:12I've, I've struggled a lot with because the, what gives you the credibility to gain media and attention
01:00:18is being exceptional in some domain most of the time and being exceptional in a domain makes you
01:00:23unrelatable. And so it's kind of this very difficult, uh, catch 22 where credibility and
01:00:30relatability are inverse. Right. And I, but like, to your point,
01:00:35poor people are surrounded by other poor people and then assume that that is everyone because it's
01:00:41everyone they know, not everyone that exists, but it's their everyone as far as they're concerned.
01:00:44And I think that's what makes it so difficult in the beginning to, to get out of that first bubble
01:00:48is because you have to look outside and look at some people who might even appear unrelatable
01:00:53and try and grasp at the straws of their character, their origin story, where again,
01:00:57people could hear me say that I slept on the floor, that I didn't have enough money, whatever.
01:01:01But like, they only see me not then no one's interviewing the gym owner who's sleeping on
01:01:06the floor, who's going to someday become something because they don't know yet.
01:01:11That's your one regret. One of the regrets that I have, that's the same as yours,
01:01:15which is I didn't track the early journey enough.
01:01:17If anyone is listening to this, I, I, I, I'm not a big advocate of regrets in general,
01:01:23but like a behavior that I would have changed that I don't think would have changed the outcome
01:01:27is like document and you don't have to share, you don't have to share it publicly.
01:01:32Just take pictures, take voice notes, email yourself, whatever, whatever catalog you want.
01:01:37I remember one of the most important personal moments that I had was when I lost everything
01:01:42for the first time. Um, I screen shot up my bank account. So I went from having,
01:01:46you know, six successful gyms to losing all of it and having a thousand dollars to my name.
01:01:51And I remember looking at my bank account and I was like, wow, that's what the bottom
01:01:56of the barrel looks like. That is, and I hadn't, you know, I seen a number that low in a very,
01:01:59very, very long time. Even in high school, I had more than that just because I had jobs
01:02:02that I didn't have expenses. And so, um, I screenshotted it and it was this very cathartic
01:02:07moment for me. Cause I was like, never again, like, I will not let this happen. And I will have
01:02:12this be part of the story I tell. And I still have that screenshot and I show it because like, so basically
01:02:20you want to document it because you believe that you will be the hero that will overcome.
01:02:25And I think that if you can, if you can really just grasp it, like just beginning the documentation
01:02:29story, like even the fact that Kanye had some of those early videos, it's like, he believed that
01:02:33he would make it and he believed he would use it. And so I think one of the, one of the greatest
01:02:37things you can do is, and it was like, it was almost like at that point, like I, I, I believed
01:02:41when I took that screenshot that I was going to win and I did believe I was going to get it back.
01:02:44Um, and so the earlier you can have that realization that like,
01:02:48I have to document this monster. Otherwise I won't be able to tell the story and the story
01:02:52that the receiver of that story, biggest beneficiary of that story is you.
01:03:01I wish that I'd done the same. I wish that I'd done the same. You know,
01:03:06all the way back in my previous life, there was a period in my placement year, I would have been 20.
01:03:13I was living in Scotland. And one of the problems that you have with running businesses in events,
01:03:17especially long single outcome events is that it's all costs until you finally get to cash in the revenue.
01:03:25And there was a dwindling pot of money that we had because we were putting all of this time in and
01:03:31driving from Edinburgh to Glasgow, to Stirling, to Dundee, to come back, to hand out flyers,
01:03:35to manage the guest listeners, to restock the bars with the t-shirts, to sell the thing. And the event
01:03:39wasn't going to happen for another month. And that just meant it was all output. I needed to pay for
01:03:44my gym membership and I needed to eat food and I needed to drive to these different places, dwindle,
01:03:49dwindle, dwindle, dwindle. And we're not going to get to withdraw this money until it happens.
01:03:52And I had a friend who came to help me hand out flyers because my business partner needed to look
01:03:57after Freshers Week in Newcastle. And I was going to look after Freshers Week across all of Scotland.
01:04:01And my friend who came up, a bit of a rough dude, but nice guy. And he'd grown up in serious poverty
01:04:07in the northeast of the UK. And this was the first time that I was out of money, zero, zero money.
01:04:13And I could have rung my parents and I'm sure that they would have sent me some cash, but I had too
01:04:17much pride and I felt too ashamed to do it. And there was this moment where we were in this
01:04:22flat and Socky Hall Street in Edinburgh, on the far side of Edinburgh, sorry, Dean Park Road,
01:04:30Dean Park Road on the other side of Edinburgh. And I was saying, "Hey man, we're out of food in the
01:04:34house and I don't know where we're going to get it from." He said, "Oh, don't worry, man. I'll just go
01:04:37and steal some." And his background, his background from his upbringing was that when you run out of
01:04:45money, you go and steal food. And I remember thinking- Yeah, it's wild.
01:04:49I've got myself to the point in life where stealing food is a realistic decision. And do I want to video
01:05:01my friend Dean stealing sandwiches from the Tesco around the corner? Probably not.
01:05:06But the fact that that story only exists for me in my mind, and then the only way that I can
01:05:11communicate the lessons that I took from it and the way that it made me feel is by having to go through this
01:05:16retelling. Yeah. Capture shit, especially in the beginning.
01:05:22The worst case scenario is you delete it. Like that's the, I'm just saying for like,
01:05:27what's the downside of doing it? The downside of doing it is that you quote,
01:05:30don't use it and that you delete it. But the, but like the upside of having it as an artifact of
01:05:35kind of the stepping stones of who you wanted to become, I think is invaluable.
01:05:38Everything looks like luck to the unskilled. Ignore them.
01:05:45Yeah.
01:05:53You have to have skill in order to perceive and recognize skill. You have to have a base level
01:06:00of skill. Now you don't have to have the same level of skill as somebody else, but the greater skill
01:06:04you have in any domain, the more you appreciate the skill of somebody who's exceptional. So for example,
01:06:10if you don't understand the rules of basketball, it's just guys passing a ball around and you don't
01:06:16know who scores or how it works or why they're wearing different shirts. Like you have no understanding
01:06:20what's going on. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a great example of this. No idea. Is that good? Is he,
01:06:26is the guy winning? Yeah. Yeah. Who's winning? Yeah. Who's winning? Right. And then, and then
01:06:30the greater your skill, the greater your appreciation for how, how good someone is at that thing.
01:06:36Kind of resolution, more dexterity. A hundred percent. And so like, for that reason, if, if people
01:06:41who are around you, as, as you begin to walk, you know, up the ascension of beginning to get
01:06:46successful, you have your first signs of life. Like, oh my God, this might actually start working.
01:06:49Um, and you get angry. Um, only speaking from experience here, when people attribute the success,
01:06:56um, to luck rather than effort, the reality is one, there was probably some luck to, um,
01:07:03they don't have the skill to recognize your skill. It's a question of competence, not, um, malicious
01:07:11intent. And I think just, just defining it that way has made it significantly or made it significantly
01:07:15easier for me to realize. It's like, oh, they, they, they don't have the ability to recognize what I
01:07:20didn't, because if they did have the ability to fully comprehend the skill that it took, they would
01:07:26be able to do it too. Mark Manson, James Clear have got an idea that's similar to that. You only envy the
01:07:32lives of people whose sacrifices you cannot see. It doesn't make sense to continue wanting something if
01:07:37you're not willing to do what it takes to get it. If you don't want to live the lifestyle, then release
01:07:42yourself from the desire to crave the results, but not the process is to guarantee disappointment.
01:07:48You only envy the lives of people whose sacrifices you cannot see.
01:07:52Yeah. I love Jimmy Carr's, um, people want what you have, but not what you did to get it.
01:07:58It's just so good. You know, I, I mean, I think the first time I heard that, I was like,
01:08:01fuck, I wish I had written that. That was on this pod. Yeah. So good. I wish I had written that.
01:08:05Um, but yeah, and I think, I think part of it is just like, it goes back to what we started with around
01:08:11trades. It's like, they're just price tags and you can totally say that something costs too much.
01:08:18Like that is good. Like those shoes are nice. They're not worth a billion dollars or whatever
01:08:24that relative. Yeah. To me. And so I think that being able to say, like, I think it is okay to say
01:08:30something is both good and not worth it. And people have a hard time with that. So they say it must be
01:08:35bad because I'm not willing to pay the price for it, but it's like, they might be great shoes. They might
01:08:39not be worth it for you, but they're still good shoes. I think what particularly hurts is when you,
01:08:44as a person who's put a lot of effort in, see the price that you paid to acquire a skill and it appears
01:08:49to be dismissed by somebody that doesn't understand it. Or when you buy the shoes and then someone says,
01:08:54I can't believe you bought those shoes. There's no way I would ever do that. And you're like,
01:08:58I know you would never do that. That's why you don't have them. And it's okay that you don't have
01:09:03them either. I'm not saying that as a judgment on you. It's like, you don't have the shoes.
01:09:07I do. I thought they were worth it. You didn't. And guess what? We both are different
01:09:11people who live different lives. And so we have stated the obvious.
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01:10:06period by going to the link in the description below or heading to shopify.com/modernwisdom,
01:10:11all lowercase. That's shopify.com/modernwisdom. Avoiding people who make it hard for you to achieve
01:10:17your goals is the highest form of self-care. The fastest way to change your life is to get around
01:10:22people whose minimum standards are your life goals. It's like, I violently agree with both of these
01:10:27statements that I wrote. I agree with me. It'd be great if you didn't agree with you.
01:10:34I was like, whoever wrote that is a fucking idiot. This is at the heart of the, and I was,
01:10:42I wrote that right in the thick of my thinking around malicious goodwill, or sorry,
01:10:52malicious benefit and, and well-intentioned harm was just, I think I had some people around me at
01:10:58that time that had, had done me harm and had said, but I didn't mean to, you know, I had good intentions.
01:11:06And if you were telling that as the person who was texting and driving to the wife of the person whose
01:11:11husband you killed, um, I don't think, I think they are justified in not caring.
01:11:19And I think that if that person who continues to drive while texting afterwards, because they lack
01:11:25the skill to not drive without texting and continues to run over your spouse or whatever,
01:11:31um, you are justified in removing them from your life, despite their good intention. And I just think
01:11:38intention is desired result, which is like, if I, my intention was this, this is what I wanted to have
01:11:43happen. And it's literally just a lack of competence and competence is incredibly rare.
01:11:49So it makes sense to remove many people who are not competent at helping you and either
01:11:54intentions, but incompetent. Yeah. And so I think that's why being really clear about like,
01:11:57Hey, if you do this, this would help me. This decreases my risk of failure. That would be helpful
01:12:02for me, um, makes serving. And I say that like serving you as a friend or as a spouse or as a
01:12:07whatever. Um, it get, you give people the tools to help you. And I think that you should totally do
01:12:15that. If some, if you give someone the tools, um, and then they choose not to help you, then I think
01:12:20you were also justified or it would be, it would be rational for you. If you value your goals more
01:12:25than you value the relationship to sacrifice the relationship for the goal. And again, we would say
01:12:30which one you love more by the one that you're willing to give up.
01:12:36The harshest truth, every young man must eventually learn is that everyone was always rooting for you.
01:12:42Your parents want you to be a great son. Your wife wants you to be a great husband. Your boss wants
01:12:46you to be a slam dunk hire. Every first date you've ever been on, they've been rooting for you to get
01:12:51laid. Every time you started to tell a joke, people hoped it would have a hilarious punchline.
01:12:56Your proximity to anyone is a reflection of themselves, meaning the deck is never stacked
01:13:01against you. And your failures are completely your own. Denzel Rust.
01:13:06I was supposed to say, I was like, who wrote that one? Um, it's all your fault. No one's coming to save
01:13:18you. Sacrifice who you are. But people aren't against you, especially the people that are in
01:13:24proximity to you. People's proximity to you is a reflection of themselves. We hang around with people
01:13:29who we want to be like and who we want to win so that we can be in the collective glory of it.
01:13:37So this is where the world view, I think is, is super important for me at least, which is like we
01:13:41hang around people who've rewarded us for being around them. So either they've removed stuff that we
01:13:45ate or they, um, give us stuff that we like. And I think where it becomes difficult is where you have
01:13:51competing priorities, where you have multiple things that you like and you want to shift. It's where you
01:13:56begin to change. Basically your motivating factors start to change, but your environment hasn't.
01:14:01And so what was once reinforcing for you or was once rewarding no longer is as much. And so this
01:14:07is where people feel this tension between desired of like, this is the life I want to live versus the
01:14:11life that I have trade-offs. Yeah. I mean, I could, I've, I've given a tremendous amount of thought
01:14:17to trade-offs and I really think it comes down to that is that people are just unwilling to make trades.
01:14:25Why? Experientially. Why?
01:14:32Because we want everything. And when we get everything we wanted, we no longer want it
01:14:40because we have it. And I think there's this amazing comedian. I think his name's Kanaan.
01:14:45I'm going to mess it up. But he says, he has this awesome bit on this. It's like more philosophy than
01:14:50comedy. And he says, all the joys in the getting he's like, but once you get it, you just have it.
01:14:56He's like, and getting so much better than having, having is like, but the only thing that's worse
01:15:01than having is losing. And then you lose it and all you want is to have it again.
01:15:07It's like a two minute bit. And, and he's like, you know, you don't, you don't get kids. You have
01:15:11kids. And he's like, you are have, and that is why you will never be satisfied.
01:15:17But yeah, you only either live in the desire or in the have and the have is unsatisfactory and the
01:15:23desire is always compelling and out of reach.
01:15:25Layla, um, has been talking to me about this more recently where she was like, you know, the things
01:15:30that, that make you us, et cetera, like very good at business is always seeing where things could be
01:15:37better, where things could be improved. And it's this incredibly, you said earlier, these habits
01:15:44that have been reinforced, these grooves of behavior that lots of water has run through. Right.
01:15:49Um, and being able to live life with two modes, I find incredibly difficult, which is like
01:15:58all I am in one part of my life is dissatisfied and seeing the imperfections in what we do.
01:16:05And then the key to satisfaction of life is saying everything is great
01:16:10or rather I accept everything as it is, and I do not wish to change it.
01:16:13Um, and I think that conflict is, I would just say, just one that I, I not conquered, just one that
01:16:18I walk through. It's that line about a problem to be managed, not paradox to be solved.
01:16:22Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's a, it's a problem to be managed, not a dichotomy to be solved.
01:16:27Yeah. Yeah. I, I, I, and I think many of these things, like there, there is no, uh, oh, number 42,
01:16:33that's the answer. Like that is the answer to this. I think that we just, we do the best we can.
01:16:36And I think again, to the question that started with, which is why do people have such a hard time
01:16:40with trade-offs? Um, which is that the trades, we don't want to make the trade.
01:16:48Um, we want to be able to date everyone and have the benefits of a committed relationship.
01:16:54And when you begin to walk down one of those paths and see the other one start fading into
01:16:58the distance, people have an emotional reaction and then they change course and then they flip
01:17:01flop back and forth between these two things, but then they never actually get to realize any of them.
01:17:05Because loss is more painful than gain. If you lose five pounds, it is more painful than finding five
01:17:14pounds. And that means that you're always going to try and avoid loss as opposed to expedite gain,
01:17:21even if you would be happier by doing that, because the pain of the loss is always going
01:17:25to be felt more and probably short-term long-term as well. Yeah. Bill Perkins has got this line.
01:17:31He says, people will endure years of misery to avoid a couple of minutes of pain.
01:17:36Oh my God. Yes. Incredibly true.
01:17:43And again, when we think about motivation, it's just that, that, that short-term pain is always
01:17:47immediate. And so it all does always motivates you not to do it. So you always, you have many
01:17:53motivating operations that are, that are working on us at any, any given moment. And so even though
01:17:58something is short, like even it's funny, cause like many people, obviously there's some people
01:18:04who just love, love going to the gym. There are significantly more people who don't love going to
01:18:08the gym. The moment they get to the gym, then you warm up, then all of a sudden you feel good again.
01:18:10Right. But there's this, this period where you're like, I don't necessarily want to go right now.
01:18:14And so you have a motivating operation at all times that is working against your, your best wishes
01:18:20or, you know, your best desires. And our goal of motivating ourself is to tell ourselves those stories
01:18:27so that in the short-term we can overcome the short-term discomfort so that we can get the
01:18:31long-term benefit that we ultimately want, that we know we want, but we're reminded.
01:18:34And the first time you work out, it only looks like pain. And then we model, we look at somebody
01:18:39else who's already done it for a long time and say, well, I want that. And so we model that and we
01:18:43borrow that credibility, that outcome of the penguin that jumps off the cliff and say like, I want the
01:18:47fish. So I guess I'll try and do that. And then after that, the, the, the loop takes over.
01:18:52It's like hyperbolic accounting rather than hyperbolic discounting.
01:18:56Mm-hmm. And it happens both ways.
01:18:58So like, for example, if I'm, if I want to set an alarm, right? If I set an alarm at five
01:19:03o'clock for the night before for four o'clock in the morning, I'm going to wake up super early and
01:19:06I'm going to do all this shit, right? We get the benefit of the idea of our productivity when we
01:19:13set the alarm, but the cost is discounted because it's in the future. But when we have to pay the cost,
01:19:18it's immediate. And so the benefit of hitting the snooze button is immediate. And the cost of getting
01:19:24up is also immediate. And so we hit the snooze button. And so it's like that, that I feel like
01:19:29that is the microcosm of humanity of setting, setting an alarm 12 hours before or eight hours
01:19:33before you're supposed to wake up and being like super jacked about it because you only get the
01:19:37benefit and there's no price attached to it. But then in the moment that you have to make the trade,
01:19:41all of a sudden your priorities change because the motivate operations have changed.
01:19:44Yeah. And the long-term benefit of what will happen to your life if you become the sort of
01:19:48person who gets up early is also in future.
01:19:51Mm-hmm. And if you do it a few times in a row, then you tell yourself, I'm the type of person who
01:19:54does this. And then that becomes a second operated operation, which can help you overcome the short
01:19:59term. Like I'm a big believer in, um, in I am statements as motivating operations, meaning like I am
01:20:05this type of person. Um, I tend to be really hesitant to say I am statements because I believe
01:20:10they're very powerful in terms of changing behavior. Um, but it's also something that I feel like I
01:20:14listen to a lot when I'm talking to other people. Like what, I mean, this happens a lot, especially in
01:20:18dating. The thing about first date, second dates, um, you're like, well, I'm a, like in, in, in the
01:20:23first meeting, they'll give you like 20 I am. It's like, I'm a, I'm an eat freak. I'm a,
01:20:27blah, blah, blah. Like they just give you, okay, here's my lattice work of my beliefs about myself.
01:20:31Um, when in reality, all of these things are just shorthand for a number of behaviors underneath
01:20:36of it. They're saying I'm a great at basketball and I'm also great at swimming. And you're like,
01:20:38whoa, there's so much here. Um, but where it gets difficult is when, um, you need to stop dribbling
01:20:43and start passing. But we said, I'm great at basketball, but I'm supposed to do both, but I
01:20:46actually need to change only one of them. And that's where people get into these really hard times,
01:20:50which is why I think defining everything at the granular and moving it back up, but being able to go
01:20:55clouds to dirt on these definitions of behavior, allow you to change who you are much more fluidly.
01:21:01Because you, you understand that the label is actually just that it's just shorthand.
01:21:07It's not reality. It's just a bucket to make communication easier.
01:21:10If I can't be bothered to describe all of the things that this particular term means.
01:21:14And it would be unreasonable if I had to say he's a good basketball player, but instead of saying that,
01:21:17I'm like, oh my God, he's really good at taking his right foot and putting it in front. Like it would,
01:21:21it would be ridiculous, but you have to understand at that level in order to communicate really
01:21:25clearly in my opinion. This tension between excellence and satisfaction
01:21:31is an interesting one. I had this line this year, which was what you are praised for in public,
01:21:36you will pay for in private. A lot of the time, the things that make you fantastic operator when it
01:21:43comes to business and your career often can be totally unadaptive, maladaptive when it comes to the kitchen
01:21:52table.
01:21:53Competing priorities. And I like, this is, this is such a, this is one that I think,
01:21:58I think a lot about this, um, because there is a priority. There is one that you want more.
01:22:05And I think people have a lot of trouble with that.
01:22:07This is why people who are monomaniacal often get so much further than people that don't because
01:22:11even just the thinking cost of managing, navigating the trade-offs, that's why someone asked me
01:22:21basically how, how monomaniacally should I go after my career? And I said, well, it depends on what
01:22:26phase you're in. Uh, but I think it is almost impossible to make a big swing, make big progress
01:22:34in your life without going complete sicko mode for an extended period of time.
01:22:39Yeah. It's about 10 years. I mean, I've just, I think it's, it's like about 10 years.
01:22:42I've just gone, um, I'm not going to compromise.
01:22:45Yeah. It's no compromises. It's no, there's this, um, episode in breaking bad and the title
01:22:55was, I think no half measures. And I think it was about whether you punish someone or kill them,
01:23:00but that was, but I remember watching that episode and the, the line stuck with me a lot,
01:23:06like no half measures either do or don't. And I think that
01:23:14half measures yield no outcomes.
01:23:18Yeah. It's not that you get half results.
