#105 The Confidence Expert: How To Build UNSHAKEABLE Self Confidence | Mark Manson

29:20It's nothing good's going to happen. But if you have, this comes back to the meaning and purpose thing. If you have something very meaningful, something you're giving yourself to, something you're willing to sacrifice for, something you care very, very deeply about, then suddenly it's okay if some people don't like you. It's okay if some people don't get it if some people judge you or disapprove of you so what what would you say to somebody that's like i just want to stop being such a people pleaser find the hills that you're willing to die on like find like ask yourself what are you willing to be disliked for and for a people pleaser that's going to be a very hard question to answer they like they might not actually have anything that they can answer and to which at that point your job becomes to find something find something you're willing to be disliked for and then go do it because that that's your thing that's that's that's the piece of meaning and purpose that's going to be more important than other people's opinions as long as you're driving towards that then everything else will kind of fall into place what is sort of the right way to respond when somebody else is like coming at you in a boundary way or when somebody else is trying to make you work outside of something that you feel comfortable with?

30:37How do you keep boundaries, but not look like a dick? I think it's, I think tactically speaking, it's, it's always great to frame things like rules. So, you know, for instance, if I, if I was like, like, let's say your producer emailed me and it was like, you know, come in at whatever o 'clock. And I was like, no, that's preposterous. I like, I refuse. Like, then it creates this ugly situation, right? Whereas if I'm just like, hey, man, I have this rule. I don't do interviews after 3 p.m. Sorry. Maybe we can find another time. Like, when you frame things as a rule, it's like, hey, this is just a rule I have in my life.

31:19I just don't do this thing. And it's just to take care of my own health and my own sanity or whatever. People respect it. And then if they don't, it actually, it makes it very easy to be like, oh well then fuck them like they're not respecting my rules so this is just not going to work out so i i always encourage people like frame whatever boundaries you want to have frame it as a rule it's like hey i don't um you know i i don't talk about this subject uh with people who aren't part of my family nothing personal you know and then it's like then things become very clear it's so because it's shifting the no to you to like, oh no, it's not about you.

32:00It's about this thing under here that already exists. It's like you get to use a shadow influence without even having one. And then you get to deflect in a respectful way whatever somebody else is trying to push on you. That's so good. Yeah. And what's interesting too is that it also clarifies for you the caliber of the relationship you have, right? Like if the person doesn't respect your rule, then by extension they're not respecting you so it makes it very clear of like okay this is i have somebody in my life who is not respect who doesn't respect me what am i going to do about that whereas if you're kind of in this people-pleasing mode and you're like well i don't want to upset them so i'm going to like hint and like maybe like be a little passive-aggressive drag my feet pretend like i forgot then you just end up in this like murky gray area where it's like nobody nobody's really happy with how how the friendship's going or the relationship's going but like you're you're kind of going through the motions and like it just yeah it doesn't doesn't end well do you think that we are like over labeling ourselves such as like these days i was like watching something online it's like i'm an avoidant i'm a this i'm a you know i'm With a passive aggressive person.

33:19He's definitely a narcissist. Like what is going on with all these labels we're placing on ourselves? Are these real? Are they that black or white? Yeah, they are real. They're not necessarily black and white. And I have mixed feelings about it. Like I think it's a sword that cuts both ways. So I do, and I do think there is a bit of an over labeling that has been happening. So I'll make the bull case first for all this labeling. and and i guess we could call this just kind of like therapy culture in general you know so it's like the all of the language that permeates tiktok and instagram and and youtube these days and people talking you know about being neurodivergent and avoiding and attachment types and dealing with narcissists and all this stuff like there's all this like kind of clinical therapy language that has entered into the mainstream so on the one hand it represents just an awareness of like a lot of these dynamics and issues, right?

34:18Which I don't think that's a bad thing. Like if you go back a couple generations, like people just buried shit for decades and it only come out after - Like adults, you know? Shove it down. Just keep shoving it down. Yeah, don't deal with that. And hope it doesn't come out after nine or 10 drinks. So I do think it's good that these things are being talked about. The problem is that there's a very fine line between labeling a problem and adopting a label as an identity. So as soon as you adopt a label as an identity, like the way our minds work is whatever I've defined myself as part of my identity, I'm going to defend it.

