Why We Stopped Caring About Politics

0:00Welcome back to Secret Leaders. I'm Dan. I'm Chris. And today we're going to be talking about a few different things coming up in the sort of business. sphere so most important most exciting potentially for business people is president-elect trump is getting inaugurated shortly he certainly is how are you feeling about that do you know what um i have uh gone through a journey of that myself personally like last time he was president i thought that was going to be the worst thing in the world ever ever ever ever and i was one of those hyperbolic people with fear over it. This time around, I'm actually quite excited and think that there's a lot of evidence from history to say that he was actually a pretty decent president across a lot of the things that mattered.

0:44And I think the difference this time is he's been very democratically elected and given an opportunity to perform. And I think like this, whoever is in power, including this current Labour government in the UK that I think is useless, you've got to give people time and they've been democratically elected so give them time and give them space and opportunity to do the thing so i think about that with keir starmer and labor in the uk i think about that with trump in the usa let's see yeah i mean it's certainly going to be i'll say something a second about politics which i don't even know how you're going to react to it but it's certainly going to be a more fruitful business commercial environment in the states now because of trump like he he whether you like him or hate him he's certainly bringing a lot of like commercial optimism at the same time the stock market did really well under biden so it's like really interesting isn't it because it did its best ever under biden and everyone was like it's gonna you know be terrible for the economy but the thing is inflation was horrendous and i think that is one thing that is interesting that he is going to have to try and tackle there's two ways to bring inflation down you can um literally raise interest rates or you can grow an economy through productivity and america has the biggest companies in the world probably also the smartest people at the top tier in the whole world with the most forward-leading technology companies in the world so if any country can grow itself out of a productivity issue it's is america yeah and i think it's a long time since i think that the populace voted based on necessarily the immediate economy just because it's always out of whack with the actual political cycle so it's true it's a fucking joke anyway that's true um but i would say weirdly for someone who did like politics at uni and am obsessed with politics i would say for the last few years i almost made a deal with myself that i would not concern myself with any politics in any country moving forwards because it would just take up thinking time stressing time time talking to others debasing it like whereas i've taken like a whole view of like sole focus on my own goals for the last few years i'm not saying that's going to be the case forever but i really wish more people would like not be so obsessed about like politics and like so obsessed about religion these big fucking questions like a lot of the advice i wish i could give to people is like be the change you want to see in your own life like control what you can control i mean like that should be written at the top of the piece of paper about how you improve your life like don't moan all day about politics when your own life is not in order like fix the shit at home and then maybe have an opinion on that also if you look on social media most of the people that opine on politics my god are they quite obviously the problem in the world that's true i do on both sides of the spectrum they are just toxic people i do think really articulate people also have a very very you know firm view on politics and the rest of it but totally but they they also have their own issues and how they're toxic yeah quite often most of the reason that i can uh like honestly say that i couldn't have made it to any rallies is i have a job and that's the thing that gets in the way it it sounds ridiculous but yeah it seems to be really true there's always a very high disproportionate amount of people who have a lot of spare time do you know like it's a very separate thing but like i'm so cynical there so no but do you know a very separate way of looking at this is my mum worked really hard her whole entire life um was really really intelligent woman with like lots of like interesting opinions but like you know thoughtful and busy and all this kind of stuff my dad passed away and she's getting older and you know it's been 10 years since that and all this kind of stuff and over that period of time last two three years i've had to like sit down and have conversations with my mom it's not about politics actually but like gossipy stuff and it literally i had a long conversation with her i realized that what are you gossiping the void no what she gossips about the void in her life the space taken up by not having my dad around by not being engaged in in full-time work and having like less of a social life she's filling up that time with sort of like meaningless or what she believes is meaningful information that really isn't and it helped me understand actually a lot of the people who are at these protests or are at these events or at these marches or whatever they are they have very little very often they have very little idea what they really stand for they stand for the new current thing because they actually don't have a job they got nothing else to do yeah there's only so much netflix you can watch i can help a lot of them aren't half as principled as you think because they'd be at the next thing i can help most of them with the outcome of their lives by just saying that uh it's not important to have an opinion on everything that's exactly true that's like like write that down at the top of the piece of paper about like how i'm going to improve my life you don't need to have an opinion on every single political issue that's happening in the country right now because most of the time you won't