How to completely reinvent yourself in 2026

SPEAKER_01

When I was at the Tony Robbins event, he was like, you think I just woke up like this? I created this Tony Robbins mother f***er. I decided that that's who I needed to be, and then I created him. [SPEAKER_00] All right, I've got something that every woman listening to this is going to be saying to themselves, no duh, but I think it might be interesting to you. There's a chance that your wife has already indoctrinated you on this, but have you heard of this thing called Ballerina Farms? Why does that sound familiar? What is it? What's Ballerina Farms?

SPEAKER_00

Awesome. I love that you don't know this. All right, so check this out. So there's this woman named Hannah Nealman, and I started following her on Instagram along with 20 million other people. She's got 20 million followers across all of her platforms, so definitely was not an early adopter to this. [SPEAKER_01] You discovered her.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, you're welcome. But her content is these warmly lit videos where it's a little Martha Stewart-y, and it's her on her farm talking about how she's making sourdough bread, and she's getting her own milk from the cows and making different recipes and all this amazing stuff. And it's blown up. And it's this whole category of influencer called the trad wife. Have you heard that term, trad wife? [SPEAKER_01] I've definitely heard trad wife. Definitely seen the TikToks, which are people churning their own butter.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, so it's that. And frankly, I don't think even Hannah Nealman would call herself a trad wife. But she's got 20 million followers across all social media. And it's crazy because I think she has nine kids. And so part of her videos are her kids running around barefooted. And it's a very calming aesthetic. And I think she has a company. It's called Ballerina Farms, where they sell sourdough mix. They sell electro mix. They sell I think they sell meat. And at one point, they sold milk. And I think it does like $80 or $70 million a year in revenue. That was some estimates that I saw on some pretty reputable sites. And it's this phenomenon where now her store, she has a physical store as well as an online store, has become this destination that these young women are obsessing over. And I found this to be very fascinating for a few reasons. But she was just actually in the New York Times last week. And let me read it to you. Let me read one of the paragraphs. She said, you might recognize Midway, Utah as a storybook backdrop to Hallmark Christmas movies like Christmas on Duty. And if you're from Utah, you might recognize it as a village that looks like it's from the Swiss Alps. But if you're a woman with any degree of susceptibility to gigam aprons, hand-hem sourdough knives, milk cradling on a thick layer of cream, then you might recognize it as this place called Ballerina Farms. Ballerina Farms, which supplies a store in this town, is a working farm about a half hour's drive away from Midway. And it's between snow-frosted mountains and cow pastures of rural northern Utah. But it's also, Ballerina Farms, it's also a woman named Hannah Nealman, who's a Juilliard-trained ballerina who gave up dancing to become a farmer and mother of nine. And it goes on to explain the story of how this woman Hannah has blown up, but it comes with a lot of hate for what she's done. Because a trad wife, it comes with a lot of political baggage. It also comes with a lot of I don't know if you describe it as jealousy of, I'm a young woman and I want to live that life. Or if I don't, if I think that this is somehow anti-feminist, it comes with all this baggage. But regardless of what people think about it, it's pretty amazing that this phenomenon is happening. The article says that teen girls were lining up as if this was Disney World. And I think this is so fascinating. And I wanted to talk about this traditional life movement. But more so, what I want to talk about is how she has gone all in on a lifestyle. And I think that if you're creating a brand, particularly around content, I want to talk about the tactics that I think you can use around this, because I think it's super underrated.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] So when you say lifestyle, I almost think I'm not even sure if that's the right word. It's either the word I would have used is either aesthetic or escape. So I noticed this with my wife and my mom, they love to watch Bridgerton. And it's The Crown. And there's this fascination with this Royal England lifestyle or Bridgerton, which is a fantasized version of that. And I think that in the same way that guys get really into sci-fi or Game of Thrones or different gladiator stuff, there's the whole meme around guys fantasizing about the Roman Empire. I think that there's a handful of these escape aesthetics. And if you position your products as part of that escape aesthetic, I think that you differentiate from you could sell the same commodity product, but differentiate it. And what I would want to see is instead of people doing it for apparel, which is where this is most common, right? Apparel is the classic way that people do this. You'll find apparel brands that are golf brands, and people wear them who don't play golf. People buy running shoes, they don't run. And people will buy aesthetics that are summer in the Hamptons or whatever it is. And I think that it would be really interesting for people to do this with dental care, for people to do this with supplements, to do this in categories that you wouldn't expect it in. I think it would work. I think that if you created the same creatine, collagen type of supplement brand, but instead of just looking like every other supplement brand,

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] and people wear who don't play golf. [SPEAKER_01] People buy running shoes, they don't run. [SPEAKER_01] And people will buy aesthetics that are summer in the Hamptons or whatever it is. [SPEAKER_01] And I think that it would be really interesting for people to do this with dental care, for people to do this with supplements, to do this in categories that you wouldn't expect it in. [SPEAKER_01] I think it would work. [SPEAKER_01] I think that if you created the same whether it's creatine, collagen type of supplement brand, but instead of just looking like every other supplement brand, you look like you were part of a different aesthetic.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Or same thing on any sort of everyday staples, consumables. [SPEAKER_01] I wonder what would happen. [SPEAKER_01] I'm not sure it would work, but I really wonder what would happen. [SPEAKER_01] Milk. [SPEAKER_01] You take a milk, you create a milk brand, but the milk brand looks like way further down the spectrum of whether it's farm or even maybe a different, less expected direction. [SPEAKER_01] What do you think about that? Well, what I'm describing is when I say lifestyle, I'm putting an emphasis on life.

SPEAKER_00

And what I mean by that is, I have invested in a couple of companies as well as I'm just a fan of certain bits of content where the person goes all in and they live a certain life and they bring me along with them. And I find that fascinating. And this woman, Hannah gets a lot of hate because her husband, his father founded JetBlue. So he, if he's not a billionaire, he's whatever, he's up there.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] He's very rich. [SPEAKER_00] And so there's a lot of well, you can, it's easy for you, this and that, which I think is nonsense.

SPEAKER_00

But what I've noticed is that I've started following these people on Instagram. Like there's this one kid who you actually showed me. And he was like, the opening line for his Instagram was, I just graduated college and I had barely any money, but I've decided to move to rural Virginia and open up an Airbnb. And there's this stick where people actually live the life that they are wanting to live. And then they happen to sell a product that goes along with that life. And what I'm, the point I want to make is that I think that that is super underrated and not enough people do it. And brands could benefit from doing it a lot more than they currently are.

SPEAKER_00

So I used to work for this guy named Mike Wolf. Mike was the star of the show called American Pickers, which when it was on TV, or it still is on TV, but at its prime, it was like the second most popular show on TV. I think that they would get like six or seven million viewers a week. Whereas David Letterman was getting like one or two million. And the way that Mike got the show popular was he actually, and this was in early 2000s, this might've been in the late nineties where Mike's job was, he would drive around the country and go to old barns, find interesting stuff and meet the people and find the stories of the people and the objects that he was buying.

SPEAKER_00

And he would bring a literal camcorder. This was before smartphones. And it got picked up and it became this whole lifestyle. It was called picking. And there was this small niche that was quite large of people who identified with being pickers. They love collecting, antiquing. I also, I'm an investor of this thing called. All right. So this episode is all about excellence. A while back, I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life. And the team at HubSpot turned it into a 30 day operating system that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that took me 10 years to figure out and shows how exactly I use them day to day.

SPEAKER_00

These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So if you want to build a good life, scan the QR code or click the link in the description. Now let's get back to the show. There's this guy named Brent. Brent was partners with Ryan Holiday. And do you remember years ago, I think in 2014 or 2013, there was an old abandoned mine town that was for sale for like $2 million. It was 500 acres. You remember that? [SPEAKER_01] In California or Utah? Where is it? California. And then the pandemic hit and Brent, who is kind of the main guy leading the charge, he was like, screw it. I'm going to go live in that town. And now he has a YouTube channel with millions of followers.

SPEAKER_00

And if you go to YouTube and type in ghost town living, every single one of his videos gets a million views. It's crazy. And he's documenting how he's turning this town into a hotel. And it's been a huge pain in the butt because that's a lot more work than making a cast iron skillet to sell. But it's just so fascinating to me because I think that going all in on something with your life is more fun and will increase the likelihood that you will succeed. And I think that there's a framework behind it. I think that you have to find a thing that sings to you that you're interested in. So the easiest one.

SPEAKER_00

So basically the moment you start typing on a computer, this concept gets kind of lame. And so this mostly only works for products where the creating of the thing is the content. And easy ones are farming or fitness. Those are the easiest ones. So for example, I worked in finance or I worked in tech and I said, screw it all.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] And I think that there's a framework behind it. [SPEAKER_00] I think that you have to find a thing that sings to you that you're interested in. [SPEAKER_00] So the easiest one. [SPEAKER_00] So the moment you start typing on a computer, by the way, this concept gets lame. [SPEAKER_00] And so this mostly only works for products where the creating of the thing is the content. [SPEAKER_00] And easy ones are farming or fitness. [SPEAKER_00] Those are the easiest ones. [SPEAKER_00] So for example, I worked in finance or I worked in tech and I said, screw it all. [SPEAKER_00] I'm moving to a farm because I want to eat better meat.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] Or I want to drink better milk. [SPEAKER_00] Or I want to make some supplement or I think collagen. [SPEAKER_00] What's the breast milk that comes out right when the baby's born? [SPEAKER_00] Colostrum. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah. [SPEAKER_00] There's all the rage where it's this. [SPEAKER_00] There's a story arc of I was this person. [SPEAKER_00] I want to become this person. [SPEAKER_00] Come along this journey. [SPEAKER_00] And for the few of you who truly are bought into this, I happen to have a product that you can buy. [SPEAKER_00] But the making of the product needs to be the content. This is timely because the World Cup has gone on.