35:04And I'm going to become emotionally attached to it. So if I decide that, let's say I'm ADHD, which I am diagnosed as ADHD, but if I decide to make that a core part of my identity, like it defines who I am and my relationships and how I see the world and interact with the world, then I'm going to start imposing that on all of my experiences and my relationships. and then you get this kind of self-fulfilling prophecy, which is that because I'm approaching every experience in my life is like, well, as an ADHD person, I can't really handle this. And as an ADHD person, you need to talk to me this way and not that way.

35:44You actually amplify how serious the condition is. Whereas if you just said like, okay, this is a thing I have and I'm just gonna manage it and I'm not gonna make it part of my identity, you can use that awareness to diminish how much it affects your life. So the problem I see is that adopting these labels as an identity is being rewarded online. And so the more it's rewarded, the more people like cling to them, which the worse they feel for having them. Great point. I've also been diagnosed as ADHD from an online test I did once. Very clinical. Yes, it was super. But the best part about the test was at the end, I didn't believe it when somebody sent it to me.

36:32But at the end, there was a literal link to talk to, I guess it would have been a psychiatrist because they could prescribe, and consider some sort of option, which I believe was some variant of Adderall that I hadn't heard of before. So like, you may need to get on a person with this one. And some of your treatment options. So it was like kind of an ad. And I thought, for the love of all the Tully, in a 15-question interview online, you're going to diagnose me as X thing and give me a pill? Seems flawed. Yes. You know? There's a whole overdiagnosis issue, and that's just across the board. Anxiety disorders, depression, PTSD.

37:16Probably all of those are being overdiagnosed to a certain extent. I mean, the problem is just without getting down too much of a tangent, there's always been kind of the pharmaceutical incentive, right, to diagnose people. And I think for many, many decades, the population was underdiagnosed. So like that incentive was aligned with the public good. but I think probably in the last 10 years 15 years um we're we're getting to a place where there's an over diagnosis and now that incentive is an issue and then on top of that you have kind of the social incentives of well if I start making tiktoks talking about my adhd then I'm going to get a following and all these other adhd people are going to follow me or if I talk about my anxiety disorder or my panic attacks like all these other people are going to follow me and then that becomes just a core part of who I am, which psychologically promotes, subtly it promotes a greater propensity for anxiety attacks and panic attacks, right?

38:20So like self-definition, I probably should have said this earlier, like self-definition has a huge impact on our mental well-being, right? Like there's so much research about this on both good and bad labels. So like for instance, if you set out and start a new challenge, say it's a business challenge or it could be anything, it could be running a mile or whatever, simply deciding, like simply believing that you are capable of doing it, that you will be successful at it, like increases your odds of success substantially. it's it's the self-fulfilling prophecy aspect of life right like if i tell myself that uh my new business venture is going to fail it makes it more likely it's going to fail because it's going to prime my brain to start looking for all the ways it could screw up and and then when it does screw up i'm gonna be like see i always knew it was going to screw up so it's like this is why you often see like founders and entrepreneurs are delusionally optimistic and overestimate themselves consistently because it's actually very useful in a certain context.

39:30You see this with the athletes. You generally see this with a wide range of highly successful people. The opposite of that is true as well. So if you believe, I can't do this because I'm an anxious person. I can't do this because it's going to be too stressful. I'm going to have panic attacks. you make it more likely that you are going to succumb to stress and panic attacks. That's not to say that it's the only thing causing your stress. People do legitimately have anxiety disorders and panic disorders and all sorts of things. But the language you use with yourself can move the needle in terms of the likelihood of it holding you back or not.

40:16And so the other concerning part of therapy culture is that it is, I think it is subtly reinforcing people to place limitations on themselves. To say, you know, instead of saying, I have ADHD and, well, actually there's a bunch of contexts and situations that ADHD can actually be an asset. that it's encouraging people to say, I have ADHD, so I'm just never going to be like a normal person. And there's all these things I can't do. And there's a bunch of things I'm probably going to fail at. And then it becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy. If you're listening, how do you integrate this into your life?

40:54What should you do instead of labeling yourself as negative things? How do you change and prime your brain so that you can label yourself a winner? It's a great question. I also think there's potentially issues with labeling yourself a winner so I I'm I'm of the Buddhist school of like don't label yourself anything you don't know who the fuck you are because when you don't have a label then your potential is infinite right like you could potentially become anything or anybody you want so I just I recommend people shy away from labels as much as possible. And if you do adopt one, like be very conscious of why you're adopting it and like what the consequences of adopting that label are.

