The best stuff we’ve read in the last 12 months

21:22Okay, great. But like, when? When do you actually sell on the high? Like, do you sell, like, you know, when it goes up a little bit? You know, when it goes up a little more? Do you wait, do you hold it forever? Like, how do you actually do this? And he's talking to his son about it. He's like, hey, you have this position. do you think you should sell? And his son is like, no. And he's like, well, is there any price that you would sell? Like, certainly there's got to be some price. And his son's like, yeah. And so they have this sort of back and forth, almost like Socratic dialogue. And he basically says, like the premise of the blog post is, he's like, there's only two, he's like, after lots of thought, I've realized that there's only two reasons people sell.

21:57Because things are up or because things are down. And he's like, that sounds a little silly, but let me explain. And he's like, you know, you could sell because it's up, as in you're taking profits. it's you're maybe afraid that the gains will go away. And so you want to do that. But like, it certainly doesn't make sense to just sell just because it's up, right? That would be like, you would be selling, let's say you own Amazon back in 1999. And it's$5 a share, and it goes to nine and you sell like, obviously, that wouldn't have been a good decision. And so like, simply saying sell when it's up doesn't make any sense, because how far up and, and just always That doesn't work.

22:30And selling when it's down is usually an emotional reaction to things. Panic, fear, sort of disappointment leads people to sell. The whole market gets pessimistic, and so you do too. So clearly, just selling because it's down isn't a good idea. So okay, so then when do you sell? And basically, he talks about the concept of basically it's like an opportunity cost. So all investing is about relative selection. So two things, you sort of look at two things. One, this is all going to sound very basic, but the reality is that myself as an investor and most people as investors don't actually act in accordance with this very simple logic.

23:07So the first part of the logic is you initially invest in something because you have some thesis. Well, over time, you'll either feel more validated about that thesis or less. Like, you know, more information will come out. Does the reason you bought this thing, does that feel more true today or less true today than it did at the time? You know, so maybe you believe that this would be the best thing ever. then they release the product and it's not so great. So now, you know, your confidence level should go down when that happens. So the first part is like, is the primary like principles behind why you invested getting more true or less true?

23:38The second thing is all investing is relative. So putting$100 in one stock is... Wait, sorry, but was he saying that that is the... What was he saying for point one? Is that the right way or wrong way? That your opinion shouldn't change? No, no, they should change. As new information comes out, you update your thinking and you say, well, if the reason I bought the investment is no longer true, like then I need to either have had a new reason to invest or I should not be invested in the thing. Versus just sticking with it because of cognitive bias of like - Yeah, just sunk cost fallacy or cognitive bias trying to like convince yourself that like, no, no, no, there's, despite all this evidence, I still believe, you know, that it's all wrong.

24:16The facts are wrong, you know, and sort of going in your, you know, sort of putting blinders on to reality. Well, the second part of it is it's all about relative selections, opportunity costs. So if you were not invested in this, you would be invested in something else. So do you have, you know, more conviction and the better prospects investing in something else than you do in this, right? And so that's the second thing. So he's talking about like, there's a third factor, which is if you're too concentrated and he's talking about with his son, Andrew, he's like, you know, you're really concentrated because this thing has gone up.

24:45You're overweight. This one thing, he says, his son is basically says, well, that's true, but it depends on your goals right now. trimming or selling would mean selling something that I have immense comfort in based on my bottoms up assessment of it and moving into something I feel less good about and know less well. And to me, I would rather own a smaller number of things, which I feel strongly about because I will only have a few good insights over my lifetime. So I have to maximize the value that I have from those. And this is tended to be true across most people who are active investors is that you only have a few good ideas, whether this is angel investors who the vast majority of their portfolio comes from two, three bets that they made out of potentially hundreds.

25:26Or it's George Soros saying the most important thing in investing is position size because you're going to be wrong a bunch. I think his hit rate was estimated to be about 30 % correct, so 70 % wrong. And he's like, so the key is that to 30 % correct, I need to be correct in a big enough way where it's going to make outsized returns. And when I'm wrong, I need to be wrong in smaller ways, right? So position sizing, the game is all about sizing. I don't care if you're right if it's too small. And Stanley Druckenmiller, who's now this legendary investor, says that's the number one thing he learned from Soros.

