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Most people live their life like this.
Search this video
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They build a well and they start to pump water.
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And at the end of their lives, after a lifetime of pumping, they see they are still thirsty.
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They spent their whole life pumping rather than drinking, which was the reason they started pumping in the first place. What up, Sam?
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I wanted to do something a little different today, end of the year.
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I was doing a little Slack cleanout and I was looking at I had this one channel for like the best stuff I read this week.
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I call it my content diet channel.
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It's basically what were the vegetables?
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What were my whole foods that I consumed?
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Cuz I consume a lot of junk, but this stuff was actually good.
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I was just kind of browsing through what really stood out or resonated with me, and I have a couple.
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I don't know what I want and I wanted to know yours cuz you read a lot more than me.
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And I think we read totally different things.
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So, I I'm curious if anything comes to mind for you on that topic. Yes.
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For me, it's a lot of books.
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And so, like for example, the the topic that I got obsessed with this year was presidential assassinations.
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I went deep on the four different presidents who were assassinated and it went on that interested me.
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But, you know, I'm a huge history fan and so I can talk to you all about history, which I which I I can like say some of the most amazing stuff that I learned.
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I feel like we did a whole bit when the Trump assassination thing happened on presidential assassinations.
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There's some crazy stories, right?
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There's like the guy who had a speech in his pocket that like blunted the blow and so he got shot. >> and he survived.
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>> and he gets shot by his car on his way to his speech.
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Doesn't die cuz the speech is so thick in his pocket.
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Gives the speech while bleeding.
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Yeah, that was Roosevelt.
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There's only been four presidents that have been successfully assassinated and three of them happened between like 1865 and like 1905.
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And like pretty much up until Andrew Garfield was assassinated, which I think was like around 1904, any human, any American, it was like customary, you can just go to the White House and schedule an appointment with the president.
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And the idea here was that they were supposed to be like a man of the people.
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And I think that's ridiculous.
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And the Secret Service, even up till 1963, 64, 65 when JFK was shot, it was only like 300 people.
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And so like basically was non-existent.
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And so I'm like obsessed with that about how like something became an institution even after four years, or sorry, four deaths happened.
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And so I've been obsessed with that.
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I've also been obsessed with leadership and the idea of speeches.
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Have you ever studied any of the great speeches of American or world history? Not in particular. Well, what what you got?
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>> So, in particular, Winston Churchill.
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Have you ever seen the movie Dunkirk?
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You've never seen it, right? >> No. I have. Okay.
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The idea is like early in the war of England, this was when like the Nazi Germany had just invaded France and it was like clear that Nazi now was a Nazi Germany was officially bad.
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Before it was like, yeah, they're horrible, but like they're going to stay themselves.
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They started invading other countries and people start freaking out.
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They go through France and everyone's like, oh my god, I can't believe you know, imagine today.
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Imagine like France getting taken over.
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>> Yeah, it's it's just like insane.
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And so England, which is nearby, they were like, oh my gosh, now they are coming to us.
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And so they start officially getting getting into a war and have skirmish in Dunkirk where Nazi the Nazis surround a part of England and they surround like I think it was like 50,000 or even 100,000 soldiers.
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And basically if those people died, the war would have been over and it was a magical moment where hundreds of ships that were just fishermen, but also the British Navy, they raced over and they grabbed these guys off this island and they saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Whatever. Whatever.
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>> [laughter] >> But that's not the important part of my story.
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But up until that point, England was like fearful. They were very fearful.
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They were like, this is horrible.
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Like they were imagining all the worst things that was going to happen.
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Winston Churchill, who was in power, was a very fearful fearful person and he was very nervous, but then he goes, screw it.
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We're not going to take this.
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We're going to get after it.
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And he gave this speech and at the end of the speech, he does this in like I forget what they're I think it's the House of Parliament Parliament.
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It's like they're like physical setting where everyone's watching him.
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And he was like, we're going to fight in the beaches.
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We're going to fight in the trenches.
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We're going to fight in the land and we will never ever give up.
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And he like gave this like amazing speech that basically changed the entire morale of the country.
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We're talking about tens of millions of people.
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And it just like I've always been very fascinated when there's one person who can exert a relatively small amount of energy and get everyone else to change their energy.
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So like if you've ever been to a concert, I used to love watching these Oasis concerts.
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They'll be literally they're famous.
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They they they were famous for helping create like this idea of like a mega concert.
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They would have 250,000 people in the audience.
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And they're relatively high energy band, but it's just one or two guys singing into a microphone and they get 250,000 people to like light up and like push that energy back to them.
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And I'm obsessed with what is that one thing that person has and how do they leverage that amount of energy to impact potentially hundreds of thousands or in the case of Winston Churchill, tens of millions of people.
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And so I'm like like trying to figure out like what words does someone have to use?
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And like if you think about Winston Churchill, do you know what he looks like?
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Uh yeah, I've never seen photos of him.
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>> Like he's a short, fat, kind of drunkard.
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Like he's not like he's not like a good-looking guy.
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Like he doesn't have like the traditional movie star good looks or anything like that.
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And so what I've been trying to study is how people do that.
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Because you want to just deliver this at work?
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Or what what's the like connect the dots for me?
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>> Yeah, because I do want to become a better leader.
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Like once your company gets so my company, we're only at like 25 or 30 people, but I'm getting to the point now where I'm not doing a lot of the work and I am having to not motivate people because all my a good employee is already motivated.
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But in order to make it a good employee a great employee, you do need to inspire them. Right.
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And so I've just been trying to figure out how to become a better leader.
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And so I've been studying some of the We're going to advertise in the banner ads.
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We're going to advertise in the podcast.
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We're going to advertise everywhere.
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We will advertise You know, what what do you what is the like rally cry that you're trying to trying to get to that?
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What what what would be like What would be an example? Have you done it yet? Have you tried?
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>> Yeah, like so so right now AI is everywhere and I just it's making me sick that I am like having to talk to AI all the time and I'm not having a lot of like relationships in real life.
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I'm not having what you call these belly-to-belly conversations.
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And what I've noticed with Hampton is once we got people in room in the room in the same room once a month to have their conversations for the core meeting, it literally will change their lives.
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Not because we're particularly special, but just being in a in a physical setting with people who have been vetted and you know that you have like-minded interest interest and you're indoctrinating them into having what do we call the three C's?
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Confidentiality, candor, and commitment.
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That will change someone's life.
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And it changes their life just in a small way. These are entrepreneurs.
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It's not like the average show.
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So, eventually we want to like figure out how can we do this with everyone else, but just this idea that the world is going one way, yeah, everyone is so incredibly lonely and sad.
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What can we do that like solves that even if it's for a small group of people like entrepreneurs.
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Did you see churn like go to zero when you went from digital to in person? It it's crazy.
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Like on a bad month, it would be like 60s annual churn.
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Now it's like 80s and 90s.
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Wait, 60s mean so 40% churn?
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What what do you what do you mean by that? Uh 60s retention.
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Yeah, so four so 40% would churn every month before? Annual. It's annual. Annual. >> Okay.
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Of your annual membership. Okay, got you.
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And then now it's like jumped up significantly just by making that one change. >> 85, 90%.
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Like it's not even it's like but but there's all this other work of like being crazy about the vetting process.
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I don't think people realize that thousands of people apply and we let in like four or five percent per month. So we do a lot of work.
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But in real life does most of the work.