01:23:20Yeah. And so what many people are plagued by is they are doing half measures in four domains
01:23:27and have yield in none. And they feel like they are trying all the time. They're working
01:23:33every hour that they're awake to pursue or serve four different masters. And it's the realization that
01:23:41compromise on one means getting neither. And I think that people have a hard time with that because
01:23:47they're unwilling to say, I, I, I want one thing more than another. And I think you just have to be
01:23:53able to say like, I'm willing to sacrifice this thing, not forever, but for now.
01:23:59Obligation because of anchoring bias, because of the momentum of where you are now,
01:24:04because of the fear of regretting it. This is where, this is where the inaction thing comes back in.
01:24:16People think that inaction has no cost, but it does have a cost.
01:24:20Usually it's higher.
01:24:25Like, um, it's like money loves speed, wealth loves time, poverty loves indecision.
01:24:34And if you think about inaction
01:24:42as an action, we are, we are always doing something. Even if you were watching television,
01:24:48you were taking an action. It's just not making, it's not making any progress. Well,
01:24:52maybe you're making progress in a show. Maybe you're making progress in your, in your relaxation.
01:24:57Maybe you're resting heart rate drops. Like you, like things are always occurring.
01:25:00Um, and I think it's just whether we're voting with our behavior about the outcome that we truly want.
01:25:10And most of the outcomes that we truly want happen at a delay, which is what makes them worth wanting,
01:25:16but also makes them equally hard to get.
01:25:17Don't listen to other people's opinions. Friendly reminder that most people are fat,
01:25:24poor pansies and don't listen to them when they try to deter you from whatever it takes to succeed.
01:25:29The average person will always try to keep you average. It makes sense that if you want to be
01:25:33extraordinary, you will do things that an ordinary person would see as extra.
01:25:38This is the really hard part that I had to come to terms with. It's that a lot of people want to see
01:25:43you fail because it justifies the risks that they chose not to take. We always have to think
01:25:49about listening to the people who are closest to our goals, not closest to us.
01:25:59We yearn for the approval of many people who don't have lives that we want.
01:26:11And so if they have a specific life, then it means that that is what they think is valuable.
01:26:21And if we don't want what they have, then why would we value their weight on our decisions?
01:26:31And so it's like, you have this, they're like, we have this mold. That is my life. Your life no
01:26:35longer fits my mold. And you're like, right. I don't like the pot that that mold makes.
01:26:41And so somehow when people state the obvious, which is that you are living your life against my
01:26:45preferences, we somehow feel like that needs to change because when we're younger,
01:26:51and growing up, we can't leave. Yeah, you can't leave. And you do need to live your life according
01:26:56to your parents' preferences, your teachers' preferences, your classmates' preferences,
01:26:59your principals' preferences. But when you get older, you do have to break the mold
01:27:05and decide what mold you want. And in so doing, you will be against their preferences. And if the
01:27:10vast majority of people have a life that you don't want, then you're going to do things that the
01:27:14vast majority of people don't agree with. I think the average American adult is obese, likely to be
01:27:20divorced and has less than 1k in the bank. And doing what everybody else does sounds like
01:27:26a great idea, but it's actually a reliable route to a life that you're probably not looking for.
01:27:35I feel very passionately about this particular topic because
01:27:43it means that the path to exceptionalism is lonely. And loneliness is something that we decry as a
01:27:55society, that there's something wrong with it, there's something bad, there's something wrong with you
01:28:00if many people disagree with you. But success and pursuit of large endeavors is one of those few domains
01:28:09where everyone disagreeing with you is a signal that you are actually doing something different.
01:28:19Now, sometimes you doing something different is the wrong move. I think Larry Ellison said this, he said,
01:28:30if everyone thinks your idea is stupid, either they're right or you're right. And if you're right,
01:28:38then you're likely to make a lot of money. I'm loosely paraphrasing, but basically it's like we have to be
01:28:44willing to do exceptional things in isolation and deal with the pain of rejection. And some of rejection
01:28:52isn't people saying, no, I don't want to buy from you. Some of rejection is people just rejecting your
01:28:56behavior, rejecting who you're becoming, rejecting the choices that you're making. And I think that rejection
01:29:01oftentimes is harder because it often surfaces as snide remarks, jokes that are demeaning, that have a little bit too
01:29:07much edge to them, like a little bit too much truth. Or even just being excluded, a more silent version
01:29:13of that, not commission, but omission. Oh, we won't invite them out. You turned up to squash practice. I
01:29:19didn't know it was on. I just thought that, I don't know, do you guys not tell me? Oh, yeah, well, all right,
01:29:23come on, join. Yeah, those moments. And I think those moments are very painful. But you trade those moments
01:29:32for the many moments when you're at home alone, looking at your life around you and saying, this is
01:29:41not what I want. I don't want to be here. Right. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be who I
01:29:45am. And I don't want to be there with them either. Right. And so it's no man's land. And I think that
01:29:50that is like the beginning of the metamorphosis, the beginning of the transformations. The single most
01:29:55powerful idea that me and you have come up with the lonely chapter by far, by far. And I think
01:29:59the reason that it speaks to people is that the amount of doubt that you have to endure
01:30:05when doing this for the first time, when nobody around you understands what you're trying to do,
01:30:09when you're actively being discouraged from making changes and you have no promise of glory or success
01:30:13on the other side of it is one of the most perfect cocktails of pain and discomfort that you can go
01:30:22through. And this happens on every mountain. So it happens on your first mountain and it happens on
01:30:27your second mountain. Like if you are, you've achieved some level of success that everyone
01:30:30around you deems as successful enough by their standards, not yours. When you pursue the next
01:30:36summit, they then, all of it begins again. The machine begins again. I actually think that for a
01:30:42lot of people, the first big lonely chapter that they will feel will be after their first success,
01:30:48because for a lot of people, the first success is done within the frame that they're already inside
01:30:53of. They get to the top of it and realize it wasn't what they wanted. And then some people decide to
01:30:58go back down. Maybe some people don't need to go up the first mountain to realize they're somewhere
01:31:04they don't want to be. But for a lot of people, especially people that are driven and pushed
01:31:07toward excellence, I think they actually have to get there within, this was my story, right?
01:31:12Getting one of the biggest events companies in the UK running an organization that is cool and fun.
01:31:20And I got to define and I was the boss and everybody knew me and there's some wealth and
01:31:24some status and some freedom and there's goals. Everybody's telling me that this is something that
01:31:31I should be happy about and satisfied with. And for some reason it didn't feel right. And the only way
01:31:38to try and find something new is to let go of something that everybody else is telling you
01:31:43is something that you should want.
01:31:45Local maximums. And it's like the furthest up they can see up the mountain. And then when you
01:31:52get to that new local maximum, you have a different perception than they do and you can see the next
01:31:56peak and they can't.
01:31:57Some people don't need to go up the peak, but I think a lot of people do.
01:32:00Yeah. I wonder if those are different types of lonely chapter. I wonder if there's a different
01:32:05type of a lonely chapter of letting go. I've kind of been, hold that thought. I really wanted to
01:32:11talk to you about the difference between having fallen off and having never made it. And having
01:32:17fallen off a lot of the time is somebody going from one local maxima to another local maxima that's
01:32:22higher or to a global maxima. Sure. Some fall offs occur not through choice, but that evolution might
01:32:29be somebody going, my priorities have changed and you are judging me on the scorecard of the game
01:32:34that I used to play. I'm not bothered about that anymore. Oh, that guy fell off.
01:32:40Man, I have two completely different thoughts about this. One is short and then I'll make the longer
01:32:49one. I realized when I was writing something a while ago that when you have no evidence or no proof
01:33:00that you're going to be successful, everyone will ask why you're working so hard. And then once you win,
01:33:06everyone asks why you're working so hard. You know, that was the Mark Manson one
01:33:10that he said, we'll tell you how lucky you are. Oh, is it? And you liked the idea of,
01:33:16no, they just ask you again why you're working so hard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was
01:33:20a funny remix. Yeah. And, um, and it was just a realization that people were literally always going
01:33:25to ask me why I was working so hard or why you were working so hard and why are you pursuing your
01:33:29goals? Because they're saying that your goals are not the goals that I would pursue and to which you would
01:33:33respond. Yes. The second thing was, um, I was, I was talking to an entrepreneur, at least successful,
01:33:41and they were saying, Hey, I really want, um, I want to dominate my market. I want to put everyone
01:33:45else out of business, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I, as somebody who has put people out of
01:33:50business, um, I will say that it doesn't come with parades and it doesn't come with balloons and it's
01:33:57not Goliath versus Goliath because by the time you actually beat them into true submission,
01:34:02it's really like a giant beating a child because it's almost never a true fair fight.
01:34:08And there are no rules and there is no referee and no one determines you the winner. And so what
01:34:13ends up happening is you get bigger and bigger and bigger, and then they shrink into a relevance.
01:34:18And then you see a Facebook post that says that they've changed their goals and that they actually
01:34:21discerned that this isn't as important to them as it once was. And I think that one, that's okay.
01:34:27Um, two, it's not satisfying at all. Three, when you see the jobs and the employees that actually
01:34:34worked at the company that were just, you know, living their lives and have kids and all of a sudden,
01:34:39like this idea of this conquest that you're going to beat someone feels significantly less rewarding.
01:34:46Um, that's glorious a hundred percent. And
01:34:52I used to, I used to joke that when losers lose, they change their goals rather than say they lost.
01:35:00And I think it's more that they might have at some point while they began to lose, maybe it's the
01:35:08first quarter or the second quarter of the game, but down by a few points, they might have some awareness
01:35:13of what it would take in order to win, but they determined at that point that the trade was no
01:35:17longer worth it. And I think that that's okay. And I would say that that has, that is a shift that
01:35:22I've had personally, is that if someone no longer determines that the price is worth it, then amazing.
01:35:29They've made a, they've made a conscious decision. What I, what I, I would say I advocate against is
01:35:34having that decision made for you because you weren't conscious of the decision being made to begin
01:35:38with and then just basically accepting it. Can vengeance be deranging in that way then?
01:35:43Say it again? Can vengeance be deranging?
01:35:46Uh, for whom? The desire to get one over on this person.
01:35:51It compels you to act in a way which is being puppeted by them in a very odd way.
01:35:59Yeah. They control you. Yeah. The, the, the person that you're trying to beat has cajoled you and tempted
01:36:07you into doing something that isn't necessarily in your interests. And then when you do reach the
01:36:12finish line, they're never going to say, well played man, fair fight. Yeah, exactly. No one else knows.
01:36:19It's, it's largely just this silent war between you and your projection of them.
01:36:24And, and, and to be clear, like I, I think that vengeance and revenge can be incredibly motivating.
01:36:30And if, if the only fuel that you have is that to get what you want, then use what you have. But I think that
01:36:40the, the outcome of it, of beating a specific person is not nearly as fulfilling as you think it will be.
01:36:48But if along the way you can create good from it, then I think that there's some reconciliation of
01:36:56pros and cons that happens of like good stuff happened, bad stuff happened. And is there more
01:37:00good than bad, um, that we sum up at the end of our lives. But I find it interesting when I think about,
01:37:06when I look at like the oldest, you know, the old wise men that I, that I pay attention to, or that I
01:37:11read their dead books or they're dead, the books are alive. Um, it is interesting how, how much they
01:37:17talk about like the folly of youth and how, how, how much we value things that never really mattered
01:37:21to begin with. Um, and how, and I, I try to think like, what is that guy going to say about what I'm
01:37:26currently doing and will he approve of it? Um, and I don't, I mean, to be clear, I feel like I always
01:37:31have the answer, but I think it, it takes the edge off both sides. Uh, on the downside, if you do,
01:37:37you know, have your losses, it's like, well, this, this is okay. Um, and on the upside, when you do have
01:37:43your wins, you're like, I'm not that important. A lot of this feels to be about the expansion of
01:37:47time, being able to see things on a broader time horizon. Is that fair?
01:37:56Time and space. I think there's the two things that can shrink or expand anything,
01:38:01right? So like if you zoom in the atoms of this table versus zooming all the way out to the cosmos,
01:38:06all of a sudden, you know, whether two monkeys are having a podcast that they're recording matters
01:38:10significantly less. And also when we think about the billions of podcasts that get recorded over
01:38:14the next however many years, it, it shrinks it. Um, but in this exact moment, this becomes the most
01:38:19important thing that I'm focused on right now. And so, um, I think playing with time and space as ways
01:38:24to cope with hardship is one of the most viable tools that you can have in terms of getting through
01:38:31to zoom into enjoyment, zoom out of difficulty pain. Yeah.
01:38:37You can get competent at nearly anything in 20 hours. The problem is most people spend a decade
01:38:42delaying the first 20 hours. More potential is wasted through inaction than incompetence.
01:38:49I saw a Ted talk years ago where a guy talked about how he learned how to play the guitar in 20 hours.
01:38:54And that Ted talk changed my life, not because I learned to play the guitar, but all of a sudden
01:39:00complex tasks or seemingly complex tasks
01:39:05felt much, much more attainable. I was like, okay, I might not be the best website developer in
01:39:11the world, but in 20 hours I can have a website. And that 20 hour mantra for me has just been like two
01:39:17days, two full days, two, 10 hour days, fully focused. You can pretty much go from zero to not hero,
01:39:23but zero to competent. Um, and when you string hundreds of those 20 hour days together, I think
01:39:30you become incredibly dangerous. We were talking earlier about range the book. I think being
01:39:37cross departmental being cross, um, what's the multidisciplinary. Thank you. Disciplinary multidisciplinary
01:39:44is, is, is hard to calculate how valuable it is because of the, because the, the first 20 hours of
01:39:53almost every discipline is probably the biggest, most meaningful concepts from that discipline,
01:39:57not being able to ride a bike to being able to ride. Yes. Being able to not read, to read. Um,
01:40:02even if you can't read Shakespeare, but you can read all of a sudden like 80% of the world of Shakespeare
01:40:06is now opened up to you. It's just a matter of time before you get there. Yeah. And even if you could
01:40:10never read Shakespeare, the 80% of the books that you can read as a result of a sixth grade reading
01:40:14level is basically more books than you have time to read. Um, and you will get the largest returns from
01:40:21those first 20 hours. And so there's a very strong argument for trying to collapse the time between,
01:40:25uh, wanting something and beginning those first 20 hours. And because the, the 80, 20 of your,
01:40:31of the skills you gain that are, that have utility, like that your usefulness across
01:40:37a huge amount of domains is multiplicative, not additive. So I I've, I've said this example before,
01:40:43but like, you know, Jay Z in the very beginning, it's like, he might've had some rhythm or something.
01:40:47And then all of a sudden he, you know, learned how to wrap and then he learned how to sell.
01:40:52Now, some people say maybe it was sold earlier than that, but I'll just leave it there. He learned
01:40:55how to sell. And then all of a sudden he learned how to market. And with each of these additional
01:40:58skills, his income didn't go up by like, Oh, one plus one equals two. It went, you know, one,
01:41:04well, one's a bad number. So two to the 10th power, all of a sudden becomes significantly greater,
01:41:08um, than what you can do. And so when, when unsure about what step, like when you're not sure what to do,
01:41:17build potential, because when the opportunity does come, you want to be ready. And so it does make
01:41:31sense in the beginning of your career to maximize optionality. It's just that you have to be willing
01:41:35to trade it in. And so when you're not sure what to do, the logical thing to do is I don't know what
01:41:40I'm going to do tomorrow, but I'm going to get a good night's sleep. I don't know what I'm going to
01:41:43meet a mate, but I'm going to start getting in shape now. I don't know what I'm going to sell,
01:41:45but I'm going to start building an audience and making content. There's always an argument for,
01:41:49like you, if you don't know what to do, there's still plenty of things to do.
01:41:52And, but the goal is not necessarily to do those things forever. It's to do those things,
01:41:56to then use them as the launch pad to get the thing you really want.
01:41:58The trap is opening up so much optionality without the concordant decisiveness that you end up being
01:42:06trapped. You end up being stuck. Because you think, I've got all of these directions that I
01:42:11could go in. I've spent all of this time building up panoply of routes that I could take my life down,
01:42:21and I do not have any ability to decide on which of those to take.
01:42:24Panoply.
01:42:25Panoply. You like that?
01:42:26Yeah. Myriad, cornucopia, a plethora.
01:42:28Yeah, yeah. Two people that are obsessed with language have a war with each other.
01:42:35But one is British, so he wins.
01:42:39You only need to get rich once, so you might as well work as hard as you can to get it done as fast as you can.
01:42:44The fastest way to attract what you want in life is to deserve it by doing so much work it becomes
01:42:49unreasonable not to achieve it. Do so much work it would be unreasonable that you fail.
01:42:53The seat at the table is yours if you want it. Do the hard work, build the skills no one can ignore,
01:43:00adjust your mindset to match where you want to go, then pull up a chair and sit down.
01:43:04You want to work with such relentless obsession that when people see you they're grateful they
01:43:08don't have to compete against you. The fastest shortcut is to stop looking for shortcuts.
01:43:14Do the work.
01:43:16Are those all mine?
01:43:16All one.
01:43:22Violence is the answer.
01:43:25There's two quotes in the first few pages of our sales handbook internally at acquisition.com.
01:43:32One is volume negates luck, and violence is the answer. And I would say that those are like
01:43:38credos that the team lives by. And I think-
01:43:42A violent team.
01:43:42Mm-hmm. They are. Um, and violently successful. Um, I think, I think there's a lot of power in
01:43:55in knowing that you're doing every single thing you possibly can to win.
01:44:01Mm-hmm.
01:44:02Because if you are, if you can look at yourself in the mirror and say, I have controlled the controllable.
01:44:08I think there's some level-
01:44:09Entirely.
01:44:09Entirely. The controllable, not the uncontrollable. Those things can happen. I could do my bulk launch and
01:44:15there can be a lightning strike and there can be no power in Vegas. That can happen.
01:44:19But in the event that that happens, if you, if you leave it all in the field, if you have nothing left in the tank,
01:44:26I don't think there's a feeling that's more satisfying as a man than knowing
01:44:32that you've given everything that you had to give to an endeavor that you deemed meaningful.
01:44:37And so Layla and I have this thing that we say a lot, but, um,
01:44:41a man must have a quest.
01:44:43And I just really, really like that.
01:44:46It's like, you need to do something. You need to go towards something and your quest could be the best,
01:44:50being the best father. It could be, it could be being the best musician or the best podcaster,
01:44:54the best businessman or the best tire replacer, the best sweeper, whatever it is. But like, I think,
01:45:01I think being questless, being aimless and never being able to use the violence that you are capable
01:45:09of in the pursuit of endeavor that you find meaningful is where people find themselves lost
01:45:16and without hope because hopelessness comes from a perceived lack of options. We don't know what to do.
01:45:27Anxiety comes from many options, but no priorities. And so there's many things to do, but we don't sure
01:45:33which one. And so a quest remedies both of those because you have one path that you're clear on and
01:45:45you know the only thing that you have left to do is destroy everything in your path to getting to where
01:45:51you want to go. And I'm using strong language on purpose rather than saying that you literally
01:45:55need to destroy everyone, but more so the ideas, the thoughts, the doubts, the perceived risks that
01:46:01aren't even really risks. Those are the things that we have to march triumphantly towards. And I think
01:46:09having someone in your corner who believes in that better version of you is one of the rarest gifts
01:46:19that you can have in life. And there's a line from 300 that I love. The queen says to Leonidas,
01:46:27she says, come back with your shield or on it. And I think that we all want a spouse or a partner who
01:46:35can reward us for the good fight because what that queen is saying in that moment is not like I want
01:46:44you to win. She's like, I want you to die trying. To be fair, that's literally all we will do is die
01:46:53trying. All of us will die trying. And I think, well rather all of us will die, some of us will die
01:46:59trying. And I think that's about as good of a life as I think anyone can really ask for.
01:47:05One of my least favorite groups of people are those without a quest mocking those who have one.
01:47:16Wastes of space.
01:47:17It causes doubt. This is another reason why the Lonely Chapter thing resonates so much that
01:47:23people who are in it have their certainty about wanting to get out of it diminished by people who
01:47:29can't see the fact that they're in it. And you go, fuck, all of my friends are saying,
01:47:33well, why, why are you staying in? Cause you want to go to the gym in the morning.
01:47:36What does it matter if you miss? What does it matter if you miss your workout?
01:47:40It doesn't matter if you, it doesn't matter if you miss your workout tomorrow, dude.
01:47:43Go, no, I really, really want this thing. And my wanting of this hard thing and the efforts
01:47:50and sacrifices and trade-offs I'm having to make in order to get there, the doubt that already exists
01:47:56inside of me is being multiplied by people who are outside of it. And if I could give everybody a gift,
01:48:03it would be the ability to turn down the volume on people who don't understand the goals that you're
01:48:08trying to achieve. It shouldn't be your job to explain yourself to people who don't understand
01:48:13what you're trying to do. And the confusion of this person gets it and understands it,
01:48:20and this person doesn't, you shouldn't be listening to them at equal measure.
