How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky) | Eric Jorgenson on Naval Ravikant

0:00 Somebody said to him, "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?" And he's like,

0:02 "Oh, I can apply my intelligence to this problem and I can break it down.

0:05 Desires a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what

0:08 you want." If you can learn

0:09 the discipline of having few desires carefully chosen,

0:12 you spend a lot more time being content, [music] being happy,

0:14 not holding a strong burning desire that is like

0:17 making you unhappy every minute until you've achieved something.

0:20 This episode [music] is an important step back from a world

0:22 that increasingly wants to tell you what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.

0:26 We're bringing on my friend Eric Jorgenson, one of the best writers of our time

0:31 on brilliant billionaires and philosophers like Naval Ravikant.

0:34 He's spent the last 10 years studying him.

0:36 Now, we're going to steal his homework.

0:38 Naval has a line that's very jarring about how

0:40 a salary [music] is like the most addictive form of heroin.

0:43 The three most addictive substances he says heroin,

0:46 carbohydrates, and monthly salary.

0:49 Like that push to get you out of the comfort zone.

0:51 Are you a risk-taker?

0:52 [music] Are you exposed?

0:53 Or are you kind of like a lamb in the paddock?

0:55 Can you get really rich on a 9-to-5?

0:57 What I took from Naval building [music] this book when I

0:59 was like 30 is like you can grind and beat yourself up

1:02 and have this brutal [music] internal monologue all the way to like

1:06 winning the game get the same epiphany that you can have right now,

1:08 which is that like [music] none of it matters.

1:13 One of my favorite quotes from Naval is forget rich versus poor,

1:18 white collar versus blue.

1:19 It's now leveraged versus unleveraged.

1:22 What does that mean?

1:24 Leverage is to me one of the most important things that Naval talks about.

1:27 If you don't understand leverage,

1:28 a lot of things about the world and the outcomes that you see are not going

1:32 to make sense and you're going to get

1:33 like bitter and confused and feel like it's unfair.

1:36 But, it's actually just the normal workings of leverage.

1:39 And so, as Naval explains it, there are many forms of leverage.

1:42 The modern forms of leverage are code, media, and capital.

1:44 Zero marginal cost and uncapped and access is this sort of global marketplace.

1:51 Um and it's really unintuitive.

1:53 Like we're not programmed to think that way.

1:56 And so, understanding that we're in the age of leverage and it

1:58 totally changes like what businesses can be built and where your priorities are.

2:03 And we're seeing unbelievable businesses get built that sort

2:06 of have this understanding of leverage at the core of them.

2:09 It's so funny you say that.

2:09 I was at this YouTube thing this week and so I have top of mind,

2:12 but uh one of the creators there,

2:14 I think it was Mark Rober, who has like a huge science YouTube channel,

2:18 and he did something with like the Discovery Channel or another science channel.

2:21 And so the, you know,

2:23 CEOs of YouTube was joking with them and he was like, "Yeah,

2:25 um you know, uh it was really nice

2:27 of you to do that thing with Discovery Channel.

2:30 It's incredible to collab with the smaller channel

2:32 because [laughter] their viewership's like 10x smaller than Mark

2:35 Rober's on on YouTube." And so it it's

2:37 interesting like this idea of capital, code, and media.

2:43 How do you judge whether you have those kinds of leverage or you don't,

2:46 if you're a normal person?

2:47 Ideally, you want your earnings,

2:48 your inputs and your outputs to be separate from each other, right?

2:52 You don't want to have to work an hour to earn,

2:54 you know, 10 bucks or 100 bucks or 1,000 bucks.

2:56 You want to earn independent of your input.

2:59 If you're in a normal job, you're linear inputs and outputs.

3:04 Um if you are working on a podcast, like you record the same podcast,

3:09 you publish it whether 100 people listen to it or 100,000 people listen to it.

3:12 You put the same amount in, but you get

3:14 an unbelievably higher reward for doing the same amount of work.

3:18 If you're investing in a company,

3:19 like whether you invest $100,000 or a million dollars, it's the same decision,

3:23 but the rewards for doing it are an order of magnitude higher.

3:27 So, you want to look for these places

3:30 where your inputs and your outputs are uncorrelated,

3:32 and the more leveraged you are, the bigger that difference is going to be.

3:37 And the way you get leverage is by winning a smaller leverage game.

3:41 So, start small and just let those things accrue incrementally.

3:45 Like we talked about Elon Musk, he's like the most leveraged person alive

3:49 and it's because people choose to give him capital,

3:52 people choose to go work for him.

3:53 People choose to support his companies and invest in him.

3:56 And they do that because they trust his judgment.

3:58 They trust that he's going to use that well

4:00 and give them good rewards for doing so.

4:02 Yeah, so interesting because in today's age it's even more normal.

4:05 Like it used to be maybe even like 30 years ago,

4:09 I would say, most people had none of these, right?

4:12 You had no money, capital.

4:14 You had no code, you weren't an engineer,

4:16 and you had no media cuz you weren't CNN.

4:18 So, it was like unless you were a top 10%

4:21 or 1% in any of these three, you had zero.

4:25 But now everybody could actually have all three really easily.

4:29 So, you could literally just ask yourself am I making money

4:33 and thus am I taking my money and investing in other things?

4:35 That's leverage.

4:36 Can I code?

4:37 No, but now I've got all these AI tools, so I can now use code.

4:41 That's leverage.

4:42 And media, do I own CNN?

4:44 No, but I actually have a podcast or I have an email

4:47 newsletter or I have an Instagram account that I talk about.

4:49 And so, yeah, I actually am levered with all three.

4:52 And then it's degrees of them, but it's it's a wild time to be alive

4:54 because for the first time ever any human really, at least in in, you know,

4:59 most established worlds can have all three of them

5:02 for almost a zero dollar cost except capital.

5:05 Yeah.

5:06 If you can get a device that can get on the internet,

5:08 like you can enter the global meritocracy essentially.

5:11 And like most people aren't even trying.

5:13 Like most people are just on the consumption side.

5:16 Um and so, if you do if you start creating if

5:18 you start coding if you start trying to build products like

5:22 and you think about it in terms of where do you get

5:24 those disc- uncorrelated inputs versus outputs and try to build a business,

5:28 that's where you're going to get those exponential returns.

5:30 And this is true in every industry, right?

5:32 Like I think people, you know,

5:34 running a plumbing company would probably say like, yeah,

5:36 that's all well and good for a podcaster or a hedge fund,

5:39 but like I run a plumbing company.

5:41 Every business is just uh their growth is determined by how levered they

5:47 are and how elegant they are and how long those levers can get.

5:49 And Naval has a great It's a long thing.

5:53 I won't take you all the way through it,

5:54 but he has goes step-by-step all the way through the real estate industry where,

5:58 you know, you could be a day laborer working on a house.

6:00 You could be a general contractor.

6:02 You could be a real estate investor.

6:04 You could be a developer of big properties,

6:08 or you can take the final leap into like maximum

6:11 leverage of external investors and technologists

6:13 and everything and build Zillow.

6:15 Right?

6:16 And so, all the difference between a day laborer and Zillow is like,

6:19 how leveraged are you and how comfortable are

6:21 you using each of those different forms of leverage?

6:23 That's a really good point.

6:24 I actually never thought of that before.

6:25 It'd be interesting to put names on the tiers,

6:27 you know, because every industry actually has that.

6:30 Everyone has the day laborer all the way to the CEO,

6:34 to the like level of CEO of what kind of company you are,

6:37 to investor, to like, I don't know, capital allocator plus risk taker.

6:42 So, it's it's actually an interesting way to think about the world.

6:45 a lot of times people just think, am I entry-level?

6:47 How much do I make?

6:49 What But they don't think about what is

6:50 the game the company that they're in is playing, too.

6:54 And I feel like Naval's the king of contextual awareness.

6:57 Like, you know, understanding the game that you're playing.

7:00 It would be a fun game like books to build of just like breaking

7:03 down the business from the beginning all the way up the whole ladder cuz we

7:08 hear these incredible stories of people who

7:11 like entered as a dishwasher in the restaurant

7:14 industry and over the course of their career built like a 50 restaurant chain.

7:19 And those people those are people who just sort of figured out,

7:21 you know, what is the person above me know that I don't know?

7:24 What tool do they know how to use?

