How to break out of autopilot and create the life you want | Graham Weaver (Stanford GSB professor, founder of Alpine Investors)

25:40And so a big part of what I do with students is work through those things and say, okay, great. They don't let's, let's talk about this job you're going to take for X years and you're going to pay off your loans or whatever. But during that time, let's get you on the path of the thing you really want to do. So sometime in your life, you want to, you know, sometimes soon in your life, you want to get on that path. There's a bunch of directions I want to go here. One is I'll just share like what you're describing is exactly what happened to me without knowing this advice. I just started writing things online because the poll was there and people seem to enjoy it.

26:16So I just kept following that path and the whole time my wife's like, you can't make money writing on the internet. That's not a thing. Why would you do this? You have all these skills that can be, you can make a lot more doing other things, but I just kept doing that. And that's what led me to this life. Now where I make much, much more than I made as a product manager at Airbnb.

26:39And probably that, you know, if you go back to what I was saying before, you probably were answer the question, you know, what would I do if I didn't have to make money? You know, you just did that because you enjoyed it. What's play for you that's worked for other people? You know, what are you doing your free time? You know, you were answering all those questions. And then I think a lot of people just say, Oh, well, that's just a side, you know, hustle or a hobby. It is until it isn't right. And, and, and then you're in your great example of that. Just to say, it's to make expectations with folks.

27:06It's not like, like you told me, how often does this actually work out for someone where this ended up being the right path for them that it ended up working well for them? Just, you know, because people can hear this and be like, Yeah, okay, like I'm sure works for some people, probably not for most people. What's your, what's like the success rate, however you define that for your students? Okay. So the short answer is I don't know, because I don't, I don't have full information about how my students do or what their path would have been, had they not done it. So it's a, it's a kind of a difficult question to answer.

27:39But what I would say is that the formula you're solving for is you excited about something for like a decade or more. So what has to happen? You excited about something we just talked about what that is? The decade or more is going to come true more likely if you're excited about it. But also you have to go at the beginning with that mindset and in the structural ability to stay at it for a long period of time. So the missing ingredient in most of the people that fail is time. And I can, I'll use my own, myself as an example. You know, I started Alpine. We lost money on our first fund. You know, we started doing while we hit by the recession.

28:31You know, we started digging out whatever. But one of the story short, I was 14 years into running my firm until I could say like with confidence, we were going to even stay in business, let alone be really successful. And probably 18 years until we were what I would say really successful by external standards. And now 23 years, you know, we've had, we've had a great run. But if you take away that the time period, then I would have gone down as one of the quote failures. As opposed to I would say one of the success stories using this methodology. So time is the really the very, the variable. And I think the biggest part of that is it's really believe it or not, not typically the finance or the the structural piece.

29:23It's the entrepreneur or the individual's willingness to actually stay with it. And in an upstream of that, it's their belief about how long it's supposed to take. And I really hate this about the social media and just media and general where they try to paint this picture that things are going to happen overnight. And I just, I, we've invested in 600 founder, 600 businesses, the vast much let's say 550 of those are founder, founders started businesses were were the first money. I've never in one of those examples seen anyone who did thing something quickly. They've all been very, very long stories to get to that point.

30:12This reminds me of a quote I read that you, I don't know if you wrote this or you shared it. I said, do the life of suffering so choose something worth suffering for. I wrote that. Yeah. You wrote that. Talk about that. And because I feel like it's exactly what you're describing. It's going to take a long time. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. It's a good. I'm glad you brought that. Yeah. I mean, think about it. Like in again, using my self example, the first job I had, I was, I wasn't suffering any less. I was getting on planes. I was working late hours. I was, my time was not my own. You know, if I would have had kids, I'd be missing their literally games and all that stuff.

30:45So I'm doing that anyway. I'm just doing it for something I don't care about. And then, you know, I start my own company and I was quote, suffering, you know, getting on planes, doing all that. I just, it was just something that I cared about. So yeah, the quote, life is suffering. So figure out something worth suffering for. You're going to suffer either way. And that's another thing I think people don't realize is like, there isn't really a path that is easy that I've ever found. You have another quote along these lines, which is everything you want is on the other side of worse first. I mean, I know those are two not super optimistic quotes, perhaps, but they're, but I think that I think they're true.