01:48:30I have a lot of live translation that I think, um, I've wired into being able to handle some things
01:48:36that were difficult. Um, which is like, I pretty much translate all hate into you live your life
01:48:41against my preferences. And so whenever they're saying all of these things of like, no, you don't
01:48:45have to go to the gym. We were doing this other thing. It's just saying, you're living your life
01:48:48in a way that's against my preferences. You're valuing things that I don't value. And you're like,
01:48:51you're right. And so it doesn't mean like we don't need to have the same values at least in the short
01:48:56term. Um, and I think just accepting that that is okay and that you can still be friends at least in
01:49:03the short term is fine. And what they're really trying to do is get you to comply with their way
01:49:09of living because maybe not always when you live in accordance with your new values and new preferences,
01:49:20it brings into sharp contrast how they are not living in accordance to theirs.
01:49:24Yeah. Yeah. This was 10 years ago when as a club promoter, I decided that I was going to take six
01:49:32months off from drinking, which now sounds like commonplace now is almost a caricature of something
01:49:37lame that people do too much and drinking has come back around. But 10 years ago I was on the
01:49:41fucking frontier. And I remember when I stopped drinking, so many of the people that I would hang
01:49:48out with went from being surprised to ribbing mockery to almost offended. And I think a lot of
01:49:58that was people realizing, oh shit, the fact that Chris has stopped drinking throws the fact that I need
01:50:03to drink in order to feel social into harsh contrast. My bad habits are being highlighted by the fact that
01:50:10someone near me has broken them.
01:50:13And what's really interesting about that is that you made money from other people drinking. And so
01:50:20you clearly had no problem with anyone drinking. You just chose not to drink for you so that you could
01:50:25grow the business, get more in shape, whatever.
01:50:26Makes it feel even more elective, which makes it feel like even more of an insult.
01:50:29Right. Which makes it also more ridiculous how violent they were about opposing this choice.
01:50:39Because you were like, I'm not projecting anything on you. I would prefer it if you drank.
01:50:43Please.
01:50:43Please spend as much money as you can at the club.
01:50:45Continue. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:50:47Right. But even that, it's a perfect example because there wasn't a shade of judgment behind it because
01:50:54you are incentivized to have them drink.
01:50:56I was opening the doors myself.
01:50:58And cracking the bottle.
01:50:59Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much.
01:51:00And so I actually think it is the perfect example because it shows that it is not about you. That is
01:51:07the point. Because there was no judgment. You were literally incentivized for them to continue that
01:51:12behavior. And yet they still felt bad and angry that you were not doing something they were doing,
01:51:19which then made them feel that they felt like they shouldn't be doing it either.
01:51:22And then they just projected it onto you. And it's like, when you have these, this violent opposition,
01:51:27one of the things that I've actually been more recently thinking about is like,
01:51:31no one hates you. They hate the projection that they have of you. That's 99% made up
01:51:37because no one can know 100% of you. Like the only person whose hate you should really pay attention
01:51:41to is your own because there's no other person on earth who has full context to who you are.
01:51:47And so the person that someone's making fun of or they hate or that they're disagreeing with
01:51:52is the person within the context of here, obviously, that's consumed six 30-second clips of you over the
01:52:0037 years you've been alive and has filled in the blanks for every other minute of your existence,
01:52:07with the exception of those three minutes that they have consumed.
01:52:10Correct.
01:52:11And so how much weight, I should probably proportionally weight the opinions of people
01:52:19based on the shared experience that they have of my life with me. And so if someone has spent one
01:52:24day with me out of the 37 years that I've been alive, I have 37 times 365 more context on the individual
01:52:31than they do. And so I should probably weight it appropriately to that.
01:52:34There's an idea from Gwynda Bogle, which is about this. It's called Tilting at Windmills.
01:52:40An online stranger doesn't know you. All they have are a few vague impressions of you, too meagre to
01:52:45form anything but a phantasm. So when they attack you, they're really just attacking their own
01:52:50imagination. There is no need to take it personally, which is related to this principle of humanity.
01:52:56Every single person is exactly what you would be if you were them.
01:53:00Hmm.
01:53:00This includes your political opponents. So instead of dismissing them as evil or stupid,
01:53:05maybe seek to understand the circumstances that led them to their conclusions.
01:53:10You know I love that.
01:53:13Oh, God.
01:53:13It also teases out something that I might have to put my hat on for.
01:53:19Throw it on. Switch it out.
01:53:21Um, which is that if everyone, if you were going to be the same,
01:53:30if you were the exact same person as they are, if you were them, then it removes the concept of
01:53:38free will.
01:53:46Yeah.
01:53:49If you're poor, try the buy nothing challenge.
01:53:52The buy nothing challenge. For 30 days, buy nothing except food, rent, gas, and insurance.
01:53:58Don't bring your wallet with you when you leave home. Pack lunch. See how much you save. Repeat
01:54:03until you have as much as you want. Brackets. Pairs well with working 12 hours a day.
01:54:09Being good with money literally just means spend less than you make and put the extra in things
01:54:15that go up, not down.
01:54:20Financial education in two tweets.
01:54:26The hardest part about most things isn't knowing what to do.
01:54:33It's doing it.
01:54:35And the hard part about doing it is that you're often more rewarded
01:54:40for every action except for the one that you need to take.
01:54:43And so there's a hundred things you can spend money on.
01:54:46There's only one nothing.
01:54:48And so
01:54:50every, it's so exhausting to not spend money when you don't have any, because
01:54:54every single thing that you want or many things that you want have price tags associated with them.
01:54:59And you have to
01:55:00at all moments in the day, say no a hundred times in order to quote, spend nothing.
01:55:06And so
01:55:07it's this muscle that we have to build.
01:55:10But I, I, I strongly encourage the buy nothing challenge because
01:55:15one, you realize how little you can really live on.
01:55:19And when you realize how little you can really live on, you realize how much more risk you can
01:55:23actually take because the apparent downside of what if I lost everything becomes incredibly
01:55:27tangible, which is like, well, I lived on $200, $500.
01:55:30Not even that bad.
01:55:31Yeah.
01:55:31It's actually, and when you realize that, and this is, I think, Morgan Strucel,
01:55:35I don't want to say his name right.
01:55:39When we look back in time at some of our happiest moments,
01:55:42we think we were happy when we were poor.
01:55:45But I'll just say on an anecdotal level, we'll say one of my own words.
01:55:52We often say that we'll be happy.
01:55:54Like we already have the things that we said we want that would make us happy.
01:55:58Yeah.
01:55:58And yet here we are.
01:56:00Yeah.
01:56:00There's a nostalgia discount for sure that nobody ever believes that we're living through a golden era.
01:56:07Golden era is only ever occur in history.
01:56:09The good old days.
01:56:11Yeah.
01:56:11It's always the good old days.
01:56:13I asked a question actually recently, which was there's certain periods that people look back on
01:56:19nationally as times that were particularly wonderful.
01:56:24I did ask the question, do you think anyone will look back at 2026
01:56:27and think that it was the good old days at some point?
01:56:31Every generation believes that they're living through a moment,
01:56:34which is markedly different than the generations before.
01:56:36This one does feel particularly unremarkable in that way.
01:56:41To a degree.
01:56:43Yeah.
01:56:43I think when I, I'm trying to project forward stuff that currently we think about with loving nostalgia
01:56:51from the past.
01:56:53And I'm not sure, but then probably during the nineties, right.
01:56:56Did people think that WWF and F-16 fighter rockets, the fighter jets and, and Limp Bizkit were going
01:57:05to be what people in three decades time would look back on with loving tenderness.
01:57:11So I'm going to say two things that I think are, um, so one, a behaviorist can explain the, the,
01:57:19the nostalgia paradox, which is that across species, negative consequences fade.
01:57:28Fading affect bias.
01:57:29Yeah.
01:57:30And, but positive doesn't.
01:57:32And so that's why you have your ex that you always want to go back to because you forget how
01:57:35crazy she is and then you see her and then you're like, oh my God, I forgot how crazy you were.
01:57:38Um, and why you drink in the next morning, you say, I'm never going to drink again.
01:57:42And then seven days later, you're drinking again.
01:57:43That came to my life.
01:57:44Right.
01:57:46And so, um, but like even being cognizant of the fact that punishment fades and reward
01:57:50sticks is helpful for making decisions in the future.
01:57:53So that's thing one.
01:57:55The second is that.
01:57:57Like when I really think about at least the areas of my life, so I'll just talk personally.
01:58:02When I think about when I was, you know, sleeping on the gym floor,
01:58:06um, in a lot of ways, that was like the good old days.
01:58:10Like I was, I was fighting really hard for something I really cared about.
01:58:13And then, you know, there was a moment where it started to work and I started, you know,
01:58:17launching gym to gym to gym with Layla, which was like,
01:58:21wasn't necessarily the good old days, but like it was she and I, and we were figuring it out.
01:58:25And I think I have a lot of respect and admiration for that kid who was just working his ass off,
01:58:31even though I didn't know what I was doing. I just try, I tried. Um, and then obviously when
01:58:35things started working out with gym launch and it was really scaling, it's like, I remember that
01:58:39period. And like, I think you can, you can ascribe a good old days, especially on a personal level to
01:58:42like almost every season of life. When you look in retrospect, just because the, the negative has faded.
01:58:47Of course. Um, and so it's one of these things. It's like, it's like a great way to feel bad about
01:58:56how you feel today because you know, you should feel better because you know, you will feel better
01:59:00about today in the future because the future will have today without the negative consequences and
01:59:05the stressors of today that in the future seem irrelevant. Um, and so it's like, whenever you think
01:59:10about this stuff, like what is my, what my, my operation for gratitude is imagine something good,
01:59:17imagine losing it, and then realize that you haven't lost it. That is how you feel gratitude
01:59:24at the most basic level. And so
01:59:30whenever you repeat that operation, either in your mind or in reality, like you feel gratitude. And so
01:59:35I think nostalgia is a flavor of that as we go back in time. Um, now we, we can't get it back.
01:59:43Um, but I guess we can see it through a new lens.
01:59:45That's the memory dividend thing from Bill Perkins.
01:59:48I love, phenomenal book. Everyone.
01:59:50Die with zero. Gone by die with zero.
01:59:52Really, really good book.
01:59:53Really great. Three hours to read. Fantastic. Um, yeah, I think some of the areas that people
02:00:01rely on with more nostalgia from a personal standpoint,
02:00:05times with more simplicity and fewer trade-offs, I think tend to be looked back on with,
02:00:12huh, I was really singularly focused in that way.
02:00:15Life was simpler then.
02:00:16Correct. And there is an accumulation of complexity. So I wonder if
02:00:23simplification would be a way to remove some of the restrictions between
02:00:28now and front running some of that gratitude for now in the moment.
02:00:32I think that's really interesting because I think that the complexity of our lives in the moment that
02:00:37we were living them was just as maxed out. It is as it is now because we're human, not because life
02:00:41was more complex, but because we always find the maximum amount of problems that our brains can
02:00:45perceive. And so at any given moment, whether you're, you know, 20 or 40, like you're, you might have
02:00:50absolutely more problems when you're 40, but you also have higher ability to deal with those problems
02:00:55and the problems that you perceive when you were 20. The worst things ever happened to you is the worst
02:00:59thing ever happened to you. You will still have the same number of problems. And so the idea of
02:01:03simplifying our lives is really just an attempt to mirror only the incomplete memory that we have
02:01:08of that moment.
02:01:09Yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm going to try and get rid of the trade-offs that I did have to do in the
02:01:14past in the moment to make the moment more like the past. Adam Lane Smith taught me this a couple of
02:01:21years ago. I think it's really, really true. Your life does not need to be easier. It needs to be
02:01:26simpler. Your system is designed to handle stress and challenge, but not complication. You probably
02:01:32handle hard things pretty well, but feel overwhelmed when they become messy. Do not attribute to difficulty
02:01:38that which can be explained by complexity. Really cool. And I think that's, that's where a lot of
02:01:48stress is felt. And this is the line from whatever, fucking four episodes ago, where there's no such
02:01:54thing as being overworked only under rested, that overworked is the asterisk overworked at a small
02:02:06bucket of things. But there is such a thing as being spread too thin and overworked across a larger
02:02:12bucket of things. If all that you have to do for the next six months or two years is write a book,
02:02:19it's going to be stressful, but it's going to be enjoyable. If you have to write a book and raise a
02:02:24kid and manage finances and go to work and try and get in shape and connect with your partner and your
02:02:30mom's ill and it doesn't take, it only takes two or three of those and people fall apart. The system
02:02:36is designed to handle intensity, but not complexity.
02:02:45I think most people would be astonished at how much they can accomplish if they remove things.
02:02:51Because I don't think focus is also not additive, but multiplicative in that
02:02:59the best things that I've ever made, books, things like that, the best works that I've created
02:03:04have been things that had many coats of paint. And so I can look at the same project
02:03:12over a long period of time when I'm on good days, on bad days, it rains, it's sunshine,
02:03:17Layla and I are good, Layla and I are bad, through all these different seasons. And so I look at the
02:03:21work through as many lenses as I can. And then it creates the texture to the work that gives it that
02:03:28depth. And I like the many coats of paint because you have to let it dry. It's very rare that
02:03:32something on the first shot is very good. It just takes a lot of attempts, but you can't get that
02:03:38surface area of thinking if you can only think about it a handful of times. And so there's only so much
02:03:44thinking time that you have, which means that if you give it to five projects rather than one,
02:03:50getting one inch deep on five projects is rarely a novel concept. Like you rarely will come up with
02:03:56something that is inherently unique because many people can give one inch deep thought towards any
02:04:00idea. Well, also somebody who is one fifth as good as you are doing that thing are giving a hundred
02:04:07percent of themselves. So you're basically curtailing your capacity by spreading it across multiple
02:04:13things. And again, I relate things back to business, but in some ways you believing that you can pursue
02:04:20multiple masters is actually arrogant because it assumes that the people that you compete against
02:04:26can't beat you when they're fully focused on one thing and that you can somehow compete with three
02:04:31or four or five people at the same time and still win. And maybe you can, but I think the vast
02:04:37majority of people just lose. Stop whining. Every position has an advantage. Younger means cutting edge.
02:04:44Older means more experience. Smaller company means more personalized. Bigger company means longer track
02:04:50record. Rich means resources to use. Broke means nothing to lose. You aren't limited by your resources,
02:04:57only your resourcefulness.
02:05:07There's always a way to win.
02:05:12Just not always a enough desire to win.
02:05:18The position of simplicity as well, I think. So much of today is about trade-offs. It's cool.
02:05:29Looking across all of these, I can't see any of them that would be improved by complexity.
02:05:37Young, old, small, big, rich, broke. It's a universal rule that cuts through all of them,
02:05:43which I think is really interesting. But yeah.
02:05:48Everybody is able to find a reason why the situation that they're in is either great,
02:05:54but more typically, not great. Because finding all of the ways that the thing that you have or don't
02:06:01have either limits you or restricts you in a way that it wouldn't if you were somebody else or in a
02:06:06different situation, allows you to front-run why you might fail in future.
02:06:14This is the reason why inversion is one of the most powerful ways to get what you want.
02:06:20Because we are hardwired to survive. And part of survival is threat identification. What are all the
02:06:27problems that exist around me in my environment, in my life, that threaten me? And so when you try to
02:06:35think about what's good with your life, you have to sit there and be like, "Okay, I have to do my five
02:06:39minute journal in the morning and think, what three?" And you're sitting there like, "Okay,
02:06:42what three things am I grateful for?" And you have to try to do that, especially if you do different
02:06:47things every day. But what's interesting, and this is why I think Munger was so brilliant with this,
02:06:53is if you frame, "What are all the threats that I have to accomplishing what I want? What are all the
02:06:59things that are going to get in my way? If I had to guarantee failure, what would I do?"
02:07:06It's much easier to come up with the list of all the things that will guarantee failure
02:07:10because we're programmed to find those threats. And then all you have to do is just flip it
02:07:15as soon as you've figured out that monster list of the things that guarantee your failure.
02:07:19And then you just do that.
02:07:20You know, it's a cool version of this. If you were to design a day or a lifestyle
02:07:24for your worst enemy who's trying to beat you, what would it be? And the inversion of the inversion
02:07:31is, imagine that you were going up against you, but with a mustache.
02:07:38It's you versus a mustache. And this version of you is doing everything that they can to beat you.
02:07:42They know all of your failures. They know all of your shortcomings and your fears.
02:07:46What would that person do? Just do that. Do what that person would do that would beat you.
02:07:51Do what you with a mustache would do to beat you. And that's one of George's ideas. And I think it's
02:07:56really cool. It's the same as basically, what would you do if you had 10 times the agency?
02:08:01Because presumably that person would have way more agency. They wouldn't doubt themselves as much.
02:08:05They'd be more decisive. They would reduce complexity. They would be less distracted.
02:08:15So there's a frame in the investing world, which is if someone else were to come and buy
02:08:19100% of your company today, what would they immediately do in the first, you know, 30 days?
02:08:23Holy shit. I can't believe that they're spending this much money on catering.
02:08:29I can't believe they still have that guy who was good two years ago and just shows up for work now.
02:08:35And I think it's because what that frame provides you is an emotionless view of your current
02:08:43situation. You are your best, the person that you would, your, your, your worst enemy would have
02:08:49no emotion around, yeah, with a mustache would have no emotion around making the hard call because
02:08:55he's not you. He's someone else. And the person he's firing is not your best friend, Todd.
02:09:00It's just this inadequate person who's no longer upskilled. And so
02:09:04when we make these, when we talk through, you know, we have these podcasts around feelings and
02:09:09emotions and whatnot, like there is the, there's the feelings that we, there's the experience of
02:09:16life, of the things that we feel while we go through it. And then there's the, the decisions
02:09:22that must occur in reality. And I think trying to serve both masters is where people get,
02:09:30I don't want to say in trouble, but at least they understand that they're making a trade.
02:09:33I keep Todd on because I feel guilty. Okay. We just at least understand that Todd is hurting your
02:09:39business and you would rather hurt the business than have the conversation with Todd.
02:09:43Show me your priorities. Yeah. And we know the priorities. It's just, are the priorities the
02:09:48priorities you want? What are you willing to sacrifice? Well, you either care more about Todd
02:09:53or more about not feeling guilty than you do about your business. Yeah. Show me your priorities.
02:09:59And, and we know them, we know the priorities. And so, um, oh, behaviorist you, man. Um,
02:10:07yeah. And I think that like your life is a consequence of your priorities. And the question
02:10:11is just whether or not like many people want to want, they don't actually want. Yeah.
02:10:18They want to be willing to give up things in order to get stuff,
02:10:20but they don't actually give up things in order to get stuff.
02:10:23Yeah. Above your intelligence, above your work ethic, you will be compensated in proportion to your risk.
02:10:31Pro tip. If you're afraid to take the risk, write down in excruciating detail what you're
02:10:36actually afraid of happening step by step, what happens next when you fail. You'll often find
02:10:42it's not so bad when you spell it out. Fear exists in the vague, not the specific.
02:10:53So risk comes in a handful of flavors. One is what we know we will give up that we hope we will get
02:11:03something back from that's bigger. There's also the, we want something bigger, but we will pay a cost.
02:11:11So different ways of saying the same thing, like it's going to be, uh, lose something good,
02:11:16get something bad. Um, are the, are the things that risk presents for us?
02:11:20A different view on risk that I've been thinking a lot about is proportionality of risk.
02:11:29And at the most basic level, this is a lot of what, you know, investing really is, which is
02:11:33there is always risk, but is the risk priced appropriately? And Peter Thiel had this commentary
02:11:41around Elon, where if he had just had one of his three companies succeed, it would have already been
02:11:45a crazy win, but somehow he got all three of them to become, I guess now, you know,
02:11:51multi-billion trillion dollar plus companies. And he said, he must know something about risk
02:11:56that all of us don't understand. And I think there's something incredibly powerful about studying
02:12:02the person who's accumulated the most wealth in history, or at least in present day. Um, and that,
02:12:07that man's understanding of risk is different. And it's probably a more accurate view of true risk
02:12:11risk rather than perceived risk. And he often talks about like, well, the downside of trying as hard as
02:12:16you can is basically nothing you are. If you're in the developed world, the likely that you starve to
02:12:21death is almost nothing. And there are, there is free shelter of literally no one in your social
02:12:25construct would allow you to crash on a couch. And that assumes that during the day you are incapable
02:12:31of working in any way that generates money, which there are many ways to generate money that do not
02:12:35require tremendous skill, at least today. And so the downside is nothing. And so that is why the risk
02:12:42of going after whatever it is that you want is mispriced by the vast majority of people because
02:12:47they have this fear of the big thing. That's good. That's going to go away or a big, bad thing that's
02:12:53going to come as a result. But the big, bad thing is nothing, but the big thing that's good that they
02:12:59miss out on is everything. And so the risk is almost always mispriced because our brains are wired to
02:13:08misprice it. Because if you mess up once you don't pass on your genes and you die, but it is in no way
02:13:14wired to maximize your potential and what you're capable of.
02:13:17This mismatch between ancient programming and the modern world is kind of hilarious. We got a nervous
02:13:25system that was built to fight bears and now it's worried by group texts. It's true. It's true. And
02:13:34how do you think about- Let me add one more piece on that risk piece. I was talking to an entrepreneur
02:13:41a week or two ago, and she had grown her great grandmother's business from 4 million to 44 million in
02:13:47three years. It was like, awesome, super cool story. And it became obvious to her that her brand and
02:13:53needing to create more content was kind of the constraint of her going from, call it 45 million to
02:13:58200 million and beyond. And she said, okay, so do you think I should hire an editor?