SPEAKER_01

Have you ever seen World Cup Dad? So there's this guy, Zach Duke, and he posts on TikTok one day that he's, I think he's 34, 35 years old. He's like, I'm a 35 year old dad who's never played soccer and I'm training to be on the World Cup team. And he got a dad bod. He's got a little bit of a gut. And he, but he's definitely athletic at the same time. And so he has this weird immediate visual hook of this unathletic looking guy, but he's doing pretty athletic looking things. And he says he's never played soccer and that he's going to make the World Cup. What does that mean? And he went mega viral.

SPEAKER_01

So it was, can a dad who's never played soccer make it to the 2026 World Cup? And he started training hard every day. He would post everything that he's doing. And he would not say, I want to see what can happen. He was, I will make it. It was very manifestation oriented. I'm doing this. And so the haters loved it in the comments, but then there were some people who were inspired by what he was doing. Hey, that's actually not bad. He actually is looking way more fit.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] He actually does have pretty good touch. [SPEAKER_01] He's not bad. [SPEAKER_01] And so he started doing this and he actually made it pretty far. [SPEAKER_01] So he got in legitimately great shape. [SPEAKER_01] If you go look at his videos, we put them on the screen here. [SPEAKER_01] He got really pretty good at soccer. [SPEAKER_01] For a guy who never touched a soccer ball, and then he started getting all these brand deals and opportunities to play on these small three on three, seven on seven, the Adidas cup. [SPEAKER_01] And so all this amazing stuff happened. [SPEAKER_01] No, he didn't make it onto the U.S. national team. But you don't have to.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] He trained, he transformed his life. [SPEAKER_01] You don't have to. I bet his videos get more views than eight of the 11 guys on those starting team on the actual World Cup team. [SPEAKER_01] And so in a way he did, yes, he didn't make it, make it, but man, that's pretty impressive how far he got. [SPEAKER_01] This guy changed his own life with what I call man on a mission content. [SPEAKER_01] So I have these different content buckets in my head. [SPEAKER_01] One is called man on a mission. [SPEAKER_01] Another one is the escape lifestyle where you say, this is how I live. [SPEAKER_01] I'm just the type of person who does this.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] There's this woman who goes viral on Twitter because she just walks every day and eats natural food. [SPEAKER_01] So she'll just post a tweet. [SPEAKER_01] I think we talked about her before. [SPEAKER_01] She posts a tweet and the tweets basically, walked six and a half miles and ate a chocolate cake. [SPEAKER_01] And it'll just be pictures of the scenery where she walked and a giant chocolate cake that looks really great. [SPEAKER_01] It'll have 10,000 likes on that one picture. [SPEAKER_01] And she just posts the same thing every day. [SPEAKER_01] That's the whole content stick. [SPEAKER_01] I think it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00

This idea of you can make this decision to become this person. You don't have to be the person at first. So for example, one of the reasons I love the entrepreneur Ralph Lauren is because he had this great line where he was, I'm a Jewish guy from New York city. And yet I sell Western wear. Sometimes people would criticize me, but the fact is, I would want to be more brave. And so I would sometimes wear vintage military gear, or I would want to be a little more adventurous.

SPEAKER_00

So for example, one of the reasons I love the man, the entrepreneur, Ralph Lauren, is because he had this great line where he was like, some people, he's like, I'm a Jewish guy from New York city. And yet I sell Western wear. Sometimes people would criticize me, but the fact is, I would want to be more brave. And so I would sometimes wear vintage military gear, or I would want to be a little more adventurous. And I would dress like a cowboy. And you could tease me for cosplaying. But the fact is, I would eventually go on a farm and I would dress like this. And you become this thing. I make a decision to become a little bit of a farmer and I own a ranch. Now the point that I want to make to the listener is, and also to myself, I'm learning about this as well. And I'm being inspired by it is you can just change who you are publicly and you don't need to start at all. In fact, probably it's a better story to start at a horrible place where you're nothing like the person who you want to be or the aesthetic that you want to be. And I just think that it's more fun to do it and it will increase the odds that you will succeed. There's this guy who I'm going to talk with on Thursday. His name's Mark O'Brien. So check this guy out. So his old photos, when I used to look at him, he was a normal looking real estate guy in New York city and he wore a suit.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] But he's got AI. He looks like AI.

SPEAKER_00

No, but this guy has a really striking look. And now on all of his more recent photos, he's wearing a white t-shirt and he's doing manly stuff, like restoring townhomes and his whole shtick, which from an outside, I'm going to talk to him on Thursday. So I'll get a better sense of it is he finds old brownstones in Brooklyn. And you literally will see him bring a sledgehammer and start renovating it, breaking the stuff and explaining the story behind it. And this guy, if you look at his old photos, was wearing a suit and he just looked like this normal real estate guy. And he leaned into this lifestyle to where now I think he actually is that person. And I've been enamored by following his journey. And I'm just realizing how powerful it is. There's this other company called, I think it's called Maui Nui. They make beef jerky made out of venison in Maui. You know what I'm talking about?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

And if you go to their Instagram handle, it doesn't say anything about how they're actually making the stuff or how, for hunters and things like that, you could actually show them doing the hunt, setting it up and how they're doing it ethically and why this is better. I just don't think that there's enough brands who are doing a good enough job of bringing you along because it's scary. It seems stupid at first. You might look dumb. And I just think that it's far more compelling and more people should do it. I think you can figure out what are the innate feelings that we all have right now. I think there's this innate feeling. I think there's categories of cleanliness, both in terms of the food that you eat, but your home of feeling clean and feeling tidy. I think there's this whole category of how do you care and protect your children the best. I think there's another category of people who want to master something and be craftsmen and be great at stuff. And I just think there's this massive opportunity. It's always existed though, to look at what popular shows and content existed in the 90s and 2000s and just redo that with your phone and bring people along with you. You could be the Anthony Bourdain where you look at restaurants and you could start selling products. And I just think that people will often say, well, there's so many other people doing this. Well, there's always room for more. There's always room for better. And it's just an underrated tool to go all in on a lifestyle and then eventually sell a product.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Yeah. On one hand, what you're saying sounds like you're saying there's this great opportunity, which I think makes most people think there's this new opportunity. No, it's not new. And I think in this situation, what you're saying is not new. It's being done. It's been done. And it will always be done. And what you're saying is it can still be done. And in some ways it's easier because it's easier than ever to create.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] It's easier than ever to be discovered. And it's also harder than ever because it's more competitive, right? And you get to choose which part of that narrative you're going to feed your energy into. I have a couple of examples that work here. First, I'm just going to read you from Robert Green, who came on the podcast. Really interesting guy. He wrote 48 Laws of Power. Law number 25, recreate yourself. It says, That's exactly what we're talking about here. [SPEAKER_01] Exactly. It's the power to reinvent yourself, to dramatically do it, and to never bore the audience.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Have you ever heard of a guy named Anthony? I think his name is Anthony Maharovic. You know this guy? No. No. What's he do? [SPEAKER_01] First, I'm just going to read you from Robert Green, who came on the podcast. [SPEAKER_01] Really interesting guy. [SPEAKER_01] He wrote 48 Laws of Power. [SPEAKER_01] Law number 25, recreate yourself. [SPEAKER_01] It says, that's exactly what we're talking about here. [SPEAKER_01] Exactly. It's the power to reinvent yourself, to dramatically do it, and to never bore the audience. [SPEAKER_01] Have you ever heard of a guy named Anthony? [SPEAKER_01] I think his name is Anthony Maharovic. [SPEAKER_01] You know this guy?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] No. No. What's he do? Well, Anthony J. Maharovic, born into a family that had a lot of trouble, blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_01] He ended up reinventing himself as a guy you might know named Tony Robbins. [SPEAKER_01] Oh. [SPEAKER_01] And so that's Tony Robbins' birth name. [SPEAKER_01] And when I was at the Tony Robbins event many years ago, 10 years ago maybe, he tells a story where it was part of the Q&A. [SPEAKER_01] It wasn't really part of his script. [SPEAKER_01] He was like, you think I just woke up like this? [SPEAKER_01] You think I was just born like this? [SPEAKER_01] You think I just stood up on a stage and suddenly talked like this?

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[SPEAKER_01] You think I looked like this? [SPEAKER_01] You think I had the power to compel people like this? [SPEAKER_01] And he just goes, you think I woke up with discipline? [SPEAKER_01] I just one day had discipline suddenly. [SPEAKER_01] And he was like, no. [SPEAKER_01] And he goes, I created this Tony Robbins motherfucker. [SPEAKER_01] He goes, I created him. [SPEAKER_01] I decided that that's who I needed to be. [SPEAKER_01] And then I created him. [SPEAKER_01] And he goes, and now it seems like, yeah, that's just how it is.

SPEAKER_01

But he goes, you have to decide for yourself who you are going to make yourself into. And I just remember feeling like that was just a very powerful way of saying it.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] There's no accident. [SPEAKER_01] The bitter and the haters will always say, it's always luck. [SPEAKER_01] You were given something. [SPEAKER_01] It was, yeah, it's easy for you to say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. [SPEAKER_01] It's easy for you to say that. [SPEAKER_01] It's actually incredibly hard to do what I've done. [SPEAKER_01] And I think that people should take pleasure in the fact that you can today on the drop of a hat. [SPEAKER_01] You could right now, you could be listening to this podcast right now. [SPEAKER_01] You could pause it. [SPEAKER_01] You could open up your Apple Notes app.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] And you could literally write down, yesterday I was this and today I'm this. [SPEAKER_01] And you could start to reinvent yourself starting in any given moment. [SPEAKER_01] There's incredible power once you realize that. [SPEAKER_01] And I think there's a lot of power by labeling yourself. So you wake up the next day. I remember when I was mildly fit and I woke up the next day and I was, I'm an athlete. And I used to joke with you. But it wasn't a joke. I was, I'm a fitness influencer now. You said it with a smile, but you weren't joking. [SPEAKER_01] No, I was. And I think that you can tease me and make fun of me all you want. And I think I deserve it.