understand it and you certainly won't have any power of it so if you have power over yourself work on yourself so a really good book i read last year that i loved and uh unusual philosophical teacher arnold schwarzenegger be useful yeah it's a really good book did very well that book it did it was it's excellent i haven't read it genuinely my publishers the other day yeah they were like this actually because a book can sell two ways can sell really well up front yep and then it can sell really well by being handed on apparently that book is like viral as in people hand it to each other yeah and i would i would say as someone who loves stoic books it is essentially more of the same all these books are the same really if you read marcus aurelius we read the power of now you read ryan holiday it's all the same it's all just basically marcus aurelius repackaged steven bartlett all of it is stoicism just repackaged almost all of it right and so is be useful but it is exceptionally simple modern advice for men mostly about how to show up in the world and to exactly that point you don't need to have a political opinion on everything you don't need to go on marches and virtue signal absolutely everywhere just figure out how to be useful to the two or three people in your life that matter most and you'll actually create a really great ripple effect from that and that's essentially the whole summary of his book and it's very very good you should read it i got i i got myself in a situation where i was hanging out with some uh some friends of friends and they were telling me about like how wrong and screwed up the world was and i was like what's my favorite question at the moment rather than what do you do is like what's keeping you busy and then one one was like um oh i'm sort of in and out of work i'm kind of working as a um an usher in the cinema and the other one was like not working but they were so informed of everything that was going on the news and they were like what about you and i was like honestly i don't know enough about these issues to give you an informed answer but like i really have my shit together i am like so present for my partner and my family and i saw an excellent meme literally yesterday which was all right i'm done with being an expert on syria finally time to move into my south korea era exactly it's like exactly yesterday you knew everything about ukraine today is syria and tomorrow is south korea how incredibly broad your depth of knowledge must be it's actually so funny it's like the people who change their facebook profile picture to like every crisis that's going on it's like i'm gonna solve the world by uploading my profile picture and you're like oh no it's so true anyway so um do you know what we're talking about you know what though like there's actually it's just sort of a relevant it's a relevant point um there's there's just forgotten that we've actually got the notes here as well anyway there's i think but i think there's a relevant point here which is um either way like a lot of this flip-flopping on political expertise etc etc etc um the last few years has been a little bit psychotic and manic and whether or not you welcome trump in and his inauguration and his his policies and his cabal of people that he's bringing into the white house whether you're better this time huh much better cabal of people much better and if you're an entrepreneur you would naturally feel quite excited about having elon musk and vivek like in the in the white house on that a two-year project as well that's not a forever project right it's a short-lived project of doge the department of government efficiency and again coming back to how um taxes work right in the uk we've become so like just comfortable just tax me when i sleep tax my business tax my house tax me when i die tax me when i'm living tax my food tax my water everything you're like that's just life okay fine that's how the welfare state works fine elon must did a whole bunch of tweets the other day where he's like people forget that that is your money and the way through a lot of this stuff isn't only just taxing you for everything it is making the spend of the money they're taking more efficient that is the other way that you can do it it's like i'm not saying that people who are poor and on benefits and are disabled and need the money shouldn't get money from the state they should they don't need all this money people who are in charge of the money should be less callous with the money that they're taking from tax collection and make sure it is efficiently spent and it will be it will be a really interesting thing to observe it'll be incredible if you manage just to pull it off it'll be the perfect case study in the world which is you don't need to tax everyone as much as you do you just need to make sure that you've got responsible people in charge of spending it yeah and I don't know if we've ever really seen much like modern day entrepreneurship in the White House so high up in politics I don't remember I mean we would probably be too young to know but no I don't think so because like Trump's obviously an entrepreneur but again no one really no one really respects him as a business super questionable no one really respects him as a business but Elon Musk but everyone respects Elon Musk out and out probably the best entrepreneur ever yeah and so that will be fascinating to see him actually cutting productivity focusing on outcome automation etc yeah technology you know really interesting one of the trump's things again is you know there are so many different ways to to grow the economy to make america strong and one of those ways is tariffs what do you think about tariffs so one of the things obviously trump is very pro is tariffs to make i suppose american businesses much more competitive with uh overseas labor effectively so what do you think about that um as a general rule i think i heard him on a podcast say uh tariffs is the most beautiful word in the english language and it's not uh not used enough in business and i think on the basis that we don't really use tariffs really in the UK, I can't profess to be an expert on how to expect the outcome of tariffs working.