02:14:04And it was interesting. She's like, well, how much is that going to cost? And so the business is doing
02:14:08a million month of profit now. And what was interesting to me is that oftentimes we don't also recalibrate
02:14:15our appetite for risk as our exposure to opportunity expands.
02:14:21And so you right now are still operating from the $4 million business owner risk
02:14:26angle where you were making a million dollars a year and one or two editors was 10 or 20% of your net income.
02:14:32When you're making $12 million in profit, we should be thinking about how do we make a two,
02:14:37three, $4 million bet that we think is going to result in an extra 200 million or a hundred million on top
02:14:43of that, which is a phenomenal return. And so, I mean, I opened up the offers book with one of my top
02:14:49two quotes from Jeff Bezos. He talks about how if you have a 10% chance of a hundred of 100x payoff,
02:14:56you should take that bet every time knowing that you will be wrong nine times out of 10.
02:15:01The difficulty with that example contrasted with reality is that if you were at a casino and you
02:15:10had a 10% chance of 100x payoff, of course, you should take that bet, but then just assume that the
02:15:17minimum bet is 10 years and you only have three hands to play. And that's the reality of life.
02:15:27That said, when we look at what that loss of that 10%, when that 10%, when the 90% of the time that it
02:15:33fails isn't actually a loss though. You've accumulated a lot along the way.
02:15:39Yeah. And you've gained experience, you've gained lessons, you've gained skills, you've gained network,
02:15:42you've gained relationships, perspective. And so, you only move forward by taking these shots on goal.
02:15:51And I think that if every risk was only seen as zero downside, only upside, and either I win or I
02:15:57learn, which we are not the first people to say that, but whatever version of that narrative you
02:16:04need in order to realize that life has given you an endless amount of scratch-off tickets and you just
02:16:08have to cash them in, I think that more people would take bets and more people would win.
02:16:13It's way better to be high conviction and wrong than low conviction and wrong.
02:16:16You know? Like, I'm just going to go for it. Because at least if you're high conviction and
02:16:22wrong, you move sufficiently quickly to be able to update your system based on the results that you got.
02:16:27It's why indecisiveness, again, and that inaction thing, inaction has a cost. Do not make the
02:16:31assumption that inaction has no price. So it does have a price.
02:16:34Yeah. And this is one of those labels that we were saying at the very beginning about shorthand.
02:16:39It's like, inaction isn't even inaction. We are always taking action. It's action against your
02:16:44priorities versus action towards your priorities. Which of them will help you accomplish what you want?
02:16:48Mm-hmm. And when you think that, presumably, nobody wants to be
02:16:53less decisive. There's very few. I mean, there's being rash, which I don't think is the same as being
02:16:57decisive. When I've met the threshold that is satisfactory or should be satisfactory in order
02:17:03for me to make this decision, I make it, is not the same as I make a decision before I have
02:17:07sufficient information in order to be able to make it.
02:17:09It's an information question, not a time question.
02:17:11Yeah. But when you think, don't practice what you don't want to become. And if you are practicing
02:17:19being indecisive, couched in the wrapper of keeping optionality open, you're just practicing being
02:17:28indecisive over and over again. And if you think of your indecision as an investment in your future
02:17:34decisions, i.e. making them harder, that actually makes indecision a really, a really, really horrible
02:17:41pitfall to go down. I remember one of the things that allowed me to take the bet to quit my job was,
02:17:47and I, people see me now, but like, I'm still very risk averse, um, believe it or not. Uh, and so,
02:17:55I mean, remember I was a, you know, I didn't have the like school failed me.
02:17:59What do I do? I had the opposite curse of options. I had done really well, all that kind of stuff. And
02:18:07the thing that got me was if not now, then when, because I figured a future version of me that I
02:18:15was delaying this decision for would either have a wife to support or wife and kids.
02:18:19Only gonna get harder.
02:18:20Right. And I was like, so if it's this hard for me now, how do, how can I make the assumption that
02:18:25it's going to somehow be easier at some point in the future? And if I really say that I want this thing,
02:18:30then how can I not do it now when the chips are most stacked in my favor? Yeah. And, um, you said one
02:18:39other thing earlier that I, um, oh, about, uh, we, we have a desire for perfect information in order to
02:18:48make a perfect decision from a world that will give us neither. And so we have to be willing. So like,
02:18:54what separates a rash decision from a well-informed decision? Well, taken to the natural extreme, a
02:19:01perfectly informed decision, the decision is often been made for you because the outcomes have already
02:19:06occurred, which means that if you have perfect information, the opportunity has already gone away.
02:19:11And so we have to be willing to make some assumptions. We have to make some bets, which is why having a
02:19:17worldview or a good model of prediction makes you better at getting what you want, because you can say,
02:19:23listen, I know this, I believe this based on my pattern of how I think the world works.
02:19:28And because of this film, I think this is a good, a good or decent bet. And a lot of that calculus is
02:19:33the, what's my upside? What's my downside if I'm wrong? And if we know that the downside of being wrong is
02:19:39zero, then go for it. What's that? All, all loss is just psychological until death.
02:19:44Dude, that's Jocko. Of course, I saw that and I was like, fuck. Jocko, shout out. I love that quote.
02:19:51Yeah. It angers me how good it is. So good.
02:19:54I was thinking about, it's been almost exactly a year since me and you sat down and a lot of the,
02:20:02this is seventh time you've been on maybe something.
02:20:04Maybe a sixth or seventh. Plus we did the one with me and me and Layla.
02:20:11And I think there's always an interesting progression. So one of the things that I've noticed
02:20:16looking at the time capsule of the last year of your writing and what I've been thinking about too,
02:20:20is risk, uncertainty, and decisiveness seem to be themes that are in there a lot.
02:20:25And I came across this Nabeel Qureshi quote that is maybe a little self-serving,
02:20:32but I think it's really true about why drilling 20, 30 hours, 40 hours, however long me and you have
02:20:40spoken, why it's, why I think it's important and why I don't get bored of it. He says a cursed fact of
02:20:46the world is that the most important life lessons you learn are the hardest to communicate to others
02:20:51because they always sound like cliches. And there's a bit of me in the back of my mind that hears,
02:21:00it's not that deep, bro. You're over-complicating it. You don't need to look at life with this level
02:21:04of resolution. This seems to be unnecessarily dissecting. This is majoring in the minors.
02:21:14This is taking too seriously things which don't matter in that sort of a way, paying too much attention.
02:21:20It's a kind of fragility of optimization, et cetera, et cetera. And the fact that lots of things that are
02:21:29important sound like stuff that you've heard before doesn't discount the fact that you need to hear it.
02:21:36Because if you know it that well, why the fuck are you still in the same place?
02:21:41If you're bored of hearing about how important cold, dark, quiet is in order to prepare your bedroom for
02:21:48sleep, why does your sleep still suck? Why does your sleep still suck? If you're bored of hearing how
02:21:56it's important to integrate emotions, but there are times when you need to put them to one side,
02:22:01that they're information, not a master. Why is it you still don't have a good relationship with your emotions?
02:22:07If you know this stuff, if it's so obvious, if this is the sort of thing that you should have been taught
02:22:11taught by your father, or you should have learned in school, or you shouldn't have had to wait until
02:22:15you're in your forties to understand, why is it you haven't mastered it? And the most important life
02:22:23lessons that you learn are the hardest to communicate to others because they always sound like cliches.
02:22:27: We need to be reminded more than we need to be taught.
02:22:37And so that means that the gap between what we have and what we want
02:22:44is typically not a lack of information, but a lack of execution. And so if it's a lack of execution,
02:22:50then it ladders up to what are the motivating operations that are either preventing me from
02:22:53doing it or that are insufficient to compel me. And so this is why I think Chris and I go into this
02:23:01very, very minute detail about, okay, you would just sleep on your friend's couch. And how bad is that?
02:23:08And trying to actually spell out that the downs, like, how do you put the picture? Like we were
02:23:12saying earlier with the waiting room or the hospital bed. It's trying to take three steps forward into
02:23:21the reality of what living through your downside would look like so that you can realize that the
02:23:25downside is 10 times worse in your mind than it is in reality. And if it's 10 times worse in your
02:23:30mind than it is in reality, then it means that you can take actions in reality because the downside
02:23:34doesn't really exist.
02:23:35: And the excruciating detail is needed in order to be able to bring this imagination into reality.
02:23:40Oh, I can feel that. I imagine what it would be like to be on my friend's couch. I know it would
02:23:44be brown. It would be on the left-hand side of the room. I would have a little thing on the floor.
02:23:47That would be a mobile desk that I might work at.
02:23:48: And sometimes it takes actually reaching out to a friend before you take a big jump and say,
02:23:55hey, if all this, I'm about to do something wild. If this went to shit, would I be able to crash at
02:24:01your place for like an extended period? I would be willing to do X, Y, and Z. I don't think it's going
02:24:06to happen, but would you be willing to do it? Because you saying that you're willing to
02:24:10take me in is going to allow me to do that. I would say that if you actually have real friends,
02:24:1610 out of 10 of them would be like, yeah, dude, go for it. Like, I got you. And I think having,
02:24:21like I had, there was a handful of people that, um, I probably called every single night during
02:24:26the six months leading into me quitting my job, where I basically rehashed the exact same decision
02:24:30a hundred times, uh, with them and re-derived it.
02:24:32: I think people would be surprised to hear that. I think people would be surprised to hear that Mr. Decisive
02:24:38seemingly would need to have that conversation. I also think it's cool to hear that story because
02:24:47it legitimates somebody's bravery in the face of uncertainty and repetition. I think a lot of the
02:24:54time we feel like we're a burden to our friends for asking them for advice about the same problem that
02:24:57we've come to with before. I've done it with you and like, Hey man, I yeah, no, no, it's not new.
02:25:07Yeah, no, it's the, yeah, it's the, it's the, it's the same thing again. I'm sorry.
02:25:11Yeah. I need to say no, no new perspective. No, I need to say the, I need to, yeah, it's going to be,
02:25:17it's the conversation from last week, but, but now again, is that cool. So
02:25:25the, the, the license giving people the license
02:25:31to be boring
02:25:36in their learning and in their need for support from people to like, I'm sick of moping about this
02:25:43situation. And I have a friend that's prepared to sit in it with me. That feels really good.
02:25:50To give more color to that, that period, because one of the things that Layla and I were talking
02:25:58about was she has a desire to make successful people more relatable so that people who don't
02:26:04have successful people around them can feel like it is attainable. Um, so I'm going to add a handful
02:26:11of colors to that little chapter and hopefully people will be okay with it. Um, so in that,
02:26:17in that time period, um, many people know this, but I got fired. And so I'd be like,
02:26:22who would fire her Mosey the hardworking maniac? Well, I just wasn't that good of an employee.
02:26:27Um, and so I basically just read books all day instead of working. Um, and I read most of the
02:26:35self-help books that you've heard of, um, hundred million dollar offers,
02:26:38hundred million dollar leads. Those are the books I'm kidding. I wasn't reading.
02:26:45No, but I was reading, you know, and, and to be fair, I don't think any one of them.
02:26:50I'd say like, I can, I can say a handful of them phrases and entire books stuck with me.
02:26:57Um, one phrase I heard in a book, can't remember which one it was, was entrepreneur.
02:27:02And the phrase disgusted me so much because it was like, oh yeah, all those people who just want
02:27:07to be entrepreneurs. And it just said it flippantly. It wasn't even decrying the term.
02:27:10It just said like, oh yeah, this is how we define these people who are like, not there,
02:27:13but like business interested. Yeah. And the nonchalance is even more insulting.
02:27:17Exactly. And that's why I was like, I'm that I am this disgusting thing. I don't want to be this,
02:27:23but that still wasn't enough to motivate. It was a negative operating, you know, it was negative,
02:27:27but it still wasn't enough. Um, I listened to Arnold's ladder of success speech that he gave.
02:27:34This is obviously 15, 16 years ago. Um, it was this speech. I found it on YouTube and I listened to it
02:27:41like every morning before I go to work. Um, you cannot climb the ladder of success with your hands
02:27:46in your pockets, you know? Um, and I listened to that every morning. I, um, I read, uh, relentless
02:27:55by Tim Grover. And it was basically the first book that I think gave me permission to use called the
02:27:59dark side to get things done. And I'd be like, I would say now I don't necessarily operate a hundred
02:28:04percent from that same perspective, but it was what I needed at the time. And.
02:28:09I called a friend of mine. His name was Victor. He was considering quitting his job too. And so every
02:28:13night we basically just like planned and schemed of how we're going to, our exit plan of how we were
02:28:18going to, we just mentally masturbated to the idea of like what freedom would be like if we actually left.
02:28:23And I would have this, I, you know, I had to have an early Bluetooth thing, which is a piece of
02:28:27now. Um, and I remember I had this cowhide carpet in my apartment that I got from Ikea that the path
02:28:34that I would walk on while he and I would talk started getting treaded. Um, so there's this line
02:28:37in the middle of where I would pace and, and the, and so the things that, that, and I, and I, and I
02:28:47would have the lunch with my dad, the like, Hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna quit my job and do my own thing.
02:28:52I didn't have that lunch one time. I had that lunch many times. And each time he would reasonably
02:28:57talk me off the cliff and say, listen, this is the boring chapter. You're just gonna do your few
02:29:02years and then you're gonna go to business school. And like, this is the plan. Um, and so it was very
02:29:07clear that I was following a path that was trod upon. And to be fair, my dad absolutely did what
02:29:11he believed was best. And I think his intentions are perfect. Um, and so all of these things were
02:29:18happening with me for me during that period of time. And I just remember having read as many self
02:29:25books as I could, you know, get my hands on. And then I looked around my room and apartment and
02:29:29realized that my life hadn't changed at all. And that was when I Googled online and decided that
02:29:38I was going to start a business. I narrowed it down to three. And then one guy got back to me who had a
02:29:43gym. And even then when I had my first conversation with him, I was like, I really want to start a gym.
02:29:50He's like, so you don't have a gym. I was like, no. He was like, okay, well, basically, uh, you're
02:29:54gonna need to like do something before I can help you. And it's just, you need to make a serious
02:29:59commitment, make a decision. So I, I thought about this for a while. And then, um, a few weeks later,
02:30:05I texted him. I said like, I'm ready. And so I called him back up again and he's like, well,
02:30:09okay, great. So you have a lease. What's the, you know, what's the, you know, it's just like,
02:30:13oh, oh no, no, no, I don't have that. And he was, and he was disgusted. And he was like,
02:30:16lose my number, dude. Like, and he was disgusted by how little I had done in that meantime.
02:30:24And so all of these things happened. It wasn't one of them. And so as much as I could say, like,
02:30:28I just read this one book and my life changed. Like sometimes you have to hear it a hundred times
02:30:33before it either sinks in or there's enough negative or enough positive or both.
02:30:39That it gets you over whatever perceived threshold of action that you have.
02:30:42And so it was only when all of those things happened and I came to the realization.
02:30:48And I also applied to business school. Cause I was like, what do I do in the meantime? So I
02:30:51was doing four hours of GMAT, uh, problems every day because I, I was still violent then. Um,
02:30:57so that I could ace the GMAT and then I got above Harvard's mid score. And then I was starting,
02:31:01I was doing all the applications cause it's something else that you can do that you can
02:31:03procrastinate with. And so I did all the applications into business school. And one of the questions
02:31:08that came up was how will a Harvard MBA or Booth MBA, I can't remember, help your short and long-term
02:31:14goals. And I remember belaboring over this, this question for three days and I answered all the
02:31:19other questions and I was thinking about it and I was like, I don't think it is going to help my
02:31:23long-term goals because I looked at the math of like, okay, this can cost me $120,000. This is at
02:31:28the time. Um, and I won't be able to make money for two years. So I'm going to stop making money and
02:31:32it's going to cost me 120. And then the starting salary was 120 or like average starting salary
02:31:37post business school. And so I thought to myself, could I take two years, $120,000. And within that
02:31:45period of time, believe that I could get to the point where I could make $10,000 a month, but I
02:31:48would own a business rather than having a job to then maybe someday own a business. And I believed
02:31:53that that bet felt reasonable. And so even then you're like, okay, so that's when he quit and did
02:31:58it. No. And it was all of those things. And then finally the realization that I, that it was never
02:32:06going to get easier. And so then the fear that I was never going to start the business that I said I
02:32:11wanted to someday start. The fact that, that, that I actually had an exploding offer from life,
02:32:17which is that it was only going to get harder. And that I realized how hard it had been for me to
02:32:22that point to still not have made a decision. And it was the fear that I was never going to make it,
02:32:26which compelled me to make it. And that's what got me to pack all my shit, drive my car halfway across
02:32:33the country. And then, then, and only then call everyone and tell them that I had left so they
02:32:37couldn't talk me out of it. And so if anyone is like, man, the so decisive Hermosi or whatever,
02:32:43like it took a Herculean effort and to, to suspend a shitload of doubt and risk aversion.
02:32:51And also in terms of when I talk about this stuff with caring about what other people thought,
02:32:55I cared so much about what other people thought that I, I knew that I cared so much about what
02:33:01other people thought that I wasn't even willing to hear them because I knew if I did hear them,
02:33:04they would talk me out of it. That's how fragile your conviction was.
02:33:08That one sentence from the wrong person moving you back in that past direction would have pulled you.
02:33:14I needed to physically create so much space that even if they had talked me out of it,
02:33:20it would still take me a day and a half to drive back. And so the reason I think you read one of
02:33:25the quotes earlier, like, if you want to change your life, change your environment is so powerful,
02:33:30is that your environment as it currently stands right now, the combination of where you live,
02:33:36where your friends are, the routines that you have, the places you go,
02:33:39have created loops of behavior for you. And so the best way to change what you're doing is change
02:33:45the entire environment. Like there's the, the Vietnam war vets. They did this research study.
02:33:49You probably heard of it, but, um, all these guys did heroin when they were in Vietnam. It was like
02:33:5325%. It was a gigantic percentage. And then weirdly when they came, I think clear talks about this
02:33:58in his book, uh, when they came back, uh, only 10% of the heroin users, uh, relapsed into heroin only.
02:34:06I mean, but still it's, it's small compared to heroin. Yes. The success rate of, or the failure rate
02:34:11of rehab institutions, like 78%. So it had a eight X, you know, a difference in, in, in relapse rate,
02:34:20but there wasn't even rehab that happened. The only thing that happened was that every single
02:34:25environmental queue was changed. And so if you are having trouble getting out of your current condition,
02:34:31then get out of your current condition, move, go to a different city. Even if you can't move to a
02:34:37different city, move across town, move 30 minutes away, train at a different gym, go to a different
02:34:41coffee shop to work. Yeah. Make different friends for the short period. And realistically, you probably
02:34:45won't make different friends, but just stop hanging out with the friends you got for period. And if you
02:34:49decide that once you've gone through that session, that series, that chapter, you still want to be
02:34:53friends. If they are really your friends, they will welcome you back with open arms.
02:34:56If they only were friends with that version of you, then that's not the version of you that you want
02:34:59to be. And that's not what you want to go back to anyways. And so that was one of the trades that
02:35:06you made to become who you wanted to be. It's crazy that we think we can change our thinking
02:35:10environment whilst keeping our external environment, the exact same. And we're going to just continue to
02:35:15use, I don't know what type of effort we think it is that we're applying to our own brain whilst
02:35:23experiencing the same cues and stimulus, but hoping that our thinking is going to adapt.
02:35:28You have to change to change. And it sounds so odd. Does that sound like a trite truism or whatever?
02:35:35Like cliche. Yeah.
02:35:37If nothing has changed, nothing will change. And so you have to be like, something has to be the
02:35:43catalyst. And you were the only, like either you get in a car accident, your girlfriend breaks up
02:35:46with you. You can use the negative, at least like, if you are not happy with your life and then
02:35:51something bad happens to you, be grateful for it in the moment because it means that you, a change,
02:35:56a chaos variable has entered the building. And that means that you have the ability for a short period
02:36:01of time before equilibrium gets reestablished that you can change shit without the same consequences
02:36:05because all your loops got muddled. And so like, those are the periods of time where you can go through
02:36:10tremendous change because you're like, well, fuck it. Everything that I thought to be true isn't.
02:36:14So what else, uh, that I think was false, but isn't, and then you can start moving towards it.
02:36:20Came across this line from beauty of sass. It is an unwritten rule of life that after every
02:36:24prolonged period of hardship and uncertainty, there is going to be a period where you achieve
02:36:28quantum leaps across multiple areas of your life. The only requirement is that you do not give up on
02:36:33yourself.
02:36:40Failure and success are on the same road. It's just that failure isn't
02:36:44earlier exit.
02:36:49What's that one about, uh, whatever you do, don't be the guy who gives up at the exact
02:36:53moment when you should be fighting with everything you have. You'll make it through either way,
02:36:58but there's only one way you'll look back and be proud of yourself.
02:37:03Like this is the meta frame of the story that we one day tell. Like we tell stories of who, of what type
02:37:08of person we are all day long when we're confronted with different decisions, what type of person am I?