31:32The second one, everything you want is on the other side of worse first. And this is something where I almost can't think of many exceptions to this where, you know, you pick anything. You want a better body. Okay, you're going to need to go to the gym. When you go to the gym the first few times, it's going to not be that fun. You're going to set your alarm. You're going to get sore. You know, it's not going to be great. You're going to have to probably make some changes to your diet. That's not going to be fun, at least initially. And so that, so that we're, you know, so that's one example. You want to change careers.

32:06You're going to have to learn a new career. You're going to have to, you're going to have to leave your career. You're going to have to maybe interview for new jobs or whatever it is. It's going to, in each case, the first move is negative. First move is negative to getting in shape. The first move is negative to get out of a bad relationship to get into a career you want to be in. That is the reason I think that's important to say is because if I'm optimizing for tomorrow and I just want to have a great day tomorrow, I'm going to stay exactly where I am because my life will be better tomorrow if I don't make any changes.

32:43You know, I don't have to break up with my girlfriend, have a hard conversation, have the tears, be, you know, be alone, go on dating apps. I don't have to do that if I, if I just stay in it one more day. So if you realize this and instead ask the question, you know, what would myself, my, the version of myself five years from now, what would they wish I was going to do right now? You know, so I can guarantee you your five year version yourself will say, get out of that toxic relationship no matter how painful it is for the next two months. And if you can make decisions from that and then on top of that, realize it's going to get worse first.

33:23Then that's why I say everything is, everything you want is on the other side of worse first. But if you don't do that, you just end up plateauing and so many people I see have this happen where they just, they hit a plateau and they never move past it because they're not willing to have that, that hard day, month, week, year, whatever it is. I'm imagining many people hearing this right now are like, damn, I see what I need to do now. That was really powerful advice. It makes me think of a parenting advice, a pair of some parenting advice I recently saw, Dr. Becky has this advice of your job as a parent isn't to make your kids happy, but it's to make them resilient.

34:02I love that. Yeah. By the way, watch how people parent their parent exactly the opposite of that. They are exactly what you and I both live in Marin. You know, I don't know if you have kids or how old they are, but when you get kids in school Marin, you know, you see parents, they try to clear all obstacles away from their kids. It's the worst thing you could do. Today's episode is brought to you by LiveBlox, the platform that turns your product into a place that users want to be. With ready -made collaborative features, you can supercharge your product with experiences that only top tier companies have been able to perfect until now.

34:42Think AI co -pilots, like notion, multiplayer, like Figma, comments, and notifications, like linear, and even collaborative editing like Google Docs, and all of that with minimal configuration or maintenance required. Companies from all kinds of industries and stages count on LiveBlox to drive engagement and growth in their products. Join them today and give your users an experience that turns them into daily active users. Sign up for a free account today at LiveBlox .io slash Lenny. I want to talk about another exercise that you have, but before I do that, I just, there's all this advice you're sharing that people might be hearing me, like, yeah, yeah, okay, this is great.

35:22But I'm going to show this in intro, but and we're not going to talk a lot about your fund, but I did some research on it. And from what I understand, it's one of the top performing PE funds in the world, which is very hard considering how many smart people run PE funds and how ruthless that industry is. Anything you can comment on there? And is that just like, yeah, I think that's important for people to know. Well, I think I think one of the things I would say is that I never stand up in front of students or being a podcast like this and say anything that I'm not doing myself or that I'm advising students or people who work at Alpine to do.

36:04And so I appreciate the kind words. And I think that the things that I'm talking about are rooted in real results. And this is not just kind of happy talk podcasts. It's one where this is the formula, I think, for greatness is to be intentional, get in the path of the thing that you're most excited about and then give yourself several decades to do it. And that's based on investing in 600 companies and building my own business. So I appreciate the kind call out. Yeah. For people that are listening to me like, okay, I'm motivated. I want to do this. Other than taking your class, anything you can recommend to just like do these sorts of exercises, ask yourself these questions that you've seen work.