11:32On a fundamental basis, what Trump did do, so let's talk about the Middle East last time, what he did very well last time with the Middle East, why I actually do think that he could be a good thing for the US and the world. Obviously, right now, the Middle East is in flames. And when Trump was in power, they got unbelievably close to the Abraham Accords and signing peace treaties across the Middle East, right? That was done through business deals. And that was done through people in the Middle East wanting to have really lucrative business deals with America because it's the largest economy. And one thing he's exceptionally good at is this concept of art of the deal and understanding that...

12:13Which he didn't write. Right. But on a fundamental basis. Fascinating. Different point. Yeah. I just heard that the other day. He didn't write... Who wrote that? He had a ghostwriter. Oh, right. Okay. Well, that's different. Everyone has a ghostwriter. Yeah, that's true. So, yeah, on a fundamental basis, he understands that America has unbelievable purchasing power and unbelievable strength. And the US currency is the strongest currency in the world. And so he uses that to negotiate his way through any problem. And the Abraham Accords almost created peace in the Middle East, quite possibly could do again.

12:49I think that is a microcosm example of how he intends to use tariffs he intends to basically say the American economy is the biggest in the world because of their opportunity with both the US dollar and technology businesses they can still be the fastest growing they can literally grow themselves out of pretty much any problem because they have these unbelievable businesses that are all based there the future of the world is essentially AI and almost all of the AI businesses are in the Silicon Valley so on a fundamental basis like America can totally just grow itself Nvidia is there you know like all of them are just there so we really have a chance here that the new wave of businesses aren't necessarily product businesses which is a fascinating space yeah absolutely for the US now to be in he has so much power he's using that power to say that if you don't do business with the US the way that we want to do business yeah yeah we're going to tariff the shit out of you I'm going to make it so much more expensive for you to do business with the US and most countries can't afford to take that risk yeah it's too much it's too much to lose I think that's, you know, at the end of the day, he's got to do something.

13:48And that's just showing American strength. You know, he did a tweet the other day that was about the US dollar and BRICS countries. Right. So that's obviously Brazil, Russia, India, China. And essentially, you know, they want to create another alternative currency to the US, the US dollar. So if you think we're going to do that, no problem. 100 % tariffs on your products. 100%. hmm so we'll make it literally impossible for you to basically do any business with the us yeah it's kind of the only lever he's got but he's gonna exercise it because whilst you are the most powerful country in the world you can totally flex your muscles and do that and once you've lost that opportunity you can't do it anymore so even though a lot of these things look psychotic and the tweets are pretty badly written i don't think he has a ghostwriter on these tweets i'll it that way um not the way he uses caps and uh and grammar but um i think he's actually using the leverage that he has in a really smart way and i would be very bullish on the american economy right now would agree obviously one of the things that happened with trump i'm not personally happy about it because i sold all my bitcoin at the bottom to buy my house my wife's very happy i'm constantly disappointed you got to buy a house i'm homed i'm homed um but you know she always says you can't live in a bitcoin well right now i feel like i really bloody could um anyway um i do technically live in quite a few bitcoins um you know him doing that and then also him becoming president and also appointing david sachs the head of crypto and ai it's just flying so across 100k um and that that generally is because with more positive view towards crypto in general in the regulatory space and him saying he's going to get rid of the sec chair who's then resigned in advance.

