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Ask yourself, do you want to use money as a tool to give yourself a better life or as a scorecard for other people to measure you by?
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And most of those people are not even paying attention to you to begin with.
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness.
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Very excited about our guest.
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We have the inspiring Morgan Housel in the house.
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Good to see you, sir.
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Thanks so much for having me.
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Good to see you.
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Very excited that you re here.
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You have a new book out called Same as Ever, A Guide to What Never Changes, which I m excited to dive into.
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And you also stormed on the scene with Psychology of Money, which has now sold 4 million copies.
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Is that right?
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That s right.
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In the last few years?
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Yeah.
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And I wanted to ask you a question about money and the future to start.
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A little bit about both in each book, same as ever, and the psychology of money.
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I m curious why you think our brains trick us in staying broke.
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Because based on historical past with our families and predicting the future,
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A lot of people think, I can never make money.
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How can we change that?
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And why do our brains trick us into thinking we will always be broke if we don t have money?
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I think so much of this is the value of comparison and expectations.
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Because there s no such thing as an objective measure of wealth.
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There s no such thing as once you have X dollars, everything will be okay.
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Everything is just relative to the other person next to you.
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How much do I have relative to you, relative to that person?
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So in a world where things tend to get better for most people, not everybody, but we tend to get richer over the generations.
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Well, if you re just comparing yourself to your peers, then if you get richer, but your peers do as well, you went nowhere.
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And so that s the thing.
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That s why you can look at, you know, the average median income adjusted for inflation has doubled since our grandparents  generation.
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Adjusted for inflation.
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But we don t feel any better off at all because now, look, we re living in bigger houses, driving nicer cars, but so are our peers.
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So relative to them, we ve gone nowhere.
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And you can easily imagine a world in which our grandkids
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are living twice as well as us.
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And they don t feel any better off either.
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And that s all based on comparison?
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It s all because you re comparing.
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And it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective.
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Like it doesn t matter how much, how many resources I have.
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What matters is that I have more than you.
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More than the next guy.
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Really?
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There s that joke about like there s two hikers being chased by a bear.
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And then one of the guys starts running and his friend says, you idiot, you can t outrun a bear.
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And his friend says, I don t need to outrun the bear.
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I just need to outrun you.
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Wow.
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And that s money too.
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That s what it is.
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And so it really is, it s a sad thing to ponder that you can live in a world where everything gets better and you don t appreciate any of it because you expected all of it.
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But it s happened forever, and I think it will happen forever.
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Really?
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So this is like a psychological safety?
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Is that what this is?
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It s just general social comparison.
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Really?
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And I mean, there s the Chris Rock joke where he says, if Bill Gates woke up with Oprah s money, he d jump out the window.
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Because who is a billionaire comparing himself to?
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Other billionaires.
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That s it.
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I ve also thought about the minimum wage in Major League Baseball, I think is $500,000 a year.
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By any metric, a lot of money.
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But do you think the guy on who s playing for the Yankees making 500K feels like he s crushing it?
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No.
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No, he s playing with all his peers who are making 10, 20, 30 million a year.
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So even if by any definition, he s in the tippy top of income, you don t feel like it.
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Based on the book, Same as Ever, and connecting it to psychology of money, what are the top three patterns that are keeping people broke consistently versus the top three patterns that are making people rich?
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I think that the top things that make people broke, number one, the most important, this might seem like a cop out of an answer, it s they don t have enough luck.
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I mean, that s so much of it.
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I know so many people who would disagree with that statement.
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So if you do disagree with that, I get it.
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But I think, like I said earlier, in any kind of extreme success,
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Even mine, and I would venture to say yours too.
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If you re really honest about connecting the dots in the past, you would say that there is this thing that happened to me that I never planned on.
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I did not strategize this.
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It just kind of happened to me.
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As I said, even if that thing is you were born in the right era.
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And so that s a big part of it that I think is too easy to ignore.
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The second is, I think, some form of short-termism, whatever it is.
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I heard this great story from Mr. Beast recently where he said when...
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People who have YouTube channels come to him for advice, and I m sure a lot of them do.
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He tells everybody the same thing.
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He says, go make 100 videos and then come back to me.
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And he said that 99 of those people will give up before they make 100 videos.
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And the person who actually makes it to 100 doesn t need his advice anymore.
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Doesn t need to go back, yeah.
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But the fact that 99 of them gave up,
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Is is I mean that s really what it is.