36:48I mean, the answer is accountability. How do you keep yourself accountable to kind of living the life you want to live? And the analogy I would use is let's say that you really, your number one goal in life is you've got to get in better shape. You just have to. Let's say you have even medically that's going to, you know, you're going to have real health problems if you don't do that. I would say you hire yourself a personal trainer, you know, pay what you need to pay. Okay, maybe you don't have a ton of money, but that's where I'd spend it. You know, that person is going to, A, they're going to hold you accountable to showing up at the right at a certain time and B, they're going to drag you.

37:31They're going to show you the exercises. They're going to, you know, call you if you're not there. You're just increasing the chances of success. Plus you spend some money. You want to get your money out of it. The equivalent of that in your life is an executive coach. And I figured this out in 2009 in the dark, you know, recesses of the recession. I hired my first executive coach. I was like, wow, it's a personal trainer for me for two things. Number one, make space to ask yourself the big questions in life about your career, your relationships, your health, your spirituality, your, your children, whatever the big things are in your life, ask the big questions, find out what your intention is.

38:15What are you looking for in those areas? And just have, in my case, you know, sell hours a week to get clear on those things. Okay, so that's part one. And then part two is that person can hold you accountable. I have one coach that I can't even have the call with the coach unless I fill out a piece of paper that's set, an online form that says, here's what, here's what my one year goals are, outcomes I want to have this year are. Here's what I did last week based on those. Here's what I'm going to do next week toward those. And here's the account of bill or here's the outcomes I want to have for the call we're about to have.

38:52And even if I never had the call, just having to fill that out every single week is incredibly powerful and account and hold, you know, allows me to hold myself accountable. Now, so 100%, that's what I'd recommend. Let's back up and say, okay, let's say you can't afford a coach or you're worried about that. Okay. Then, and this is the same thing as like, let's say you couldn't afford a personal trainer. I would give you the same advice, which is find a very like -minded friend of yours and sit down and do it for each other. So, you know, if you're using the workout example, okay, you're going to go on a run Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with your friend and they're going to meet you at 7 a .m.

39:33at this, you know, trail or 6 a .m. at this trail. That's your accountability. And you're going to, you know, you're going to be more likely to do it. You don't want to let them down. They're going to, you know, beat you up if you don't, if you don't get there. Same is true with this. I used to, this is how I started. I did this with my roommate in business school. And we would, you know, we would go on a walk for 30 minutes and talk about my dreams and hopes. And then we go on a turn around and talk about his. And it had, it was great because we, we made room for each other to have those conversations.

40:03And we also developed a great friendship. So, short of having an actual executive coach, you know, find a really like -minded person that could get into this with you. And that, that would be another thing. But accountability is huge. But let's just say one more thing. I'm sorry. I'm going on a little bit longer. Please. There's another thing that happens. It's kind of magical, which is you activate a different part of your brain when you talk. You actually activate more of your brain when you talk than when you think or write. So thinking operates the least, activates the least amount of your brain.

40:40Writing is a little bit better, but talking activates like a whole, a whole different region of your brain. And so that's the other big benefit of not doing this, you know, just on your own, is being able to talk about it with someone. I love that there's a whole spectrum of ways to create accountability for yourself. I love the second coach he's shared where just feeling out that form was basically the biggest benefit. When I was in college, I learned this from these audio tapes. When I was in college, I had this green notebook. And I was trying to row crew. And I never rode crew before. And I wrote down at the top of the page every single morning.

41:17I wrote down, I am the number one rower in the country. I wasn't. I was a freshman novice, 135 pound Midwestern. Never had been on a boat. So I was, but I wrote that down. And then I wrote down three things I was going to do that day to move toward that goal. And I did that every single day that I was in college. And it's just incredible. We talked earlier about your subconscious mind. You're just locking your subconscious mind into your goals and where you want to go and who you want to be and how you want to show up. It's really powerful. And that's advice anybody can implement. You could do that.

41:49You could do that to founders. Exactly. Yeah. It's such a simple thing. I want to be the best product manager. Here's three things I'm doing today to help me along. Absolutely. I have. This is my students have to do this every twice a week. It's one of their assignments. And they actually have to turn it in. And I have so many students that say like five years later, I still do this, you know, a couple of times a week and it's been unbelievable. It you will get more done. I'd say this to all your listeners. You will get more done writing, writing down your goal and three things you're going to do to move toward that goal.

