Hello friends.
Welcome back to the show. My guest today is Sean poori, he's an entrepreneur, former CEO podcaster and an angel investor. Sean is kind of an anti Guru. He's a self-identified lazy person, but also managed to exit multiple companies for millions of dollars. So today we're delving into seven of his most semi controversial insights And discussing. Why much of the advice from actual business gurus? Might just be useless, expect to learn why hard work is
massively overrated. What the most undervalued skills in the world are how to get out of your head and stop overthinking. Why many people learned the wrong lessons from failure? How falling behind might not be the great teacher? Many think it is. Why being a billionaire is a stupid goal? Why you shouldn't follow what most people do and much more this Monday. Another modern wisdom Cinema. Episode goes live this time with Rich Roll, massive Time, Podcast syringe.
In South Elite and all-round, interesting. Human, I really enjoyed this conversation, is a much more personal one where we both opened up about challenges that we faced in our past and in our current lives. And I really love Rich. Has influenced got a very sort of peaceful calming demeanor, very interesting, really, really enjoyed that conversation. And after this Monday, we get on to the episodes. I recorded in the UK with some very well-known.
Very well known names. And those will be going live starting soon. Hopefully within the next couple of weeks. I'm also back in Austin, by the way, I'm back in the USA for at least a little while and my live shows begin next week. So if you're in Austin, and you've got tickets to my live show, so we'll see you on Monday. This episode is brought to you by eight sleep. I am currently dying in Austin because it's too hot all the time. And I'm being kept Alive by my eight sleep pod, cover it actively calls, and heats each different side of the bed. So if you
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But now, ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Sean Puri. We already did this once it went. Well, it went amazingly well and I was very sad that we couldn't put it out because we had technical
Difficulties this time were both in our home setup. No, technical difficulties, and we're going to run it back from what we got through last time, plus more.
Well, last time I was also very sick that night after we require recorded a podcast. I did the podcast with you. So to podcasts in a row and I went home and basically just was in bed with a fever for the rest of the night. So if you thought that was good, great because I thought it was terrible and I was feeling terrible, the time I got it, I got to do better than that.
Okay, maybe that's just what old guests.
Like once they finished up recording with me, that's what I like the post-coital, like depression that occurs after you've podcast with me, I'm not too sure. I'll have to ask him previous guests. All right, so I want to go through some of your most controversial semi controversial opinions, which you've kind of become famous for. I think first one, one of my favorites. Hard work is massively overrated? Why
what? I'll take a step back. The reason I like these controversial opinions is
A, you always look cool if you have some controversial opinions, but be, I'm I've learned how much of what we believe is just simply stories that were told. This goes from everything, religion, to school to being taught, what you should be doing for your career and all this stuff. And so I've actively tried to just do program myself and ask in question the Assumption. So I actually started with looking at. What are the things that almost nobody disagrees with?
And are those really true? And one of those that I found that I in practice disagree with was growing up, I was told hard, work is what's most important hard work is the key to success hard work is and you just hear hard work, preach. And it's almost like, you have to be insane to be
Anti hard work, right? Like some people do it just for the just for the effect, but I don't really mean it like that. I just mean it's overrated. It's not that it's a bad thing, but that it is overrated because what I found in my life, is that what you do is far more important than how hard you work on that thing. So, for example, you know, I thought about the hard work thing, I used to work in restaurants and nobody works harder than people in restaurants, restaurants are open, you know, from breakfast, till till late night every single day 7 days a week.
It is, you know, a thankless job. You were working in a hot kitchen and you are, you know, Cooks work hard Cooks, in the back, line of a kitchen work hard, janitors, work hard, you know the cleaning lady works hard but you know you sort of think about like why isn't the janitor driving a Bentley, right? Like if hard work was the key to success then why aren't the people who I think works work the hardest and most of these situations doing better and it's because you know, hard work will let you win the game that you're playing.
Playing but it doesn't help you if you chose the wrong game. And so the most critical decision is actually project selection. What you decide to work on what you decide to do with your talent and your time and your work ethic is far more important and I don't really hear that. In fact, I actually growing up heard the opposite. You know, you get to college and they're like, What's your major? I don't know, I'm 1789. How am I supposed to? You know, I just came from high school, right? Like, I don't know what the thing is yet, is there a list I can look at
Of like the jobs and what they're like, can I do? I get to go see one, you know, and instead it's just like just pick if you don't pick, if you don't declare if you don't declare, your major is in the u.s. at least, I don't how it's for you if you don't declare your major, your behind like already, it's like you. If you've chosen to wait and see or think or go test, you've fallen behind, right? So it just became this thing. We're picking what you do was like this quick one second thing you were supposed to just
it right right away with no preparation and then spend the rest of your life working hard. And I just found that the opposite actually turned out to be true for me, which was picking the right project made the made a huge difference and working hard. Enough was good enough. I consider myself to be frankly, somewhat lazy, but very happy and successful. So, you know, I, you know, I don't know if I'm the outlier or what but, like, at least disproved it is not, it is not the main thing in terms of success. I believe it's overrated
yet to clarify here.
Don't think that you're saying hard work, doesn't matter. Hard work isn't a competitive Advantage. You're saying that for the people who believe that hard work is absolutely everything it is, the end all be all that. There are other higher points of Leverage that you can do that. Open up labels levels and layers to the hard work so that it can be maximized.
Yeah, exactly. Hard work is maybe the fourth or fifth most important factor or ingredient.
So you might say, what's more important. So number one to me is what you work on. Number two would be who you're around, who you work with, because those people will influence you in a far greater Direction and provide more opportunities in the future. So what you work on, who you work with, who you work with far, more important than how hard you work. I sort of think it's something like fourth or fifth most important on the list and that they're really, there's just a threshold, you need to reach. So
If you simply don't take action, you don't do the work. Doesn't matter how good of an idea you had, or how good of Partners yet. Obviously not going to work, but it is a threshold and that going far beyond that threshold going from 40 hours a week to 70 hours weeks, 90 hours a week. Like some people will popularize has much less of an effect than I think. People think it just sounds good. Sounds cool. And it sounds like you earned it. Yeah. Why? Why is it? If, if you're
true, if what you're saying is correct and hard work is as
Overrated, as you say it is. Why is it such a pervasive
myth? Because it's virtue signaling. Most people, you know, the reality is, if you looked at like a contribution, a chart that showed the contributions to success. Well, I was born with like, on all my healthy functions, right? Yeah. 10 fingers, 10 toes. Everything works great. I was born in the United States so already that was like far more influential in my future success and Endeavors than
You know, somebody who had the genetic Lottery played out differently for them, they're born in the in a different place, with a different set of physical resources and then you just keep going down the list of like how what you what what actually contribute to success. A lot of those things are out of your control. I can't take credit for where I was born. I can't take credit for the genetics that I was giving her the gifts, the talents that I had as a baseline. So what people try to do is they try to shove those away, pretend those don't matter because you didn't earn them and people,
You're privileged few if you bring them up and so instead they go to the thing, that sounds like they made a choice to do it. And that is the sole reason why they had the success that they had. I chose to work hard, I put in the time I earned it and it's sort of like, you know, the same thing happens in any Endeavor when I win, it's because I'm great when I lose it was bad luck. So, why is that? Why do we think that? Would we win? It's because of what we did and when we lose it's because what everybody else did all right. But what the, what the
Tommy did what the weather did. What the, you know, the government did, like, you know, people are very quick on the downside to offload, accountability, and on the upside to load in accountability. So, just notice these things. And notice human Nature's Tendencies realize.
It does seem like that would be the convenient thing to do to assign credit to your actions and to make it sound like you. If you, if you have a lot if you earned a lot. If you got a lot of success, the reason why is because you put in a lot and in reality, we know that sometimes it's asymmetric sometimes you just make a few critical decisions. Simple decisions I might have taken you a very short amount of time to do but totally differentiated between success and
failure. Yeah I think there's a few things going on.
On one being if you achieve success. And it wasn't painful people who are working hard and suffering and haven't achieved success to you to them you just look like a lanky sort of Bourgeois. Aristocrat of some kind like a Randomness. Aristocrat that was blessed by this this this sort of chance. Some Harris has got this idea that I didn't get a chance to bring up with him on our episode, The Myth of the self-made man and he takes this one step further because he folds in determining
And a lack of Free Will. So he's basically like none of the things. None of the achievements that you have are yours to Bear because you didn't choose the circumstances he didn't choose the laws of thermodynamics, you didn't choose your genetics. You didn't choose the randomness you didn't choose anything and he sort of Ames this at the right and says this was an awful lot of heavy lifting for people right of Center and uses it to kind of lambaste. This this myth of the self-made, man, the problem I have with that is it's a very disempowering stories. Tell yourself. I don't see it as an Adaptive or
Useful story. Like I want to feel pride in my successes because otherwise I know that I'm not going. I'm going to leave more on the table because what's the fucking point? Like I get satisfaction from doing things well. So it's almost like a it might be a literal truth but a figurative falsehood in that it's not adaptive to believe even if it's true and I think that I don't know, maybe there are times when self-deception can be justified and that might be one of them.
100% agreed on both of the points you made. So I think the first is that you know if you were honest about what actually works and what doesn't it might annoy people because if they have it, har if things are going poorly or it's hard, they want to. They do. Nobody likes to hear how easy it was for somebody else or how simple it could have been if they had made different decisions. So it's a sort of like Keeps The Barbarians at the gates type of thing to be like, no, no, no, the reason.
The only difference was I put in more time in this direction and you put your time in this other direction, you know, and it's the most Equitable way to describe this that pisses off the least number of people, however, for me pissing off, people is not really a priority or a concern. I'm not trying to do it, nor am I trying to avoid it? Just simply trying to be and let the chips fall where they may feel, some people will love it. Some people will hate it and that's okay. I don't really care too much either way, the second point you made, which is
There is no there. The complete myth of the self-made band is it is disappearing and so I have this whole category of things that I always say our may be true but not that useful. So for example, if it's true but not useful, there's plenty of things, like will be in a meeting at work and somebody will say something, I say that's as true, I don't argue with what you're saying but it's simply unimportant is not useful to what we're trying to decide or what we're trying to do here. Similarly, if it is true that we sort of have no Free Will and that it's all determined anyways and that doesn't really
Matter what you do. Well, that's not that useful because it doesn't actually serve me. It's not a story that serves me and once you realize that it's all just stories anyways, pick the ones that serve you pick the ones that make you feel, the way you want to feel that, get you to the outcomes you want to have. And not the ones that make you feel like, crap
a related Point, another opinion of yours. What are the most underrated skills in the world right now in your opinion?
So I have to the first one. People don't even think is a skill which is how underrated.