25:59He came in with a great idea and he expected Soros to say it's too risky or whatever. And he's like, well, if you're so confident, we should be betting 10 times the size. Either you're wrong about your thesis or you're wrong about your size. You can't be right about both right now because your size is too small on what you're saying you believe in. The reason I love talking to people like Howard Marks, and I would love to have any of these investors on, not because I particularly care about investing. I find it mildly interesting, but it's whatever. It's fine. But I care more about what they can teach me about how to live a better life.

26:28Because when I hear you talking about truthing this with investing, I'm like, oh, I made that mistake with this relationship. Therefore, my thinking is flawed. Did you have any takeaways on how this could apply to life other than just through investing money? No, I was thinking about it more for my money. Money point of view, to be honest. But I mean, his solution, it's not like he gives you like some formula at the end, right? He says the bottom line, we should base our investments based on our own estimates of the asset's potential. So that's the first, like, you have to think about the asset's potential.

26:59That's the reason you invest, not because it's up or down. We should not sell just because the position has risen. There could be a reason to limit the size or how concentrated you want to be, but there's no scientific way to calculate what that limit should be. It's a personal choice. And he goes, so in the end, it comes down like everything else in investing entirely to judgment. So it was less about like, how do I apply this philosophy to everything? It's like, damn, dude, everything, you know, judgment is the ultimate lever. Because just like you're saying with relationship, who you pick to marry, where you choose to live, what you choose to invest in, where you go with your career.

27:33Like these are all judgment calls that we put very little thought into, I would say. You know, most people are pretty thoughtless about a lot of those decisions. or we put very little effort into becoming better at judgment. Like if I asked you today, how do you become better at judgment? And how much time did you spend this year working on that muscle? None. It's like none consciously, right? So consciously we're spending no time on probably the most important muscle to us, to our like long-term happiness, right? Because your decisions become your destiny. So how do you make better decisions?

28:00Do you study that? Do I study it? Well, I do a couple of things. I don't know if I study it, but I told you this before. I write down all my decisions. So I have this thing called the decision register. it's a table and I write down two things when I'm making a decision I write down what it is and why I'm making it and my like confidence level in the decision and then I go back and I assess the decision register and there's two things that come out first I see was I right or wrong on that and then the other thing was what were important decisions that I didn't even realize were important at the time like going on a whim to that conference I felt like a small decision at the time but actually this amazing relationship came out of it and that led to this you know huge outcome for me.

28:41That's a good way to be retroactive. Explain to me how you said you write down what it is. Part of solving the problem is defining the problem. I buy into that. But how can I use your framework for making a better decision in the future versus just looking back and trying to adjust my... So here's, I call it the decision survey. So here's the actual questions I have in a Google Doc. So first, what is the decision? Write it in the length of a tweet. So I'm deciding to do X, right? So actually write it down. Then two, check in on your feelings. So what am I feeling right now while I'm making this decision?

29:14Is it extreme fear? Some fear, neutral. Some greed, extreme greed. So like why, what is my emotional state when I'm making this decision? And I know if I'm on either end of the spectrum, you know, on the far end of the greed spectrum or up in the fear spectrum, I shouldn't be making the decision. It's like going to the grocery store hungry. Exactly. Then I write this. I say, what is the one decisive reason to do this? Blended reasons are bad reasons. So learned this from Reid Hoffman, a LinkedIn guy. I think he learned it from Peter Thiel, which is if you want to go do something, you don't say, well, it'll be good because, you know, he gives the example of like, oh, should I go speak at this conference?

29:52He's like, well, it'll be good because I've never visited Canada before. And, you know, I might meet some cool people there. And it might be a good reason to work on my speech, my public speaking skills. And, you know, it'll be a good chance to spend time with this person. And basically, that's what bad decisions sound like. You can just blur out the words. But that, if you hear that tone, you're about to make a bad decision. But you're saying bad decision meaning a bad outcome or you're deciding on the wrong thing. Like, does bad decision mean I'm saying no when I should say yes? or does bad decision mean I shouldn't even approach you?