SPEAKER_00

But there is power to labeling yourself as something. And you are that, not I'm working to become this. There's this old school book. [SPEAKER_01] It's impossible to read. [SPEAKER_01] It's so dense at this point. [SPEAKER_01] But the title itself actually tells you everything you need to know. [SPEAKER_01] It's called Your Word is Your Wand. [SPEAKER_01] I think it's by Florence Scovel. [SPEAKER_01] That's a great title. And the basic idea is that the words that come out of your mouth are spells that you cast. [SPEAKER_01] You cast on yourself. [SPEAKER_01] You put yourself in a trance as well as others around you.

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[SPEAKER_01] And so be very careful the words that come out of your mouth. [SPEAKER_01] My trainer always says this. [SPEAKER_01] He goes, when I say something differently than I used to say it, one day I'm going to versus I am or I do or I haven't done this yet. [SPEAKER_01] The word yet is actually a very powerful word. [SPEAKER_01] It implies that it is inevitable. [SPEAKER_01] For example, my company that I named 10 plus years ago, before I had anybody, before I made my first million, my LLC was called Inevitable Outcomes.

SPEAKER_01

And I basically thought it was an inevitable outcome that I will be successful. And I'm going to invest in other things that I view to be inevitable as well, that they will be successful. My trainer made this shirt that said I am. And it said the two most important words in the English language are I am. Because whatever comes after it defines your destiny, decides your fate. Just take it as a test. Just try to riff off the top of your head. I'm the kind of guy who, and what comes out after that? Is it, I'm the kind of guy who when things get tough, I fold. And then you can define whatever you say is true, right? It will be true. It will always be true.

SPEAKER_01

And so I think one of my superpowers is that I'm a pretty analytical guy by nature, by training. And if you can marry that with a little bit of the soft stuff, right? Not just EQ of how you deal with people, but the manifestation world that sounds total hocus pocus. But when you start to realize the way you think will shape the actions you take, right? What you believe will change what you do. And what you do changes your results. Once you realize that, you will approach things somewhat differently. I think being willing to go Eastern Western in that way, I think it can take you very far.

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My most annoying trait, according to my wife and probably everyone who knows me, is I'm a stickler for words. [SPEAKER_00] So when people say, well, it's just semantics. [SPEAKER_00] I'm, yeah, it is just semantics. [SPEAKER_00] And it's really important. [SPEAKER_00] We are purposely using certain words. [SPEAKER_00] So for example, I'll say to someone, what do you think about this? [SPEAKER_00] I'll say, I don't know. [SPEAKER_00] It's, well, I didn't ask what you know. very far. My most annoying trait, according to my wife and probably everyone who knows me, is I'm a stickler for words.

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[SPEAKER_00] So when people say it's just semantics, I'm like, yeah, it is just semantics, and it's really important. We are purposely using certain words. So for example, I'll say to someone, well, what do you think about this? I'll say, I don't know. It's like, well, I didn't ask what you know. I said, what do you think? So what's the point of words? What's the point of words if we're not going to use the right words?

SPEAKER_01

That's right. I remember being at Twitch after we got acquired and on the ninth floor at Twitch was the main meeting room. And that's where the CEO, Emmett, would sit and the COO at the time, Sarah, she would sit. They'd sit at the head of the table. And then every 30 to 45 minutes, a new team would come in. So then the trust and safety team comes in, the growth team comes in, the mobile team comes in, the international team comes in. And they basically come and they just dump their problems on the table. And then the CEO and the COO would try to help them work through it. And I remember sitting at a bunch of these tense meetings. And I thought at the beginning, I thought, this Emmett guy's a genius, but he's an idiot. He's really smart, but he gets focused. He gets hung up on the dumbest things because he would always get hung up on words. And you could tell that the teams hated it, that he would get into these Socratic debates about things. And he would just be debating the team endlessly about the most minor sounding things. And over time, I came to appreciate that. Well, there were some times that he took it too far. There's a cost to doing it, but there was a great benefit in doing it too. I remember in one meeting, he was talking to the team that decides the homepage and they said something, oh yeah, but that's algorithmic versus editorial. And he just got hung up on it. So he's like, what does editorial mean? And then they laughed and he's like, no, what do you mean when you say the word editorial? And they're like, well, there's editors who pick it. So it's editorial. He goes, and who are these editors and how do they pick it? And he didn't—it's not like he had some destination in mind that he was leading them into some trap. He literally wanted to understand the specific meaning of the words that were coming out of their mouth and get a shared understanding of what each of the words means. Because in his view, we will never get to the right solution if you say words that mean one thing and I say those same words and they mean another thing, we're screwed. And so he would always go to these painstaking semantical debates with people that for a while seemed like, are we just going in circles here? Does this really matter? And you know, there was a bit of a method to his madness that you saw play out, maybe not in that first meeting, but three weeks from then or four weeks from then or seven weeks from then when the teams then realized they had to be really precise in their language and they had to really know the details of their stuff because it would be tested. And even just knowing that he might ask made sure that they came in knowing everything about what they were going to say and being way more precise about their thinking, their level of clarity on their thinking.

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[SPEAKER_00] My sophomore year of high school, we had to take a speech class. That was the best class I've ever taken in my life. And the best lesson that they taught us was you must always define your terms. And I deeply believe that to be true for anything that you're discussing, you have to deeply define your terms. The downside of that is that you look like an asshole and it's pretty annoying. It is quite annoying when we do this, where someone said something and you're like, what do you mean? And they'll say it again. It's like, those words don't make sense to me. Can you use other words? And what you find is that if they have unclear words, they have unclear thinking. And so it becomes really obnoxious and annoying, but I do think it's really powerful. I just saw this other story. It was on 60 Minutes last night or the week before. You've probably never heard of this. It's called the Mountain Pass Mine. And the story on 60 Minutes was basically these two hedge fund guys. And I think they were mildly successful, but they somehow raised money. And I think they raised $20 million. And they bought a mine in, I think at the border of Nevada and California. And now if you Google Mountain Pass Mine, I think the company name is called MP Materials Corp. It's a $10 billion publicly traded company. And the whole story, which was really cool, and they had to use the platform of 60 Minutes as opposed to their own. And I think they should use their own. It was two hedge fund guys who knew nothing about nothing, are now wearing hard hats, driving an F-150, and they're in the thick of it. They're literally learning this as they go, although it's been 10 years now, so they probably have learned a lot. But they're these yuppies who knew nothing about blue collar work. Now they're living that life and it's paying off. And I heard this story and I'm so in. I'm so in on a mine.

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Well, I've heard of MP Materials. I didn't know the backstory of Mountain Pass Mine. How have you heard of that? [SPEAKER_00] Hedge fund guys. Well, it went public. It was a SPAC, right? It was a Chamath SPAC, I'm pretty sure, or something. [SPEAKER_00] He did it? Either he did it or he did the pipe or something. [SPEAKER_00] Now they're living that life and it's paying off. [SPEAKER_00] And I heard this story and I'm so in. [SPEAKER_00] I'm so in on a mine. [SPEAKER_00] Well, I've heard of MP Materials. I didn't know the backstory of Mountain Pass Mine. How have you heard of that? [SPEAKER_00] Hedge fund guys. [SPEAKER_00] Well, it went public. It was a SPAC, right?

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It was a Chamath SPAC, I'm pretty sure, or something like that. He did it? [SPEAKER_00] Either he did it or he did the pipe or something like that. I'd heard of it at that point. It was a rare earth company. And I was, what are rare earths anyways? And how does this work? So yeah, I've looked at it, just in passing that way. But I didn't know the backstory. Another World Cup thing that's going on right now, you've probably seen this, is all of the international tourists that are coming to America for the World Cup and discovering America for the first time. And it's when a friend goes into town and suddenly you're, okay, yeah, let's go to Alcatraz.

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And you've been living here for five years. You've never been to Alcatraz.

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[SPEAKER_01] But because somebody's visiting, you suddenly will go that week.

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Right now on social media, there's a whole swath of people. Have you seen these that are going viral? So Freddie LA is one of them. This guy comes to America for the World Cup and he's touring through America, touring like you did when you rode your motorcycle around America. And he's also this one, for example. We found another surreal place on our way. I know some people will say I'm too positive about everything, but this place is crazy. And he's at an out, a Bass Pro Shop, Outdoor World. And it's pictures of there's the enormity of this place. This giant fish tank. He's there's a shooting range inside the store. He's they're literally selling rifles in here.

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And so he's been stopping at Bucky's. And he's been stopping at we found this river in Chattanooga and we're in a tube. And the guy said this. And at the airport, we asked this. And the guy just gave us a ride. It was incredible. And so he's when you have kids and you get to rediscover the world again, because your kids are discovering the world. And it's yeah, you know what? But if you take a straw and you squish the paper down and then you drop a piece of, drop of water on it, it expands a snake. And you're and their mind is blown. And you remember when your mind was blown when you were seven and that happened, but you took it for granted,

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forgot about it and just throw away all your straw paper now. And so this guy, there's this group of guys on Twitter and Instagram that are coming to America that are posting all these things that are run-of-the-mill American things, but they're amazed by it.

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[SPEAKER_01] And it totally makes you proud to be an American [SPEAKER_01] and rediscover yeah, do you know what? [SPEAKER_01] America's pretty awesome, actually. [SPEAKER_01] And we have these amazing things. [SPEAKER_01] And actually, have you guys been to Waffle House? [SPEAKER_01] I can't wait for Freddie to go to Waffle House, right? [SPEAKER_01] You want him to go to the next part of real America. [SPEAKER_01] It's more entertaining than the World Cup to me. [SPEAKER_01] Look at the title. German tourist Freddie is going viral as he visits Louisiana on the way to World Cup. Yeah, that's awesome. Exactly. [SPEAKER_01] There's this great book. I'm sharing it now.