42:22You'll get more things done in three months than you will in three years without that. That's an awesome thing to just try tomorrow and work right this down. See how it goes. The coach point I just want to highlight that what convinced me to get a coach back when I was working is I just realized one every athlete has a coach that tells them here's how to become better. Slash everyone that you work with that is like a leader and exec basically has a coach and the people that have an exec coach will do better in their career and life than those who don't. So why would you not have someone there just helping you become better at this craft?

43:01Like it just makes so much sense. If you can afford it, there are different price points for different coaches. Most people can probably afford it. That's right. That's right. Sweet. Okay. Let's talk about another framework that you have that you call nine lives. And this is essentially another way. It's like another way to hack your brain to come up with things you really should be doing probably. Talk about this exercise. So this idea of like what's my passion and what's my career goal? It can be really intimidating and it is intimidating. And so this exercise is to make it less intimidating and you basically come up with nine lives.

43:39So you see, first life, life one is the life you have now. So when I did this exercise, I was, I think, you know, let's just say I let's pretend I did this exercise when I'm right out of school taking that job. You know, so life one is I'm working at this big firm. I live in the Bay Area. You know, here's what I'm doing. That's life one. And then you say, okay, now you there's there's two rules of first rule is all the lives have to start from today. So you can't go back in time. They all start from today. And second rule is you have to be excited about all these lives. So I might say, hey, my second life is I want to start a private equity firm and, you know, be a founder and be a CEO and that's life too.

44:22And life three is I want to be an author and, you know, I would write whatever fiction or nonfiction and and then life four would be I want to be a professor and teach in life five is I want to be, you know, maybe I want to make videos and be on social media and I want to be like six. I want to be an actor and and you go through this whole list of these these lives and and and the idea is that there's a couple of things from this exercise. One is let's say that you're in a position where you need to be working in the job you're in. There might be one of these lives that gives you the most energy and it's the thing you if you knew you wouldn't fail you would do this one.

45:04And it it's good to recognize what that is and then pull that life a little bit into your current life. So, you know, let's say, you know, let me that you were a product manager but you really love doing podcasts and that was one of your your nine lives start, you know, do do a podcast every other week, you know, and just and just pull it into your life, which is it sounds like what you did, you know, you started doing it as a side hustle and and then that'll have two amazing effects. One is you will just have more energy everywhere else in your life. Like, if you forget if you ever do this full time or not, just the act of pulling something into your life you're really excited about will give you tremendous amount of energy.

45:44And then the second thing is you'll you'll ideally find the path that, you know, is the thing that you you know, that gives you the most energy. The other thing that I've learned in doing this exercise is you actually can have pretty much all nine lives. You can't have them at once, but over the life, you know, if you're fortunate enough to live, you know, long enough, you can you can have all of these things. So, I have, you know, had the the the corporate job been the founder, you know, been the professor, been a writer, built, had videos, you know, taught people, you know, I've been able to bring in, you know, most of those lives into into this current life.

46:25There's a couple things there that come up as you talk about. One is on that point, what I do now is my fourth career. First, I was an engineer, then I became a founder, then I was a PM and now I do whatever the heck this is. And I think people don't realize that's how life often goes. You think you're going to do one thing and you have many different careers that pivot into exactly. And I think that's the thing. It's just trying to make it a little less intimidating. Like, you don't have to have this one life purpose passion thing that you do for the rest of your life. If you just follow the thing that gives you energy at each time, it'll probably be a good indication of like where you want to be going.

47:03The other thread there is I know one of you are other who really important piece of advice is to avoid not now idea where everyone's like, here's the thing I should be doing my genie goal, but not now. Thoughts on just how to think about that. I was just like, okay, I know I have these lives I could live, but like, but not now on on this or that. Yeah, I mean, in 20 years of teaching, I've never had a student come to me and say, hey, Graham, you know, my real dream is to do X. But I'm just going to give up on it. I'm not going to do it. No one's ever said that instead they say, not now. And not now, if they're not careful, we'll turn into not ever because not now is just really another way of saying, I'm not going to do it.