Is is enthusiasm, sort of a lame part? Maybe a little bit of let down from the way. I framed that, but I don't think it should be a letdown. I think it should be exciting. That enthusiasm is underrated. I'll give you a little story. So I had a realization one day, so I was 24 years old and I took a job. In silk, I moved to Silicon Valley, to take this job. I joined the company. And I think, at the time I was probably the youngest employee in the company about 20 people there. I was the youngest of 20 and, and I looked
Around in there was engineers and the designers people with all kinds of talents that I did not have couldn't code, couldn't design, you know can't dance. Can't do a lot of things, right? So as a not like don't feel like I have a bunch of hard skills.
And I was like, what am I good at your right hand as you sort of, have that, that sort of like impostor syndrome self-doubt moment where you're like, what, why do they have me here? Why did they put me in charge of this project? Is because I literally am like, you know, and I realized that, like one of the things that I had that turns out to be quite important for most people who go on to do interesting things is I had a lot of enthusiasm meaning. I was very excited about what we were doing. I would paint a picture that was compelling to me and then I would Sprint at it.
The ability to paint a picture that excites you the ability to bring excitement to a situation, sounds cheap, sounds fun. Sounds totally frivolous until you're around a group of people that don't have it. And then when the first person comes in, that has a bunch of enthusiasm that has hope about the future, that brings energy to the table. It's contagious. It changes the way everybody feels, and if you're going to do something that's important generally, it's hard, right? I come from the world of Entrepreneurship entrepreneurship. People sort of realize, like, yeah, usually starts off like
Starting from scratch, you have nothing trying to make it happen. There's a lot of force of will that goes into that and discipline is one force of will. I'm going to show up at the right time and do the right things. The other is enthusiasm which is I'm going to believe before it's here and I'm going to believe that it's going to happen. I'm going to take the, I'm going to borrow on that future excitement. Today I'm going to take out a loan against the future and I borrow my happiness and excitement about the future. And I'm going to deploy it today to invest, that, that enthusiasm today. That's how I think about
The borrowing from the future and I think it's a skill. I think it is massively underrated. I think having enthusiasm, when things are going, good is quite easy. Having enthusiasm when things are neutral too bad, is where you get the value of it. And most things are hard, and most things have pretty deep dips. So, having enthusiasm is I think completely underrated? Because people don't even see it as a skill. They don't see it as something, you could develop, and they see and they don't place the
Importance on it. Don't realize how important that source of fuel is how contagious, that is, how it brings everybody's level up when you have it. So I think that's underrated altogether. The second one is storytelling.
I want to go. I want to Jim, I want to jump in on enthusiasm to things. By the way, three or disagree I have noticed. Since I've been in America, I've realized the value of people around me, being excitable, British are genealogical e. Like we are genetically predisposed to be kind of do.
Were sort of personality is very similar to the, whether it's sort of grain, everything's a bit shit or were very great with the satire and the sarcasm, and the cutting, the cutting remarks and stuff, but my disposition doesn't need any more of that. And what I realized one of the reasons that I flourished since I've been in America, is I've been around people who believe that things are going to be better than they are right now. They continually presume progress, is baked in its factored. In all the time that things are going.
To get better. Of course, it's going to grow. How do this going to be fine this catastrophe. You're going to get over and everything. I did it. That maybe America overall. I'm not sure that may just be my particular cohort of particular people in this particular City that I'm living it. But what it's done is its raised my ambient mood, an awful lot. We do not know the things that are going to happen in the future, right? We are not Clairvoyant. We don't even really truly know ourselves or self-deceptive other people deceive us.
We don't have a crystal ball. That shows us, what is going on either outside the world or inside of our own minds and our own bodies given the fact that we have to have some form of delusion. Why not pick a delusion that's going to be beneficial to you, right? Like you have the choice to do this? Why are on the side of? And the only real reason I've been railing against cynicism for quite a while now and it was Michael. Malice is book. The white pill that really got me on to it. Cynicism is the opposite of enthusiasm in some regards and
What I realized is.
The people who were being cynical would doing it because it was like, sour grapes at an existential level, I called it the cynicism safety blanket. That if you presume that things are going to be terrible. You can never be disappointed by the world. Exactly. And it just seems like it's like a coward's way to live. And I understand, I understand people have had bad things have happened to them, they've gone through traumas, they've had discrimination of had, all of this stuff. Like don't I get it right? I understand. And that would set you up to believe this may very well happen in the future.
But like,
What does it do for you? What corn does it grow? Show me the corn that you're growing from this. The corn you're growing is fucking shitty. So yeah I think lesson isn't more enthusiasm. The skill to questions you can respond, but two questions as well. How do you develop it as a skill and how do you feel it?
Effectively let me let me give you a couple different angles at this. Okay. So I come from Silicon Valley, and Silicon Valley, the cynics get to be right and the optimism optimism
Just get to be rich, so the cynics get to be right that, you know, eight out of the ten, things are going to fail, of course, yeah, you're right. You're get to be right 8 out of 10 times and the two out of ten that actually work, you sat on the sidelines, thinking it was just another thing that's not going to work. So Silicon Valley, to Silicon Valley, retrain your brain. So one way to train, your brain, to default optimism, rather than default, pessimism is to play in a game. We're optimism gets rewarded, and so come to Silicon Valley. You get to play again. Upping his Roar. Here's another. Here's another.
Angle. Where come from this great, Conor McGregor quote, I love it. Used to be my desktop background. I told the story before I came to Silicon Valley and every engineer has, like, multiple monitors, it was like a Santa status symbol. Like they don't have Louis Vuitton or anything, but the status of was like, how many monitors you have elaborated, your desk set up. So I'm sitting here with just my laptop and I'm like, shit. I got the, I'm like the I'm wearing the thrift store version of this
luxury status in idiots, kids at the party.
Exactly. I didn't even know what I would do with.
Other screen but hey I need another scream here, it guy, come on, let's go. So I get another screen and I don't know what the hell to do with it. So I just put up one quote because I was like, I don't have any functional, you like isn't functional utility here aside from again honing, the skill of enthusiasm but I'm controlling my mood and the quote that I had on, there was a Conor McGregor quote, where he said they're like, Connor you always have this personality and even when you lose, you seem to be having this, like I feel like we never get to see you, you know, down in the dumps and this is
usually a sport of highs and lows and he goes
At the end of the day, if the quotas us at the end of the day you got to feel some type of way. So why not feel unbeatable? Why not feel Untouchable? Why not feel like the best to ever do it? And I just love that quote, which is
I'm in any moment, I am going to feel something. I'm going to be feeling a certain type of way. And I think, what a lot of smart people do is they try to make that neutral because it just like almost logically mathematically rationally, makes sense. It's like, well, I'll make my default emotional home to be neutral, feeling nothing and has good things happen. I'll feel better. And as bad things happen, I'll feel worse. And this is like a unspoken thing. That I see a lot of smart people do a lot of intellectuals do this. It's a second.
Witness and starting at zero and then I'll go up if it good or bad. If it does down, whereas people with the self-delusion and which are usually, if you use, you get to sit down with, like kind of people remarkable people every week. You'll notice that their emotional home is not zero. There are emotional home is closer to 10, they default feel Untouchable. Unstoppable unshakable, they just enjoy that feeling and they just start there. And yes, sometimes the world will beat them down a little bit and they'll dip, but they'll everybody always returns to your emotional home and see.
You have to like program, it set that like a temperature, like a thermostat in your room. What is my default? Temperature. Going to be and I just took time to do that. So that's the first thing. The second thing is, here's enthusiasm and a non-business context. Anybody who's ever dated somebody knows that like there is the quote unquote honeymoon period. Like the the start of every relationship that you get into is typically where it's like, you know, the highs but, you know, both
I would say First Dates, like two people sitting down to deciding to lie to each other. It's like you present your best self. You're going to, you're going to basically play everything up, you're going to your gentlemanly, how gentlemanly are you? You're going to play it up and let me get that door for you. Let me let me dress up let me do XYZ and nobody farts on a first date. And so what happens is later in a relationship, people will Retreat back to their emotional home, their personality home, and all of a sudden, they'll start to behave differently. Somebody
No, at the beginning. Let me take out that trash at the end at the end, why I was have to take out the trash. Why don't you do it every know for once once in a while? So we kind of slip and we slip in these ways. And the worst way we slip is that the enthusiasm dips, we get comfortable and the enthusiasm dips in the kind of classic Trope. Here is like, when if you see somebody come home from work, you see like a dad come home from work.
This person, the dad might have been left there for the house at 6:00 in the morning, 7:00 in the morning. Worked hard all day drive back home, sit in traffic, 40 minutes, get back to the house, open up the door, they're hungry, they're thirsty, they're tired. They put down the briefcase, take off the suit jacket, finally, and like this sort of slump through the door and what all they want to do is get to the couch, get the cold beer, turn on the TV, and turn off their brain. And this is how like, I think, a lot of the world operates,
and I heard this once and I never let it go, which was that, if you
If you, if you do what you did at the beginning, there would never be an end. And in this works in relationships, if you act the way you act at the beginning, there would never be an end of the relation because both people beyond their absolute best behavior. Giving to each other all the time. And the version of this that I tried to like, make as a practice or a habit, is to have honey, I'm home energy. So honey I'm home. Energy is like if you ever see an I Love Lucy back in the day the guy opens the door, he's bursting with energy like nobody comes home from work like that but this guy did it.
The show because it's a show. It would come home, honey, I'm home and you could just hear from the voice if somebody's in the house, I'll get ready. It's on like, get ready for a great ball of energy, coming your way that is going to be loving. That is gonna be affectionate can be playful and flirtation is a Charming. All the things we kind of want to be but we slip and we don't do it. And so one simple practice to develop the skill of enthusiasm is to have this honey, I'm home on energy which is where before you walk through a door whether it's
To a meeting whether it's to your house or apartment, whatever it is just decide to walk in with that humming honey, I'm home energy and you only need to do it for like 45 seconds. But if you just do that for 45 seconds, you like the way it feels, they will respond to you differently, and it will just carry versus. If you come in slumped over, you're going to have that type of energy in that type of interaction, those types of experiences which nobody actually wants to
have. Yeah, the enthusiasm of excitability portion is it's almost kind of like,
A personality trait that I didn't know about. It's like finding out that there's a new type of weather. You just step out one day and you're like, what the fuck is this? Oh, I've never seen this before, it's like that. All right. And um, yeah, I very very much. I'm completely Pro, I've been calling it toxic positivity. I'm very Pro toxic positivity, like just seeing seeing the good in situations being around people that do the same. There's definitely an undercurrent in the UK of excitability. Almost being naive, it.
Being kind of immature, it's being lame. And then, you know, even as you move up through the IQ distribution, smart people like the idea of being cynical because it seems heterodox and it's it seems like you've considered all of the options, only somebody that's a, you know, smooth brain-dead idiot would believe that things are going to go. Well, obviously, you know, that's what that's what that's what the Normie Midway, its think. No, no, I've considered the options but it fails to recognize that
Ultimately, your experience of your life is largely determined by the story that you tell yourself about it. In fact, you could maybe say that it almost. It's almost exclusively determined by that.