15:31It's all just so bullish for crypto. And he's very pro-Bitcoin and very pro-crypto. And so yeah, we've had a massive surge. Massive surge. So congratulations to you and all of our subscribers and everyone except for me. I'm so happy for you all. My house has remained the same value. Never mind. I'm obviously totally over it as you can tell. Dan's very over this. I'm so over it. It's fine. So yeah, what do you mean? Like all this Bitcoin you now got, all this unrealized wealth um there's a lot of stuff going on i don't see all warren buffett's letter about him leaving money behind for his kids you're going to leave all your bitcoin behind for your kids what's your what's your policy on this i mean my my only view because i because i i took the view that i knew nothing about it and so that's why i would hold it as in i wasn't going to trade it in and out because again like if you think about how i often think about like work and business anything that occupies mental space should be shelved and so like that's actually works perfectly with with crypto so rather than like fucking around with it trading in and out of it trying to be complex or fancy with it i pretty much just held anything i ever bought um but i suppose in terms of like money down i mean the buffett thing is fascinating it's a very interesting letter if you read it which is like we gave 10 million to each of our kids and that's when his wife died and then he always thought that his wife would distribute their money but now he is distributing their money and so originally he was like i don't know if my kids can run off uh the the foundation which is like 90 something of 99 of his wealth and now he is actually handing over the uh the reins as it were of that organization to his kids he says that they're ready but technically speaking they're not giving them that much money but they are giving them the shares and so they do have control over the foundation so it's an interesting one i mean one of the things that my wife and i talk about is that if we're ever lucky enough to have children we would be very cautious about how we bring them up now that we have been very successful because now that we can fly anywhere do anything stay in anything buy anything that you because we've worked for so long and so hard to get to this place we feel like we always deserve it and to an extent maybe you could make the argument that we do but when you have a kid they just grow up in that yep and so it's very hard so like do you leave your kids loads of money I think that at least I would try and bring up my kids to not have lots of money and it almost be a nice surprise if they ever found out it's a constantly complicated question yeah like so many different philosophies on this like Warren Buffett would be he's the seventh richest man in the world I think he'd be number one if he hadn't already have given away so much of his wealth anyway um and kind of the problem is like ultimately giving his kids that much money isn't necessarily going to change them because they've already grown up as warren buffett's kids like obviously he still lives in the same house in omaha and drives the same old car but surely someone that philosophy of how he how dad is he's having a mackie d's every day every day mackie donald's breakfast every day also donald trump yeah so what are we learning from that maybe a mcdonald's breakfast every day keeps you fighting fit yeah because trump's fucking old as well you wouldn't want to drive the old banger that warren buffett drives though yeah i've driven a honda jazz for my whole my whole life basically what are you driving now though well my i'm driving a tesla now yeah exactly i mean not for not for long warren buffett's in his 90s he's still driving the old banger i'm only you are in your 30s mate you do just for context yeah i had a honda jazz which i loved and everyone who knows me knows i loved it my favorite car in the world yeah i always said it was my favorite thing and then what happened is my my wife's father was like i want the honda jazz back and i was like well i don't want to be carless and i worked out that you can get a tesla for free on a business through corporate tax so i didn't buy a fancy car i'm just saying you know but i do drive a tesla at the moment yeah just to wrap that whole part if anyone's listening what he doesn't do is drive a honda jazz so you're no warren buffett no so do you see this tweet from elon musk he said if you exclude security guards and maintenance personnel the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours a week is close to about one percent so almost no one that works in the government actually shows up and does a full week yeah i mean that i mean that if that's a true stat i'm sure that probably probably is true but it doesn't i mean once you say it you're like probably yeah i mean that is yeah that hurts hearing that actually because like now that i've heard that i'm like god i reckon that is so true and i reckon in his companies as you know when he took over twitter he had that like unbelievable you know pulling apart of twitter yeah and he was like stay here if you want to work like 70 hour weeks yeah and everyone's like what a maniac and twitter has basically just become bigger and bigger and better yeah twitter is certainly the most viewed it's ever been i I think right now.

