#610 - Alex Hormozi - 19 Harsh Truths About Human Nature

23:14I think it's because you think you can handle both. And so you're like, oh, I got this. Oh, okay, because if you did think that you were smarter than you are, you would then start to take on more stuff. So a quote from John Maxwell, which I absolutely adore that says, you cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything. which is just fucking perfect. And it's the cool, it was, so Greg McEwan's Essentialism is one of my top five books of all time. And it's for this precise reason that it's an antidote to the type A fallout, right? I can do it all, I will do it all, watch me suffer and bear this burden.

23:46And you go like, look, you can do the hard work thing, right? You can do that. But the working hard and being spread thin are two different dynamics. and one of the interesting idea I've been playing around with a little bit recently is periodizing work. So in the same way as your weightlifting coach, we'll have the guys doing his submax for 90 days, he is building up for 90 days, he has comp rep, he has blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever it is, mobility. That's a much easier way to blend what we're talking about here. Maybe a little bit earlier, I think you need to specialize more as you get bigger and bigger because the distractions are going to be even greater.

24:27Especially how so. So if you are the CEO of your company and then someone comes in with, you've got so much more downstream from you that if you get distracted, the repercussions, the ramifications of becoming distracted are magnified even more. What do you think about that? Do you agree? I think the specialist piece is the piece that threw me because I always feel like the higher up you go, the more general is to become. In terms of skill set, but not in terms of projects or in terms of projects. Specialised in projects, generalised in skills. There we are. Yes, I like that. We'll get back to talking to Alex in one second, but first I need to tell you about HubSpot.

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26:05All that you need to do is head to click hubspot .com slash modern wisdom. That's click hubspot .com slash modern wisdom to download your free email template today. The first step to achieving a massive dream is conquering tiny impulses. I think it's exactly what we were talking about earlier. It's like, if you, like, I got a, there's a tweet that I made. Actually, you, you were the one who made it go viral, right? Which was when you quoted me quoting you, David Guggen. It's just this endless human centipede of fucking homozy quotes. It was really Churchill who said it first. It was, I'm kidding.

26:48Thank you. But he's like, you don't, you don't, you don't build confidence by shouting affirmations in the mirror, but by stacking. By having an undeniable stack of proof that you are who you say you are. Thank you. That worked itself out. Thank you there. I'll quote you to you, which is a new, a new low.

27:11So that, right? A lot of people were like, no, but what if you don't have any successes? How do you get started? And I still think that the quote is when Humberson vowed is that they don't realize the validity of the smaller things that they have done up to that point. And so it's being able to transfer your successes of like, okay, like, did you get dressed this morning? Like, did you get in front of the computer? Like you have evidence, it's smaller evidence, but you have enough evidence to make the claim that you can do this. And then you do that enough times that you have enough evidence to make a claim that you can do this and support it.

27:45And I think that's where the big outcomes come from lots of constrained tiny impulses, so saying like, you know what, I'm going to get this tiny victory. And I know how to say no to that. I notice a say no to heroin today or whatever. That would be a hard one, you know. A lot larger. Probably larger. But that's the idea. It's just stacking as many of those pieces of evidence is they give you proof that you are who you say you are, that you have done what you say you can do. Yeah, it's the challenge of action or belief first is something that I've been playing around with so much. And my friend, James, he wrote a book, the C -word, like confidence.

28:21It was a book about how to be confident, right? And I do feel like a big footnote summary could have been that quote from you. Proof. And the problem is, this is something that I've seen as well. Well, a good example coming from a world where I was successful in business before I was successful personally, I have a skill set now. And my capacity within this particular skill set and the performance of what that does are intrinsically linked, right? There's almost a linear relationship as I become better at networking with guests, with recording, with doing all the other things, the show increases.

28:55When I ran a business, there were so many degrees of freedom between my inputs to the business and the success of the business that someone with like malignant imposter syndrome could always explain away how things had gone well. So I would say, oh, it's because we timed the market right. Oh, it was because of like this member of staff that we brought in. I mean, I trained him, but really, he would have been great without me or whatever. And self -doubt can sort of weedle its way in in very sort of nefarious ways when you do that. Then switching to something where you have a relatively undeniable stack of proof, even undeniable to the part of you that wants to deny proof, right?

29:31Which is that imposter syndrome. After a little while, it's just a crushing weight that you, I call it imposter adaptation. So, you know, if you continue to disprove your imposter syndrome in the real world and it persists, you have to admit to yourself that it's got nothing to do with your capabilities and everything to do with your addiction to feeling like an imposter. This is you have competence without confidence, which is a lack of belief and confidence without competence is soft illusion. So you need to have this balance between the two. But people when they say, well, surely self -belief becomes before action.

30:08I'm like, well, not particularly, not if that's not your nature. I don't think like, you're asking for delusion there. And it is significantly easier for you to think, I am a fitness person, if you just went to the gym and did 10 push -ups, then I am a fitness person when I go to the gym tomorrow and do 10 push -ups. Like, where's the show me? Spit and sawdust. Where's the fucking reality of this? You know? I agree. Good. Opportunities only look like opportunities in the rear view mirror. Today they look like risk. How does someone get around this? This asymmetry between the fact that in retrospect, it seemed totally obvious.

30:46And yet the thing that you're looking at right now, looking forward, you go, that might not be obvious in retrospect. again. It's tough because a lot of the big wins, like Uber's the classic example, right? Like let's start a business where strangers pick up girls who are 16, you don't even drive them to their friends' houses. That sounds like a terrible idea, right? But in retrospect, you're like, no, it'll be totally fine because there's going to be a mutual rating system and blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Taking out the fact that there are people who've been captured and whatever. We'll put that to the side, right?

31:20And the thing is is like, just because we're on the investing side, what we found is that there are always reasons to say no to a deal. You can always find reasons to say no, because there's nothing that's risk -free. Even treasuries have risk. The US economy could collapse, and treasuries could be worth nothing. You could create a really compelling argument. Lots of influencers spend a lot of time doing that, right? Is it likely? Maybe? I don't know, but it's probably less likely than a bank failing, because if the US fails, all the banks might have fallen or also failing. So which of these is great risk?

31:51So then you start comparing risks rather than trying to eliminate risks. And so if we're looking at opportunities, that's why risk adjusted return is one of the things that a lot of investors look at, which is like, is there a way that I can appropriately adjust this risk to normalize different opportunities? And I think that that single skill set is one of, if not the most important skill sets is an entrepreneur because fundamentally it's betting. Like that's what we're doing. We're making bets. Every day we bet with our time, we bet with our money. with the limited constraints we have, or limited resources we have against unlimited opportunities.

32:23Because that's the hard part, is that there are, it's unlimited women in the red dress. Now there's some fours and there's some sixes and there's some eights, but you have to both rate the girl, right, the opportunity, and then also how crazy is she? Right, or whatever, you know, whatever risk factor you wanna associate with this, is she gonna stab me in my sleep? I don't know, right? Does she have a crazy ex -boyfriend? I don't know about that, I don't know. Right, and so that's what we do the Dildes process. But like the way that we, because I just tied up this chapter in the book that's coming out, is when we're organizing opportunities that we're going to pursue with a business, we look at what are the ones that we have the absolute highest likelihood of success that we need no new skills and no new effort.

32:59If we can do that, or the least amount of new effort and no new skills, that would be the first thing we're going to do. And then once we take off all the ones that take basically no effort and no extra skills, we're like, okay, which ones take more effort and still skills. And then once we do that, then we're like, okay, now we can start learning a new skill and of the different skills that we could learn, which of these is going to give us the highest leverage, as in most output for the least amount of input. And that's pretty much how we tick down which of these opportunities we want to pursue because those have the lowest likelihood of not happening.

33:27Does this work in the personal world as well? This one that isn't investor, there isn't in business that's just thinking about life opportunities. Do I want to learn to salsa dance or code? I think that the investor frame is simply people who have been scored and quantified on their ability to make decisions. And so I think that we can learn a ton from how investors make decisions overall. It's like why Ray Dalio's book Principles became like a best seller, even though 99 .9 % of people who are reading the book aren't even investors or definitely not investors at his level. But the principles of good decision making are just quantified and we have a scoreboard for these guys being excellent decision makers, whereas most other people you don't have a real scoreboard, so we can't tell how valid is their advice.