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The problem is it's a [ __ ] pain in the ass. It's really hard to do.
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We got to find these like moderators in all these cities and train them. It's really really hard. But not even close. Like night and day.
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>> [music] >> All right, I read a ton.
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I would say almost a book a week.
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And the reason I read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is I want to see what worked for the winners that I love and what strategies they use.
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And then I want to see what mistakes did they all make?
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What were the common flaws that they all had and I just want to avoid that.
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And so HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025 and I did that.
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So I listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life and I explained what the differences that they had on me or what actions I took because of the book.
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And then also I listed out my very particular ways of reading because I'm pretty strategic about how I read and how I read so much and how I remember what I read and things like that.
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And so I put this together in a very simple guide.
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It's seven books that had a huge impact on my life and you can scan the QR code below if you want to read it or there's a link.
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You guys know what to do.
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There's a link in the description.
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Just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide that I made.
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So it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far.
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And then also how I'm able to read so much. So check it out below.
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So, it sounds like one of the things you're doing is you're tying it to a bigger movement, which is I think what I think what the great leaders do.
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So you're not saying, hey, we are trying to win.
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We're trying to grow revenue cuz people only get so excited by the sort of financial success or metric success of your specific company.
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But when you say, look, the world is going this way. But we got to fight. We got to fight.
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We I don't want to live in that world.
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I think that world is messed up.
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The world where we just get lonelier, sadder, we're only talking to AI, we're not seeing other people, we're just living digitally like this digital overload is going one way.
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I want to I want We're part of the resistance.
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And that sort of we're part of the resistance is generally one thing that like most leaders do.
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They they tie their you know, you could play in a football game, a high school football game.
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But you'll feel like you're going to war and you're fighting for your brothers and like they took something from you and your family.
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And you could you could make it so important when actually it's a you know, division 3A high school football regular season game that you'll never remember four weeks from now, right?
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But but the leader can elevate the importance and what this means because the meaning it is what it is. No, no.
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It is what you say it means.
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And so what you tell yourself it means is what you will actually um, what you will actually feel about it.
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And you know, I don't when you study when you're in like social studies classes in like fifth and sixth grade, they used to talk about these Roman emperors.
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And I don't know if you remember this, but they would often refer to them as orders. Yeah, orders, yeah.
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Which is kind of I remember thinking like that's funny.
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So, this person who >> Content creators without without the internet.
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>> [laughter] >> Like I if I had a order at Rome was like someone who stands on a rock and like, "Hey everyone, here's what we have to do."
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Should we rebrand from podcaster to order?
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It's kind of a it's kind of like an interesting take. >> that is what we do.
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And you ask yourself, why on earth would an order, someone who could just speak good, why would they control like, you know, the entire world? Right.
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>> And I started thinking about that obsessively and I'm like, okay, well, what did the leaders have in common?
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And most of the time it is great speeches and great speaking and I underestimated that for a long time.
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So, I've been trying to figure that out.
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>> That's been a rabbit hole you've been obsessed with.
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I'm shocked that you're not going down that track either.
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I think that you I think you have that.
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I think that you study it as well.
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I don't think you get credit enough for studying that, but I'm shocked that that doesn't like fascinate you. It it does.
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It's just what season are you in?
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What which rabbit hole do you happen to be in right now? That's a good one.
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I've got it earmarked, you know, like you you know, it's that's a that's of great interest to me.
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But, right now I'm interested in in a couple other areas. I want to give you one.
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You know, there's a book that I think a lot of people have heard about, probably even read.
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I read it, but I had sort of forgotten about this part of it, Die with Zero.
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And Die with Zero is really like it's just Yolo rebranded.
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And so, what what is what is it about?
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And I I emailed her this passage.
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I said, "Here's from the book.
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It says, 'A death wakes people up and the closer it gets, the more awake we become.
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Cuz when the end is near, that's when we suddenly start thinking, what the hell am I doing?
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Why did I wait this long?'
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You can't live every day like it's your last.
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If so, you wouldn't bother studying or visiting the dentist or doing anything that has delayed gratification.
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But, if you delay gratification for too long or indefinitely, it's just too late.
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You also can't live life as if it's infinite.
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So, we all face the question, what's the best way to allocate our life energy before we die?
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And here's the principles.
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So, principle one, timing matters.
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Some experiences can only be enjoyed at certain times.
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You can't water ski when you're 90.
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And in the book he tells this great story about how his buddy and when he was a investment banker, his buddy was like, "Let's go backpacking through Europe." He's like, "I'm down." He's like, "Awesome.
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It's going to be a 6-week trip." He's like, "6 weeks?
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How are we going to get 6 weeks off?"
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He's like, "We'll ask, but they'll probably say no.
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We'll probably have to quit." And he's like, "Quit?"
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And he looked at his friend like he's being so reckless.
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Like, "Wow, you're just quitting your job to go backpacking through Europe?
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What a reckless thing to do.
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What a irresponsible thing to do.
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I will do the responsible thing and stay in the job."
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And he talks about when his friend came back and he immediately just he he sees the glow, sees how he's talking about his time abroad.
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He's like, "Oh [ __ ] I made a mistake.
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What I thought was responsible was actually irresponsible cuz I threw away this time in my 20s where there's only what there's only timing matters.
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There's only one time to go backpacking through Europe and sleep in hostels."
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And so, he actually talks about when he was 32 or something, he finally, you know, gets his promotion he's been waiting for and he takes he has enough time to take off and he goes and he he goes and does that trip.
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Bill Perkins, the author?
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Yeah, Bill Perkins goes and does the trip and he's like, "Guess what?
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It's not as fun to go bumming around in hostels when you're 32, 33 years old.
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Like, that was a game to be played when I was, you know, 20 to 25 and I missed it. I missed the window." And so, timing matters. That's the first thing.
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Second thing, what to worry about.
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We can always make more money in the future, but we cannot go back and recapture time.
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So, it makes no sense to let life opportunities pass us for the fear of squandering money.
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Squandering our lives should be of much greater worry. All right, the last one. Money is life energy.
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Think of money as the concept of life energy.
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You trade some life energy working to get some amount of money, maybe $10 an hour.
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Then then when you want to buy a shirt for $30, you don't think about $30.
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You say you say, "Hell no, you want me to go work for 3 hours for this shirt?"
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Similarly, a higher salary doesn't mean more income on an hourly basis.
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If I'm making 200k a year, but only working 20 hours, that's better than making 300k working 40 hours.
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It's like eating a cookie.
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One cookie is 1 hour on a treadmill.
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Is that cookie really worth it?
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Just imagine if your credit card imagine if your credit card it like starts at 100 years old and every time you buy something and now goes to 900 years, you know, 900 years and 6 months.
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It's like, "Oh [ __ ] that was 6 months I just paid for that."
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If when you checked out, it was like, "Awesome.
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Based on your your salary, that was, you know, 4 and 1/2 days of work.
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So, you know, would you like to Would you like to work 108 hours right now?
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You know, like you you know, when would you like to schedule that in?"
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You're like, "Never mind, just keep the blender, dude.
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I don't want it, you know?
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>> [laughter] >> I'm not interested in this."
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Um, and so, I thought there's a lot of good stuff in this book.
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I actually didn't really read the full book cuz it was kind of like a book should be a blog type of deal.
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But, the the core concepts in the first, you know, let's say 50 to 75 pages, I thought were really really good.