7:25 What are they able to access?

7:26 Like, how can I figure it out?

7:28 How can I take that next step, that next risk,

7:30 and climb all the way up the ladder?

7:31 And Naval talks about something that is kind of controversial these days.

7:34 He says, "Hard work is overrated and judgment is

7:37 underrated." What do you think he means by that?

7:41 I think the like, you know, the Archimedes quote like,

7:43 give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I can move the world.

7:46 Like one totally correct decision can dominate everything.

7:49 And Naval is really um is an elegant thinker.

7:53 I think he's like really enamored with the idea of like

7:57 where can you flick one domino and everything takes care of itself.

8:01 Which is like this incredibly kind of like Zen business thing.

8:04 What's the smallest action I can take to create the biggest result.

8:07 Um it's very different than somebody like Elon or Goggins or whatever who

8:11 are just kind of like trying to get the most out of themselves possible.

8:14 Um but I think that's a really interesting approach.

8:16 It's a good tool for thought to just be like yeah, how easy could this be?

8:21 Um he describes himself as lazy which I don't think he is,

8:24 but he's like, you know, I I I just want I want the greatest reward

8:27 for my effort and I I don't want to expend effort wastefully.

8:32 Yeah.

8:32 There is something to this idea of how

8:34 you become incredibly ambitious while also being lazy.

8:40 And uh and lazy and like the things that you will allow to take up

8:44 your time because if you are crazy particular

8:47 about the things that take up your time,

8:49 then you have time to figure out where to flick that domino.

8:51 Like that's going to live rent free in my mind actually.

8:54 Like you could spend a lot of time in the middle.

8:57 And you will never actually have the full effect

8:59 than if you spent the time to find the beginning.

9:02 And the real thing is like hard work has a limit eventually.

9:06 Like you can't work 100-hour weeks forever.

9:08 Like hard work is you know,

9:10 respectable and admired and yes, we should work hard,

9:13 but hard work can only get you a two

9:16 or three X improvement in what you're doing.

9:18 And if you don't learn to improve how

9:20 you're working or the elegance or improve your leverage,

9:23 like learn where you can have those 100 X, you know,

9:26 where one hour of work or 10 hours of work can have a 10 X or 100 X impact,

9:31 like you're going to be kind of stuck in that two

9:33 to three X improvement window no matter what you do.

9:37 I think the part that then becomes hard is so then you're like,

9:39 "Okay, that makes sense.

9:40 Of course I'd want to find, you know,

9:42 the fulcrum or of course I'd wish to find the first place

9:44 to flick the domino." But then the question becomes, how do you know?

9:48 And like Naval has great sort of critical thinking frameworks.

9:53 But what does he mean by live [snorts] like a lion?

9:56 Like if you go see a lion on safari,

9:57 like they're just chilling most of the time.

9:59 Like 30, 45 hours at a time.

10:02 They're just laying there and sleeping and kind of whatever.

10:03 And then when they are both hungry and see prey,

10:09 they leap into action with maximum adrenaline,

10:11 full sprint, unbelievable violence,

10:14 and attack and take down this thing and have an incredible feast,

10:17 and then just lay there and sleep again for like 30 hours.

10:20 And I think Naval's sort of learned wisdom

10:23 is that this is how he now approaches projects.

10:26 Like he'll see an opportunity, see an investment,

10:29 just kind of be like reading and casually working,

10:33 learning, going about his own life.

10:35 And then an opportunity will arise or a person

10:38 will make themselves known and it's kind of like,

10:40 "All right, we got to leap into action.

10:41 We got to have a sprint.

10:41 We got to start a company.

10:42 We got to make an investment.

10:43 We got to get up to speed on this really,

10:44 really quickly." Um but if you were mired in something else,

10:49 just like plotting along on not the biggest opportunity rather than having

10:52 the space to jump on the best opportunity when it came about,

10:55 then you might miss it.

10:56 And like that's the live like a lion kind of mindset is like you want

11:01 to have the space to evaluate and attack the most important thing at any time.

11:06 You know, it's interesting you you talk

11:07 about that because one of the things I've been obsessed with lately is um people

11:11 sitting in meetings that they shouldn't be in.

11:14 Yeah.

11:14 And it's a big phenomenon.

11:16 And you know, my team will all sort

11:18 of chuckle about this because I will often say,

11:20 like, "You guys don't have anything to do in here.

11:22 Why are you still in here?" But what I haven't gotten to yet is where they

11:25 self-select to leave the meeting because there's so

11:28 much social normative behavior of just, "No, no,

11:31 I'm supposed to be here from this time to this time

11:33 and I'm paying attention and I'm sitting here and it's like,

11:36 why are we being such good little girls and boys?

11:38 Instead, you really should be saying you pay me and we are here to do

11:43 this mission and if I am sitting here doing this thing that is not top priority,

11:47 I'm actually wasting your time, our money, our mission, all of it.

11:52 But somehow we've all become like way

11:53 too politically correct to say anything like that.

11:56 And so we just sit in meetings that we know are a waste of time.

11:59 We tell nobody and we think that's normal and the CEO might like it.

12:03 I feel like there's there's probably two types of person in that meeting.

12:05 One is like this looks like work and it's easiest thing I can do today.

12:10 So I'm just going to sit in here and like I'm going to be in a meeting.

12:12 I'm doing my job with the lowest effort possible.

12:15 And then there's somebody else who's like sitting there

12:17 and their skin is crawling because they're like, I hate this.

12:19 I'm useless.

12:20 I feel like I can't leave.

12:21 I've got more important work to do.

12:22 Like please let me out of here.

12:24 Yeah.

12:24 Um but both are caught in the like if you make the first step of the meeting,

12:29 like what is the point of this meeting and who belongs in it?

12:31 Like who has a hand in the solution that we're trying to arrive

12:33 at and spend the first 5 minutes of a meeting on that and make

12:37 it a cultural norm to dismiss people from meetings that are not

12:39 like I don't have a good case for being here and great,

12:43 I want to be somewhere else.

12:44 Yeah, it seems like such a no-brainer but I think off even

12:47 at our company where I'd say people say this to people a lot,

12:49 I don't think we've done a good enough job giving them permission Yeah, yeah.

12:53 to be you know, if they're like, Cody,

12:54 I don't think this meeting is relevant to me.

12:56 I don't think I've ever gotten mad at anybody for that.

12:58 I'm like, oh yeah, you're right, get out of here.

12:59 Yeah.

13:00 Or there's a dynamic where people I think want

13:01 to be in the same room as like the the person,

13:04 the the CEO, the leader, the whatever.

13:05 Like that that there was those meetings are opportunity for face time probably

13:09 in some ways that are like more about the political game than the output.

13:13 I've actually never thought about that.

13:14 That's a that's a very good point.

13:15 I think it's another screen that happens like the more successful you get,

13:18 the more you forget that you know,

13:20 your presence can have negative or positive effects.

13:23 Like when you give feedback, sometimes you have have be careful at which

13:25 levels of the game because it can just

13:27 ruin somebody or simultaneously they want to hang

13:30 out with you more even though you're like,

13:31 I would like you so much more if you didn't do that.

13:35 [laughter] We have to sort of say that, too.

13:36 I actually it's kind of like an interesting

13:38 idea because this goes back to authenticity,

13:40 but there's a quote that I found originally from you,

13:42 find what feels like play to you but looks like work to others.

13:45 You're going to outcompete them because you're going to do it effortlessly.

13:49 To you it's art, it's joy, it's flow.

13:51 You escape competition through authen- authenticity.

13:54 If I had to summarize how to be successful in life,

13:56 I would just say two words, productize yourself.

13:59 Tell me more about that and what does that even mean to productize yourself?

14:03 Yeah, I mean that that is the two-word summary of half of the book,

14:07 which is like very difficult to fully unpack.

14:10 Um but the ability to really understand and observe

14:14 in yourself what you want to do naturally, your ikigai or whatever.

14:18 And one way to do that is to look at the things that you did as a kid,

14:22 like when you were like 10, 12, ask your family, ask your friends,

14:27 um what are the things that you were naturally drawn to?

14:29 What are the things that you do in spare time?

14:30 What are the things that you do even though nobody's paying you to do it?

14:33 Or what's the 10% of your job that you like really,

14:36 really love and find yourself doing it more than you should?