34:11And I think that's what makes taking advice from really world class investors who've been doing it for decades as a great source of information because we can validate that they have a stack of undeniable proof that they are who they say they are. Very nice. Okay, so this was not Churchill this time. So this was this is something that I've actually relied on a little bit myself Whenever I get to a low point where I think why do I even bother? I just remind myself this is where most people stop and this is why they don't win and this relates to another one Which is a reminder for the gladiators in the arena who feel beat up and scarred with no hope in sight building a business It's hard hard feels shitty.

34:49This is what hard feels like and this is why most people can't do it But you can this is what hard feels like is so fucking nice to lean on. It is so nice to lean on. Take me through that low point stuff. There's actually a story, I'm gonna give you a little goosebumps telling it. So I was way back in my day, like you, a party promoter, but I was in a fraternity, so I was president of fraternity. And this was my first semester being president. And so you have a pledge class, you get two pledge classes as a president, you get a fall on a spring, and then that's your tenure, and then another president comes in.

35:25And what we knew, and this would be really interesting for the audience from a human behavior perspective, is that like clockwork, every time we'd start a new pledge class within 14 days, 10 to 14, it was like clockwork. They would all get together and they'd revolt. And they'd say, we don't want to do it anymore. This isn't what we sign up for. This is way fucking harder than we thought it was going to be. Like, we thought we were just going to party with you guys, like, that's what we expected. Which also shows you how long it takes people to adapt or acclimate to a significantly more difficult situation.

35:53right? I'll tell you what happens after and then I'll tell you what happened in between. After we have this kind of talk that we had and I'll tell you how I explain it when I was president, all of a sudden it all vanishes because their expectations of reality have completely reset. We break reality like in the first 10 to 14 days it's so painful for them because it's such a contrast. What do you have to do? Not the fun stuff. What's not fun? Oh my God. I mean they can't drink, can't talk to girls, the only people they could talk to or brothers or each other, and we're mean to them, so they could really only talk to each other.

36:27And the whole point here is that we're trying to get them close together, because there's a bunch of dudes who don't know each other from different parts of the campus, right? And then we have to get them in eight to 12 weeks to leave as one unit of people who know everything about one another, that trust one another, that know everything about the other people in the house. So it's like, how do you do that? Well, there's only a semantic communication you can have every day. So let's cut out anybody who's not us, okay? And then if we really want them to be close together, we'll also reinforce that we're mean.

36:49but part of what they had to do is they to learn everything about everyone else in the house. And so every pledge has to do something that would impress a brother. And then they get a signature from their brother, meaning like, I approve of you. And you have to get every single brother signature by the time you're done, right? And so that's where each of those side quests become as insane as you might imagine, right? And there was lots of hazing back in the day, which is not fun, and a lot of sleepless nights, and things like that. And you go from parting with girls, feeling like you're top of the world, all these brothers feeding you drinks, be like, you're awesome dude to then like the next day.

37:21And this is literally how it happens. This is how the break and reality happens. We do this huge party to launch the new class. And the next morning they all wake up, they're all sleep at the house because that's one of the requirements. And they're all hungover, got their ties, vomit in the corner, whatever. And we're like, great, clean it up. And they're like, what? Because up to this point, they haven't cleaned after a party because all they did is got to party, see the girls and then leave. But then all of a sudden, and they're like mopping bottom in the corner and they're hung over and they feel terrible and they're like, what the fuck, this is what I signed up for, right?

37:53So anyways, two weeks of this, they get together and they wanted me to meet them and this always happens cause they wanted me on their turf and I'm like, all right guys, what's up? And so it's just me, all right? And my vice president and like 25 guys. So there's like a size comparison of like, just animalistically, there's way more than there is of me. And so I just asked them a couple questions. So I was like, who here before pledging started was like, I want to be a part of this house. The guys were like, you know, me, okay, okay, got it. Who here thought it was going to be easy? Who here thought it would be hard?

38:30They raised their hands. I'm like, guys, this is what hard feels like. You know, all of a sudden there's just like this big exhale in the room, they're like, expectations get reset. that this is normal. You wanted this thing, you expected to be hard, reality now matches conditions. Sorry, expectations now match conditions. This is what heart feels like. And then all of a sudden it's like, they got permission to feel shitty. And by getting permission to feel shitty, they stop feeling a shitty, because they're like, this is just my new world. And so then you know you're like, listen, you give eight weeks, you're gonna get three and a half years, other people are gonna drive you around late at night, other people are gonna clean after you like, it's a good investment, right?

39:12And it was a good deal. Like you give one semester and you get the rest of them to just do whatever you want. But that concept, like that quote, and both of those, came from that experience. Of having someone tell me, this is what hard feels like. This is where most people stop, and this is why they don't win. Is also another beautiful bit of motivation, and given that I spent a little bit of time with Goggins and Cammayns, two guys, I was telling you about this before, you said, must be nice as we walked in. So Cameron Haynes, bow hunter extraordinaire, lives in Oregon and he has Behind the power rack in his garage where he lifts he has must be nice written and I was like, why do you got that put up on there?

39:54And he was like it's because everyone says must be nice to be you can must be nice to be sponsored by height and all of these like top level Bow things and go on Rogan He was there's a video that went super viral of Goggins losing his shit after John Jones won last weekend and the guy that he's hugging his camp. So it's like, it must be nice for you to be backstage at UFC, it must be nice for this. And I've seen what that guy does. And that guy picks up a rock that weighs about 80 pounds. And it's got the word, poser written on the front of it because people call him the poser. And he carries it up a hill that is maybe like a thousand foot of elevation, mile and a half high, with no fanfare at the end, no finish line, doesn't post it on social media unless the team's there filming it with someone else.

40:34and then carries it back down, puts it in the boot of his Raptor, drives away. And he just does that because he needs to remind himself that he's doing the stuff that is hard. And this is where most people stop, and this is why they don't win, combined with this is what hard feels like, justifies things being hard. Now, I do worry, and I find this in myself sometimes as well, that you can be so good at dealing with suffering, that you can actually push yourself a little bit too far. and you go, I'm starting to bear more burden than I can basically take on. And the art of not burning out is something that I think a lot of people, if this resonates with you, the art of not burning out is something that you really, really need to be able to feel.

41:16And like realizing what happens when you just start to glance off the bottom side of it and go, okay, I'm just gonna ease off the gas a little, I need to take this afternoon to go sauna and get some sunshine and chill out and get some food, and then I can put my foot back on maybe a little bit tomorrow and more. temperate. But it just it justifies the fact that I use this that all the time. 90 % of podcasts don't make it past episode three. And of the 90 % of the 10 % that do 90 % don't make it past episode 20. So by making 21 podcasts, you're in the top percentile of all podcasts as ever in history.

41:50That's what hard feels like. And that's not even hard. It's just consistent. Fuck me. It's less than half a year. Yeah. Insane. I hear stats like that. And I just think man, It is so easy to win. Like that, I mean, like when I hear that, that's exactly what I think. I'm just like, man, if everyone is like struggling to win, it's like, you, like most of the pain that people experience is purely in their own minds. And so to your point, I think there's an interesting one between like burnout versus hard. And so like, for me, burnout is when my, I would define it as my output per unit of time decreases.

42:25So I can see that. That's measurable, right? Now, like I can say like number of pages that I edit are the quality of the content that I create. Like my output part, like the team knows when I like, when I'm like six hours, seven hours into recording something, they're like, I literally start like slumping. You're like, like physically, I just start like slumping and I like my cadence isn't as, like I'm just not as sharp, right? There's that versus emotional burnout, which I think people mislabel as burnout. When really it's just like, they don't know how to reframe reality. And so what it really is is they got a comment on a post that bugged them.

43:03And like, again, it's like pulling it from the shadows. It's like, no, this stuff doesn't work. It's like, hold on. What's the one voice that actually is coming through? What is the real thing? Well, there is this comment. Okay, great. It's embarrassing to even have to say that. But when you say it, then you admit it and all of a sudden you put it in the light, and the shame kind of starts to evaporate. Because then you can name it and be like, is this comment better than my, bigger than my future? Is this comment bigger than me? And one of the things that has helped me was saying like, what's true about this?

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44:09Altogether, it means that your digestion is going to move more smoothly. So if you've been thinking that you want to make an upgrade to your digestion, you've been considering using some probiotics and prebiotics for a while, seed is the most advanced option on the market. Also, you can get 15 % off your first month if you go to seed .com -modern -wisdom and use the code modern -wisdom. Check out that's s -e -e -d .com -modern -wisdom and modern -wisdom. Check out. Are you familiar with Byron KT? You know her? I've heard her name. Yeah, the work. She does the work and one of the first questions is you ask you is Is it true?