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The last one, this is one for you.
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The vast majority of financial fears are completely irrational.
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There are real financial fears that do exist.
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And then there are irrational or illogical financial fears, like rich people who still worry about money even though the math clearly shows they're fine and will always be fine.
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And I think this is also true for a lot of people.
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But, I hate I hate that advice though because, well, you didn't you know, I'm not going to criticize the book because I I think it maybe it goes into like actual tactics, but it's sort of like saying like a young guy like who's struggling to date someone like, "Just be yourself."
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It's like, "Well, but myself sucks.
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So, can you like maybe instead just teach me how to be a better self?"
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So, like telling someone not to worry is like telling an alcoholic just like try harder, you know?
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So, what is the solution? [ __ ] I don't know. Years of therapy?
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I'm not sure exactly, but but but I haven't found it.
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No, I you I have found it. It's just get richer.
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Like what there >> [laughter] >> No, I don't think you found it. I don't know.
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I think you have to There is a point.
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I have hit a point where I'm like, okay, there there's enough for this current lifestyle. Um, that's for sure.
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And by the way, the final visual he has, he says, "Most people live their life life like this.
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They build a well and they start to pump water.
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And as the well fills, they use a cup to scoop out a small amount of water.
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They take a sip and go right back to pumping higher and higher.
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And at the end of their lives, after a lifetime of pumping, they see they are still thirsty.
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They spent their whole life pumping rather than drinking, which was the reason they started pump pumping in the first place."
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When I when I see these things, a lot of times the takeaway that people have is that I shouldn't work or I shouldn't do something.
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And I think that that's not the takeaway that he implies or what he wants the takeaway to be, but that's the takeaway that a lot of people have and I think that that is such a bad idea to like not work.
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I do think that there is something magical about 30 or 30 to 50 hours a week.
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There is something magical where you have to have a thing that you are contributing to with others for a shared mission.
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And so, when I see this, I don't want people to think young people to think I should get rich and not work.
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I think that's not the goal.
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I think you should have a mission in life that it aligns with yourself, but um, you have to contribute to society.
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Otherwise, you're just going to feel empty.
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Yeah, I think the idea here isn't work or don't work or don't care about money or care about money.
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It's those are sort of false choices.
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It's really the idea of uh the way most people live their life is I'm speaking to the type person who's going to listen to this podcast.
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You're probably an overachiever type, probably a little type A.
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You're probably pretty hungry for success.
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Um, you might be slightly impatient, right?
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These are I would say common common disorders of the MFM listener group, right?
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I know this because I am one.
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And I would say the trick is for most of us, we basically work work work or work and then we try to fill in some life around the gaps.
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And the idea I think of what he says and what I picked up from Jesse is look, you got to decide what you want to do in life. Schedule that. Don't worry.
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The work The work is always there.
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The work will fill in all the cracks around those things.
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But, if you just wait till you have large gaps of free time or it's the right time to go do that thing you always wanted to do, work just is like a liquid or a gas.
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It just expands to fill the container you give it.
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And so, you have to be really conscious of how you let that fill the container.
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Like the the analogy I used with Jesse is um, you know, you have a jar. Jesse Itzler. Jesse Itzler, yeah. You have a jar.
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And imagine for your year, you have you know, next to the jar.
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The jar is empty right now, but you have sand, you have small rocks and big rocks.
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And the sand is going to be like all your day-to-day life routines.
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It's going to be your errands.
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It's going to be your Zoom calls.
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It's going to be your meetings, whatever. That's the sand.
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It's stuff that you you do, you got to do.
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Um, you got to do a lot of it.
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But, you're not going to look back a year from now and remember any of those.
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You know, your Zoom calls don't go in your sort of your lifelong memories or your photo albums.
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Like it's it doesn't make it there, right?
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But, you got to do some of them.
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Then you have the small rocks, which are like, you know, little little initiatives, little efforts.
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And then you have the big rocks, the things that, you know, really matter to you, you know, taking that family trip or going and visiting your parents.
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Even though you don't have to and maybe you don't have time to do it, but hey, you're they're getting older and you want to go visit them.
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Or it's learning that new skill or whatever it is, launching that project.
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Those are your big rocks.
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And if you put the sand in the jar first and then you say, "Great, now I'm going to fit the big rocks in." They don't go in at all.
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But, if you put the big rocks in and you say, "I'm doing these.
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These have this much space. They're in here."
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And then you fill as much sand as you can.
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It turns out you can fit the whole you can fit all the things into the container if you do it in the right order.
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The sand will fill in all the cracks and crevices.
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But, the big rocks don't work that way.
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So, you just have to make sure you sort of figure out what are my big rocks?
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What do I actually really really care about?
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And then how do I put them in the jar first?
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Uh, not do the first, but even just schedule them first so that my life doesn't just become, you know, a jarful of sand. Dude, that's so funny.
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That's the same analogy that the book the book Traction that teaches you how to use their EOS system, they use the exact same analogy on why you should like set goals and work hard and all this stuff.
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>> it's like a I mean, somebody did this to us in like high school or something.
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They did some It's like a magic trick.
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It's like, "Oh, try to fill all these in."
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And if you do it in one order, it looks like it's physically impossible.
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You put it in the other order, it all fits in.
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And you're like, "Oh, I didn't need a bigger jar, I just needed to put things in the right order."
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What else did you read this year that you liked?
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Um there's this Howard Marks blog post that I mentioned called Selling Out is the name of the the title.
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Have you read this blog post? >> That's a new one.
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That was that one of his more recent ones?
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>> Uh no, it was in January of 2022. Oh, that's cool. What'd he say?
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And it's a conversation with his son, Andrew.
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So, there's Howard Marks who came on the pod and was awesome.
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His son, Andrew, is also a great investor and and so they were talking and basically they're like um you know, the basic idea in investing is buy low, sell high. >> Okay, great. Uh but like when?
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When do you actually sell? On the high?
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Like could you sell like, you know, when it goes up a little bit?
20:57
You know, when it goes up a little more? When it do you wait? You hold it forever?
21:00
Like how do you actually do this?
21:03
And um he's talking to his son about it.
21:05
He's like, "Hey, you have this position.
21:07
Do you think you should sell?"
21:08
And his son is like, "No."
21:08
And he's like, "Well, is there any price that you would sell?
21:12
Like certainly there's got to be some price."
21:13
And his son's like, "Yeah."
21:15
And so they have this sort of back and forth almost like Socratic dialogue.
21:18
And he basically says like the the premise of the blog post is He's like, "There's only two He's like, 'After lots of thought, I've realized that there's only two reasons people sell.
21:27
Because things are up or because things are down.'"
21:28
And he's like, "That sounds a little silly, but let me explain."
21:30
And he's like, you know, you could sell cuz it's up as in you're taking profits, you're maybe afraid that the gains will go away, and so you want to do that.
21:40
But like it certainly doesn't make sense to just sell just because it's up, right?
21:44
That would be like you would be selling let's say you own Amazon back in 1999, and it's $5 a share and it goes to 9 and you sell.
21:50
Like obviously that wouldn't have been a good decision.
21:52
And so like simply saying sell when it's up doesn't make any sense cuz how far up? And and just always? That doesn't work.
21:58
And selling when it's down is, you know, usually a emotional reaction to things, panic, fear, you know, sort of disappointment leads leads people to sell.
22:10
You you the whole market gets pessimistic and so you do too.