14:39 Like these are all maybe signs uh that you're

14:42 sort of drawn to do a particular thing.

14:44 And I've experienced this in my life is like the stuff that you do for fun

14:49 or without expectation of reward is sometimes

14:53 turns out to be the most rewarding thing.

14:55 Do you do this book?

14:57 You didn't even make money on this, really, right?

14:58 Didn't you give away most of the money for this book?

15:01 I give away we've given away like 5 million copies of this book,

15:04 but we've also sold like millions.

15:06 So I have made a lot of money, but I when I when I wrote it,

15:10 I fully expected like a thousand people to buy this thing.

15:12 I thought it was going to be a passion project

15:14 for Naval nerds like me that would never make any money,

15:18 but I would have learned a lot by doing it.

15:20 And I did learn a lot by doing it

15:21 and I'm still like completely shocked that people of all ages

15:25 and races and countries and languages are like reading this thing

15:29 and finding uh revisiting it and finding joy in it.

15:33 And I'm like I'm delighted by it.

15:35 I think it's just a testament to like how

15:36 far-reaching some of the principles that Naval puts forward are.

15:40 Yeah.

15:40 What about this idea of He talks about in the book

15:44 um no one is going to beat you at being you.

15:47 Yeah.

15:47 And specific knowledge.

15:50 And how important it is that you have specific knowledge in what you're doing.

15:54 What does that mean?

15:55 And if somebody is struggling to figure out what they should do,

15:58 how do they figure out if they have specific knowledge?

16:01 I think I mean the word should is a thing

16:03 that he talks about of like there is no shoulds.

16:05 Um but it's so hard to train yourself out of that, right?

16:08 Like we spent the first 20 years of our lives sitting in classrooms

16:11 all being taught the same thing and being assessed on the same thing.

16:14 And so then we go out into the work world and we're sort of like, "All right.

16:18 [snorts] What's the job?

16:18 What am I told to do?" And what you find in successful people is

16:22 that they're rewarded to the degree

16:23 that they are unique and authentic and excellent.

16:26 Um actually they're they're rewarded

16:28 to the degree that they're unique and excellent,

16:30 and that is usually downstream of them being authentic, right?

16:33 Like your business works because you have fun being you and you're

16:37 authentically interested in all these concepts

16:39 and building businesses and buying businesses.

16:41 You buy crazy stuff all the time and you

16:43 have so much fun telling everybody about it.

16:44 And I don't know how many of them work out,

16:46 but it doesn't matter cuz it's all fun to watch, right?

16:48 Like um everyone's watching you like buy vacant land

16:51 in Texas abandoned land in Texas at a auction or something.

16:54 I was like, "That's just cool, and you're clearly like just having fun doing

16:57 it." Um and like I for whatever reason,

17:00 I'm sure it'll be a nightmare for plenty of people,

17:02 but I have fun spending thousands of hours like breaking down

17:05 very specific useful ideas and articulating

17:08 them and finding supporting arguments

17:09 for them and like putting them all together in this thread

17:11 that um helps me remember it and helps other people identify with it.

17:15 Like these are examples of specific knowledge that are

17:19 outcomes of just how we chose to live.

17:21 And we just continued to do things that felt authentic and unique to us,

17:26 and people responded to it, and we sort of iterated through like, all right,

17:30 I had fun doing that, and the world enjoyed it, so I'm going to do it again,

17:34 and I'm going to do it in a new way, and I'm going to continue it.

17:37 Like and we both ended up in unique careers that would

17:41 have been very difficult to predict or define ahead of time.

17:44 Um there were no blueprints for, you know, this is not a existing genre.

17:49 Like your particular combination of businesses is not

17:52 one that there's a ton of historical precedent for.

17:55 It's not like you set out to say, I'm going to build a real estate brokerage,

17:57 and I'm going to do it using all

17:58 the best practices of real estate brokerage, right?

18:00 Like this combination of media and capital is like new and emerging and dynamic,

18:04 and everybody's kind of doing it in a new way.

18:06 Um so I think that mixture

18:07 of like authenticity and excellence, like be yourself,

18:11 do it to the best degree you possibly can,

18:12 and specific knowledge will sort of come downstream of that.

18:15 I know you know Bill Gurley on, and he's like,

18:17 you know, become this incredible student of your your industry.

18:21 And if you set 10 people down and said like, all right,

18:23 you are all going to go study the history of venture capital.

18:26 Bill Gurley is a great venture capitalist.

18:28 Those 10 people are going to study different things.

18:30 They're going to make different branching decisions all the way down,

18:32 and one might become an expert

18:34 in the history of biotech or greentech or fintech.

18:37 Like those people will all make authentic

18:40 human decisions that makes them ever more unique.

18:43 And one of my like the degree that you specialize,

18:46 like even if you set out to be a generalist,

18:47 you will end up becoming a specialist.

18:49 A sufficiently like advanced generalist becomes a unique specialist,

18:53 and you should aspire to be a unique

18:57 combination of authentic traits um performed to excellence.

19:02 And like those are the careers that you are going to enjoy,

19:06 and products that are going to end up being unique.

19:10 Such a good point.

19:10 I mean, Scott Adams talks about the skill stack, right?

19:13 Which really is a lot of what Naval talks about,

19:16 too, I think, in different ways.

19:17 He would say specific knowledge, and Scott Adams would say skill stack,

19:20 and then he would talk about how you could either go become Michael

19:23 Phelps and do 10,000 or really 100,000 hours in order to become Michael Phelps,

19:27 or just do hundreds of hours at totally disparate tasks

19:31 that when you stack them together create an unfair advantage.

19:35 And so, I think that's that's super interesting.

19:37 I want to circle back to this idea on shoulds,

19:39 because you have very interesting takes on it.

19:41 You've caught me twice on it.

19:43 And Naval is very aggressive on shoulds, too.

19:46 Like, do you believe in the word should?

19:49 Does Naval Ravikant believe in the word should?

19:52 And how should we speak to ourselves?

19:54 So, should is one of those uh words that just indicates to you

19:59 that you might be feeling more of an obligation than an interest in something.

20:03 And so, you hear people talk about like, "Ah, I should go work out." Like,

20:08 yeah, but also your relationship to that thing is now like,

20:12 "I don't want to." And the voice in my head is telling me that I have to.

20:16 And the the common thing is like,

20:18 "I get to work out." So, just like change your phrasing about,

20:21 you know, you have the opportunity to go do this thing that you want to do.

20:23 There's a bunch of funny like little reveals in language that like

20:27 when you're paying attention to people's

20:28 relationships with things, um that's in there.

20:31 But like, "I should go to work.

20:32 I should, you know, follow in my family's footsteps.

20:35 I should pursue this opportunity." Like,

20:37 we all have those, and it just listening for them um Yes,

20:42 it's it's either an obligation or an imposition

20:44 from from some version of yourself uh that you don't

20:48 necessarily agree with, or some external voice that is

20:51 like speaking to you more loudly than your inner voice.

20:54 Yeah, that's really good.

20:56 I mean, he talks about he has like a pretty

20:57 brutal heuristic about if you're faced with a difficult choice,

21:01 you should do Dang it.

21:03 Can't even say the word should.

21:05 [laughter] But if you're faced with a beautiful

21:06 brutal choice and there's not an obvious one, then don't do either.

21:11 Like what would he say about when to do something or when not to do something?

21:16 There's one from his like personal trainer which is hard choices, easy life.

21:20 Um which like in the short term if you take the hard path,

21:23 you will sort of naturally bias you'll you'll

21:25 come up with an excuse not to work out.

21:27 You'll come up with an excuse not to have the hard conversation.

21:29 And so if you find yourself in that position where

21:33 there's something hard to do and there's something easy to do.

21:35 If you just become good at making yourself do the hard thing,

21:38 your life will become better as a result.

21:40 There's probably something magical that's

21:44 on the other side of something you're avoiding.

21:46 And if you just build a habit of tackling

21:47 that, a lot of problems will take care of themselves.

21:52 Um that's one.

21:54 Uh Paul Graham has a similar thing

21:55 competitively which is just like run upstairs.

21:58 Um you know, if you're fighting a big company,

22:00 do something really hard that they're going

22:01 to find it very difficult to imitate.

22:04 Yeah, that's a good point.

22:05 Especially as the world gets less and less moted.