44:45How do you know that it can be true? Yeah, and so it's like the same thing bring it from the shadows right into the light Okay, you have this sense. There's no shit. It's like a fucking smell. Yeah Maybe some things a bit maybe something's maybe I might be like a piece of shit. Maybe I'm not competent Maybe I'm not whatever. Yeah, okay, that's and the next one is like what if we confront it and say like what if they're right? Now what? Because a lot of, I think a lot of effort gets put into trying to deny reality. Right? There's this clip that I shared from Tom Bility when he was talking about how he gets made fun of first years, being big.

45:20And I think it's a really good clip because his point that he was making, because it's such a visual, easy example for people to understand. He's like, is that, it's true. I do have big ears. And? And so that's like if they're like, you have no right to be making content. Are they right? Okay. And I'm still going to do it anyways. Because the thing is like, one of the things that I had earlier on in my career was like, I didn't think I was a really good person. Like I was like, I'm not a good person. Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I just had that, right? And I had a history, you know, whatever. And one of the things that gave me a lot of respite or relief from that kind of thought process was like, comma, that's okay.

46:02Because I can still do the things that create success and not deserve it and still get it. And that actually felt very powerful for me. Because it was like, I don't have to deserve to success. I can still just do the stuff that gets it. It's like, you don't have to, you don't have to deserve the girl, but you can still do the things that get her. And do you deserve it when you have her? I don't know. Who knows? I hate the word deserve to begin with, right? Yes. But like that concept, because also I I could segue into like gratitude around like if you think you deserve it Then you don't you don't enjoy it, but um that has been super powerful for me Which is like what if they're right and?

46:38Because a lot of people just trying to they spend so much effort trying to fight the fact that the comments might be right This might have been a fucking terrible thumbnail Yeah, you know what this might have been a boring video this this post might have been regurgitated content This post might have been inspired too closely by someone else's post right What if they're right? And does it make me a piece of shit? What if it does? And? You end up getting down to base, which is pretty much nothing. All that there is is actions. All that there is is what you're going to do in response to this. You know what, another brilliant ad addition to this that you kind of mentioned, which is the fact that this is what hard feels like.

47:20Most people get to this stage and they decide to stop. and now the bar is set so low. Goggin said this in the episode with me and it gave me chills when he said it. He was like, it's so easy to be successful nowadays because people are weak. Yeah. Everybody's weak. Dana White says it as well. Yeah. I tell my kids, it is so easy. If you are even a like weekend savage, you will run these kids over. Yeah. And for every single person, it's giving me chills again, for every single person that likes to castigate the very padded victimhood mentality of the modern world. Okay, cool. You can rail against people that say that the world is against them, even though it's not and et cetera, et cetera.

48:02How does that inform the way that you should operate in the world? Well, okay. What you're saying is everybody else is fallible, weak, fragile in some way or another. How does that inform the way that you act? The way that you should act is holy shit if I have even a modicum of resilience This makes the market environment for me so much easier whether I want to get the girl by the house become Successful in whatever domain I choose to the bar is set solo. Yeah This if we're going if we're going tweets This segues into one of my favorite ones which is you stay in poverty until you learn the first lesson of poverty which is two words, my fault.

48:46And so when I was younger, I was really angry at my parents like many people are, right? Justified or not, doesn't really matter. I was very angry and I blamed them for the woes of my life. And I realized when I was 19, that these people that I hated, I was giving all the power over the fact that I wasn't the person I wanted to be. And I was like, well, it's their fault. And the idea that I had actually given these people that I hated power over my success was ultimately something that made me feel sick to my stomach and was what allowed me to point the finger of blame inwards and say my fault.

49:27And then at least take ownership over the fact that like, and like sure, maybe your dad didn't hug you enough or maybe your mom was in present or whatever it is, right? It's like, and, and like, I said this the other day and it'll probably piss off a lot of So, you know, we can put our software phones on. Like, if you were, if you, if you suffered from racial inequality, if you suffered from gender inequality, if you suffered from being born in Bangladesh, if you were raised, uh, no, it's sexually abused your entire life, you would be completely justified in the fact that you are not achieving the things that other people who didn't have those disadvantages have achieved.

50:04And I say this as a white guy who was born in America to a doctor father. I understand that. But at the same degree, you have the opportunity that Chris nor I have, which is that you can be an inspiration to people who just who went through the same thing and succeeded come at a spite those circumstances. Because I can promise that there is somebody who has had it worse and has done it better. And I think that that one single point of proof and like there's a global point of proof that you can look for for sure, but like you can be that very local point of proof in your community or sub community.

50:33And I think as soon as we shed that, that's like, I just am a big fan of Power Follows, The Blame Finger. So like wherever you point the Blame Fingers or the Power Follows, until it's like if you pointed it to the government, government has the power. If you pointed it at your spouse and say like, it's their fault that I'm not in shape, it's their fault, they never let me do anything. It's like, well, you're giving them all the power. And so it's like until you're like, it's my fault, it's also become my fault. What if it's not your fault? It doesn't matter. And... Hmm. Like, I can't run marathons because I lost my leg at birth.

51:13And... Either you can just never try, or you put the metal thing on, and you do it anyways. So this is one of the themes that I'm very interested in to do with your work in general. And it's one of the reasons why it bridges the gap from what we're going through, which are some really lovely philosophical insights and all of the rest of it. The difference is you seem to have a knack to be able to drag yourself out of the philosophy and get yourself into action. There's not too much mental masturbation that goes on. So let's say that there's someone who's listening to this podcast, thousands of people that are listening who are that person.

51:53Millions. Thousands of people that are that person. There'll be a lot of people that are listening. Don't worry. That person that goes, I love when I hear these aphorisms and things and maybe it goes on the whiteboard that's on the front of my fridge for a couple of months. How does that person get from mental masturbation around it to action? That this impact my life in a tangible way that actually makes a difference to me. Any of the things that we go through today. All right. Two things. One is knowing the input output equation. The second is knowing what your fuel's going to be. So if you can't define the inputs and outputs that are going to get you what you want, then there's no way to start.

52:33Right? Because you don't know what you're supposed to do. So you have to define it down to like the most basic first actions. It's like if I want to start creating content, that means I have to post something. If it means I have to start doing cold, I always think in terms of business because that's what I'm in. But like I mean, they're doing a cold reach out. I'm doing a cold, cold call, cold email, cold DM, whatever that is. I have to make a piece of content. I have to post it. I have to make a podcast. I have to make a YouTube video. I have to make a short, whatever that is. Make a blog post.

52:56I have to run NAD, right? I have to run the NAD, I have to press go, I have to spend the money. Whatever it is, whatever that core initial action is, the gym, put the shoes on, get in the car. Whatever the input is, you have to define what the input is that's going to get you the output you want. Now, once you know what that input output is, the next one is why aren't you doing it? Right? And so, I think a lot of people are looking for something that is very hard to find. And so, and then they attribute their lack of success or lack of action because they don't have passion or motivation, right?

53:27And I was the same way. And so the short story around this was that I watched all the TED Talks in college. Like that was like what I was like, I'm watching YouTube, I'm watching TED Talks. And I was like, and then I heard the Terminal Masterbation and I was like, oh, that's definitely what I'm doing. I was like, my life hasn't changed at all. And then I got my job out of college and I would read all the self -help books. I read like every night it's all I did. I read all these self -help books and I found one of them that said, there are people who are watcherpreneurs and entrepreneurs. And I'm rearing that word, watcherpreneur.

54:00And I was like, it made me feel sad. I was like, I wanna be fucking watchpreneur. I was like, I'm not some bitch. Like, yeah, but I was like, but what if they're right? I am a watchpreneur. I'm not an watchpreneur. I want to be one and I'm not. And from that point, it took me six months to quit my job to actually decide to do the entrepreneurial thing. And the thing, there are many things that contributed to me being able to leave. And I think a lot of it, it's not like we were looking for one thing. It might be a big bag of wise, a lot of them, right? That add up together to be above your action threshold.

54:31And I think in the early days, people are looking for the big carrot. They want the big vision. They want the big passion, but they don't have it. But I want to, I'll give you the first rule of entrepreneurship that I've learned, which is use what you have. And a lot more people have pain, a lot more people have anger, a lot more people have shame. And if you can use that as your gas in the beginning, you'll eventually get to a point where you can get out of that loop and then find something that you are really passionate about. But if you can't tie your shoes, you can't lift the weight, you can't send the DM, then you have to start with whatever you have.