47:46And then there's a million reasons why you can't do it now. And those those reasons, some of our legit, some of our just fear, fear in another form. So in terms of like how to overcome that, I think, I think it's kind of hopeful to realize that it's never really the right time. Like when you're making a change or you're going to go do something different, it's never going to feel secure and safe. It's always going to have some fear. You're always going to feel like you're not ready. You're going to feel like it's too soon. You're going to know exactly what that path looks like. And so just understanding that's normal.

48:30You know, that's called entrepreneurship. That's called life. And if you wait for the clouds to part in this ray of sun to come down and say, now is the time, you know, you're going to wait, you're going to wait your whole life. And so I think I think that realization can maybe be helpful. And then and then try try to figure out like what is that what are the things that need to be true for you to launch. And usually for my students, it's something financial that is the is the big bottleneck. And what I tell them is, you know what, has people can have raised money to start a business before. That's happened.

49:12You know, where you're you've had people who started businesses without their own money that have been able to pay themselves. And that's not a reason to not do it. Like it's it's a it's an obstacle. It's something you have to solve. But it's not a it's not an insurmountable obstacle. This touches on a quote. I definitely wanted to get to something that you wrote not long ago. Here's the quote, the most important thing I've learned in the past in the first 50 years of my life is that the true game of life is an internal one, not an external one. And that journey starts with three powerful words.

49:47I am enough. Talk about that. Why is that so important? Well, that's a I mean, that's a really kind of a deep topic. And but I'll just I'll talk about the internal and external journey. Yeah. So life life presents itself as a series of external obstacles and events and it and it feels very much like an external journey. And and it can feel that way your whole life. But what I think what you'll realize and I started realizing this when I really started meditating and spending time kind of distancing myself from that that some you know, the subconscious thoughts is it's almost it's it it's a very, very large part of life is internal.

50:36I say a very large part because obviously you need some food clothing shelter some basic you know, some basic needs that are external. But for most people that are have the ability to even listen to this podcast, I would say the vast majority of your life is internal. So what what do I mean by that? I mean that you're writing a story about what it is you think you need to be happy or you you're writing a story about things you think you you need to be to be enough or to be respected or to feel worthy or to get admiration of other people, you're writing that story. And and that it's just a story.

51:19And if you really follow this logic, you'll realize you'll realize that you'll realize it is 100 % just a story or it's a story that you should even care. And and then that that opens up a lot more agency that you have over deciding what is important to you. You know, what is your internal scorecard? What are the things that that matter to you? Not not what the external world thinks or what or or or the story you've been writing for a long time. This when you start to open this up, it's really kind of scary at first because you'll start to realize most of the things you're operating from are really just stories that have been written at some point in your life.

52:04And and and so it's it's actually terrifying at first and then it starts to become really liberating. Was there an example of that in your life? Because externally it feels like you're killing it. Killer P. E. Fon teaching at Stanford like the scorecard is looking good. So it's interesting you say that. The first time I really realized this was when I it was in 2015, I mentioned to you it took me 14 years to be successful. So we had just sold the last company from our second fund, which is where we really got paid. I had a financial event that was. It wasn't like I never have to work in my life.

52:44It was just like I could exhale a little bit. You know, I knew I was going to be able to pay my mortgage and put my kids through college. It was that kind of an event and and for like a couple days, I was euphoric because I felt like I'd work so hard for this. I've been again at this for 15 years, but really longer than that. If you go back to getting into college and the whole thing had been a long, a long journey. And then it hit me that nothing changed, you know, nothing internally changed at all. I still had the same problems. I still felt the same way about myself. I still had the same kind of a lot of, you know, negative thoughts about myself like nothing like this goal that I thought that I had for this whole long period of time.

53:26It didn't actually change anything. It changed externally for sure. I like I said, I could I could exhale and pay my mortgage and those are all really good things. But that was the first time when I realized like, oh, wait a second. It's really up to me to find things that are going to give me joy and the achievement of some kind of external event is is not one of those things. And I know that sounds really, really weird, but there's so many people that I've heard that have had very, very similar stories. And so it's really it was really disorienting for me. And I actually was the first time in my life where I experienced depression because I just had this thought of like, well, that wasn't what I thought.