There's a thing called the show, people talk about Vicious Cycles and we've seen Vicious Cycles. How people slip into depression, how companies fail, how vicious cycle of vicious cycle? For example, would be, if you break it down into its core elements is just three. Look it's a triangle three dots triangle dot one is belief. If I believe that something is not
going to work, this relationship is going to work. This company is not going to work. This meal is going to suck, whatever. Whatever it is. If I believe that it's not going to work, this is the second dot is action. How much action am I going to take towards making it happen, right? Like, I'm going to take minimal action because I don't believe that it's going to work. You don't believe is going to work, you know, just your sort of tiptoeing, you're not actually going to go full force on it. So, minimal belief leads to minimal action, which leads to a minimal result which only reinforces your shitty.
No belief and that's the Vicious Cycle. So then the next time you just reinforce that, oh, you know, I don't really believe I'm going to stick to this diet, so therefore I'm not actually going to like throw away the junk food. I'll just put it away in the closet a little bit and therefore I'm going to actually end up snacking on the stuff because I know where it is. It's in the closets. Just I just have to open the door and then I get a shitty result. And I say, I knew it, I'd I'd never follow through with these things, right? Like these are the stories you tell yourself silent leader had the voice in your head.
The opposite is true. There is also the winner cycle or The Virtuous cycle, The Virtuous Cycles. The exact opposite massive belief. Oh my God, this is going to work. What if you knew that, like, if you knew that, if you get to this, like you're what you're going to the corner store, and if you knew at that corner store, there is the winning lottery ticket. It is there. The next person who prints it wins? Would you would you walk of? Would you run right now? You're going to run? So your belief if you really believed that you would take Massive Action, you would Sprint.
And when you sprint, you would actually get there first, right? And like, you would actually have a different result than the lotteries are exactly. Right. Because I'm going to, the belief is ill found in that case. But you would take Massive Action and generally Massive Action over a consistent period of time, leads2results, which reinforces your belief that I'm the type of person that whenever I set my mind to something, I do it and when I do it, I get results right. Like that, that just becomes how a winner things. And so enthusiasm is another word as a sort of a it, you know, roommates with belief.
'F. And if you say belief belief, so these kind of like heavy long-term, you only have a few beliefs and Susie azzam is a general state that you operate in such that it takes your default level of belief in something up, which takes your action up, which takes your results up over time. And that is sort of like the this to me the strategy that under that explains why this works. Not only does it feel good to have positive enthusiasm or positivity but like there's an actual Advantage. I think there was a TED Talk Back in the Day called The Happiness Advantage.
To the sky was talking as a Harvard Professor. He explained that like, happiness is not just doesn't just feel good. It literally makes you perform better. They did many tests to see how you actually perform on the same same test. If you came in a certain State versus a different different state, the Happy, Happy State versus
not yeah, JoJo Mac. Has this really great idea that I'm going to write an article a code written article with him about of public metrics and hidden metrics and he talks about stuff like peace of mind being a hidden metric but money being
Being a public metric. And time is very interesting times somewhere between the two, we kind of don't know time, but we kind of do as well. So for instance, people will happily sacrifice their Peace of Mind in order to achieve money because there's no dashboard that tracks your peace of mind. And it's almost like enthusiasm, right? Enthusiasm, such a hidden metric as opposed to it being something that you fail to see the cost of it's something that you fail to see the Returns on because the the the in a texture of your mind is not something that you're open to. So that's people will.
Learn another language will tick a box, though. I'm going to learn Spanish versus work. If you said I'm going to work on upping. My general level of enthusiasm, you'd be looked at like an insane person. What's going to actually serve you better in
life. We need to do a language. One of Duolingo for enthusiasm
actually, I prefer the opposite. I'm happy to be the one who is massively exploiting this
Arbitrage captain'll capturing all of the games.
Exactly, let's a talented talentless guy like me, thrive in a world like
this.
It's right. Okay. Second skill. What's the other
one storytelling? So Stories are the storytelling is that is massively underrated? Because stories are the natural like transfer mechanism between individuals. So like if you want something to stick in somebody else's head you really have two choices music, our story. And you know, you look at like through all of time. What are the things that have lasted? Thousands of years, religions? How religions coded do you remember?
Of the, all of the rules of religion? No, but people remember the stories. Same thing with anything that lasts a long time or sticks in people's heads, you know, I couldn't tell you what I learned in seventh grade, but I can tell you the plot of Lion King. You know what? Play-by-play plot of Lion King. Why? Because it's encoded as a story so stories are like an encoding mechanism for information or for knowledge. Music is another one people will naturally, you know remember catchy music. Most people don't have the ability to make
Make music, but almost everybody could tell a good story. So if I could do the music thing I would but instead I'll do the story thing and I think this is underrated because and I think Steve Jobs had some quote like this. He's like something like the Storyteller is the most powerful person on Earth because they get everybody else to take action. So they're the ones who move one person to the next. And this is how politicians get people. This was how CEOs run companies as stories and so but you're very rarely taught how to
Tell a story. Like if I went and asked somebody like, just explain to me like how if I wanted to get better at storytelling, what would I do? Like what what what are the skills that give me like the two or three big Concepts? And so, they're very nobody really knows how to articulate your not taught this in school and because of that, again, there's a mass of Arbitrage, you have a thing that is quite is very valuable that most people don't know how to do very well. So if you even try a little bit, you'll become the top. 10% 1% of storytellers very quickly. And from
There you know, you get the sort of results that a great communicator would get
what are the principles of Storytelling as far as you're concerned.
So if you listen to like Aaron Sorkin so guy you know, the writer and movie guy who did, you know, I think you like whatever West Wing and Newsroom and a bunch of other stuff like the The Social Network movie. He's like if you ask him like I wanted to take his master class. I had set out a day. I was like I'm gonna learn everything. There is to know from this guy about story telling us. This guy's a master Storyteller, cleared my calendar and like in the first 30 minutes
He just repeats the same one principle over and over again I'm like oh that seems to be it which is stories are about intention and obstacle. He says I worship at the altar of intention and obstacle. So basically if you watch any movie you want to watch any TV show within the first second. You will, you should know, right? Like at any given time you should be able to pause. And you'll know this usually within the first five minutes of every story
There's a Hero and the hero wants something. They have an intention and they have an obstacle. What's in the way of it? Last night? I was watching a show called hijack using this,
it's on. Yeah, I finished it. Did you finish it? I finished the last night. Yeah, everyone should go and watch it interest. I don't
know.
Right away. You see Idris Elba while I won't spoil it but it just all. But once one thing, right at the very beginning, as he wants to be with his family and he's got some obstacles, wife does want to be with, all right, so like you get that if you go watch, DieHard Die Hard. Oh, it's his movie about defusing, a bomb and doing all this create this terrorist plot. What does he want? A very beginning? He gets a call, he wants to be home with his family, but then there's this terrorist plot and really at the at the end of DieHard, all he's trying to do is just get to his family. The whole movie is hero wants something. And there's
And it's in his way in this case, a terrorist plot. And so, and then throughout any story that escalates. So like, let's take this show hijack, write the name kind of gives it away a plane gets hijacked. Okay, cool. So now, this person wants something different. He doesn't want to bring his family back together. He immediately just wants not die from this terrorist right or not die from this hijacking. Let it land safely. That's the intention. What are the obstacles? Well, there might be people working against that plan and so every story must have
Had its underpinning an intention and obstacle, okay, that's the first key principle of Storytelling, and it doesn't matter if it's a romantic comedy. Oh, what does she want? Well, she's a high-powered lawyer, but all her friends are getting married and she's not dating. Anybody what issue? She has an intention. She wants to be mayor, wants to have a loving relationship, they obstacle. She's so successful in all the guy she meets are assholes. Okay cool. She's busy and had me tassels.
Okay. Now what do you do to make a story more compelling? The next ingredient? You need to add is steaks. So you sprinkle some steaks on there, what our steaks? Steaks are elevating. The what's at stake? If they don't get it. So, intention obstacle. If the intention is I'm hungry and the obstacle is, you know, lunch is over there in the other room. It's not that exciting of a story. If the stakes are this person hasn't eaten in 30 days and there you know, if they don't eat they're going to die, right? Like now all of a sudden you have something more
Interesting. So Stakes are high element now. Stakes don't always have to be life or death, the best story, some of them, some of the best things like I don't know if you've seen the show called The Bear that's out recently, it's on Hulu and it's cool. It's just kind of like critically acclaimed like who people think it's cool type of show and in that there's not life or death Stakes, there is no terrorist plot. There is no like life on the line, but they know that for everybody in whatever your world is, there's something that's the highest Stakes thing. The thing you want the most, and all you have to do is convince the audience that this character really cares about this, that the character
Really feels like it's a like a life or death. It's a life-changing swing if it happens or doesn't happen. So all you have to do is make it believable that that's the case. So when I tell stories, I'd actually take most pride in a story where on the surface, the stakes are small. Like I told the story once at a corporate retreat as like an executive Retreat and they went around the circle, every supposed to say what's going on and everybody was trying to one-up each other with a more important bigger problem, a more urgent fire that they had to
Out. And I went the other way I said, so I just moved out of my house, into my own apartment, is back in the day, I've just moved out of my house, my own apartment living on my own. For the first time in my mom is coming over my mom's coming over, and I had told her that like I'm living on my own. I'm a man. Now I'm a big boy. Now, I can do it, but the reality was I was still there. Like, clothes are all over the floor. House is a mess. I don't have groceries, nothing, but I told her I'm cooking dinner for tonight, and I'll be damned if I didn't look like an adult for at least two hours, while my mom is there. It's, I've established the intention.
I've established the obstacle, right? I'm trying to look like an adult obstacle. I'm not actually an adult steaks. My mom's opinion of me matters to me. I can convince you that it matters. I convince you that like drop everything did. I will not fail at this. I will it will be so bad for me at this happens and I talked about in the story, I'm like, you know, I mean this is true. So really, I mean brussels sprouts because I was the most adult thing I could think of to, I'm trying to figure out how to make brussels sprouts taste, good. I've never even eaten, brussels sprouts. And like I tell the story people love it.
