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Somebody said to him, you're so smart, why aren't you happy? And it's like, oh, I can apply my intelligence to this problem and I can break it down. Desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. If you can learn the discipline of having few desires carefully chosen, you spend a lot more time being content, being happy, not holding a strong burning desire that is like making you unhappy every minute until you've achieved something. This episode is an important step back from a world that increasingly wants to tell you what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. We're bringing on my friend Eric Jorgensen, one of the best writers of our time on brilliant billionaires and philosophers like Naval Ravikan. He spent the last ten years studying him. Now we're gonna steal his homework. Naval has a line that's very jarring about how a salary is, like, the most addictive form of heroin. The three most addictive substances. He's heroin, carbohydrates,

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and a monthly salary. Like, that push to get you out of the comfort zone. Are you a risk taker? Are you exposed? Or are you kind of like a lamb in the paddock? Can you get really rich on a nine to five? What I took from Naval building this book when I was, like, 30 is, like, you grind and beat yourself up and have this brutal internal monologue all the way to, like, winning the game. You have the same epiphany that you can have right now, which is that, like, none of it matters.

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One of my favorite quotes from Naval is

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forget rich versus poor, white collar versus blue. It's now leveraged versus unleveraged.

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What does that mean?

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Leverage is,

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to me, one of the most important things that Naval talks about. If you don't understand leverage, a lot of things about the world and the outcomes that you see are not gonna make sense, and you're gonna get, like, bitter and confused and feel like it's unfair. But it's actually just the normal workings of leverage. And so as Nawal explains it, there are many forms of leverage. The modern forms of leverage are code, media, and capital. Capital. Zero marginal cost and uncapped and accesses this sort of global marketplace.

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And it's really unintuitive.

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Like, we're not

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programmed to think that way. And so understanding that we're in the age of leverage and it totally changes, like, what businesses can be built and where your priorities are. And we're seeing unbelievable businesses get built that sort of have this understanding of leverage at the core of them. It's so funny you say that. Was at this YouTube thing this week, and so I have top of mind. But one of the creators there, I think it was Mark Rober, who has, like, a huge science YouTube channel. Mhmm. And he did something with, like, the Discovery Channel or another science channel. And so the, you know, CEO of YouTube was joking with them, and he was like, yeah. You know, uh, it was really nice of you to do that thing with Discovery Channel. It's incredible to collab with a smaller channel because their viewership's, like, 10 x smaller than Mark Rober's on on YouTube. Yeah. And so it it's interesting, like,

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this idea of capital,

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code,

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and media, how do you judge whether you have those kinds of leverage or you don't if you're a normal person? Ideally, you want your earnings, your inputs, your outputs

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to be separate from each other. Right? You don't wanna have to work an hour to earn, you know, $10 or a $100 or a thousand bucks. You wanna earn independent of your input. If you're in a normal

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job,

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you're linear

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inputs and outputs.

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Um, if you are working on a podcast,

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like, you record the same podcast, you publish it whether a 100 people listen to it or a 100,000 people listen to it, you put the same amount in, but you get an unbelievably

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higher reward from doing the same amount of work. If you're investing in a company, like, whether you invest a $100,000 or a million dollars, it's the same decision,

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but the rewards for doing it are an order of magnitude higher. So you wanna look for these places where your inputs and your outputs are uncorrelated, and the more levered you are,

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the

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bigger that difference is gonna be. And the way you get leverage is by winning a smaller leverage game. So start small and just let those things accrue incrementally.

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Like, we talked about Elon Musk. He's, like, the most leveraged person alive, and it's because

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people choose to give him capital. People choose to go work for him. People choose to support his companies and invest in him.

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And they do that because they trust his judgment. They trust that he's gonna use that well and give them good rewards for doing so. Yeah. It's so interesting because in today's age, it's even more normal.

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Like, it used to be maybe even, like, thirty years ago, I would say, most people had none of these. Right? You had no money, capital. You had no code. You weren't an engineer, and you had no media because you weren't CNN. So it was like, unless you were a top 10% or 1% in any of these three, you had zero.

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But now

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everybody could actually have all three really easily. So you could literally just ask yourself,

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am I making money and thus, am I taking my money and investing in other things? That's leverage.

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Can I code? No. But now I've got all these AI tools, so I can now use code. That's leverage. And media, do I own CNN? No. But I actually have a podcast or I have an email newsletter or I have an Instagram account that I talk about. And so, yeah, I actually am levered with all three. And then it's degrees of them, but it's it's a wild time to be alive because for the first time ever, any human, really, at least in in, you know, most established worlds can have all three of them for almost a $0

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cost except capital. Yeah. If you can get a device that can get on the Internet, like, can enter the global meritocracy,

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essentially. And, like,

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most people aren't even trying. Most people are just on the consumption side. Um, and so if you do if you start creating, if you start coding, you start trying to build products, like and you think about it in terms of where do you get those

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uncorrelated inputs versus outputs and try to build a business, that's where you're gonna get those exponential returns. And this is true in every industry. Right? Like, I think people, you know, running a plumbing company would probably say, like, yeah, that's all well and good for a podcaster or a hedge fund, but, like, I run a plumbing company. Every business is just

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their growth is determined by how levered they are and how elegant they are and how long those levers can get. And Naval has a great

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it's a it's a long there. I won't take you all the way through it, but he has to go step by step all the way through the real estate industry where,

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you know, you could be a day laborer working on a house. You could be a general contractor.

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You could be a real estate investor. You could be a a developer of big properties, or you could take the final leap into, like, maximum leverage of external investors and technologists and everything and build Zillow. Right? And so all the difference between a day laborer and Zillow is just, like, how leveraged are you and how comfortable are you using each of those different forms of leverage? It's a really good point. I actually haven't thought of that before. It'd be interesting to put names on the tiers, you know, because every industry actually has that. Everyone has the day labor,

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the all the way to the CEO,

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to the, like, level of CEO of what kind of company you are, to investor, to, like, I don't know, capital allocator plus risk taker. So it's it's actually an interesting way to think about the world. I think a lot of times people just think, am I entry level? How much do I make? What but they don't think about what is the game the company that they're in is playing too. Yeah. And I feel like Naval's the king of contextual awareness,

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like, you know, understanding the game that you're playing. There will be a fun game, like, books to build of just, like, breaking down the business from the beginning all the way up the whole ladder. Uh, because you we hear these incredible

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stories of people who, like, entered as a dishwasher in the restaurant industry and over the course of their career built, like, a 50 restaurant chain. Um, and those people those are people who just sort of figured out, you know, what does the person above me know that I don't know? What tool do they know how to use? What are were they able to access? Like, how can I figure it out? How can I take that next step, that next risk, and climb all the way up the ladder? And Naval talks about something that is kinda controversial these days. He says hard work is overrated and judgment is underrated.

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What do you think he means by that?

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I think the, like, you know, the Archimedes quote, like, give me a lever long enough in a place to stand and I can move the world. Like, one totally correct decision can dominate everything. And Naval is really,

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um,

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he's an elegant thinker. I think he's, like, really enamored with the idea of, like, where can you flip one domino and everything takes care of itself? Mhmm. Which is, like, this incredibly kind of, like, zen business thing. What's the smallest action I can take to create the biggest result?

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Um, it's very different than somebody like Elon or Goggins or whatever who are just kind of, like, trying to get the most out of themselves possible.

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Um, but I think that's a really interesting approach. It's a good tool for thought to just be like, yeah. How easy could this be? Um, he describes himself as lazy, which I don't think he is, but he's like, you know, I I just want I want the greatest reward for my effort, and I I don't wanna

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expend effort wastefully. Yeah. There is something to this idea of how you become incredibly ambitious while also being

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lazy.

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Mhmm. And, uh, and lazy and, like, the things that you will allow to take up your time Because if you are crazy particular about the things that take up your time, then you have time to figure out where to flick that domino. Like, that's gonna live free in my mind, actually. Like, you could spend a lot of time in the middle,

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and you will never actually have the full effect than if you spent the time to find the beginning. And the the real thing is, like,

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hard work has a limit eventually. Like, you can't work hundred hour weeks forever. Hard

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work is, you know, respectable and admired and, yes, we should work hard, but

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hard work can only get you a two or three x improvement in what you're doing. And if you don't

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learn to improve how you're working or the elegance or improve your leverage, like, learn where you can have those 100 x, know, where one hour of work or ten hours of work can have a 10 x or a 100 x impact.

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Like, you're gonna be kind of stuck in that two to three x improvement

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Yeah. Window no matter what you do. I think the part that then becomes hard. So then you're like, okay. That makes sense. Of course, I'd wanna find, you know, the fulcrum, or of course, I'd wish to find the first place to flick the domino. But then the question becomes, how do you know? And, like, Naval has great, um, sort of critical thinking frameworks.