41:44I'll use kind of a superficial example or it's not really superficial. It might sound superficial, but it was actually very profound for me. So I started, as we talked about earlier, I started blogging 2007. my first business was dating relationship coaching. And that actually did pretty well. And I was happy and everything was going great. And I decided to write a book to kind of promote my online coaching business. That book eventually became Subtle Art. Subtle Art went on and sold a bazillion copies. And sure enough, next thing I know, all these big book deals are showing up. all these publishers want to work with me, all these incredible opportunities are knocking on my door.

42:32I got to do a book with Will Smith. And it was super exciting. For the next five years, I was working just as hard as I had always worked. But it was feeling like, I guess I would say, it started to feel like a grind. It started to feel like, obviously, it wasn't a day job. But the feeling that people get when you're just doing something for a paycheck, it started to feel like that towards the end and and it really started to like grind me down and i i got pretty burnt out and i took a sabbatical in 2022 and and my big realization on the sabbatical was like i thought i was an author like all of this shit all the burnout and the stress and like long long miserable hours the problem was i thought i was an author I'm an entrepreneur this is like I I was creating a media and coaching business I lost track of that because people showed up and started offering me like more money than I'd ever seen in my life to play as an author and so I I told myself I'm an author I do author things now and I started living an author life and it was like I don't know it was like walking around in clothes that are the wrong size like it's just very uncomfortable and eventually like starts to wear you down.

43:47And so on my sabbatical, I was like, I completely forgot. The way I got here is because I'm an entrepreneur, I should go back to being an entrepreneur and building online media and coaching businesses. And that's what I did. And I'm like happy as a pig in shit. So I haven't written a book in five years. So it's a simple shift in definition. And I think, I guess my story like the lesson from that is that it's very easy to unconsciously change how you see yourself based on the financial opportunities that show up it's very tempting to do that and um and i did that and it like i ended up paying the consequences so um so yeah i'm back to being an entrepreneur and i'm very happy comma author yes sometimes author well you know you are really good at which is I think one of the reasons why so many people follow you online, but why I like talking to you, you're really self-reflective.

44:44Like almost every time we've talked, you've been like, I'm thinking about this. I tried this. I didn't like it. Like it didn't sit well with me. And so I thought about it and I, and I changed it. And I think a lot of us in life, we just keep going. We're like, you know, don't pay attention, keep going. And that's why burnout comes. There's no self-reflection. There's no review, but like, you're quite good. I think it taking a step back and going, okay, let me think about this. And even a reframe like I did there, you would have been very tempting for you to go like, oh, well, here's how you should label yourself.

45:16You accept somebody else's frame. That's actually, it's really hard to not do, especially in an interview. To go instead, you said dumb question, this is what you should do instead, right? So for somebody listening, what is the way that you should self-reflect to even figure out, oh, I'm unhappy because I've labeled myself improperly? properly. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.

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46:04Mark Manson:Good sleep is everything. That's why Oli's science back support is made with a blend of melatonin and L-theanine for both kiddos and grownups. So when your mind won't switch off, you've got something that can help. Erasing thoughts and restless nights won't stand a chance. Find Oli's sleep solutions for the whole family at Oli.com. That's O-L-L-Y dot com. So a drum that I will bang on until my death. I keep pushing this message into the productivity space and I feel like nobody wants to hear it but I think it's extremely important so for people who care right now or in a phase of their life that they care very deeply about success, productivity, achievement, all those things you have to view your emotions as another system to be managed most people just like you said push the emotion that they compartmentalize they're like we're not going to think about that now.

47:02I've got meetings to go to. And you can do that for a while. You can do that for a year, maybe a couple of years, but like at some point it's going to come back and it's really going to bite you in the ass. And I think that the thing that doesn't get talked about enough is that your emotions are another system to be managed to. And as soon as you feel yourself getting off track emotionally of like not enjoying what you're doing, not being excited about the people you're working with, not getting along with your team. Like these are all signals of like something's off and sure, maybe it's not showing up on the balance sheet and it's not showing up in the PNL, but like it matters because if you're miserable, like that's, that's fucking terrible ROI long-term.