I loved it because I took a low-stakes thing and I told a story. Well
I love that. That's really really great. And yeah I say this a lot but aspiring fledgling. Podcasters that ask me about sort of what I wish I had known when I started the show and there's all the technical stuff and all of the Strategic stuff that's good for growth hacking. But when it comes to the show, when I first started doing it, I thought that the job of the podcaster was to basically be blink estate for your guests that you were supposed to ruthlessly index whatever's in their head and that you
Any moment that was Meandering away from it, any sentence that wasn't directly driving some sort of return that people could action in the life. I basically wanted to be Andrew hubermanns website dictated right to people. But for everybody on the planet and overtime, increasingly realize that the best podcasters are Just Vibe Architects. They architect the vibe and all that they're doing is they're just allowing you to marinade in that Vibe. You know, today's Vibe is here are some
And thoughts that you may take offense to but you're probably going to find interesting and we're going to Whimsy our way through a bunch of Side Stories before I decide that it's time to move on to the next one. That's the story right? That's the that's the vibe for today. So people know what they're going to expect and I love these listicle style articles in particular because it keeps everything quite Snappy and it keeps it moving and it stops everything getting too but it's not about being like right Shan. I need to know the five step process on storytelling and then I need to understand exactly how to do the whatever it's good.
Because it focuses you to make sure that you get something out of a conversation but allowing someone to me under and let's not forget. I've sat down opposite Rogan a lot of my friends have multiple multiple times that man is a like he is like a cook for Meandering like he is in love with me enduring and it works amazingly on his show because it's it just feels so naturalistic because that's how you talk with your boys are that's how you talk with your girls, right?
When you sat at the dinner table, or out having a beer, or you've just finished playing pickleball or whatever, someone sees a particular type of bird, guess what, the next 15 minutes or about birds. Like and then the next five minutes after that are about how birds are actually a psyop from the government. And I saw this Conspiracy Theory online, a know what about Australia? Remember you seen that thing that Australia doesn't exist and that's a sign up. Yeah, actually my aunt went to Australia. I've got a friend who's doing rattlesnake conversion therapy because rattlesnakes returning. Gabe, did we students in the water? How do you think that Alex?
As Jones trials going. And isn't he the most suit post any? Like it just
fractures and branches off. It's
like Freestyle rapping but really slowly and I think that that protracted just allowance of, I'm going to follow the Curiosity. It keeps people who have got varied interests interested because it doesn't, it doesn't pigeonhole you too much. It's a natural representation of how people have normal conversations and even if you sit down to try to have a normal conversation with someone and then you began to constrain it, everyone would feel the constraint.
Like, I've Got a Friend really famous comedian, who sat down for dinner with Jordan? Pederson is a long time ago. Now, the first time you met him, you know, he's become friends. First time we met him, he had notes. You tried to have a conversation with Jordan and apparently, half way through. It was like, I need to like stop fucking about with these notes. Like, I'm not, I'm not here to interview you. I'm not the New York Times, right? Washington Post. It just have a conversation with the guy and guess what? Like if he had a bad flight that morning you're talking about flights for 20 minutes and that's fine. And
And yeah, I Vibe architecting storytelling Whimsy really leaning into it. Like, you know, unnecessary detail like, cold blustery November night. I all this shit, like, yeah, get in there. I love that. I love
that. Yeah, I think it's a podcasting, is a medium that allows for that. That's the beauty of it, not other mediums, you can't do that. You can't Meander in a Tic Tac in the same way, but you could do other things in a Tic-Tac which are very interesting. Like, you can say nothing and a tick tock and it
Works is as long as you had the vibe right there too. Have you seen this girl who did this? What the fuck? Dude. DJ's actually do video that went viral. You have to see
this. What is
it? Oh my God, we need Jamie here to pull this up for you. Okay. So this is ticked off axes girls. I think she's a model. She's just looking at her phone like she's like very close to her phone. Something like a staged, whatever. It's like, she's just looking for fun and she's cool. She's like crying. There's like a tear going down her cheek which is inexplicable. Because all she's saying is she's like
Almost like broken batch. Like what the fuck did you just actually do? Like, what are they? What buttons are they pushing. What did the buttons do? Is that even connected to anything? And she just she did that. And it was so funny. It was not trying to be funny but I'm so funny. She was saying nothing would use it would devolve. I was there because immediately, she was like somebody who's so shook by this like this unknown and this like realization that, I don't even know. I don't even understand this thing. And I think it might even not even real. Are we sure that this is real?
And he went viral now and then a bunch of DJ started. Do edit, turned her saying that into a sample and turned it into a song, they're turning it into a song. And then she came back as he came back on. Also like the very next post where she was like, so many DJ's are answering me about what DJ's I should do it. Now, just got me thinking, what if what if football is actually do? I mean, like, are you guys running around? Like she's like almost flirting. Like yeah. Maybe you guys should slide into my DMs now and tell me what you do because that other one works so well. Yeah, it's but she gets ticked.
Talk in a way that nobody does. I think like she's going to be a superstar. I watched a bunch of her content, it's because she is a Vibe architect there. She knows how to be at her house, doing nothing while still entertaining you and making you feel like, you know, her like she did this like kind of like Girl, Next Door, hot thing right sick. She's hot enough that ticked off because interesting but she's makes it feel like she's not trying, she's really makes you know kind of it feel relatable. Yeah. And she's
Talking about nothing but she's entertaining when she the way she says it. So it's just like, amazing like mashup. Now Rogan does the equivalent of that for podcasting, or he's like, he gets a good guess but not like, celebrities really? Like it worked when it was like his friends who are good. Hangs is like no we're going to talk about stuff. We will kind of go wherever and we could talk about nothing but you still are entertained and you still kind of learn something because we talked about a nothing subject that you knew 20 about and so you know he
It's you that way. So I find this stuff. Very, very entertaining are very interesting, how it all plays out, stop how you would have thought and I'm sure many people told him like dude, three hours. Way too long for a podcast. Cut it down. Trim it out. Edit it make it forty minutes. That's the length of a commute. Yep. And he was like, I'm just gonna do what I want. How about that?
And I liked it. I remember when I first started doing podcasting, and I looked, you know, ruin everything by the data. Okay. So, what is the optimal length for a podcast or if you want to maximize completion and balance that with Val,
You you're looking at a bit between sort of 30 and 40 minutes I think because that's the length of a commute, you want people to be able to commit to it during your commute doesn't account for those Psychopaths out there like me and probably you don't listen to stuff it like 1.5 or two or 2.5 times speeds. It's like that's like double Community or whatever. But yeah and ultimately it comes down to are you having fun? Because if enthusiasm with storytelling enthusiasm plus storytelling, or enthusiasm about your story is a vicious combo. Me and my housemate always talk about this
These rallycross not rallycross, what's the is it Motocross or rallycross rally driving? Like off road rally driving things like Colin McRae. What he used to do. There are these guys that were anoraks and it's the Scottish Highlands and it is the middle of October and its pitch, black and freezing cold and they've been camping there and they stand there by the side of this dirt track to C naught point two five seconds of a car. Go
past me
That's it. And then they turn to all of their boys and they're like
and they can't believe
it and watching anybody get fired up that much about anything fires, you up as well. This is why enthusiasm is contagious. And this is why toxic positivity and going against cynicism is good because it has a trickle-down effect, right? Like a contamination Zone from a nuclear spill, you've got this Fallout that just continues to go and it can happen on the internet and it's this
This girl, this girl was genuinely so intrigued and found it so funny to to observe this thing. Like what do DJ's doing? I've employed them for 15 years and it's still a question that I can't give her a definitive answer to
she's
onto something. What the fuck do they do? And so yeah, I think very, very good. Okay, next one. If you're in your head, you're dead. What's that mean?
I guess there's kind of a theme with these, which is
Smart people do really dumb things and I think an example of that is people who are in their head along. So if you're in your head, you're dead. I heard that. Was it just resonated with me, partly? Because it Rhymes, I'm a simpleton but also partly because there was something that was very true about it and I didn't even fully understand it yet, but I was like yes what though? Yes. And what? That was my reaction to it, which is a very good, like signal for something you want to know more about which is an immediate visceral. Yes, without the intellectual understanding
And get.
And what I learned from this is a very simple thing. I want to be happy like many people do, but I did something that most people don't do which is try to figure out. How the hell do you actually be happy? And one of the things about actually being happy is that you need to get out of your head. So most people who are again, the type people who listen to podcasts, I'll call out a lot of people listen to podcast, they are in their head, they try to think their way through life, they think, their way into, they think, their way through problems and that serves them, but then they think they can think their way
Through feeling like they want happiness. So they try to think their way their way. Whoa, no, hold on. You can't, you know like that's like saying I'm going to talk my way through cooking. No, no. There's two different things like I can maybe think my way like in logic my way through logical problems but I can't think my way through emotion that doesn't that's not how one motion Works.
Trying to think your way out of overthinking is like trying to sniff your way out of a cocaine addiction George Mack
to George to Bangers in this episode. Love it.
He's great. I just added, by the way, I just added George to my work. Slack, even though me and George don't work together because I was like, I just think we're Georgia. My life. Ha ha. Do not have a challenge for. Like I'll just dump random shit like this and he'll do, he'll do the same. It's amazing. Highly highly recommend. So the the realization here was I always had a mindset. I thought the formula work like this. I thought if you think a certain thing, you will feel a certain way, which will lead you to do a certain thing. And that is true.
If I think that this person is, this person just cut me off. While I was driving, I will feel pistol. So angry and I will then do something in retaliation. I'll road rage, I'll drive, I'll cut them off, I'll flick them off, whatever it is right. Think leads to feel leads to do. I thought it's a one-way Street and I realized most like like math equations math equations are like reversible like if a plus b equals c then C equals a plus b. So the other way also works and it actually works better in this
So if you do a thing, you will feel differently which will cause you to think differently. And so anybody who exercises knows this intuitively, whether they've wrapped words around this or not which is if you if you focus on if you think. So if you think you're feeling tired or shitty and therefore you you know if you think I don't have enough time or I'm feeling I didn't sleep enough last night whenever you'll feel tired of shady therefore you won't do exercise. But if you just happen to overcome that if you if you
Cledus short-circuit that and say do not listening to that thought and you instead just go do the thing you go and you get do 50 pushups right now in the ground you go into a cold plunge, you do something physical, you will immediately feel different which will lead you to have a different thought. And and so once I realized the equation works better. The other way, the street, the traffic is less crowded going driving the other way on that road, I was like, this is the hack. And so now I realize that the thoughts are not the sort of Master controller of the universe.
They're just an equal party to this. They have one seat at the table feelings, have another and actions have another and actually, they all influence each other. So, if you want to feel differently, you can either think something different, or do something different. And doing is just way easier because if you try to think yourself out of it, you just tie yourself up in knots usually. And so once I realized that realize this, I realized I had lived a lot of my life in my own head, trying to think my way through everything and a much faster version of this was just do something this plays itself out in a bunch of different ways.
Is so one time I saw on Twitter, somebody say something like I've having panic attacks or anybody found a way to you know, get myself to not have these panic attacks and they were like therapy or you could try just you know, really talking yourself through it. So you're not feeling that you don't think that thought they're very, don't have that feeling there for you don't have the panic attack and then Emmett sheer, who's the CEO of twitch, the guy who had acquired my previous company, replied to it. And this was, I never really thought a CEO would chime in on like hey, here's how I deal with.