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It s just it s just like do you have the endurance if not stubbornness?
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To keep it going in any business endeavor in any investing endeavor What you re really getting paid for is to put up with uncertainty and pain And most people will they realize that they re going to cry uncle sooner than they thought and that s okay I don t think it s anything to be ashamed.
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All right, but the people who don t make it
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are the ones who, or the people who do make it, are the ones who are just like, I have such a high tolerance for pain.
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I ve heard this about Navy SEALs too, that when Navy SEALs start, you got the big, burly, six foot four, bulging guys.
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And then you got the skinny little guys who are like five, seven and kind of pudgy.
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There is no telling early on which one of those people are going to make it because what actually is going to help you to make it, to actually get to the finish line,
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It s just your tolerance for pain.
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That s it, man.
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And the scrawny guy might have a super tolerance for pain.
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I remember when Obama met the Navy SEALs who killed bin Laden, he had this comment where he was like, I was stunned at how ordinary they looked.
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They just looked like average dudes, yeah.
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He said half of them could have been like high school principals.
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Exactly.
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But their tolerance for pain was off the chart and that s why they got where they were.
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And I think that s a great analogy for people who make it in business and investing in any career.
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That s amazing.
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So, you said luck, short-termism.
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What was the third one?
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The tolerance and pain?
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I think, yeah.
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I would put them in that order of what it is.
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It s interesting you say that because people come to me all the time when they want to launch a podcast.
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I m 10 years in and start 10 years this year.
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And they re like, what s the secret?
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And I go, to be honest, I ve just been showing up three times a week for 10 years.
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I wish I was a lot smarter than I am.
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I m not as smart as a lot of people who are launching shows and going super viral and building it really quickly.
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I ve just showed up consistently and tried to be better every time.
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I ve tried to improve myself.
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I try to learn.
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I try to research.
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And I just keep showing up.
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And a lot of people do it for six months, two years, and they stop.
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Or whatever, they want to grow faster than they are and they get discouraged.
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And I m like, okay, I just kind of ride the waves.
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Yeah.
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Before I wrote a book, I wrote 3,500 blog posts over the course of 17 years.
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Of those 3,500, I think 3,000 of them sucked.
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And I would admit that they sucked.
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So, the pain and the endurance that it took to get to that point where I was like, okay, now I think I m ready to write a book.
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17 years.
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17 years, yeah.
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And I probably could have written a book after year five or something, but it wouldn t have been very good to get to a point where I was like, okay, I think I m ready to do this with 17 years of writing every single day.
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And even then, the book could have done 5,000 sales.
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Absolutely.
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That s what we thought it would do.
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And I see this a lot with new bloggers as well, where they ll be like, I started a blog and I wrote two posts and nobody read it, so I gave up.
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And I m like, yeah, you gotta write 3,000 more.
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And by the way, if you can keep that up,
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People are going to tell every day, they re going to tell you how dumb you are, how bad of a writer you are, and you just got to bite your lip and endure it.
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Endure it.
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Yeah, because it s like the first year you re not going to get a lot of praise.
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Maybe once in a blue moon, there s a few people that like are just incredible writers and they get viral or something, but it s very rare.
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It s like you have to go through a year of no one watching, listening or reading your stuff.
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Or not even one, maybe 10 years.
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Might be 10 years.
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Might be 10 years.
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Now, I think... And you may not just be that good either.
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That s the thing.
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You ve got to know if you ve actually got some skill or not.
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So, how do you determine what is patience versus stubbornness?
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Right.
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Maybe it s like, no, keep going and you ll get there.
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Versus like, hey, this isn t your thing.
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You should quit and give up.
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When do we know that?
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I think with hindsight is when we know that.
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I m not sure there s actually a good way to know it.
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And I think there have been things in my life where I was stubborn and not patient.
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There have been other things where I look back and I m like, oh, I was appropriately patient.
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But other things, it s like, man, I wish I would have kind of quit before that, particularly like different styles of writing that I ve experimented with.
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I mean, but Morgan, you feel like, you seem like the most, you know, consistent human, 17 years, 3,500 plus articles.
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You know, you ve invested for 20 years the same way.
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You probably have everything, automatic payments coming through and all these different places.
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Like you seem organized.
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You seem structured, you seem humble, you focus on values, family, relationships, not trying to be powerful or have status, things like these things.
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But what is your biggest weakness?
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I m definitely a worst case scenario thinker.
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And I definitely, including recently this week, can become kind of wrapped up in stress and anxiety.