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I don't know how to pronounce their name, but it's Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip. I read this a few years ago. It's so good. And it has very few reviews. On Amazon, it has 40 reviews. And a paperback copy is $400. And so in 1935, during the era of Soviet communist Russia, two Russians came over and they took a road trip throughout America and they described what they're seeing. And this book is one of my favorites. It's so good to hear the history of America from people and what they're seeing. And it's very similar to what people would experience now. It's huge. And everything's big. And there's processed food everywhere. It's funny.

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The same stuff in 1935, people would say today. Yeah, I'm into this. [SPEAKER_01] So let me show you this one. [SPEAKER_01] So this is this Japanese guy. [SPEAKER_01] And he goes, USA, a Mexican restaurant. [SPEAKER_01] We have not ordered anything yet. [SPEAKER_01] And yet the food is already arriving. [SPEAKER_01] Chips, salsa, unrequested, free.

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I stopped the waiter. We have not earned these.

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[SPEAKER_01] They just come with a table. [SPEAKER_01] In my land, hospitality is a debt. [SPEAKER_01] Every gift creates an obligation. [SPEAKER_01] Wade carefully. [SPEAKER_01] Return to the proper season with an interest of feeling. [SPEAKER_01] Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven [SPEAKER_01] you could pay for dinner. [SPEAKER_01] It is not an appetizer. [SPEAKER_01] It is a declaration. [SPEAKER_01] We trust you. [SPEAKER_01] Eat. [SPEAKER_01] I eat with the gravity the moment deserved. [SPEAKER_01] And then I must report calmly. [SPEAKER_01] This basket is empty. [SPEAKER_01] A new one appears. [SPEAKER_01] Did we refill? [SPEAKER_01] It's bottomless.

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[SPEAKER_01] Bottomless. [SPEAKER_01] They have wells of salsa. [SPEAKER_01] Every gift creates an obligation. [SPEAKER_01] Wade carefully. [SPEAKER_01] Return to the proper season with an interest of feeling. [SPEAKER_01] Here, the gift arrives before you have even proven [SPEAKER_01] you could pay for dinner. [SPEAKER_01] It is not an appetizer.

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It is a declaration.

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[SPEAKER_01] We trust you. [SPEAKER_01] Eat. [SPEAKER_01] I eat with the gravity the moment deserved. [SPEAKER_01] And then I must report calmly. [SPEAKER_01] This basket is empty. [SPEAKER_01] A new one appears. [SPEAKER_01] Did we refill? [SPEAKER_01] It's bottomless. [SPEAKER_01] Bottomless. [SPEAKER_01] They have wells of salsa. [SPEAKER_01] The supply lines of this nation are beyond anything [SPEAKER_01] my ancestors imagined. [SPEAKER_01] My friend warned me. [SPEAKER_01] Don't fill up on chips, dude. [SPEAKER_01] Too late. [SPEAKER_01] I had accepted three baskets. [SPEAKER_01] Honor demanded each one be finished. [SPEAKER_01] An unfinished gift is an insult.

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[SPEAKER_01] By the time my actual food arrived, [SPEAKER_01] I was a ruined man. [SPEAKER_01] I was not hungry. [SPEAKER_01] I was not uncomfortable. [SPEAKER_01] I had been defeated by courtesy. [SPEAKER_01] Generosity arrives before the request can be repaid. [SPEAKER_01] It can only be survived. [SPEAKER_01] I know the rule now. [SPEAKER_01] I made peace with my basket. [SPEAKER_01] One basket. [SPEAKER_01] Two at most. [SPEAKER_01] Who am I deceiving? [SPEAKER_01] There's no number of baskets I refuse. [SPEAKER_01] The trust of a nation is in that salsa.

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And I intend to honor all of it. That's beautiful. [SPEAKER_00] There's no way that's real. [SPEAKER_00] Is that real? [SPEAKER_00] I don't think it's real, but it's hilarious. So I don't know if it's real or not. But have you seen all the Japanese lore that's just being honored in America for the World Cup?

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[SPEAKER_01] Have you seen what's going on?

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[SPEAKER_00] No, man. [SPEAKER_00] You're World Cup deep. [SPEAKER_00] I'm in New York City. [SPEAKER_00] I just got done burning down a bus because of the Knicks. It's like one time I went to this basketball game, and I was in the owner's suite, and there was just all these Instagram models there. And they all had their phones out, and I was like, wow, they're so into capturing the second quarter of this game. And I realized all the phones were pointed at them,

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[SPEAKER_01] not at the game.

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And that's me with the World Cup right now. I'm the model. Where I don't watch the game. I only watch the crowd.

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[SPEAKER_01] And there's this incredible thing with the Japanese crowd [SPEAKER_01] where they're all waving these blue, [SPEAKER_01] well, it looks like blue. Is it flags?

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What is that? No, it's a trash bag. And so they use trash bags to cheer at the game. It's their version of carrying a sign or waving a foam finger or a flag. And they were like, why are they all waving trash bags? Like, oh, because then we can cheer. It makes sound. It has a color. But then we can just clean up after ourselves on the way out. And they clean up their whole section using the trash bags at the end. And they showed the locker room of the Japanese national team. And every single item was folded properly in the middle. The locker room is pristine. And that's how the Japanese soccer team is leaving the locker rooms.

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And I'm like, God, if Japan couldn't go any higher on my list of incredible cultures and people that you have to see it to believe it. They're just, the stock continues to go up. It's untethered with reality. [SPEAKER_00] Before UFC was a thing, it was called Strikeforce. [SPEAKER_00] And it was a Japanese fighting league or whatever. [SPEAKER_00] And they're the best videos to watch [SPEAKER_00] because in the crowd, they're silent. [SPEAKER_00] And then you hear the punches. [SPEAKER_00] And it's really hard to watch almost. [SPEAKER_00] And they only cheer on the epic big punches. [SPEAKER_00] And it's very strange and awesome at the same time.

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[SPEAKER_00] You know, I think a guy who we both admire, [SPEAKER_00] I think he's one of your heroes, definitely one of mine, [SPEAKER_00] is Jesse Itzler. [SPEAKER_00] And it's this idea of buying into the lifestyle. [SPEAKER_00] And I think that in particular right now,

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we're in this phase where people are trying to balance how do I work hard in my job? And particularly women. How do I work hard in my job and be a good mother? But same thing for fathers. How do I work hard and be a family person

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[SPEAKER_00] while also being fit? I see everyone.

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Did you see Jesse's story on Instagram the other day? [SPEAKER_01] I just know that right now. He's like Uncle Rico. Jesse wrote the song for Go New York Knicks. You know, Go New York.

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[SPEAKER_00] And whenever the Knicks start playing again, [SPEAKER_00] that's his story that it brings up. [SPEAKER_00] And I love it. [SPEAKER_00] I'm not sick of it. [SPEAKER_00] But so he was at Madison Square Garden when they won, I think, game four maybe.

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[SPEAKER_01] And he leaves.

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And he sees this guy who's giving rickshaw rides or whatever. What do they call it in New York? Where it's like the guy's biking and you sit in the carriage behind it, whatever that's called. So he hops in, as billionaires do. And he was like, and that guy's playing the Go New York, Go New York, Go. And he's like, that's my song. And the guy's like, no. And he's like, what's your name? And he looks it up. He's like, that's your song. And he's like, I got to give you a ride around town. So he just rode around all of New York with this guy. And he just posted it. And there's a small set of people that I feel like they don't have any more time than the rest of us.

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And he was like, and that guy's playing the Go New York, Go New York, Go. And he's like, that's my song. And the guy's like, no. And he's like, what's your name? And he looks it up. He's like, that's your song. And he's like, I got to give you a ride around town. So he just rode around all of New York with this guy. And he just posted it. And there's a small set of people that I feel don't have any more time than the rest of us. But they seem to be getting a lot more out of their time. And there's something to be studied and learned. And there's a reason that I get interested in these folks. Nick Gray is one of these people. I think Jesse's one of these people.

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There's a handful of these people that seem to go with whatever way the ball of life is bouncing, they seem to just experience more. And have a tap dancing through life sort of experience.

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[SPEAKER_01] Even when they do hard things, it just seems enjoyable in this way because they're surrendered into it. [SPEAKER_01] I don't know. [SPEAKER_01] I don't know what it is. [SPEAKER_01] But that's something I think the art of living well is not well understood. [SPEAKER_01] And for me, it's a bit of a mission to understand what gets more out of the hours rather than always feeling like if only I had more time, then I'd get more. [SPEAKER_01] And it's actually, I think, bullshit. [SPEAKER_01] I think, A, you're wasting a ton of time either doing fake busy work or just on social media.

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[SPEAKER_01] And two, even if I gave you an extra four hours, I don't think you'd get any more out of life. [SPEAKER_01] I think you'd just fill it with more of the same, more of the same feelings you currently are having, whether they're stress or anxiety or any of the others. I've been meeting these people. So I live in a building in Manhattan. And there's rich people and there's poor people in this building. And I really like that.

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[SPEAKER_00] And we were contemplating getting a big place, we got a great place. [SPEAKER_00] But we were like, oh, should we get more space for more kids and all this stuff? [SPEAKER_00] And then I met this family that has a family of four, husband and wife and two girls, twins. [SPEAKER_00] And the girls are now 18 or 19 or something like that. [SPEAKER_00] And they've lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for 30 years. [SPEAKER_00] So the mom and dad lived there. [SPEAKER_00] And I was like, how do you guys, what's your sleeping arrangement? [SPEAKER_00] And they're like, well, mom and dad get the bedroom.