22:07 Like it feels like every year actually there's

22:09 more and more opportunity to do things in business.

22:13 You know, you used to have to have a ton of capital

22:16 to launch a media company and now you have to have none.

22:18 You used to actually have to have a lot of money to invest in startups.

22:22 Now because of AngelList, you could have a very small amount.

22:24 Like everything has gotten kind of progressively easier

22:27 in society or I guess easier to access in society.

22:30 And so if you don't do the hard thing that is hard today, well, you know,

22:35 you're definitely not going to make it next year because

22:36 that thing that's hard today will probably be even easier next year.

22:39 So it's it's a good way We say here

22:41 at our company one of our slogans is choose your hard.

22:43 And so like no matter what, anything in life is going to be hard.

22:47 Being employed is hard.

22:48 Being an owner is hard.

22:50 Choose your hard.

22:50 One of them's going to have a better outcome than the other.

22:52 Working out is hard.

22:53 Being fat is hard.

22:54 Yeah, you got to choose one.

22:55 Yeah.

22:55 And um you know, he also talks about I love the way he talks about luck.

22:59 And in particular he talks about four types of luck.

23:02 Blind luck, luck through persistence, spotting luck, and built luck.

23:06 Can you break down some of those types of luck?

23:09 What does Naval mean by these different types?

23:11 Yeah, and this it ties in well with the sort

23:13 of authenticity and specific knowledge because the ultimate

23:16 form of luck is to like be the kind

23:19 of person that luck is your your destiny, right?

23:23 Like opportunities just befall you.

23:25 Um, so the the blind luck is is the first, right?

23:28 Which is what most people think of.

23:29 Like, did you walk over a $100 bill today or not?

23:32 Did you pick it up?

23:32 Did you notice it?

23:34 Um, what was the second?

23:35 The second is uh luck through persistence.

23:38 Luck through persistence.

23:39 Okay, so like if you happen to walk across a $100 bill

23:43 versus if you went out on the beach with like your, you know,

23:47 your metal detector and like spent hours looking for something.

23:50 That's, you know, your persistent These are simple metaphors,

23:53 but like did you happen to run into somebody

23:55 who wanted to you to paint their house today

23:59 or did you knock on 200 doors and find

24:01 three people who wanted you to paint their house today?

24:04 But that's also true because there's like a lot of studies now that show

24:07 that you actually will not see lucky things

24:10 if you think you are an unlucky person.

24:12 Oh, yeah.

24:13 Like, have you seen I just was reading a study the other

24:16 day where um they gave two groups of people uh you know, blind study basically.

24:22 One group uh of people was told varying things to the degree of they're lucky,

24:28 good things happen to them, and they are the type of people that believe that.

24:31 The other group was the type of people who

24:32 say things are good things don't really happen to me.

24:34 I'm not super lucky.

24:36 Then they were given a task, and the task was to go and look through

24:40 a booklet for how many times some word was said.

24:43 So, I don't know, bad.

24:45 And it's like go through it and look for it how many times bad is said,

24:47 and then you'll you'll get a thousand bucks

24:48 or something when you find the you know,

24:53 217 variations or like whatever the number is.

24:56 And uh so the first group um that thought that they were not lucky,

25:00 they went through diligently, you know,

25:02 they got to the 217 number, they told them, "Okay,

25:04 217." And the other group goes through it and on like page five,

25:09 there's a little paragraph that says, "You can stop searching,

25:13 there's 217 instances of that." And this other group can like finish

25:18 it in like 60 seconds and this group took 10 minutes on average.

25:22 Like their their vision was the same.

25:24 Like they came from sort of the same socio-demographics,

25:27 but one associated it's not lucky and one associated it's lucky.

25:30 And so I thought that was fascinating.

25:34 that.

25:33 You know?

25:34 And so so explain to me spotted luck and then built luck.

25:38 Spotted luck is just the ability to sort of position

25:40 yourself at a place where luck happens to you, right?

25:43 And so this is, you know,

25:44 the maybe the highest order decision is like where do you live?

25:47 Like what's your exposure?

25:48 What's your surface area to luck?

25:50 If you say you can't find anybody like ask out on a date,

25:54 like okay, well how often are you like going to parties?

25:56 Have you left your house?

25:57 Like where are your habits?

26:00 Um how many companies have you started?

26:02 How many companies have you met with?

26:03 Like how many customers have you approached?

26:05 Like these things are you can control your surface area to luck essentially.

26:10 And then the final form where like luck becomes your destiny

26:13 is you you just become so uniquely known for a thing,

26:17 like you reach such a final form of awareness

26:20 and excellence and authenticity that luck finds its way to you.

26:25 And [snorts] like Warren Buffett is an example of is it lucky

26:29 that he gets a phone call to like buy a bank

26:34 and do a deal of financing that like nobody else has

26:36 the capital or the reputation or the speed in order to do?

26:39 Like he has become the only person on Earth who can get that lucky.

26:43 And that's a crazy example, right?

26:45 But like there are many smaller forms of that.

26:50 So your reputation, your mindset, um, your positioning essentially,

26:55 like that is a is a very long-term game.

26:57 That's a really good point cuz I feel like what Naval actually teaches

27:00 a lot of us is that all these things that seem like unfair magic,

27:05 aka leverage, luck, are actually really curatable.

27:11 And you can change your ability to have more of them

27:13 as opposed to be a victim of the world around you.

27:16 And so like luck can be manufactured.

27:19 Yeah.

27:19 In fact.

27:20 In particular if you're young, I feel like it's it's hard to um,

27:24 it's hard to appreciate that what how lucky some people are getting

27:26 is actually 20 years of like

27:28 carefully grown seeds and reputation and relationships

27:33 and effort and like you shouldn't expect to get as lucky as somebody

27:38 that has created that much surface area and covered that much ground.

27:42 Um, but you can sort of match their pace or outpace them by, you know,

27:47 being thoughtful about your luck surface area.

27:50 What would Naval say about how to become luckier?

27:53 Like how could you become luckier?

27:54 I think the the path towards luck is, you know, you can follow those things up.

27:58 You can sort of go from one level to another.

28:02 You can do luck through persistence and effort that then

28:06 becomes a little bit more of luck through all right,

28:09 I have a feel for the the dynamics.

28:12 Um, and if you really if you gain enough

28:15 information through the persistence and reputation through the persistent luck,

28:19 you'll have better information on where the luck might be heading

28:24 and you can sort of meet it there and position yourself for it.

28:27 And if you do that enough times over time,

28:29 like you become the only person who can do it.

28:31 So, if we use the real estate example that he uses

28:34 for leverage and just like take that as like, you know,

28:36 if you're a if you're starting off as a general contractor or handyman,

28:39 like you don't just wait around for jobs, you go knock on doors.

28:43 If you knock on doors and do a great job,

28:45 you'll start working more and more and get higher and higher quality referrals.

28:49 If you are doing a bunch of work in one particular neighborhood,

28:51 you start to learn that maybe that neighborhood is

28:54 up-and-coming and a new development is going to move in.

28:57 And then you can you can buy land ahead of the development,

28:59 or you can invest in the person

29:02 who's coming in to like renovate this neighborhood.

29:05 And if you do that a few times, then you become,

29:08 you know, the person who builds the developments in the city.

29:11 You've done the last five, they've all been successful,

29:13 and so of course the sixth development is going

29:15 to like pick up the phone and call you directly,

29:17 and you don't even have to pitch anybody, right?

29:19 Um, and I I bet you if you go

29:20 through like all of the A-list of Hollywood right now,

29:24 you can map their career phases to those different forms of luck.

29:29 You know, there's people that like when you need

29:32 a specific type of actor or character, you're like, "Well,

29:37 Christopher Walken's the the the only person who can

29:39 do that role." That's who everybody fills that gap with.

29:42 If you need a certain kind of movie directed,

29:44 like it's and you want it to be top tier, it's going to be one of 10 people,

29:47 and those people had all like grind and then iterate and position themselves,

29:53 and then they became like a this singular

29:55 person who is like gets the phone call.

29:58 Like is Christopher Nolan lucky when he gets the next phone call,

30:00 or is he like spent his entire career becoming the person?

30:03 That's so true.

30:04 And I feel like that's true in everything in life.

30:06 You You It's like a mixture of like data collection that you do,

30:08 and then data collection that other people do on you.