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But what does he mean by live like a lion? Like, if you go see a lion on safari, like, they're just chilling most of the time, like, thirty,

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forty five hours at a time. They're just laying there and sleeping and kinda whatever. And then when they are both hungry and

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see, uh, prey,

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They leap into action like maximum adrenaline,

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full sprint, unbelievable violence, and attack and take down this thing and have an incredible feast

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and then just lay there and sleep again for, like, thirty hours. And

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I think Naval sort of learned wisdom is that this is how he now approaches

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projects. Like, he'll see an opportunity, see an investment. He'll just kinda be, like, reading and

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casually

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working, learning, going about his life, and then an opportunity will arise or

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a person will make themselves known. It's kind of like, alright. We all leap in action. We gotta have a sprint. We gotta start a company. We gotta make an investment. We gotta get up to speed on this really, really quickly. Um,

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but if you were mired in something else, just like plotting along on not the biggest opportunity rather than having the space to jump on the best opportunity when it came about, then you might miss it. And, like, that's the live like a lion

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kind of mindset is, like, you wanna have the space

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to evaluate and attack the most important thing at any time. You know, it's interesting you you talk about that because one of the things I've been obsessed with lately is, um, people sitting in meetings

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that they shouldn't be in. Yeah. And it's a big phenomenon. And, you know, my team will all sort of chuckle about this because I will often say,

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like, you guys don't have anything to do in here. Why are you still in here? But what I haven't gotten to yet is where they self select to leave the meeting Mhmm. Because there's so much social normative behavior of just, no. No. I'm supposed to be here from this time to this time, and I'm paying attention, and I'm sitting here. And it's like, why are we being such good little girls and boys? Instead, you really should be saying,

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you pay me, and we are here to do this mission.

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And if I am sitting here doing this thing that is not top priority, I'm actually wasting your time, our money, our mission, all of it.

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But somehow, we've all become, like, way too politically correct

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to say anything like that. And so we just sit in meetings that we know are a waste of time. We tell nobody, and we think that's normal, and that a CEO might like it. I feel like there's there's probably two types of person in that meeting. One is, like,

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this looks like work, and it's easiest thing I can do today, so I'm just gonna sit in here and, like, I'm gonna be in a meeting. I'm doing my job with the lowest effort possible. And then there's somebody else who's, like, sitting there and their skin is crawling because they're like, I hate this. I'm useless. I feel like I can't leave. I've got more important work to do. Like, please let me out of here. Yeah.

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But both are caught in the like, if you make the first step of the meeting, like, what is the point of this meeting and who belongs in it? Like, who has a hand in the solution that we're trying to arrive at? And spend the first five minutes of a meeting on that and make it a cultural norm to dismiss people from meetings that are not like, I don't have a good case for being here and great. I wanna be somewhere else. Yeah. It seems like such a no brainer, but I think off even at our company where I'd say people say this to people a lot, I don't think we've done a good enough job giving them permission Yeah. Yeah. To beat it. You know? I feel like, Cody, I don't think this meeting is relevant to me. I don't think I've ever gotten mad at anybody for that. But, oh, yeah. Right. Right. Get out of here. Yeah. There's a dynamic where people, think, wanna be in the same room as, like, the the person, the the CEO, the leader, the whatever. Like, that that those those meetings are an opportunity for FaceTime probably in some ways that are, like, more about the political game than the output. I've actually never thought about that. That's a that's a very good point. I think it's another screen that happens. Like, the more successful you get, the more you forget that, you know, your presence can have negative or positive effects. Yeah. Like, when you give feedback, sometimes you have to be careful at which levels of the game because it can just ruin somebody.

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Or simultaneously,

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they wanna hang out with you more even though you're like, I would like you so much more if you didn't do that.

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So we have to sort of say that too. I actually it is kind of like an interesting idea because this goes back to authenticity, but there's a quote that I found originally from you. Find what feels like play to you, but looks like work to others. You're going to outcompete them because you're gonna do it effortlessly.

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To you, it's art, it's joy, it's flow. You escape competition through authenticity.

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If I had to summarize how to be successful in life, I would just say two words, productize yourself.

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Tell me more about that, and what does that even mean to productize yourself?

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Yeah. I mean, that that is the two word summary of half of the book, which is, like, very difficult to fully unpack.

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But the ability to really understand

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and observe in yourself what you wanna do naturally. You're icky guy or whatever. Mhmm. And one way to do that is to look at the things that you did as a kid. Like, when you were, like, 10, 12, ask your family, ask your friends.

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Um, what are the things that you were naturally drawn to? What are the things that you do in spare time? What are the things that you do even though nobody's paying you to do it? Or what's the 10% of your job that you, like, really, really love and find yourself doing it more than you should? Like, these are all maybe signs,

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uh, that you're sort of drawn to do a particular thing. And I've experienced this in my life is, like, the stuff that you do for fun

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or

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without expectation of reward is sometimes

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turns out to be the most rewarding thing. This book. You didn't even make money on this, really. Right? Didn't you give away most of the money from this book? I give away we've given away, like, 5,000,000 copies of this book. Yeah. But we've also sold, like, millions.

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So I have made a lot of money, but when I when I wrote it, I fully expected, like, a thousand people to buy this thing. I thought it was gonna be a passion project for Nival nerds like me that,

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um, would never make any money, but I would have learned a lot by doing it. I did learn a lot by doing it, and I'm still, like, completely shocked that people of all ages and races and countries and languages are, like, reading this thing and finding,

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revisiting it and finding joy in it. And I'm like, I'm delighted by it. I think it's just a testament to, like, how far reaching some of the principles that Naval puts forward are. Yeah. What about this idea of

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he talks about in the book, um, no one is going to beat you at being you Yeah. And

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specific knowledge

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and how important it is that you have specific knowledge in what you're doing. What does that mean? And if somebody is struggling to figure out what they should do, do they figure out if they have specific knowledge?

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I think I mean, the word should is a thing that he talks about of, like, there is no shoulds, um, but it's so hard to train yourself out of that. Right? Like, we spend the first twenty years of our lives sitting in classrooms all being taught the same thing and being assessed on the same thing. And so then we go out into the work world and we're sort of like, alright.

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What's the job? What am I told to do? And what you find in successful people is that they're rewarded to the degree that they are unique

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and authentic and excellent.

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Actually, they're they're rewarded to the degree that they're unique and excellent, and that is usually downstream of them being authentic.

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Right? Like, your business works because you have fun being you and you're authentically interested in all these concepts and building businesses and buying businesses. You buy crazy stuff all the time, and you have so much fun telling everybody about it. And I don't know how many of them work out, but it doesn't matter because it's all fun to watch. Right? Like,

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remember watching you, like, buy vacant land in Texas abandoned land in Texas at an auction or something. I was like, that's just cool, and you're clearly, like, just having fun doing it.

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And, like, I for whatever reason, I'm sure it'll be a nightmare for plenty of people, but I have fun spending thousands of hours, like, breaking down very specific useful ideas and articulating them and finding supporting arguments for them and, like, putting them all together in this thread that

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helps me remember it and helps other people identify with it. Like, these are examples of specific knowledge that are

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outcomes of just how we chose to live, and we just continued to

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do things that felt authentic and unique to us and people responded to it. And we sort of iterated through. Like, alright. I had fun doing that, and the world enjoyed it. So I'm gonna do it again, or I'm gonna

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do it in a new way, and I'm gonna continue it. Like and we both ended up in unique

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careers that would have been very difficult to predict or define ahead of time. Um, there were no blueprints for you know, this is not a existing genre. Like, your particular combination of businesses is not one that there's a ton of historical precedent for. It's not like you said, I'd say, gonna build a real estate brokerage, and I'm gonna do it using all the best practices of real estate brokerage. Right? Like, this combination of media and capital is, like, new and emerging and dynamic, and everybody's kind of doing it in a new way.

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So I think that mixture of, like, authenticity

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and excellence, like, be yourself,

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do it to the best degree you possibly can, and specific knowledge will sort of come downstream of that. I know you're Bill Gurley on, and he's, like, you know, become this incredible student of your your industry.

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And if you set 10 people down and said, like, alright. You are all gonna go study the history of venture capital. Those are great venture capitalists.

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Those 10 people are gonna study different things. They're gonna make different branching decisions all the way down, and one might become an expert in the history of biotech or green tech or fintech. Like,

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those people will all make authentic human decisions that makes them ever more unique.

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And one of my like,

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the degree that you specialize even if you set out to be a generalist, will end up becoming a specialist. A sufficiently, like, advanced generalist becomes a unique specialist,

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and

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you should aspire to be

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a unique combination of

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authentic traits,

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um, performed to excellence. And, like, those are the careers that you are going to enjoy and

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products that are gonna end up being unique. That's good point. Mean, Scott Adams talks about the skill stack, right, which really is a lot of what Naval talks about too, I think, in different ways. He would say specific knowledge, and Scott Adams would say skill stack, and then he would talk about how you could either go become Michael Phelps and do ten thousand or really a hundred thousand hours in order to become Michael Phelps or just do

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hundreds of hours at totally disparate tasks that when you stack them together, create an unfair advantage. Yeah. And so I think that's that's super interesting.