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[SPEAKER_00] And we just have this Murphy bed that we sleep in the living room. [SPEAKER_00] And part of me was like, obviously, ooh, I don't want that. [SPEAKER_00] But then the other part, they start telling me these stories. [SPEAKER_00] And I actually go to their apartment and we all hang out. [SPEAKER_00] And I'm like, there's a lot of inconveniences here. [SPEAKER_00] But there's a lot of conveniences here at the same time, which is you guys are all together at the same time. [SPEAKER_00] And it's kind of nice. [SPEAKER_00] And I think that we are looking at this other place. [SPEAKER_00] And I'm like, there's two living rooms. [SPEAKER_00] Why?

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[SPEAKER_00] I don't want two living rooms. [SPEAKER_00] I want one living room. [SPEAKER_00] I want everyone to be in the same room at the same time all the time. [SPEAKER_00] And I think that there is this inherent want that many of us have, myself included, of more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger. [SPEAKER_00] And I just don't think that that is oftentimes the answer to creating a memorable life. [SPEAKER_00] There's an amazing post that's kind of gone a little bit viral. You might have read it. By Julie. Yeah. I read your comment on it. [SPEAKER_00] So the blog post is called, yeah, Julie. The blog post is called, to all the folks who are about to be rich.

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And it was released the day before the SpaceX IPO. And she basically starts with, you did it. Congrats. All the hard work, blah, blah, blah, led you to this day. Your stock is about to be liquid. You're about to be rich. And she, I think when she was at Facebook, when Facebook IPO'd. And so she was kind of telling a bit like, almost like your older sibling, hey, you're going to go to college. Guess what? It's going to be crazy. And here's some things that are going to happen. And so she's almost describing what happens from here. And there were so many incredible one-liners in this.

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And part of it is scientific studies say that, blah, blah, blah, after one year, lottery winners default to the same happiness that they were before. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00] And so there's one line I love. She talked about the three groups of people from when she saw the Facebook thing. Some of my former colleagues slipped away from tech, like aquarium fish being flushed out into the ocean, off to find their true homes.

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[SPEAKER_01] Engineers who decided they're not going to code anymore. [SPEAKER_01] I saw people become chefs, hoteliers, artists, therapists, writers, teachers, parents. [SPEAKER_01] These groups always fascinated me because I was watching some sort of Cinderella transformation. [SPEAKER_01] Who would you bloom into once you were given the gift of true freedom? [SPEAKER_01] So that's group one. [SPEAKER_01] She calls the fish. [SPEAKER_01] And then group two, she calls the leisure class, which is basically people who say, oh, I'm going to pursue this lifestyle of leisure.

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[SPEAKER_01] So I'm going to travel to all these wonderful places, Michelin star restaurants, have a sleek new home with all the fancy furniture. [SPEAKER_01] Forget Ikea. [SPEAKER_01] I'm going to do the Disneyland VIP tour, Coachella. [SPEAKER_01] I'm going to buy a $500 hoodie from Japan. [SPEAKER_01] And then she's like, and then there's the others who continued on the same track in tech. [SPEAKER_01] They become VCs or founders and they continue to march to try to get a higher high for the next few years. [SPEAKER_01] So that's group one. [SPEAKER_01] She calls the fish.

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[SPEAKER_01] And then group two, she calls the leisure class, which is people who say, oh, I'm going to pursue this lifestyle of leisure. [SPEAKER_01] So I'm going to travel to all these wonderful places, Michelin star restaurants, have a sleek new home with all the fancy furniture. [SPEAKER_01] Forget, forget Ikea. [SPEAKER_01] I'm going to do the Disneyland VIP tour, Coachella. [SPEAKER_01] I'm going to buy a $500 hoodie from Japan. [SPEAKER_01] And then she's like, and then there's the others who continued on the same track in tech. [SPEAKER_01] They become VCs or founders and they continue to march to try to get a higher high for the next few years.

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[SPEAKER_01] They're chasing the thrill of the climb. [SPEAKER_01] And she's not really saying one is better than the other, but she does have her own take. [SPEAKER_01] But she says, I saw it play out in all three groups. [SPEAKER_01] I know people for whom the money simply let them check off some goals, like paying off their parents' house or having enough for retirement. [SPEAKER_01] Maybe they upgrade their car or their house. [SPEAKER_01] And largely they stopped. [SPEAKER_01] They didn't change how they carried themselves. [SPEAKER_01] They didn't change who they hung out with. [SPEAKER_01] They did not take up the game of more.

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[SPEAKER_01] And so she talks about this idea of the game of more. [SPEAKER_01] And I think the way she said it was like, there is a game and that game is called more. [SPEAKER_01] And once the money lands, a question will be waiting for you to think deeply.

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Am I still playing? And I just thought, if you just take this idea of there is a game and a game called more, but it's more of what?

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[SPEAKER_01] What do you want more of? [SPEAKER_01] Do you want more leisure?

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Do you want more travel? Do you want more challenge? Do you want more impact?

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[SPEAKER_01] Do you want more authenticity to who you are?

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Do you want more joy? Do you want more kids? What do you want more of? And I think this is a very powerful question of if you assume for a second that everybody is playing some game of more, right? We've not renounced our desires. We all wake up today. We're going to go do some stuff. But in the name of what? And I just think it's actually pretty powerful to put a name on what is the game of more that you're playing right now? I think it's actually a really, really hard question. I think you might be embarrassed by the answer to those questions if you looked at your actions and you said, what is this action in the game? What am I seeking more of?

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If I'm going to post a story of my vacation right now on Instagram, what am I seeking more of? I'm playing the game of more, and that's a game of more validation, more status, more prestige. I like that I don't post stories because I've opted out of that. But I have opted into a game of more in other flavors. And so I just think this is a really, really powerful idea. I don't know what you think about that. [SPEAKER_00] Well, I want to know, did she say which one she has found people to be most happy in? [SPEAKER_00] And amongst your friend group, I believe she's mostly referring to people who overnight are now liquid, which is a very interesting phenomenon.

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[SPEAKER_00] I've seen it happen many times. [SPEAKER_00] Not rich to super rich. Yeah, so versus someone who has been a lawyer for a long time and they've made money throughout their career. [SPEAKER_00] I was in the category of I wasn't and then I was. [SPEAKER_00] All of a sudden, I think you have been accumulating along as you've gone. [SPEAKER_00] But we know a bunch of people who have overnight made it. [SPEAKER_00] Have you noticed any similarities or commonalities of who ends up in a place that more people would desire to be in that place? Yeah, I mean, this is probably the thing I'm figuring out the most.

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So I have some thoughts, but I bet in 5, 10 years I will have a much simpler, wiser perspective on this than I do today. [SPEAKER_00] Is your question of what's the right answer or what's your question really? Well, there's no right answer, but I'm just saying, can you stereotype each bucket of what you've noticed? [SPEAKER_00] I only have maybe one friend who has done the first one where he's opted out. So here's a couple of observations. I think there is actually a better and worse, even if there's not a right answer. And I would say the leisure path doesn't seem to result in anything good. [SPEAKER_00] I completely agree. Sure, take a few trips.

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Sure, you could upgrade your car, your house, whatever, that's fine. But the diminishing returns are very real and very dramatic in that path. And the people who seem to do that and seem to wander, they sort of lose themselves in a way that everybody sort of looks back. It's almost funeral-esque when people talk about them at some point. Because they're seeking something, but they're in the wrong place, right? It's searching for your keys, but this is not where you drop them. And so that path actually does genuinely seem to be worse. I would say very few people can do what I call slay the money monster.

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So very, very, very few people can actually achieve financial independence by my definition. So most people feel that financial independence is the ability to buy whatever you want. You have the freedom to buy, to do, to go, to fly, to whatever. And it's actually freedom from that you want. Financial independence to me is not the ability to buy whatever you want. It's that you make decisions not based on money. So sometimes that's about buying what you want, right? You might order a certain dish or buy organic or whatever. You might buy things because you're choosing what you want and not based on the pricing.

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But for the most part, it's you choose whatever your next project is. You didn't do it because this could be a 10X or this could whatever, right? So freedom from, I think, is very, very rare. The second thing I would say is very, very rare. It seems valuable when you have it. And by the way, Jesse, we've talked about earlier, Jesse's a great example of this. I've talked to him on the phone about ideas that can make a ton of money that we're like, yeah, that would make, we could be making 20 million a year if we just did this. And then we're both like, I don't know, man. He goes, and I was like, what do you really want to do, Jesse?

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[SPEAKER_01] So freedom from, I think, is very, very rare. [SPEAKER_01] The second thing I would say is very, very rare. [SPEAKER_01] It seems valuable when you have it. [SPEAKER_01] And by the way, Jesse, we've talked about earlier, Jesse's a great example of this.

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I've talked to him on the phone about ideas that can make a ton of money that we're like, yeah, that would make, we could be making 20 million a year if we just did this.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] And then we're both like, I don't know, man. [SPEAKER_01] He goes, and I was like, what do you really want to do, Jesse? [SPEAKER_01] He's like, I think I just like to ride my bike. [SPEAKER_01] He's like, I want to go do these races and triathlons and Ironmans. [SPEAKER_01] He's like, I think I just like riding my bike actually. [SPEAKER_01] And because we both agree, money at a certain point has very little utility to you. [SPEAKER_01] So at the beginning of your money curve, when you're, let's say in debt, money has a tremendous amount of utility. [SPEAKER_01] When you have no savings and no safety net, money has a tremendous amount of utility.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] And then as you get to be comfortable, money has less utility, but it can, if it buys you back your time, you don't have to work. [SPEAKER_01] You get way more utility. [SPEAKER_01] At a certain point, you're trading very valuable hours of life energy for useless dollars that you have no ability to even spend to improve your life. [SPEAKER_01] And I find that vast majority of our friends who have achieved that, they still make that horrible trade of valuable life hours for useless dollars. [SPEAKER_01] And so I think that's the most common observation: man, that must be really hard to kick. Most people can't do that.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] And I'll say one last thing, which is the other observation I have is that man needs a quest, man needs a project, but you got to choose what is the quest and what is the project that is going to light you up. [SPEAKER_01] And I don't think very many people are able to do a very good job of that because we're incredibly mimetic creatures. [SPEAKER_01] So if all our friends are starting companies, we start companies. [SPEAKER_01] If all our friends are investing, we start investing. [SPEAKER_01] And we rarely ask ourselves, what do I really want?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] There's this idea of mimetic, which is Rene Girard and Peter Thiel, really popularize this idea around what we want, what we want because other people want it. [SPEAKER_01] And so I think a very valuable trait in humans that I've started to observe is people who are anti-mimetic, meaning people who seem to want things from their own internal volition and not because other people want those same things. [SPEAKER_01] Tell me examples of people you know who fit in that category. Nick Gray is incredibly anti-mimetic.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] He is surrounded by goofballs like us that are always on to the next company and the next investment and the next this and the next that.