30:23A poor judgment process. A poor use of the skill of judgment. So a better way to make decisions, right? The input, right? Making the decision. Because the outcome might work out, right? It's like in poker. Sometimes you play deuce seven offsuit. It's a bad decision. You shouldn't have made the bet, but you got lucky. Two sevens came out and you hit trips. Okay, cool. You don't want to let that fool you into thinking, well, I should always play deuce seven. It's my lucky hand, right? That's what really bad players would do. Same way where there's people who will fold pocket kings because they got beat once.

30:51And it's like, well, no, you should always just put your money in with good odds and then let things play out based on the probability. And over time, it'll work in your favor, right? So you kind of only, you can't do what's called resulting, where you judge every decision only on the result. Like you have to be able to judge the decision based on how is the input, not the output, which is easier in poker because the odds are known than it is in life because the odds are unknown. But you just got to do your best to do it either way. So anyways, I try to write the one decisive reason. So if I'm going to go give that talk, it's literally because I want to go spend time with this person and they live in Canada and that's why I'll go give that talk.

31:26That's why I'll take the trip. And if that one reason is not enough to do it, then there's really no reason to do it. So you should have one reason that's strong enough to do the thing and everything else is bonus, but you can't count it. And what I do is I make my strongest reason for and my strongest reason against, and then they joust. So it's like I write the single reason I would do it and the single reason I wouldn't do it. And I look at those, I say, who would win this? If that's an arm wrestling match, who wins? Which one is stronger? But what attributes does each of those arguments have?

31:55For example, it could be like, I want to be around my family versus this one thing could change. I could make a lot of money because it's a new customer. First, it's got to be honest. That's the first thing because I think we're not honest sometimes about why we're doing certain things. I think it's got to be concise. So it can't be a spaghetti reason because your brain can't even understand it. And then the last is, it's got to figure out, you got to tie it to the value. So right now, is your top value making more money and getting in great shape? Or is it spending time with your loved ones, right?

32:29They're all good things, but like, do you have one that's valued more? And secondly, do you have good substitutes? So, okay, I could do this to spend that time with this person, but couldn't I just go hang out with them when they're back, right? Couldn't I just call them once a week, right? Is there not like a valid substitute that doesn't have the same cost. And if there is a valid substitute, you do it. Okay, secondly, I write down, what are the secondary benefits? And then I ask again, if I took all the secondary benefits away, would I still make the decision? These are all related to don't do blended reasons because that's the number one thing that we try to do, especially smart people because we love making lists.

33:03So we make like long lists. Like a lot of times what people do is they do pros and cons and they go, well, the cons list is way longer. Therefore, that's right. Yeah, exactly. Right. Or they just don't even make a decision. They write a big pros and cons list and just paralyze themselves. I don't know. It's too complicated. And that's why you don't want to do that. So what triggered the decision? What made me want to do this, basically? Which is usually a sneaky way of figuring out the fear and greed thing. It's like, oh, because my buddy did this and he got this great thing. And now I want it too.

33:34It's like FOMO or something like that. Seven is what alternatives did I consider? Which is usually just a test of did you consider any alternatives? Or are you just trying to do the first thing that you thought of? and it's a sign of shallow thinking, which results in bad decisions. Eight, is it a reversible decision? If it's a reversible decision, good. I don't need to worry about it as much. If it's irreversible, I should think about it a lot. What's the upside if I'm right? What's the downside if I'm wrong? What follow-up is important to make sure this one decision would be higher chance of being a success?

34:01So that's kind of like, you could almost make a decision a good decision if you do it with enough intensity, if you follow up and follow through and do secondary actions. When and how will I know if this is a success? and then lastly what do I think is going to happen just write down a quick prediction of the future did you create this yeah it's pretty good thank you it's a lot of effort like I'll tell you I do this probably one third of the time I should and I would say the average person does it 0 % of the time and the reason why is because it's like going to church or something it's like oh man I gotta I gotta go do this thing I know it's the right thing to do I know I should do this I know it's good for me, but it takes a little bit of effort and it's going to require me to be critical of my own thoughts.