47:52Like you don't want to be stuck in a business. you don't want to build your own prison essentially so it's it's the first thing i would say for people who like you know really care about uh that stuff is is like to just acknowledge that this matters that it like it does affect everything and the second thing i think once you once you realize that it is an important facet of of everything that you're doing it is another system to be managed then you can start looking at it and thinking about it like you look at and think about other systems in your business or your career of like, okay, where's the bottleneck?

48:28You know, where's like the poor ROI? Like where's the place or the person that I'm putting tons of energy into and I feel like I'm getting very little out? Like it's the exact same principles that you're applying in all these other areas of your life. You can look at your emotional life in the exact same way. In terms of tactically, I think journaling is by far probably the easiest lift, the highest leverage activity for people who haven't thought about this stuff a whole lot. Just get yourself an empty notebook and start asking yourself a lot of these questions. And really starting with the basics.

49:08What do I feel about this? How am I feeling in this moment? How am I feeling today? How am I feeling about what I'm working on? How am I feeling about the people around me? And then once you've identified those feelings, then ask yourself, why? Why do I feel this way? Why does it feel so draining when I'm working on this part of my business or on this part of my career? What is it about it? And then really explore that. you know, give yourself the freedom to, to write pretty liberally until you, you find something. That's really good. So no screaming manifestations in the mirror and journal just kind of briefly about the things that we feel and ask why.

49:52That seems reasonable for like internet people. It's funny too. Like it's such a basic thing. I used to call this the why game and it's, um, you know, so you just take something, take something you're struggling with and say like, how do you feel about that uh or like why are you struggling with it take that reason and then you take that reason you say okay why is that reason a problem and then you get another reason and you say okay why is that reason a problem and it's just like layers of an onion and you just keep going going and going and going and usually you'll you'll get to a point where it gets circular and um and and like that circularity is usually like okay that's that's actually the real problem That's the thing that you actually have to focus on, not this surface layer shit that, you know, you've been thinking about.

50:38That's so good. You know, on the same vein, you were talking originally about, hey, like, I think people get this wrong and they're not listening to this, but I'll scream it from the rooftops. What else do you think that young people today just have so wrong? Yeah. Well, we've definitely hit two of them. Like the failure piece is, that feels very particular to Gen Z, I think. It's just the... I'm alarmed by the amount of risk aversion. I think the other thing that people, you know, we talked about boundaries a little bit earlier. I do feel like there's maybe an overcorrection that's happening there.

51:16Again, it's great that people are becoming aware of boundaries and speaking up for themselves and being willing to say no. But I think, again, coming back, there's so much shitty advice on social media But it's just like, if they don't respect you, then they can get the fuck out of your life. And it's like, well, no, actually, some people you don't want to do that with, right? Like some people, some people you maybe want to stick it out and, and try to work with them or, or put some time into it. um i i do there's some alarming we did a we did a podcast last year on um uh kind of some alarming statistics on on people people cutting family members out of their lives what's happening it's i forget the exact numbers because it's been a while but it was an it was an episode we did like probably like early 25 um and it's yeah it's it's shocking it's way more people and you think it's something like 20-25 % of Gen Z is like willingly chosen not to speak to at least one parent.

52:22A lot of siblings being cut off you know a lot of stuff and again I think it's it's like well-intentioned therapy culture type stuff of like you know well my mom is toxic or my brother never respects my boundaries or whatever and I get where it's coming from but I also think that there are i i feel like cutting family members out of your life is is a a move of last resort like there's a lot of intermediary steps you can go you can doesn't need to be step one you can manage you can manage exposure to people you can manage like you know set boundaries around which topics you you'll talk with how long you'll spend with them you know what conversations you'll indulge which ones you won't um yeah there's there's just a lot of managing that you can do in between.

53:09I mean, I always go back to the quote. It's like an African proverb about you can either pave the world in leather or you can wear leather shoes. And I think there is, I totally agree with you. Sometimes that person that's problematic is there to teach you something. And if you just avoid everybody that you don't like or everybody that is even toxic or everybody that is pushing boundaries, then that means you don't get better at holding them. You don't get better at keeping things out of your perimeter that are toxic because you're so hard to push through. You know, if you don't allow these people in to teach you lessons in some way, you never get better because you expect the whole world to be paved as opposed to wearing the shoes.