22:13
So, clearly just selling cuz it's down isn't a good idea.
22:15
So, okay, so then when do you sell?
22:18
And basically he talks about the concept of basically it's a it's like an opportunity cost.
22:21
So, all investing is about relative selection.
22:23
So, you know, two things you sort of look at two things.
22:28
One This is all going to sound very basic, but the reality is that myself as an investor and most people as investors don't actually act in accordance with this very simple logic.
22:38
So, the first part of the logic is you initially invest in something cuz you have some thesis.
22:43
Well, over time you you'll either feel more validated about that thesis or less.
22:46
Like, you know, more information will come out.
22:48
Does the reason you bought this thing that does that feel more true today or less true today than it did at the time?
22:54
You know, so maybe you believed that this would be the best thing ever, then they released the product and it's not so great.
22:58
So, now you know, your confidence level should go down when that happens.
23:02
So, the first part is like is the primary like principles behind why you invested getting more true or less true.
23:07
The second thing is all investing is relative.
23:10
So, putting $100 in one stock is Wait, sorry, but was he saying that that is the What was he saying for point one?
23:15
Is that the right way or wrong way?
23:17
That your opinion shouldn't change?
23:18
No, no, they should change.
23:20
As new information comes out, you update your thinking and you say, "Well, if the reason I bought the investment is no longer true, like then I need to either had have had a new reason to invest or I should not be invested in the thing."
23:32
Versus just sticking with it because of cognitive bias of like sunk cost fallacy or cognitive bias trying to like convince yourself that like, "No, no, no, there's despite all this evidence, I still believe, you know, it's all wrong.
23:44
The facts are wrong, you know."
23:46
And and and sort of sort of going in your you know, sort of putting on blinders onto to reality.
23:51
Well, the second part of it is it's all about relative selection, opportunity cost.
23:54
So, if you were not invested in this, you would be invested in something else.
23:58
So, do you have, you know, the more conviction in the better prospects investing in something else than you do in this? Right?
24:05
And so, that's the second thing.
24:07
So, he's talking about like there's a third factor, which is if you're too concentrated.
24:10
And he's talking about with his son, Andrew.
24:12
He's like, "You know, you're really concentrated cuz this thing has gone up.
24:15
You're overweight this one thing."
24:15
He says um his son is basically says, "Well, that's true, but it depends on your goals.
24:21
Right now, trimming or selling would mean selling something that I have immense comfort in based on my bottoms-up assessment of it and moving into something I feel less good about and know less well.
24:30
And to me, I would rather own a small a smaller number of things which I feel strongly about because I will only have a few good insights over my lifetime.
24:37
So, I have to maximize the value that I have from those.
24:40
And um you know, this is tended to be true across like, you know, most people who are active investors is that you only have a few good ideas.
24:48
Whether this is you know, angel investors who like, you know, the vast majority of their portfolio comes from, you know, two, three bets that they made out of, you know, potentially hundreds.
24:56
Or it's George Soros saying the most the most important thing in investing is position size because you're going to be wrong a bunch.
25:04
I think his hit rate was estimated to be about 30% correct, so 70% wrong.
25:08
And he's like, "So, the the key is that the 30% correct, I need to be correct in a big enough way where it's going to make, you know, outsized returns.
25:16
And I need when I'm wrong, I need to be wrong in smaller ways, right?"
25:19
So, position sizing if the game is all about sizing.
25:22
Like I don't care if you're right if it's too small.
25:23
And and Stanley Druckenmiller, who's now this legendary investor, says that's the number one thing he learned from Soros.
25:29
He came in with a great idea and he expected Soros to say it's too risky or whatever.
25:32
And he's like, "Well, if you're still confident, we should be betting 10 times the size."
25:37
Like either you're wrong about your thesis or you're the wrong about your size.
25:39
You can't be right about both right now because your size is too small on what you're what you're saying you believe in.
25:44
The reason I love talking to people like Howard Marks, and I would love to have any of these investors on, not because I particularly care about investing.
25:50
I find it mildly interesting, but it's whatever, it's fine.
25:53
It's But I care more about what they can teach me about how to live a better life.
25:57
Because when I hear you like talking about like truth in this with the investing, I'm like, "Oh, I made that mistake with this relationship.
26:03
Therefore, my flawed thinking is my my thinking is flawed."
26:08
Um did you have any takeaways at how this could apply to life other than just through investing money?
26:14
No, I was thinking about it more from a money money money view, to be honest.
26:17
But I mean, his solution It's not like he gives you like some formula at the end, right?
26:21
He says, "The bottom line, we should base our investments based on our own estimates of the asset's potential."
26:26
So, that's the first like you have to think about the asset's potential.
26:28
That's the reason you invest, not because it's up or down.
26:32
Um we should not sell just because the position has risen.
26:35
There could be a reason to limit the size or how concentrated you want to be, but there's no scientific way to calculate what that limit should be. It's a personal choice.
26:41
And he goes, "So, in the end, it comes down like everything else in investing entirely to judgment."
26:47
And so it was less about like how do I apply this philosophy to everything?
26:51
It's like, "Damn, dude, everything you know, judgment is the ultimate lever."
26:55
Cuz the just like you're saying with relation who you pick to marry, where you choose to live, what you choose to invest in, where you go with your career.
27:02
Like these are all judgment calls that we put very little thought into, I would say.
27:08
You know, most people are pretty thoughtless about about a lot of those decisions.
27:11
Or we put very little effort into becoming better at judgment.
27:13
Like if I ask you today, how do you become better at judgment?
27:16
And how much time did you spend this year working on that that muscle? None. None consciously, right?
27:21
So, consciously we're spending no time on probably the most important muscle to us to to our like long-term happiness, right?
27:26
Cuz your decisions become your destiny.
27:28
So, how do you make better decisions? Do Do you study that? Do I study it?
27:31
Well, I do a couple of things.
27:33
I don't know if I study it, but I told you this before.
27:35
I I write down all my decisions, so I have this thing called the decision register. It's a table.
27:40
And I write down two things.
27:43
When I'm making a decision, I write down what it is and why I'm making it.
27:46
And my like confidence level in the decision.
27:49
And then I go back and I assess the decision register.
27:51
And there's two things that come out.
27:53
First, I see was I right or wrong on that.
27:54
And then the other thing was, what were important decisions that I didn't even realize were important at the time?
27:59
Like going on a whim to that conference.
28:02
I felt like a small decision at the time, but actually this amazing relationship came out of it and that led to this, you know, huge outcome for me.
28:09
That's a good way to be retroactive.
28:11
Explain to me how you said you write down what it is.
28:14
Part of solving the problem is defining the problem. I buy into that.
28:18
But how can I use your your framework for making a better decision in the future versus just retroactive looking back and trying to adjust my So, here's here's I I call it the decision survey.
28:29
So, I here's the actual questions I have in a Google Doc.
28:33
So, first, what is the decision?
28:33
Write it in the length of a tweet.
28:34
So, I'm deciding to do X, right?
28:36
So, actually write it down.
28:39
Then two, check in on your feelings.
28:41
So, what am I feeling right now while I'm making this decision? Is it extreme fear? Some fear? Neutral? Some greed? Extreme greed?
28:46
So, like why what is my emotional state when I'm making this decision?
28:51
And I know if I'm on either end of the spectrum, you know, on the far end of the greed spectrum or in the fear fear spectrum, um I shouldn't be making the decision.