30:11 And like when those two things come together, you get luckier.

30:13 And so in the beginning,

30:14 all you can do is like collect as much data and do as much action as possible,

30:19 which would be like play a lot of poker hands in the beginning,

30:21 and really learn what the cards mean,

30:23 and what the percentage likelihood is, and oh,

30:25 most people that tell right there they do on their face is actually a thing.

30:29 And oh, no, it's a really bad probability if I play that hand,

30:32 so I probably shouldn't play that hand over time.

30:34 And I need to put more chips in because if I don't,

30:37 it turns out over time I should take in too little risk isn't good.

30:41 And so I think most people life don't think about life as like

30:44 a series of hands or a series of like data collection points,

30:48 but that is all that it is.

30:50 And so, like if you whatever your life

30:51 is today is really a reflection of like how

30:53 many hands have you played paid attention to, looked

30:55 at the data on, and then iterated on.

30:57 And like that's it.

30:58 Yeah, I I'm not I was I was a little impatient early in my career,

31:03 and I'm not advocating for patience or slowness or anything,

31:05 but my perspective now in my 30s is that, you know,

31:08 the first 20 years of your career is

31:11 an audition for the second 20 years of your career.

31:13 And like if you look at Walter Isaacson, right?

31:16 Like did he get lucky when Steve Jobs called him?

31:19 He's like, "Hey, I'm I've got a few good years left.

31:22 Like I want you to write my biography." It's because Isaacson spent the first

31:27 20 years of his career writing permissionlessly

31:29 writing biographies of of Da Vinci and Einstein,

31:32 like great figures, but they were historical.

31:34 Anybody could have written those.

31:35 He didn't have unique special access necessarily.

31:38 But by doing that work, he became the person who got that call.

31:41 And by doing Steve Jobs' biography, he got the Elon Musk biography.

31:45 And so, like you know, these are permissionless books.

31:47 I've spent the first 20 years of my career

31:50 like building permissionless curations of public material.

31:53 And like I don't know what's going to happen in the second half of my career,

31:56 but I imagine that it will look like luck,

31:59 and it's only because people have been reading my books for 20 years and have

32:01 a respect for what they have done that I will get opportunities that, you know,

32:06 no other author will have had.

32:08 Such a good point.

32:09 What what does Duvall say about or and I don't know if he does,

32:12 but this I have a recency bias.

32:14 Lately, I've noticed a lot of creative

32:15 people saying they don't do creative free work.

32:18 Meaning like they want to apply for a job and not want to do a project.

32:23 And And our company, one of the rules is like we have to see your work

32:26 because resumes and history has so little correlation to good and a fit.

32:32 There's almost no correlation.

32:33 And that used to be that if you

32:35 worked at some of these big companies, you're like,

32:37 there's a pretty high indicator that you might

32:39 continue to have like a certain output or level.

32:41 And since then we've realized in fact

32:44 that sometimes those are the worst people to hire.

32:46 And now you almost have to talk me out

32:48 of if you went to Harvard and worked at Google, why you should work here.

32:51 Um and so now we make everybody do a creative project.

32:55 And uh and I don't like to pay people for it.

32:58 Not because of the expense.

32:59 I don't like to pay people because I want

33:01 to know how they feel about doing work with us.

33:04 Are they really [clears throat] interested or are they merely kind of curious?

33:08 Because if they're kind of curious,

33:09 there are many companies to go be curious at, but it's not this one.

33:12 And so I'm curious like you've done so much free work throughout your career,

33:17 both like writing and um you know,

33:20 collating things and and doing lots of stuff on the internet.

33:24 One, how do you feel about doing free work

33:26 in order to get eventual super highly paid work?

33:29 And two, is there anything Naval says about that?

33:32 I'm very happy to do free work that I assign myself.

33:35 Um I don't know if I have the same relationship to like

33:37 free work that somebody else wants me to do for them.

33:39 Uh if it's along with my natural curiosity, maybe,

33:41 but um like it's kind of a natural independence

33:45 is like when you're doing things for their own sake,

33:47 you do them at a different level.

33:48 Um but if I want to really wanted a job at a company, absolutely,

33:51 I feel like I would do a project to get a job, for sure.

33:54 Um Well, it's I mean, Naval is a fan of like doing things for their own sake.

33:59 Um and he has an interesting story he tells

34:02 that I I think about all the time where he's like,

34:04 "The most lucrative year of my career where I created the most value,

34:09 I didn't think I was working.

34:11 I told everybody I was retired and I just kind of like cleared

34:14 my calendar and did what I wanted

34:15 and followed my curiosity and like in retrospect,

34:18 that was outrageously productive and I didn't know it and I didn't intend it.

34:22 I didn't trick myself into it.

34:23 I just followed my curiosity and it all worked out.

34:27 So, I think, you know,

34:29 like many things uh sometimes rewards are best pursued indirectly.

34:33 And so like this book is excellent if people see excellence

34:37 in it is not because like somebody told me to make it great.

34:41 It's because I cared about it enough to invest a lot

34:44 in making it great um of my own choice and volition.

34:48 Like I'm not a perfectionist in any other area of my life,

34:52 but like when it comes to putting out a book with my name

34:55 on it that I think you know might make a difference in people's lives,

34:58 I'm like utterly meticulous.

35:00 The book has a line I loved,

35:01 which is "Desire's a contract you make with yourself

35:04 to be unhappy until you get what you want." Yeah.

35:08 What a line.

35:09 What does that mean?

35:10 And how do you integrate that into your life?

35:13 Or how did you see him do it?

35:14 Yeah, he uh he's his happiness arc is so interesting, right?

35:19 So he had like achieved all this incredible material success,

35:21 he built successful companies,

35:23 he'd been an incredible investor, he was well-known in Silicon Valley.

35:27 And he sort of looked around and was like,

35:28 "I all the things that I thought would make me happy do not

35:31 I have them and they do not seem to have made me happy.

35:33 So maybe I need to just make a study

35:36 of happiness and like um somebody said to him,

35:38 "If you're so smart, why aren't you happy?" And he's like, "Oh,

35:41 like I can apply my intelligence to this problem

35:44 and I can break it down." And so he started reading,

35:45 you know, um like the the most of the happiness

35:48 canon is kind of this Eastern Buddhism and things like that.

35:52 And so "Desire's a contract you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get

35:55 what you want" is a very it's a modern phrasing of a Buddhist idea that like,

35:59 you know, type-A business people like us sort of immediately identify with.

36:03 And it identifies like if you set yourself a goal,

36:06 which we are all doing constantly,

36:08 unconsciously, probably hundreds of times a day,

36:11 um especially if you're on social media,

36:14 Instagram in particular seems like this bottomless well of desire creation.

36:19 Uh of course you're going to be unhappy.

36:22 And if you can learn the discipline

36:24 of having few desires carefully chosen, his words.

36:28 uh That you spend a lot more time being content,

36:31 being happy, not being not feeling lesser,

36:35 not waiting for some future state where

36:36 you have something that you don't yet have,

36:38 which is like a very natural human tendency.

36:42 But you can make just as much progress and maybe more by just like not holding

36:46 a strong burning desire that is like making

36:49 you unhappy every minute until you've achieved something.

36:51 Naval also talks about getting a partnership

36:53 and what it means to be in like partnership.

36:56 What would Naval say is important in choosing your partner?

36:59 Naval sites the great Buffett as like using

37:03 the energy energy plus intelligence plus integrity as like

37:07 the formula for a successful partner and somebody

37:10 that you want to work with or invest in.

37:13 Munger and Buffett are like the partnership that everybody aspires to, right?

37:17 Like great friends, phone call every day,

37:20 you know, 60-year zero fight partnership.

37:23 And Buffett is track record is investing

37:25 in CEOs and abdicating entirely to them.

37:27 And so like you got to be a really good people picker when that's your strategy.

37:34 And so I think that's, you know, a perfectly great formula to to emulate.

37:39 I can't remember if it's Munger or Buffett that says when you get a dog,

37:43 don't do the barking for it.

37:45 And so I like that in partnerships too.

37:48 It's the same thing.

37:49 You know, don't hire a CEO and then do the CEOing for them.

37:52 Yeah.

37:53 I think that makes a lot of sense.

37:55 What about I know it's interesting cuz

37:57 we've talked about happiness with Elon Musk,

37:58 we've talked about happiness with Naval and sort of that neither

38:02 of them really seem to aspire much to raw happiness.

