Wealth Expert: Unlock This Mentality to Make $10K a Month - Sahil Bloom

29:18Most people are very bad at that. They get information. It goes in one ear, out the other. They don't do a thing. I would argue, you know, we have all these books around. my book included um 95 plus percent of people that read a self-improvement or self-help book get the dopamine hit from the reading part not from actually going and doing anything about it or the buying part yeah yeah it's true that's true this is gonna change my life no but like i mean relationships uh social wealth which is the second type of wealth that's covered in the book that is what provides the texture and meaning and the ability to enjoy any of the other types of wealth there's no point in having money if you're going to be by yourself like what point is there to having a yacht if you're by yourself on the yacht i mean what good is having a bunch of money if you have no one to dote on give gifts to be around and so recognizing that at a younger age and realizing that like the top 10 richest people in the world have 13 divorces among them.

30:17I don't know how many broken relationships with children, but we know that money creates a lot of challenges with kids. Money is not the answer to these things. The relationships have to be at the center of your life. And what you're referencing is the Harvard study of adult development is this, I would argue the most fascinating study of the last century conducted over the course of 80 plus years, 1300 plus participants that they followed. And what they found was that the single greatest predictor of your physical health at age 80 was your relationship satisfaction at 50. It wasn't your cholesterol.

30:50It wasn't your blood pressure. It wasn't you smoking, drinking, any of those things. This was more impactful, how you felt about your relationships, the people you were surrounded by. And we need to invest in those relationships the exact same way we think about investing in any financial instrument. And that's a mindset shift to just recognize that you think about your financial investments compounding. You're like, oh, compounding is great. Look at all the beautiful benefits of it. Everyone sees the chart, James Clear from Atomic Habits. Like if I just do 1 % a day, it's 37X or whatever the chart everyone shares.

31:22And that's great. Same thing applies to your relationships. Invest in your best relationships. Like text the person, let them know you think about them, get together with those old friends, Talk to your wife. Tell her something you appreciate about her. Invest in those things because if you don't, they will atrophy. They will not be there. You'll get the negative side of it where the people just won't be there for you. The last thing I'll say on this is your whole life is filled with a lot of laters. Entrepreneurs in particular use the word later way too often. You say, I'll spend time with my kids later.

31:56I'll focus on my health later. I'll spend more time with my wife later. I'll, you know, focus on my purpose later. The sad thing is that later is just another word for never. Because those things won't exist in the same way later. Your kids are not going to be three years old later. Your health is not going to be the same at 50 as it is now. You're not going to be able to invest in it. Your wife is not going to be there for you later if you're not there for her now. Your friends are not going to be there. So unless you're willing to build it into your life now, you have to recognize that you never will.

32:29i think there's uh something you were saying just just earlier as well with the kids right um there's a recent court case you know it's going on i mean obviously people know about this via succession but rupert murdoff with his kids fascinating it's so fascinating well i mean it's basically exactly what's going on did he yeah he lost okay so it's exactly what's going on in succession which is basically you know which kids do you like do i split my dynasty up with he was trying to he's trying to fight him he's trying to move the power of his predominant parts of his media empire to his son that's more right-leaning yeah who's more conservative versus more liberal yeah which is basically the storyline in success away from wendy's children like away from uh the uh the second wife's children or something i think i think so away from all of the rest of them who are much more left-leaning and so and so but the point is like in that scenario you put your kids against each other in a court case no one's happy and rupert murdoch is still a human being right so he will still and he's still a dad he still raised those kids he's still going to be gutted that with all of his money in the world you fucked up your relationships with the most important people in the world about money and power yeah and it won't make him happy like we could posit and joke that uh he won't care no he totally would he's a human being it's innate have you read shoe dog yeah it's sitting right behind you actually yeah um my so shoe dog was an amazing book um yeah the stuff with all about phil knight yeah and my only takeaway from that entire book how sad was that phil knight so the story as you know phil knight's son tragically died in a scuba diving accident and my only takeaway from reading that book i came away with this immense sadness and this feeling that phil knight for all of the success he has had every single dollar that he has made he would trade to have his son back and to not have that have happened and also the choices that he made in the book as a dad that led to having a depressed son and all of the things which you know he does talk about not not so much in the book but also separately um it's a hard it's a hard thing to read and you're completely right and he makes choices as an entrepreneur you're reading that book throughout the book that always optimize his personal wealth and the success of nike versus sharing it out distributing being kind and thoughtful to the other people that are loaning stuff for him he has his basically chief of staff guy that's doing everything for him is asking for like a few shares early on and he's like and i told him to fuck off and that's like chapter 22 and you're like what what this whole chapter was about how that guy basically just saved nike's ass and you're like don't give a fuck about that guy i kept the wealth but there are as you learn later in the story serious downsides to someone who has that hard mentality there's a cost for all of these things i mean um it uh it's really the realization, it's part of this whole journey I've been on and this realization that most of the people that you read books about are not really people you would want to trade lives with.