02:37:14And I would like to be known to myself as a fighter is that I'm willing to fight for what I want and
02:37:23for what I believe in. And I think that not as why I think I would want to have courage to be the one
02:37:29thing that is transferred. And I think it's because I'm going to go back to that season because I think
02:37:34it's relevant. Like I, I was a really good student at Vanderbilt. I was vice president of the
02:37:47powerlifting team. I was president of the fraternity that I was in. I had a three, eight, I think GPA.
02:37:53Um, and I graduated in three years, but I was so afraid of not getting a job that I took the first
02:38:00job that I was offered from the first person, which was an introduction my dad had from a patient of his.
02:38:06And to be clear, so we were like, oh, it was a, it was an epithetism. It wasn't a great job,
02:38:11but I was so afraid that I would be jobless that I just took that job. And I only say this to say that,
02:38:17like, you can change your stars. Like I was not the type of person who, who does the types of things
02:38:30that I do now then. And I, I, I retell those stories. I don't talk about, talk about them as much
02:38:42because, um, honestly, I blocked most of them out because I was in so much pain during that period
02:38:47of my life. And the reason that I'm willing to keep making content and write books and all that
02:38:53stuff, um, is because I know that there is a, another person who is going through a similar chapter
02:39:01and worried if they are sane or if it is only them and it is not. And so like,
02:39:10you can't compare yourself to people who are different chapters. You just have to believe
02:39:14that you can change incrementally one behavior at a time over an extended period of time,
02:39:20and that those changes will aggregate, that they will stack up. Um,
02:39:26because like, we don't know what the last chapter is going to look like. We only know what the next
02:39:29page does and we get to write that today. And like, I was, I was so driven by fear. I was so,
02:39:39I was so afraid of everything, um, during that chapter. And so it was like other people's opinions.
02:39:47What if I fail? What if this doesn't work out? What if people make fun of me? Like I had all this,
02:39:52this fear around it and like the emotionality that I have now towards it is because of the,
02:39:57the, a mix of, of pity and pride that I have for that young man, the young Alex that was going
02:40:08through that because I'm proud that I made, made it through that. But I also pity the amount of pain
02:40:15that I was going through, um, to, to, to make that jump. And so I don't, I don't know who's listening,
02:40:23but like fear can be useful if you know that you were driven by fear to some degree. And in some
02:40:33ways it's almost shameful to say it because it was the reason that that the word that I never want to
02:40:39have used described for me is cowardly is because I behaved like a coward. I was afraid of everything.
02:40:45I was afraid of failing. I was afraid of my dad's judgment. I was afraid of, of everything. And I,
02:40:53the, the flip that made it for me was just using that fear against something bigger was that I was
02:41:00more afraid of not, of, of looking back on my life and never having tried. And I knew that that would
02:41:07be so empty and I would be so filled with regret and that I knew that I would beat myself up over it
02:41:14every single day as I got older, that that existence was, was more terrifying to me
02:41:22than the practical consequences of me taking a step where I would fail. And it sounds,
02:41:29it's very easy for me to say now to you or anyone who's listening, like, of course,
02:41:33the downside's not that big, go to sleep on a friend's couch, whatever. But at the time for me,
02:41:39it was everything. And it was all of the status that I had spent all of my time trying to accumulate.
02:41:45I was president of this, president of that. I'd done all the good grades. I had a good job on paper.
02:41:48Um, and so whatever fuel you have, whether it's anger, whether it's shame, whether it's fear,
02:41:57even if you have all of them, like if you know, you have them, try and put them behind you to,
02:42:06to get you to run away from it. If it's right now, it's in front of you and it's, it's preventing you
02:42:11from taking the next step. And so it's like, if you can just put it behind you so that you're running
02:42:14away from this, this future, it's like run harder away from the future that your current path is
02:42:22taking towards that you're afraid of, then the short-term path that running away from it is going
02:42:27to run you into. It's like, you either have to be, you know, uh, it's like, um, um, I'm taking some
02:42:34liberties here. Um, it's like, you can either fear the whip of the person behind you or the enemy in
02:42:41front of you and the direction you face is the one that you fear the least. And so if you know that
02:42:48there's an enemy in front of you and a whip behind you, it's like, you just need to, in the short term,
02:42:52increase the pain of the one that you want least.
02:42:56Have you seen succession?
02:42:59Uh, the first season.
02:43:00Okay.
02:43:01So I don't watch it because it's too real for me. So it's, it keeps me up. And like, I get,
02:43:06I get too like amped when I watch it because I like it, but I'm like, I can't do this before bed.
02:43:10So I need like vampires and like.
02:43:16In the final season, Tom is having a conversation with his wife and he says,
02:43:23I wonder if the pain that I would feel without you
02:43:29would be less than the pain that I feel by being with you.
02:43:32Hmm.
02:43:37And that seems to be what you're talking about here.
02:43:39It's a hundred percent that.
02:43:40And I, you talk in retrospect about that period, about what that guy went through.
02:43:45It doesn't sound like pity to me. It sounds like grief.
02:43:48It sounds much closer to grief. Like somebody
02:43:51nearly died or did die or suffered a lot and didn't deserve it.
02:43:54Oh, I think that person totally died.
02:43:57Like the, I don't want to say the man I was, the boy that I was totally died. And I think,
02:44:02I mean, the hardest, the hardest loss that I had to take was the,
02:44:05the boy that I was in my father's eyes that was living up to his expectations, which is all that I
02:44:10wanted. And so sacrificing that. And it took years and my dad and I are cool. We're great.
02:44:17But like for a, for a season, that's what I, I had to sacrifice that person. And it was,
02:44:23all I had wanted was to make him happy. And so, and again, no fault of his own, but that is all I
02:44:30wanted. And so it's like, I had a tree, I had achieved the dreams that I had as a younger man.
02:44:35And in so doing, it had become my nightmare. And that's why the third point that, that you read
02:44:42about no one is coming to save you. Everything is your fault. And you have to sacrifice who you are
02:44:47for who you want to become. Um, I think it's so real for me is that you do. And like, like someone's
02:44:54dreams will die. It is yours or theirs. So you just want to make sure that the person who is dreaming
02:45:01for you has bigger dreams for life than you do. And sometimes well-intentioned people
02:45:07because they want to be practical and they want to be realistic, have smaller dreams for you than you
02:45:11do. And if they have smaller dreams, then you should listen to you and not them.
02:45:18Obviously your dad built a story about what success looks like.
02:45:21Yeah.
02:45:21And you rejected it slowly, but loudly. Now that you're about to have a child,
02:45:30what story are you going to tell that kid?
02:45:31Of that period or?
02:45:34No, this story about what success looks like. Like how, how certain are you that the story
02:45:42that you tell your son isn't just a new version of the same cage that you had to break out of?
02:45:48It's something that I think a lot about. Um, how do I, you know, the, the child is going to be born into,
02:45:56by the time he has memory, he will be the son of a billionaire. That's, that's a lot. Um,
02:46:07and in some ways I like, don't wish that on anyone, but I'm, and yet I'm bringing someone into that,
02:46:13um, which has its own thought circles. I won't get into, um, but I am going to focus him
02:46:22to the degree that I can influence his behavior, um, on, on being courageous,
02:46:33on leaving nothing on the field. I will care endlessly about his effort and very little about
02:46:43the outcomes, assuming he controlled the controllables and I will hold an incredibly high standard.
02:46:54And it is because I respect him and believe in him and that he has the potential to achieve it.
02:47:01And what's been very difficult for me, cause I haven't, I haven't fully defined this and maybe I
02:47:06will by the time he's born or by the time he's a little older is, is I've had trouble trying to
02:47:10define what a successful parent looks like and what a successful child look like. Because if we decide,
02:47:16if we define a successful parent by the output of the child, there's a whole hell of a lot of people
02:47:21that have had pretty tough parents that have turned out really good. But then does that mean that the
02:47:25parents are good or bad? I don't know. Um, and the successful child is the successful child that
02:47:32he is happy. I tend to reject that, that definition overall. Is it that he has purpose? I'd probably
02:47:39prefer that. Um, cause I think happiness can be fleeting. Purpose tends to stick a little longer.
02:47:45Um, but at the very end of the day, I think, um, character, which I still just define as just huge
02:47:51sets of behaviors. Um, I want him to be brave and I want him to try his ass off. And if he does that,
02:48:04well, no matter what, he will be good enough for me, but, uh, I will just more so make the commitment
02:48:11that given all the resources that I have, both mental and, and financial, um, I will do the best
02:48:17I can with what I have, um, to give him the maximum possibility of achieving what he wants.
02:48:22Have you been thinking about life differently for yourself with the prospect of a kid on the way?
02:48:27Not really. Um, that might surprise some people, but like, first off, I'm not pregnant. And so I
02:48:31don't believe in the, we are pregnant. Uh, I do not have a baby inside of my stomach. Uh, and so,
02:48:36um, no, I haven't, uh, my behavior hasn't really changed because my conditions haven't really changed.
02:48:41Um, I suspect that when, you know, the child comes, I will, I will change accordingly. And I think that
02:48:47it's, this is one of those, I would say like, uh, internet straw mans of like, well, just wait till,
02:48:52wait till the kid comes. I'll be like, yeah. And then I'll change. There'll be a new condition. So
02:48:56I'll change to that. It's just like, well, what if you change your mind, then I'll change what I'm
02:49:00doing. You know, it's just like, this has worked for me so far and I'll probably take the things that
02:49:04will continue to work and I'll probably adjust others. I don't think that having children in any way
02:49:08is going to get in the way of the goals that I have. Um, and my, my, my proof points are that the,
02:49:13you know, wealthiest, most successful business people in the world almost all have children.
02:49:17And so like, I see that as pretty strong proof that it's not something that, that prevents you
02:49:23from achieving, you know, business success. And to be clear, business success for me is more so that
02:49:26like, I want to leave everything I have on the field. And if that results in growth, then great.
02:49:30If I have many seasons of hardship ahead of me, which I'm sure I do and moments of plateaus
02:49:36and stagnation and things like that, until I figure out whatever the next thing I have to do
02:49:38is or the next person I need to become, or, you know, sets a behavior that I have to do,
02:49:41then that's, that's the game. That's, that's what I, I signed up for that. I chose this.
02:49:45Um, but I also know exactly what I chose this, what I traded this for, which was the, the young boy,
02:49:53uh, and that life. And I would happily make that trade a hundred times over. And so I, in no way
02:49:59say that my life is perfect or anything far, far from it, but it is the life I chose and I am okay with that.
02:50:05You talked about changing your environment, often changing your desired outcomes.
02:50:12It's going to be about as big of an environment change as you've had in, uh, a decade more.
02:50:17Yeah. Yeah.
02:50:20I'm sure it will change me. And I, what would be the most surprising outcome?
02:50:27I think the most surprising outcome is that I don't change at all.
02:50:30Right. I actually think the second most surprising outcome.
02:50:34Um, I'll, I'll, I'll say the, the outcome that might surprise other people the most is that I
02:50:40think there's a very real chance of a reality where like I work significantly less than I do now.
02:50:45Um, because I prefer hanging out with the kid than I do working. And if I do, then that's what I will do.
02:50:50Is that a pathway of satisfaction that hasn't necessarily been
02:50:57front and center of your life for quite a while?
02:51:00Uh, basically being willing to enjoy a moment for the sake of the moment and nothing else.
02:51:04Um, it's a less instrumental view.
02:51:05Yeah.
02:51:06A lot of your life and mine as well is very instrumental.
02:51:09Yeah.
02:51:10I will do it because I will do it because not, I will do it.
02:51:13Yeah. Also because I enjoy it.
02:51:16But there's only one more step.
02:51:17Yeah. Um,
02:51:21yes. And I think it's just because it's in accordance with values that I have.
02:51:23Like I want to be a good father. And so I deem that a label that I would like to live up to.
02:51:27And so I'm willing to make some trades.
02:51:30And I think that's, I will, I will be making trades in the future and I will try to make
02:51:35the trades the best I can.
02:51:36Interesting that after a decade and a half, a couple of decades of
02:51:41contorting yourself into this very specific type of engine or a sort of, a sort of monster that sucks
02:51:46in challenges and spits out completed tasks that to most people, holidays sound like leisure,
02:51:55but to a certain category of people, holidays feel like work because they need to let go of the
02:52:00routine and pathway that they've sort of constructed themselves into,
02:52:05that there might be a lot of work required in order to be able to co-sleep with your
02:52:10kid at three in the afternoon with it laying on your chest, reading fiction or not,
02:52:15just lying, staring at the ceiling, thinking this is cool.
02:52:18Huh. That should be naturally, biologically, hormonally, energy expenditurely, relatively seamless to do.
02:52:31And yet there's potentially going to be a ton of areas for growth in you there.
02:52:37Yeah. I'm sure. I'm sure that it will be a new challenge and I will dedicate my effort to
02:52:47succeeding at it the same way I do other challenges. And I'm sure I will be uncomfortable as I have been
02:52:54with other challenges. And I will try and meet that discomfort with action and let myself get used to a
02:53:01new reality. And I will do my best to enjoy it every second of it because, I mean, I do look a lot at
02:53:10older guys who have kids. And one of the really fun ones to look at is people who have second families.
02:53:15So they kind of like do first run, first wife, kids, whatever, and then take 10-
02:53:20Exited the first business. How does he run the second one?
02:53:22Yeah, kind of. And so what's interesting is I've, I've tried to observe what those guys do differently
02:53:27and almost to a man, they'll say, I should have spent more time with the kid. And like, and it's,
02:53:33it's one thing to say that you, you, you should have. It's something very different to see them do it
02:53:40the second time around. Now there's the obvious of like, well, easy for them to say because they
02:53:45built the empire the first time. And so like, they get a do over.
02:53:48That was collateral damage and getting to the point where they're sufficiently satisfied.
02:53:52I, thankfully, knock on wood, whatever you want to do. Um, I, I built what I needed to build to
02:53:59feel like I had a sufficient platform to provide for a child, um, in all manners, both like my time
02:54:07flexibility. I work because I choose to, but like, I have the flexibility and we can not work, whatever,
02:54:12and the kid can have whatever. The side effect of you working to, whether you chose to or not,
02:54:17is a degree of material comfort and taking off of the accomplishments that closes the loops around
02:54:22them. I think that, um, if I can live this season, trying to steal as many chapters from
02:54:30people's second, second go, I'll see that as a good idea. And, um, I'll basically use that off of
02:54:39modeling. Like I'm just looking at what good things seems to happen for them. I'm going to try it, try
02:54:43that and I'll adjust as we go, but I'll probably use that as my base case baseline and then, and then
02:54:49I'll, I'll, I'll figure it, we'll figure it out together. Yeah.
02:54:51Well, I, uh, I have a little, have a little, ah, something.
02:54:56Ah, wisdom pending. Yeah. Loading. Yeah. Loading competence. Yeah. It's very important that the
02:55:04baby's got good much. So it's all about the merge. Yeah. That's right. Uh, this, uh, this spot on him is,
02:55:11is, uh, we have a retail price for the ad space. So I'll, uh, I'll let you know.
02:55:14Okay. That's cool. I imagine. I, I assumed it would just be acquisition.com, but front end of
02:55:20the funnel, front side of the baby. Yeah. He'll be like a NASCAR driver with all the sponsors.
02:55:25Everything everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, if you're going to chase a dream, go all in. If you're going to
02:55:30love, love fiercely. If you're going to walk away, never look back. So many people never even give
02:55:36themselves a fighting chance because they never fully commit. If you're going to go,
02:55:40go all the way. Dot, dot, dot. No half measures.
02:55:45I was about to say no half measures. Um, I was like, no, no, who wrote that? Um,
02:55:52you think so many solutions are, um, aren't fully committed to. And as a result, they don't actually
02:55:57work. And then we think, oh, this, this path was wrong. This business was a bad idea. I should have
02:56:00started making content. Um, when it never had a fighting chance because we didn't even do close
02:56:06to the amount of volume that would be sufficient for it to work and not for nearly the duration
02:56:10that, um, would be required. And so it's like people to do enough for long enough to get anything
02:56:16to work. And I think the biggest issue there is because we expect our dreams to be accomplished
02:56:20faster and easier and risk-free when it will be hard, take a long time and we will sacrifice more
02:56:27things than we expected. And I think one of the hardest parts about, um, accomplishing big things
02:56:32is that the cost is unknown. So even though it is more than you, uh, you know, you're giving up some
02:56:36stuff, but you still don't even know everything that you're going to give up. It's like running a
02:56:39race and not knowing how long it is. I don't know where the finish line is. Yeah. And what's,
02:56:44what's fascinating about that is that like, if you know where the finish line is, you can usually
02:56:47handle just about anything. Um, it's the, yeah, that's the re the main reason. Yeah,
02:56:52you can order a cab from anywhere and you don't need to work out the local taxi number and stuff.
02:56:55The main reason why it works is you know how far away the car is. I know how long this wait is.
02:57:00Remember in the before times, just ring a cab and it would just arrive at some point. Yeah.
02:57:08I think, uh, Rory Sutherland had the thing about the, uh, I think the channel, uh, this is your
02:57:12people's thing, but you could see that people complained about how long it took and they could
02:57:19either build another channel, which would cost billions of dollars, or they could do what they did,
02:57:23which was just tell you how long you had to wait. And it like solved all the concerns.
02:57:26Right. It was, um, Heathrow airport. Yeah. Uh, terminal five, if anyone's ever taken a connecting
02:57:33flight inside of terminal five, it's mad how many times I've done that. And it's always the same
02:57:38fucking escalator. I don't know whether it's cause I'd fly the same routes or if that's just the one
02:57:41funnel to go up through internal security for the second time to briefly enter England before you then fly
02:57:47back out without actually being able to leave. And people were complaining about the fact that it was
02:57:52taking too long to get through security and classic engineer problem. They decided we're going to get
02:57:59new detectors and we're going to speed up the conveyor belt. And we're going to have an S
02:58:03shaped cueing system, which will spread people out into more fingers so that the security checking
02:58:08people can get them through and more expeditious, just millions, hundreds of millions of dollars in
02:58:14reoperating costs. And Rory and his team were like, let's, there might be, there might be a cheaper
02:58:19solution. And they fixed it by just putting wait time posters, 15 minutes from here, 20 minutes from
02:58:27here, 25 minutes from here. And the wait time was always five minutes longer than the amount of time it
02:58:32took together. Moving fast, but it's moving. Yeah. Dude, we, they said it was going to be 25.
02:58:36We got in 17. Yeah. We got a bit of a bonus. Got some good time. Yeah, dude. That's why,
02:58:40that's why his book's called Alchemy, right? Behavioral science applied well is kind of like magic.
02:58:44Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, the no half measures thing, dude, like
02:58:52so much of the pain that people feel when it comes to decisions is in the indecision,
02:58:59even in making the decision to the uncertainty when they do it. And this is what common
02:59:06optionality focused advice is, well, if the decision's reversible, then it doesn't really
02:59:14matter so much, but you should treat reversible decisions still as if they're irreversible.
02:59:19And this is Brian, David Epstein's new work, which is people are much happier with irreversible
02:59:27decisions than with reversible ones. For instance, if every jeans store that you went into did not allow
02:59:35returns or exchanges, you would be happier with your jeans, even if you wanted to exchange them or
02:59:40return them. It's like the kid store. You can't return the kid. So most people are very happy with
02:59:46their kids. This is just like, you can't, yeah. I mean, you can't, you can't really go back. And so it
02:59:51makes it's way less cognitive effort to justify and rationalize that it was a good idea.
02:59:55So I am an investor and a huge advocate of embryo selection through IVF and Herocyte,
03:00:04which is the company in the world that's best for this, have just an endless list of philosophical
03:00:11justifications, medical justifications, biological justifications, humanitarian justifications. And I
03:00:18think that if you agree that trying to avoid disease is good, it scales all the way up to trying to
03:00:23increase robustness, which is pretty much any trait that you care to care about. The thing that I'm
03:00:28still yet to hear a compelling case in argument against is buyer's remorse. Because if you have chosen
03:00:39this particular embryo out of a list of 10, because this one had the particular diagnostic criteria and
03:00:45dashboard that you like to look up now, the thing that's weird is this is already happening by doctors
03:00:51because they look through the scope of the microscope and they go, that one looks healthy round. That
03:00:56one's it's ABC, right? You don't want the C's, B's probably not. You've got three A's, two A's in
03:01:01there. Let's try and implant this. One doesn't take one, whatever. So this was already being done and
03:01:05eyeballed by the doctor, but even that wasn't your decision. So you can maybe be angry at the doctor,
03:01:10but it's like, Hey, look, we just took the advice of a professional here. We decided to do the thing.
03:01:13That is the one element that I wonder whether when this becomes more widespread, whether we're going
03:01:21to see just a little tweak. I don't think so. Okay. Just because I don't think the, the like,
03:01:27cause it, I think it would be more akin to, um, you go to the jean store and they show you, uh,
03:01:33maybe like a thread on a, uh, a thing and maybe a dye. And then, but the jeans that you get,
03:01:41you still can't return. And so it's, it's so far from the final product. If they had,
03:01:45if you had six kids and you could only pick one and they were fully you and you could talk to them
03:01:49and then you're like, but you can't go back. I think people might have more buyers.
03:01:52Yeah. With the full, with the full. Yeah. Yeah. Don't stop trying because it didn't work.