54:14I think I was working my whole life for that. And it wasn't what I thought it was going to be. And so now I was thinking, well, what, what is it then? You know, what what is the thing that's going to give me joy? And then that that takes, you know, that takes some some introspection to ask those questions. I was just having a conversation with a friend who's an angel investor and he just had a bunch of exits. And he's like, cool, I got some money in my bank account now, but I don't I don't feel anything like it just doesn't I thought I'd be like, holy moly. It's all this is exactly what I was hoping for.

54:50Nothing changed exactly. You're describing. You know, the, the, I think I think you get a little bit of peace of mind when you have some financial security, which is which is valuable. But in terms of now, my life changes now. I'm enough. Now I am happy. Now I feel good about myself. None of that changes for really anybody that I know. And the hardest part, as you said, is you think it will. You think, oh, I'll be so happy once I achieve this thing. And I think an example is just there's a lot of miserable billionaires from what I read. And that should tell you a lot. Yeah, exactly. Maybe a second to last question.

55:30I'm curious if there's anything recently you're focused on. I've been thinking a lot about that you may be changing your mind about or it's kind of changed the way you think about the world. The last two years I had my two oldest boys go off to college, 2022 and then 2024. And that really hit me hard. I would think that I would have been preparing for that for 18 years for each of them. But for some reason, it just really hit me really, really hard. And I think it was a real wake -up call of mortality, I guess. And to realize that nothing goes on forever. And you know, these wonderful people that I had lived with for each for 18 years were no longer going to really be a part of my daily life.

56:17And that really set me off on a journey of a lot of spiritual work, doing a lot of meditating and working with some gurus. And it's been really profound. And it's put me a lot closer and touch with the things that really matter to me. And given me, I've given myself more permission to spend time doing those things than the kind of normal, external world type things. So that was that was a pretty profound change for me. And the spiritual spiritual journey is a arguably really the important journey. And this could be a longer conversation. And maybe you have the luxury of doing that journey, you know, as you get older or something.

57:11But it's been a a really profound, profound journey. I'm excited to see what insights come out of this part of your life. Final question before we get to our very exciting lightning round. We have this segment on the podcast, like I'll fill your corner where people come on this podcast to share all these wins. Oh, I have this amazing P fun that's killing and I teach it stand for it. I've launched all these things, all these students are so great. Life's amazing. Nothing ever goes wrong. When in reality, it does. And those stories often aren't told. So I'm curious if there's a story you could share of time you failed in your career.

57:48And if you learned something from that experience, what you learned. Yeah, I'll tell a couple stories. So when I was in high school, I wrestled and I cut a lot of weight to make the varsity team. And I was not in the best mental place because of cutting weight. But anyway, I lost a big match my junior year and I quit. And I never I never wrestled again. And that haunted me. So that I first of all, that was a failure, a big failure for me. And it really haunted me. And so I kind of after that was made a promise to myself that I wasn't going to have that happen again. When I went to college, I tried to row crew.

58:31I failed year after year trying to make the team, trying to make the boat. Eventually had some real success by senior year, but prior to that, just failure after failure. And then at Alpine, I mean, we lost money on our first fund. We had a real trouble during the recession. We made a lot of I think five of my first e -investments ever made in my life, I lost money. And that in venture world, that's one thing. But in private equity, that's a whole different ratio, which is not not a good ratio at all. You know, when I first started teaching, wasn't wasn't good at teaching. You know, had a lot of insecurities was I was really young when I started and I didn't feel like I had really anything to share with the students.

59:21And I think that showed up and I took me a long time to kind of figure that out. So I guess my almost my entire track record is one that starts with things not going well. And then just over a long period of time of chip in a way looks like a success on paper. But any time in that early in the process would look like an abject failure. So I'm quite familiar with failure in the form of setbacks. I think the ultimate failure, though, was the wrestling one where I just quit. That was that was really the only one I would characterize as a failure. The other ones, because I kept going and staying with it, it turned out to work out well with a lot of stars and bruises.

1:00:12But the failure would have been quitting. I love that the circle is back to your core advice of stick with it. Most things that are important or take a long time. And there's a lot of suffering. They do as well. Yeah. Something I wanted to ask, I can't help but ask at this point, because I think a lot of people are wondering this, just like when do you quit? When should you quit something? Because some things are just not worth it. Is there any advice there you could share? Yes, for sure. I think the time to quit is when you can no longer see the vision and you can no longer really believe the vision.