34:45And it's so much easier to just not check in on those things. There's this like, I don't know what it's called, a quadrant, four squares, you know, the graph. And it's like high urgency versus low urgency and then highly important and not important. And I think the idea is like you want to spend, you have to allocate a certain amount of time to things that are not urgent and are very important. Right. But that bucket tends to get no love. Typically, it's unimportant and urgent and important and urgent. And because of that, you don't invest enough time that actually builds the foundation to a lot of things in the future.

35:22And what's really fascinating is that we're discussing how do you get good at making decisions, which is one of the top 10 things on earth you could ever potentially learn, right? And yeah, I have never actually thought about that. I've tried to read, Charlie Munger is famous for being an interesting thinker. And when he died recently, they wrote an article about him. And he had these funny quotes where he was like, you know, it was really hard in life because I just knew I was so much better than everyone else. And even though I talked a lot, I wanted to talk so much more to show how much better I was than everyone else.

35:55So he's this really cocky guy. But his thinking is very good. And I have tried to read Poor Charlie's Almanac five different times. and I just find it incredibly boring. But now that I think about it, you find it boring too? Yeah. I'm like, I should love this. On paper, everything about this, I should love it. And then you read it and it's like, I'm reading about Charlie's grandkid. Do I care about this? No, no, no. And it's just a little slow to give me some, like, I need, I don't know. I need some, I'm like a kid. I need some zingers every few minutes. It's very textbook. It's very textbook.

36:29Well, he has like this speech, which is like, him and a lot of other people really love these like cognitive biases. Like what I think is he gave this talk once called like the top reasons of human misjudgment. Right. So it's about this exact topic and I've listened to that. It's good. But I find it pretty hard to memorize like 23 cognitive biases and carry them around in my head all the time and like identify them when they're happening and then like find some root cause. And I find a much easier thing is this sort of like Socratic method of like, well, what are you doing? I'm doing this. What makes you think that that's a good idea?

36:59Do this. How will you know if this worked? I don't know. Stop asking me questions. But like that Socratic method to me is like just a much clearer indicator of when I know what I'm doing and I'm making a good decision or I'm making a bad decision and it helps me avoid things in the moment. The other thing is just time. So like don't try to make a decision in the same time you're sort of gathering information or sleep on it or like let three days go by as a cool down period if you can. It's like same thing with like any impulse control, right? If you just add a time delay, you can avoid a lot of mistakes.

37:36When I was younger, in my early 20s and late teens, I used to do book reports on all the books that I read. And I still occasionally do it. But before, it was like, I'm going to read this one book this quarter. And I'm going to read the big bibliography and all the cited sources. And I'm going to master this. And then I'm going to write a book report on it. And one quarter, it was like the 48 Laws of Power. because I was like, well, if you learn about power, then I could see when people are trying to manipulate me. And if I want to get powerful, hopefully I can memorize it. And I was like, but there's 48 of them.

38:05How on earth am I supposed to memorize all of them? And so for the longest time, if you Googled 48 Laws of Power Summary, I had this Google Doc that I wrote. And I wrote all my thoughts and I wrote and I summarized all 48 laws. And I shared the document with people. But you know, when you share in Google Doc, you sometimes put like share with link, or sorry, share link to anyone. You forget that that's searchable on Google. And so for the longest time, I think it was like three years, my Google Doc was number one. And every time I logged in, there'd be hundreds of people on this document. And it was so funny that it became number one.

38:38And then what I did was I made it so people could comment. And so people started commenting on it and they would add interesting takeaways and stuff. So it was like a crowdsourced thing. It was actually really cool. But I was obsessed with how do I memorize this stuff? And now that you're talking about this Charlie Amonac thing, I'm like, I've just said I've tried to read this. tons of times. And right now I'm telling myself and everyone else listening that this is important, but I have not done it. I need to do this. This is actually so fascinating. And a really interesting thing is I asked myself, do I wish I would have done this three years ago?