29:00
>> It's like going to the grocery store hungry. Exactly. Uh then I write this.
29:04
I say, "What is the one decisive reason to do this?
29:08
Blended reasons are bad reasons."
29:08
So, learned this from Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn guy.
29:12
I think he learned it from Peter Thiel, which is if you want to go do something, you don't say, "Well, it'll be good because I you know," he gives the example of like, "Oh, should I go speak at this conference?"
29:22
He's like, "Well, it'll be good cuz you know, I've never visited Canada before, and you know, I might meet some cool people there, and it might be a good reason to work on my speech, my public speaking skills, and you know, it'll be a good time chance to spend time with this person."
29:35
And basically that's what bad decisions sound like.
29:37
You can just blur out the words, but that if you hear that tone, you're about to make a bad decision.
29:42
>> you're saying bad decision meaning a bad outcome or you're deciding on the wrong thing.
29:47
Like does bad decision mean I'm saying no when I should say yes or does bad decision mean I'm >> Poor I shouldn't even approach it. Poor judgment process.
29:53
A poor use of the skill of judgment.
29:55
So, a better way to make decisions, all right, the input, right?
30:00
Making the decision cuz the outcome might work out, right?
30:01
It's like in poker, sometimes you play deuce seven offsuit, it's a bad decision.
30:06
You shouldn't have made the bet, but you got lucky.
30:08
Two sevens came out and you you hit trips. Okay, cool.
30:10
You don't want to fool let that fool you into thinking, "Well, I should always play deuce seven and it's my lucky hand." Right?
30:15
That's what really bad players would do.
30:16
Same way where there's people who will fold pocket kings cuz they got beat once.
30:19
And it's like, "Well, no, you should always just put your money in with you know, with good odds and then let the let things play out based on the probability and over time it'll work in your favor, right?"
30:30
So, you kind of only you can't do what's called resulting where you judge every decision only on the result.
30:36
Like you have to be able to judge the decision based on how is the input, not the output.
30:39
Uh which is easier in poker cuz the odds are known than it is in life cuz the odds are unknown, but you just got to do your best to do it either way.
30:45
So, anyways, I try to write the one decisive reason.
30:47
So, if I'm going to go give that talk, it's literally because I want to go spend time with this person and they live in Canada and that's why I'll go give that talk.
30:54
Uh that's why I'll take the trip.
30:56
And if that one reason is not enough to do it, then there's really no reason to do it.
31:00
So, you should have one reason that's strong enough to do the thing and everything else is bonus, but you can't count it.
31:07
You got to And and what I do is I I make my strongest reason for and my strongest reason against and then they joust.
31:11
So, it's like I write the single reason I would do it and a single reason I wouldn't do it and I look at those I say, "Who would win this?"
31:17
If that's an arm wrestling match, who wins? Which one is stronger?
31:21
>> But what attributes does each of those arguments have?
31:23
Like For example, it could be like I don't want to I want to be around my family versus this one thing could change I could I could make a lot of money because it's like a new customer.
31:35
First, it's got to be honest.
31:37
That's the first thing cuz I think we're not honest sometimes about why we're doing certain things.
31:42
Um I think it's got to be concise.
31:44
So, it can't be a spaghetti reason because your brain can't even understand it.
31:48
And then the last is it's got to figure out you got to tie it to the value.
31:51
So, right now is your top value uh making more money, getting great shape, or is it spending time with your loved ones? Right?
31:59
They're all good things, but like do you have one that's valued more?
32:01
And secondly, [clears throat] do you have good substitutes?
32:04
So, okay, I I could do this and spend that time with this person, but couldn't I just go hang out with them when they're back? Right?
32:12
Couldn't I couldn't I just call them once a week, right?
32:13
Is there not like a valid substitute that doesn't have the same cost?
32:16
And if there is a valid substitute, you do it.
32:18
Okay, secondly, I write down, "What are the secondary benefits?"
32:21
And then I ask again, "If I took all the secondary benefits away, would I still make the decision?"
32:26
These are all related to don't do blended reasons cuz that's the number one thing that we try to do, especially smart people cuz we love making lists.
32:33
So, we make like long lists.
32:34
Like probably you will a lot of times what people do is they do pros and cons and they go, "Well, the the cons list is way longer, therefore that's right." Yeah, exactly. Right.
32:44
Or they just don't even make a decision.
32:46
They write a big pros and cons list and just paralyze themselves. I don't know. It's too complicated. Right?
32:51
And like that's that's why you don't want to do that.
32:53
So, what triggered the decision?
32:55
What made me want to do this basically, which is usually a like a sneaky way of figuring out the fear and greed thing.
33:01
It's like, "Oh, because my buddy did this and he got this great thing and now I want to too."
33:04
It's like FOMO or something like that.
33:05
Seven is, "What alternatives did I consider?"
33:07
Which is usually just a test of did you consider any alternatives or you're just trying to do the first thing that you thought of?
33:13
And that's a it's a sign of shallow thinking which results in bad decisions.
33:17
Eight is it a reversible decision?
33:17
If it's a reversible decision, good.
33:19
I don't need to worry about it as much.
33:20
If it's irreversible, I should think about it a lot.
33:23
What's the upside if I'm right?
33:24
What's the downside if I'm wrong?
33:26
What follow-up is important to make sure this one decision would be higher chance of being a success?
33:30
So, that's kind of like you can almost make a decision a good decision if you do it with enough intensity, if you follow up and follow through and do secondary actions.
33:39
When and how will I know if this is a success?
33:41
And then lastly, um what do I think is going to happen?
33:43
This is write down a quick prediction of the future. >> Did you create this? Yeah. It's pretty good. Thank you. It's a lot of effort.
33:51
Um like I'll tell you I do this probably 1/3 of the time I should and I would say the average person does it 0% of the time.
33:58
And the reason why is because it's like going to church or something.
34:03
It's like, "Oh man, I got to I got to I got to go do this thing.
34:06
I know it's the right thing to do. I know I should do this.
34:09
I know it's good for me, but it takes a little bit of effort and it's going to require me to be critical of my own thoughts and it's so much easier to just not check in on those things."
34:19
There's this like I don't know what it's called, like a quadrant, four four squares. Do you know the graph?
34:24
When it's like high urgency versus low urgency and then highly important and not important.
34:28
And I think the idea is like you want to spend you have to allocate a certain amount of time to things that are not urgent and are very important. >> Right.
34:39
>> But that bucket tends to get no love.
34:41
Typically it's unimportant and urgent and important and urgent.
34:44
And because of that, you don't make you don't you don't invest enough time that has actually builds the foundation to a lot of things in the future.
34:52
And what's really fascinating is that we're discussing like how do you get good at making decisions?
34:56
Which is like one of like the top 10 things on Earth you could ever potentially learn, right?
35:01
Like And yet I have never actually thought about that.
35:05
I've tried to read Charlie Munger is like famous for being like an interesting thinker and his um when he died recently, they wrote an article about him and he like had these funny quotes where he was like, "You know, it was really hard in life because I just knew I was so much better than everyone else.
35:20
And even though I talked a lot, I wanted to talk so much more to show how much better I was than everyone else."
35:25
So, he's just like very really cocky guy, but his like thinking is very good.
35:30
And I have like tried to read Poor Charlie's Almanack like five different times and I just find it incredibly boring.