20:33And so it's interesting because if you took that approach to the government, I saw a clip by him the other day, which was like, we're not going to be horrible. We're not going to just sack people. We'll give people years of severance. But if you're not working hard for this country, you should be let go. And it's like, you can start to think, okay, I can understand if we had an unbelievably motivated, incredibly hardworking workforce in the government, that's only a good thing for all of us. So it is a hard one to get your head around. I think it's a tough love thing. At the end of the day, like greater good, Like you want people who are like super hardworking in your company and really care about the mission.

21:06And you want people that are super hardworking, care about your country, working for the government. Like in reality, that is an aspirational view. All of your smartest friends, hardest working friends, if you could get all of them to work for the government, you'd be like, wow, the government will be in a way better position. And I'm not saying necessarily as politicians, but like civil servants, right? I think it's one of the really interesting things about reform. But civil servants are amazing generally. Yeah, they are. But reform is really interesting because reform has the most momentum in British politics right now.

21:34And what they're basically doing, there's something like four MPs. Don't quote me. There's four or six MPs. There's a tiny amount of MPs and something like 15 employees. But almost all the employees are entrepreneurs. You know, and they have by far, they've just overtaken Labour and loads of constituencies and most like popular party or whatever. It was obviously polling. So what does it mean? But it's fascinating because they're building a new party from the ground up and lots of people in there are entrepreneurs. why because entrepreneurs kind of understand the full cycle of what it takes to build something with momentum employ people do it efficiently because money doesn't just grow on government trees all of that stuff right good example so then i guess cutting in here i don't know if you saw there was a tweet that was happening around the other day i saw uh about an article it was basically about um like how important is the ceo what should ceos be paid what is reasonable um so So, you know, is it ever justifiable to pay a CEO 100 million salary?

22:31I mean, even just the other day, by the way, talking about Elon Musk, the Delaware judge decided to rule against his big payout again. Yeah, ridiculous payout. Yeah, ridiculous payout, but it was going to be nothing. That was the game. And the shareholders voted for it. And a Delaware judge says no. Anyway, separate point. But why should a CEO be paid? I hate to be the one who always gives his answer to everything, but I think it stands true. like that is the most nuanced topic ever because i can have a ceo of a public company i can have a ceo founder and owner of their own company that they built from the ground up i can have a ceo of a company that doesn't make much profit and pays its staff badly but pays the boss really really well so there's so many different variations of that generally speaking i do think the ceo should be paid a lot of money yeah because a good ceo is accountable for the direction and the quality and the success of the company that's that's well and the hiring the people yeah and so you get all these like hilarious things that i see online like uh you know i'm working really really hard and i have to teach my boss how to use like powerpoint and it's like yeah but your boss isn't thinking about powerpoint your boss is thinking about how the company is successful and so i think it's such a nuance but i think good ceos of good companies who show good growth for those companies are beneficial to everyone and therefore should be paid a lot and if you're a founder owner CEO of your own company that's up to you yeah the world doesn't get to decide what you do in my opinion is 100 million too much well if the person owns the company they can do what they want I mean I fully agree I feel like for example if you as an individual and I'll take me for this example because I have to take a position on this right is if I have a company that makes 100 million profit a year and I own 100 % of the company it's within my right to pay myself 100 million yeah and i don't feel like i should have a cap on that i would have obviously paid all the tax on that yeah and therefore created all the tax and paid all the tax which is far more than an ordinary person would but it is my choice at that moment if i made 100 million to pay myself 100 million but i and so i don't know if we should be able to force change on that because otherwise what we're saying is you can be successful but not that successful you can be successful but don't name for the stars like i feel like we should encourage people to pursue greatness i agree and then also just like teach people good values if you're going to earn 100 million presumably you're going to spend it in quite a responsible way you weren't not all of it of course you'll do some stupid shit but like hopefully also give loads to charity and do good in the world i mean at a minimum you've probably paid like 20 to 30 million tax on that i mean at least at least in the uk 99 million yeah maybe 70 million if it's in the uk exactly it's also i say most ceos at the level we're talking about so paying yourself a hundred million dollar salary you know that is not the founder quite often at that point yeah you know founder yes has shares i wonder i wonder what that see i don't know that story i wonder what that ceo had to do to unlock that 100 billion as in because if you're ceo of a public company you have a board that makes those decisions and so normally your compensation is tied to if i get the company to x amount then i get the the salary and so in that regard if they if they had got it like elon musk's thing was about if i take the company to this absurd valuation that none of you believe i deserve x and if i don't i get zero yeah and everyone goes yes okay and he did yeah and so you go well he created all the value for everyone but it's it's it's when you see the company okay so the the flip side is and it's it's rarer and rarer and rarer but the flip side is obviously if you have a ceo that is paid an absurd amount while the staff are being underpaid or like low paid then it's fundamentally wrong and the ceo shouldn't get that much well that's a difficult challenge though because we're talking now here about 100 million dollars so at 100 million dollars for a ceo there is going to be no one even even if the best next paid staff member is on 5 million which would be very unlikely because that's pretty unheard of outside of ceo the disparity will be that so the typical disparity um is 196 to one pay ratio between ceos and the average worker so that's kind of the thing the storm that's caused this problem right is like you know if it should a ceo be paid 196 times what your average worker is paid my answer to that question is in the right companies yeah absolutely because they'll be delivering like a they'll be delivering all the value to employ all those people in the first place most of these examples was 196 per one pay ratio, you're going to be talking about companies with tens of thousands of employees whose job it is to not just maintain the rights and salaries for those tens of thousands, but to grow the company for more tens of thousands of employees.