SPEAKER_01

And Nick Gray was like, I'm going to prioritize hosting cocktail parties. I'm going to prioritize writing my blog. I'm going to prioritize going and traveling to India and living as a villager in India. He wants what he wants and he wants it because he wants it. And you could tell because he's very lit up while doing it. And you could tell the people who don't because they have everything and they're still not lit up. Why? Because they're choosing things that other people want. Tony Robbins had told a story once at his event where he was talking about eating dinner with his wife.

SPEAKER_01

And she said this thing where she was like, you know, the waitress brings out her burger and it's a burger with pickles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they were talking about this idea of are you even doing what you really want? Or are you just still programmed and conditioned by your upbringing, by society, by your friends, by whatever? And she's like, whose burger is this? Why do I even order with pickles? I don't even like pickles that much. Maybe I should start ordering differently, right? And I think that metaphor applies to a lot of life. A lot of what's around you is a burger you ordered. Is this even how I like my burgers?

SPEAKER_01

Maybe I like my burgers medium or rare. Maybe I like this, maybe I like that. And so once you become alert to it, you might start to observe examples of people who operate this way. I think Palmer Luckey is incredibly anti-mimetic. He was doing everything. Every project he's picked is incredibly unpopular when he picked it. This is the test, right? How popular is the thing you're doing amongst the people who you associate with or want to be like? And doing virtual reality goggles when he was 19, living in a trailer park. He was not keeping up with the Joneses.

SPEAKER_01

And then even afterwards when it happened, he stayed wearing his Hawaiian shirts and his jorts and his flip-flops. He didn't suddenly start wearing designer clothes and this and that. He didn't become a venture capitalist. He didn't start worrying about his summer vacations. He then went and worked in the defense industry, started building weapons when that was incredibly unpopular to do in Silicon Valley. You were seen as a black sheep for doing that. It was hard to get funding for doing something like that because it was incredibly unpopular. So you look for people who do unpopular things because to them it's what they want.

SPEAKER_01

There's this book I read last year called Status and Culture. And it was about what does high status mean and how does that impact trends, whether it be fashion or whatever. [SPEAKER_00] And the book's author, one of his points was to be inauthentic is the lowest status thing. [SPEAKER_00] And if you look at all the people who you admire, they're truly, whether they've become that person or they're born that way, both are fine. [SPEAKER_00] They are truly authentic. [SPEAKER_00] And if you look at who we admire, for example, I was just reading about this mathematician. [SPEAKER_00] Have you heard of this guy? [SPEAKER_00] His name's Gregory Perlman. No.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] Who's that? Well, he's one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize or the Nobel Prize for math, I guess, or was it economics? [SPEAKER_00] I forget. [SPEAKER_00] I think there's a math one. [SPEAKER_00] And he turned it down. [SPEAKER_00] And he's like, I'm not about this. [SPEAKER_00] They are truly authentic.

SPEAKER_00

And if you look at who we admire, for example, I was just reading about this mathematician. Have you heard of this guy? His name's Gregory Perlman.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] No. [SPEAKER_00] Who's that? Well, he's one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize or sorry, the Nobel Prize for math, I guess, or was it economics? [SPEAKER_00] I forget.

SPEAKER_00

I think there's a math one. And he turned it down. And he's, I'm not about this. I didn't do this for this reason.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] And then someone calls him to say, hey, you won the prize. [SPEAKER_00] And his famous quote was, you're disturbing me from picking mushrooms. [SPEAKER_00] And he hung up and he never collected the prize. [SPEAKER_00] He never collected the prize. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, exactly. And you hear about these guys that are rebellious this way. And what I've noticed is that the worst thing that you can do if you're going to be someone like, for example, I think I've fallen partially in two of the categories of the three that you've mentioned. [SPEAKER_00] And I've been a little bit half pregnant with them.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] And I think the worst thing that you could do is to be unbalanced about where you fall and to go all in on which type of person you want to be and to not half ass it and to go all in. [SPEAKER_00] Not hedge. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, it's a very scary feeling. [SPEAKER_00] It's a very scary feeling. [SPEAKER_00] But if you do go all in. [SPEAKER_00] And so, for example, I don't respect everything Palmer Luckey does or says, but I respect the hell out of the fact that he seems authentic and he does believe the way that he acts and says.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] But if you look at other people, for example, sometimes you'll hear Elon say something and you're like, dude, that's cringe. [SPEAKER_00] Why is that cringe? [SPEAKER_00] It's, well, it's cringe because I don't think that you truly feel that way. [SPEAKER_00] And you're just doing this for laughs. [SPEAKER_00] And that's the idea of authenticity. [SPEAKER_00] Yeah, exactly. [SPEAKER_00] Let's get an example of somebody who's incredibly anti-memetic. Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett became, at one point, the richest man in the world. He lived in the same house in Omaha. He drove the same car. He liked his breakfast from McDonald's. He liked to drink Coke.

SPEAKER_01

He loved to read. So he read. He resisted every fad and trend. He did not participate in the tech bubble, basically. He did not participate in tech altogether because he didn't understand it. And he stayed true to his principles, right? He loved to read. So he read. He loved to play bridge. So he played bridge.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] He had a certain small set of friends. [SPEAKER_01] He stayed with them. [SPEAKER_01] He closed down his fund at one point because he was, I just don't see good opportunities. [SPEAKER_01] He goes, I think what everybody's doing in the market right now seems crazy. [SPEAKER_01] I can't understand it. [SPEAKER_01] And the fools are getting rich. [SPEAKER_01] So I'd rather not play than play their way. [SPEAKER_01] That's literally the definition of anti-media. [SPEAKER_01] He literally closed down the Buffett partnership after he had run it up to a hundred million.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] He'd gone from a couple hundred thousand to a hundred million in the 60s or 70s, something like that. [SPEAKER_01] And I'm, damn, that's incredible. [SPEAKER_01] And so, you know, practically speaking, it's when you want to get fit, if you were to advise me, you're, all right, Sean, you've been talking about getting fit. [SPEAKER_01] Let's get real. [SPEAKER_01] All right. [SPEAKER_01] You want to get fit. [SPEAKER_01] Here's the first thing you need to do. [SPEAKER_01] Here's the second thing you need to do. [SPEAKER_01] What would be in the top three things you need to do if you're real about getting fit?

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] Probably eat your body weight in grams of protein. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] So you pick one metric that you're going to optimize for that is a non-negotiable daily set point that you're trying to hit.

SPEAKER_00

Okay. [SPEAKER_01] Next. [SPEAKER_01] I would say probably walk 10,000 steps while lifting weights three days a week. [SPEAKER_01] And what's usually the leak for somebody who's trying to get fit, but they keep snacking or they're eating late? What's the solve for that? [SPEAKER_01] Because that's the problem. [SPEAKER_01] How do you solve that? You remove barriers.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] So for example, the day you say you want to get fit, you immediately go to the gym and buy a one-year membership. [SPEAKER_00] Or the day you want to eat better, you immediately throw everything away that you think is bad. [SPEAKER_00] You have to remove all friction. [SPEAKER_00] Just don't have it in the house. [SPEAKER_00] And so I think there's, what's the equivalent of that in terms of living life well or living this sort of antimemetic life where you actually, if we take this train of logic, which is that you will be most lit up and happiest when you're living authentically and in line with what you really want and living in line with your own values.

SPEAKER_01

To me, it's basically, if you spend all day, you spend three hours a day looking at other people on Instagram and TikTok and the way they're living their life, I think you're basically doing the equivalent of having a free vending machine of snacks in every bedroom of your house. This sounds like such a silly hack, but I've noticed whenever I wanted to become something in life, if I unfollow everyone on Instagram and only follow the people I aspire to become, you 100% get closer to being that person. [SPEAKER_00] So I remember when I wanted to get fit, my Instagram feed was literally only shirtless ripped dudes. [SPEAKER_00] Yes. Immersion. Total immersion.

SPEAKER_01

[SPEAKER_00] To dress better, I unfollowed everyone. I only followed people I wanted to dress. Did I tell you this story of when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast and he told me the story about getting fit? Well, I know that he painted a thing on his wall, which you'd explain. You got to explain what that, what he painted. So I was hanging out with him and we see him every year, once a year. [SPEAKER_00] So I was, dude, you got an incredible shape, congratulations, man. How'd you do it? What was the thing? [SPEAKER_00] And he goes, you see that really jacked dude right there? And he points over at a guy who I thought was his bodyguard or something.

SPEAKER_01

Did I tell you this story of when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast and he told me the story about getting fit? Well, I know that he painted a thing on his wall, which you'd explain. You got to explain what that, what he painted. So I was hanging out with him and I was, we see him every year, once a year. [SPEAKER_00] So I was like, dude, you got an incredible shape. Congrats, man. How'd you do it? What was the thing? [SPEAKER_00] And he goes, you see that really jacked dude right there? And he points over at a guy who thought it was his bodyguard or something. He's that's my trainer. He's just with me everywhere I go.