35:36
But now that that I think about it, would you find it boring, too? Yeah.
35:41
I'm like I'm like I I should love this.
35:43
On paper, everything about this I should love it.
35:44
And then you read it and then it's like, "Oh, I'm reading about Charlie's grandkid. Do I care about this? No, no, no."
35:48
And it's just a little slow to give me some like I need I don't know.
35:53
I I need some I'm like a kid, I need some zingers every few minutes. >> textbook. It's very textbook.
35:59
>> Well, he has like this speech which is like him and a lot of other people really love these like cognitive biases.
36:04
Like what are I think he he gave this talk once called like the top reasons of human misjudgment. Right?
36:08
So, it's about this exact topic and I've listened to that. It's good.
36:12
But I find it pretty hard to memorize like 23 cognitive biases and carry them around in my head all the time and like identify them when they're happening and then like find some root cause.
36:20
And I find a much easier thing is this sort of like Socratic method of like, "Well, what are you doing?" I'm doing this.
36:28
"What makes you think that that's a good idea?" You do this.
36:29
"How will you know if this worked?"
36:31
It's like, "I don't know.
36:32
Stop asking me questions."
36:32
But like that Socratic method to me is like just a much clearer indicator of when I know what I'm doing and it's I'm making a good decision or I'm making a bad decision and it helps me avoid things in the moment.
36:44
The other thing is just time.
36:45
So, like don't uh don't do don't don't try to make a decision in the same, you know, in in in the same time you're sort of gathering information or don't you know, sleep on it or like let three days go by as a cool down period if you can.
36:56
It's like same thing with like any impulse control, right?
36:59
You need to if you just add a time delay, you can avoid a lot of mistakes.
37:05
When I was younger in my early 20s and late teens, I used to do book reports on all the books that I read and I still occasionally do it.
37:12
But before like I'm going to read this one book this quarter and I'm going to read the big biography and like all the cited sources and I'm going to master this and then I'm going to write a book report on it.
37:23
And one quarter it was like um the 48 Laws of Power because I was like, "Well, if you like learn about like power, like then I could see when people are trying to manipulate me and if I want to get powerful, hopefully I can memorize it."
37:33
And I was like, "But there's 48 of them.
37:34
How on Earth am I supposed to memorize all of them?"
37:37
And so, for the longest time, if you Google 48 Laws of Power summary, I had this Google Doc that I wrote and I wrote all my thoughts and I wrote and I summarized all 48 laws and I shared the document with people, but you know when you share a Google Doc, you sometimes put like share with link or sorry, share link to anyone.
37:54
You forget that that's searchable on Google. >> Right.
37:57
And so, for the longest time, I think it was like three years, my Google Doc was number one.
38:01
And every time I logged in, there would be hundreds of people on this document and it was so funny that it became number one.
38:07
And then what I did was I I put made it so people could comment.
38:11
And so, people started commenting on it and they would add like interesting thing like takeaways and stuff.
38:15
So, it was like a crowd-sourced thing.
38:17
It was actually really cool.
38:18
But I was obsessed with like how do I memorize this stuff?
38:21
And now that you're talking about this Charlie Almanack thing, I'm like I've just said I've tried to read this like tons of times and right now I'm telling myself and everyone else listening that this is important, but I have not done it. I need to do this.
38:32
This is actually so fascinating.
38:34
And a really interesting interesting thing is I asked myself I would like do I wish I would have done this three years ago?
38:41
Yes, I should probably do it like immediately then.
38:45
Because I will be less regretful if I do it in the future.
38:47
And so, this is funny that that we're talking about that.
38:50
Well, Naval had this thing about reading that changed kind of the way I think about reading.
38:54
So, I I used to approach it similar to you which is like I'm reading to get information.
38:59
I'm really reading to learn something.
39:00
So, I was like, "This book contains stuff and the goal is to get the stuff from the book to be stuff in my head." Right? And that was hard.
39:10
And sometimes I'd be like, "Ah, this stuff isn't that great."
39:14
Or "Oh my god, how am I going to memorize all this?
39:15
How am I going to remember any of this?
39:17
Do I remember the stuff I read recently? No, I don't. Does this even work?"
39:22
And Naval put it differently.
39:22
He goes, "When you read, it's like rubbing two sticks together.
39:26
All you're trying to do is create a little bonfire in your brain."
39:30
So, he's like you're looking to spark a thought, an idea.
39:31
So, you read not to get the stuff all the stuff from the book to be all the stuff in your head, you're reading to just catalyze some sparks, some thoughts, some some realization, some thought process, some new idea in your mind.
39:45
And if you look at books as creating that spark in your mind, you look at them very, very differently.
39:52
And so, you don't need to even you often don't even read the whole book.
39:56
And you don't feel any guilt towards that.
39:58
You don't need to remember things from the book.
40:02
The book just needs to be a consistent tool to get you to think more interestingly and think more deeply in the moment itself.
40:10
And if you just do that habitually, you'll just consistently be a good thinker.
40:14
And once I started doing that, once I started kind of went into reading with that mindset, I enjoyed it a lot more cuz it was way less pressure.
40:23
There was way less obligation.
40:23
I didn't feel obligated to finish.
40:25
I didn't feel obligated to remember.
40:27
All I felt obligated to do was ask like what thoughts does this spark in my head?
40:32
And when I started paying attention to that, like it changed, you know, how I read.
40:36
Did you read anything else that you liked this year? I read a lot of stuff.
40:40
I mean, fiction, there's this book called The Will of the Many, highly recommend.
40:43
If you like stuff that's in the kind of like Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, like fantasy, sci-fi, like it's not sci-fi, it's more fantasy, but it's basically this book that's like this kind of it's like mirrors like the Roman like the Roman political structure.
40:57
So, like when there was like, you know, the um the there's like a hierarchy.
41:02
And so, The Will of the Many was a good book and it's a it's a series.
41:07
The second book just came out, Strength of the Few. Crushed that one though.
41:11
You know, I'm into this series right now. This is a good series.
41:12
And like for me, one of the great joys of life is like getting into one of these like fictional series.
41:18
Like whether it's again Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or like one of these one of these different ones, but they're pretty hard to find, they're pretty hard to get into cuz it's a lot of world building.
41:24
When you do, it's like really, really rich.
41:28
>> that with Jack Carr this year. You know Jack Carr?
41:31
He does what, mystery novels or what does he do?
41:34
Is it like war like Tom Ryan or whatever? >> Yeah, yeah, yeah.
41:35
It's called The Terminal List and we actually had him on on My First Million.
41:39
The James Reece series which starts with The Terminal List which is like the best seller. Dude, it's crazy.
41:45
So, this guy was a We had him on on the pod.
41:47
I didn't want you to come because I wanted to nerd out with him and I was embarrassed as like how much I like love this book because it's one of these things where you read one of these books and you like fall in love with like these fake things and you're like don't want to like tell anyone else. >> These fake things?
41:59
Like like have you ever read a book and you're like you're sad that it's over and you're like I have to remind myself that this person isn't real.
42:07
Like there's been times that like I've read a fiction book that I'm like Googling.
42:10
I like need to see like did other people ever draw this character or was an act did an actor ever play them so I can like, you know, like get to know them further.
42:19
Uh >> [laughter] >> That's how it was with the with this guy and Jack Carr. >> you read?
42:22
Which books did you read? Like seven of them.
42:24
He's got like I think he's got like six or seven of them.