39:12Yes, I should probably do it immediately then, because I will be less regretful if I do it in the future. And so this is funny that we're talking about that. Well, Naval had this thing about reading that changed kind of the way I think about reading. So I used to approach it similar to you, which is like, I'm reading to get information. I'm really reading to learn something. So I was like, this book contains stuff. And the goal is to get the stuff from the book to be stuff in my head. Right? And that was hard. And sometimes I'd be like, ah, this stuff isn't that great. Or, oh my God, how am I going to memorize all this?

39:46How am I going to remember any of this? Do I remember the stuff I read recently? No, I don't. Does this even work? and Naval put it differently. He goes, when you read, it's like rubbing two sticks together. All you're trying to do is create a little bonfire in your brain. So he's like, you're looking to spark a thought, an idea. So you read not to get the stuff, all the stuff from the book to be all the stuff in your head. You're reading to just catalyze some spark, some thought, some realization, some thought process, some new idea in your mind. And if you look at books as creating that spark in your mind, you look at them very, very differently.

40:23And so you don't need to even, you often don't even read the whole book. You don't feel any guilt towards that. You don't need to remember things from the book. The book just needs to be a consistent tool to get you to think more interestingly and think more deeply in the moment itself. And if you just do that habitually, you'll just consistently be a good thinker. And once I started doing that, Once I kind of went into reading with that mindset, I enjoyed it a lot more because there was way less pressure. There was way less obligation. I didn't feel obligated to finish. I didn't feel obligated to remember.

40:58All I felt obligated to do was ask, like, what thoughts does this spark in my head? And when I started paying attention to that, like, it changed, you know, how I read. All right, let's take a quick break because I got to tell you a story. Let me tell you about the first time I tried to run payroll for my team. I was using a traditional bank, and you know the type. It's got a janky interface. It's built like a 2002 tax form, and it was open only during business hours. And I hit send and it froze. They flagged the transaction. They locked my account. They put me on hold for 45 minutes. And then they told me I got to visit my local branch.

41:26And that was the day I started looking for a new banking solution. After asking a few founders what they were using, I found out about Mercury. And so now my payroll is two clicks. I can wire money. I can pay invoices. I can reimburse the team all from one clean dashboard. That's why I use it for all of my companies. And so do 200 ,000 other startup founders. And so if you're looking to level up your banking, head to mercury.com and apply in minutes. Mercury is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group, column N8, and Evolve Bank & Trust members FDIC.

41:55Did you read anything else that you liked this year? I read a lot of stuff. I mean, fiction. There's this book called The Will of the Many. Highly recommend. If you like stuff that's in the kind of like Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, like fantasy, sci-fi, like it's not sci-fi, it's more fantasy, but it's basically this book that's like this kind of, it's like mirrors like the Roman, like the Roman political structure. So like when there was like, you know, the, there's like a hierarchy. And so, The Will of the Many was a good book and it's a series. The second book just came out, Strength of the Few.

42:29I just crushed that one. You know, I'm into this series right now. This is a good series. And like for me, one of the great joys of life is like getting into one of these like fictional series, like whether it's again Game of Thrones or Harry Potter or like one of these, one of these different ones. But they're pretty hard to find. They're pretty hard to get into. because it's a lot of world building. When you do, it's like really, really rich. I did that with Jack Carr this year. You know Jack Carr? He does what, mystery novels or what does he do? Is it like war, like Tom Ryan or whatever? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

42:56It's called The Terminal List and we actually had him on My First Million. The James Reese series, which starts with The Terminal List, which is like the bestseller. Dude, it's crazy. So this guy was a, we had him on the pod. I didn't want you to come because I wanted to nerd out with him and I was embarrassed as like how much I like love this book because it's one of these things where you read one of these books and you like fall in love with like these fake things and you like don't want to like tell anyone else. These fake things? Like, have you ever read a book and you're like, you're sad that it's over and you're like, I have to remind myself that this person isn't real.

43:27Like there's been times where like I've read a fiction book and I'm like Googling. I like need to see like, did other people ever draw this character or was an actor, did an actor ever play them so I can like, you know, like get to know them further? That's how it was with this guy and Jack Carr. What did you read? Which books to read? Like seven of them. He's got like, I think he's got like six or seven of them. I've read almost all of them. And he's got a bunch of them. He's one of the more prolific guys. I don't know how he writes so much, but he was - So he came on the podcast. What was like, is there like the one thing you remember from what he said?