Attacks. But he did and he goes fast as fast as hack for panic attacks. Immediately dip your face, submerge. Your face into ice-cold water. You will stop having a panic attack immediately because it activates the mammalian dive
reflex. Yep.
And I never heard this before. I just completely new to me, but it was exactly in the same line of thinking, which is often the fastest way to change, how you feel, is a rapid change in your physiology, which then will lead you to think.
A different thought which then will lead you to feel it every way and have a different action. It's just a hat. It's just a complete lie fact that most smart people don't utilize their just brains sitting in a dead vessel and you see this. Go, go watch how people operate. They just sit in their car, sit on their couch, and sit at their desk, or like, you want to make a. You want to have a meeting where you're going to make a key decision that might change the trajectory of your entire company and everybody sits there hunched over tired after a long day, eating shitty food, love muffins. Yeah, trying to get
Coffee just to stimulate themselves, just to kind of get through that thing. Yep it's insane. We make decisions when we're in that physical state. It is. It is a an absolutely core weakness in most people's game.
One of the interesting things I learned from Kelly Starrett. Supple Leopard guy was if you've ever had to take a really mentally challenging phone, call. What you will sometimes, find yourself doing is like a puppeteer has got a hold of you. You'll stand up from your seat and you'll start locomoting around the
Umm, yep. You'll just do laps. You've got a 30 square foot room that you're in. And you're somehow, you've somehow managed to create some totally arbitrary route that your work a lot walking in a figure of eight or an infinity symbol or whatever. Around this room, we're just built to move. Humans are built to move. Were built to be on the ground were built to be out in nature with built to be connected to the ground to see Sun etc, etc. This you don't need to go full like Aubrey Marcus psychedelic, whoo, like biohack Ben Greenfield, biohack stuff here. Like, it's just it
Notice within yourself what your physiology feels compelled to do, when things happen to you. Like you do something, you reach for something because the cookies are the cinnamon rolls or the coffee or whatever, is in front of you. And you condition yourself to think that that's the thing. What's that? That's going to change. You humans got the best quote on this which is you cannot change the mind with the mind. You have to change it with the body. I don't know if that's strict as with most aphorisms. There's exceptions meditation is
Is purposefully changing the mind with the mind, right? Like, it's actually isolating the mind to cycle on itself, but I think the broad rule is very true. And I've always said this, that if you gave me the choice between having a good night's sleep or going to the gym, I will go to the gym every time and my mood will be reset, more from pre to post training, then from pre to post bed, where I can wake up and yesterday's bad mood or whatever can bleed through the night. I'll have a dream about being kidnapped.
People from Liverpool and being forced to do the marketing. Oh, I had that literally happened a couple of weeks ago. I also had another one where I'd committed a war crime and my old cricket team from 20 years ago. Knew that I'd done it and they were mercenaries hunting, me and Sam. Harris was a newscaster trying to track me down speaking of Sam. The episode that I did with him, he had this really lovely bit where he's he's talking about, kind of this like cerebral pornography that a lot of us have where we sort of pray at the altar of cognitive.
Its power and and presumed it because we've got such good Concepts that we can just, you know, we can we can sort all of this. And when you when he tries to explain to his smart friends that meditation and maybe letting go of that and finding a little bit more, he's releasing the tiller a little bit more. Might be a good idea. They say, well, that sounds roughly equivalent to being hit over the head with a hammer. You know, I look at all of my great concept. You would have a much better life. If you had some caught, you should have more Concepts. Like, might like,
Imagine how great you'd be if you had my concept right? And it's yeah, I it's a permanent battle, I think and you're right as well to point the finger into the ears of the people that are listening to podcasts like mine and yours because so good at this. You just
told a funny vulnerable. The story about being kidnapped and forced to do their marketing is so funny to me, by the way, that is like an amazing and I love you. I connected the dots to some like Sam Harris. Like you have this like Bank of
quotes and Frameworks and nuggets from the smartest people on Earth. That's so amazing that you have that. So first of all, you're good at what you do. I appreciate that. Thank you. The second is I had a realization while you were talking that I think is a new philosophy that I have just realized. Let me try to work this out Live. Mental minimalism. So basically I think it's becoming Vogue to have a sort of minimalist lifestyle, maybe fashion style like minimalism is in a bunch of different.
Is one area where it's not in is mentally. So the sort of knowledge porn worshipping at the altar of the cognitive cognition collecting, you know, mental models and Frameworks like their stamps. Like, you know, I think a lot of this is complete wasted energy and actually counterproductive, you know, it's what's that Bruce Lee thing. It's like, you know, I don't fear. The man who doesn't know those 1,000 cakes, I fear the man who's practiced. One kick a thousand times.
Same same same Z's you know like that's how I feel about. Like I really just want to understand a few
principles.
And that's it. And how would it be? I want to go. How do you know, which of the right principles?
I think there's the. I think they're the ones that resonate and they'll still change over time. So, like at any given season of your life, you need different. There's different principles that will speak to you. Almost in a, like, when the student is ready, the teacher appears type of thing right now in my life, I think that there are certain ones that that stand out more than others, but this mental, minimalism thing. I think works because it ties into my favorite.
Meme. The the mid wit meme, The
Yours, Mine and George Max. George is asking about if he's going to do it, the mid width Guide to Life. So I haven't heard that. He's thinking about doing a coffee table book, which is every page is a different mid wit Meme. And it's just the just all of them.
I mean, first customer, whatever
you thought, I'll put my water, whatever it is. Yep.
That Meme I I told
This
is part of the being of the year, I said that's this is the meme of the year. I said, this meme, explains everything I've done wrong in life and everything. I've done right in life and when I did it right, I did it right? According to this mean, when did it wrong? So, if people don't know the meme, it's basically, I'll actually, I think you might explain it better than I do. Can you articulate? What is the Midwest Meme? And then let's let's play with that a little bit,
of course. Yes. So it's an IQ distribution which is a bell curve, right. So you have a graph and from left to right you have stupid on the left and you have super super smart on the right. You have this bell curve that runs
He's showing that there's more people in the middle than there are on the edges. On the left. You have this guy that kind of looks a little bit like a neanderthal with this sort of furrowed, brow sort of these sort of recessed eyes. He looks kind of thick and then in the middle, you sort of have this woke sort of sjw screaming very tense. Kind of like glasses stressed out guy. And then on the right you have the sage who almost looks like a Jedi Jedi Master or whatever. And usually you have both people the stupid
Smart person end up coming to the same realization and the person in the middle, has some overcomplicated idea. So, one of the obvious examples would be lift weights. Eat protein. Stupid guy guy in the middle. I must ensure that my predigested grass-fed coffee. Butter is perfectly served 30 minutes before to ensure that my protein window. Lift weights, eat protein, right? George is with George's favorite. One of these is the guy in the left says, I'm the guy in the left. The guy in the middle says, I'm the guy in the right, and the guy in the right says
I'm the guy on the
left, fuck about is good. There's levels to the Midwest, me mayor and now learning method. I think that me McSwain, so much of life. I think that most people should strive to be. You know, the funny thing you could try to be either the knee enthrall Neanderthal or the Jedi doesn't matter. They come to the same conclusion and this idea of mental mental is minimalism, can you distill down why you're doing something to one reason? People love pros and cons,
Us, and they tie themselves in knots, trying to weigh this out. The scale of one pro one convert to Pros, one-and-a-half cons, and they and they can't make any decisions. Or this happens to me a lot in the business world, I talked to a Founder today. They're starting a new company and I said your last couple of so interesting. You raise 20 million dollars, you did all the stuff, you did some good things but it obviously didn't work out. That's why we're here versus on your yacht. So so what you get wrong and he proceeded to talk for 20 minutes. Telling me about everything he did, right? And I was like, what happened?
And I asked you a question. I said where did it go wrong? You gave me 20 minutes which already is an incorrect answer because the answer should be simple and then the 20 minutes were weaving through things. You did right and things that other people did wrong and things that other companies. Try to, what are you talking about? People don't even learn the right lesson from what they did and so like you know I would simplify a lot of the things in life. Are they like the diet part of my life? Eat real food. Not too much.
Your size, right? Like that's it right real food, mostly veggies, an exercise. I know this is this is diet advice at the simplest level. All I need to do now is intensely do that thing, right? The difference between knowledge and wisdom, knowledge is knowing what you should do and wisdom is doing what you should do. Like to me, that is my definition of wisdom, it's knowledge applied, it's doing what you should do.
You do need enough knowledge to at least know roughly what you should do. But what most people do is they then over index on knowledge and go try to learn all the possible things that there are to know about the subject and under index on wisdom which is actually doing and applying that the the base knowledge that they have.
Yes. So trying to take the mental minimalism thing making it a little bit more applied. I think that it makes me think a little bit about the explore exploit framework, which is that you need to be able to expose yourself to enough ideas that you can work out, which ones are good.
Which one's a bad Tim Ferriss has a phenomenal idea which is his system for memorization and it's called the good shit sticks and what do you suggest is? You know, if you're Thiago Forte and your or Ali Abdel and your built from like that cohort of people, you'll have a perfectly organized ever. No external brain. That's got everything's route folded and decision trade back to whatever, whatever.
If you listen to something and it stands out to you, and you can't not send a screenshot of it to someone from a book, or screen record it, and send it to your friends or put it in a group chat or write it down in a note. Yeah, that's good. That's good. The good shit sticks and that for me is the easiest way to remember stuff because you don't ever have to remember things that you're not excited about remembering, it's easy to remember, stuff like the one that I've got from you earlier on today that Senex get to be right in Optimus get to be rich money.
Bond money, right? I can't forget it. I can't see. I'm gonna remember that now for five years, right? I'm going to be putting that in half a decade's time. Can't get rid of it. He doesn't matter if the story about storytelling, if you switched off and you started thinking about, like what you've got to do later on today or what you're going to make for lunch or whatever like sweet. Then you don't need to go back and try and remember that because it wasn't for you, right? And that's that, you know, you just enjoyed the lovely warm tones of what we're going through. So explore explode. Good shit. Sticks. Good good. That's so we've got
How do I expose myself to it? How do I allow things to pop up, like, what's my selection criteria from the things that I've been exposed to? So that's a nice little framework to to run ourselves through. And then I would maybe say
When it comes to like stopping yourself praying at the altar of cerebral horsepower, quite so much. All of the people that I know that are the most effective in life. Have a very small number of operating principles and one orientation. Usually one single orientation and this is a lesson
orientation. What do you mean by that?
They are moving toward a particular destination. I hesitate to say goal because I don't think it's quite the same as a goal, it's more an area.