42:26
I've read almost all of them.
42:27
And he's got a he's got a bunch of them.
42:29
He's one of the more prolific guys.
42:30
I don't know how he writes so much, but he was he was a >> on the podcast.
42:34
What was like is there like the one thing you remember from what he said or did he say anything really insightful? So, listen to this.
42:40
He was a Navy SEAL where he was he was bad.
42:42
He was a bad to the bone dude and he basically started writing these books which was funny because writing is not like a very typical masculine thing, writing fiction, writing stories.
42:51
But this guy is a I mean, he's a masculine dude.
42:55
And he starts writing these like >> He writes like this.
42:58
Like his grip on the pen is And like when he's thinking, he's like picking his teeth with like a big knife.
43:05
>> [laughter] >> But he's like a pretty hardcore dude and yet when he talked to us, he was very soft. He was the politest guy.
43:11
He was so kind and the book series is basically a Navy SEAL who was wronged and he goes to the end of the world in order to wrong the right.
43:22
And it just so happens that he gets into different like adventures, you know, seven different times, seven different books.
43:28
Sort of like James Bond, like how on earth is one guy like constantly saving the world.
43:30
So, but it was crazy how soft this guy was.
43:33
Yet at the same time, he was like very I mean, he he definitely has killed a lot of people before and he was like this pretty hardcore dude, but he was so gentle and I found that really cool.
43:45
>> [laughter] >> Is that a is that a weird thing to take away?
43:51
Well, this is a thing you do a lot which is like we have someone on and you're almost like a feeler rather than a listener.
43:57
Like you you're more into their vibe and their persona always.
44:03
It's always the first thing. Like which is cool.
44:05
Like I I it's different than like the way I operate, but like I I find that often when I ask you about somebody, it's always like the way they were, not what they said. Which is cool.
44:17
And I think actually there's probably a lot of people pick that like that is what we pick up from people is like the unspoken.
44:21
But you are like particularly in tune with that.
44:25
I felt that way with John Morgan where I'm like I don't even remember half the stuff that he said, but like he had this cowboy vibe that I was into.
44:33
>> [laughter] >> I'm all vibes. I am all vibes.
44:36
That's an interesting observation.
44:38
I do I do do that all the time where I've like What did we I don't even remember what him and I talked about.
44:43
I can't remember anything.
44:43
But then you will do these things constantly where you recall these stories and they're very minute.
44:49
Like I've been with you and I've heard you retell the story and you'll be like and he set this thing down and he looked at us and he said this thing. And I'm like, he did?
44:58
I don't even remember that.
45:00
How do you remember that?
45:01
What like I don't I don't think of those details.
45:03
Like we've been with like I you've told stories of Furqan and you're like retell a story with a detail that I had no idea, but I just remember him as like a really nice guy.
45:12
Yeah, it's it's kind of interesting also to just figure out like what what do you want to observe? Right?
45:19
Like I wonder how intentional you could be about that.
45:23
And be like, do I like can I change like my little like metal detector here? You know what I mean?
45:28
Like can I could I actually improve it?
45:29
Could I be more intentional about what it is or is it just like that's innate?
45:32
It's very hard to change.
45:34
That's [ __ ] It's sort of like people who say they're bad at names.
45:38
I'm like, no, you're not. You just don't care.
45:39
So, like I'm someone said that to me.
45:41
I was like, I'm bad at names.
45:41
And they're like, no, you just don't care. And that bothered me.
45:44
And so, I was like, okay, I care.
45:46
So, whenever I meet someone, so if someone recognizes me on the street, I'll say, "What's up, man? What's your name? Kevin?
45:51
Okay, Kevin, where are you from, Kevin?
45:53
You're from you're from Idaho? Okay, Kevin from Idaho.
45:55
Man, it was so good to meet you. Thanks, Kevin, man."
45:57
Like I'll like you like repeat it a bunch of times and then you'll say and you I I'll associate with where he's from.
46:03
And so, I will always remember someone's name all because someone made me feel bad.
46:05
And so, I I think I should change to like how do I remember like certain details.
46:10
And the way that I think you have to remember those details that you're referring to is you have to remember the story.
46:14
It all has to be the story.
46:16
So, Eric Jorgenson is another thing I read this year.
46:18
So, Eric Jorgenson, he runs Scribe and he wrote The Naval Almanac.
46:22
So, he wrote a book that compiled like all of Naval's wisdom.
46:25
Dude, I think he sold like a million copies of that. Is that true?
46:27
I think he sold a lot more than that.
46:29
More than 1 million copies? Yeah.
46:31
How many books have sold more than 1 million?
46:36
He's made he's made a lot of money off that book.
46:38
And it's great because the funny thing is the genre of that book is a in your own words in his own words biography type of book, right?
46:48
So, he doesn't write himself.
46:48
He compiles what Naval said without adding any of his own commentary.
46:54
Naval has this philosophy of like you open source your material, you let other people sort of fork it, remix it and like your ideas spread.
47:02
Like what more do you want than your ideas to spread?
47:03
This is a win-win for everyone. Right.
47:05
So, so he's doing one on Elon right now.
47:08
So, he sent me an like an advance copy of his Elon book.
47:12
And I was excited and I cracked it open and one thing that I liked right away is, you know, smart by Eric which is he put something that you don't already know about Elon at the front.
47:21
Just to at least signal to you there's going to be [ __ ] in here that you don't already know assuming you're like any Elon general like fanboy or, you know, you're you're in the tech bubble already.
47:29
If he was like, yeah, Elon likes to think from first principles, I'm like, I know, I know.
47:32
I read all this [ __ ] before.
47:33
But he talks about it's a it's Elon talking about memory.
47:39
And he's like, yeah, like when I was a kid, I learned how to do these like memory palaces.
47:43
>> [laughter] >> He's like, you can remember pretty much anything if you learn that like memory is a skill and there's like a way to do it.
47:50
>> Is that like walking through a house?
47:51
Yeah, like you know, like the idea of a memory palace like you like create like a physical 3D, you know, structure in your mind.
47:59
And then you sort of link the the thing to a room or a location, a visual object and then you create a little bit of like a story of like walking through from one to the next.
48:08
>> So, like the people who could the people who could memorize like all the cards, they're like the king is like a real king and the number seven is a house.
48:15
There's a king in a house. He meets a queen. So, he has a wife. The king is in a house.
48:19
>> Lane and on Seven's Lane, his wife, the queen, she loved diamonds.
48:21
And so, she you know, and you do that and you that's how you sort of build this thing.
48:25
So, it's like Elon talking about like memory palaces and I was like, this is great.
48:30
I'm like, I just give me more Elon stuff.
48:31
I need I'm happy to get, you know, an unlimited buffet of like new Elon anecdotes and nuggets cuz like how rare is that, right?
48:39
So, I thought that was pretty cool.
48:40
And in general, his book is really good. It's going to be good.
48:43
I can't believe he has sold that many copies on that book.
48:45
That is absolutely insane.
48:47
So, one of the topics I was going to do today is a work smarter, not harder topic.
48:50
And Eric is an example of this.
48:54
So, how do you write a best-selling book that sells in millions of copies?
48:58
Well, what if I told you it's um none of your ideas and none of your words? Would that interest you?
49:06
It's like a a way smarter way to write a best seller, right?
49:11
So, Eric doing that, there's this incredible interview that came out that there's a clip that came out. Did you hear it?