55:02And so for me, it was hatred of my current existence. I hated being a watchman or I hated being a wannabe. I hated being one of those people who like talked about all the things they were going to do and didn't do anything. I hated living the life that my dad wanted me to live. I was his bitch. That's what it was. I was his bitch. I was living his dreams out on mine. And that was led to that other tweet, which was, sometimes your parents dreams have to die in order for you to live. And for me, I realized that the idea that my father had of me as his son, that image had to die in order for the image of myself that I wanted to be to live.

55:42because I kept trying to quit my job and go be an entrepreneur. And every time I'd have the conversation, you'd be like, oh, come over, we'll talk about a lab dinner. You know what, and you'd always talk me off the ledge. It was always over and over again. Good thousand. Yeah. And we're great authoritarian. You don't need to persuade when you have compliance. And so everybody has that person, or it might actually be somebody who's talking off the ledge, or might should be a voice in your head, doesn't really matter, because that voice in person that only happens once or twice it probably keeps talking to you when you're at home.

56:16But the big thing for me when I decided to make the jump and mind you, I was such a bitch about it that I had to drive across the country before I called him to tell him that I had left. Yeah, I remember that. I didn't want to confront him, which he then flew off the handle about.

56:32But I just knew, and this is the Tony Robbins quote, but it's just that when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change. And I think that I think pain moves people far more effectively than pleasure does. Like, the easy thing to prove it is like pointing a gun at someone's head and you have absolute compliance and they will do what they need to do, right? Automatically, just like that. Like death is the great motivator and the gun just reminds you. And so I think that if you can create the figure of gun to your head of the pain that you're experiencing and then I'm a big fan of future casting out, negative scenarios.

57:05So people are talking about like positive visualization. I prefer negative visualization, which is what if I keep doing what I'm currently doing for the next 10 years? Well, my life looked like then. That usually takes my current pain and then just magnifies it. And then that allows me to get my action threshold high enough that it goes over the edge so that I can take that first move. And so if you know what the inputs outputs are, of what you need to do, the guy who has the little quote on his wall, and you figure out whatever fuel you've got, not the one you wish you had, but the one you've got.

57:32And you use that to do the first input, that you've crossed the line, you're in the game. I told a story on the episode that I did with Guggins about bullying in school. And this was something where I opened up about a topic that I haven't spoken about a ton because it made me feel weak and it made me feel vulnerable and so on and so forth. But one of the things that's only really recently happened, and it's actually been assisted by the guy that reached out and messaged me. This dude messaged and said that he was sorry for what had happened. His daughter was going to school and it made him reflect on his time at school and how he treated me and he was like, dude, I just wanted to say that I'm sorry.

58:08I don't even know if you're going to see this. I'm happy that you seem to be happy, but I just had to get it off my chest. And that really helped. Not that I was carrying much, but one of the questions, you know, you've spoken about your dad in this kind of like authoritarian relationship and living out that dream. How did you avoid or how have you got yourself to a stage now where you're no longer driven by a chip on your shoulder toward him, because I think that there are a lot of people that go through challenges in their past that find fuel in it, and they go, wow, I can be fueled by hatred.

58:42The phenomenal. I can alchemize this toxic thing into something which is useful. But I would imagine that that has a shelf span, right? That if you keep on using that for long enough, there are more optimal ways that you could start to move perpetually under your own motion, transmuted into something else. How did you get past having this chip on your shoulder about the relationship that you'd had with your dad and where it had set you back or forward or whatever? Well, have you? Yeah, I think I have. I think my realization was, you know, first the goal was make as much of my dad than it was make more than my dad than it was I realized that the approval that I had, that I saw it was always going to be moved, right?

59:34I mean, I've told this story before, but maybe not your audience. But like when I, when I, my dad and I didn't really speak a ton, you know, we texted and you know, two minute telephone call, had I an ear alive, okay, cool. But for that was kind of like for like five -ish years after I left home to go do the gym thing. And only once gym launch was like printing money. And so we were, I think I was taking home a million and a half a month at like 27 or something like that. And he gave me a call out of the blue and like, my dad doesn't like cold call me. And so I'm sitting at dinner and I step outside.

1:00:07And he says, hey, you're gonna want to sit down for this and I was like, okay, he's like, I'm sorry. And I was like, about what? And he was like, everything. And I remember in the moment, actually feeling nothing. And thinking that was curious and then being like, huh, okay. And I probably should have just like accepted it for the olive branch that he was probably trying to like lean out to me. But here's what I said instead. I said, you know how people get up on stage when they win the awards and they're like, I just want to thank my mom and dad for always being there always believing me. I was like, I'm not going to say that.

1:00:46I was like, because you weren't and you didn't believe in me.

1:00:51And right after that, he was like, well, we'll see how long it lasts. And so it was after that phone call that I realized that everything that I'd done to that point was to try and beat him at his game because everything in my day cared about, and not everything he's a good guy, like, you know, we're fine now. But like, when I was growing up and it's fairly common in most foreign families to be very like money driven. And I always knew that kind of subconsciously, and he would never say this, but like, I I felt it because whenever he introduced somebody, he'd tell me how much they made immediately.

1:01:20He'd be like, this is John, John makes this. Like, this is Paul, he makes this. Like, it was just like the worth and the name was like immediately tied together. And so I realized that I was trying to win his game rather than playing my game. And I think when that happened, it was the same instance of kind of like the blame finger, but just at a different level of saying like, okay, well, I don't blame my dad anymore, but I'm still playing his game. And so I'm winning not my game, I'm winning someone else's. And so I think when I was like, okay, well then I have to define the game and the meaning of the game that I want to play, I have more responsibility now because I have to define the rules of what matters to me, et cetera.

1:01:59But that was where I feel like I got, and maybe there's more that I'll unpack later, but that was kind of the next level, at least for my awareness of how I perceived what I was going after. Do you remember you, I think you spoke about people that break the law in an attempt to make money? You said we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. So we sacrifice freedom for money in the hopes that the money will give us freedom. Downstream from that, this is one of the best things that I learned for all of last year and you created the framework and then I filled it in. So I talked about the tension between success and the desire to feel like we're enough.

1:02:37I think that this speaks to what you're on about here. Success is a strange thing. Presumably, we want success because we think a more successful life will bring us more happiness, meaning and fulfillment. Here's the problem. We sacrifice the thing we want, happiness, for the thing which you're supposed to get it, success. Fairly can make you miserable but I'm not sure that success will make you happy. And if you end up with an equation, if you could imagine like we sacrifice happiness to achieve success in the pursuit of happiness, like if you just remove success from both sides of the equation, what you left with, it's just happiness.

1:03:06People are so happy. There are, we can't deny the fact that we're statusful beings, that we require external validation, we can't just go and live in a cave and in a peaceful place and all the rest of it. There are things that we need to do, but I do feel like a lot of the time we overclock our lives with regards to success and the pursuits that we go through in an attempt to do this. And that we sacrifice the thing we want for the thing which is supposed to get it is like, I see that all the time. I always ask myself, am I over complicating this? Like, am I doing more than I need to do? Is there a simpler way to do this?

1:03:39I think this is actually a game theory thing. And you're from, okay, I can go on it or I can not. I've got, bring it on. Yeah, so I mean, so I'm a cynic popularized this, but you have finite and infinite games, right? Finite games we have known players, players agreed upon rules and an outcome that wins the game, right? And then infinite game you have known and unknown players, no rules and the point of the game is to keep the game going. And what happens is that people apply finite rules to infinite games and then they wonder why it's not working. That's an example. So a finite game would be like baseball.

1:04:19No, the players, at the end of the game, the person you tell, I have the ones with the most runs and you win and there's you can't you can't run you can't hold the ball and and run it around the bases like there's rules of play. With an infinite game,

1:04:32the Vietnam War isn't a simple example that Simon's in it gives, which is basically the US lost the Vietnam War because they were applying a finite structure, which is we're going to win this war. And the Vietnamese people were playing an infinite game, structure which is we're going to stay alive and keep fighting. And as long as someone is staying alive and keeping fighting, they will beat the person who's trying to end something. And so the infinite frame always conquers the finite. And the thing is, is that most of the games worth playing are infinite. And so if you were trying to get in shape, you don't win getting in shape, the point is to stay in shape for the rest of your life.