Sure that they're moving toward. So for instance for George his would be, he wants to be able to have fun and right so his entire life is built around him, being able to have fun and right mr. Right? For two hours, every single morning, it doesn't matter where on the planet he is, and he wants to have fun and fun for him can be from hanging with friends, it can be doing cold, cold tub. It could be learning to play Pickleball. It can be traveling, it can be doing whatever, right? Two stories one from Jeff Bezos apparently while he was.
Amazon. Every single decision that was made was run through one single orienting principle, that orienting principle was does this improve the customer experience, does this improve the customer experience, every single decision, don't know if it's true symbolically, it's useful. Second one, Elon Musk. Does this get us closer to Mars? Does this get us close to Mars and if you have a single orienting principal, evidently does me taking a poop now or taking a poop in 15 minutes time? Which one gets us closer.
Mars, like that's, you know, you're not going to ask yourself that question but just having that orienting principle. And this is why whole mozi who is got an interesting approach to this, he talks about periods of Life, phases, phases, or periods of life and he was talking about for this next phase of this next period. And I think he's breaks them up into seven your blocks. He was like, I know that I'm going to be in Vegas for the next seven. So I don't mind like I can just lock in. I'm in Vegas. This is, this is what we're going to do.
We've got the apartment. I've got I know where I'm going to buy an office and I'm going to do the whatever and I'm going to build a gym by having phases or periods of your life. It allows you to be more ruthless with your orientation principle because you don't it doesn't need to scale for quite as long. If you accept it your time bound on what you're doing at the mall, I actually think seven years is fucking insane. Like obviously he's probably got it broken in a 90-day Sprints and one year blocks or whatever whatever. But by having
Get at least time-bound what it permits you to do
is feel it, right? Okay.
All that I need to do within the next 90 days is build up a healthy, eating habit and my social life can go out of the window and my business might take a little bit of a hit, but I have decided in advance that this is the thing. I'm going to do and I like the orienting principle as like a way to simplify down, I've been exposed to all these ideas. Some good ones have stuck about the ones that I enjoy to the ones that I've kept. Now, what, what am I really, really aiming towards, okay, which one spoke
Me the most. How does it fit with my lifestyle? And how can I Time by and time-bound that for the next? However, long?
Yeah, the time thing is interesting because you can use it in a bunch of different ways you can play with time and a bunch of ways. So when you think that something's going to be really hard, you shrink the time to time box, to be like, cool, what's the best I can do in the next 45 minutes and all of a sudden, the brain becomes a, I called the brain and answering.
Machine, you just have to figure out with right questions, right? Prompts like, AI, what are the right prompts? I need to give it in order for it to give me a different answer. Ask a better question, get a better answer. And so you could time box on the short scale to be more productive to be more creative. You can time box, like you said, to depressurize a decision. So you can think in both directions. You what I'll do sometimes it's a, but if I was long, how do I take a longer-term term orientation towards us? So, for example, I might say,
There's a meeting on the calendar. I don't really see the agenda. Doesn't tie into this thing I'm doing right now but like over long time Horizon, I think Chris is awesome and I want to do awesome things with awesome people in the long run. Great, it's worth doing, or, you know, this person I could kind of win more in this deal now, but maybe if I give a little, it actually builds some Goodwill with us and lubricates. The next ten deals, we do together. I met a friend. Once I really wanted to be an investor, and I had no money, and he was like,
Like as a first, I just didn't do any deals because I did have the money. I just limited by my imagination. Don't have money, don't do deals and I missed three Deals. I became billion dollar companies and that's that point, I was like, okay, well, I don't want to really see number four. So I'm going to find a way I still have no money, but I'm gonna find a way. So I asked a different question of my brain. How can I invest even though I don't have money brain says, well you got friends with Buddy. Why don't you ask them? Why don't you why don't you do a deal with them? Take a little less economics but at least you do the deal and immediately go to
Who's maybe 10 years older than me or so 7 to 7 to 10 years older and he's got money and I said want to do the dealership yet. I said okay well I don't really know what's the fair split here. Like is there a standard? I'm Googling it can't find it. I don't want to be a sucker but I also do want to be greedy. I'm don't know the answer and he I thought well this and this guy's a business sharks. I'm like certainly he's going to shark me with this offer. I got to prepare myself for this shark attack. This guy's been so successful made hundreds of millions of dollars. He's I'm playing
Chess against Magnus Carlsen here, trying to negotiate this deal with this guy. And instead, he text me and just says, whatever you think is fair is fine with me in this deal. I actually don't care about this deal. What I care about is doing deals with you for the next 20 years.
And I was like, huh? Never had a text message like that, never even had an experience like that. Never met somebody who takes that long term orientation Bezos and others have the, I think Bezos donates a lot to the long now Foundation, which is like this in San Francisco. There's a clock that's like 10,000-year clock or some shit like that. It's like this. This tells you like think longer, think bigger, you'll operate differently than somebody who's all the short-term minded so you can go in that direction or you can shrink the time Horizon and say you know what? I don't know the
Rancher of my purpose in life and what I want to do with my career and all the stuff but what I do know is like this is fun right now. I think it'll be fun and why don't I just set two years. What's it? What are great decisions. I can make that. Well, I'm happy to commit to for a two-year period, but not necessarily a 20-year period, so you could depressurize the situation and allow yourself to think more clearly. My buddy Sam has a version of this called worry time. And he's kind of like, I'm a pretty laid-back guy, he's a lot more like high-strung in general. And I'm like, how do you live like that? He's like, oh, I've found my mechanisms. He goes I have
Something called worry time, he's like I used to worry all the time about whatever it is money. My car repair, whatever. Whatever is going on. He's like and I realize like that really doesn't get me anywhere to have this like low ambient worry at all times. This low-level nonspecific stress at all times. He's like so I just started setting out time. I said okay I don't think about, I don't worry about money except for Sunday's from 11 a.m. to noon and that's my time. I know it's there and I'll think about money during that time and I'll say I do I have enough and I might be spending too much and whatever. I'll make some adjustments I say I'm
Good tell the next Sunday and he's like, that's what I do. I literally just schedule it in and just the fact that I scheduled it of like, now's the time I'm going to work on this or worry about this. Totally changes my like allows me to then function freely and think. Clearly, other than that, I love that hack. Justin Ayers has a similar one about choosing what to work on. He's like a common thing you see is people get to a certain point like middle of their career and then they get paralyzed. They can't decide what to do. They're looking for the perfect project as the
What conditions that's just going to be like sufficiently ambitious, and prestigious, and Noble and lucrative, and all these things and they just don't know what to do. They can feel totally lost and he goes one of the big things that works is basically committing to something and being like, I'm going to not question. This decision, every day, my trainers as a thing he goes, you don't plant the seed and then dig it up the next day and they are you growing like no, you plant the seed and you just water it, you just water it, you just you believe, you know, that that plant is gonna take a little time to sprout you
Okay. You don't dig it up every single time in question it and so, let's get this sort of. Scheduled worry. Time are scheduled commitment times. I think, I think people are mostly victims to time and then you meet some people that are sort of Masters of time they manipulate time in a different way. And I didn't even have language around this until I met them. And I started to realize oh, there's some games you can play with time that actually make it work for you versus just this thing. You're running out of and don't have enough
of next one. People think they learn from failure but I don't find that.
At to be true why?
It's another one of those things that everybody says. And you sound crazy to disagree with it. Everybody says, oh, I fail. But I learned so much right. I didn't lose I learned right? And these are it's a great mindset to have. If it were true is simply not true in most situations because you, if you press on that, you asked about it. So what did you learn?
Answers not at the tip of the tongue. Okay, let me give you some time. Let's think about it. Okay. So what did you learn, right? I gave the example of the, the founder, who I said, well, it failed. Why did it fail? And they had a different story? Some people in success, learn the wrong lesson, I had a guy work for me, 18 years old and he he was talented, what he was doing, but he had like, it had, you know, like many people do I did it 18 to? I had a bit of a degenerate streak like to gamble and you know, I when I game when I played online poker kids nowadays, they play Robin.
And they play crypto and they play other things, right? So he was like, you know, I'm talking to him on a call and he goes quiet for a second. I hate. Did you hear me? Like I said, let's do this. You're writing the notes you stopped writing what happened? He goes oh sorry. I said that Bitcoin crash to four thousand dollars and I wanted to buy and I go and I'm like, two things, a we're going to meeting. Why are you looking at the Bitcoin price? Be wise, big 24,000, I want to buy two and so she bought on
Like some crazy leverage. So he's buying like 25 X or something like that. So he puts in like 5 grand but buys 25x worth but like he's going to get liquidated if the price drops anymore but he played that right makes money and so he's 18 or 19 years old. I think he's got a couple hundred thousand dollars in the bank from like combination of like taking all the money. I paid him for work and then gambling and trying to run it up. And I'm like, okay that's good. And I'd always talk to him about this one company. So this is company that he he was really interested in.
That was like, whatever some gaming company listed on the Australian stock exchange. It kept talking about, is, I'm like, dude, you think I care about some company in Australia. That why do you tell me about this is a, I think it's gonna be big. So, I'm like, if you think it's gonna be big, you should invest in it, but I forgot that he's not a normal person and he's going to invest everything in it. So he does. He invests all of his money into this one. Stock, of course things. Don't go right. The that company wasn't doing so well. They say they decide. You know what?
What shit's not going well for us. We're going to do what was in Vogue at the time. We're going to Pivot to crypto, so they go. And they say, we are now a blockchain gaming company Australian stock exchange doesn't like that. They boot them off the exchange. They say we don't support crypto publicly traded companies. So you know they d-list them. So now my friend is 20 years old, he's holding two hundred thousand dollars of a stock that is no longer listed on the market and basically has no Pathway to get back on there and just seems like a dead end.
Joins us Facebook group of people who also were like stockholders. I guess, you know, like, victims of victims group and people in that group are just like, what do we do? Like, I own the stock. I can't even sell it anymore, and so and let's not publicly traded anymore. So what do I do? And so some people are offering, like, look, I'll buy it off you for like you know, ten cents on the dollar. Like I'll just I'll give you ten cents for every dollar you have this and people are happy to move on from their position. So my friend decides
You know what the thing I'm going to do the lesson I've learned so far in this like extreme risk taking thing is that I didn't take enough risk. He immediately goes and doubles down on it and he buys he goes and borrows more money and starts buying up more stock. From all these people that are selling for pennies on the dollar, he becomes like one of the largest shareholders of this company.
Somehow through like dumb luck. This company starts to like crypto be crypto hits a bull, run crypto, start showing up. Now, any crypto company is looking good and if T's become a thing, this company is perfectly positioned to do something. I have these share price goes way up, but it's still delisted, but it's now worth a lot. So a guy approaches him and says I'll give you two million dollars for it.
Hold on, I got to take my daughter to go pick one second.
Okay, all right. Potty training.