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I wanna circle back to this idea on shoulds because you have very interesting takes on it. You've caught me twice on it. And Nivala is very aggressive on shoulds too. Like, do you believe

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in the word should? Does Naval Ravikov believe in the word should?

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And how should we speak to ourselves? So should is one of those, uh,

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words that just indicates to you that you might be feeling more of an obligation than an interest in something. And so you hear people talk about, like, I should go work out.

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Like, yeah.

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But also your relationship to that thing is now, like, I don't want to, and the voice in my head is telling me that I have to. And the the common thing is, like, I get to work out. So just, like, change your phrasing about, you know, you have the opportunity to go do this thing that you wanna do. There's a bunch of funny, like, little

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reveals in language that, like, when you're paying attention to people's relationships with things

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that's in there. But, like, I should go to work. I should, you know, follow in my family's footsteps. I should pursue this opportunity. Like, we all have those and it just listening for them.

00:20:42.210 --> 00:20:47.330
Yes. It's either an obligation or an imposition from from some version of yourself,

00:20:47.650 --> 00:20:52.370
uh, that you don't necessarily agree with or some external voice that is, like,

00:20:52.770 --> 00:21:01.365
speaking to you more loudly than your inner voice. Yeah. It's really good. I mean, he talks about he has, like, a pretty brutal heuristic about if you're faced with a difficult choice,

00:21:01.525 --> 00:21:09.680
you should do knee gosh. Dang it. Can't even say the word choice. But if you're faced with a brutal brutal choice and there's not an obvious one,

00:21:10.320 --> 00:21:20.160
then don't do either. Like, what would he say about when to do something or when not to do something? There's one from his, like, personal trainer, which is hard choices, easy life,

00:21:20.560 --> 00:21:29.895
which, like, in the short term, if you take the hard path, you will sort of naturally bias. You'll you'll come up with an excuse not to work out. You'll come up with an excuse not to have the hard conversation.

00:21:29.975 --> 00:21:31.655
And so if you find yourself

00:21:31.895 --> 00:21:33.335
in that position where

00:21:33.655 --> 00:21:42.540
there's something hard to do and there's something easy to do, if you just become good at making yourself do the hard thing, your life will become better as a result. There's probably something

00:21:43.580 --> 00:21:48.140
magical that's on the other side of something you're avoiding. And if you just build the habit of tackling that,

00:21:49.725 --> 00:21:52.125
a lot of problems will take care of themselves.

00:21:53.405 --> 00:21:56.605
That's one. Paul Graham has a similar thing competitively,

00:21:56.605 --> 00:21:58.605
which is just like run upstairs.

00:21:58.765 --> 00:22:04.365
Um, you know, if you're fighting a big company, do something really hard that they're gonna find it very difficult to imitate.

00:22:04.445 --> 00:22:07.700
Yeah. It's a great point. Especially as the world gets less and less moded.

00:22:07.860 --> 00:22:11.780
Like, it feels like every year, actually, there's more and more opportunity to do

00:22:12.180 --> 00:22:28.195
things in business. You know? You used to have to have a ton of capital to launch a media company, now you have to have none. You used to actually have to have a lot of money to invest in startups. Now because of AngelList, you could have a very small amount. Like, everything has gotten kind of progressively easier in society

00:22:28.275 --> 00:23:06.930
or, I guess, easier to access in society. And so if you don't do the hard thing, uh, that's hard today, well, you know, you're definitely not gonna make it next year because that thing that's hard today will probably be even easier next year. So it's it's a good way. We say here at our company, one of our slogans is choose your hard. And so, like, no matter what, anything in life is gonna be hard. Being employed is hard. Being an owner is hard. Choose your heart. One of them is going to have a better outcome than the other. Working out as hard, being fat is hard. Yeah. You gotta choose one. Yep. And, um, you know, he also talks about I I love the way he talks about luck. Mhmm. And in particular, he talks about four types of luck. Blind luck, luck through persistence, spotting luck, and built luck.

00:23:07.090 --> 00:23:21.225
Can you break down some of those types of luck? What does Naval mean by these different types? Yeah. And this ties in well with the sort of authenticity and specific knowledge because the ultimate form of luck is to, like, be the kind of person that luck

00:23:21.465 --> 00:23:33.705
is your your destiny. Right? Like, opportunities just befall you. Um, so the the blind luck is is the first, right, which is what most people think of. Like, did you walk over a $100 bill today or not? Did you pick it up? Did you notice it?

00:23:34.690 --> 00:23:42.450
What was the second? The second is, uh, luck through persistence. Luck through persistence. Okay. So, like, if you happen to walk across a

00:23:42.930 --> 00:23:57.125
$100 bill versus if you went out on the beach with, like, your, you know, your metal detector and, like, spent hours looking for something. That's, you know, your persist these are simple metaphors. But, like, did you happen to run into somebody who wanted to

00:23:58.165 --> 00:24:19.245
you to paint their house today, or did you knock on 200 doors and find three people who wanted you to paint their house today? But that's also true because there's, like, a lot of studies now that show that you actually will not see lucky things if you think you are an unlucky person. Oh, yeah. Like, have you seen I just was reading a study the other day where, um, they gave two groups of people,

00:24:20.205 --> 00:24:25.805
uh, you know, blind study, basically. One group, uh, of people was told

00:24:26.365 --> 00:24:36.060
varying things to the degree of they're lucky. Good things happen to them, and they are the type of people that believe that. The other group was the type of people who say things are good things don't really happen to me. I'm not super lucky.

00:24:36.300 --> 00:24:54.345
Then they were given a task, and the task was to go and look through a booklet for how many times some word was said. So I don't know. Bad. And it's like, go through it and look for how many times bad is said and tell us at the end how many times bad is said, then you'll get a thousand bucks or something when you find the, you know, 217

00:24:54.345 --> 00:24:58.265
variations or, like, whatever the number is. And, uh, so the first group

00:24:59.050 --> 00:25:06.010
that thought that they were not lucky, they went through diligently. No. They got to the 217 number. They told them, okay. 217.

00:25:06.010 --> 00:25:11.850
And the other group goes through it. And on, like, page five, there's a a little paragraph that says,

00:25:12.535 --> 00:25:14.775
you can stop searching. There's 217,

00:25:14.855 --> 00:25:27.095
uh, instances of bad. And this other group can like, finished it in, like, sixty seconds, and this group took ten minutes on average. Like, their their vision was the same. Yeah. Like, they came from sort of the same socio demographics,

00:25:27.530 --> 00:25:32.490
but one associated that's not lucky and one associated as lucky. And so I thought that was fascinating.

00:25:32.490 --> 00:25:58.940
I love that. You know? And so so explain to me spotted luck and then built luck. Spotted luck is just the ability to sort of position yourself at a place where luck happens to you. Right? Um, and so this is, you know, the maybe the highest order decision is, like, where do you live? Like, are what's your exposure? What's your surface area to look? Um, if you say you can't find anybody to, like, ask out on a date, like, okay. Well, how often are you, like, going to parties? Have you left your house? Like, where

00:25:59.100 --> 00:26:00.700
are your habits? Um,

00:26:01.020 --> 00:26:07.260
how many companies have you started? How many companies have you met with? Like, how many customers have you approached? Like, these things are

00:26:07.945 --> 00:26:15.305
you can control your surface area to luck, essentially. Um, and then the final form where, like, luck becomes your destiny is just you just become so

00:26:15.705 --> 00:26:22.025
uniquely known for a thing. Like, you've reached such a final form of awareness and excellence and authenticity

00:26:22.450 --> 00:26:31.170
that, uh, luck finds its way to you. And, like like, Warren Buffett is an example of, um, is it lucky that he gets a phone call

00:26:32.130 --> 00:26:33.090
to, like,

00:26:33.490 --> 00:26:43.555
buy a bank and do a deal of financing that, like, nobody else has the capital or the reputation or the speed in order to do. Like, he has become the only person on earth who can get that lucky.

00:26:43.795 --> 00:26:47.235
And that's a crazy example. Right? But, like, there are many

00:26:48.115 --> 00:26:49.555
smaller forms of that.