35:23On the surface, you're like, oh, it sounds great, right? X billion dollars, right? You're like, oh, would you trade lives with Warren Buffett? And the person's like, he's worth$130 billion. He reads and learns all day. He flies around on private jets. He has access to anyone in the world. But you wouldn't trade lives with him for one simple fact. He's old. He is 95 years old. You would never trade the amount of time you have left for the amount of time he does. And the flip side of it is he would probably trade all of his$130 billion to be in your shoes today. It reminds me of that Tim Urban thing about the time billionaire.

35:54You probably know it better than I do. It's in the book. And it's a guy named Graham Duncan who first talked about it on the Tim Ferriss show, I think. And Graham is a great investor. I spoke to him and interviewed him for the book. And And he had this concept where he was interviewing all these hundreds of kids who were going to join his investment firm. And he recognized that they all want to be billionaires. They all talk about they're going to make a billion dollars. And they are billionaires in one very clear way, which is that they are time billionaires. They literally have billions of seconds left in their life.

36:26A billion seconds is about 30 years. And so when you're 20, you have 2 billion seconds left, say. 50, you have a billion seconds left. But you're not recognizing and appreciating the value of that asset. The fact that that time is quite literally your most precious asset as an individual. You're not relating to yourself that way. And that mindset shift is a powerful one. So talk us through your non-negotiables, like in your day-to-day life. What are the things that cannot be negotiated? They happen regardless. Let's see, when I'm at home or just in general, I guess it's non-negotiables. It has to be in general.

37:00I have to move every single day. um 30 minutes minimum uh i have to move what do you do uh he does everything i know that but our listeners may not yeah it is wild i mean if i'm at home um i do my cold plunge in the morning uh i do a run and some sort of lift um every single day i i've been big into like i trained for these marathons while trying to not look like a marathon runner yeah which is evidently quite difficult and took a lot of time and energy and effort to do. So a lot of movement. I have to eat at least 200 grams of protein a day. Like that is just absolute non-negotiable for me because I know that protein is very satiating.

37:47So if you're getting enough protein on a daily basis, especially when you're training as much as I do. Then you won't look like a marathon runner. And you won't eat the bad things that are going to derail your body composition. So people are always like, well, you know, then I cheat, you know, what if I eat 200 grams, but then I eat a lot of, you won't be hungry enough because 200 grams of protein will fill you up a lot. You won't go and eat an entire bag of chips. You just won't, you won't be, you won't be hungry. Um, so it solves a lot of dietary problems by just doing that one thing. Um, I have to spend focused, clear, energetic time with my family, with my wife and with my son.

38:20Um, and when I say that, what I mean is like, I have to be present. Um, and even if it's only 15 minutes, cause I was so busy or I was running all over the place, even if it's like I'm traveling and FaceTime, but being really present, I have to do that. And then I have to work on something that I really care about for at least like a real focus block of time, call it two, three hours. There has to be something where I'm like really diving in and focused on it. Usually that's creative work for me because that's what lights me up. I'd be kind of miserable if that was like emailing. I'm very bad at emailing these days.

38:54But yeah, if I hit those four buckets, I feel I had a pretty good day. So I know we were talking about this just before, but your son obviously helped transform how you think about success. So like, yeah, first off, what shifted in your thinking?