SPEAKER_01

He's watching everything I eat, everything I do. And I just hang out with him a lot. [SPEAKER_00] He goes, then I told all my friends, his boys that he's grown up with, that he does all his videos with. [SPEAKER_00] And he's hey, I'm getting fit. And this is going to be a lot easier for me if you get fit too. And you have to be as committed as I am. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to hang out with you. He's because if I'm hanging out with you and you're eating pizza, that's too hard for me. I'm going to have to suddenly resist pizza. So how about we just all do this?

SPEAKER_01

Or if you're going to be the guy eating pizza, just know that I'm not going to be hanging out with you as much. Because I just can't do that. This is my priority. So I'm going to do this. And changing your peer group, what it usually means is you go join a different set of peers. You move to a city of really ambitious people if you want to go start a company or move to Hollywood if you want to be an actor. Or you start to go to the gym with people who go to the gym every day because it'll become a part of your lifestyle. Well, he was for his own friends, he's you need to change your lifestyle because I'm changing mine.

SPEAKER_01

And otherwise, this is not going to work. We're not going to be hanging out very much. And I just thought that's a very direct path to the outcome. You brainwash yourself, but you use your lizard brain or your monkey brain to your own benefit rather than having it used against you all the time. I'm just going to steal this word for word as some of our ad copy for Hampton. Thank you. All right, man. Well, good talking to you on this podcast. Mahalo, dog.

SPEAKER_00

[SPEAKER_01] I'm not in Hawaii, but actually, that's good. That's a good cover story. [SPEAKER_01] Bye. [SPEAKER_01] All right. See ya. [SPEAKER_01] Bye. And we were contemplating getting a big, we got a great place. But we were like, oh, should we get more space for more kids and all this stuff? And then I met this family that has, it's a family of four, husband and wife and two girls, twins. And the girls are now 18 or 19 or something like that. And they've lived in the same one-bedroom apartment for 30 years. So the mom and dad lived there. And I was like, how do you guys, like, what's your sleeping arrangement? And they're like, well, mom and dad get the bedroom.

SPEAKER_00

And we just, we have like this Murphy bed that we sleep in the living room. And part of me was like, obviously it's like, ooh, I don't want that. But then the other part, they start telling me these stories. And I actually go to their apartment and we all hang out. And I'm like, there's a lot of inconveniences here. But there's a lot of conveniences here at the same time, which is you guys are all together at the same time. And it's kind of nice. And I think that like, we are looking at this other place. And I'm like, there's two living rooms. Why? I don't want two living rooms. I want one living room. I want everyone to be in the same room at the same time all the time.

SPEAKER_00

And I think that like, there is this inherent want that many of us have, myself included, of more, more, more, bigger, bigger, bigger. And I just don't think that that is oftentimes the answer to creating a memorable life. There's an amazing post that's kind of gone a little bit viral.

SPEAKER_01

You might have read it. By Julie. Yeah. I read your comment on it.

SPEAKER_00

So the blog post is called, yeah, Julie.

SPEAKER_01

The blog post is called, to all the folks who are about to be rich. And it was released the day before the SpaceX IPO. And she basically starts with like, you did it. Congrats. Like all the hard work, blah, blah, blah. You led you to this day. Your stock is about to be liquid. You're about to be rich. And she, I think when she was at Facebook, when Facebook IPO'd. And so she was kind of like telling a bit of the like, almost like your older sibling, like, hey, like you're going to go to college. Like, guess what? It's going to be crazy a little bit. And here's some things that are going to happen. And so she's almost describing like what happens from here.

SPEAKER_01

And there were so many incredible one-liners in this. And, you know, part of it is like, you know, scientific studies say that like, you know, blah, blah, blah. After one year, lottery winners default to the same happiness that they were before.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, exactly. And so there's one line I love.

SPEAKER_01

She talked about like the three groups of people from when she saw the Facebook thing. Some of my former colleagues slipped away from tech, like aquarium fish being flushed out into the ocean, off to find their true homes. Engineers who decided they're not going to code anymore. I saw people become chefs, hoteliers, artists, therapists, writers, teachers, parents. These groups always fascinated me because I was watching some sort of Cinderella transformation. Who would you bloom into once you were given the gift of true freedom? So that's like group one. She calls the fish.

SPEAKER_01

And then group two, she calls the leisure class, which is basically people who say, oh, I'm going to pursue this lifestyle of leisure. So I'm going to travel to all these wonderful places, Michelin star restaurants, have a sleek new home with all the fancy furniture. Forget, forget Ikea. I'm going to do the Disneyland VIP tour, Coachella. I'm going to buy a $500 hoodie from Japan. And then she's like, and then there's the others who continued on the same track in tech. They become VCs or founders and they continue to march to try to get a higher high for the next few years. They're chasing the thrill of the climb.

SPEAKER_01

And she's not really saying one is better than the other, but she does sort of have her own take. But she says, I saw it play out in all three groups. I know people for whom the money simply let them check off some goals, like paying off their parents' house or having enough for retirement. Maybe they upgrade their car or their house. And largely they stopped. They didn't change how they carried themselves. They didn't change who they hung out with. They did not take up the game of more. And so she talks about this idea of the game of more. And I think the way she said it was like, there is a game and that game is called more.

SPEAKER_01

And once the money lands, a question will be waiting for you to think deeply. Am I still playing? And I just thought, like, if you just take this idea of there is a game and a game called more, but it's more of what? What do you want more of? Do you want more leisure? Do you want more travel? Do you want more challenge? Do you want more impact? Do you want more authenticity to who you are? Do you want more joy? Do you want more kids? Like, what do you want more of? And I think this is a very powerful question of if you assume for a second that everybody is playing some game of more, right? We've not renounced our desires. We all wake up today.

SPEAKER_01

We're going to go do some shit. But in the name of what? And I just think it's actually pretty powerful to put a name on, like, what is the game of more that you're playing right now? I think it's actually a really, really hard question. I think you might be embarrassed by the answer to those questions if you looked at your actions and you said, what is this action in the game? What am I seeking more of? You know, if I'm going to post a story of my vacation right now on Instagram, what am I seeking more of? I'm playing the game of more, and that's a game of more validation, more status, more prestige.

SPEAKER_01

You know, I like that I don't post stories because I've opted out of that. But, like, I have opted into a game of more in other flavors. And so I just think this is a really, really powerful idea. I don't know what you think about that. Well, I want to know, did she say which one she has found people to be most happy in?

SPEAKER_00

And amongst your friend group, I believe she's mostly referring to people who overnight are now liquid, which is a very interesting phenomenon. I've seen it happen many times. Not rich to super rich.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, so versus, like, someone who has been a lawyer for a long time and they've, like, made money throughout their career.

SPEAKER_00

I was in the category of I wasn't and then I was. All of a sudden, I think you have been, like, accumulating along as you've gone. But we know a bunch of people who have overnight made it. Have you noticed any similarities or commonalities of who ends up in a place that more people would desire to be in that place? Yeah, I mean, this is probably the thing I'm figuring out the most.

SPEAKER_01

So I have some thoughts, but I bet in 5, 10 years I will have a much simpler, wiser perspective on this than I do today. Is your question of what's the right answer or what's your question really? Well, there's no right answer, but I'm just saying, like, can you stereotype each bucket of what you've noticed?

SPEAKER_00

I only have maybe one friend who has done the first one where he's opted out. So here's a couple of observations.

SPEAKER_01

I think there is actually a better and worse, even if there's not a right answer. And I would say the leisure path doesn't seem to result in anything good. I completely agree.

SPEAKER_00

Sure, take a few trips.

SPEAKER_01

Sure, you could upgrade your car, your house, whatever, that's fine. But the diminishing returns are very real and very dramatic in that path. And the people who seem to do that and seem to wander, they sort of lose themselves in a way that, like, everybody sort of looks back. It's almost like funeral-esque when people talk about them at some point. Because they're sort of seeking something, but they're in the wrong place, right? It's like searching for your keys, but this is not where you drop them. And so that path actually does genuinely seem to be worse. I would say very few people can do what I call slay the money monster.

SPEAKER_01

So very, very, very, very, very few people can actually achieve financial independence by my definition. So most people feel that financial independence is the ability to buy whatever you want. You have the freedom to buy, to do, to go, to fly, to whatever. And it's actually freedom from that you want. Financial independence to me is not the ability to buy whatever you want. It's that you make decisions not based on money. So sometimes that's about buying what you want, right? You might order a certain dish or buy organic or whatever. You might buy things because you're choosing what you want and not based on the pricing.

SPEAKER_01

But for the most part, it's you choose to whatever your next project is. You didn't do it because this could be a 10X or this could whatever, right? So freedom from, I think, is very, very rare. The second thing I would say is very, very rare. It seems valuable when you have it. And by the way, like Jesse, we've talked about earlier, Jesse's a great example of this. Like I've talked to him on the phone about ideas that can make a ton of money that we're like, yeah, that would make, we could be making 20 million a year if we just did this. And then we're both like, I don't know, man. He goes, and I was like, what do you really want to do, Jesse?

SPEAKER_01

He's like, I think I just like to ride my bike. He's like, I want to go do these races and triathlons and Ironmans. He's like, I think I just like riding my bike actually. And because we both agree, like money at a certain point has very little utility to you. So at the beginning of your money curve, when you're, let's say in debt, money has a tremendous amount of utility. When you have no savings and no safety net, money has a tremendous amount of utility. And then as you get to be comfortable, money has less utility, but it can, if it buys you back your time, you don't have to work. You get way more utility.

SPEAKER_01

At a certain point, you're trading very valuable hours of life energy for useless dollars that you have no ability to even spend to improve your life. And I find that vast majority of our friends who have achieved that, they still make that horrible trade of valuable life hours for useless dollars. And so I think that that's like, they're probably the most common observation is, man, that must be really hard to kick that most people can't do that. And I'll say one last thing, which is the other observation I have is that you have, like man needs a quest, man needs a project, but you got to choose what is the quest and what is the project that is going to light you up.