00:26:50.330 --> 00:26:52.010
So your your reputation,

00:26:52.170 --> 00:26:53.210
your mindset,

00:26:54.090 --> 00:27:00.010
your positioning essentially, like, that is a is a very long term game. It's a really good point because I feel like what Naval

00:27:00.010 --> 00:27:02.010
actually teaches a lot of us is that

00:27:02.815 --> 00:27:07.215
all these things that seem like unfair magic, aka leverage,

00:27:07.215 --> 00:27:07.855
luck,

00:27:08.175 --> 00:27:09.055
are actually

00:27:09.215 --> 00:27:09.935
really

00:27:10.255 --> 00:27:11.135
curatable.

00:27:11.455 --> 00:27:19.380
And you can change your ability to have more of them as opposed to be a victim of the world around you. And so, like, luck can be manufactured

00:27:19.700 --> 00:27:30.180
Yeah. In effect. In particular, if you're young, I feel like it's it's hard to, um, it's hard to appreciate that what how lucky some people are getting is actually twenty years of, like, carefully grown

00:27:30.260 --> 00:27:32.180
seeds and reputation and

00:27:32.515 --> 00:27:33.555
relationships

00:27:33.715 --> 00:27:35.395
and effort. And, like,

00:27:36.035 --> 00:27:59.690
you shouldn't expect to get as lucky as somebody that has created that much surface area and covered that much ground. Um, but you can sort of match their pace or outpace them by, you know, being thoughtful about your look surface area. What would Naval say about how to become luckier? Like, how could you become luckier? I think the the path towards luck is, you know, you can follow those things up. You can

00:28:00.565 --> 00:28:06.085
sort of go from one level to another. You can do luck through persistence and effort that then

00:28:06.405 --> 00:28:11.365
becomes a little bit more of luck through or I have a feel for the the

00:28:11.445 --> 00:28:12.485
dynamics.

00:28:12.725 --> 00:28:19.190
Um, and if you really if you gain enough information through the persistence and reputation through the persistent luck,

00:28:19.430 --> 00:28:21.670
you'll have better information on

00:28:22.150 --> 00:28:22.950
where

00:28:23.750 --> 00:28:36.455
the luck might be heading, and you can sort of meet it there and position yourself for it. And if you do that enough times over time, like, you become the only person who can do it. So if we use the real estate example that uses for leverage and just, like, take that as,

00:28:36.855 --> 00:28:49.280
you know, if you're if you're starting off as a general contractor or a handyman, like, you don't just wait around for jobs. You go knock on doors. If you knock on doors and do a great job, you'll start working more and more and get higher and higher quality referrals.

00:28:49.360 --> 00:29:01.625
If you are doing a bunch of work in one particular neighborhood, you start to learn, like, maybe that neighborhood is up and coming and a new development is gonna move in. And then you can you can buy land ahead of the development or you can invest

00:29:01.625 --> 00:29:05.625
in the person who's coming in to, like, renovate this neighborhood.

00:29:05.945 --> 00:29:21.530
And if you do that a few times, then you become, you know, the person who builds the developments in the city. You've done the last five. They've all been successful. And so, of course, the sixth development is gonna, like, pick up the phone and call you directly, and you don't even have to pitch anybody. Right? Um, and I I bet you if you go through, like,

00:29:22.355 --> 00:29:25.475
all of the a list of Hollywood right now, you can

00:29:25.795 --> 00:29:33.555
map their career phases to those different forms of luck. You know, there's people that, like, when you need a specific

00:29:33.715 --> 00:29:35.955
type of actor or character, you're like, well,

00:29:37.210 --> 00:29:48.570
Christopher Walken's the the the only person who can do that role. That's who everybody fills that gap with. If you need a certain kind of movie directed, like, it's and you want it to be top tier, it's gonna be one of 10 people. And those people had to all, like,

00:29:49.765 --> 00:29:53.525
grind and then iterate and position themselves,

00:29:53.525 --> 00:30:34.540
and then they became, like, as a singular person who is, like, gets the phone call. Like, is Christopher Nolan lucky when he gets the next phone call, or is he, like, spent his entire career becoming the person? That's so true. And I feel like that's true. It's everything in life. You you it's like a mixture of, like, data collection that you do and then data collection that other people do on you. And, like, when those two things come together, you get luckier. And so in the beginning, all you can do is, like, collect as much data and do as much action as possible, which would be like play a lot of poker hands in the beginning and really learn what the cards mean and what the percentage likelihood is and, oh, most people that tell right there that it on their face is actually a thing. And, oh, no. It's a really bad probability if I play that hand, so I probably shouldn't play that hand over time.

00:30:34.860 --> 00:30:40.380
And I need to put more chips in because if I don't, it turns out over time, actually taking too little risk

00:30:40.780 --> 00:31:08.410
isn't good. And so I think most people in life don't think about life as, like, a series of hands or a series of, like, data collection points, but that is all that it is. So, like, if you whatever your life is today is really a reflection of, like, how many hands have you played, paid attention to, looked at the data on, and then iterated on? And, like, that's it. Yeah. I I'm not, uh, I was I was a little impatient early in my career, and I'm not advocating for patience or slowness or anything. But my perspective now in my thirties is that,

00:31:08.730 --> 00:31:14.905
you know, the first twenty years of your career is an audition for the second twenty years of your career. And, like,

00:31:15.305 --> 00:31:20.825
if you look at Walter Isaacson, right, like, did he get lucky when Steve Jobs called him? He was like, hey. I'm

00:31:21.560 --> 00:31:24.760
I've got a few good years left. Like, I want you to write my biography.

00:31:25.000 --> 00:31:29.240
It's because Isaacson spent the first twenty years of his career writing

00:31:29.320 --> 00:31:38.275
permissionlessly writing biographies of of da Vinci and Einstein, like, great figures, but they were historical. Anybody could have written those. He didn't have unique special access necessarily.

00:31:38.515 --> 00:31:42.195
Um, but by doing that work, he became the person who got that call. And by doing

00:31:42.355 --> 00:31:45.235
Steve Jobs' biography, he got the Elon Musk biography.

00:31:45.395 --> 00:31:46.195
And so, like,

00:31:46.595 --> 00:31:53.450
you know, these are permissionless books. I've spent the first twenty years of my career, like, building permissionless curations of public material.

00:31:53.610 --> 00:31:58.970
And, like, I don't know what's gonna happen in the second half of my career, but I imagine that it will look like luck.

00:31:59.130 --> 00:32:07.995
And it's only because people have been reading my books for twenty years and have a respect for what they have done that I will get opportunities that, you know, no other author will have had.

00:32:08.475 --> 00:32:14.075
Such a good point. What what does Naval say about or and I don't know if he does, but this I have a recency bias.

00:32:14.315 --> 00:32:18.075
Lately, I've noticed a lot of creative people saying they don't do creative free work.

00:32:19.040 --> 00:32:19.760
Meaning,

00:32:20.080 --> 00:32:28.000
like, they'll wanna apply for a job and not wanna do a project. And at our company, one of the rules is, like, we have to see your work because resumes

00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:30.480
and history has so little correlation

00:32:30.480 --> 00:32:34.175
to good and a fit. There's almost no correlation.

00:32:34.175 --> 00:32:55.300
And that used to be that if you worked at some of these big companies, you're like, there's a pretty high indicator that you might continue to have, like, a certain output or level. And since then, we've realized, in fact, sometimes those are the worst people to hire, and now you almost have to talk me out of if you went to Harvard and worked at Google, why you should work here. Um, and so now we make everybody do a creative project.

00:32:55.860 --> 00:33:19.050
And, uh, and I don't like to pay people for it, not because of the expense. I don't like to pay people because I want to know how they feel about doing work with us. Mhmm. Are they really interested or are they merely kind of curious? Because if they're kind of curious, there are many companies to go be curious at, but it's not this one. And so I'm curious, like, you've done so much free work throughout your career, both, like, writing

00:33:19.050 --> 00:33:19.770
and,

00:33:20.010 --> 00:33:24.170
um, you know, collating things and and doing lots of stuff on the Internet.

00:33:24.410 --> 00:33:32.090
One, how do you feel about doing free work in order to get eventual super highly paid work? And two, is there anything Nipal says about that?

00:33:32.825 --> 00:33:42.505
I'm very happy to do free work that I assign myself. Um, I don't know if I have the same relationship to, like, free work that somebody else wants me to do for them. Yeah. Uh, if it's a lot of my natural curiosity, maybe, but,

00:33:43.385 --> 00:33:54.390
really getting kind of a natural independence is, when you're doing things for their own sake, you do them at a different level. Yeah. Um, but if I wanna really wanted a job at a company, absolutely, I feel like I would do a project to get a job. Sure.

00:33:56.550 --> 00:33:59.590
Well, it's I mean, Naval is a fan of, like, doing things for their own sake.