39:12My recognition that

39:17my purpose and my clarity around that of being a provider and of taking care of him and of helping give him the best life and letting him know that he is loved became my central focus. And I would say for the early years of my life, I had no idea what the point of all of this was. And I really had this sensation like he was born. And I remember thinking, I spent 30 years wondering what the meaning of all of this was. And then in one instant, it was looking at me in my face, I was holding him and it was staring me right back in the face. And I really had this like powerful epiphany about life in that way.

39:57And I felt that ever since. And there's, you know, there's troubles and there's, he's a pain in the ass. He's a two and a half year old boy, right? Like he's constantly, he's chaos, all of these things. But the amount of gratitude I have and the amount of clarity that I have on a daily basis through him has been immense. How do you, if you don't mind my asking publicly, but how do you handle the fact that you're growing an audience and not your purpose is to grow an audience, but to be successful across the different spheres and certainly some of them, the job, the tactic is to build a bigger and bigger audience, better awareness, more notoriety, more people knowing the name Sahil Bloom.

40:41That fundamentally gives you more leverage. That sometimes is really at odds with having the desire for privacy, as a lot of parents do as well around your kid and needing to, and actually we talked about having a similar thing earlier, like having partners who are very private. How does that all work in your head? Because when you just have to think about yourself, it's very easy to be like i'm just going big but when you're going to think about these other forces it can be quite conflicting no yeah it's very conflicting and i totally appreciate and respect anyone's different perspectives on this my own perspective um has been that a big part of my mission and my purpose is inspiring other dads and moms to really embrace the joys of being a parent and the ability to do that while building an incredible business or life for yourself and your family.

41:40And showing myself doing that, being a product of that idea rather than just a salesman of it is much more powerful. and i'm really focused on actual impact i don't i don't care all that much about the vanity metrics if i wanted to just grow on social i would do the hot takes and i would do the memes and i would say controversial shit all the time and i would challenge people to boxing matches and like you know i would do all that right like it's i could see it yeah like yeah i would play the game right i'd try to uh you know do the things that work who would take who uh that's a good question i think you probably think so he would win i don't know i would definitely have better like i would last into the later rounds for sure you are a rugby boy though yeah yeah that's what i'm saying yeah i have to get him you'd have to get me early it would be like like tyson jake paul like it would have to be like i'd have to just be like running around if i didn't get you early i'd probably be like yeah you'd be winded yeah let's do it it'd be good yeah we could set it up linkedin boxing match linkedin celebrity boxing match uh i'll be the eddie just fixing everything Yeah, exactly.

42:44There you go. Yeah, I'll take a fall for like. Yeah, exactly. For the right amount. Yeah, exactly. No, I recently had an experience with this. I mean, my wife and I talk about this a lot because I show like, you know, I share pictures of our family, my son. And we were out in Boston two weekends ago with my wife and with my son. And we were on this carousel and someone called out, Sahil, Sahil, and came over and he was with his son and tells me that he's out that day with his son because I had inspired him to spend more time with his kid. And so rather than working that day, he took the day off and he took his kid to go out and have a dad and son day.

43:24And his son had just had heart surgery. And it was like a very, he's a one-year-old and it was, it was a very emotional moment. And for my wife to see that, I feel that because I get messages every day from people telling me that. I know that kind of thing. But for my wife to see it and to see that like, that's not likes, that's not follower, like that is real impact, that someone took an action, changed the way that they operated. And the ripple effect of that in his relationship with his son and the way that his son is going to grow up feeling loved and supported is enormous. And so when I think about my own life and I think about what makes me feel good about the things that I'm doing and the work that I'm doing, what more could I want than that?

44:01Like three years ago, I was working in a job that to me, I didn't find meaning in. And I was moving money around basically and trying to grab a little bit along the way. And now I get to do things where I feel like I'm actually creating a positive impact. That to me justifies the risks and the trade-offs. The other thing I'll say is like, because I don't post anything controversial, I mean, like, you'd be hard pressed to find me saying something that is like remotely on the edge or controversial. um i don't get a whole lot of the like you know people being pissed at me like if you're going to be pissed at me it's going to be that you're calling me corny or lame or like cheesy or boring and that's fine you call me that yeah that's fine like it's okay i'm not talking about politics or like uh you know things that are going to enrage people or get people angry i'm not like selling a course to anyone right now so there's no one that's like feels like i did them wrong you know like if you buy my book and you don't really like it maybe maybe you'll be like ah give me i'll send you$30 back if you buy my book and you paid it.