43:57Or did he say anything really insightful? So listen to this. He was a Navy SEAL where he was bad. He was a bad to the bone dude. And he basically started writing these books, which was funny because writing is not like a very typical masculine thing. writing fiction, writing stories. But this guy is like, I mean, he's a masculine dude. And he starts writing these like... You write like this. Like his grip on the pen is... Yeah. And like when he's thinking, he's like picking his teeth with like a big knife. Like, but he's like a pretty hardcore dude. And yet when he talked to us, he was very soft.

44:31He was the politest guy. He was so kind. And the book series is basically a Navy SEAL who was wronged. and he goes to the end of the world in order to wrong the right. And it just so happens that he gets into different adventures seven different times, seven different books. Sort of like James Bond. How on earth is one guy constantly saving the world? But it was crazy how soft this guy was. Yet at the same time, he was very... I mean, he definitely has killed a lot of people before and he was this pretty hardcore dude, but he was so gentle and I found it really cool.

45:07is that a weird thing to take away well this it's a thing you do a lot which is like we have someone on and you're almost like a feeler rather than a listener like you you're more into their vibe and their persona always it's always the first thing um like which is cool like i i it's different than like the way i operate but like i i find that often when i ask you about somebody, it's always like the way they were, not what they said, which is cool. And I think actually there's probably a lot of people pick that, like, that is what we pick up from people is like the unspoken, but you are like particularly in tune with that.

45:46So that's what I felt that way with John Morgan, where I'm like, I don't even remember half the stuff that he said, but like he had this cowboy vibe that I was into. I'm all vibes. I am all vibes. That's an interesting observation. I do, I do do that all the time where I will, I don't even remember what him and I talked about. I can't remember anything. But then you will do these things constantly where you recall these stories. And they're very minute. I've been with you, and I've heard you retell the story. And you'll be like, and he set this thing down. And he looked at us, and he said this thing.

46:18And I'm like, he did? I don't even remember that. How do you remember that? I don't think of those details. You've told stories of Furcon, and you'll retell a story with a detail that I had no idea. but I just remember him as like a really nice guy. Yeah, it's kind of interesting also to figure out like, what do you want to observe, right? Like, I wonder how intentional you could be about that and be like, well, how do I, like, can I change like my little like metal detector here? You know what I mean? Like, can I, could I actually improve it? Could I be more intentional about what it is? Or is it just like, that's innate.

46:53It's very hard to change. I'm curious about that. It's sort of like people who say they're bad at names. And I'm like, no, you're not. You just don't care. So like someone said that to me. I was like, I'm bad at names. And they're like, no, you just don't care. And that bothered me. And so I was like, okay, I care. So whenever I meet someone, so if someone recognizes me on the street, I'll say, what's up, man? What's your name? Kevin? Okay, Kevin, where are you from, Kevin? You're from Idaho? Okay, Kevin from Idaho. Man, it was so good to meet you. Thanks, Kevin, man. You like repeat it a bunch of times and then you associate.

47:20And I'll associate with where he's from. And so I will always remember someone's name all because someone made me feel bad. And so I think I should change to like, how do I remember like certain details? And the way that I think you have to remember those details that you're referring to is you have to remember the story. It all has to be the story. So Eric Jorgensen, this is another thing I read this year. So Eric Jorgensen, he runs Scribe and he wrote the Navalmanac. So he wrote a book that compiled like all of Naval's wisdom. Dude, I think he sold a million copies of that. Is that true? I think he sold a lot more than that.

47:50More than one million copies? Yeah. How many books have sold more than one million? He's made a lot of money off that book. And it's great because the funny thing is the genre of that book is a in-your-own-words, in-his-own-words biography type of book, right? So he doesn't write himself. He compiles what Naval said without adding any of his own commentary. Naval has this philosophy of like, you open source your material, you let other people sort of fork it, remix it, and like your ideas spread. Like what more do you want than your ideas to spread? This is a win-win for everyone. Right. So he's doing one on Elon right now.