00:34:00.425 --> 00:34:05.865
And he has an interesting story he tells that I I think about all the time where he's like, the most

00:34:06.185 --> 00:34:09.785
lucrative year of my career where I created the most value,

00:34:10.185 --> 00:34:24.530
I didn't think I was working. I told everybody I was retired, I just kind of, like, cleared my calendar and did what I wanted and followed my curiosity. And, like, in retrospect, that was outrageously productive, and I didn't know it, and I didn't intend it. I didn't trick myself into it. I just

00:34:25.010 --> 00:34:30.445
followed my curiosity, and it all worked out. So I think, you know, like many things,

00:34:31.245 --> 00:34:33.965
uh, sometimes rewards our best pursuit indirectly.

00:34:33.965 --> 00:34:34.925
And so, like,

00:34:35.485 --> 00:34:45.720
this book is excellent. If people see excellence in it, it's not because, like, somebody told me to make it great. It's because I cared about it enough to invest a lot in making it great,

00:34:46.040 --> 00:34:50.360
um, of my own choice and volition. Like, I'm not a perfectionist

00:34:50.360 --> 00:35:00.695
in any other area of my life, but, like, when it comes to putting out a book with my name on it that I think, you know, might make a difference in people's lives, I'm, like, utterly meticulous.

00:35:00.935 --> 00:35:16.360
Nabal has a line I loved, which is desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. Yeah. What a line. Painful. What does that mean, and how do you integrate that into your life, or how did you see him do it? Yeah. He, uh, he's

00:35:16.760 --> 00:35:24.840
his happiness arc is so interesting. Right? So he had, like, achieved all this incredible material success. He built successful companies. He'd been an incredible investor.

00:35:25.080 --> 00:35:30.795
He was well known in Silicon Valley. And he sort of looked around and was like, I all the things that I thought would make me happy

00:35:31.195 --> 00:35:37.835
do not I have them, and they do not seem to have made me happy. So maybe I need to just make a study of happiness. And, like,

00:35:38.155 --> 00:35:48.090
um, somebody said to him, if you're so smart, why aren't you happy? And it's like, oh, like, I can apply my intelligence to this problem, and I can break it down. And so we started reading, you know, like, the the most

00:35:48.250 --> 00:35:51.050
of the happiness canon is kind of this Eastern

00:35:51.130 --> 00:36:03.085
Buddhism and things like that. And so desire is a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want. It's a very it's a modern phrasing of a Buddhist idea that, like, you know, type a business people like us sort of immediately identify with.

00:36:03.405 --> 00:36:04.765
And it identifies,

00:36:04.765 --> 00:36:08.605
like, if you set yourself a goal, which we are all doing constantly,

00:36:08.765 --> 00:36:09.725
unconsciously,

00:36:09.725 --> 00:36:11.325
probably hundreds of times a day,

00:36:12.800 --> 00:36:19.200
especially if you're on social media. Instagram in particular seems like this bottomless well of desire creation.

00:36:20.400 --> 00:36:21.840
Of course, you're gonna be unhappy.

00:36:22.240 --> 00:36:28.325
And if you can learn the discipline of having few desires carefully chosen, his words,

00:36:30.405 --> 00:36:34.405
that you spend a lot more time being content, being happy, not be not feeling

00:36:34.645 --> 00:36:41.205
lesser, not waiting for some future state where you have something that you don't yet have, which is, like, a very natural human tendency.

00:36:42.140 --> 00:36:45.660
But you can make just as much progress and maybe more by just, like, not

00:36:46.460 --> 00:36:55.740
holding a strong burning desire that is, like, making you unhappy every minute until you've achieved something. Naval also talks about getting a partnership and what it means to be in, like, partnership.

00:36:56.225 --> 00:36:58.865
What would Naval say is important in choosing

00:36:58.945 --> 00:37:00.945
your partner? Naval's

00:37:01.345 --> 00:37:09.345
cites the great buffet as, like, using the energy, uh, energy plus intelligence plus integrity as, like, the formula for a successful

00:37:09.780 --> 00:37:12.580
partner and somebody that you wanna work with or invest in.

00:37:13.300 --> 00:37:15.380
I mean, Munger and Buffett are, like,

00:37:16.340 --> 00:37:22.980
the partnership that everybody aspires to. Right? Like, great friends, phone call every day, you know, sixty year zero fight partnership.

00:37:23.805 --> 00:37:33.085
And Buffett's track record is investing in CEOs and abdicating entirely to them. And so, like, you gotta be a really good people picker when that's your strategy.

00:37:33.965 --> 00:37:35.565
And so I think that's, you know,

00:37:37.050 --> 00:37:42.010
a perfectly great formula to to emulate. Can't remember if it's Munger or Buffett that says,

00:37:42.250 --> 00:37:45.370
um, when you get a dog, uh, don't do the barking for it.

00:37:45.770 --> 00:38:02.325
And, uh, and so I like that. In partnerships too, it's the same thing. You know? Don't hire a CEO and then do the CEO and inform. Yeah. Um, I think that makes a lot of sense. What about, um, and it's interesting because we've talked about happiness with Elon Musk. We've talked about happiness with Naval and sort of that neither

00:38:02.805 --> 00:38:04.565
of them really seem to aspire

00:38:04.565 --> 00:38:06.485
much to raw happiness.

00:38:08.710 --> 00:38:09.910
Do you think that

00:38:10.150 --> 00:38:12.870
success and happiness go together?

00:38:13.030 --> 00:38:16.470
When Naval say that they go together, do you believe that they go together?

00:38:16.710 --> 00:38:20.550
I think they go together for some people. I think some people, um,

00:38:21.030 --> 00:38:36.980
there's a balance of, like, for some some people, it's easier to achieve your material desires, and for some people, it's easier to lower them or dismiss them. And Naval's got a great line. It's it's maybe, like, the ultimate Naval line, which is the true test of intelligence is whether you get what you want out of life. And,

00:38:37.140 --> 00:39:04.700
you know, if what Elon wants out of life is to be, like, the maximum contributor to the flourishing of humanity and human progress no matter what the cost or risk, then, like, he's getting what he wants out of life. And if somebody just wants, like, as much peace as possible, then, like, they should go live in a monastery and, like, yield any desires, uh, to affect the material world and or have deep relationships. And and maybe they have an incredible subjective experience. And most people will end up somewhere in between. Right?

00:39:05.100 --> 00:39:06.460
But as long as you're

00:39:06.860 --> 00:39:12.220
at peace with the trade offs that you're making and you're not trying to, you know, fit five

00:39:12.780 --> 00:39:13.660
impossible

00:39:13.660 --> 00:39:15.100
things to coexist

00:39:15.180 --> 00:39:16.940
into one life, I think,

00:39:17.585 --> 00:39:23.025
you know, your formula for happiness, uh, and getting what you want out of life is gonna be uniquely yours.

00:39:23.505 --> 00:39:32.305
What's the lessons that you keep going back to from Nival? Like, you've studied him for years Mhmm. And now interacted with him for probably, like, a decade plus.

00:39:33.130 --> 00:39:34.810
Like, what do you go back to?

00:39:35.370 --> 00:39:36.090
I think that's

00:39:36.730 --> 00:39:42.570
that test of what you want out of life is a good one. Um, I I I first felt drawn to Naval

00:39:42.890 --> 00:39:45.690
in the same way I felt drawn to Munger because I

00:39:46.505 --> 00:39:51.865
such a high percentage of what they said was both surprising and just, like, immediately, like,

00:39:52.345 --> 00:39:55.465
felt correct to me. What, like, 99%

00:39:55.465 --> 00:39:57.625
of what you hear somebody say is like,

00:39:58.585 --> 00:39:59.385
Nailed it.

00:40:00.230 --> 00:40:05.590
In a way that felt right to me. Like, they're not gonna be everybody's heroes, but they they spoke to me for some reason.

00:40:05.910 --> 00:40:09.110
Um, and Naval takes all of Munger and sort of puts him in a, like,

00:40:09.510 --> 00:40:10.470
progressive

00:40:10.550 --> 00:40:11.670
technological

00:40:11.990 --> 00:40:42.160
setting that's, like, exciting and futuristic and, um, more growth oriented. And I I like the combination of those very much. Um, but I the Nabal also lives, like, a quite a balanced and well rounded life. Like, I'm more of a Munger guy than a Buffett guy because Munger is, like, kind of a polymath, and Buffett is, like, maniacally focused on just, Berkshire and compounding his capital. But Munger has many different interests and many different curiosities and has gone down many rabbit holes and lived many lives in the same way that Naval does. He's founder of AngelList and investor in a ton of companies and started many companies and is

00:40:42.915 --> 00:40:49.635
intellectually well rounded and well read and curious and plays around with ideas and applies them in many different ways and,

00:40:51.075 --> 00:40:52.995
you know, has found a way to find, like,

00:40:55.360 --> 00:41:10.395
both peace and happiness and success, uh, like material success kind of all at the same time. And material success in a way that is, like, meaningful to him, not externally or image driven, I think, in my my view, which is, like, certainly what I aspire to do because those are,

00:41:11.435 --> 00:41:19.675
um, those are winnable games. Like, the inner scorecard is a winnable game. You can set the goalpost and achieve them, and you can make sure that, like, you're always happy with

00:41:19.995 --> 00:41:20.795
where you are,

00:41:21.970 --> 00:41:28.210
that you're not trying to, like, fill this bottomless bucket with, like, something someone else's perception that you have no hope of controlling.