1:00:47And then when that happens for a long period of time, or maybe you're no longer even excited about the vision, somewhere in there, I think the excited one you have to be a little careful of, because in the dark days, it's exciting is not the word you're going to use. But at least, like in our company for the first 10 years, it was not going well. But each time I could start to, we'd make fewer mistakes. We'd start to see something working. We'd do one really good deal in this fund. We'd start to learn from that. We'd get one really good hire. We'd learn from that. We would, you know, little by little start to see these green shoots.

1:01:24And I have this unbelievable, there's unbelievable statement. I didn't write it. Dan and Chip, he wrote it in their book, Switch, you know, which is scale your bright spots. You know, find what's working and do more of that. And as you start to progress, like for me, for example, at Alpine, almost all the time, we always had at least a small glimmer of a bright spot. And then we'd scale that. And then we'd continue forward and we find some more and we'd scale those. And over time, all those bright spots became our business. That became what we did. That became our strategy. That became how we hired people.

1:01:59That became where we recruited from. That became, you know, all those bright spots just started to magnify until the entire entire business was pretty much a bright spot. But it took time because we had to figure out where those were and we had to do a lot of things wrong to figure out where the bright spots were. Graham, is there anything else that you wanted to share? You think is important to leave listeners with before we get to our very exciting light in ground? I mean, I think what I would say is just in general, you know, you got one life, you get one shot. And so take the time to really figure out, and answer the question, what does a wonderful, amazing, incredible life look like?

1:02:41Just get as clear as you possibly can on that. No matter how crazy or aspirational it seems, write it down. Write down that thing is, write down that thing that would make this life amazing and write it down for your life, your career, your relationships, your friends, your body, your spirituality, your financial situation. And just the first, the first magic is just knowing what you want. And I'd say 90 % of people never even know what they want. So take the time to do that. And the more, the more clear you are on that, the more invested you are on that, the more likely you are to make it come true.

1:03:18What I love about that is you don't have to do this thing. Just step one is understand what it could be if you, exactly, if you, if you could do that. And it's like almost like understand where your Google directions could take if you turned off Autopilot. Oh man. Okay, well with that, Graham, we reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? Let's do it. First question. What are two or three books that you find yourself recommending most other people? So in the, in the, sort of realm of a lot of the topics we've been talking about, which is your internal and external game. I love the book Untethered Soul and I love the book.

1:03:58Don't believe everything you think. They have very similar themes, but they come at it differently. But I think both of those will really change your perspective if you, if you read them. And then a very, very practical book that's probably the book I've read more than any other book is How to Win Friends and Influence. People buy Dale Carnegie, which is written in like 1930, but it is absolutely, there's no other book like it. There's a reason that people are still recommending it 100 years after it's written. So it's, it's definitely worth worth checking out. Yeah, that book I still think about it often, even I read it like 30 years ago at this point.

1:04:36I love that recommendation. And it's like, it's like a very old book to read, but you have to get past that fact that it was written a long time ago. Okay, next question. The other favorite recent movie or TV show you've really enjoyed? I wrote, for the first time watched the movie Where the Crosse Ed sing and I just loved it. It was, it's kind of a romantic comedy or not, we're not comedy. So our romantic love story meets murder mystery meets coming of age. And it was just really, really touched me. And then I, I probably read the book as well. So I love that. Do you have a favorite product you recently discovered that you really love?

1:05:17I'm a really big fan of sleep. I think it makes a massive difference in your life. And that's a whole other topic we could go down another time. But so I have, I have two things, a few things that have helped me on that. So if you, if you saw me sleeping, I have ear plugs, I have a noise machine, I have a sleep mask, and then I have a chili pad that goes on my bed to keep the bed cool. And I sleep great. All those things really helped the, the ear plugs and mask and noise machine kind of allow you to not hear the ambient noise. And then there's a lot of research actually on the temperature at which you want to sleep in this, and your, your body goes up and down throughout the night.

1:06:00So this chili pad that goes under your mattress, there's a whole bunch of versions of that. And, and, and that, that helps a lot. I also sleep with an eye mask and my wife and I rotate the ear plugs because someone has to pay attention to the baby. There you go. Yeah. Makes wakes up. And this chili pad is this like the eight sleepers, this like a like in just a cold bag. Well, no. I know. So I actually bought the eight sleep, and it was too much like it would, it would turn on and off and I wake up and, and then it would track my sleep. And then I'd start to freak out because it tell me I wasn't sleepable.