49:16
It's Akon talking about his music. No. What did he say?
49:19
So, Akon, the rapper, he was on a podcast and he told the story.
49:25
He's like, they're like, "Dude, so you, you know, you had a crazy career."
49:28
You know, they're talking about his Guinness Book of World Records that he owns for ringtones. He tells the story. He's like, "Yeah, man."
49:36
He's like, "I was recording music and at the time the way we sold music was you would sell your single on iTunes and it'd be a $1.
49:42
99 for your 4-minute song."
49:46
He's like, "But then I'll walk around and I saw everybody had a phone and they were all had a like a ringtone.
49:49
They had a song as their thing. So, I asked them.
49:53
I said, 'Hey, do you get to pick what that is?' They're like, 'Yeah.'
49:56
He goes, 'How much did that cost? Is it free?'
49:57
And then they go, 'No, you pay for it. $4. 99.' He's like, '$4. 99? A 4-minute song is $1. 99.
50:06
10-second ringtone is $4. 99."
50:06
He goes, "And then even better."
50:09
He goes, "I asked my I called my lawyer.
50:10
I said, 'Hey, um check my contract with the record label.
50:15
What's the cut on ringtones?'"
50:15
And he's like, calls him back.
50:17
He's like, "Akon, there's nothing about ringtones in here.
50:20
>> [laughter] >> There's no there's nothing about digital anything."
50:23
And like there's nothing for ringtones.
50:25
He goes, "Yeah, say less."
50:26
So, he hangs up the phone.
50:27
He goes, "I started making music, songs that were meant to be ringtones.
50:32
Every song I did I would focus on how is this a ringtone?" And so, Mr.
50:34
Lonely became the number one ringtone in the world and he wrote that song to be a ringtone.
50:40
He's like, "I would write the song with a ringtone in mind.
50:42
I'd record it with the ringtone in mind.
50:44
I would chop it up and make it really easy for these songs to be ringtones."
50:47
And he's like, "Um I broke the Guinness Book of World Records.
50:51
I sold 11 million ringtones." He goes, "$4.
50:53
99, that's $55 million of gross sales on ringtones."
50:59
And he's like, "I became the ringtone king."
51:01
And then he's like, "Then the next time they tried to redo my contract they tried to slip in "Oh, and ringtone sales."
51:06
He's like, "Let's take that out right there. No.
51:10
You know, that's not going in the contract.
51:11
We're going to have to renegotiate a separate deal on that."
51:14
And I just thought it was brilliant.
51:14
The Akon ringtone, work smarter not harder.
51:18
How do you sell a 10-second song for five times the price for for for two times the price as a 4-minute song?
51:22
I still remember like being 14 and hearing girls that had that on there.
51:27
I'm going to put that on my as my ringtone now.
51:31
I don't even Do you do ringtones? Does that still work? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
51:35
Cuz I had a It was a remix version of the Nokia one and so it actually had beats.
51:40
It started off like a normal like Dude, can you just like clocks came back?
51:44
Can you just bring ringtones back?
51:46
I feel like if feel like if I was the music industry, the number one thing I'd try to do is bring ringtones back.
51:49
Well, do you know what I Here's Let me tell you what I what I'm bringing back.
51:52
In my house we I bought a DVD player and an activity cuz I don't let my kids watch TV, but I'm letting them like sometimes on Saturday when we're like over Like if it's just me watching two kids and I'm overwhelmed, I'm like, "I need like something, but I don't want to turn YouTube on cuz I don't like the ads and stuff."
52:10
And so, I've got a DVD player and we go to there's a thrift store down the street from my house and there's DVDs and I will find the DVD and it's incredibly fun to like put the DVD in there and there's this new toy.
52:19
Have you seen this toy called um you'll you'll know what I'm talking about.
52:22
It's the little red thing, right?
52:23
That plays music that plays music.
52:25
Yeah, what's that called?
52:27
Like the Yuck Box or Yum like it starts with a Y. It they kill it.
52:31
I we just >> Called Tonies. What is it? There's two of them.
52:37
There's one that starts with a Y as well.
52:38
So, there's It's a It's called Tonies.
52:40
It's like a box and you put like a disc in it.
52:41
You put It's a It's a box and then you put a character on top like a record and then it just starts to play songs.
52:48
But they actually you buy it and then it doesn't connect to your Wi-Fi cuz you don't have a two 2G connection. You only have 5G.
52:54
That's that's my story about with the Tonies. It doesn't connect? It doesn't connect. You got to have 2G. You got to have less Gs.
53:00
>> [laughter] >> I don't I don't I have too many Gs.
53:01
Like I I mean yeah, I don't even have like 5G.
53:05
I've got one above that, I think.
53:06
But they like it's an incredible toy.
53:07
Like I'm playing with this and so we're actually I'm actually on the hunt for a boombox.
53:14
I want to buy a boombox where you just put the CD in and a cassette tape and click play. It's so fun.
53:18
We've had so much fun in my house like doing some of this stuff.
53:23
Uh Tonies, these guys crush by the way.
53:25
They do like like hundreds of millions. So, Tonies Uh let's see. Is this the right thing? Yeah.
53:32
510 million euros last 12 months.
53:36
510 million euros on this kids' boombox. Isn't that insane?
53:39
Tonies, uh the other one is Yoto. That's the one I got. Y O T O. Have you seen Yoto? No.
53:46
It's like the same thing.
53:46
I don't know how they're different, but I just remember one time I typed in Yoto and it said like Yoto versus Tonies. 127 million in revenue. Are you joking me? What what's going on? Crazy, right?
53:55
It's It's an incredible toy. This is ridiculous. This makes me mad. Why? It's pretty brilliant.
54:03
Yeah, that's what makes me mad.
54:06
That the brilliance was not mine.
54:08
Dude, I followed this guy on Instagram now who started um Poppi.
54:10
I don't know how he came on my feed, but I saw him and I I thought it was me.
54:14
He looks just like me, but he's better looking.
54:16
Have you seen what he looks like?
54:18
I thought [laughter] it was me. Hold on. Poppi the drink?
54:21
Yeah, Poppi founder, the man. It's a husband and wife. Look him up. >> Let's see.
54:26
So, you thought this was you. No, click a video. Go to his Instagram. Yes, trust me.
54:30
Go to his Instagram right now. I'm telling you. Look at the videos.
54:33
I was like, am I really a billionaire CBG guy or what?
54:40
>> [laughter] >> I said, "Want to do a video together? We look alike."
54:47
And he said, "Could be funny. Let's do it."
54:50
>> [laughter] >> He's got a podcast?
54:53
Got a podcast No, I don't know if he has a podcast, but he just like does Instagram [ __ ] Dude, are you mad?
54:59
This guy's just taking everything you worked for.
55:01
>> [laughter] >> There can only be one.
55:05
And I was shocked at just like Do you know that Poppi sold for like two or three billion dollars?
55:09
And it started out as a probiotic soda?
55:11
The worst That sounds like the worst idea ever. He lives in Austin?
55:15
Oh my god, this guy is He's you. Yeah.
55:17
If he wants to trade spots, we could we could talk.
55:22
He just crushed it on that.
55:23
And it's like the ultimate hack.
55:25
When you start a company with your wife and it works and you both get all of the equity.
55:30
>> [laughter] >> Uh yeah, that's crazy. Is that it? Is that the pod? All right, that's it. That's it. That's the pod.