Here. I am dropping knowledge bombs and then I have to go wipe a
button potty training. That's the Jew ality of mine. Get you a man that can do, both exactly. That was the
commercial right there, where was it? Okay. Guy comes up offers some two million dollars for his stock. I'm like, how the hell did this work out from? Of course he says. No, he says, this is going to go bigger and he goes hard and I'm telling the story. And at the time, I told the story, I was telling it because I was like this guy who's my
Turn had this crazy story. Like isn't that amazing? And one gentleman at the table goes,
Huh. He goes so, do you think he learned the right lesson out of that? I had never even heard somebody say this question which is, did you you learned? Yes. But did you learn the right thing from this experience? And I don't think I could even learn the right lessons and definitely my friend. Who was the kid who's doing this? Had not learned the right lesson, which was his like he was taken away this lesson of like, I'm a genius and I'm right as his like, take away, when he actually probably should have been taken away or, you know, a slightly different lesson. And I just see this over and over
Again and I think there's a practical part of this too. People don't write down what they were thinking at the time or later. Like they don't really have a system in place that will let them assess what they're doing so that you can kind of like our memories are generally quite bad, our memories of our own thoughts are worse. Our memories of our thoughts, when we were wrong, you're kidding me. Like there's no chance we have an accurate view of that. And so, because you don't actually have this like accurate like
I'm doing this for this reason. I think this is going to play out fast forward. Here's how it actually played out. You don't have this before in Acts 4 after to learn from. So I think generally people are very good at learning from this. And I think it's also
Interesting that they don't have a system to do it and I think people should have a system to assess the decisions you make because judgment and decision-making is probably the most important skill you can hone over time but we just kind of leave it up to like I hope it just comes with age when actually probably increase the rate of learning on your decision-making. If you like establish a little system for yourself of being just writing things down just right now while you're doing what you're doing or why and then assessing it
later regularly. Regularly assessing it. I always thought it would be really cool if it was
Such a machine as being able to take a photo of the texture of your mind and being able to revisit it, you know, for the people that are trying to become more positive or more enthusiastic, or more balanced, or equanimous, or or mindful, a peaceful or aggressive or overcome the shyness, whatever. Go back to you five years ago, you 10 years ago and get a sense for what? Sorts of things, captured your attention on a daily basis.
What were the sorts of things that you were caught up ruminating about and worrying about whether they were going to happen or how they could have happened? Or if what you would have done? Had you not wanted them to happen?
If you were able to go back and experience, that literally feel it again, the texture of your mind, the contrast would be so unbelievable, but it's the drip drip, drip Japanese water torture of erosion that so slow, like a tectonic plate moves over time that it nudges, what? We expect from our daily existence, to the point where you can't notice it. When did you become confident? When did you overcome your shyness? When did you whatever like it?
It's there's no point at which it happened. It's just it's like asking someone when they became old right there. Just, it's just a gradation that you went through. When did you become peaceful? When did you become angry? When did you become resentful? Like, all of these things, they just occur. And I think that
Self-deception around things that we got wrong. As you said is just it's fucking doing on be. I went to the
doctor the other day and I'm sitting there and I'm like, yeah, I think I might have sleep apnea, I don't really know. I did a test back in the day they said, you know, very mild, but I feel like it's gotten worse. I don't really know and he goes, he's, it can be gained any weight and I was like, yeah, maybe a little, I don't know. Hard, yeah, I think so but like
Like something drastic, he pulls up my chart and the the doctor's office I go to it's like the charts in between you two. So it's not like back in the day. The doctor you should have it. They used to look at it then talk to you here. We could both see the screen. And so I'm looking at the chart and literally he's like so 2016, 2017, you were 40 pounds, lighter than you are now.
I was like 40 pounds. That sounds like a lot of weight to get. I guess it has been. I basically gained 10 pounds a year of our eight pounds a year for five years. And I was like, yeah, I knew I'd been getting kind of out of shape dad bod status but like when you hear it that way, or you see it on a chart, you're just like, what? Like it was eye-opening. And that's me and I can see my body. Imagine my brain didn't mention my level of wisdom, and the things they focus on in my intellect and my decision,
Like I have no chance of noticing either the degradation alarm or improvements to be honest of those over time I do wish a such a machine would exist
George. So again this is like the George is the third guest here. It's just it doesn't happen to be contributing to being very quiet today. He's got this thing that he's doing which is pretty Dyrdek pilled as it goes. We're at the end of each day. He's trying to capture some key lessons about the day so that he can make the hidden.
Well, in terms of how he feels and, you know, journaling is kind of a more qualitative solution I suppose for this but, you know, a dashboard like what Rob is trying to design or George has managed to Cobble together on a free typeform website, or whatever it is that he's using. I do think is a good way to start visualizing the things that you care about. All right? Next one, I love this one. Being a billionaire is a stupid goal. Why you're on billionaires? You, you're a man of many means and you have friends with
Many means and even more means why?
Well, first of all, they just give the money away anyways, so clearly couldn't be that valuable. Like if they worked their whole life to get in, then they give it all away. So, the already that tells you that like acute, massive accumulation in abundance of money Beyond a certain point, certainly, doesn't matter. Otherwise, they would not give it away. Like let's say, I gave them extra health, I don't think they're donating that. Let's say I gave them extra time. 100 extra years of life. I don't think they're donating that.
Yeah, but you can give them a billion dollars in, they'll give away 99% of it. So that's the first thing. Just for signal that maybe this is overrated. The second is I'm not against abundance. So some most people who hate billionaires just hate abundance. They hate when anybody wins at a large scale. I'm not that guy. I like people who win, I admire, and respect and cited. You know, strive to be one of those people, but what I admire and appreciate the most is somebody who picks the right game to play somebody who chooses a game or designs a game of their own liking. So,
The question then becomes what are the other things I could become massively abundant and a massive winter of? Okay, the money game is won and there are certainly checkpoints along the way of money that matter when you don't have to have any more money. Like you don't have to have a job because you haven't your Investments, make you enough money, right? That's Financial Freedom. That was like, the key checkpoint of life, or it's not being in debt and getting back to zero for somebody who's in debt is a big checkpoint, but beyond that, you know, the checkpoints run out, or they spread out.
Out in a big way and the prizes shrink it's like what's the difference between somebody's got 50 million dollars in five hundred million dollars, like one rents the jet, the other owns the jet, there's not that much of a difference, right? One has a library in their house. The other guy pays for the library at the school. It's like, who cares? I do, I really care about that. Anyways, not worth dedicating my life to. So the question is, what things, what things of abundance are worth dedicating her life to and how do you think about those? So I think it's great to have an abundance of Time free time but also youth, that's youthful
And also, if you're just a young person, when I was 21, I just wanted everything that the 40 year olds around me, had they seem to have the money, they seem to have the relationship to seem to have the, the cars, and the status, and the cool job and everything else. And now that I'm, you know, getting I'm 35, I'm going to be 40 soon. All I want is what the 21 year, olds have time and youth energy abundance like Freedom, like, you know, and so, you know, youth is wasted on the young in that way. So I think having abundance of time is amazing, having an abundance of generosity would be amazing have an
Sense of fun is amazing. I got I've figured out what to do with my life, just by simply asking the question who is having the most fun in their career? And that was a much better guiding principle for me to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life was look around and figure out who's having the most fun. I do a lot of successful people. Those people were not having a lot of fun and the the the scary part, that's the most dangerous part of it all was. If you ask them, are you having fun? They say. Yeah. But if You observe them, you'd it's like somebody whose
Knob is stuck on seven, they don't even know that there's eight nine and ten. They can only go to 7. They think seven is sufficient and maximally fun. Once you see somebody on 10, you look at the seven, you're like, ah, there's a clear difference
who was a people that were at 10.
So, there's some people that are like of, I would say first. It was sad how hard it was to think of this. Because I was like, I know a bunch of people who buy traditional measures are successful, and it wasn't like I just could rattle off.
20 names of people who are winning. Like, if you said who's winning the money game, I could name you 20 people. If said who's winning the audience game, I can name you Tony people. But if the who's having the most fun, who are the people that are dominating, that have fun in life game was a lot harder for me to think of those names, which means kind of surrounded myself with the wrong people, the wrong inspiration. I think that Joe Rogan has a ton of fun and he's kind of like a popular person. So it's not that cool of an answer but what I think he's done amazingly well is
He has managed to make his life about his Hobbies without turning his Hobbies into jobs. So his Hobbies loves. You know, martial arts fighting. You have C becomes the commentator for the UFC gets to call. All the biggest fights. Sit ringside, no gets another Fighters, follow the sport, study it for, get paid to study this thing. Get paid to watch this and he would otherwise be paying to watch. Hmm, that's great. But he also avoided all the trappings of that job.
He's not on the road 200 days, a year like Dana White is he doesn't have to. He literally just said, I'm only gonna do the Vegas shows which happened to be the best shows, which happened to be one hour from where he lived, you know, was living in these in LA. And he's like, I'm not going to travel to Abu Dhabi for was one fight. It's just not worth it right. He loved comedy finds it creatively challenging to do that and finds it amazing to like, make people laugh for a living. He does that and he has he was one in that game as well, but he again, doesn't have to tour, 250 days a year like most comedians.
It doesn't have to censor himself like, many comedians podcasting. He's like, oh, I'm just curious. Guy love to have these conversations became the time on podcaster, right? Didn't have to, but what you don't see him do is what a lot of content creator. Do they get on a Content treadmill that they don't enjoy and they're constantly begging the all begging for audience, trying to figure out what do I need to do to get more clicks, more likes, more, whatever, and they almost ruin. What's otherwise, the best job in the world. He's managed to become the podcast or without doing that. And so he kind of hits the goals but also what you call the anti go
Goals which are basically the traps. You could fall into while achieving your goal. I'll never forget like a friend in college. Her dad was a partner at a big consulting firm and he's making literally 1 million dollars a year. And I thought that was mind-blowing that somebody could make 1 million dollars in a year. Let alone like I thought having a million dollars was like what you accumulate over time, that was the endpoint of money and he's making a million dollars a year, but he also traveled Monday through Thursday night and he would get back for Thursday night. And then be there, Friday, Saturday, and then Sunday, he would leave again.
We travel for his job, he did that her whole life and now she's in college and he missed like basically her whole her whole life and she resented him for it. And I was like, wow, you know, can you do you want success but you want your kids to like you you want success but your kids to know you you want success but you want your wife to still like you and be faithful that relationship. So like you know, Define the game a little differently. So I think bigger billionaire is a stupid goal, because it defines the game on terms that for an abundance, that doesn't actually matter.
I love that you familiar with.