38:08 Do you think that success and happiness go together?

38:12 Would Naval say that they go together?

38:14 Do you believe that they go together?

38:16 I think they go together for some [snorts] people.

38:18 I think some people Um there's a balance

38:21 of like for some time some people it's easier

38:23 to achieve your material desires and for some

38:25 people it's easier to lower them or dismiss them.

38:28 And Naval's got a great [clears throat] line.

38:30 It's It's maybe like the ultimate Naval line,

38:32 which is the true test of intelligence is

38:34 whether you get what you want out of life.

38:36 And you know, if what Elon wants out of life is to be

38:39 like the maximum contributor to the flourishing of humanity and human progress,

38:44 no matter what the cost or risk,

38:46 then like he's getting what he wants out of life.

38:48 And if somebody just wants like as much peace as possible,

38:52 then like they should go live in a monastery and like yield

38:54 any desires uh to affect the material world and or have deep relationships.

38:59 And And maybe they have an incredible subjective experience.

39:02 And most people end up somewhere in between, right?

39:04 Um but as long as you're at peace with the tradeoffs

39:08 that you're making and you're not trying to, you know,

39:11 fit five impossible things to coexist into one life,

39:16 I think, you know, your formula for happiness uh and getting

39:20 what you want out of life is going to be uniquely yours.

39:23 What are the lessons that you keep going back to from Naval?

39:26 Like you've studied him for years and now

39:29 interacted with him for probably like a decade plus.

39:33 Like what do you go back to?

39:35 I think that's a that test of what you want out of life is a good one.

39:39 Um I I I first felt drawn to Naval

39:42 in the same way I felt drawn to Munger because I

39:46 such a high percentage of what they said was both

39:48 surprising and just like immediately like felt correct to me.

39:53 When like 90 99% of what you hear somebody say is like, "Huh." Like nailed it.

39:59 Um in a way that felt right to me.

40:01 Like I they're not going to be everybody's heroes,

40:03 but they they spoke to me for some reason.

40:05 Um and Naval takes all of Munger and sort of puts him in a like

40:09 progressive technological setting that's like exciting

40:13 and futuristic and um more growth oriented.

40:16 And I I liked the combination of those very much.

40:19 Um, but I Naval also lives like a quite a balanced and well-rounded life.

40:23 Like I'm more of a Munger guy than a Buffett guy because Munger is like kind

40:26 of a polymath and Buffett is like maniacally

40:28 focused on just like Berkshire and compounding his capital.

40:30 But Munger has many different interests and many different curiosities

40:34 and has gone down many rabbit holes and lived many lives.

40:36 In the same way that Naval does.

40:37 So, he's founder of AngelList and investor in a ton

40:39 of companies and started many companies and is intellectually well-rounded

40:44 and well-read and curious and plays around with ideas

40:47 and applies them in many different ways and um, you know,

40:51 has found a way to find like both

40:55 peace and happiness and success like material success kind

40:59 of all at the same time and material success

41:01 in a way that is like meaningful to him,

41:03 not externally or image-driven, I think in my my view,

41:07 which is like certainly what I aspire to because those are um,

41:11 those are winnable games.

41:12 Like the inner scorecard is a winnable game.

41:15 You can set the goalpost and achieve them and you can

41:17 make sure that like you're always happy with where you are um,

41:21 and that you're not trying to like fill this bottomless bucket

41:24 with like something someone else's perception that you have no hope of control.

41:28 Naval has a line that I love that's very jarring about how um,

41:35 a salary is like the most addictive form of heroin, something to that degree.

41:39 It's a Taleb quote.

41:40 Uh, the three most addictive substances are uh,

41:44 these heroin, carbohydrates and a monthly salary.

41:47 Yeah.

41:48 And that like uh, that push to get you

41:51 out of the out of the comfort zone, right?

41:53 Like Taleb's morality is all around like, are you a risk-taker?

41:56 Are you exposed to the upside or downside of your own behavior?

42:00 Um, or are you kind of like a lamb in the paddock?

42:03 And you know, like many things Naval finds like a pithy,

42:08 kind of powerful way to phrase it,

42:09 but it's a it's a nice way to just kind of like give you a nudge um,

42:13 towards your authentic self and to like feel

42:16 the the rush and the risk of being feeling your skin

42:21 in the game and feeling exposed to the upside and like

42:23 being a little more authentically you and on on life's adventure.

42:27 Yes, it's you know, I think a lot of people live life like

42:31 they're watching the football game and they've never set foot on the turf.

42:35 And that to me is sort of sad.

42:39 Because the difference between feeling what a hit feels like and you know,

42:43 smelling the grass and you know, having that actual adrenaline that comes up

42:46 at the beginning of it versus the small percentage

42:50 that you feel when you watch somebody else do it is you know, it's a world away.

42:55 Yeah.

42:55 And so I do think a lot of what I've learned from Naval

42:59 at least is how do you get a little closer to the action?

43:03 Because like that that is the only way one you get leverage,

43:06 but two it's the only way that you can

43:08 actually feel like the full human experience in many ways.

43:11 And he talks about I don't agree with him on all of it,

43:14 but I do like I like that he pushes like there's he talks about how um you know,

43:19 he'll never get rich renting your time.

43:20 Yeah.

43:21 And I actually don't agree with that.

43:23 I mean, mathematically it's not true.

43:25 Like Sheryl Sandberg quite rich, always been an employee.

43:29 Um But yeah, also she was an employee

43:31 at the level where she had massive equity upside, right?

43:33 Well, I think that is the part that gets mhm way laid in some of this.

43:39 Like is that a belief that you can't be

43:42 an employee without massive upside and you can rent I mean,

43:45 she does typically she does actually you know, but quantifiably rent her time.

43:51 She is paid a salary, right?

43:53 But her upside probably comes all from equity warrants, options, etc.

43:57 Well, so what maybe explain that.

43:58 Like that'd be an interesting question which would be

44:00 something like can you get really rich on a 9-5?

44:06 Can you get really rich renting your time or on salary?

44:10 I think maybe the nuance is that you need asymmetric upside, right?

44:13 And so one of Naval's sort of directions in one of the chapters

44:18 in the book is like build or buy equity in a business.

44:20 Like you need equity upside.

44:21 You need asymmetric exposure.

44:23 Um and there are many job There's many ways to get that.

44:27 Um there are people who get reasonably rich, who become millionaires,

44:30 who work 9-5s their whole lives,

44:32 but they're really diligent savers and investors.

44:34 And they max out their 401k and they live on half

44:36 their salary and they This is like the FIRE movement, right?

44:38 They Their way of getting equity is just like buying

44:41 the index with half their salary and keeping living below their means.

44:46 Um that's a way to get equity.

44:48 You probably won't become a billionaire on $100,000 a year and a, you know,

44:52 50% savings rate and an equity,

44:54 but you will almost certainly become a millionaire if

44:57 you're diligent about it over a 50-year time period.

44:59 Um if you ascend to, you know, if you're climbing the corporate ladder,

45:03 there are career paths where your salary will go up,

45:06 but you'll still never get equity exposure.

45:09 I feel like doctors are the famous example of this, right?

45:11 Like we all know cash-poor doctors who are like making 700 grand a year,

45:15 spending 700 grand a year,

45:16 they never have equity, they never bother to figure out the game,

45:19 and they have no retirement plan.

45:21 Or they have a, you know,

45:23 they never build up a net worth because they're just like

45:26 their lifestyle consumes everything that they earn and they have no equity.

45:29 Um but, you know, in the case of CEO, CFO,

45:33 C-suite, VP and above, like you just want asymmetric exposure.

45:38 If you believe in a company that you're working at, you want part

45:41 of your package to be equity so

45:43 that you get Even sales people have asymmetric exposure.

45:47 They have they have non-linear earning potential.

45:50 Um but if you ever want to be like

45:51 sort of truly passive and live off the capital,

45:54 you need to start figuring out the uh the equity game.

45:57 It's so true.

45:59 Naval has a quote where he says,

46:00 "The real winners are the ones who step out of the game entirely,

46:03 who don't even play the game, who rise above it.

46:05 These are the people who have

46:06 such internal mental and self-control and self-awareness

46:09 they need nothing from anybody else." What does he mean by that?