1:05:02You don't win at marriage, the point is to stay married. You don't win at business, the point is to stay in business and keep doing business. And the point of the game is to keep playing. And I think if the six, and I would imagine success, if you put all of those things together, it's an infinite game. And so the point of success is to do the things that make you successful. And so if you're doing the things that are making you successful, then you are by definition winning. And I think that for me, you've redefining what is a perfect day, and living as many of those days in a row as I possibly can, to me, that's winning.

1:05:34And I, and I obviously have a relatively contrary and road view, which is that like when we die, nothing happens. And you know, we know what it was like to die because we've all been dead before, which is when we were before your life. But I don't think that what I will do will ultimately matter in 500 million years. And so that kind of come. Sure. I'm human. There are definitely motivators. But if I can just over time, chip away at how much that weighs on the scale, and I can keep putting more and more coins on the other side towards the infinite game of like the point of the game is to keep playing.

1:06:08And like there are some things that I remind myself over and over again. It's like the point of the game is to keep playing. That's the point. That is the point is to just keep playing. The point of the game is to keep playing. I very much like that. What was that? You found out the three trait, the three most common traits of highly successful people. Do you remember those? Yeah, it was, it's so funny. A spirary audio complex. So the three most common traits of hyper successful people that they looked at. And it was interesting because there's the influencer world wants to be like, you have to wake up at five or you have to do cold plungers or whatever the fuck, right?

1:06:40But the thing that, but there was actually very few that they all had in common. So number one was that they had a spirary audio complex. They thought they were better than other people and that they deserved more. The second is that they suffered from massive insecurity and feeling that they would never be enough. And third, they had impulse control. And so you've got this combination of people who are like, I want to do this big thing. So there's big toward thing. And they've got this big away pain that's like, I'm never going to be enough. I always have to do more. And then they have impulse control that keeps them focused on the goal without seeing the woman in the red dress or getting pursued by her.

1:07:11And that like, so it's like shoot high, have a big thing that that motive like have a big tiger behind you and stay on the path. If you ever heard Jordan Peterson talk about that study of starving rats in a tube with a spring attached to that fucking brilliant, this is what you're talking about. So starving rats are placed into a tube and they have a spring that is attached to the tail that can measure the force that they pull out and that's a proxy for desire. Then they waft the smell of cheese in from the front of the tube and the rat pulls and they measure how hard they want to go. And you think these rats are starving, they'll be pulling pretty hard.

1:07:45Then they do another iteration of the study. this time they waft the smell of cheese in from the front, but they waft the smell of a cat in from behind and The rats pull harder. Yeah, and what's the lesson? They you'd not only need to run towards something that you want Yeah, but you need to run away from something that you fear Yeah, the problem and this is I like super superiority complex crippling insecurity impulse control. Yeah, I like that the problem is The people who we admire the most due to the most success in the real world Don't necessarily have the most admirable internal states that to me isn't necessarily the most peaceful, blissful way to live your life.

1:08:21What does it say that, especially in the modern world, we revere the people who have external accolades of success, and yet the three most common traits of these super successful people lead from a place which is almost objectively miserable, unadmireable. How do we square this circle? I think it's just what are we solving for? So like I mean a lot of people I love watching last dance which is Michael Jordan's you know many Docu series phenomenal. Yeah unbelievable. I think most people could see him there and be like I don't know if I really envy this guy's life like he still seems like pretty upset despite being a billionaire despite all these you know these these other things and so I think that if like what are we solving for like Mike my closest friend Dr.

1:09:09Cashy he is a statement because he coached Olympic big Olympic teams. And he was like, champions are broken. I was like, huh. He's like, people look at champions and try and find something that that champion has that they don't have. He's like, but it's not that at all. He's like, they lack something everyone else has, which is an off button. They just don't stop. And at the end of the day, like if we're optimizing for outcomes, then the most broken person will win. The person who has the absolute biggest desire for achievement, the absolute biggest fear, or pain that they're running away from, and the hardest impulse control.

1:09:43Now, impulse control most people would agree as a good thing. The other two, not as much. And so, what are we optimizing for? What problem are we solving? It's probably the number one most frequently asked question that I asked to our portfolio companies whenever we're about to do anything, which is what problem are we solving? If the problem that we're solving is that I want to be content, well, there's a lot of ways to do that, and you don't need to do all these other things. If the problem you're solving is that you want to be the richest man in the world, well, you're gonna have to have a lot of superiority already complex, you have a lot of crippling insecurity, and you have a lot of impulse controlling after a wait a long time.

1:10:14There's a quote from Jason Pargan that says, accept that all of your heroes are full of shit. Your heroes aren't gods, they're just regular people who probably got good at one thing by neglecting literally everything else. Yeah, I just agree with the statement. Fucking money. It's just so interesting to me. I've been thinking about this to do with Billy McFarlane. Let me just get this in. Hit it. And that's okay. Because if they wanted that, then that's the problem that they're solving for. Like, I get criticized all the time for work life balance. People are like, well, you don't have any hobbies, Alex, and you don't, whatever, right?

1:10:48And I'm like, I don't fucking want any. So why do I have to sacrifice things that I would prefer to do to do things I don't want to do to satisfy your objective measure of what you deem as work life balance? Why? So that's what, this is what you were talking about. Was it optimized for the outcome or what's the metric of success? Yeah, you were saying like what is it that people are optimizing for right? It seems to me that you have stepped back and decided axiomatically this is the thing that I'm optimizing for that I enjoy most doing yes Yes, that's I enjoy playing the game and so everything I do is about the game Yes, my podcast is called the game.

1:11:28I draw pictures all day about business I write books about business. I make content about business I've never seen a picture of it. I'll do 100 million offers. Zillion pictures in there. Oh, they done by you? 100 % all of the bit drawings are mine. And 100 million leads is like a hundred doodles in it. Is that it? Oh yeah. Oh yeah, when are you good? Are they nice? I think so. I think they got cute. Yeah. We got little animals in. Yeah. They don't have animals in them. I'm not, I'm not going to look at them. There's little back of money, big back of money. Like that's how nice. Dead serious. Sweet.

1:11:52But no, but like, and I spend the rest of my day doing business. Yeah. And so it's like, well, why don't you garden? Because I don't care. I always talk about this Steffi graph. They, one of the greatest female tennis players of all time, and she gets tested when she's 10 years old, 11 years old, and she's in some tennis academy. And they gage the players on two criteria. They gage them on desire to train and skill set. And she was 10 out of 10 on both. So, okay, not only has she got the raw materials to make a phenomenal tennis player, but she'll outwork you and to her, it won't even feel like work.

1:12:27That's fucking terrifying. And that's why I do think, for the people that look at yourself and say, Alex is on a road to burnout. It's because you are using your theory of mind about how you would feel if you had to work as much as you do. But okay, what is the thing that you can do longer than anybody else? And to them it looks like work, and to you it looks like play, or feels like play. What would that be? Oh, well, for me it would be a computer games on knitting or rock music or whatever it is. Okay, so imagine if you just got to do that all day, but instead of it being rock music, it was fucking business.

1:13:01Someone commented the other day, was it, you're sprinting on a treadmill, they were concerned that the pace that the show is going out was going to cause me to burn out. And in retrospect, I'm five years' time, I'm like, oh fuck, yeah, I was moving too quick. But I don't think that, like, I work at the pace that I like to work at. And I also like to see where those limits are, and that's exciting to me, to go, okay, just how much harder can I go here? And then again, you've got to temper it with that's burnout, like that's just the beginning of it. And you only know that after you've burned out like 30 times.

1:13:35But that's, it's tried to say after a ton of cowards by James Clear, right? But the intersection of like what you love to do, what you're good at and what you can be paid for is like slap bang in the middle of it. Slaves worked all the hours they were awake for their entire lives. In American history, in Egyptian history, in the rest of the world that had slaves, which is most of the world at some given point. I think like if they can do it so can I. Now you're like, well, did they have a happy existence? Well, they didn't get to pick the work they did, but it means that you can work. That's if you have the cap behind you, you can work every hour of the day.

1:14:13I'm like, well, if you get to have the cheese and you get to eat the cheese the whole way you're going, then I mean, there's the famous quote, you know, the person who, the person who loves walking walks further than the person who loves the destination. right? And so like I think it's the same thing. But the...