03:01:59It never works the first time. It takes everyone a different amount of time to realize everyone is
03:02:05just thinking about themselves. No one's watching and you should have just done whatever the fuck
03:02:09you wanted to all along. Yeah. Look at old people, like old people have it figured out there. I mean,
03:02:20my, I did. So my, my debt, my, my, my father's father died before I was, you know, able to function.
03:02:27Um, but my dad has called a father figure who functioned as a grandfather on, on that side. And
03:02:35one of the things that I always admired about him was that he literally didn't have time for
03:02:39this. He's like, I've got like 10 years. I literally don't have time for this.
03:02:45And so his, his, his give a fuck level was so low, um, that he just, he walked through life
03:02:53unscathed by the worries that weigh down most people. Like, oh, I wonder if I said that, uh,
03:03:01too rudely to that. He was, he was, he was already on to the next thing. He's like,
03:03:04I literally don't have time. That's the youth is wasted on the young thing. Yeah.
03:03:09But it's, it's one of those, like you, I, it was so funny you brought that up.
03:03:16I don't know if youth is wasted on the young. I think, um, you just have call it peak cognition
03:03:22and health state, and you don't know anything besides like nothing hurts and everything works.
03:03:26And then you just have a, a slow degradation of everything works and nothing hurts until,
03:03:34and then at the very end, you just, nothing works and everything.
03:03:36Yeah. And everything hurts.
03:03:41Yeah. And I think that's just it.
03:03:44there's definitely a, uh, uh, unique value in
03:03:53the future is long and broad that has a quality all of its own that is only available to people that
03:03:59are young, right? That is not nothing. And it does not just exist inside of your head. You're able to
03:04:05make a materially different type of plan when there is a long amount of time in front of you than when
03:04:11there is a short amount of time in front of you. Assuming you don't die or something else happens.
03:04:14Of course. Or the probability distribution of you being able to fulfill these plans is different.
03:04:20And, uh, this is, uh, Bill Perkins thing about it's not memory dividend, but it's, you can only do
03:04:25certain things at certain periods of life. A really great concept. Yeah. That, uh, going downhill
03:04:31skiing at 80 is unlikely with your knees. I think he told me he's fifties and he said, um, he got offered
03:04:41the opportunity to go wake boarding, wake surfs a lot. We got the opportunity to go wake boarding,
03:04:47uh, a year ago, a couple of years ago, and he didn't want to go. He was tired or something.
03:04:52And then he realized, thought, this is probably one of the last times I'm ever going to be able to go
03:04:59wake boarding. I don't think I'm ever going to be able to do this again. And, um, he did. And that,
03:05:06that very well might be it. There are certain things that you can only do at certain times. And I think
03:05:11what we're trying to do, and it's interesting about that cliche line, you know, unteachable lessons,
03:05:18uh, we, we choose to learn the hard lessons, the hard way. And what we're all trying to do is get
03:05:24as many cliches into our experience in order to be able to skip over the most well-known pitfalls of
03:05:32the ages ourselves. Like we're trying, we know that it's coming. We know it's going to happen.
03:05:38For some reason we refuse to learn by the doing of others. We have to choose. We, we, we decide to do
03:05:43ourselves. We're trying to like pick up, we're trying to imbibe the most commonly held wisdom
03:05:52that is least absorbed by everybody. Money won't make you happy. Fame won't fix your self-worth.
03:05:58You don't love that hot girl. She's just pretty and difficult to get. You should see your parents
03:06:02more. Uh, nothing is as important as you think it is when you're thinking about it. All your worries
03:06:07were a waste of time. We're just trying to, the mountain of evidence and exposure is greatest
03:06:16and our ability to, it's like a, it's a, some sort of macronutrient, which is unbelievably pervasive
03:06:22and unbelievably hard to absorb. Like you can ingest tons and tons of it, but for some reason,
03:06:27and what we're trying to do is find the enzyme or the particular way to cook this thing so that we are
03:06:32able to finally absorb it. But yeah, it takes everyone a different amount of time to realize
03:06:40everyone is just thinking about themselves. No one was watching and you should have just done whatever
03:06:43the fuck you wanted to all along. Like that is every old person ever telling you that. And it's just a
03:06:49case of, okay, how quickly can I believe that the people, all of the old people are right? Because
03:06:54it's one of two things is true. Either all old people have arrived at a similar sort of insight,
03:07:01which is that one, or they've all been inducted into some sort of psy-op cult to lie to younger
03:07:10people about the same coordinated false flag in order to get them to do something. I don't know.
03:07:17I think, so each of the isms that you just said to me is a clear behavior loop where there is a super
03:07:24strong short-term reinforcer and a very long, long-term one. And so almost all of those are
03:07:32things that you would opt for in the short term. And so until you have a strong thing that tells you
03:07:38that that is wrong, the other magnet is just too strong to resist for the vast majority of people.
03:07:44And I would also imagine that the older folks have a much closer proximity to death,
03:07:49which I mean, when you see one or two people die, it can affect you. When you see like a lot of people
03:07:54die and the good ones and the bad ones and the in-betweens, all of a sudden you're like, wait,
03:07:59because I think like when you go through death or someone close to you dying, I think one of the most
03:08:04jarring pieces of death is how quickly everyone else moves on and how everyone just keeps operating as
03:08:09though that person never existed. And of course there's the like, I always remember, you know,
03:08:14X, Y, Z person. And of course that's fine, but like the world moves on. And I think when you see
03:08:20that happen at times, unless you are completely delusional, you assume that they will, that it will
03:08:24move on from you. And then I think what it does is it creates this huge, this, this gigantic pill of
03:08:29humility that I think older people have, not all older people. Of course, there's, there's odd
03:08:33balls, but like, I think by and large, old people are significantly less competitive. There's less
03:08:39ego. I would say as a, as a class, they're more like, that's a young man's game. Like, I don't,
03:08:46I don't want to basically, they just choose not to play at a lot of the status games and things like
03:08:50that, because they've just seen people with the best status and the worst status. They all die the same
03:08:54and everyone moves on just the same. And so I think they, they shift more to more being present,
03:08:59so they could die soon too. I think that's one of the reasons why seeing somebody who is old
03:09:05playing a game that they should have transcended gives us a sort of a sense of, yeah, like we wince
03:09:10a bit. It's like cringe almost. The businessman who is in his sixties, still attending every high
03:09:17powered conference who already has done the exit as many times as is needed, trying to win the
03:09:23validation of the same group of people who have cycled through a bunch. He never, he never exit. It's
03:09:29like being stuck on the level of a video game whose boss you've defeated and just going back and running
03:09:34it back again, because maybe this time it would be different. Yeah. I think Arthur Brooks talks about
03:09:37this with like, uh, like from strength to strength in that book or like the second, like everyone has
03:09:43to make this leap from first level of fluid intelligence, high energy, high work ethic to
03:09:48at some point you make the second jump and some people don't. And then it just becomes this
03:09:52curmudgeons, these very miserable older people. And it's like, you have to make this leap where you switch
03:09:56the way you work. You're not an old person is not going to beat a young person at being young.
03:10:00Right. And that's, and that's where people, and that's where I think some of that cringeness,
03:10:03and it happens on both sexes, men, you know, men, men, men, and women, uh, the, you know,
03:10:07the six year old woman is trying to pretend like she's 20. It's like, it's, yeah. Yeah. There's
03:10:11something there too. If you're nervous, do more. It's hard to be nervous when you practice the same
03:10:16thing a thousand times in a row. When in doubt, stack reps, anything you start, you will suck at.
03:10:23It will be embarrassing, but you will survive. Then you will realize that looking like a fool
03:10:27lasts a moment. Being one that never started lasts a lifetime.
03:10:30I think people wildly underestimate the value of accumulating significant enough volume that it's
03:10:38no longer something that you have a reaction to. So you desensitize yourself to it. Um, and so like,
03:10:44for example, exposure therapy. And so if you, if you, if you give a speech and you're nervous about the
03:10:48speech, if you do it enough times that you are bored of doing it, that you are sick of the presentation,
03:10:55you're probably ready. And so I, how many times did you do the buck launch?
03:11:01Over a hundred easily, easily over a hundred. Um, it was a lot, but, but by the time that it happened,
03:11:10I was like, I know what the next slide, like I had words on the slides, but I knew what the slide was
03:11:15going to say because my, my word started, started them before the words appeared on the slide. Um,
03:11:21and that is, that has just become my limits test because I, like I said earlier, like I
03:11:27definitely cared a lot about what people thought. And so you can do the very hard work of not caring
03:11:32what people think, or you can do so much work that there's nothing left to control. Like if you've
03:11:38controlled the controllables, then I think at least for me personally, my, my anxiety levels around
03:11:43performance and things like that go down to essentially zero because it's like, I have done
03:11:47this before. And before I did both launches, cause I've had them, I've done two big ones now.
03:11:52The first one that I did, I did at a venue and the, the woman who like kind of ran the whole thing,
03:11:56she's like, she had people going on stages and all the time. And she said something right before I got
03:12:02on stage, she said, you were the most calm out of any person that I have seen. And I just remember
03:12:05looking at her in the moment and I was like, I, I have done this before. And I said it a little bit
03:12:11violently, but I was just like, this is not my first time doing this. Like I will do exactly what
03:12:16I did the last 20 fucking times I did this. And that is all I will come. I will do my job.
03:12:22And I just, that's why I'm a big fan of the Patriots under Belichick. Like, like do your job.
03:12:28Like you cannot control everything, do the things you can control. And it just, it takes so much of the
03:12:34anxiety and the second loops of thinking and third order consequences that you're worried about out of
03:12:38your mind because that is it. And so if you, if there's a lot of stakes, do so much volume that
03:12:45it would be unreasonable that you fail. And then at that point, if you do fail, you will not blame
03:12:49yourself because you're like, I did my part and that's okay. And next time I'll try to control the
03:12:54things that are outside. And the judgment of other people becomes less scary because your likelihood
03:12:58of failure becomes lower overall and less culpable to you in, uh, uh, admission.
03:13:07People think after they fail, they think to themselves like, oh, I should have done this
03:13:10differently. I should have done that differently. It's like, well, think about what you're going to
03:13:13say when you fail and then do that before you fail. And you probably won't fail.
03:13:18That's why I think people feel so aggrieved when something happens that was out of their control
03:13:27when they'd done everything. Because it is going to suck if there is a lightning strike in Vegas and
03:13:32you go, for fuck's sake, dude, I worked so hard. I worked so hard. Everything was done. Yes,
03:13:38it's not your fault, but there's a, it's not that frustration won't come and that you won't be agitated
03:13:42at it. It's a different flavor and it's certainly better than blaming yourself, but it's
03:13:51like, I think about, you know, botched, uh, pediatric surgery, something like that.
03:13:57You know, you've got the kid that had been in the traffic accident to the hospital on time, but that
03:14:04surgeon that particular day just wasn't paying the right amount of attention or whatever happened.
03:14:08And then there's, you know, there's some bad outcome. Fuck, like we did everything. We did
03:14:14everything and we did everything is reassuring, but it, there is a type of lack of control
03:14:24that comes along with that. That must be also very difficult to deal with the same for
03:14:28business launches and everything else. So two fun things there. So one, people don't know this,
03:14:33but the day before the launch, the last one, um, I had someone filed a TRO, which is temporary
03:14:41restraining order to try and prevent me from launching the book. Let's just say an adversary.
03:14:47And the hearing for the, whether I could do the book launch was at four o'clock on Friday
03:14:54for a launch that I'd spent $10 million on and almost two years of my life, plus the other books leading
03:14:59up to this. Right. And so at four o'clock there was going to be a decision. Obviously it was dismissed,
03:15:05but like there was a world where I was not going to be able, there's a parallel universe where I
03:15:11wasn't going to be able to launch the book. What time did you launch the book?
03:15:149:00 AM Saturday, right? Like tight. Did you have to attend the hearing?
03:15:19No, I had my, my, my counsel do it. Um, but what was interesting is that when, like when they,
03:15:24when they told me that we, that it was dismissed and that we had won or whatever, I, um, my honest
03:15:30reaction was like, darn, it would have been a sicker story. Like I swear to God, because I already was
03:15:36like, this book is so good. People want to make it illegal. Like it would have been like the marketing
03:15:40would have written itself. Um, but anyways, I say that, say like one is like, I'm a big believer from
03:15:46a marketer's perspective. You should never waste a crisis. And that means that there's always a story
03:15:50to tell and you're the best person to tell it to. The second one is that, um, especially with a kid
03:15:54coming, uh, I call them like getting kicked in the nuts type problems, which is if, if toddler wakes up
03:16:01and then decides to, you know, if I, let's say I had something that was super valuable and very fragile,
03:16:06finds it and then destroys it. And it's, you know, a year and a half, you know, a year and a half old
03:16:10or two years old in that moment, there is nothing that I can, I can't, there's no screaming. There's
03:16:18no punishing. It doesn't comprehend what's going on. All I would do is condition it to hate me if I
03:16:22were to punish it in that moment. And so I just have to suffer. Like there's, there's nothing to do
03:16:29there. You just suffer and you can try and avoid it and put it elevated serve, of course, control the
03:16:32control, but let's assume that you did that and it still happened. Um, and, but I think there's
03:16:37a certain amount of peace knowing that like you did what you could and shit happens. Like there's
03:16:45just nothing you can do. There's just nothing you can do. And I think in some ways that's very freeing.
03:16:51Like shit happens to everybody.
03:16:52It's interesting how I think about this when I watch people perform, especially people that have
03:17:02become very familiar with their craft. So people leak out who they are in the breaths in between the
03:17:11things that they're doing. Somebody's character is not revealed with how they pick you up on the first
03:17:18date, but it's how they treat the waiter, whether or not they hold the door open for somebody else who
03:17:22goes in. And I think about this when I see performers on stage, the watching a band this year and seeing
03:17:29the drummer who is playing and his stick breaks. And while he's playing the particular beat, he just
03:17:37seamlessly switches this hand, reaches behind him, picks up another one, twirls it twice, and then gets
03:17:41back to it. Now that is something that you have done 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 times. It's got nothing
03:17:48to do with the actual role of playing the drums, not the skill or the talent of playing the drums,
03:17:54but it's the breath in between what he does. And I think about the same here with
03:18:01it's easy for anybody to look composed when things are going well, or even when things are going neutral,
03:18:07but it's very exposing when things go poorly about that character. It's the breath in between the big
03:18:12thing. It's you going, well, what I'm here to do is give the presentation for the book. Okay,
03:18:17well, how do you deal with a TRO the night before? That's the reach behind, can I keep going?
03:18:24I see it as, um, I actually, so to, to, and this is not to pop the bubble of romanticism around,
03:18:30because I do think that's really elegant. Um, it's just how you behave in different conditions.
03:18:35And so if we see personalities, how you behave in the aggregative conditions, it means that you
03:18:39can behave under perfect conditions and you can't behave under imperfect conditions, which means that
03:18:43you need to practice behaving in imperfect conditions so that you can behave the same way.
03:18:46And so again, part of the reason I think of having so much practice,
03:18:49uh, being basically being a proxy for the preparation is that you will have been exposed to so many
03:18:53different conditions that none of them happens when the clicker stops working.
03:18:56Exactly. And I had that happen during one of them. Uh, one of my practices, I had two,
03:19:00the two times I had the clicker stopped working. So I was like, oh, am I gonna do that? Like,
03:19:02it didn't happen when we were live. Um, one of the issues.
03:19:05Had it have happened, you've already run that.
03:19:06Right. We've, we figured that out. I had another run where, um, I had the, the case of the book
03:19:11stuff and then it all fell over. Um, I had, I had, I had one where like I put it there,
03:19:16there were backwards. They were like upside down or whatever. So like on the camera.
03:19:19Tell me about that.
03:19:20So there's, there's, there's all these different
03:19:23permutations that like, it's like, you can, you can, you can decrease the likelihood of failure
03:19:26if you try and get all the failures out before you actually, before it counts.
03:19:29And I think that's like, at least for me, how I approach performance is how do I get all the
03:19:33failures out of the way so that I have the highest likelihood of succeeding, uh, when,
03:19:37when the time that matters counts.
03:19:39I wonder if Elon intended to do that with the cyber truck, how many times have you tried to throw
03:19:43that steel ball at the window of a cyber truck? Presumably not none.
03:19:47Presumably it's happened before. You just get a little bit overexcited with too much adrenaline
03:19:52and launch it with too heavy of an arm. Yeah. You'd be surprised how far you can get
03:19:58by only knowing what you want and not accepting anything else until you get it.
03:20:02So we've talked about commitment and decisions a lot. Um, I find it interesting, like decisions,
03:20:09the, the root of that from Latin is decadere, which is to cut off and commitment is the elimination
03:20:14of alternatives. And so they're almost like, you know, cousin, cousin words in terms of their meaning.
03:20:18Um, but by definition, if you are the most focused person in the world, then you would have nothing
03:20:25but the one thing that you focus on. If you're the most, uh, focused reader in the world, you would
03:20:30only read, you would not drink, you would not sleep, you'd not eat. You'd be the most focused
03:20:33reader in the world. Anything that is not reading is making you less focused. And so if you know what
03:20:38you want, which I think is for many people more difficult because it's not knowing what they want,
03:20:42it's deciding all the things they're willing to give up in order to get what they want,
03:20:45because what you want is what you're willing to sacrifice for, right? And so if we want multiple
03:20:49things, which one of the things that we still want, are we willing to sacrifice for the one
03:20:52that we want more? And I think if you get clear on the thing that you're willing to sacrifice other
03:20:56things for that, you're willing to put all those things on the altar to sacrifice for the one thing
03:21:02life gets to our point earlier about simplicity much easier because you have a singular lens to
03:21:06make all decisions through. Kobe was notorious for like, does this make me a better basketball player?
03:21:11That was it. It just, every decision was filtered through that lens. And so it makes decision
03:21:16making incredibly easy. And so the amount of mental bandwidth that you get back
03:21:22is all of it. Um, but the, the hard part for more people is making the decision that this is what
03:21:28they want. Um, not once you made the decision, stick following through it's the elimination of
03:21:33alternatives, not the continued commitments to the thing, which is none of the alternatives.
03:21:39We talk like there's tons of stuff on products for like switching costs being, you know, horrendous,
03:21:43but I think that what is not talked about enough is basically the cost of switching desires.
03:21:49Like you're, you're switching wants and, and the, the, the amount of time and effort that gets wasted in
03:21:55the loops of making the decision and then yearning for the cost of that decision that you already said
03:22:02was worth it. So one of the things that's been really helpful for me for big life decisions when
03:22:06I have, I would say conflicting priorities, like multiple things that I want is when I make the call,
03:22:11I'll usually write out a document that explains all of the reasoning and it's, and it's an, it's an,
03:22:16it's an, in its totality so that I don't. So one, if I, if I, if I, if I have this moment of doubt
03:22:22again, I revisit it and then I read it again and then it basically closes the loop almost instantly.
03:22:27And so rather than have these endless thought loops, I'll have one or two, I'll reread it.
03:22:31And then it kind of goes away. And this is especially on, on the relational side, if you,
03:22:36let's say you had a breakup or something like that and you're like, or maybe you were the one who did
03:22:39the breakup and you know, you could get them back, but you don't know if it was the right decision,
03:22:41blah, blah, blah. Like writing out every reason that you did it because you forget.
03:22:47And this is the whole point about punishment fades and reward sticks is that in the moment of pain,
03:22:51after she comes back and she's crazy, you have to remind yourself of all the shit of all the things
03:22:56that you know, you will forget. So it's almost like you writing a warning letter to your future
03:23:00self of like, don't forget about this. Remember the time she keyed your car, she did it again,
03:23:04right? Like you have to put all those things down so that when you're in that moment of nostalgia,
03:23:08looking back, you know what, those were the good old ties. You know, she wasn't so bad.
03:23:11Maybe I was being a little bit unreasonable. You can read again. You're like, oh my God,
03:23:14I can't believe. Thank God I made that call. But that way you don't actually have to then
03:23:18waste the next six months re-learning the same mistake again, because you already documented in
03:23:22an artifact. That's called borrowed authority exercises, borrowed authority. But instead of
03:23:28borrowing it from someone else, you're borrowing it from a past version of you. Yeah. I like that.
03:23:32Yeah. Yeah. The, the fading affect bias thing is pretty fascinating. Adam Mastriani says that
03:23:38tragedy plus time equals comedy is the closest thing that exists as a formula in human psychology.
03:23:44tragedy plus time equals comedy. Some stuff that was kind of horrendous in the past over a long
03:23:51enough time horizon becomes neutral or hilarious. And then some stuff sticks about as bad, but even the
03:23:57bad isn't as bad. But yeah, it's a tragedy plus time equals comedy is kind of true. And I think that's
03:24:04one of the reasons why gallows humor that soldiers use when they're away that was talking to this British
03:24:09SAS guy. And he got one of his teammates got friendly fired in the ass, uh, by a misfire from someone's
03:24:17handgun. And they're in the middle of a firefight surrounded by enemy combatants. They're now going
03:24:23to have to get this guy out of there. That guy's not going to be able to fight anymore. They're gonna
03:24:26have to sub someone in for the team. Maybe this means everybody, but everyone just started laughing.