46:14 I think this is the very ultimate inner scorecard, right?

46:18 Um so much of what people are driven to do is driven by this like

46:22 memetic desire and they're always sort of moving the goal posts on themselves.

46:31 You have to know why you're playing the game.

46:34 Like this is a this is like the enlightenment path, right?

46:38 And there's there's all kinds of books that he

46:39 recommends and conversations that he's had with with people.

46:42 But if you like study these sort of enlightened people,

46:46 they're just like removed from it.

46:50 And some people feel compelled they can't remove

46:52 themselves from the game until they've won the game.

46:54 And not everybody's like that.

46:57 Some people can be like, "This is this is a all a hallucination.

47:00 I'm just going to remove myself." But some people need

47:03 to win the game and then look around and be like,

47:05 "Oh, there's nothing else here.

47:08 So I can escape the game." But there are so many games that you can spend

47:12 your whole life playing them and just kind

47:14 of leap from one to the other and always feel,

47:16 you know, behind or pressured or like driven

47:20 and if you know where the road ends,

47:24 like what I took from Naval reading this, you know,

47:26 building this book when I was like 30 is like oh,

47:31 if you grind and beat yourself up and have this brutal internal

47:34 monologue and like ride all the way till like winning the game,

47:39 finally achieving all these things that you hoped to the whole time,

47:41 you have the same epiphany that you can have right now,

47:43 which is that like none of it matters.

47:46 It's all made up.

47:47 You don't even exist.

47:49 None of this exists.

47:50 We're all in this like a hilarious absurd dream state.

47:53 So don't take it all so[ __] seriously.

47:55 You can get the things that you want or you can choose not to want

47:57 them or you can you can be almost you can probably be equally effective

48:02 by just like by having emotional detachment

48:06 rather than having like being all in all

48:08 consumed emotionally like ringing yourself out every day

48:12 feeling massive stress about everything that you're doing.

48:15 And if you know that that's the eventual end state is like do I

48:19 need to wait until I'm 80 and I've lived a whole life of mistakes before

48:24 I like embody in that epiphany or can you just be like I can

48:28 keep playing the game cuz it's a fun game and we're here and why not?

48:31 Like Yeah.

48:33 It's a fun dream.

48:35 [snorts] And then it kind of doesn't even have to stop you from your speed.

48:38 Like I don't know about you but when I was

48:39 younger I used to think well if if I don't

48:40 care the most and if I don't get emotional if

48:42 I don't get upset then I'm not going to win.

48:44 Mhm.

48:45 Cuz that's what winning takes.

48:46 Mhm.

48:47 But it really so actually having like a pretty big step back from like

48:53 that pain in your stomach or that anxiety in your heart when something

48:56 happens and being able to look at it rationally is a complete step

49:00 function change in your decision-making capability because

49:03 you're not living in flight or fight.

49:05 And your longevity in the game and your energy level within it

49:09 and your ability to sort out like what is what matters and what doesn't.

49:13 Yeah.

49:13 Because otherwise you just you get adrenal fatigue.

49:15 You're just you get burnt out.

49:17 You have decision fatigue.

49:19 Um you know it's interesting we I I had a member

49:21 of my team and you know he was really good

49:23 and um you know in his words he burnt himself

49:27 out and so I was like well let's talk about that.

49:30 And um and he said well you know I just don't know that I want to keep

49:33 doing this and I've got all these things

49:35 and I go well do you need to hire somebody?

49:38 Like do you think that that is a truth that you always

49:41 have to stay in said role doing the exact same thing continuously?

49:46 And then yeah surely if you look down into the future 10 years down

49:49 the road you probably think that doesn't look like a very fun road to go on.

49:52 So, why would you?

49:53 And and what I found with a lot of people that job hop or um you know,

49:59 can't figure out what to do next or when they jump around that you know,

50:02 they they have a great sprint for like 2 years and then

50:04 they're kind of not sure is like wherever you go, there you are.

50:07 And so, you know, you can change your location and even change your title,

50:11 but if you are a people pleaser and you stay well and if

50:13 you don't know how to delegate and you never figure it out,

50:16 it's really problematic because you you can you

50:17 build like this like constraint that isn't even there.

50:21 And so, some of the stuff I think that he at least teaches me is yeah,

50:24 it's about what do you want or not want,

50:27 but also like even figuring out what is possible or not

50:31 and where do you have these fake constraints which you don't even realize.

50:35 That's what I was saying basically the Elon algorithm

50:37 is like the uh question the requirements and and having

50:41 like how do you give your team members agency

50:43 over their environment is like I love this company,

50:45 but like this role is now breaking me, you know,

50:48 what do we need to change in order to unlock this and continue

50:52 it and help the energy sort of proceed and like of course,

50:55 there's many solutions to that.

50:57 What questions do you ask yourself when you're in that position?

50:59 Cuz I think part of part of this is like self-realization with Naval, right?

51:03 So, Naval would like you would even have

51:05 to first recognize in yourself, I feel this way.

51:08 Yeah.

51:08 I need to name it.

51:09 I need to figure out why.

51:11 Like how would you if you were struggling right now

51:13 and felt trapped or lost and not know what to do next?

51:16 What have you learned?

51:16 To me, the most universal thing um in the most the thing

51:20 that I I come back to most often here is like thoughtful desire management.

51:25 Um I've I've now noticed when a new desire

51:29 enters my mind and I have to like triage it.

51:32 Uh and I I've learned to like you know,

51:35 I used to I used to like watch stand-up comedy and half of my experience

51:39 of watching stand-up comedy would be like I want to be a stand-up comedian.

51:42 I[ __] love stand-up comedy.

51:44 There's a version of me that should be a famous stand-up comedian

51:47 like and I I've just totally dispelled that desire in my life.

51:50 I still love it.

51:51 I still respect it as a medium.

51:52 I think it's incredible and I don't know

51:54 if it's age or just awful desire management whatever,

51:56 but it's just like very clear to me now that I do

51:58 not want to pay the price to become I don't want the lifestyle.

52:02 I don't want all the things like you know, the price tag is too big.

52:05 It's a fun thing to fantasize about

52:07 and now that's kind of like I've just completely

52:09 dispelled that desire um and that's there are

52:13 thousand examples like that and I bet you know,

52:16 open Instagram or Twitter for 5 minutes and you will

52:19 find you will feel a new desire welling up in you.

52:22 You just walk outside and you a new desire will well up in you.

52:26 And big or small learning to identify that and say like do I really want that?

52:32 Is it a meaningful desire?

52:33 Is it a long-term desire?

52:35 Is it worth changing you know, the the course that I'm on?

52:38 What would I sacrifice do I want that thing enough to pay the price tag for it?

52:42 It's like almost always the answer is no

52:44 and quicker you can close that loop and the fewer

52:46 of those that exist in your head at any

52:48 given time the happier you are on a minute-to-minute basis.

52:52 So how do you do that?

52:53 Do you literally go okay, I feel a desire so like I hear in my head I want that.

52:57 So I recognize that and then I think

53:01 what would be the prices that come with that?

53:03 Like what does that thought process look like

53:05 for recognizing a desire and not immediately latching onto it?

53:08 Well I mean an example like a friend texted me today

53:11 and is like did you hit your targets for the book launch?

53:13 And I was like I don't have targets for the book launch.

53:16 I don't have like that is an arbitrary I'm not going

53:18 to pick a number that I have like may or may

53:21 not work is if I pick 10,000 copies and I

53:25 sold 9,000 am I supposed to be sad for how long?

53:27 Like is that a useful desire or not a useful desire?

53:30 Um it's just arbitrary.

53:33 So like I don't know.

53:35 I I don't hold any desires um particularly closely

53:39 and the the longer the term and the more vague they are,

53:43 the more helpful it is, right?

53:44 Like um I want to have a wonderful relationship with my life.

53:47 I want my kids to have an incredible life.

53:49 Am I stubborn about any of the specifics about how that needs to look?

53:53 No, not really.

53:54 Um and so the version of like you know,

53:58 do I have to go to one specific place at one specific time on a vacation?

54:01 No, I I don't know.

54:02 It's just um there's like a loose grip over almost everything is like

54:08 maybe where you end up after some practice of like triaging these desires.

54:12 It's fascinating because it is very zen in many ways.

54:16 But I guess you and your career have have been like that.