1:14:33Everyone, so many people want to project their idea of what they think your life should be like onto you. And it's just completely irrelevant. It just doesn't matter. Like if all I did, if I, if I weren't married, right? Because people were like, okay, well, he is married and like I am in shape, but I also just like working out. But if I didn't have either of those things and all I did was work all day, more people would talk about the work -life balance thing for me than they currently do. And who cares? I just like, I just, I fundamentally am like, you are gonna die and you're not gonna matter and I'm gonna die and I'm not gonna matter.

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1:16:10That's h -o -s -t -i -n -g -e -r .com slash modern wisdom, and modern wisdom, a checkout. What is it that you're taking an enjoyment from then? The one step deeper than this, there is something that you're optimizing for. I love the reward. What reward? The micro rewards I get every day. Like, of operating a business. All things business related. Yep. So I love writing the book about business. I love talking to my editor about what we're changing. Oh, that's a really way better way to say it, right? Or I like tweeting about the thoughts that we have. I love doing discussions like this because I talk about my theory topic, which is business.

1:16:44For the most part.

1:16:48I'm pretty averse to punishment. I've learned that about me. Like, I do not like it. And when I say punishment in the formal sense, like things you don't like, right? And so like, I avoid them like the plague. I don't do them. And so I just do as many of the things I can that reward me as frequently as possible. But from the outside to a lot of people that looks like punishment. Right. Yes. Interesting. How can someone cut through societal expectations, the ways they've dealt with past trauma, expectations from parents, all of the things that aren't their thing. How can somebody, because what you've done, again, axiomatically, A priori, this is the thing I want to optimize for.

1:17:26How do people find the thing that they want to optimize for? I don't have a thing. It's that's fucking great for you with your business. It just happens to be something else that's at the intersection of making a shit ton of money. Yeah. How do I find it? I was lucky with that. Yes. That just happened to be the intersection, because if I love knitting, and I didn't like business, That's a whole set because like you can turn knitting into a business But like if I only like knitting then there's a way to make a living from that But to get to the person who's like How do I find my thing? I'm a big fan of being directionally correct rather than absolutely correct and so I think what happens is most people are trying to find the Perfect answer when they have no perspective from which to make a judgment They're trying to find the perfect thing to do when they haven't done anything.

1:18:06So how would you have perspective to be a judgment? Like if you try a lot of things in the beginning, which you have to know what your inputs outputs are, decrease your action threshold enough with either a cheese or a cat, whatever you need, most people have more cats than they have cheese in the beginning. So use the cat to start running towards something. And the thing is is the rat is so simple, it's like there's cheese here. But what you really just need to know is that there's cheese out there. And there's a cat behind me for sure. And so if I just go anywhere away from the cat, I have a higher likelihood of getting closer to the cheese.

1:18:37Not that I will find it, but I will get closer to it. And I think it's, and I've lived my life through a series of rapid iterations, not trying to pick the right thing. Because I just like, even when I was starting my first business, I was between frozen yogurt, test prep, and a gym. Those are the three businesses that I was choosing between. Makes complete sense, yeah. So a lot of things that I like, right? So I was choosing between those things and like, why were those the things? I was like, well, I was pretty good at taking tests in college. So I get that I like frozen yogurt and I mean it sounds simple But like I was like everybody likes something right and I actually didn't know that I was gonna like business That's the crazy thing because also a when you and I were younger Instagram wasn't there you took like none of this shit existed and entrepreneurship wasn't cool yet and so I Just hated my job a lot and I hated where I lived a lot and so I was like well I will just not be here so cat don't know what city I'm gonna go to, but just not this city.

1:19:33I went across the furthest place from Baltimore, which is California, and then I was like, okay, well, what do I hate doing? Well, let me not do that, which is, sitting on meetings all day and doing whatever, doing grunt work for shit that I felt was meaningless. And instead, I was like, I'll do fitness, because I like fitness, and I was like, at the very least, I'll do something I enjoy, which I liked fitness at the time. And if you're like, well, I don't like doing anything. Well, it's like, well, then that's impossible, because your brain is wired to be rewarded for things, And so you are doing things that reward you.

1:20:02That's why you do them. Like everything we do is because we've been awarded for doing things like that in the past. And we project the same activities, and we predict that doing things like we did in the past that reward us, we reward us again in the future. That's where our behavior comes from. And so it's like, okay, well, what has rewarded you in the past? Where's the cat? Go the opposite way. Yeah, so the reverse role model is something similar, but you're almost taking this into a lifestyle perspective. So the reverse role model is if you live in a town know you grow up somewhere and there's no one around you like the sort of person that you want to be like but there are tons of people like the person you don't want to be like.

1:20:36You can say there's a way marker. I don't want his relationship with gambling. I don't want the way that he mumbles his finances. I don't want the way that him and his wife communicate with each other. It's like okay, there we go. Warren Buffett, Munger says like an amazing amount of success has been achieved by not trying to be smart but avoiding being stupid. So there's your way markers there. But what you're saying is that this is almost like an abstracted lifestyle version of this. These are all of the things that I hate to do. What's the opposite of that? Yeah. And the challenge of I don't know precisely what the exact thing is, therefore I can't move toward it, is one of mine, which is perfectionism is procrastination, masquerading as quality control.

1:21:17I was going to say it's a fallacy. It's a decision -making fallacy. It's a, it's this is why investor frames can be so useful. Like, if you're looking for the perfect investment, you won't find one. There's always downsides. Every investment has a risk, right? And so using that frame, you're like, well, there's all these paths which from do I choose. It's like, well, you have the one thing it's guaranteed is if you keep the money, it will go down in value because it'll inflate, right? So not investing is the only way you guarantee to not get a return on your investment. Is that the fact that inflation exists?

1:21:47Do you think that's a useful motivating force for business people? You know, you could imagine a different form of world economics where, you know, like embedded growth obligations weren't there and like whatever, you know, inflation didn't happen. Do you think that that sort of motivates people to actually be like, oh fuck, like I need to do something with this money, I can't just sit and leave it in the bank. I think you're going to motivate investors. Yes. Yeah. But I mean, the business people would just like probably keep more coins in their vault and just keep transacting. It was that much.

1:22:12It was that much. It was that much. It was that much. Yeah, they'd be less likely to deploy capital faster. Because if you feel like there's a cost of capital that's higher for keeping it like letting it sit there Then you have higher urgency to do something with it. If you have less urgency then you only do it when you know it's gonna crash You gain nothing from underestimating your opponent. Mm -hmm How does this relate to your world? So a lot of the tweets that I have actually come from conversations I have with our portfolio CEOs and so they'll say something, right? And they're like, oh, we're way better than those guys.

1:22:51And I think somebody said like something like that on a meeting. And I just thought about it and I was like, what is stupid thing to say? I was like, you gain nothing from that statement. I was like, you literally gain, like what do you gain from that? You gain complacency, right? You increase the likelihood of looking stupid in the case that they do crush you, right? I was like, because on the flip side, like how many ups, like the only things that upset the guys who are on the top of the mountain is hubris. There's really no reason that the guy on the top of the mountain should ever lose. He has the most resources, he has the highest perspective, he is the most vision, like he is everything, he is all the food at the top of the mountain.

1:23:25And yet history shows us humans act like humans. And so we lose because of our egos. And because it hurts to say, what if that person is better than me? And so I think that if you, it actually is really parallel with it, a different tweet that kind of took off, which was, people underestimate how much smarter you can see if you have 20 minutes of preparation. Yeah, that's so fucking true. Right. And so like, people get into businesses and like, well, what if you actually had to face this team? People were like, why don't we practice? It's like, why not? Like, why wouldn't you practice? Like, for a lot of fighters show up not having prep for the fight.

1:24:03not really hard. I'm like, what do you gain from that? Because if you practice really hard, you get better period. And like all it is is purely an ego play. The only the only when you get from not prepping and showing up to the fight is that you appear to be more naturally gifted and I would rather be known for my work I think than my natural gift as an aside, but you appear to be more naturally gifted and then you win by less than you would if you prepared. You gain nothing. And so it's purely an ego thing, but we do it all the time. And so I wanted to, like my Twitter stream is just thoughts to self.

1:24:39I deleted because I didn't have enough room of my profile to say, but it was originally like, no, it's to self. And it's just like to remind me of things as they come up. Because I fall into that trap too. I'm like, oh, I'm going to perform the sky or like this company is going to crush it. And like, but we don't gain anything from that. It's like, so we just have to assume that we're always the underdog and then they've got to trick up their sleep that we don't know about. It's like that's the whole, only the paranoid survive. A reverse of that or something that's interesting to do with people at the top of the pyramid is there's only one way I know to beat people who copy you, get bigger.