00:41:28.450 --> 00:41:32.690
Naval has a line that I love that's very jarring about how

00:41:35.385 --> 00:41:43.145
a salary is, like, the most addictive form of heroin, something to that degree. It's a Taleb quote. Uh, the three most addictive substances are,

00:41:43.545 --> 00:41:45.225
uh, these heroin,

00:41:45.225 --> 00:41:46.265
carbohydrates,

00:41:46.265 --> 00:41:59.700
and a monthly salary. Yeah. And that, like, uh, that push to get you out of the out of the comfort zone. Right? Like, Taleb's morality is all around. Like, are you a risk taker? Are you exposed to the upside or downside of your own behavior?

00:42:01.315 --> 00:42:04.035
Or are you kind of like a lamb in the paddock? And,

00:42:04.835 --> 00:42:06.195
you know, like

00:42:06.195 --> 00:42:12.755
many things, Naval finds, like, a pithy kind of powerful way to phrase it, but it's a it's a nice way to just kind of, like, give you a nudge

00:42:13.700 --> 00:42:16.100
towards your authentic self and to, like,

00:42:16.660 --> 00:42:19.220
feel the the rush and the risk of being

00:42:20.500 --> 00:42:26.100
feeling your skin in the game and feeling exposed to the upside and, like, being a little more authentically you and on

00:42:26.260 --> 00:42:27.300
life's adventure.

00:42:27.460 --> 00:42:35.345
Yes. It's, you know, I think a lot of people live life like they're watching the football game, and they've never stepped foot on the turf.

00:42:35.665 --> 00:42:38.705
And that to me is sort of sad

00:42:38.945 --> 00:42:40.705
because the difference between

00:42:40.785 --> 00:42:49.080
feeling what a hit feels like and, you know, smelling the grass and, you know, having that actual adrenaline that comes up at the beginning of it versus

00:42:49.160 --> 00:42:53.640
the small percentage that you feel when you watch somebody else do it is,

00:42:54.120 --> 00:43:00.575
you know, it's a world away. Yeah. And so I do think a lot of what I've learned from Naval, at least, is

00:43:01.135 --> 00:43:03.135
how do you get a little closer to the action?

00:43:03.535 --> 00:43:18.240
Because, like, that that is the only way, one, you get leverage, but, two, it's the only way that you can actually feel, like, the full human experience in many ways. And he talks about I don't agree with him on all of it, but I do like I like that he pushes. Like, there's he talks about how, um,

00:43:18.800 --> 00:43:24.800
you know, you'll never get rich renting your time. Yep. And I actually don't agree with that. The I mean, mathematically,

00:43:24.800 --> 00:43:29.155
it's not true. Like, Sheryl Sandberg, quite rich, always been an employee.

00:43:29.875 --> 00:43:35.395
But, also, she was an employee at the level where she had massive equity upside. Right? Well, I think that is the part that gets

00:43:37.715 --> 00:43:44.430
waylaid in some of this. Like, is a belief that you can't be an employee without massive upside?

00:43:44.830 --> 00:43:48.670
And you can rent I mean, she does typically. She does actually, you know,

00:43:49.390 --> 00:44:01.515
like, quantifiably rent her time. She has paid a salary. Right? But her upside probably comes all from equity warrants options, etcetera. Well, so what maybe explain that. Like, that'll be an interesting question, which would be something like,

00:44:03.675 --> 00:44:05.195
can you get really rich

00:44:05.675 --> 00:44:08.715
on a nine to five? Can you get really rich

00:44:08.850 --> 00:44:15.250
renting your time or on salary? Maybe the nuance is that you need asymmetric upside. Right? And so one of Nawal's sort of

00:44:16.930 --> 00:44:23.410
directions in one of the chapters of the book is, like, build or buy equity in a business. Like, you need equity upside. You need asymmetric exposure.

00:44:24.305 --> 00:44:27.505
And there are many job there's many ways to get that. There

00:44:28.225 --> 00:44:43.610
are people who get reasonably rich, who become millionaires, who work nine to fives their whole lives, but they're really diligent savers and investors. And they max out their four zero one k, and they live on half their salary, and that this is like the fire movement. Right? They their way of getting equity is just like buying the index with half their salary

00:44:43.770 --> 00:44:44.650
and keeping

00:44:45.210 --> 00:44:47.050
living below their means. Um,

00:44:47.530 --> 00:44:56.915
that's a way to get equity. You probably won't become a billionaire on a $100,000 a year and have, you know, 50% savings rate in equity, but you will almost certainly become a millionaire

00:44:56.995 --> 00:45:08.950
if you're diligent about it over a fifty year time period. Um, if you ascend to you know, if you're climbing the corporate ladder, there are career paths where your salary will go up, but you'll still never get equity exposure.

00:45:09.110 --> 00:45:27.625
I feel like doctors are the famous example of this. Right? Like, we all know cash poor doctors who are, like, making $700 a year, spending $700 a year. They never have equity. They never bother to figure out the game, and they have no retirement plan. Or they have a you know, they never build up a net worth because they're just like their lifestyle consumes

00:45:27.625 --> 00:45:29.785
everything that they earn, and they have no equity.

00:45:30.025 --> 00:45:32.425
Um, but, you know, in the case of

00:45:33.170 --> 00:45:36.290
CEO, CFO, c suite, VP and above, like,

00:45:37.490 --> 00:45:45.650
you just want asymmetric exposure. If you believe in a company that you're working at, you want part of your package to be equity so that you get like, even salespeople

00:45:46.185 --> 00:45:49.225
have asymmetric exposure. They have they have a nonlinear

00:45:49.225 --> 00:45:50.345
earning potential.

00:45:50.745 --> 00:45:56.425
Um, but if you ever wanna be, like, sort of truly passive and live up the capital, you need to start figuring out the,

00:45:56.905 --> 00:46:00.090
uh, the equity game. It's so true. Has

00:46:00.090 --> 00:46:11.690
a quote where he says, the real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely, who don't even play the game, who rise above it. These are the people who have such internal mental and self control and self awareness. They need nothing from anybody else.

00:46:12.655 --> 00:46:14.015
What does he mean by that?

00:46:14.815 --> 00:46:17.775
I think this is the very ultimate inner scorecard.

00:46:17.775 --> 00:46:18.415
Right?

00:46:18.975 --> 00:46:26.335
So much of what people are driven to do is driven by this, like, mimetic desire, and they're always sort of moving the goalpost on themselves.

00:46:31.080 --> 00:46:33.160
You have to know why you're playing the game.

00:46:35.000 --> 00:46:40.760
Like, this is a this is, like, the enlightenment path. Right? And there's there's all kinds of books that he recommends

00:46:40.760 --> 00:46:44.095
and conversations that he's had with with people. But if you, like,

00:46:45.375 --> 00:46:48.175
study those sort of enlightened people, they're just, like, removed

00:46:48.735 --> 00:46:49.615
from it.

00:46:49.855 --> 00:46:54.335
Um, and some people feel compelled. They can't remove themselves from the game until they've won the game.

00:46:54.930 --> 00:46:55.570
And

00:46:56.290 --> 00:46:58.850
not everybody's like that. Some people could be like, this this

00:46:59.330 --> 00:47:06.130
is all a hallucination. I'm just gonna remove myself. Um, but some people need to win the game and then look around and be like, oh,

00:47:06.770 --> 00:47:08.130
there's nothing else here,

00:47:08.450 --> 00:47:09.890
um, so I can escape the game.