48:28So he sent me an advanced copy of his Elon book. And I was excited and I cracked it open. And one thing that I like right away is, you know, smart by Eric, which is he puts something that you don't already know about Elon at the front just to at least signal to you there's going to be shit in here that you don't already know, assuming you're like an Elon general fanboy or you're in the tech bubble already. If he was like, Elon likes to think from first principles, I'm like, I know, I know. I read all this shit before. But he talked about, it's Elon talking about memory. And he's like, yeah, like when I was a kid, I learned how to do these like memory palaces.

49:03He's like, you can remember pretty much anything. If you learn that like memory is a skill and there's like a way to do it. Is that like walking through a house? Yeah, you know, like the idea of a memory palace, like you like create like a physical 3D, you know, structure in your mind. And then you sort of link the thing to a room or a location, a visual object. And then you create a little bit of like a story of like walking through from one to the next. So like the people who could memorize like all the cards, they're like, the king is like a real king. And the number seven is a house. There's a king in a house.

49:36He meets a queen. So he has a wife. The king is in a house. He lives on Seven's Lane. And on Seven's Lane, his wife, the queen, she loved diamonds. And so she, yeah, and you do that. And that's how you sort of build this thing. So it's like Elon talking about like memory palaces. And I was like, this is great. Just give me more Elon stuff. I need, I'm happy to get, you know, an unlimited buffet of like new Elon anecdotes and nuggets. Cause like how rare is that? Right. So I thought that was pretty cool. And in general, his book is really good. It's going to be good. I can't believe he has sold that many copies on that book.

50:06That is absolutely insane. So one of the topics I was going to do today is a work smarter, not harder topic. And Eric is an example of this. So how do you write a bestselling book that sells millions of copies? Well, what if I told you it's none of your ideas and none of your words? Would that interest you? It's like a way smarter way to write a bestseller, right? So Eric doing that. There's this incredible interview that came out. There's a clip that came out. Did you hear it? It's Akon talking about his music. No. What did he say? So Akon, the rapper, he was on a podcast and he told the story.

50:45He's like, they're like, dude, so you, you know, you had a crazy career. You know, they were talking about his Guinness Book of World Records that he owns for ringtones. He tells the story. He's like, yeah, man. He's like, I was recording music. And at the time, the way we sold music was you would sell your single on iTunes and it'd be$1.99 for your four-minute song. He's like, but then I walk around and I saw everybody had a phone and they all had like a ringtone. They had a song as their thing. So I asked them, I said, hey, do you get to pick what that is? They're like, yeah. He goes, how much did that cost?

51:18Is it free? And then they go, no, you pay for it,$4.99. He goes,$4.99? A four-minute song is$1.99. 10-second ringtone is$4.99. He goes, and even better, he goes, I call my lawyer. I say, hey, check my contract with the record label. What's the cut on ringtones? And he's like, calls him back. He's like, Akon, there's nothing about ringtones in here. there's nothing about digital anything and like there's nothing for ringtones he goes yeah say less so he hangs up the phone he goes i started making music songs that were meant to be ringtones every song i did i would focus on how is this a ringtone and so mr lonely became the number one ringtone in the world and he wrote that song to be a ringtone he's like i would write the song with a ringtone in mind i would record it with a ringtone in mind i would chop it up and make it really easy for these songs to be ringtones.

52:08And he's like, I broke the Guinness Book of World Records. I sold 11 million ringtones. He goes,$4.99, that's$55 million of gross sales on ringtones. And he's like, I became the ringtone king. And then he's like, then the next time they tried to redo my contract, they tried to slip in. Oh, and ringtone sales. He's like, let's take that out right there. Nope. You know, that's not going in the contract. We're going to have to renegotiate a separate deal on that. And I just thought it was brilliant. The Akon ringtone, we're smarter, not harder. How do you sell a 10 second song for five times the price, you know, for two times the price as a four minute song?