1:25:11It's not by direct conflict, but by making them shrink into a relevance by comparison. Mm -hmm. Agree. I just, I mean, especially when it comes to content creation, I imagine that this is something that you see one thing that becomes effective. and then downstream from that a lot of stuff happens. And if you've done the hard work of forging ahead, trailblazing, pathfinding, split testing, wow, we finally came up with this thing. And then within four weeks, you're like, oh brilliant, this is all over the internet now. Why we see it as like a first mover thing, which is like, they need me, I don't need them.

1:25:50They require me in order to iterate their content, I don't, because I don't look at theirs to make mine. And so, it's like, mine is... Everybody knows. Every single person that's copying thumbnails, that's copying subtitles, subtitle styles, that's going after the same talking points. They know deep down that what they're doing is creating a rough, human pixelated equivalent of what they think they can try and be at best what you can hope for is being the second best Alex Homosie in the world. Right. And I'll win that game, but they would beat me at being whoever they are. Correct. I mean, this sounds so tripe, but I'm trying to say this in a different way so that it hits because people over there, like there's only one version of you.

1:26:30Like there's just so much actual meat to that concept because this is Gary originally did the document don't create thing. And I think that the reason that the content that we have is, quote, original, is because like, we document, I document through Twitter, the things that come up in my actual life. And so it's not like what's trending right now? It's like, well, I had this meeting with a CEO and he fucking said that thing about the competitor and that's my tweet. And there wasn't somebody else in the meeting also going, oh, brilliant, that's a lesson that I can take that I can use for my Twitter.

1:27:03Right, right. And so it's all from like original source. And if everyone else, like in this is on the flip side, if you're the person who's doing this, like you need to find what your original source is of content because like you will always be second or second, you'll never be first. Is really the statement. And like at least for me, if I'm playing a game, I wanna play for the long haul. And the point of the game is to keep the game going and if you want to keep the game going then you can't be dependent on someone else There was another one that I thought was quite interesting especially given the kind of current world of men's advice and rich guy existence online More people stay poor because of their egos then get rich off them.

1:27:47Yeah at the moment it seems like Egos are being valorized on the internet especially among men's advice. Yeah How is it that more people stay poor because of the regos and get rich off them if there's a bunch of examples of people with seemingly big egos that also have money? I think that's um, what's the fallacy? Whatever the whatever the cognitive fallacy for what's in front of your eyes? I think the form of people was it availability by there you go Yeah, I think there are far more people who are successful and significantly more successful than the people who are visible on and content, and I would say many of those people aren't actually that successful.

1:28:24And so if we're looking at the objective measure of success as like net worth, just for the sake of this conversation, there are far more people who are rich and anonymous than there are people who flaunt their labor genius that they rented for a day. Now there are, I mean, if you really think about the influence or world of business, there are not that many guys who actually are really in the game, like most of those guys sell something from their platform about building a platform, like that's 90, not even 95, it's probably like 98, 99%. And so there's only like a very small select, and to be fair, those guys are all pretty humble.

1:29:00Like you look at the Gary's, you look at the Andes, you look at the Tom Billy, like these Edmila, like the guys who have become, you know, in the business space, like they're not particularly ego -tistigled guys, and it's usually because they know what hard feels like, and they know what it's like to be inadequate over and over and over again, because you only can be inadequate if you go to another level. If you feel amazing, it's because you haven't moved up. Does that mean that if somebody wants to be successful and they feel like they've still got an ego that they need to do some work on dissolving that?

1:29:28I think they just need to do harder things. Like you need to fight harder opponents. Because the only way you can maintain an ego is by believing that you're a big fish and a little pond. Right, it's a big fish and whatever size pond you think it is. And if you're a big fish and not in a big enough pond. It's totally delusion. It's hard to comprehend, like, Bezos, if you've heard any of his interviews, seems like a very humble guy. But like, you could have a hundred billionaires in a room and he is worth the same amount as them. And then if you had each one of those billionaires is a thousand to millionaires, he's still worth the same amount as one thousand, one hundred, whatever, a hundred thousand to millionaires and it him.

1:30:08So like, there's just levels to it. And I think the moment you get to ego is the moment you stop growing because you feel like you beat the level, but you just keep repeating the love rather than moving up because there is a harder boss and they just haven't faced it yet. I suppose it's an easy way, you know, if you were going to a karate class, but you decided instead of going to the adult one to go to the one that's under 11's, and you're going to kick the fuck out of all of these old things. And you video it and you're like, look, and it just happens to be that they're the same size as you.

1:30:36And like, just imagine they're like dumb on the inside, but they're cute, you know, adult size and you're kicking the shit out of them. It's like, yeah, do it to Jones. Yeah, right? Like not gonna happen. Yeah. And so like, I'm gonna say this. Yeah, go ahead. I was just, I'm gonna try and say this the way that I, take this the way I mean it. I get comments from people who are like, love your humility, Alex. And like, I don't think of that humble of a guy being real, at least internally in my own head. But I am reminded daily of my inadequacy on the business game because like right now we've moved up a level in terms of like, now we're, we're doing deals, now we're investing in companies, we're taking a big risk, we're writing checks like Another level of the game than just only not to say that only one business and growing it is not hard It absolutely is a different kind of hard, but like I'm getting into this game and I'm absolutely the small fish Like one month of me 90 billion dollars on the trading made an apple in 2020 One move right and so I'm like I am entering into a like how could I say that I'm good like Even if I was exceptional, it's still gonna take 20 years to prove it So like I can't say anything and by that point I'll probably have other guys who are fucking Titans at that point to remind me of the fact that I'm not as good as them.

1:31:42So in your estimation is the presence of an ego something which artificially limits the size of the vision of how you want to climb? Yeah, 100 % because you cannot both say that you are, you cannot admit death sits and say you're awesome at the same time in my opinion. Like, I can't say like, I suck at all these things and then also be like, I'm the bat, like you can't do it. You either like, you suck at all these things. And it's, I think it's the Dunning Corrigor effect, which is like the more you, the more you learn about something, the more like, the more you realize you don't know. And so I think that if you have a tiny, tiny subset of things that you were studying and a tiny subset of people you're comparing yourself to, then it's really easy to feel awesome about yourself.

1:32:24But if you compare yourself to, I mean, I compare myself every day to warm up it. And like he's my app, him and Munger are like my heroes. mostly because the way they lived life and what they like just everything about the way they lived is something that I just love and like I have Buffett's net worth by age tracks and I have like mine tracked and I'm like I just got to stay above that line And you know he's got to above it at the moment. I am right now, but like I had a you know like His world was different. Yeah, like I got Warren didn't have Warren to learn from Yeah, it's very interesting.

1:32:59It's, I mean, you talk, we spoke about this at the very, very start where you were saying you have the opportunity of using the blueprint that has been laid down by me. Yeah. So if you've got nothing to lose, do the me thing. Yeah. You know, you have all of the mistakes, all of the failures and all of the successes. And there was another one where you said the rarer you are, the rarer the people are who share your perspective in this way, the greater your success, the fewer people you can share it with. I was playing with this quote from a lander boton from the School of Life for Ages, which was loneliness is a kind of tax you have to pay to a tone for a certain complexity of mind.

1:33:37And I'm really not sure, because since I've been in Austin, the complexity of mind thing, which is that hasn't stopped, but the loneliness changed. And I figured that that was a big function of change of environment and maybe like whatever embracing or acceptance of what was going on. But again, is this a byproduct of success that a lot of people don't necessarily realize it's a price that's going to be need to be paid? If you want to achieve a ton of success, you end up at this rarefied strata out in the troposphere somewhere and you're like, well, like five people that I can talk to that understand what I'm going through at the moment or another question as well, is that a combination of hubris and self delusion?

1:34:21Like, is that true? or other things that the bus driver or the lady that serves you at Whole Foods can actually relate to you on. So two questions. One is I would probably reject the notion that it's a price overall because like being in like if you think about it as a mountain, there's less, there's less square footage at the top of the mountain just is there's fewer people there and the air's thinner. It's harder to get there harder to breathe. Right? you have to adjust to, you have to acclimate. And the people that are around you, like there are fewer of them, but you could make the argument that they have even more context than anyone else possibly could.