Die with zero Bill Perkins
stuff could Buck. Yeah I like that book
yeah I became really tight with him after I brought him on the show he I mean you know for anybody that doesn't like that but can I can understand why tripped certain people up the wrong way because it's a book that's written for people who have Surplus income. And not everybody does which means that the people who don't have it get upset about it. Here's a man that lives that philosophy. We could finish
that has a case by the way, of pointing the blame, the wrong way, you're bad at this guy, who wrote This Book for some people because you're, you know, you
Have with those people have, you know, that's misguided
anger. I would, I would agree. Yeah. We finished that podcast within 30 minutes, we are on his boat being driven by the captain of his boat wake. Surfing for the next three and a half hours with Phil. The Unabomber, somebody somebody the poker player and I'm like this. Brilliant London. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then over the next like, three or four weeks. I spent a ton of time at his house and he
Just eat. He does the things this is related tangentially to something that I think you've done recently, or at least I've seen someone write about you or maybe you write about yourself, which is the life changing nature of having an assistant and integrating them correctly into your life. What does that look like?
Obviously two things, one, there's only one thing. I remember from the day with zero book, I read it, I liked it, but I only remember one thing. And it's a story he tells about I want to tell it again because it was so,
Impactful to me. And I feel like everybody needs to hear this so I'm like, okay, let me just say his bit here, he talks about like he was handsome job at a bank or investment firm or something like that. Like, you know, the job you want. And his friend was like, I want to go on a trip to Europe for like five or six weeks. Let's go backpacking through Europe. There were, like, just out of school. 20 to 22 to 25 years old, some like that. And he's like, let's go back to Europe and then I was like, that sounds great. But like, how are we going to get six weeks off? He's like,
we're not probably rival ask but it probably won't say yes. And then we'll quit and we'll hope that there's a job for us. When come back, he's like ah man, like that's a responsible I got to do that. So his friend goes and he's at the time, he's laughing at him like stupid guy, made stupid decision to quit his job and go backpacking frolicking through Europe. Like and he's like, you know, I'm here making wise decisions, that guy's making unwise decisions.
Friend comes back, friend is like dude. He's a how was he like I mean I can't even put into words like anybody's done. Study abroad. Comes back with the same thing where they're like, it's hard to even explain to so amazing. I stated these hostiles and I was we met this band and we just jumped on their van and we toured with them for two nights. And I met this girl and she was amazing, we're still dating. And I've tried this food and whatever slept on the beach 323 that eyes. It was amazing. He's a goddamn these like I knew immediately that I had made a mistake, should have had those experiences. And secondly, he says
Finally, he's like 32 33 years old, he's like has accumulated enough Social Capital at his company, to be able to take time off and go do this. So you goes on the backpacking trip at like 33 or 32 and he's like
You know, it's not that fun staying in a hostel when you're 33 and like you know it's different. There's actually it's not just that it would have been better to do it then is like there is a time a season of life where you should do certain things and they're really those things have maximal impact during those seasons and what I thought he was doing was unwise and actually he was doing the life wise thing to do which was to take advantage of our youth and I'd go have this experience at the time where that experience is amazing and
Just hold that. That stuck out with me. I just I feel like that is such a such a important lesson, right? Like, what
do I do to an additional one in that he hasn't released yet? He has this shows the levels of wealth. We're about to talk about your assistant. This guy's got an experienced architect, who their only job is to find different things that they think he might want to do and then put them to him and then even if he says that he doesn't want to do them, convince them that he's going to go and do them.
And one of them was training which is like interrailing in Japan and there are these five star very expensive trains that go the full length of Japan and it's like being on a cruise but being on a like a really, really expensive Trend and they sent it across to him and he said, each shit. That sounds fucking lame. I don't want to do that. Why am I going on a train? I've got a hot wife. Like, what am I? I'm going to go on this train on my own. It's going to be full of old people. I'm gonna hate it.
It's going to be moving around and blah blah. They convinced him to go, he gets on falls in love with it. He's like, I want to do this. I want to do this every month for the rest of my life. What you realize is is that he can do that when he's 70, he can't keep wakeboarding when he's 70. So he is banking this anticipation for when he's going to get back onto interrailing or training or whatever, across Japan and God knows what else he's going to go, but that's for the future. So he there are certain experiences that you can only do a particular periods of your life, they're better.
Maximize during that time, it's kind of less lame to do them during that time and it allows you to match the. It's a lot of it has to do with health like health wealth and time of the three factors that you play with. In his book, your health is largely a determinant of what it is that you're able to do because you like your hips aren't going to take it skiing when you're 80. Right. Right. But you probably find to do training like to sit on a train and be served like cake by a nice Japanese person, right? Like that's that's that's going to be fun, right?
Um, so yeah periods. Yes you assistant what have you done? How's it worked?
Yeah, I mean it's I don't even think it's that crazy. But I think that most people I sort of rail on these like, controversial things, which is like the common theme of all of my stuff. I love my beliefs comes down to the following, which is don't follow what most people do. Because most people don't have a result that you would want. So, like in America, most average person is obese.
Literally Clinic like by the definition. I think the average was obese, what 50? Something percent of marriages end in divorce. So that's kind of like that's the average expected outcome there and module don't have, you know, more than a thousand dollars in the bank or ten thousand dollars for you know, like if an emergency whatever the numbers are, the specifics, don't really matter directionally. They're all correct, which is that it is easy to feel safe doing what most people do, until you realize that most people are going to
Nation. You don't want to be at then it becomes a very risky to do what most people do. So most people, when they get money by luxurious luxurious things like fancy cars, clothes watches maybe vacations things like that.
And
I have this and and so there's this new I would say one of the general wisdoms is experiences are greater than things and I always say services are even better than experiences like I
He's able to hire, you know an assistant for Works full-time for me for like the cost of a couple of purses and an assistant improves, the quality of your life far, more than a person that sits in your closet because you're afraid to take it out and get a scratch. Same thing with a car, I hired a private, Chef for a family for less than what most people pay for a luxury car because I didn't care what it looked like for like when I drove around or you know, like I like a quality car safe car but like I didn't care if it was an Instagram car.
But I did care that. Somebody would go get fresh ingredients. Make healthy food for me and my family that taste great and better than I can. And I don't have to worry about going getting groceries cooking or cleaning or cleaning up afterwards. So, I got my time, I got my health and I got my taste. Like, I can't believe, everybody doesn't do this who can write. So, so that's the first thing assistant. Same thing, pirate assistant through Shepherd, she's in the Philippines. So, I didn't even go with a full-on personal assistant here, so, let me try first.
We dabble with it this way and it's great. She, she's the first line of defense on your email inbox and your time and she makes me, she helps me. Be a better friend. I'm like, hey, my friend had this thing? I think I want to give this gift. Can you go find? You know I want to buy him a candle that has this funny thing about this inside joke on the front and just send it to him in a month and also Windsor birthday. Let's make sure we remember that this year because I'm kind of a shitty friend. Otherwise they just help you be a better person. They help you be whatever the person you want to be. They can help you be and I created a system to like to
That. So I had to learn. How do you even operate? You know, with this, with this new functionality to have to have. Somebody could do this with you. Once I learned it is pretty big unlock, but I would say just in general, finding a way to buy luxuries. That you actually want is great. I will also say, I think, for people who are sitting there listening, they're like, oh great, oh wow. It was great to have a private chef and assistant the oh good for you douchebag, right? Like that's fair, take that on the chin. But I will say, I used to have a big
Reaction whenever I would experience whenever I encounter people who had this type of stuff, it was basically bitterness and then, but it would be disguised as all that stupid. I wouldn't want that that's stuck. And I would tell myself some story that would make myself feel better. And the story was either that having that thing would make me a bad person or that, I don't want that. Anyways, for whatever reasons reasons,
And I had this visceral experience, I went to somebody's house in Las Vegas and they hit Livin Like A basically, a palace and then they drive the fanciest cars and they have literally, there's a pool that goes around their house, like a circle like a moat but just their swimming pool
will be cooler if it was a moat.
Exactly. It's like a swimmable boat. It's about you just want to stay in instead of cross and and I was talking to my buddy and I was like, yeah they have all the stuff, I wouldn't want that. Anyway, I was being defensive about it and don't even realize it. He goes here's, you know, just going
To let you know, one friend to another, you know, like one black belt to another trying to master. We're both trying to master our minds, you're talking very differently than you usually do and it kind of makes me feel like maybe you know, it's kind of bothering you that you don't have these things and you're telling yourself all these things about why you don't want the many ways or why it's bad to have them or how this person is Douchebag for having them instead. What if you switched it, what if this was Costco and you got to walk around on your sampling, a bunch of things of a lifestyle to figure out which ones you want.
Which ones you don't. And so instead of the reaction being I don't have this and therefore, I feel bad. Be like, oh, I'm so lucky. I get to try this to figure out if I like this. How I like this or if I don't care for this at all. Fantastic. What? A cheap way to learn that. And I just flipped my mindset to like oh I actually seek being exposed to other ways of thinking or living in order to get a sample, a little taste, a little test to find out who that's awesome or hmm, they do.
It this way that I would want it this remix way or just, oh, I don't want that at all. Think I don't have to desire that because this, not something that appeals to me and that really changed the way I interact with people who I felt like, because I felt embarrassed at the way I was wrecked him before.
Having a friend who calls you out in a, what sounds like reassuring. But from way, like that about your bullshit is you need to keep those sorts of people close to you.
Well, we made an agreement.
It was like, hey look I want to be this way. You want to be this way. We're both nerds about this stuff. So let's make an agreement that in our quest to master this. But to become a black belt, there are going to be times where you're going to have to point out techniques. I'm doing wrong things, I'm doing and I, so I want you to just say, I'm to me when you see him, and I promise you that, I will receive it. As a gift, the feedback is a gift, and I will receive it that way. So, that's, that's the agreement.
Both going to do that for each other. That's part of who were both like mine in this way. So we know we can talk to each other about that. Whereas if we talked to the wrong person who's not seeking that type of input or or opinion, they might take that the wrong way. But let's set an agreement, a foundation right now, we are men who want to live by certain code. That's our code and we both are down with this
crowd sourcing, you a personal growth. I like it very much, Sean Puri, ladies and gentlemen. Dude I'm so glad that we got to run this back. The first one was phenomenal and I want to do this again.
So, please keep on, coming up with controversial tactics for people to have a better life. Where should people go to keep up to date with all of the different things that you do?
Yeah, you can go to my email list is where I put I think the best content so just go to Sean, poor e.com sha, and pu are i.com. You can put the link in there, whatever. And just put your email in there. I send out stuff that I think is the most thoughtful stuff that's hopefully going to make you make. You think is really all my only promise. I think I can spark
Thoughts in your head. And then the second thing is the podcast. So we have a podcast called my first million, you know, if people listen to this podcast, probably to become more wise, most people, listen to this podcast, our podcast, to become wealthy. And so, yeah, it's me and my buddy Sam. It's a good time. It's very entertaining and it's kind of about business and opportunities that we see or stories that we hear that, you know, we get to share on the Pod. So my first million go subscribe to that.
Oh yeah, Sean I appreciate you. Thank you man. Thank
you.