00:47:10.495 --> 00:47:16.815
But there are so many games that you can spend your whole life playing them and just kind of leap from one to the other and always feel,

00:47:16.975 --> 00:47:19.375
you know, behind or pressured or,

00:47:19.455 --> 00:47:20.575
like, driven. And

00:47:22.790 --> 00:47:29.590
if you know where the road ends, like, I took from Naval reading this you know, building this book when I was, like, 30 is like,

00:47:30.310 --> 00:47:30.950
oh,

00:47:31.590 --> 00:47:39.065
if you grind and beat yourself up and have this brutal internal monologue and, like, right all the way to, like, winning the game,

00:47:39.465 --> 00:47:45.065
finally achieving all these things that you hope to the whole time. You have the same epiphany that you can have right now, which is that, like,

00:47:45.945 --> 00:47:59.270
none of it matters. It's all made up. You don't even exist. None of this exists. We're all in this, like, a hilarious absurd dream state, so don't take it all so fucking seriously. You can get the things that you want or you can choose not to want them or you can

00:47:59.670 --> 00:48:03.270
you can be almost you can probably be equally effective by just, like,

00:48:04.855 --> 00:48:09.655
by having emotional detachment rather than having, like, being all in, all consumed

00:48:09.655 --> 00:48:10.455
emotionally,

00:48:10.455 --> 00:48:15.815
like, ringing yourself out every day, feeling massive stress about everything that you're doing. And

00:48:16.455 --> 00:48:21.200
if you know that that's the eventual end state is like, do I need to wait until I'm

00:48:21.680 --> 00:48:27.280
80 and I've lived a whole life of mistakes before, like, embodying that epiphany, or can you just be like,

00:48:27.840 --> 00:48:32.320
I can keep playing the game because it's a fun game and we're here and why not? Like

00:48:32.895 --> 00:48:50.710
Yeah. It's a fun dream. And then it kinda doesn't even have to stop you from your speed. Like, I don't know about you, but when I was younger, used to think, well, if I don't care the most and if I don't get emotional, if I don't get upset, then I'm not gonna win. Mhmm. Because that's what winning takes. Mhmm. But I realized, well, actually, having, like, a pretty big

00:48:51.030 --> 00:48:53.110
step back from, like,

00:48:53.590 --> 00:48:58.950
pain in your stomach or that anxiety in your heart when something happens and being able to look at it rationally

00:48:59.345 --> 00:49:05.585
is a complete step function change in your decision making capability because you're not living in flight or fight.

00:49:05.745 --> 00:49:18.980
And your longevity in the game and your energy level within it and your ability to sort out, like, what is what matters and what doesn't. Yeah. Because otherwise, you just you get adrenal fatigue. You're just you you get burnt out. You have decision fatigue.

00:49:19.140 --> 00:49:24.580
Um, you know, it's interesting. We I I had a member of my team and, you know, he was really good. And,

00:49:25.620 --> 00:49:29.955
you know, in his words, he burnt himself out. And so I was like, well, let's talk about that.

00:49:30.355 --> 00:49:31.635
And, um,

00:49:31.715 --> 00:49:36.275
and he said, well, you know, I just don't know that I wanna keep doing this, and I've got all these things. And I go, well,

00:49:37.075 --> 00:49:46.230
do you need to hire somebody? Like, do you think that that is a truth that you always have to stay in said role doing the exact same thing continuously?

00:49:46.470 --> 00:49:57.615
And then, yeah, surely, if you look down into the future, ten years down the road, you probably think that doesn't look like a very fun road to go on. So why would you? And, uh, and what I found was a lot of people that job hop

00:49:57.775 --> 00:49:58.575
or,

00:49:59.135 --> 00:50:27.315
you know, can't figure out what to do next or when they jump around that, you know, they they have a great sprint for, like, two years and they're kind of not sure. It's like wherever you go, there you are. And so, you know, you can change your location and even change your title. But if you are a people pleaser and you stay one, if you don't know how to delegate and you never figure it out, it's really problematic because you you can you build like this, like, constraint that isn't even there. And so some of the stuff I think that he at least teaches me is, yeah, it's about what do you want or not want,

00:50:27.555 --> 00:50:33.555
but also, uh, like, even figuring out what is possible or not Yeah. And where do you have these fake constraints

00:50:34.200 --> 00:50:38.840
Yeah. That you don't even realize. That's what was saying. Like, back to the Elon algorithm is, like, the, uh,

00:50:39.400 --> 00:51:11.030
question of requirements. And and having like, how do you give your team members agency over their environment? It's like, I I I love this company, but, like, this role is is now breaking me. You know, what do we need to change in order to unlock this and continue it and help the energy sort of proceed? And, like, of course, there's many solutions to that. What questions do you ask yourself when you're in that position? Because I think part of part of this is, like, self realization with Naval. Right? So Naval would, like you would even have to first recognize in yourself, I feel this way. Yeah. I need to name it. I need to figure out why.

00:51:11.350 --> 00:51:15.510
Like, how would you if you were struggling right now and felt trapped or lost and not know what to do next,

00:51:16.175 --> 00:51:20.175
what have you learned? To me, the most universal thing, um, and the most

00:51:20.495 --> 00:51:24.735
the thing that I I come back to most often here is, like, thoughtful desire management.

00:51:25.695 --> 00:51:27.135
I've I've now

00:51:27.375 --> 00:52:01.010
noticed when a new desire enters my mind, and I have to, like, triage it. Uh, and I I've learned to, like you know, I used to I used to, like, watch stand up comedy, and half of my experience of watching stand up comedy would be like, I wanna be a stand up comedian. I fucking love stand up comedy. There's a version of me that should be a famous stand up comedian, like and I I've just totally dispelled that desire in my life. I still love it. I still respect it as a medium. I think it's incredible. And I don't know if it's age or just thoughtful desire management or whatever, but it's just, like, very clear to me now that I do not wanna pay the price to become

00:52:01.330 --> 00:52:08.770
I don't want the lifestyle. I don't want all the things like, uh, you know, the the price tag is too big. It's a fun thing to fantasize about, and now that's kind of like,

00:52:09.090 --> 00:52:11.170
I've just completely dispelled that desire.

00:52:11.890 --> 00:52:12.930
And that's

00:52:13.275 --> 00:52:26.075
there are a thousand examples like that, and I bet, you know, open Instagram or Twitter for five minutes and you will you will feel a new desire welling up in you. You just walk outside and you a new desire will well up in you.

00:52:26.475 --> 00:52:27.835
And big or small,

00:52:28.890 --> 00:52:36.410
learning to identify that and say, like, do I really want that? Is that a meaningful desire? Is that a long term desire? Is it worth changing,

00:52:37.450 --> 00:52:49.395
you know, the the course that I'm on? What would I sacrifice? Do I want that thing enough to pay the price tag for it? Mhmm. It's like almost always the answer is no. And the quicker you can close that loop and the fewer of those that exist in your head at any given time,

00:52:49.715 --> 00:52:51.955
the happier you are on a minute to minute basis.

00:52:52.115 --> 00:53:00.720
So how do you do that? Do you literally go, okay. I feel the desire. So, like, I hear in my head, I want that. So I recognize that. And then I think,

00:53:02.000 --> 00:53:13.440
what would be the prices that come with that? Like, what does that thought process look like for recognizing a desire and not immediately latching onto it? Well, I mean, an example, like, a friend texted me today and is like, did you hit your targets for the book launch?

00:53:14.035 --> 00:53:30.720
And I was like, I don't have targets for the book launch. I don't have like, that is an arbitrary I'm not gonna pick a number that I have, like, may or may not work is if I pick 10,000 copies and I sell 9,000, am I supposed to be sad? For how long? Like, is that a useful desire or not a useful desire?

00:53:32.640 --> 00:53:37.520
It was just arbitrary. So, like, I don't know. I I don't hold any desires,

00:53:37.520 --> 00:53:38.880
um, particularly

00:53:38.880 --> 00:53:39.840
closely.

00:53:40.080 --> 00:53:54.285
And the the longer the term and the more vague they are, the more helpful it is. Right? Like, um, I wanna have a wonderful relationship with my wife. I want my kids to have an incredible life. Am I stubborn about any of the specifics about how that needs to look? No. Not really.

00:53:55.250 --> 00:53:57.010
And so the version of, like,

00:53:57.650 --> 00:54:08.265
you know, do I have to go to one specific place at one specific time on a vacation? No. Oh, yeah. I don't know. There's just, um, there's, like, a loose grip over almost everything. It's like maybe

00:54:08.665 --> 00:54:10.265
where you end up after

00:54:10.265 --> 00:54:15.625
some practice of, like, triaging these desires. It's fascinating because it is very zen in many ways.

00:54:16.185 --> 00:54:20.505
But I guess you and your career have have been like that. Like, you've done tough things, a turnaround,

00:54:21.040 --> 00:54:24.000
you know, of a company while writing books.

00:54:24.320 --> 00:54:29.280
Books themselves are not easy to do in general. You've also had startups prior to that,

00:54:29.840 --> 00:54:32.720
um, and you felt what failures felt like.

00:54:33.040 --> 00:54:33.760
Um,

00:54:33.920 --> 00:54:34.800
so I guess

00:54:35.255 --> 00:54:51.370
maybe the last thing would be, are there quotes you turn to from Naval, this book, this period in your life that you think would be helpful to someone who's listening right now who is a little lost maybe and doesn't know where to go next. I think the lesson that so many of us learn

00:54:51.690 --> 00:54:54.730
and have to learn many, many times is to

00:54:54.890 --> 00:54:57.850
trust yourself and your intuition. Right? Like,

00:54:58.170 --> 00:54:59.930
um, that seems to be, like,

00:55:00.785 --> 00:55:04.145
the weird arcs and turns of my career, like,

00:55:04.705 --> 00:55:09.505
have all sort of come back to, like, just trust trust that little voice a little sooner,

00:55:09.825 --> 00:55:16.320
um, sometimes. I is that, like, also your experience? Yeah. I think we're wrong a lot less often

00:55:16.480 --> 00:55:21.680
than we think we are. Mhmm. You just talk yourself out of it. Yep. Um, that's not in every case,

00:55:22.240 --> 00:55:24.720
but especially once you've developed that.