1:34:55And so maybe the relationship you have are potentially deeper. Even if they're not, humans don't need that many relationships. So like you just have a smaller pool to choose from, but like most people only have two or three good relationships in their life anyways. And so like you just have a narrower pool that you can make that selection from. And I mean, if the people that I have interacted with who are far above that, above me on the mountain, that's been there, that's what they've related to me. But it's only bad if you think it's a cost. If you're okay with it, because there are plenty of people who are lonely right now and don't have shit.

1:35:28So, and you already know those, but there's been some being lonely and solitude.

1:35:37And one is seen as bad, the other is seen as fine or good. And some circles that's seen as self -care. So, to me, it just means that I think your tolerance or your standard for friends raises. And I'll share this and hopefully it comes off the right way. I entered communities as I was coming up and was like, wow, everyone here is bigger than me. And then I was able to, through achievement, rise through that and then I lost context with that group. And so I think there's just more free agency, a friendship that happens on your climb up because you're just moving between strata more frequently than it is that if I settled at one of these levels, then I would eventually find all the people at that wrong.

1:36:22But if you're constantly on the move up the mountain, then more of that is in transitionary period on the climb. And it's only a problem if you'd hate it. I don't. What don't you hate? You don't hate the fact that people come and go that some of these relationships are kind of transient. Yeah, it just doesn't bother me. I think it's like a should statement, which is one of my big things. Why should I? Why does it have to be? Why must it? Doesn't must anything. It just is that way. And that's fun. Talking about social media, we mentioned this earlier on. What are your predictions for the next six months to a couple of years in terms of what you think is going to be big.

1:37:07Any focuses or any interesting trends that you'll noticing at the moment? I always say first off that I'm not a social media expert by any stretch, but just, you know, I think AI is going to be the main driving force behind the future of social media and I don't know how we're going to deal with it. I mean, there's already the deep fakes of Rogan doing entire podcasts with Steve Jobs that are going out there and the entire thing is both created and recorded with AI. And so I think it'll be really interesting because right now it's still not as good as the best creators, but in a few machine generations, it'll make the best content every time in seconds.

1:37:43And I'm not sure what's going to, I think that I know the verification checkmark is going to matter more. It'll change in its meaning. Right now, it means status and the future. It'll mean real person. So that, I'll make that prediction that the verification of bot versus human will become more more important in the future, I can make that prediction. And that there will be more AI generated content in the future than there is today. And how we respond to it, I don't know. It's scary to think that what we basically had for the last five years or so since the algorithm started to get really tight is a three way feedback mechanism from algorithms designing better delivered content to users.

1:38:25It also nudges the user's preferences so that they are easier and more predictable to predict. That was that two -way street with something I learned from Stuart Russell and he's fucking amazing. Everybody needs to understand that. It's not just you programming the algorithm, it's the algorithm programming you. And it's one of the reasons that it explains increasing division and extremity. Because if you are far right or far left or super whatever, or super the other thing, it makes you way easier to predict. And that's a byproduct of any algorithmic optimizing function. And then the third element of that is audience captured by the creators, because they are the third element of the creation of the content, right?

1:39:00That they go, how well did that perform? Uh, well, we will read me that a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and then you end up on your knees like cooking for the audience, right? The fourth element of this is going to be then you are able to algorithmically create content that understands the back end of the algorithm that can nudge preferences and can get feedback and all of that. I mean, that to me is, fuck me, if we think that, you know, like the degree of overbearingness that social has on our lives at the moment, like that's a very, very big deal. What could cut out the middle, man?

1:39:38The creator being the middleman and then just becomes a vertically integrated platform that creates content on its own using AI and just feeds it directly to the audience. That's what I said. As soon as those, the AI images of Hot Girls came out and then chat GPT, you go, look, like only fans, you're no longer an agency, you're now a tech company. That should be the move that you make. Every single person should have their own curated wifey girlfriend online and that's what you, that's your thing. And it would be infinitely scalable, you know, like the perfect dirty talk completely curated and twiddled to your specific, whatever it is.

1:40:15But that doesn't both particularly well for how much limbic hijack and freedom people have from social media because it is only going to become more and more compelling, which isn't necessarily a good thing. I mean, good bad no idea. I think there will probably be a little bit of account movement of people who want to do more things in person. Make social media human again. Well, you know, an interesting thought experiment that I had. I was like, because we've taken some things, and I do think a guy's gonna happen, but like it will continue. But I was like, we accept all technology as inevitable.

1:40:51And I was thinking about this, and I was like, has there ever been a technology that humans have created that we were like, nah, we shouldn't do this? And I thought about it, I was like, there is one. Nuclear bombs. We all were like, I think it's better if we don't, we should just not do this. And everyone just agreed, we're like, we're not gonna do this. And I think the rate of AI, how disaggregated it is, like we'll prevent that from happening, but I just thought about that as like it just, there hasn't been any other technological thing that I've seen besides nuclear bombs, that we all together were like, this isn't good for us.

1:41:23Have you seen how tabletop genetic sequencing machines work? No, this is a really good example of what you're talking about. So the way that pretty much all of them are cloud -based and in order to sequence whatever it is that you're looking to sequence, it sends the request up to the cloud, and there's three gradings. There's green, amber, and red. And if it's green, you can just do it, no one checks. If there's amber, you have to submit a proposal for what it is, where it's going BSL level, etc., security security. And if it's ready, you just can't do it. And then presumably, someone comes around and goes, excuse me, what the fuck are you doing trying to make smallpox?

1:41:57Yeah. But that, there's been, I think it's either two or three times in the history of gene sequencing that has been a moratorium placed globally on this. Everyone's gone, every fucking machine goes off, everything, stop until we work out what's going on. So there are situations. That's a great example, like cloning. As you just said, as soon as you start to atomize that and disaggregate it and distribute it between enough different actors, how are you going to be able to control, you know, And the other thing is with genetic sequencing, the kind of machines that you need, the hardware is complex.

1:42:37Yeah, it's expensive in this room. The hardware is not complex for anybody to code. And the reward is everything. It's the world. It's the world. It's domination, it's money, it's success, it's all of those things. This is why I don't know, man, like the techno optimist thing, ever since I read Super Intelligence by Nick Bossram five or six years ago, I just don't see an AGI future where stuff doesn't get fucked. I don't know, whether we get the general bit of AGI, Super AGI is still up for a big part of debate. But if you end up creating this very strange world in which everyone's limitely hijacked with their own personal news feed of perfectly, you remember Cambridge Analytica and the scandals around the Hillary Clinton ads?

1:43:20It's like, I know your preferences and we're going to create these perfectly done ads. It's like, okay, I mean, the ads were still created by a human and it was still you were bucketed into to a content with other men of this age with these interests in this area, with these voting habits. Imagine if every single newsfeed, not just post, newsfeed was perfectly curated to maximize time on site. So, hey Chris, I think that's the first line of every ad. Yeah, crazy. Well, but it might just be the same as email the first time there was personalized email. All of a sudden you stop becoming responsive to your own name.

1:43:49So, I think they'll be push pool on that stuff, But I'm with you on the AGI long term. You know, as a weird thought experiment, if you think about what God looks like, in terms of most definitions, they're like an omniscient omnipotent being. And I think we're just creating that. Like what is AI know? It knows everything, right? What can it do? Everything immediately. Like weird. Usually God would be benevolent. Yes. Rolling the benevolence in there. Yeah. Might be good, if we could. But God's long term benevolent. But short term sometimes mean, yeah, you are true. It's definitely wrath. Yeah.

1:44:29In almost all face. What are you working on now? What can people expect from you next? A hundred dollar leads, $100 million leads, which is the second book and the $100 million series is going to come out this year. So that's exciting. We will be done. The edited final draft within seven days. So I'm like, it's been, we put in 3 ,500 hours together. My editor and I combined, or the last two years doing it. So it is the first four to six hours of my day every day. Like before I came here, I was editing the book and that's what I did yesterday and that's what I did before. So they could be really, really good.

1:45:08And so that's the big creative side of me is the book. It'll be 99 cents. There you go. I get 33 of that, by the way. And yes, you're having a rich. And then the rest of my life is all about deals. It's just we've got some really interesting companies that we're investing in. They're very, very pumped on that side. So yeah, if you've got a $1 to $10 million at EBITDA business and you would like a growth partner, go to acquisition .com and let us know. I really appreciate you. I really, really enjoyed this today. It's been cool to come and see. Thank you for having me. Appreciate it. Hopefully the audience got what they wanted.