45:01It just doesn't matter to me. But I feel like that also helped. I'm trying to just put positive things into the world. I hope people see that and feel a benefit in their lives. So when you're talking to the audience, because obviously you've managed this, how do people build wealth properly without sacrificing their life? there's no one size fits all what i will say is this book does not give you the answers for your life and that's a hilarious thing to say when you publish a self-help or self-improvement book because the entire industry is like i'm going to give you the answers for your life this entire book and everything that i put out into the world is about asking better questions and the reason that i make that distinction is because i fundamentally believe that you already have the answers within you, you know the things that you really care about, the things that matter in your life, the things that you define as being those most important things.

46:01You just haven't asked the right questions yet to figure out how to define them and build your life around them. And that is what this book does. It gives you the tools and the frameworks to actually go and define those things. What matters to you in this season of your life? Clearly define that. Measure those things so that you can actually action on them. And then it gives you the tools to actually go and take the tiny steps to do it. But that transition and mindset to saying, I'm going to identify what actually matters to me. Not what society tells me matters, not what culture tells me, not what my bosses tell me, not what anyone else says, not what my parents tell me, not any of that.

46:37I'm going to stop believing all of the assumptions. I'm going to define what really matters to me. And it's not going to be the same for me as it is for you or you, but I'm going to define it. And then I'm going to go take the tiny actions today to invest in those things. In the same way that I invest in any financial instrument, I'm going to do the tiny things today to build those areas of my life. Yeah, the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions. I'm pretty sure about that. I guess on a related note then, what habits and what questions do you think separate out people who are generally wealthy from just people following money?

47:12yeah um one of my favorite questions is kind of a funky one which is if i were the main character in a movie about my life what would the audience be screaming at me to do right now we've all had this experience watching a television show or a movie yeah you're like you see the main character going down this path and you just want to grab them and shake them and tell them like chase the girl to the airport or like don't turn left here whatever the thing is you are that main character. And right now you are doing something. You were taking some actions that the audience would be screaming at you about.

47:46You know what those things are. You just haven't asked that question yet. So ask yourself that question today and actually reflect on it. Think about what would they be yelling at you to do right now? What changes would they make? Would they tell you to leave your job and pursue that thing that you're scared about? Would they tell you to double down on your job and like really go all in and try to be excellent at it? Would They tell you to, you know, refocus your energy on your relationship because it's starting to suffer and you're really not going to have that person if you're not there. What are those things that you already know in the back of your mind that this question will help you reveal?

48:18So if you could go back in time to and speak to yourself who was working like 80, 100 hour weeks, what would you be saying to that guy? I'll leave. Yeah, yeah, I would have. I learned a tremendous amount and got an enormous amount of value for four to five years because I was coming up the learning curve. And early in your career, all you have is time. You have no networks. You have no money. You have no knowledge, wisdom, experience. All you have is time. And you have to trade that time. You think you have a lot of those things. What's that? You think you have a lot of those things. You think, but you're wrong.

48:53And Gen Z really thinks they have a lot of those things, but they don't. You have a lot of time. And so you trade that time to get those things. and I did that and I got a lot of those things and there was a tremendous amount of value in all of them. But after that, I knew in the back of my mind that it was not the path for me long term. I knew that I was walking someone else's path because I could see the people who it was their path and I saw the energy they got from it and I saw how great it made them at the thing. And I knew that we weren't the same. I could see it. You could literally feel it in the in the energy that they bring to everything they're doing.