00:55:25.200 --> 00:55:35.725
In the beginning, I would say I was a little bit of an idiot, and I thought I knew a lot. Probably, and through most of my twenties. They're kinda like Dunning Kruger, like Yeah. Under yeah. Exactly. Small information, high conviction.

00:55:36.525 --> 00:55:51.420
And then at some point, you start to see a lot of cycles and think, oh, I I've I've seen this before. I should just listen to it. Yeah. Then when when you figure out that little voice in your head is telling you something, I think then the question becomes like, what do I do with that? Because usually, it'll tell you something, but it won't say,

00:55:53.100 --> 00:56:10.045
you could go bad. Like, if you say, like, I'm so mad at my wife. I'm gonna leave her. Well, that might not be. It might just be saying there's something really wrong in my relation. Like, that's what the voice is saying. And so what does that mean? Well, maybe it means you actually lean in more and you do more things. But I think most often, we just try to, like, shove it down, ignore it.

00:56:10.640 --> 00:56:12.320
Yeah. I mean, listening

00:56:12.400 --> 00:56:13.280
to the voice,

00:56:13.520 --> 00:56:14.160
um,

00:56:14.560 --> 00:56:21.120
allowing it to allowing it to go long enough, you see the patterns. Right? Like, in that moment of of anger,

00:56:21.600 --> 00:56:31.495
um, maybe you're not getting a clear signal. If if you think that twice a day every day for six months, maybe there is something really, you know, really wrong with the relationship. But in a like,

00:56:32.135 --> 00:56:35.335
after you listen, you need courage. Like, a lot of people

00:56:35.975 --> 00:56:39.495
hear the voice, and the the choice is either to repress

00:56:39.575 --> 00:56:43.910
it or to act on it over a certain amount of time. And I think the people that end up the most unhappy,

00:56:44.950 --> 00:56:46.470
have have repressed

00:56:46.550 --> 00:56:51.270
so much because they never summoned the courage. And so they're, like, deeply aware of what it is,

00:56:51.590 --> 00:56:55.590
um, that they they truly wanna be doing or feel like they could be doing and

00:56:56.345 --> 00:57:08.425
just never took that next leap. Um, you know, there's I think it's a Winston Churchill quote. Like, courage is every virtue at its highest form. And so, like, you can understand all the virtues, but if you don't have the courage to to act on them

00:57:08.960 --> 00:57:19.120
when it's difficult, when everything else is sort of going against them, like, they have no they have no form. If we were gonna get really tactical with it and somebody wanted to hone their desire

00:57:19.680 --> 00:57:22.800
plus their courage, what would you tell somebody listening

00:57:22.880 --> 00:57:25.885
right now? How do you how do you get more courage,

00:57:26.205 --> 00:57:30.445
and how do you listen to that little voice inside of your head more often?

00:57:30.925 --> 00:57:35.645
This is not a novolism, but I I know people who swear by this, which is just like a morning

00:57:35.885 --> 00:57:37.645
brain dump on paper.

00:57:38.630 --> 00:57:39.350
The

00:57:39.430 --> 00:57:40.870
process of externalizing

00:57:40.870 --> 00:57:41.750
these thoughts,

00:57:42.150 --> 00:57:48.390
um, somehow helps you evaluate them, and and it forces you to be honest. And so if you see what sounds

00:57:48.630 --> 00:57:49.830
like absolute

00:57:50.505 --> 00:58:00.425
certain reality in your head of, like, I have to be this or become this or get this or I will never be happy. As soon as you write it down, you're like, that's

00:58:00.425 --> 00:58:01.225
stupid.

00:58:02.265 --> 00:58:11.140
Yeah. But if you just live with it in your head the whole time, you're like, you could feel your body responding to it. And and that that practice of externalizing it

00:58:11.460 --> 00:58:18.580
just helps you observe it ration rationally. And it's it's a much it's a shortcut to doing that. Meditation is the same way. It helps you separate sort of

00:58:19.205 --> 00:58:20.405
the evaluator,

00:58:20.405 --> 00:58:26.965
like, the observed from the observant, like, see your own thoughts from above. But writing it is is a shortcut to doing it, and that's,

00:58:27.125 --> 00:58:30.565
um, a helpful method. And and by the same token, like, doing that over time,

00:58:31.220 --> 00:58:34.820
like, you can only write, I hate this job. I wanna quit

00:58:35.380 --> 00:58:37.460
so many times before you're like,

00:58:38.100 --> 00:58:40.020
oh my god. You

00:58:40.100 --> 00:58:42.980
know? You will respond to observing that

00:58:43.460 --> 00:58:44.100
over time.

00:58:45.915 --> 00:58:47.675
You know, whatever it is, like,

00:58:48.075 --> 00:59:04.090
if you stay present with it, uh, the courage, I think, will eventually sort of culminate, you will manifest that in some ways. That's so true. That's so true. Um, I love this book. It was one it was my, obviously, my first book I read of yours. I read it years ago. I come back to it often.

00:59:04.410 --> 00:59:18.955
Thank you for writing this and so many others so we get to learn it from the great. Thank you for having me. It's been, uh, it's been really fun to sort of coevolve with you and see, like, you are living some of the principles in this book at an extremely high level, and it's really,

00:59:19.515 --> 00:59:25.515
um, it's really awesome. Like, if you don't for people that don't understand sort of the journey that you've gone on, I think, like,

00:59:26.235 --> 00:59:32.690
principles here that are making you successful are above, like, leverage and equity and compounding

00:59:32.690 --> 00:59:33.490
are, like,

00:59:35.650 --> 00:59:42.370
you took this blueprint and ran with it and built something for it. I definitely did. We've known each other a long time now now that I think about it. How many years do you think?

00:59:43.785 --> 00:59:46.425
Should we get this book? This came out in 2020.

00:59:46.585 --> 00:59:55.545
So Yeah. Well, definitely before that. So eight, ten years maybe. Ten years, which also means we're old. It was, like, early Twitter ex. You know, I would like we were in a, like, Twitter,

00:59:56.380 --> 01:00:13.805
like, support group together where we were like God. You're funny. You assembled this, like, team of people to help each other. Like, it was like support group. Dude, it was like a sprint to a 100 k. Yeah. And, like, you made it in three months, and now you're at what? I think 700 k. 700 k. Yeah. Unbelievable.

01:00:13.805 --> 01:00:23.550
Oh, yeah. It's true. Well, that is another thing that I think, you know, both the leaders we've talked about do a really good job of and I've tried to learn from is, like, not just

01:00:24.510 --> 01:00:39.125
like, it's a big world. Pull along other people. Like, why do we have to shove other people down? I mean, I pretty much never ever talk shit on the Internet to an individual because I just find that, like, it's so much more beneficial to, like, celebrate friends, celebrate wins,

01:00:39.525 --> 01:00:50.850
you know, try to win more myself, and then get in other groups where other winners already are. Yep. You know? And I learned I think that group, most of those people in there probably besides you and I were bigger than us on the Internet Yep. And now probably

01:00:51.330 --> 01:00:52.050
aren't,

01:00:52.290 --> 01:00:57.410
um, because, like, I think we were connectors, and you're like a a super connector, you know, with

01:00:57.810 --> 01:01:21.000
lots of companies and people on the Internet. So that's another lesson I've learned here. Sit at home and write. And, like, you're you're out there running a media empire. Well, we love that. But that's what I like to do. I like to run companies. Yeah. I like to sit at home and write where it sounds right. No. And you definitely know who you are. Like, think I it's a good it's it's a very good point that, like, this makes me incredibly happy what I do. Yeah. So I consider myself a happy builder even though it's really hard.

01:01:21.560 --> 01:01:22.040
And

01:01:23.160 --> 01:01:53.665
and it my happy looks totally different than yours, but we both, like, kept listening to that little desire and playing into it more and more and more and sort of obsessing on it. Yeah. So, like, people are gonna have a hard time beating you at writing this. Yeah. People are gonna have a hard time beating me at building media companies because it's just what I do for fun. People are incredibly unique. And, like, the the further you go in life, the more unique you should become. You know? Like, I I like, uh, if you're not weird, how do you know you're free? Oh, yeah. Like, one of our main 13 principles is, uh, bring your weird. It's better than boring. Yeah. So, like, that is so true. Alright. You're the male. Thank you. You.