53:51And so I think, you know, it's cool because what you're building right now that I want to talk about is a pushback to the thing that scares the hell out of me, which is I have like multiple girlfriends who have turned ChatGPT and named it into their therapist. Okay. And the problem, as my friend Arthur Book said better than I did, and I'm not going to say it as eloquent, is that he says the problem with chat GPT is it is a malignant narcissist in that it is just trained to read back to you the things that it thinks that you want to hear. Yes. And to agree with you by and large. And so, and it has no emotion.

54:27Yes. It is psychopathic in its tendencies. And so what concerns me with some of my friends is these are like amazing people who will tell me that they'll have an argument with a man that they're dating and then go feed their side into ChatGPT. And ChatGPT will confirm every single thing that they're doing. Of course. And I love you friends, but some of you guys are fucking psychos too. Like, you know, we can get crazy relationships, me included. Of course. And I'm wrong all the time. And so if I only feed my side in and then ChatGPT is always telling me I'm right, that seems bad. Yes. And I don't know.

54:58you're the expert in this. Like what is happening? Is that bad? Should people be using chat GPT as a therapist? What is your thought? And then I want to talk to you about your counterpoint to it. Deeply concerned as well. You know, I started noticing in my life, same thing, a bunch of friends, family members started using chat GPT as a therapist. I went, this is maybe a year, year and a half ago, I went and started experimenting with it, you know, kind of And I'll say this. It's very uneven. There's some things that it's much better at than, say, your average therapist, and then some things it's much worse at.

55:40So the thing you pointed out is what it's much worse at. It just validates. It doesn't think critically. It doesn't challenge you. It wants you to feel happy. It kisses your ass way too much. the thing that it's good at is it is in its data set is the entire wealth of knowledge the entire field of psychology essentially every research paper is in there every finding is then in there every branch of the the topic is in there all like there's i think there's um over 3 000 hours worth of therapy transcripts like in the foundational model so if you get it away from if you approach it with any problem that's not about validating your feelings, like if you actually ask it for some sort of tangible feedback or advice on a more specific problem, it will actually be extremely well-informed on the research in that area and will generally give you some good direction and good advice.

56:44The problem is that your average layperson has no idea what the difference between those two things is. And so yeah, that becomes very problematic for sure. Yeah. And isn't, I mean, I was reading the other day that like 60 % of LLMs are off of Reddit, which is, I think where dreams go to die. So that like those people being my therapist is my personal nightmare. That would be horrific. Yes. But like, I guess my point here is you're building something that's a counterpoint to this, which is don't just go to, like, if you actually want to change your life or fix your life, you don't just want to be told you're right.

57:19And that's like my husband and I always say that to each other. We say, do you want to win or do you want to be right? Right. Exactly. And often winning doesn't mean me personally winning. It might mean our relationship winning. You know? Do I want our relationship to be good or do I want to say, you are wrong. I am right. Tell me. Tell it back to me. Yes. You know? Yeah. And if that's what you want, then I guess go to ChatGPT. Yeah. But if not, there's not a lot of other places to go to where somebody will kind of give you a little tough love. Yeah. And so you came up with something that I think is really clever.

57:47Yeah. so i i i felt very strongly so i again i felt this tension i'm like it's definitely not meant for this purpose but the potential is there like it is it is trained on so much wealth of psychological knowledge and data um and coincidentally it's funny i was actually at a poker game i sat next to a guy and um started talking to him and uh his name was raj and he founded a ai business have you ever checked in a hotel and you get like a like a text message and it's like an ai concierge you can say like oh i want towels or whatever so yeah he created that um he's probably doing okay yeah he he had like a very big exit and took a year off and had just just finished his sabbatical like when he went to that poker game so i started talking to him he's like yeah i'm just wrapping up a sabbatical i'm trying to figure out what's next i was like oh cool like what are you thinking about and he said well i i really want to do something in ai mental health.

58:43And I was like, no shit. Been thinking about this too. And turns out he had identified the exact same problem. He's like, there's so much potential here, but there's no LLM that has been optimized for it. There's nothing that's been trained for it. There's nothing that's like been specifically created for this purpose. So he and I became co-founders and he's, we've been working together since February. And as of this week, we were in full V1 launch of our app called Purpose. And the goal of it is to essentially be that counterpoint, the ChatGPT, instead of just trying to make you feel better all the time.