49:29And when that moment hit, I should have tried something else and done something else. It's hard to regret these things because everything contributes to where you're sitting today. And I'm very happy. I'm very fulfilled. You were able to make that change. I mean, I gave a talk at the great British entrepreneur thing the other day, and there was a couple of hundred people in the audience. And I gave a talk, which was very much like how to understand like leverage points in business and in audience building and in delegation 80 20 etc and I like had this incredible sort of flashback on the stage where I was talking to effectively loads of what I would have become which is like exhausted business owners who work insane hours and actually small businesses don't make that much money and so small businesses don't make much money which means the entrepreneurs aren't paid that much money but they work always saying later I'll prioritize my family and my health and i remember just having this moment where afterwards so many people came up and they were like how how do you do it and i remember being like well it starts with like tiny steps and then over three years you end up looking like this so if you can go back i think i would have said to myself like don't put off the relationship stuff because i i think with like my friends and my family i took i would maybe say it was like seven years seven or eight years where i didn't really see them friends were like you're definitely a ghost but then managed to course correct but in this stage of the day I could see dozens of these people just sitting at the front you know 30 years in yeah I mean I definitely had that sensation that like um I started to feel at one point on that journey that I was going to wake up in 50 years and wonder what the fuck I just did with my life and I think a lot of people that happens to them there's that quote um often attributed to Benjamin Franklin that some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75.

51:26And I think, unfortunately, it's very powerful and very true that it's very easy to just sleepwalk. The other thing that we should say is that you don't need to love your job. No. You don't need to find so much purpose in your job. It's actually like probably true that a small percentage of people in the world will ever do that. It's rare when people hear people like us and then they're like, oh, that's what it's meant to be. But it's rare. No, you can find your purpose elsewhere. What you need to do is connect to your purpose in whatever you're doing for work because you spend so many hours at work over the course of your life.

52:05And I talked to hundreds of people for this book, talking to them about purpose and asking them about what their purpose was. And a very small percentage of people that define as having a clear purpose have that purpose through their job. A lot of them, and even me, I would say, my purpose is to be a provider for my family. At the end of the day, that's my core, like, if you strip everything else away, that's what I am. And if everything got taken away, I'm going to be working at a McDonald's to provide for my family. And I'm happy to do that because that is my actual core baseline purpose. But if that's your purpose, let's say it's to be a provider and you're the type of father that provides for the family and and you really care deeply about that.

52:45I talked to a guy that was a factory worker. He works, puts together widgets at a factory. He's like on an assembly line. He doesn't like his job. There's no hope of him liking his job. He's not ever going to like it. He punches the clock every single day, but he connects to that purpose every day. When he goes to work, he talks about it. He's like, I think about the fact that me doing this thing is allowing me to provide for my sons so that I can coach their teams, so that I can show up, so that I can make sure that they're able to go to school so that they're able to go to college. And if I have to do that every single day, if I have to go do a job that I don't like, I'm connected to my higher order purpose.

53:17It doesn't matter that I don't like the job because I get energy from the fact that it's helping me further my purpose. So that's just an example to say, you don't have to actually love the thing you're doing and find purpose in the thing you're doing. You do need to connect it to the thing that does matter to you. This was exactly my experience with my dad. So my dad ran the same business for over 50 years. And before he passed away, I did get to have this conversation with him. He did not like the company or the job, really. So imagine doing that for 50 years. He really just didn't. But at the point where I was born, he was so all in on the purpose of just having something that came from lower class into middle class that comes with a lot of pride as well.