54:18 Like you've done tough things, a turnaround you know,

54:21 of a company while writing books.

54:24 Books themselves are not easy to do in general.

54:26 You've also had startups prior to that.

54:29 Um and you've felt what failures felt like.

54:32 Um so I guess maybe the last thing would be

54:36 are there quotes you turn to from Naval, this book,

54:39 this period in your life that you

54:41 think would be helpful to someone who's listening

54:43 right now who is a little lost maybe and doesn't know where to go next.

54:48 I think the lesson that so many of us learn and have to learn many,

54:52 many times is to trust yourself and your intuition, right?

54:57 Like um that seems to be like the weird arcs and turns of my career like

55:04 have all sort of come back to like

55:06 just trust trust that little voice a little sooner.

55:09 Um sometimes I is that like also your experience?

55:13 Yeah.

55:14 I think we're wrong a lot less often than we think we are.

55:17 Mhm.

55:18 You just talk yourself out of it.

55:19 Yeah.

55:19 Um that's not in every case,

55:22 but especially once you've developed that in the beginning

55:26 I would say I was a little bit

55:27 of an idiot and I thought I knew a lot probably and through most of my 20s.

55:31 The kind of like Dunning-Kruger like yeah.

55:33 100 Yeah, exactly.

55:33 Small information, high conviction like Exactly.

55:36 And then at some point you start to see a lot of cycles and think,

55:39 "Oh, I I've I've seen this before.

55:41 I should just listen to it." Yeah.

55:42 Then, when when you figure out that little

55:44 voice in your head is telling you something,

55:46 I think then the question becomes like,

55:47 "What do I do with that?" Because usually it'll tell you something,

55:50 but it won't say um "You could go back." Like,

55:54 if you say like, "I'm so mad at my wife.

55:56 I'm going to leave her." Well, that might not be It might just be

55:58 saying there's something really wrong in my relationship.

56:00 Like, that's what the voice is saying.

56:02 And so, what does that mean?

56:03 Well, maybe it means you actually should lean in more and you do more things.

56:07 But, I think most often we just try to like shove it down and ignore it.

56:10 Yeah.

56:11 I mean, listening to the voice,

56:13 um allowing it to allowing it to go long enough to see the patterns, right?

56:18 Like, in that moment of of anger, um maybe you're not getting a clear signal.

56:23 If If you think that twice a day every day for 6 months,

56:26 maybe there is something really, you know, really wrong with the relationship.

56:29 But, in another like after you listen, you need courage.

56:33 Like, a lot of people hear the voice,

56:37 and the the choice is either to reply repress it

56:39 or to act on it over a certain amount of time.

56:41 And I think the people that end up the most unhappy

56:44 um have repressed so much because they never summoned the courage.

56:48 And so, they're like deeply aware of what it is um that they

56:51 they truly want to be doing or feel like they could be doing,

56:54 and just never took that next leap.

56:58 Um you know, there's I think it's a Winston Churchill quote, like,

57:01 "Courage is every virtue at its highest form." And so,

57:03 like, you can understand all the virtues,

57:05 but if you don't have the courage to to act on them when it's difficult,

57:09 when everything else is sort of going against them,

57:11 like, they have no they have no form.

57:14 If we were going to get really tactical with it,

57:16 and somebody wanted to hone their desire plus their courage,

57:20 what would you tell somebody listening right now?

57:23 How do you How do you get more courage?

57:25 And how do you listen to that little voice inside of your head more often?

57:30 This is not an of allism, but I I know who swear by this, which

57:33 is just like a morning brain dump on paper.

57:38 Um the process of externalizing these thoughts somehow helps

57:43 you evaluate them and and forces you to be honest.

57:45 And so if you see what sounds like absolute certain reality in your head of like

57:52 I have to be this or become this or get this or I will never be happy.

57:56 As soon as you write it down, you're like, [laughter] that's stupid.

58:02 But if you just live with it in your head the whole time,

58:04 you're like you could feel your body responding to it

58:08 and that that practice of externalizing it just helps you observe it rationally.

58:13 And it's it's a shortcut to doing that.

58:15 Meditation is the same way.

58:17 It helps you separate sort of the evaluator

58:20 like the observed from the observant.

58:21 Like see your own thoughts from above.

58:24 But writing it is is a shortcut to doing it and that's a helpful method.

58:28 And and by the same token like doing that over time,

58:31 like you can only write I hate this job,

58:33 I want to quit so many times before you're like, oh my god.

58:39 You know, you will respond to observing that over time.

58:44 Um you know, whatever it is like if you stay present with it the courage

58:50 I think will eventually sort of culminate

58:52 and you will manifest that in some ways.

58:55 That's so true.

58:56 That's so true.

58:57 Um I love this book.

58:58 It was one It was my obviously my first book I read of yours.

59:01 I read it years ago.

59:02 I come back to it often.

59:04 Thank you for writing this and so many others so we get to learn from you.

59:07 Great.

59:07 Thank you for having me.

59:08 It's been It's been really fun to sort

59:10 of co-evolve with you and see like you are living

59:14 some of the principles in this book at an extremely

59:16 high level and it's really it's really awesome.

59:20 Like if you don't For people that don't understand sort of the journey

59:23 that you've gone on, I think like the principles here that are making

59:27 you successful are of like leverage and equity and compounding are like uh

59:35 you took this blueprint and ran with it and built something from it.

59:38 I definitely did.

59:38 We've known each other a long time now, now that I think about it.

59:41 How many years do you think?

59:42 Uh probably at least This came out in 2020.

59:46 So definitely before that.

59:48 So 8 10 years maybe?

59:50 Um it was like it was like uh It was like early Twitter X.

59:52 You know, I would like we were

59:54 in a like Twitter like support group together where we

59:57 were like you you assembled this like team

1:00:00 of people that we shared like it was like Dude,

1:00:04 it was like a sprint to 100K and like you

1:00:07 made it in 3 months and now you're at what?

1:00:10 I think it's 700K.

1:00:11 700K, yeah.

1:00:12 Unbelievable.

1:00:13 Um It's true.

1:00:15 Well, that is another thing that I think, you know,

1:00:17 both the leaders we've talked about do a really good job of and I've

1:00:20 tried to learn from is like not just like it's a big world.

1:00:25 Pull along other people.

1:00:26 Like why do we have to shove other people down?

1:00:28 I mean, I pretty much never ever talk[ __] on the internet to an individual

1:00:32 cuz I just find that like it's

1:00:35 so much more beneficial to like celebrate friends, celebrate wins, you know,

1:00:39 try to win more myself and then get

1:00:41 in other groups where other winners already are.

1:00:43 Yeah.

1:00:43 You know, and I learned I think that group most of those people

1:00:45 in there probably besides you and I were bigger than us on the internet.

1:00:49 Um and now probably aren't um because like I think

1:00:53 we were connectors and you're like a a super connector,

1:00:56 you know, with lots of companies and people on the internet.

1:00:59 So, that's another lesson I've learned from you.

1:01:01 sit at home and write and like you're you're out there running a media empire.

1:01:05 Well, we were both [laughter] But that's what I like to do.

1:01:07 I like to run companies.

1:01:08 And I like to sit at home and write.

1:01:09 Where's my stuff to write?

1:01:10 No, and you definitely know who you are.

1:01:12 Like I think it's a good It's It's a very good

1:01:14 point that like this makes me incredibly happy what I do.

1:01:17 So, I consider myself a happy builder even though it's really hard.

1:01:21 And uh And it my happy looks totally different than yours,

1:01:25 but we both like kept listening to that little desire and playing

1:01:27 into it more and more and more sort of obsessing on it.

1:01:29 So, like people are going to have a hard time beating you at writing these.

1:01:32 People are going to have a hard time beating me

1:01:33 at building media companies cuz it's just what I do for fun.

1:01:36 People are incredibly unique and like the the further you go in life,

1:01:40 the more unique you should become, you know?

1:01:42 Like I I like if you're not weird, how do you know you're free?

1:01:45 Oh, yeah.

1:01:45 Like one of our main 13 [laughter] principles is,

1:01:48 uh bring your weird, it's better than boring.

1:01:50 Yeah.

1:01:50 So, like So, like that is so true.

1:01:52 All right, you're the best.

1:01:52 Thank you.

1:01:53 Thank you.

1:01:55 [music]