59:24The goal is to actually make you better, right? Tell you the things, the hard things that you need to hear, you know, point out your blind spots to you, challenge you on your bullshit, say like are you really sure about that or like maybe like your shit stinks too um and it's been great like it's it's because here's the funny thing that we've actually noticed with a lot of our early users as well is that like people are way more honest with an ai than they are with a therapist like if you i don't know about you but like my experience in therapy like it often takes like four or five six sessions just to get to the point where i'm like okay I'll actually say this thing to her right and you want them to like you more than your partner that's like the natural inclination it's all about your perspective but it's you know when it's an AI it's just like well fuck it whatever this is what I'm thinking this is who I'm kind of screwed up but like here it is it never judges you it's like you never have to worry about it's gonna like hold something against you or it's like secretly thinking something about you.

1:00:30So generally speaking, we see people are much more forthcoming with it. And you actually get to that clarity extremely quickly, like sometimes in a matter of minutes. It's like pretty crazy. Is there like a Mark Manson button or Mark Manson? Is there a button where we can get your voice to talk back to us? Not yet. Maybe, maybe. That might be coming. Or is it really nice still? It is nice. Does it cuss? No. I have a lot of user feedback. I feel like this is a mess. I wanted to be able to talk shit to me from the author of The Subtle Art of Giving a Fuck back. We actually talked about this. Okay.

1:01:15And one of the things I told my co-founders, I was like, look, I'm under no illusions that I'm the right person for everybody, right? So it's, I actually think if we put my personality on it, we would be limiting it. It would help fewer people. So it is not limited to me, but, you know, maybe we will get a Mark Manson button. Just a little button. Yeah, that's what. Just be like, hey, fuck face. Yeah, exactly. Pull your head out. Also, talk about viral feedback loops. Yes. You know, can you imagine those screenshots? Yeah, it'd be fun. Yeah, come on. All right, let me on the cap table.

1:01:49Mark Manson:I've got feedback. Okay. But I really like the idea and I really commend my husband's, the smarty on AI. It's not me. But just this weekend, I was with, yeah, last weekend, whatever, whatever ASL was. And I was with all these guys who like the guy who started Aptronic, the robot company. And well, I won't say the, anyway, like just a bunch of really big names in robotics and AI. And I had the funniest conversation. It wasn't from the CEO of Apptronic. And the conversation kind of went like this. I was like, don't you think we should worry a little bit about what we're building with AI? Because seems like happiness, gone down.

1:02:30Sex, gone down. Marriage, gone down. Like social media has like, by and large, us gluing our faces to the phones, by and large, incredible for productivity and GDP growth. Not so great for just being happy, like as humans, it seems like, or even procreating. Like the data is kind of hard to refute, I think, on that. So if that's true, I'm like, maybe, you know, if they like neurochip ads into our brains, it would be not great. And so anyway, like that seems like reasonable to me. And as I was talking to this guy, who's a really nice guy that I like, he was like, well, I'm a tech optimist. And I thought, yeah, like I'm an optimist too, but you could be cautiously optimistic, which also seems rational.

1:03:11And he's like, no, we'll just like figure it out. I go, well, we haven't exactly figured it out. So shouldn't we have these conversations and say, what are we building? Is this really a good idea? And how could we try to take all the knowledge we have of human psychology for millennia and realize that if this is an extension of human psychology, it's probably good to put some guardrails on it if at all humanly possible. For sure. So I commend that you're doing it. Because his response was hysterical. It was like maximum mansplain. He goes, listen, come on Monday. I'll explain AI to you. I was like, get the fuck out.

1:03:44I was like, that's what I was like. I was like, I want to have my big dick energy. I'm like, I want to open my legs wider than you. But I know it's not funny. I mean, and I'm not pretending I know very much about AI, but we've invested in a slew of companies and even the best founders are concerned. Oh, we spend like a ridiculous amount of time. The two big things we spend most of our development time on is privacy and guardrails. Because it is such early days and we are still learning so much about what is an appropriate use of this technology and what's not. And, and, and yeah, it's hard. It's, it, there's some scary shit.