27:18196 sounds a lot. Sounds terrible and it sounds dystopian, but the reality when you get down to it is so niche. Maybe there should be some levelling. There should be some appreciation and levelling and a more fair justification of the split of profits between staff members and what have you. but should the CEO be paid a hell of a lot more I think the answer is definitely yes yeah because if like especially if you're like you're doing a job that is like I'm going to do this physical thing or I'm going to do this you know computer thing that's pretty similar every single day I'm going to do it every single day versus the person who's probably doing the CEOs work insane hours travel non-stop sacrifice their life normally for the thing um and carry the weight of the company on their shoulders and get fired if the company doesn't grow and and this is a it's a narrative it's not 196 to one salary as you said earlier it'll be based on performance so that's like if they hit the numbers and the whole company hits the numbers which is it takes an outlier talent to achieve that across an organization i mean i suppose what we would want to see more of is like if every individual hit their individual target they had the ability to earn a lot more which never really happens in companies if you built secret leaders to 100 million dollar company i'd let you take 196 times more than me i mean jay's a commie if secretly this got to 100 million that's a big podcast yeah call her daddy was 68 million was that bought by amazon joe rogan was 250 million dollars yeah we ain't getting close to that kids no not yet but but does joe rogan deserve 196 times more money than Jamie, his producer.

28:53Yes, I'm afraid Jay, he does. So in conclusion, congratulations on Bitcoin 100. I'm so happy for you. I'm so happy for all of you. And let's see what happens with Trump. I'm feeling pretty, I'm pretty, pretty bullish on crypto. I'm feeling pretty bullish on what Trump is going to do for American society and therefore economy. And therefore, I think hopefully there'll be some trickle down economics as they say to britain i feel the world is is going to shit and is on fire but i also feel very confident about the commerciality and landscape for entrepreneurs and that is genuinely how i feel inside and so i don't know if i'm happy or sad about that but that's my take on things right now yeah my take on things is with all of these things you've got to give them time like i'm neither happy nor sad about trump i just think you've to give it time and last time i was just sad and i was wrong so i feel like this time i'm gonna see how it goes before i form a strong opinion anyway i'm dan i'm chris this has been secret leaders please don't forget to subscribe to our youtube and make sure you give us five stars on all the audio channels thank you so much have an amazing year