SPEAKER_01

And I don't think very many people are able to do a very good job of that because we're incredibly mimetic creatures. So if all our friends are starting companies, we start companies. If all our friends are investing, we start investing. And we rarely ask ourselves, what do I really want? You know, there's this idea of like mimetic, which is Rene Girard and Peter Thiel, like really, really popularize this idea around what we want, what we want because other people want it. And so I think a very valuable trait in humans that I've sort of started to observe is people who are anti-mimetic, meaning people who seem to want things

SPEAKER_01

from their own internal volition and not because other people want those same things. Tell me examples of people you know who fit in that category.

SPEAKER_00

Nick Gray is incredibly anti-mimetic.

SPEAKER_01

He is surrounded by goofballs like us that are always on to the next company and the next investment and the next this and the next that. And Nick Gray was like, I'm going to prioritize hosting cocktail parties. I'm going to prioritize, you know, writing my blog. I'm going to prioritize going and traveling to India and living like a villager in India. He wants what he wants and he wants it because he wants it. And you could tell because he's very lit up while doing it. And you could tell the people who don't because they have everything and they're still not lit up. Why? Because they're choosing things that other people want.

SPEAKER_01

Tony Robbins had told a story once at his event where he was talking about eating dinner with his wife. And she said this thing where she was like, you know, the waitress brings out her burger and it's a burger with, you know, pickles and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then they were talking about this idea of like, are you even doing what you really want? Or are you just sort of still programmed and conditioned by your upbringing, by society, by your friends, by whatever? And she's like, whose burger is this? Like, why do I even order with pickles? I don't even like pickles that much. Maybe I should start ordering differently, right?

SPEAKER_01

Like, and I think that that metaphor applies to a lot of life. Like a lot of what's around you is a burger you ordered. That's like, is this even how I like my burgers? Maybe I like my burgers, you know, medium or rare. You know, maybe I like this, maybe I like that. And so once you sort of become alert to it, you might start to observe examples of people who operate this way. Like I think Palmer Luckey is incredibly anti-memetic. You know, he was doing everything, every project he's picked is incredibly unpopular when he picked it. This is sort of the test, right? Like how popular is the thing you're doing amongst the people who you associate with or want to be like?

SPEAKER_01

And, you know, doing virtual reality goggles when he was 19, living in a trailer park. You know, he was not like keeping up with the Joneses, you know? And then even afterwards when it happened, he stayed wearing his Hawaiian shirts and his jorts and his flip-flops. He didn't suddenly start wearing, you know, designer clothes and this and that. He didn't become a venture capitalist. He didn't start worrying about his summer vacations. He then went and worked in the defense industry, started building weapons when that was incredibly unpopular to do in Silicon Valley. You were seen as sort of a black sheep for doing that.

SPEAKER_01

It was hard to get funding for doing something like that because it was incredibly unpopular. So you look for people who do unpopular things because to them it's what they want. There's this book I read last year called Status and Culture. And it was this like idea of what does high status mean and how does that impact trends, whether it be fashion or whatever.

SPEAKER_00

And the book's author, one of his points was to be inauthentic is the lowest status thing. And if you look at all the people who you admire, they're truly, whether they've become that person or they're born that way, both are fine. They are truly authentic. And if you look at like who we admire, for example, I was just reading about this mathematician. Have you heard of this guy? His name's Gregory Perlman. No. Who's that?

SPEAKER_01

Well, he's one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. And he won the Nobel Peace Prize or sorry, the Nobel Prize for math, I guess, or was it economics?

SPEAKER_00

I forget. I think there's a math one. And he turned it down. And he's like, I'm not I'm not about this. I didn't do this for this reason. And then like someone calls him to like say, hey, you won the prize. And his his famous quote was, you're disturbing me from picking mushrooms. And he hung up and he never collected the prize. He never collected the prize. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_01

And you hear about these guys that are rebellious like this. And and what I've noticed is that the worst thing that you can do if you're going to be someone like, for example, I think I've fallen partially in two of the categories of the three that you've mentioned.

SPEAKER_00

And I've been a little bit half pregnant with them. And I think the worst thing that you could do is to be unbalanced about where you fall and to go all in on which type of person you want to be and to not half ass it and to go all in. Not hedge. Yeah, it's a very scary. It's a very scary feeling. But if you do go all in. And so, for example, I don't like everything Palmer Luckey does or says, but I respect the hell of the fact that he seems authentic and he does believe the way that he acts and says. But if you look at other people, for example, some of the times you'll hear Elon say something and you're like, dude, that's cringe. Why is that cringe?

SPEAKER_00

It's like, well, it's cringe because I don't think that you truly feel that way. And you're just doing this for laughs. And that's like the idea of authenticity. Yeah, exactly. Let's get an example of somebody who's incredibly anti-memetic.

SPEAKER_01

Warren Buffett. So Warren Buffett became, at one point, the richest man in the world. He lived in the same house in Omaha. He drove the same car. He liked his breakfast from McDonald's. He liked to drink Coke. You know, he loved to read. So he read. He resisted basically every fad and trend. He did not participate in the tech bubble, basically. He did not participate in tech altogether because he didn't understand it. And it stayed true to his principles, right? He loved to read. So he read. He loved to play bridge. So he played bridge. He had a certain small set of friends. He stayed with them.

SPEAKER_01

He closed down his fund at one point because he was like, I just don't see good opportunities. He goes, I think what everybody's doing in the market right now seems crazy. I can't understand it. And the fools are getting rich. So I just, I'd rather not play than play their way. There's literally like the definition of anti-media. He literally closed down the Buffett partnership after like he had run it up to like a hundred million. He'd gone from like a couple hundred thousand to a hundred million in the 60s or 70s, something like that. And I'm like, damn, that's incredible.

SPEAKER_01

And so, and then I think, you know, practically speaking, it's kind of like, you know, when you want to get fit, like if you were to advise me, you're like, all right, Sean, you've been talking about getting fit. Let's get real. All right. You want to get fit. Here's the first thing you need to do. Here's the second thing you need to do. What would be in the top three of things you need to do if you're, if you're real about getting fit? Probably eat your body weight and grams of protein. Okay.

SPEAKER_00

So you pick one metric that you're going to optimize for that like is a non-negotiable daily set point that you're trying to hit. Okay.

SPEAKER_01

Next. I would say probably walk 10,000 steps while lifting weights three days a week. And what's usually the leak for somebody who's trying to get fit, but they keep snacking or they're eating late?

SPEAKER_00

What's the solve for that?

SPEAKER_01

Because that's the problem. How do you solve that?

SPEAKER_00

You remove barriers. So for example, the day you say you want to get fit, you immediately go to the gym and buy a one-year membership. Or the day you want to eat better, you immediately throw everything away that you think is bad. You have to remove all friction. Just don't have it in the house. And so that I think there's, what's the equivalent of that in terms of living life well or living this sort of antimemetic life where you actually, if we take this train of logic,

SPEAKER_01

which is that you will be most lit up and happiest when you're living authentically and in line with what you really want and living in line with your own values. To me, it's basically like, if you spend all day, you spend three hours a day looking at other people on Instagram and TikTok and the way they're living their life, I think you're basically, it's the equivalent of having like a free vending machine of snacks in every bedroom of your house. This sounds like such a silly hack, but I've noticed whenever I wanted to become something in life, if I unfollow everyone on Instagram and only follow the people I aspire to become, you 100% get closer to being that person.

SPEAKER_00

So like I remember when I wanted to get fit, my Instagram feed was literally only shirtless ripped dudes. Yes. Immersion. Total immersion. To dress better, I unfollowed everyone. I only followed people I wanted to dress like.

SPEAKER_01

Did I tell you this story of when we were hanging out with Mr. Beast and he told me the story about getting fit? Well, I know that he painted a thing on his wall, which you'd explain. You got to explain what that, what he painted. So I was hanging out with him and I was, we see him every year, once a year.

SPEAKER_00

So I was like, dude, you got an incredible shape, you know, congrats, man. Like, how'd you do it? What was the, what was the thing? And he goes, you see that really jacked dude right there? And he points over at like a guy who thought it was like his bodyguard or something.

SPEAKER_01

He's like, that's my trainer. He's just with me everywhere I go. He's watching everything I eat, everything I do. And I just hang out with him a lot.

SPEAKER_00

He goes, then I told all my friends, like, you know, his boys that he's grown up with, that he does, you know, all his videos with. And he's like, hey, I'm getting fit. And this is going to be a lot easier for me if you get fit too.

SPEAKER_01

And you have to be as committed as I am. Otherwise, I'm not going to be able to hang out with you. He's like, because if I'm hanging out with you and you're eating pizza, that's too hard for me. I'm going to have to suddenly resist pizza. So like, how about we just all do this? Or if you're going to be the guy eating pizza, just know that I'm not going to be hanging out with you as much. Because like, I just can't do that. This is my priority. So I'm going to do this. And basically, like, changing your peer group, what it usually means is like, you go join a different set of peers.

SPEAKER_01

You move to a city of really ambitious people if you want to, you know, go start a company or move to Hollywood if you want to be an actor. Or you, you know, start to go to the gym with people who go to the gym every day because it'll become a part of your lifestyle. Well, he was like, for his own friends, he's like, you need to change your lifestyle because I'm changing mine. And otherwise, this is not going to work. We're not going to be hanging out very much. And I just thought that's actually like, again, a very direct path to the outcome.

SPEAKER_01

You brainwash yourself, but you use your lizard brain or your monkey brain to your own benefit rather than having it used against you all the time. I'm just going to steal this word for word as some of our ad copy for Hampton. Thank you. All right, man. Well, good talking to you on this podcast. Mahalo, dog.

SPEAKER_01

I'm not in Hawaii, but actually, that's good. That's good. That's a good cover story. Bye. All right. See ya. Bye. Bye. Bye.

SPEAKER_01

Bye.

SPEAKER_01

Bye. Love are on theusive.