1:04:22So like we're, we're constantly testing it. Like it's, it's very, very high on our priority list. The one thing I will say to what you just said is, and this actually like relieved me, it's going to sound a little bit funny when I explain. When I went in, when I started this company, you know, I was very like, Like basically we, you know, Raj is the engineer, the builder, you know, built the team, built all the development team and everything. And then I was kind of the product guy. So I had a rough idea of like how this thing should talk, what it should sound like, what good tough love advice is and, you know, what is just kissing your ass.

1:05:01and so I spent a lot of time working with the LLM directly like on the the eval system the training data all the system prompts like trying to trying to squeeze out of it like what should come out of it and I will say after working very very closely directly with an LLM for over a year now I've actually my estimation of what they're capable of has dropped considerably like they are they're like brilliant idiots. Like they, they will, they will do multivariate calculus while doing a backflip and like spinning two plates on their fingers. But then, you know, like their shoes will be on wrong. Like it's, there's like so many situations like that, that, uh, you know, there've been so many times where I've just been trying to get, uh, get it to do like such a basic thing and it'll take an entire afternoon.

1:05:55And I'm like, okay, there's no way this thing's taking over the world. Like it's just like the fact that it can't even give me this like one text response when I specifically asked for it, you know, it's like, okay, we're probably going to be okay for a while. So I do think there's a lot of, there's a little bit of, of moral panic going on around it. I don't think they're quite as capable as, as most of, I mean, I don't know how much you guys have been using AI in your business, but it's, it's like a year ago I was like, so on the train of like everybody on my team, you got to get good at AI right now.

1:06:30This is going to be part of every workflow. And six months later, we're like, oh, half of it is just trash. I do think garbage in, garbage out. Yeah. And it's actually very, very hard to, you have to be extremely skilled to get it to do what you want extremely well. And oftentimes the amount of effort it takes to get it to do something you want extremely well, you might as well just do it yourself. Yeah, I'm still there. sometimes too. But I do have, we hired a whole AI specialist team. So it's actually so fun to work with them because they're just, they're also smarter than me at prompting. And because with AI too, you have to know, I mean, to go to your part about beautiful idiots or brilliant idiots, you know, there's like, there is the plate spinner that is the best plate spinner of all time, but that you have to match with the back flipper sometimes.

1:07:17And you're like, oh, okay, the two of you together do some magic, but independently, Jesus, you know? There's like one other place I want to go with you today. Totally unrelated to AI, hard pivot, but you did start in dating and I've always like respected the conversations we've had about you and your wife and how you choose partners. So I want to read you a couple of quotes and get your feedback. You said, choosing a romantic partner isn't just about romance. You're also choosing a confidant, counselor, career advisor, therapist, investor, teacher, travel buddy, roommate and business partner.

1:07:51Choose wisely. And the question I think is, does that still hold true for you? That was from quite a few years ago. And how exactly does one find this type of partner? It's funny because when I posted that, I got a bunch of blowback of people like, oh, you shouldn't hold people to such high expectations. And I think what gets missed is that it's not that you should go looking for all those things. It's when you choose to marry somebody, that's what you're getting. Whether you want it or not, that person, your spouse becomes that, all of those things for you. So you have to vet them beyond just how is the romance or how spicy is the sex.

1:08:32You have to think through a lot of different personality traits. And I think it's absolutely true. I personally think marrying well is the single highest leveraged decision of your entire life. And also not marrying well is also a very high leveraged decision. Like it is just the force multiplier on all of your outcomes across life. And it's not just your career outcomes. It's your happiness outcomes. It's your health outcomes. It's all sorts of things, your social life. A good spouse makes everything better and a bad spouse will make everything worse. It's so true. I totally agree. And I get shit about it on the internet too.