54:01And he was so deeply purposeful about doing a job he didn't really enjoy at all um because at some point it was such a source of pride to be able to provide for family um that in many ways he absolutely loved it and i just found it so fucking bonkers to be totally honest with you like i found it so hard to connect with that personally because i couldn't imagine doing a job that i hated in a business that i run you know these businesses they feel like traps but my dad managed somehow to getting himself out of that sort of you know self-flagellating guilt trap of like oh i'm doing something i don't like for the family into totally shifting his mindset every day feeling super happy and proud whether he likes it or not because like complete provider mindset so like you saying that really reminded me of that but that is totally an absolute mindset that some people just have isn't it it's incredible and very admirable yeah i'd love to have that yeah i've i don't yeah i mean i did not like running verb no and i did that for 11 years and i think the thing in the back of my head was like if i pull this off i can provide for my family forever also purpose shifts yeah right like i mentioned seasons earlier your purpose is not going to be static throughout the course of your life like i actually think young people always come to me and they're like i don't know what my purpose is what's my purpose your purpose in your 20s and early 30s is to build a foundation for the rest of your life financially and knowledge wisdom experience and socially that is what it is that is your purpose so it doesn't matter if you hate your job if it's contributing to that like you can hate your job as much as you want but if you're learning things if you're meeting people if uh even the things that you hate can benefit you in the long run and like recognizing that is a powerful mindset shift because there's this narrative that like you have to like the things that you do constantly in order for them to be productive for your life i don't like getting into a cold plunge early in the morning but it's beneficial to how i feel and to my mental health and to all of these areas of my life so i do it same thing with your job you can hate your job all you want but if it's contributing to that purpose of building a foundation then that's positive round your purpose in that yeah the verb story is interesting i've never i don't think i've ever i don't think i've ever even thought about it as openly as this but like that company was 11 years i reckon i hated it from year six onwards and and i think i think if you were to talk to my wife she would always say that like in those latter years all you ever said was like i have to just land this plane and and landing the plane for me was getting it sold i'm right and so when covid happened i lost all the staff i lost all the revenue and she was like i've never seen you like that because you would effectively lost all the wealth that you'd built which was your purpose for being which was providing for the family and so i don't think i've ever or will ever work like i did on the comeback from covid because i was like if i can just get well get the plane back in the air in the analogy and then re-land it i can look after my family forever but i hated it funny thing about that by the way i'm just gonna go with your plane analogy um when you have those moments in life like covid was for you with verb uh the plane is like uh is stalling you know that you know the phrase of stalling it's like it's not moving anywhere so you just start falling out of the sky when a plane is falling out of the sky like that the tendency that humans have is to try to like angle up you like pull back because you're like oh my god i'm falling let me pull back but the only way to get out of a stall is to lean into it you have to go nose down so that you can get the speed sufficient to get lift under the wings and take back off.

57:42And so it's actually an amazing metaphor and analogy for life in that at those moments, at your hardest moment, when things were crashing, when you were stalling and falling out of the sky, you had to lean into it, go more risk. You went risk on at the moment when it felt so terrible to go risk on. You had to do that in order to get the speed to take back off. And like, we have to remember that in life. The moments when like you most want to like hide and pull back are often the moments when you need to lean into the thing the most there you go didn't think you were going to be getting aviation analogies out of this so if you were main character in your life sahil what would people be shouting at you right now yeah i really fucked you with that didn't i didn't come prepared with your own answer i um i have a banger banger wait for it here comes the banger uh he's like no yeah yeah yeah you're gonna edit all of this out right guys yeah yeah uh no i hope that gets left in that's good um i have a bad tendency to avoid giving my full best effort to something because I am afraid of what will happen if I do give my best and still fail.

59:12It is a self-protection mechanism that I think a lot of us have that becomes a sort of self-rejection in that you don't truly experience. It becomes self-limiting. and I catch myself doing that far too often realizing that I'm not giving a hundred percent towards something because I want that I want that excuse if it doesn't work out to be able to say well I didn't really I didn't push that hard I didn't try to sell the thing so the launch didn't go well but like I didn't really I didn't do all the things and I have to fight that regularly and I've been in a fight with that with the book with other things in my life where I have to be willing to put my neck out there and just like if i take the hit i take the hit um so yeah do you think you can ever have like a method for monitoring how you deal with the different parts of your life like do you have a specific framework that someone can say i am operating you know through your five pillars efficiently um yeah so in the book there is a uh i call it the wealth score um which is an assessment you can go through and you can actually do it online at wealthscorequiz.com and it is five statements for each type of wealth and you rank from strongly disagree to strongly agree for each.

1:00:47And it spits out a score from zero to 100 for where you sit on this new wealth score, this new way of measuring your life. And financial wealth is one of the five types, so that is included. But these other types of wealth are also measured. I used that starting in 2021 when I started making these changes, when I developed the questions and have refined them to some extent since, but it's largely the same. And it's provided a baseline. So when I started in 2021, my score was 53. And now when I do the assessment, I'm, you know, 88 or 90 or so on there. And so it is a way of, for yourself, tracking your own progress against this broader life scoreboard.