1:06:36So I actually returned it. And I got a really simple one called Euler. And it just turns on and off. There's no timing or it's there's no like any any weird functional functionality. So it, and it was a lot cheaper and it works better for me. So that that everyone used their own thing, but that one worked better for me. Okay. Next question. Two more questions. You have a favorite life motto that you often think about may find useful and worker in life. I love this quote that is kind of sums up a lot of what we talked about in the podcast. It's by Howard Thurman. And he says, don't ask with the world needs, ask instead what makes you come alive.

1:07:17Because what the world needs most is for you to come alive. And I think that just talks about it's really about you coming alive. That's the most important thing. And that is going to have so much positive exhaust in the world. And and things from that will come that you can't even imagine right now. I was thinking of that quote as you were describing your philosophy. Final question. I feel like a lot of people might be listening to this being like I came here for one of the most legendary private equity investors of all time. And you don't talk about private equity all. So let me just use this opportunity to ask you just a question here.

1:07:56What is it that you what do you look for in a company that you want to buy that maybe other people don't? Is there some insight you can share? Yeah. Well, I'm happy to talk about private equity, by the way, it's just that we talk about their other episode. Yeah, that could be a whole podcast episode. I understand. I'm really happy to talk about that. So I'll say like more, I'll answer the question more like what's a little bit of a different philosophy that we have. So when we were coming out of the recession and I hired this coach, we looked at all of our companies and we were looking for like where did we make our most money and what was the most consistent trend and like we looked at valuation, growth rates, capital structure, geography, industry, we cut the data everywhere you could imagine and we had these three companies that kept showing up on all these lists that were three of our top performers, but they didn't seem to really have anything in common.

1:08:53And they were like, well, they have one thing in common, which is they started off really badly, so badly in fact that we put our own person from Alpine in to go run the company and then they ended up becoming our best companies. So we said, wait a second, maybe that's the highly correlated thing is us putting our own team in place and even upstream of that, maybe just having an incredible management team. So that was foundational and we and we now we put our own leadership team in 100 % of the time and not only that, but we have spent an enormous amount of time trying to build a program to help people who are in their late 20s or early 30s learn how to become CEOs.

1:09:36And that's been foundational. So the thing that we probably believe to be true that not that many people agree with us on is that the management team is really where we think all the alpha comes from. You can't get the industry wrong because if you hire the best management team in the world who run a typewriter business, you're going to lose money. So you can't be wrong on the industry, but you also don't have to be perfect on the industry. You have to have a good enough industry and then a world class management team and we found that to be a really good formula for consistent returns and we've and it's way more fun because you you're literally in a board meeting with someone that is on your side of the table because you're you hire them and put them in and so you're you're building the company together and they're they're bringing a lot of the similar values and so it's it's been a real differentiator for us.

1:10:31I have so many questions but I'm going to cut them cut it off there. We could do another episode going deep on all this. Graham, this was amazing. I think we're going to be helping a lot of people with what they want to do with their lives and nothing else. Give them a little opportunity to break out of autopilot at least for a little bit. Two final questions. Where can folks find you a line if they want to maybe follow up, ask maybe some other questions that they are thinking as they hear this and then how can listeners be useful to you? My website is Grahamweaver .com. I have a blog on there as well as a lot of videos and different things and then on Instagram and tick -tock on Graham C Weaver and then I'm on LinkedIn on Graham Weaver and on YouTube.

1:11:10I think I'm Graham C Weaver. So Graham C Weaver will pretty much get you on all those channels. How can listeners be helpful? I would say I'd love to hear from you. My best way to reach me is Grahamweaverblog .com and tell me what's on your mind. I may not respond 100 % but I will read all the emails and then if you're interested, subscribe to my blog. Go to my website, gramweaver .com. I have a blog where I talk about a lot of the topics that we're talking about today. Amazing Graham, thank you so much for being here. Thank you Lenny. Bye everyone. Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite podcast app.

1:11:56Also, please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'spodcast .com. See you in the next episode.