1:09:16And you know what else is scary? I'm always scared to give advice because I'm like, I don't know, check back in 40 years. See how we're doing. Like I should, this is like, I'm kind of new at this. It's only been 10 years, you know? Like let's chill, but we're doing good right now. What advice do you have for a young person that is looking for what you have, which is somebody that is all of those things? I think the biggest thing to look for is character. it's it's again yes you want the romance you want the sparks to fly you want you want to have be swept off your feet and all like we all want that it's great don't get me wrong but you have to look a level deeper you have to look at their character their integrity how good of a decision maker are they are they dependable are they trustworthy do they share your values issues how's their relationship with their family like all these things matter and that not and obviously nobody's perfect like nobody's going to check every single box but you ideally you want to find somebody who checks most of them and and the ones they don't check like you can work with it you know and do you have like a couple questions you ask like if you i know we're both like a little we're a little baked now yeah but you know but basically shut up mark but like if you if you were given young you advice the team actually asked me this the other day i was like oh i have an existential crisis trying to answer it but like what if i only had three to five questions to sort of start sussing out is this potentially my person or not what are those well i will tell you my favorite first date question that i recommend everybody ask is ask the person you're on a date with um what did you learn from your last relationship and the red flag is if the person starts going off about how horrible their ex was and how shitty they were and oh my god i can't believe i dated them for so long like that that person run far away get as far away as you can what you're looking for is somebody who says you know it was a complicated relationship it was good for a while then things went bad here's why they went bad here's here was my part in it this was their part in it somebody who has perspective and an understanding of like what went wrong and and who also has clearly like done some work since then to make sure that it doesn't go wrong again.

1:11:52I also love the question too, because it, if you ask it and the person kind of freaks out and gets really uncomfortable, that's also a signal, right? It's a signal that this is not a person who is comfortable opening up relatively quickly, who like doesn't want to go there. You know, what's crazy is that's the same thing for interviewing too. I always say if like the person you were going to hire, if you ask them, like, tell me what happened in your last job? Like, why did you leave? Why did you choose to move on? If they start going negative, the company was terrible. The boss was awful. Everything was ever.

1:12:25I have never once hired one of those people and had it work out. Not once. Every single time I wished I didn't hire them. Because I think the way that you treat the last person, the highest indication will be that you will be treated the same, right? Yeah, absolutely. Oh, that's such a good one. Okay. Last one for you. You've also tweeted, the person you marry is the person you fight with. The house you buy the house you repair. The dream job you take is the job you stress over. Everything comes with an inherent sacrifice. Whatever makes us feel good will also inevitably make us feel bad. What do you mean?

1:12:57You can't escape the bullshit. You can't escape it. No matter where you go, there's going to be some bullshit. So you just need to make sure that it's the bullshit you like having it's it's the problems you are have are grateful that you have in your life um again i think people they think about the the benefits and the successes that they want that's actually a very easy and uninteresting question everybody generally wants like everybody wants money everybody wants a great partner everybody wants to be liked and popular and you know all these things um the question is is like what pain do you want like what are you willing to give up what struggles are you actually kind of okay having like what challenges do you seem to do better with than most people like those are that's actually where you get into who somebody is and like what makes you unique as an individual and what is ultimately going to serve you best as you move through life.

1:14:02That's so good. I always say with goals, like don't tell me what you want. Tell me what you're willing to sacrifice to get them. But I've never actually asked. I've like proselytized on the internet about that, but I don't ever think I've actually asked somebody. Like have you asked your wife or your friends or people you meet with those questions? Like what are you willing to give up? Yeah. Like what is the pain that you want? Like what would be the way that you would even ask those questions to someone? Because it's kind of hot. I want to like, I need to go around. I need to go around and you know you can take that question multiple ways but like I like it yeah it's when I give talks I always say I say like everybody everybody is secretly a masochist about something the question is just like what do you want to spank you and call you daddy by the way this goes over great at like corporate conferences you can imagine I get invited back all the time google's like pull him you and i probably have the most polar opposite corporate speaking experience no i tell all their employees to leave and then you tell them who wants to spank them so you know what i'll start bringing you along let's do a road show yeah we'd just be the anti-corporate speaker exactly um yeah it's it's uh i like that i like to frame it in those terms it is a it's a hard question like nobody i think nobody asks themselves nobody's asked it very often it's like what what do you what do you what do you actually kind of secretly like like what problem do you secretly like having it's like a very interesting question that most of us don't think about and uh but yeah i think i think i think the answer is extremely important what are you like the the problem i secretly enjoy having um i mean i'm a workaholic uh like i actually i i like the grind i like climbing the ladder like it's just fun it's like i told my dad once you know when so when i came back and i started scaling content and doing video and stuff online and uh launching a podcast and everything my dad kind of pulled me aside and he's like you know why are are you doing this he's like financially you're you're pretty set and uh and i told him i was like dad it's like i found the best video game and there's always another level like you can you never beat it and uh and he he got it he was like okay that's cool that's a good reason to do it oh that's such a good place to end mark this was incredible thank you so much for being on the thanks for having me

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