1:01:25So if the old scoreboard was just money, and I fundamentally believe that scoreboard is broken or at least incomplete, this is a new scoreboard that allows you to measure yourself across the full range of things that contribute to a fulfilling life. what is the first thing you think an entrepreneur or a busy person should change if they're feeling sort of trapped by their success check your energy levels during the week the exercise that you can actually do right now is at the end of every day this week look at your calendar and color code events from the day according to whether they were energy creating mark them green energy neutral mark them yellow energy draining, mark them red.

1:02:07What color is this getting for you? This is green for me. I love in person. If this was on Zoom, red, major red. At the end of a day, you're going to see it. At the end of a week, you have a very clear picture of the types of activities or the people who are energy creating versus draining for your life. If you're an entrepreneur, you actually have more discretion over making changes very quickly. If you're working in a nine to five, you're going to have to make changes more slowly. But the point is to make slight changes so that you work towards a calendar that looks more green than red. You're never going to get it to the point where there's no red.

1:02:39It's just the reality of life. There's going to be things that are draining for you. But if you start tuning into your energy more, if you lean into the things that are creating energy in your life, A, you feel much better at the end of the week and at the end of any given day. And B, you're going to be working on things that light you up, which is when you do your best work. And that is going to create better outcomes, better outputs, those 10 ,000 ,000 X outcomes that are ultimately what allow you to like make the leapfrog steps in life can you tell me more about the process of actually creating the book because you said my right in saying this you had a thousand conversations is that a thousand interviews and yeah yeah i um so when i initially set out to write the book i thought it was going to be um a very like standard 200 page uh self-improvement category book where you kind of have like you know a chapter up front that lays out the thesis and And then you, you know, that could have been like the whole book could have been kind of that upfront chapter.

1:03:35And that's the meme that people say about these books that most nonfiction books could have been a blog or whatever. And then, you know, and then there's 180 pages of sort of stuff behind it. You go deeper. Yeah, you go deeper. And I thought it was going to be that. And what ended up happening was that I realized along the way that the only way to get across a very deeply human concept is through real human experience and storytelling. And that laying out a framework and making everything very frameworky for people was not going to actually affect the change in people's lives that I want to affect.

1:04:12And what that meant was that I had to really lean into the heart of the book and the heart of the story, which is this whole idea that the greatest journeys in life come through asking better questions, not through finding answers. And that took me on a journey to actually spending time with people. And that meant flying all around the world, sitting with people, spending time with people from different walks of life. I mean, I spent time with a guy who had just been released from a 25-year prison sentence for killing someone. I sat with a man who had just lost his twin children. I, you know, became close with a young man who was about to start his journey at a bank, you know, investment banking role and then had gotten diagnosed with a brain tumor.

1:05:01with a man who had recently lost his wife and now was alone with his two and a half year old kid, same age as mine. I mean, I spent time with people from all walks of life in all different situations from nine to five workers, factory workers to high flying entrepreneurs making billions of dollars all across the spectrum. And that added the texture and the human experience to the book that I think makes it such a rich and valuable read. Because every single person, no matter who you are out there, you will find yourself in this book. You will see yourself in one of these stories and in these people.

1:05:38And that allows you to connect with the ideas in a way that just goes beyond the surface. And that's what mattered to me. And I don't know if that'll help the launch. I don't know if that'll help the first few weeks or the bestseller list or any of that. But I very deeply believe that will help the actual impact that this can create over the coming years. What was the most surprising thing you learned whilst doing it? I think the most surprising insight was really just that we all want the same things in life. No matter where you come from and what you do. Drugs, money, bitches. Yeah, drugs, money, sex.