03:24:31It's like, for fuck sake. Everyone laughs. Like I do get the sense that trying to bring forward
03:24:38humor as a tool. How do you think about that? Like serious guy take up a suit, uh, with a, um,
03:24:46an existential level of, of drive. How do you think about the role of humor?
03:24:52So it's funny that you even said serious guy. Cause like, I would say I'm serious on this
03:24:56podcast cause we talk about serious things, but like, um, if you were to talk to my team, like,
03:25:00the recording studio is a not PG zone. It is not like everyone knows there's two places. HR is not
03:25:07allowed. One is where I record. And the second is the gym. And like, there's just no HR allowed.
03:25:12You just got to deal with whatever. Um, but if you were to look at my newsfeed right now,
03:25:16it is entirely standup comedy. And so I'm probably a closeted or not, not like I'm a, I'm a huge standup
03:25:24fan. I it's almost all that I consume. And that's because I think that comedians are modern day
03:25:28philosophers. Um, they point out these apparent truths that we don't want to look at and some
03:25:34comedians, some, and, but what's interesting about comedy specifically is that most of the time
03:25:40they say statements that they would be punished for saying in any other condition than on stage.
03:25:48And so comedy gives this veil of protection, which I think we need to protect, um,
03:25:53for them to say things that like, if you think about comedy, the most basic level for like a human
03:25:58kids can laugh when they see someone do something they should get punished for, but not get punished.
03:26:03So you see road runner gets smashed with a hammer or whatever. Um, and then they laugh,
03:26:07right. Or you see, you know, three stooges like, you know, whatever. And so it's slapstick because
03:26:11that's the level of humor that a child can understand, but it's basically punishment avoided.
03:26:15And so we laugh. And so when somebody goes up there and says something they should get punished
03:26:19for, they should get bonked on the head, but they don't, we laugh. And so I find that like endlessly.
03:26:25I mean, I laugh, um, a lot. So, uh, I don't remember the question was, but yeah,
03:26:30I'm a big fan of comedy. Yeah. It was, uh, what's the role of comedy in
03:26:36manipulating, but using, using, using humor as a tool, I guess in that way, but the ability to dispel this
03:26:44thing feeling serious by laughing at it is kind of magical. It's like the Bogart and Harry Potter.
03:26:52Like how many of my big fears can I just laugh about how funny this will be soon?
03:26:56Uh, and if I can pull, if I think it's going to be funny, eventually, I might as well think
03:27:00it's going to be funny today. That's a great archive poll to think about the Bogart and
03:27:06in Harry Potter, which is how you do it. It's to make it look silly. This is the thing that you
03:27:10are most scared of. And the way that you get it to off
03:27:14is to turn it into something hilarious. I still remember the first time I learned about
03:27:17this. I was probably 11. Um, my friend, um, we were on this road trip and he at 11.
03:27:26Yeah. Well, I was, there were parents who were driving. Yeah. But there's, there's him and his
03:27:30brother, right? Yeah. We were just crushing it, crushing life. And, um, and right before the road
03:27:36trip, he, uh, they had just picked, um, like those, those yellow cherries, whatever those are,
03:27:43you know, the little, they're like cherries, but they're yellow and red, like golden cherry. They
03:27:46look like golden apples, but they're whatever, they're cherries, some sort of cherry. And they
03:27:50just picked them from like the tree that had just gone ripe, whatever. And there was a whole bowl of
03:27:53them and he had all of them. Uh, and then we went in the car to go on this road trip and about an hour
03:28:01into the trip, he's like, I, I, I need to go to the bathroom. And they were like, well, we're not
03:28:06there yet. Like, well, you know, we'll stop at the next bathroom. He's like, no, no. Like I,
03:28:09I really need to go to the bathroom. And so they had to pull over to this like small town that had
03:28:15nothing. And they literally knocked on doors to see if someone would let an 11 year old kid,
03:28:19uh, in. And so there was an old lady who said yes through a window. I couldn't even make this up.
03:28:24And we had to go through this spiral staircase up to her, her flat or whatever, her apartment.
03:28:30And I was behind him. Cause they were like, well, all of you kids are going to go use the bathroom
03:28:34if we're going to stop. Right. And so it's his dad. It's the, it's the old lady, his dad, him,
03:28:40me, and then his younger brother. And then the mom, actually the mom went in the car. But anyways,
03:28:43that was the, that was the lineup I'm looking up. And as we're walking up, I just remember this
03:28:49horrendous smell. And then I was like, oh my God, he's ripping ass. And then I see
03:28:54just a fucking deluge of shit just coming up and drip down his leg and it's on the steps and he's
03:29:02walking through and we're all trying. And it was horrendous. And he's 11. And anyways, he goes,
03:29:09he has to wear his dad's boxers because he shits his pants. Right. So his dad doesn't have boxers.
03:29:13He has his dad's boxers on. And he was so humiliated and he was like, don't fucking joke
03:29:19about it. And, and obviously we're 11. Right. And so, and so his mother, when she saw it,
03:29:28cracks up at this happening, even though he's like super serious about it. And she says,
03:29:33you are going to laugh about this in a few years. Like, this will be a very funny story.
03:29:39And I just remember that she was already there. She like, she was already there. She was already at,
03:29:43this is hilarious. And she was like, it might take you some time, but this is very funny.
03:29:47And I, that was like, that was the time where I learned that was like, your tragedy plus time
03:29:55is comedy. Can, if it becomes that eventually, then you might as well have it now. Of course we
03:30:00have a TRO. Haha. Like how ridiculous is this? Unreal. What a better story it'll be. Cause like,
03:30:06I don't remember anything about that trip besides the fact that he shit his pants.
03:30:09That'll definitely breach the threshold for emotional activation. Yeah. Novelty and intensity are the two
03:30:16things that create emotion that I would create memories. That's definitely one of them that
03:30:19talking of the young people thing, young people don't want to work hard anymore. No,
03:30:25young people don't want to work hard anymore for you. You have to create a company worth working hard
03:30:31for. Yeah. I mean, I just fundamentally reject that humans have somehow changed. Um, I do think that
03:30:38there are going to be preferences that change between, um, uh, what do you call it? Not classes,
03:30:44uh, generations. Thank you generations. Um, but they just work differently, but there, I mean,
03:30:50I see some 15 year olds, 20 year olds that are just as motivated as 15 and 20 year olds. And I see some
03:30:54lazy 15 and 20 year olds that were just as lazy as 15 and 20 year olds that I know. I think it's just
03:30:58convenient more than anything. And typically it's easier for older people to say that we had it harder
03:31:03and you did. So what? And also most generations say, I want to make it better for the next generation.
03:31:09And then when it is better for the next generation, we resent them for it being better and easier,
03:31:13but wasn't that the point? Yeah.
03:31:14And so it's really just like resenting
03:31:15for receiving the gift that we gave them what does creating a company worth working hard for mean?
03:31:28I think it's a combination of the micro environment within the company and then the global reinforcer
03:31:32that the company stands for. And so I see when, when Elon says, uh, we're going to, you know, Mars or
03:31:40more realistically we're saving humanity, which is, I think what most people were bought in, um,
03:31:45on his vision see, um, he's created the most noble cause of all kind that you should a goal big enough
03:31:51that it's worth suffering for. And so people are willing to suffer as long as the price is worth it.
03:31:56We're willing to go through just about anything. And so making the company worth suffering for or worth
03:32:01working hard for is about number one, making sure that where we're going is a place that people feel
03:32:06inspired to work towards, right? I think this is worth doing on the micro it's okay.
03:32:11How can I make the work environment something that people want to come back to?
03:32:15And that a lot has to do with just training leaders and managers in order to
03:32:20make environments that ward off people who suck and encourage people who don't suck.
03:32:25Yeah. If you have a company that continues to get great talent that you should, you can hire people
03:32:31who just weren't right, or we're not going to work hard or weren't going to be bought in.
03:32:34But after a while, especially if you've got enough staff that work for you, if they continue to be
03:32:38demotivated and to not want to work hard, it's a you problem. What, what, what's more likely that
03:32:44all of your exes are assholes who are argumentative or that you're the argumentative
03:32:48asshole because you are the common denominator between all of these different exes.
03:32:51Or them, me and them, there's two, them is the other, right?
03:32:54Yes, yes, yes, yes.
03:32:57No, but so no, to your point in seriousness, um, if we, if we see that as culture, right,
03:33:02which is this big amorphous term, but obviously it's in the business world. So I've defined it,
03:33:04which is, um, the rules that govern reinforcement in organization, right? So what are the if then
03:33:09statements that when someone does this, this happens. And so the culture of any group, not
03:33:13necessarily even a company, but of any team, any, any group of people is going to be, what are all the
03:33:17things that are rewarded? What are all the things that are punished? And then kind of third categories,
03:33:21what are the things that, um, are themselves reinforcing that we permit, but we shouldn't.
03:33:24Right. And so being really clear, and this is why I'm big on defining things in observational terms.
03:33:31So instead of saying, Hey, uh, Susie was lazy, what I said, like Susie doesn't respond to Slack
03:33:35quickly and she showed up late to two meetings. Okay. So that's what she did. Is she lazy? That's
03:33:41a label that doesn't really help anybody. But if I can tell Susie, Hey, people are beginning to
03:33:45describe you as lazy and it's because of these things, I'm assuming you don't want to be described as
03:33:50lazy. Right. Okay. If you just change, do this instead next time. And it just, it just, it cuts
03:33:56out so much of the noise of like this generate. It's like many of the times they don't even know
03:34:02that's what good looked like. No one ever defined success. No one ever defined what the, what the
03:34:07standard was. And so I see that probably the most important job of the leader is to hold the standard
03:34:12is to define what good looks like an observable term so that everyone knows this is success.
03:34:16Therefore failure is also obvious. Right. And then obviously all the downstream
03:34:21implications of that, of how do you model behavior so that other people do it, et cetera.
03:34:23It's very hard to have a vision when you have bills to pay. I saw this old white guy giving
03:34:29financial advice on Tik Tok, getting roasted in the comments, boomer, fake guru, et cetera.
03:34:35The guy was Ray Dalio. That's when I realized there was no amount of success that can legitimize you to
03:34:40the ignorant. If you actually met everyone, you'd realize some people aren't worth being loved by.
03:34:45It's a good thing to be hated by a bad person.
03:34:56Violent agreement. But that, that moment with Ray Dalio was like, it was actually like,
03:35:02there are these moments that you have that change the way you behave. And that was one for me that I
03:35:09don't want to say it was the last nail in the coffin, because I don't think anyone is impervious from
03:35:13outside influences, but it was a significant nail in the coffin of the public opinion for me in terms
03:35:19of content. Because when I, because I think to some degree, maybe I'll just speak for myself.
03:35:27There's always a chase for more legitimacy. Like, am I legit yet? Am I like, do I need to
03:35:32be a billionaire? Have I arrived?
03:35:33Yeah. Do I need to be a billionaire to be legit? Do I need to be a DECA billionaire to be legit? Like,
03:35:37when am I legit? Right. Um, which, which really means when will everyone love me and no one hate me?
03:35:46But when I, and I, when I was writing that, I was thinking to myself like,
03:35:52oh, everyone loved me. Well, I've met a lot of people that I think that if they loved me,
03:35:58I don't think I would like me. I would see that as a compliment.
03:36:01Yeah. And so then it was like, oh, well, this is just, this is a fixed cost.
03:36:08I just would prefer to be liked by the correct people. And I should prefer to be disliked by
03:36:13the incorrect people. In which case, great. Some people didn't like me. That makes sense.
03:36:18I'm not for everyone. Adam Masriani's got the two laws that govern the internet.
03:36:22The internet is a very big place and people have differing opinions.
03:36:26Just when you combine those two things together, it means that some huge portion of people are going
03:36:32to hate you. Yeah. And as you get exposed to more, given that the internet is a very big place,
03:36:37I had a Joe Santagardo on the show. Um, one of the biggest podcasts in the world recently sold out
03:36:43MSG fucking huge sat there. And the first thing that I said to him, I was like, dude, you, they do the
03:36:47same place as we do on Spotify at the same place. They got their award, their, uh, button award.
03:36:53That's literally the same announcement. I got mine. Non-zero and number of fucking plays,
03:36:59right? Worked very hard at it. So Joe, what do you think is the, uh, big podcast just sold out MSG.
03:37:06I do tours too. I podcast. It's like how Venn diagrammy, how much, and he's like, I think it's
03:37:12like the headlights of a fucking Jeep. It's like two big circles. He's 80% women at his live events.
03:37:17It's 90, 95% women for him and his cohost. Hilarious comedian. I've never heard of it.
03:37:23So yeah, being on YouTube, the basement yard, Joe Santagardo, like fucking awesome talent,
03:37:27generational talent at what he does. All of the comments, all of the comments. I like this guy.
03:37:33Who the fuck is he? The internet is a really big place. It's a really, really, really big place.
03:37:40And it's sometimes you can have that, which is wow. Two Venn diagrams come together and they
03:37:45actually mix quite nicely. Other times it's like oil and water. And given the fact that the internet's a
03:37:50big place and lots of people have different tastes, the problem I think is taking feedback from people
03:37:58who you think are your people, but aren't because the difference between, huh, this person is
03:38:04unencumbered and has a type of, uh, unbiased perspective of me that is novel and useful to take,
03:38:13as opposed to people who have seen a lot of me and can frame, maybe I was a bit mean,
03:38:18but they know I've got enough ballast in the system that they give me a pass. Suppose this person that
03:38:22saw me for the first time was like, I think you're a bit rude to that person. Yeah. Fuck. I actually,
03:38:26do you know what? Maybe I was, but the other side being this person just isn't my people.
03:38:33Determining those two from the internet with the disembodied egg profile thing,
03:38:38or everybody, everybody now, especially with how the platforms work,
03:38:43everybody can go viral because it's no longer about followers, which I feel
03:38:48like unbelievably annoyed by that. I was small when followers mattered and now I'm big when just
03:38:54content matters. Like I invested into the market when it was really, really difficult. And now that
03:38:59I'm at the top of the market, it means that it's easy for everybody at the start, whatever,
03:39:04but the same thing. How do you, how do you really feel? Yeah. It's true. It's true. It is. It is.
03:39:09Uh, followers seem to matter an awful lot and meant that you just piss out huge
03:39:12plays because of your subscriber base. And now everybody, but the fact that anybody can go viral,
03:39:17how fantastic it's egalitarian. It means that new creators can come through and I've seen lots of
03:39:21them and I coach lots of them and help them to try and get up. But at the same time, that means that
03:39:25people who aren't creators can go viral. Someone can just yap because they wanted to. I was on this
03:39:31American airlines flight and I can't believe that this thing happened. But you wake up the next day and
03:39:35you're a headline and you go, ah, I don't know if all of these people who don't know who I am are
03:39:41my people or are not. And the feedback is very difficult to discern. Or if they see the 15 seconds,
03:39:45I think there was that lady who had that, she went off on the airline pilot. I don't know anything
03:39:50about it. I literally only know that. I thought you were going to say the one about
03:39:52um, that this is like 10 years old now, the chick that said, uh, I'm heading to Africa. Hope I don't
03:39:58get AIDS. Lol. Just joking. I'm white. Um, and she got, she tweeted it before she got on the plane,
03:40:04got off the plane and her whole life was in flames. Family guy did a bit about this. Brian did it
03:40:09before he got on a plane. So good. And they saw and the world saw
03:40:15however many, less than a hundred, you know, 280 characters, whatever the characters is and took
03:40:19that and then just said, this is, I know everything about who you are. This is everything that you are.
03:40:25Um, and I think that in a nutshell is like why we can't take too much weight for, okay, that they
03:40:29have consumed 280 characters of every character that you've ever said or thought in the history of you.
03:40:35It's like one thing that, um, I think brought to, to argue the complete opposite side of this.
03:40:42Um, I think there's a very powerful question, which is what if they're right?
03:40:45Um, and, and so what? So for example, I get a ton of like juice head gear, steroids, whatever.
03:40:55I said, Jew said.
03:40:59I don't get that one. Um, but, but I get a lot of like steroid related stuff,
03:41:04especially if I don't have, uh, you know, my, my flannel on. Um, and I used to be like really
03:41:09offended by it. And then, uh, Layla was like, you've taken steroids. And I was like,
03:41:15that is a fair point. What if they're right?
03:41:18Yeah. Yeah. And it's just like, and I was like, oh, this makes sense. And then like Layla people,
03:41:23you know, get after her, her, her voice being low. And, uh, it's like, she's like, I took steroids.
03:41:29So yeah, that's how that happens. Anyways, uh, moving on. Yeah.
03:41:36Do you know, Joe Hudson, have you come across him yet? No, he's been on my pod. He's, uh,
03:41:39Sam Altman's coach, head of human culture, performance, something at open AI, like one of
03:41:45only maybe two or three people that deserve the title of master coach and Dr. K being one of them,
03:41:49probably Tony, I guess too. And, uh, his handle on Twitter is F you, Joe Hudson. And I was like,
03:41:57where's the F you from? And it's like, because people say, fuck you, Joe Hudson,
03:42:01because one of my friends a long time ago said, you know what, Joe, you're an asshole.
03:42:05And I thought about it for a while and I realized I am an asshole.
03:42:11So sometimes the things that people say to you just are true. They're just right. And
03:42:17in the fighting against it is where all of the pain is.
03:42:19That's all the pain. Exactly. And then as soon as that, like that happened, I either that comment
03:42:25stopped tapping as much or I stopped seeing it. I don't know which one actually happened, but either
03:42:30way it stopped affecting me. And so like, I mean, I guess it is simply a frame of acceptance of like,
03:42:35what if they're right? Well, maybe they are right. And so what, what does that mean?
03:42:41Oh, but the answer, what works, whether they're right or wrong, which is why, I mean,
03:42:45that's one of your old ones, right? I'm thinking about one of my favorite lines of yours that I keep
03:42:52coming back to this year, the stress of being perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections.
03:42:59Stress of trying to be perfect will kill you more quickly than your imperfections. I think there's a
03:43:04burbling, but pretty rapidly growing anti-optimization cult at the moment.
03:43:09And I think that people are feeling overwhelmed with advice. I think they're uncertain about the
03:43:14future. There's loads of chaos going on. Is AI going to take my job? Is the Iran war going to bleed
03:43:18over here? What's going to happen? Is Trump going to run for a third term? Is there going to be a civil
03:43:22war? There's too much information. I'm overwhelmed with screens. I haven't got good sleep. I'm taking too
03:43:27judgment. And they just want someone to simplify life. You can simplify life by trying to wrangle
03:43:33it down into an aggressive routine. But what that looks like from the outside, a lot of the time is
03:43:36sort of fragility. And this is your America was built on the backs of men who ate bacon for breakfast
03:43:42and smoked cigarettes. If you miss your morning routine today, you'll be fine. The line between
03:43:48this is important for me to improve my mental health in order to create the structure that I need to make
03:43:52progress. And this is a glorified rain dance that I'm doing because I'm superstitious about how things
03:43:59work. I even saw this with Jocko. The first ever episode I did with Jocko, he was in a bit of a
03:44:07terse mood. As a terse man, that was like terse squad. And someone brought it up to him afterward,
03:44:16a couple of months later on Twitter. And he said, I hadn't trained that morning. I was in a bit of a
03:44:20grump. He hadn't been to the gym. And I reflected about that a lot. And I brought it up to him. I
03:44:25spent a few days with him over Christmas. And, uh, I was like, remember when that, yeah. Interesting
03:44:31because training is obviously the structure that you have built a lot of things on and it makes
03:44:38you feel good and it facilitates your performance. But if the removal of the training doesn't allow you
03:44:46to do the thing, there is a kind of fragility that's baked into the system that you want to be
03:44:51able to perform regardless of whether you've got to train or not. And the training builds on top.
03:44:54Does that make sense? A thousand percent. If the, if the routine that you do is additive,
03:45:01great. Then you have baseline performance without it. If the routine creates dependence to do baseline
03:45:09performance, then it becomes a crutch and then you become fragile. And so, yeah, I'm, I would say
03:45:14on this, on the spectrum of routine versus retard maxing, I'm on the retard maxing side of like,
03:45:20just work, um, grab, you know, grab your, grab your, grab your, grab your stimmies and, uh, and, and get to
03:45:26it. And I think it's because my, I think one of my big fears, um, in life was, is, is becoming soft,
03:45:32is allowing, like nothing feels like success is letting the laurels soften me to the game,
03:45:40which is like the reason that I still do like Q and A's with, you know, smaller business owners that are,
03:45:44you know, doing, you know, a few million dollars a year or whatever is that's going to come off weird.
03:45:48But, um, is I have to stay connected to the earth. I have to stay like grounded here. Otherwise
03:45:56I will lose the edge. That is where all the details are one. And so, um, I'm a, I'm a,
03:46:05as a flag for self, if you cannot function without your routine, your routine owns you,
03:46:10you do not own it full stop. If it's just additive great. And that means that if you don't have it,
03:46:18you should still be able to win because one of my big beliefs is
03:46:22whenever someone has an excuse for losing, that's like, well, it wasn't a perfect day for me.