52:44I so remember like being 14 in here and girls that had that on there. I'm going to put that on my, as my ringtone now. I don't even, you do ringtones? Does that still work? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause I had a - Nobody has a ringtone now. No, I did. If you called my, it was a remix version of the Nokia one and actually had beats. It started off like a normal, like do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. Dude, can you just, like Crocs came back? Can you just bring ringtones back? I feel like if I was the music industry, the number one thing I would try to do is bring ringtones back. Well, do you know what I, here's, let me tell you what I'm bringing back.

53:13In my house, we, I bought a DVD player and an activity because I don't let my kids watch TV, but I'm letting them like, sometimes on Saturday when we're like over, like if it's just me watching two kids and I'm overwhelmed, I'm like, I need like something, but I don't want to turn YouTube on because I don't like the ads and stuff. and so I've got a DVD player and we go to there's a thrift store down the street from my house and there's DVDs and I will find the DVD and it's incredibly fun to like put the DVD in there and there's this new toy have you seen this toy called I don't know it's the little red thing right that plays music that plays music yeah what's that called like the yuck box or yum like it starts with a Y yeah they kill it it's called Tony's what is it there's two of them there's one that starts with a Y as well so there's it's called Tony's it's like the box and you put like a disc in it you put it's a box and then you put a character on top like a record and then it just starts to play songs but actually you buy it and then it doesn't connect to your wifi because you don't have a 2G connection you only have 5G that's my story with the Tony's it doesn't connect it doesn't connect you gotta have 2G you gotta have less G's I don't I have too many G's I mean I don't even have like 5G I've got one above that I think but they like it's an incredible toy.

54:29Like I'm playing with this and so we're actually, I'm actually on the hunt for a boom box. I want to buy a boom box where you just put the CD in and a cassette tape and click play. It's so fun. We've had so much fun in my house like doing some of this stuff. Tony's, these guys crush by the way. They do like like hundreds of millions. So Tony's, let's see is this the right thing? Yeah. 510 million euros last 12 months. 510 million euros on this kids boombox. Isn't that insane? Tony's. The other one is Yodo. That's the one I got. Y-O-T-O. Have you seen Yodo? No. It's like the same thing. I don't know how they're different.

55:08But I just remember one time I typed in Yodo and it said like Yodo versus Tony's. 127 million in revenue. Are you joking me? What's going on? Crazy, right? It's an incredible toy. It's ridiculous. It just makes me mad. Why? It's pretty brilliant. Yeah, that's what makes me mad. That the brilliance was not mine. Dude, I follow this guy on Instagram now who started Poppy. I don't know how he came on my feed, but I saw him and I thought it was me. He looks just like me, but he's better looking. Have you seen what he looks like? I thought it was me. Hold on. Poppy the drink? Yeah, Poppy founder, the man.

55:43It's a husband and wife. Look him up. Let's see. So you thought this was you? No, click a video. Go to his Instagram. This guy? Yes. Trust me. Go to his Instagram right now. I'm telling you. Look at the videos. I was like, am I really a billionaire CBG guy or what?

56:04I said, want to do a video together? We look alike. And he said, could be funny. Let's do it.

56:13He's got a podcast? No, I don't know if he has a podcast, but he just does Instagram shit. Are you mad? This guy's just taking everything he works for? Yeah. There can only be one. And I was shocked at just like, Do you know that Poppy sold for like$2 or$3 billion? And it started out as a probiotic soda? That sounds like the worst idea ever. He lives in Austin? Oh my God, this guy is you. Yeah. If he wants to trade spots, we could talk. He just crushed it on that. And it's like the ultimate hack. When you start a company with your wife and it works and you both get all of the equity.

56:53Yeah, that's crazy. Is that it? Is that the pod? All right, that's it. That's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world. I know I could be what I want to. I put my all in it like no days off. On the road, let's travel, never looking back. All right, everyone. If you're listening to MFM, you probably want to make more money. Well, I want to tell you about a podcast you might want to check out. It's called The Sales Evangelist, and it's hosted by Donald Kelly. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts who share their strategies to succeed in sales. They share actionable insights and stories that will encourage, challenge, and motivate you to hustle your way to the top.

57:30If you're someone looking to raise your income level, check out The Sales Evangelist. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.