1:06:11Yeah, yeah, got it. We all want those same things. and we're not as different as we think or we're led to believe. And very little of that life we're trying to create is about massive financial success. It is about money to some extent and having enough, but it's not about much more than that. And that's a pretty empowering realization. I also learned that there are a lot of people who do not consider themselves wealthy that are very, very wealthy yeah interesting because they measure it they measure it exclusively on money and they feel like they're a failure uh yes sat with a man who says like i feel like i sort of failed and didn't accomplish what i could have accomplished financially and you look at his life and i would say he is has the freedom to coach his kids little league teams he has a very loving wife uh three children now um he works on something that he actually enjoys doing which is he's a substitute teacher he's a teacher and gym teacher coaches teams uh and he's physically like he's ripped super super healthy outdoors all the time and he's you know he's making forty thousand dollars a year as a teacher he's not like killing it and from the traditional definition he feels bad about his life yeah and that is why i also just feel this idea is an empowering one because there are a lot of people out there who feel from a societal definition standpoint that they're not doing well that will look at this and say i'm actually doing great did you find the opposite as well by the way did you speak to some really wealthy people who had the awareness that actually it was you're missing a lot yes a lot i mean very very common um and a lot of them um like i said have known this in the back of their mind and the questions help you reveal this to the surface and hopefully reveal it to the point where you actually go and do something start to actually take actions against these things um because there's nothing lonelier than a rich miserable life like being super rich but having nobody around you i mean i can't i can't describe that level of loneliness and unfortunately we live in an era where like especially men are sold this story that uh all that matters is like your financial success you should there's this new meme of like don't get married you know if you're married you're like you're a loser or whatever uh and it's i mean it's i think it's hilarious it's like the andrew is the andrew tate philosophy vibe right yeah i don't i don't uh i only recently was sent something from i didn't know who he was until very recently just because i don't like traffic social media all that much um uh and i haven't actually seen him specifically say this but i'm imagining yes it's probably that same mold of like that type of if you get married you're like a cuck or something it was like a hilarious mindset to me because i know that like scientifically actually married people are significantly happier they live longer uh married uh married people who kiss their spouse uh for a few seconds a day are like a higher likelihood of living longer their all-cause mortality goes down so like happy relationships lead to a better life uh viewing women as your possessions is a disgusting and like completely irrational behavior and mindset and we live in a world where that's getting a lot of clicks and a lot of shares and people are like hyping that up and it's not cool to say like the things that i'm talking about right to say like it's not going to go viral for me to say live a balanced life and like love your partner and be kind to your child and be you seem happy and he seems fucking angry yeah and i don't know the origin of the debate i literally just saw it and was like that's weird that we're saying that like being married makes you lame uh or a loser it's like anti-masculine behavior because i think that like being a father and a husband a provider is like the most masculine thing you can do actually like it's like sparta right like the movie 300 like he goes to war and he's gonna like come back on his shield or whatever like save his children and uh i i just think of that as like very masculine even like religion like if you're religious i would think that like christianity like that is good thing uh that is a good thing right like it's supposed to be uh yeah so um in any case i uh i think there is a uh unfortunate lack of real positive male role models in the world that are talking about the fact that you can build an incredible business, make a lot of money, and also build a great life around it along the way.

1:10:34It doesn't need to be one or the other. We don't need to just prioritize one thing at the expense of everything else. It is an interesting thing, I think, particularly for men. Well, I don't know, maybe for women too, but obviously with three men it's easier to posit there but it it does seem like the internet clicks and attention and everything isn't necessarily driven quite so well towards positive role models everything you're saying is common sense positive role modeling um and you're right it doesn't drive the engagement and views and it's it's kind of negativity in general drives more clicks yeah i would say so as a self-help author um i i have to ask what are your favorite self-help books um my favorite book of all time is when breath becomes air which is not a self-help book necessarily um although i it is uh after you read it um it is a true story of a stanford neurosurgeon resident who gets diagnosed with terminal cancer and he writes the book in the last period of his life um and it is the real story of someone wrestling with time stolen from them and how you rationalize that and think about that it is so powerful um i love man's search for meaning for similar reasons the impact i thought you were gonna say that's when you said something else it's like yeah but good um and uh the alchemist go different directions one of my favorites i love the idea and i have a pipe dream uh for my long term future of writing a fiction self-help book in the way that the alchemist was written uh where it's like you know the storytelling is beautiful and the visuals are beautiful um i love that one bit like siddhartha a bit like siddhartha i love siddhartha too siddhartha is amazing yeah it's great um more traditional self-help book that i've read recently that i liked i really loved 4 000 weeks by oliver berkman that was a wonderful book uk-based author um he has a new book out that I need to read Meditations for Mortals.

1:12:40Yeah. Great choices. Thank you. Love it. I've got to wrap because, you know, you're a busy guy. Our listeners are busy people too, obviously. Sayle, thank you so much for coming on Secret Leaders. Thank you guys for having me. This was a blast.