03:46:26It's like, there's this, um, scene in, I think it's Invictus. It's, uh, Matt Damon movie. He's
03:46:32like a rug ball rugby player or whatever with Morgan Freeman, South South Africa. Yeah. And
03:46:37there's this scene where Morgan Freeman is Nelson Mandela and he's talking to Matt Damon.
03:46:42And, uh, I think Matt Damon says something to the degree of, you know, uh, we're, we're not playing
03:46:47at a hundred percent. And I think Morgan Freeman says no one ever is. And it's, it was, it was like,
03:46:53I don't even think it's a quoted part of the movie, but I remember seeing that and being like,
03:46:56fuck, like no one's ever at a hundred percent. It's like saying I can, I can win the, I can win
03:47:02with, if I have perfect weather, perfect conditions, perfect, whatever. And so I think that's why having,
03:47:06trying to get all the failures out so you can try to create or recreate the randomness that imperfect
03:47:11conditions can and still win. And I think that's why I'm such an advocate of, of, uh, of just win.
03:47:19Like, like it doesn't like, it just does. Cause the thing is, is after the game is played,
03:47:24no one remembers whether the ref gave you a bad call or the weather was bad or whether your starting
03:47:29lineup had two entries on it. No one remembers. And so if they're not going to remember it in 20 years,
03:47:35then it shouldn't be a reason that we're going to try and lose today.
03:47:36Hmm. There's a Floyd Mayweather quote where he says, uh, you felt like you were on your A game
03:47:43today. And he says, I ain't got to use my A game, my B game, my C game. I can use my Z game. I don't
03:47:49even have to hit him hard. The result's going to be the same. Uh, the prospect of being able to beat
03:47:53somebody with your C game is really fucking cool. I love it. It's violent.
03:48:00Most people think the hard part is getting started. The hard part is continuing to do the work when the
03:48:04excitement wears off and the grind feels hopeless.
03:48:12The visual that I always think about this is the marathons marathon runners is that people get
03:48:17excited at the very beginning of the marathon where there's all these balloons and their friends and
03:48:21they're like training them on there's music. And then at the end of the marathon is where everyone
03:48:26cheers you on at the end. But the marathon is one in the 26.1 miles between those two tenths of a mile.
03:48:32And it is the boring, unending, relentless, mundane middle. And I think the game is mastering the middle.
03:48:39It's just the, it's just unending, unyielding. And everyone can get motivated for a moment.
03:48:47It's just like people feel motivated, but like motivation is, is incredibly ephemeral,
03:48:52right? It vanishes. And that's why having, creating the conditions that make failure less likely is so
03:48:57important because if we can make successful actions, the most likely actions, success becomes the most
03:49:04likely outcome. And I think that is like, that is the piece that people miss because they actually stack
03:49:11their deck against themselves by never arranging the conditions to make successful actions, the most likely
03:49:16action. It's like, I have to have, like, I have to use perfect willpower to go out with my friends and not
03:49:24drink. I have to, uh, and because of that, I'm going to stay out late, but I can, I'm going to have, I'm
03:49:28going to get home and immediately fall asleep. And, and if I, if I fall asleep perfectly, I'll get up by
03:49:33the time that I have this interview or by the time I need to give this presentation. Um, and they need
03:49:37everything to go perfect in order to have one win when it is much more, let's use anti-fragile to set
03:49:44up the condition so that everything can go wrong and you can still win. So when we did the launch for
03:49:49the money models launch, one of the frames that we had is we wanted it to be inevitable. And so in order
03:49:54for it to be inevitable, we wanted to have three or four different ways that we could break the record.
03:49:58Was that like, if we only do this, we break the record. If we only do this, we break the record. If
03:50:03only this happens, we break the record. If only do this break, we break the record. And we figured
03:50:07that if each of these had 80 or 90% likelihood of, of, of happening, that the likelihood that we'd break
03:50:12the record would be very high. And at the end of the day, we still didn't know, but I think stacking
03:50:18probabilities and in, in thinking about, I'm going to, I'm going to bridge this for a second, but
03:50:24I think the number of ways that people attack the problems in front of them is not nearly enough
03:50:29in terms of volume and not with nearly enough, the intensity, like they are not going at it with full
03:50:34measure. Like if you knew that your, your, your family is going to die or the thing that you care
03:50:38about most is going to disappear. How differently would you attack this problem? And how many different
03:50:43ways would you attack the problem? If you said, ah, man, I don't have a job right now. It's like,
03:50:46okay, well, what have you actually done? Right. And it's like, well, I applied to three places. It's
03:50:50like, okay, cool. Well, how long did that take you? It took me 45 minutes. Okay. How many hours
03:50:54are there in a week? How many hours are there in a month? What are you doing? That's not that,
03:50:59that is increasing the likelihood that you get it basically nothing. And so there's nothing that
03:51:02stops you from applying to a hundred or a thousand jobs in a month. And the likelihood if you apply to
03:51:06a thousand jobs and you have the requisite requirements that you don't get one is very low.
03:51:10And so it's just like, why are you not doing that? And I don't know the answer to that because I've just
03:51:14been a relatively violent person by nature. Um, but I think once you have a very clear path to getting
03:51:20what you want, it's like, okay, how do I remove everything that prevents me from getting it?
03:51:27Not in a self-aggrandizing way. I am flawed too, but I'm just saying it helps.
03:51:32It's, it is true that more dreams are destroyed by distraction than incompetence.
03:51:37And that's in the micro, but in the macro as well.
03:51:39A billion percent. If you had, so if you had a, a white room that you were locked into
03:51:46and there was nothing in the white room except for one black dot, what is the most interesting thing
03:51:52in that room? The one black dot. And so people struggle to get motivated to do the work because
03:52:00there are other more interesting things to do than the work. And so you're not going to willpower your
03:52:06way through making work more interesting, but you can absolutely put yourself in a situation
03:52:11where work becomes the most interesting thing. And that is how you do a shitload of work.
03:52:17We talked a lot about risk. I said, you know, over the last sort of 12 months,
03:52:22looking at what you've talked about uncertainty, managing risk, but respect is something else
03:52:28you've been thinking about a good bit. What have you, another R word, the other R word,
03:52:32what have you been thinking about to do with respect?
03:52:34Well, I'm so excited you, I'm so excited you asked. Um, so I've been trying to think about
03:52:43the operation of respect because I thought, okay, what is something that I've wanted my whole life,
03:52:49right? I think many men want respect. Some people say status, but I'll define respect, um, as this.
03:52:59So respect is letting someone else's word change what you do, even when they cannot make you. So if I
03:53:06respect someone, what they, what they say changes what I do, even though they cannot force me to do it.
03:53:14And so there's two sides to respect. There's the earning of respect and there's the giving of respect.
03:53:20And so I was trying to encapsulate this into an acronym that I could remember because I know I'm
03:53:24going to talk about this a lot, especially with our leaders, the company, because leaders want respect.
03:53:28That makes sense. But how do you, how, how, how do you gain respect and then also not pass the line
03:53:34of being a tyrant, right? And so the acronym that I have is powers, which is the behaviors that earn
03:53:41respect is number one is that you pay the cost, which is that you sacrifice for the group where
03:53:46they can see it. So if I, I remember the first time, um, so when I was, when I was a pledge back
03:53:52in my fraternity days, it's a group where everyone's even right. No one's known special. And there was a
03:53:58particular senior who was known for being a bad hazer and he called the goats. And so the goats had to go to the
03:54:03house and you had to go in pairs. Right. And so he called one guy and the guy was like, it's goats.
03:54:09It's just a derogative term, derogatory term for a pledge. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Worms, goats,
03:54:15whatever. Um, well goats, cause they're gophers and they go do shit for you. Anyways, they, um, and so
03:54:21he just looked at the group of, you know, 18 other guys. And it's like, who wants to come with me?
03:54:26Cause we knew he was going to get hazed. So somebody just has to basically sacrifice themselves.
03:54:30And so I remember it was like, I'll go with you, dude. And it's a tiny act where that sacrifice
03:54:35gains respect from the whole group because that micro benefits everybody else for not having to go
03:54:41through it. And so when you are in a new organization, this is the operation for respect.
03:54:46You sacrifice yourself in a way that benefits the whole, um, in a way that is visible.
03:54:51You don't have to do it visibly cause then it looks cringe, but like they will see it eventually.
03:54:55Turning up early. Yeah. Number two is outcomes, which is that things get better when you are
03:55:01involved for everyone. And so functionally it's competence, which I would define as outcomes
03:55:06improve with your involvement that are traceable to you repeatedly. So it's the opposite of luck or
03:55:11free riding, right? Three is your word, right? The W, which is what you say will happen happens.
03:55:18And what you say you'll do, you do. E is enforced. And this is the sticky one I'll get to more in a
03:55:24second, but it's, you don't let people cross you consistently. The R is restraint, which is that you
03:55:32hold back when you could punish more and you give more credit than you need to. And then S is steady,
03:55:39is that you function in high stakes situations, the same as normal situations.
03:55:45And so what ends up happening is that enforcement is basically your compliance floor, which is that
03:55:53if I enforce rules of like, this is how I want to be treated, then people will at baseline just do that.
03:56:01But that is where you have a tyrant on it on their own, because you need the other ones to have respect.
03:56:06You have to be competent. Like if you have just, uh, enforcement of rules, but you have no competence,
03:56:11things is not better for anyone. You've never bared any cost. Everyone hates that guy. And the
03:56:15moment their ability to make that person's life worse goes away. So does the behavior. And so the
03:56:20key that separates basically fear-driven or compliance versus respect is that they have to be able to do it
03:56:26even when you have no ability to make them. Now on the flip side, if you have all of the competence
03:56:32things, but you have no enforcement, then you're the admired doormat. You do things for
03:56:36everyone, but like, no one respects you. So then the next thing that comes up is like, okay,
03:56:42so enforcement, and this is probably the hairiest of the, of the ones that is still required.
03:56:47And so there's three things that have to happen in order for you to be obligated to enforce a
03:56:52standard, which is that number one, someone has to know the standard you have where you're like,
03:56:56please do not talk to me that way. Please do not address me in that manner, whatever,
03:56:59do not turn in the dinner that's cold, whatever. They have to have a known standard. Number two is
03:57:07that they have to have the ability to adhere to that standard. And then three, choose not to.
03:57:13Now, a lot of times people can feel disrespected, but if you've never articulated that this is a
03:57:17preference of yours, that you do things a certain way, and then you basically punish someone for
03:57:22treating you in a specific way without ever having told them, then that is when you'll be seen as
03:57:25tyrannical. Unspoken standards are premeditated disrespects.
03:57:29Yeah. And so, so imagine the situation where you have a chef who's, you know, he takes a shithole,
03:57:36turns it around is, you know, best in class chef. And he's got, um, and he's known for both being
03:57:43incredibly hard, but everyone who works for him loves him. So it's like, how do we, how do we manage
03:57:48these, this apparent contradiction? So new, new sous chef comes in, messes something up,
03:57:54the plate gets, comes back in and then the head chef takes it, dumps it and looks at the kid.
03:58:01He says, you just cost us that table. We're going to comp the bill,
03:58:04but don't worry. You're still with us. Show up again at 6:00 AM tomorrow and do better.
03:58:10So you have the moment. We have to enforce it, but it's about the behavior, not the person.
03:58:13And that's the big, that's the big unlock. What would doing it about the person look like?
03:58:18So it's basically you lazy piece of shit. It's basically labeling them rather than the
03:58:23behavior and criticizing who they are rather than what they did. And so the three things is number
03:58:28one, it has to be a known rule. Number two, they have to have the ability to follow it.
03:58:34And number three, choose not to, that is when a transgression occurs. Now, then it comes into,
03:58:39okay, what are the consequences that happen? Does that mean that you just let people transgress after
03:58:43you say, Hey, don't do that. And Hey, don't worry. I still love you. Well, the consequence for
03:58:48crossing you needs to be consistent, which means that every time someone crosses you,
03:58:52there needs to be a consequence. If there isn't, then you teach people to gamble with you
03:58:57because it's a re it's a variable reinforcer. You need to have consistent reinforcers, which
03:59:00extinguishes the behavior. And so it has to be consistent. It has to be immediate. And it has
03:59:05to be escalating, which means if the first time I tell you, I say, don't worry, you're with us.
03:59:10Beer tomorrow, do better. Fine. If you do it again, then it's like, you're off for the night. If you do
03:59:17it again, you don't come back. And so there has to be escalating consequences because what happens is
03:59:22at some moment, it stops being about punishing the behavior and it should be about punishing the
03:59:27pattern of behavior, which then means it is the person, which might be at that point, I don't want to,
03:59:32I don't train this person anymore. And so at that point you have to respect the standard for everyone.
03:59:38And out of owing it to everyone, we have to let this person go, even if they're a perceived high
03:59:43performer. And so, um, the flip side of it. So that's the, how you earn respect is you do powers.
03:59:50You sacrifice for the group. You have outcomes that you demonstrate competence for. Your word is your bond.
03:59:55You do what you say you're going to do. You enforce the standards publicly, swiftly, consistently,
04:00:00and escalatingly. You show restraint when you could yell, like go fucking nuts on this kid for
04:00:06fucking something up. You choose not to, even though you could. And then S is that you're steady. Even
04:00:12when the biggest Michelin star, uh, judges there, you still act the exact same way as though there were
04:00:17just a normal dinner table on the flip side. It's like, okay, how do I give respect? Because this is
04:00:23equal opposite. If you're like, well, this person needs to show me respect. And I think this is
04:00:26important because if you're like, I felt disrespected, well, one, did we, did we say what
04:00:31our preference was? And this has been super useful for me because I sometimes will feel disrespected by
04:00:34somebody who, who doesn't know. And so it helped me just to say, Hey, you might not have known this.
04:00:40Don't do this again. We're still cool. You didn't know if you do it again. Now we have a problem,
04:00:45right? So I, uh, I just came up with an acronym hearted, which is all I could make for my memory,
04:00:51but basically honor, which is that you respect their preferences. You respect their lines and
04:00:55you don't test the limits. E is esteem. So you praise them when they are not present.
04:01:01Attend, which is that you listen to them without cutting in or interrupting.
04:01:05You are reliable in that your word is as good to them as theirs is to you. If you say, I've got the
04:01:11soup, you'll get the soup. You show them respect by saying what you said you were going to do to honor
04:01:16them. The next is truth. And this is where it gets a little bit more interesting.
04:01:20You tell them straight, including what they will not like. And so that means that if you really
04:01:24respect someone, you don't coddle them. Just like a parent would respect a child. I'm not going to
04:01:29dumb this down for you. And then E, this is another hard one is expectations is that you hold them to
04:01:35the same standard. And so you don't lower the bar for someone because otherwise that's just watering
04:01:40it down and diluting it. Don't talk down to me.
04:01:43Bringing the standard down to that level of confidence.
04:01:44Exactly. And so it's equal opposite. And then finally D is defer, is that in their area of
04:01:49expertise, you defer to their decisions. And so this has been really helpful for me to define this
04:01:54because respect is one word, but it has many behaviors underneath of it. And so by defining it
04:01:58that way, it's been incredibly helpful because when I'm talking to leaders, it's like, you need to
04:02:02earn respect and you earn respect in this way. And that way I could say, you have not visibly
04:02:07sacrificed anything for this group or the outcomes that you've generated in no way have demonstrated
04:02:12competence, or you said you would do this thing and then you haven't done it, or, uh, you are
04:02:17allowing people to treat you in a way that is not the way that a treater, a leader would allow someone
04:02:22to treat them and you have not enforced anything. Um, I would say that that happens on the E happens
04:02:27on both sides. I would say that I have some leaders in the company, for example, who are overly
04:02:31enforcing and people absolutely comply with what they tell them to do, but it's because it's all out of fear.
04:02:36Uh, just get, just don't cross them. Right. But you don't know what they're, what it is,
04:02:41which just means that they look like a loose cannon. Um, on the other side, you've got the
04:02:45people who are really competent, but they're just like, ah, you know, it's okay. You know,
04:02:48jolly, you know, happy-go-lucky, but like they don't get the respect because they never enforce
04:02:51anything. I can think of two different leaders in my company right now that are on both sides of this,
04:02:55both competent, but one that probably over enforces and another that basically under enforces.
04:03:00But until I had the words and these behaviors, I can't give them good feedback, which is why I'm
04:03:07so adamant about defining these terms in terms of behavior, because then I can actually help someone
04:03:10gain respect. And so if you were like, man, I fucking, no one respects me. It's like, well,
04:03:15there's the list. What things did you miss or what things have you not done? And that's just like,
04:03:20this is something that I've, it's obviously a huge passion of mine because defining the vague or
04:03:24defining the amorphous in terms that people can be like, wow, I, I did that operation and I now have
04:03:29gotten respect. Yeah. Like that's very cool for me. I read a really great essay about, uh, how
04:03:38status is accumulated and there's broadly two ways, especially ancestrally dominance and prestige.
04:03:45And the interesting thing is that in times of war, tribes tend to prefer dominant leaders.
04:03:52Problem being that a time of war, hopefully if you don't lose will last, it'll end. And then you stuck
04:03:59with this tyrannical dominant guy who's surrounded himself with sycophants. And that's when you want
04:04:04someone who's prestigious and to find someone who's prestigious, the issue being that sometimes
04:04:09they're not as decisive or as cutthroat as you need in a time of crisis. And, um,
04:04:17this was the issue with Churchill, right? I mean, Churchill was like an amazing wartime leader and
04:04:20then didn't, he didn't do as well after the war. A bit of a tyrant. Yeah. I mean, he, he wasn't built
04:04:24as a peacetime leader. Yeah. He just, that wasn't what he needed. UK history. Yeah, of course.
04:04:29Dude, here's one about Churchill. I'm reading the splendid and the vile,
04:04:32which is the best book about Churchill only got the whole book. I think it's 500 pages and it's
04:04:3918 months is what it covers. And it's all of the journals and diary entries from all of the
04:04:43different people. The best thing that I learned about Churchill so far is that he really hated
04:04:48whistling. He was like allergic to whistling. And there was one day there was a boy that was walking
04:04:53down the street whistling and he ended up in this huge back and forth with this like 11 year old kid,
04:04:58you know, some street urchin. And, uh, in Churchill, one of the biggest wars that before his, uh, uh,
04:05:06like campaign began was between him and this 11 year old child. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.
04:05:11Uh, finishing this off, just talking about like probably the word of the day, risk.
04:05:17You can't get rich if you never risk losing money. You can't get loved if you never risk getting
04:05:21rejected. You can't get strong if you never risk getting injured. You have to risk looking broke to
04:05:26get rich. You have to risk looking weak to get strong. You have to risk looking desperate to get
04:05:30loved. Egos hold back more dreams than failure and rejection ever.
04:05:48It's like risk, not have not. It's like you have to put something in the altar
04:05:53at the most basic level. It's like the first step is what you're willing to lose.
04:05:56And it's, it is trade of a known and inferior thing for a unknown and superior thing.
04:06:07And it's the fact that it's unknown, that is the thing that bugs everyone. And I think most of
04:06:16gains, most of the gains in life and the lack of gains come from
04:06:25being unwilling to sacrifice mediocrity.
04:06:37It's interesting to think about sacrificing mediocrity.
04:06:39Right. But that is, I think that is the, that is the appropriate term. People fear
04:06:45being less than extraordinary and in so doing sacrifice being extraordinary.
04:06:51It's like you sacrifice one either way. And so either you sacrifice being extraordinary
04:06:59to be ordinary, or you sacrifice ordinary for the chance of being extraordinary or less than ordinary.
04:07:05But if you really think about it, many people who are ordinary have failed. And so you're really just
04:07:10still ordinary. And so why would you not sacrifice ordinary for extraordinary?
04:07:13Fuck yeah, man. I appreciate you. It's always good to sit down with you.
04:07:20The pleasure is mine, as always.
04:07:22All right. See you next time, everyone.
04:07:24Dude.
04:07:25Dude.
04:07:27Yes. Yes.
04:07:28So good.
04:07:29We speak fuck.
04:07:31There we go.
04:07:36Sit back down. You can present who you were.
04:07:40Yeah.
04:07:40Two versions of a very famous photo that's going to be behind you for most of the episodes.
04:07:45A Rembrandt?
04:07:46Yeah.
04:07:47An original.
04:07:48Yeah, this is an original. I'm not sure if you've noticed.
04:07:52I'd like to thank my friends and family.
04:07:57Your hair is also really short here, too. So you look like...
04:08:00And this one, you look like a child with the...
04:08:01I do.
04:08:03I look like some sort of freak child with bicep veins.
04:08:06I think it's like ancient Chippendales.
04:08:08Yes, it is. But for some reason, you're in Hawaiian shorts.
04:08:12I didn't notice that. And then the one behind it is the... This is the original.
04:08:18All class.
04:08:19It's just... Yeah. All class, no breaks.
04:08:21I love how they've kept me in a necklace, but this one's become so Baroque.
04:08:27Yeah.
04:08:29We're a tasteful group.
04:08:30I think we're looking at truth.
04:08:32That's true. That's correct. That's correct. Disregard risk, look at truth.
04:08:36Yeah. Yeah. Fuck yeah.
04:08:41Congratulations. You made it to the end of a full podcast episode.
04:08:44You are not so TikTok-brained that you've completely dissolved into nothingness.
04:08:49Why not watch another one? Right.
04:08:53Go on. Press it.