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Really?
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Which I think virtually everyone listening to this has some degree of that.
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Mine s probably a little bit above average.
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But definitely when I look back, if I could tell myself something 20 years ago, if I could go back to 20-year-old Morgan and say something, I would be like,
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it s all going to work out.
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It s not going to be easy.
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It s not going to be fun all the time, but it s all going to work out.
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And I look back at most of my adult life and I m like, man, I wish I had just lightened up a little bit.
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I was, including, like I said, this week, you know, wake up at 2 a.m.
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fretting about something.
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And to extend, I think that s good because I think without an appropriate level of like stress is a motivator and stress is like, hey, there s a problem.
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How can I fix it?
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How can I nip this in the bud?
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So, some stress is great, but of course you can overdo it.
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And that s my weakness.
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It s blowing things out of proportion.
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What is your biggest regret in the last 20 years besides overstressing?
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Is there anything that you feel like, oh, I could have launched this other book five years ago.
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I should have taken this opportunity.
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Is there anything you have?
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I think it s not even professionally, but I think there s situations where it s like, I could have and should have been nicer to that person.
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Really?
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And more empathetic to that person.
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And usually it s like, it s pretty subtle, but it s like a friend of mine was suffering, and I just kind of said, oh, sorry to hear.
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It s like I should have at least called them another time, or helped them, or introduced, opened a door for them.
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And I think that s a regret looking back.
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A lot of that is because what are you proudest of in life looking back?
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It s like buying, at least for me, it s not selling books or making money.
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It s like, and you mentioned this earlier, like, am I helping people?
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Am I actually doing something that s worthwhile in the world?
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Did I actually use my time on earth to leave it a little bit better than I found it?
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And I think if you look back and you realize that you could have been more helpful to more people,
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That s like, I think regrets may be a wrong word because like at the time, I didn t mean any harm.
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I wasn t mean to them, hopefully, but I could have been better.
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I think that s a big thing.
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But that too, that s a worry where you re like, well, let s learn from that and try to do better.
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So even if we are gonna make more money, how do we get out of this trap of feeling like we have enough, we are enough, we re making enough?
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Like how do we get out of that as opposed to just comparing to our peers?
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I think there s two answers to this.
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At the macro, at the big level, the society level,
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We never will.
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And that s why it s in same as ever.
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It s been like this forever and always will, that everything is relative to other people.
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And look, if we re gonna compare ourself to a family 500 years ago who had 10 kids, eight of whom died by age two, whatever it would be, like, do we have less suffering today?
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Of course.
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But still, when we are comparing how well we re doing in our prosperity, it s always relative.
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I think at the individual level,
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It is possible for some people, much easier said than done, but possible to recognize the game that s being played.
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And just ask yourself, like, do you want to use money as a tool to give yourself a better life or as a scorecard for other people to measure you by?
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And most of those people are not even paying attention to you to begin with.
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Right.
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And that s a big part of it.
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Like, you wake up every morning running as fast as you can to impress strangers who are not even thinking about you.
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They re busy thinking about themselves.
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And so I think once you identify that game, then your social aspirations can decline.
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Not to zero, like everyone wants to look good and be fit in and fit in with their friends, but I think they can decline.
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And your willingness to show off really diminishes.
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I heard this great phrase recently, which was a high-end Toyota is a nicer car than an entry-level BMW.
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Because a high-end Toyota is filled with things that make you happy.
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Nice seats, a good sound system, like moonroof, whatever it is.
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The entry-level BMW is just bragging rights.
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Right.
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Other than that, like, I think you should go through life wanting the proverbial high-end Toyota.
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It s not showing off for others, it s making you happy, rather than just trying to put up your peacock feathers to show off to people.
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With all the research you ve done for psychology of money and now Same as Ever, your life,
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completely changed over the last few years, financially, socially, opportunity-wise, all these different things.
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You have more money now than you did three years ago, than you probably imagined.
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You have more opportunities, you have more access, you have more everything.
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Has your life gotten better or worse since you ve made this much more?
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I would say it has not made me happier.
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It s probably made me more content, which you might confuse with happiness, but it s very different.
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I don t think I m happier in the sense that I don t wake up smiling more than I used to.
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But I think I probably have fewer anxious days than I used to.
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I say fewer because they still exist.
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So I think it has removed anxiety, but it has not improved happiness.
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I think that for most people is what money will do to them.
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Everyone s a little bit different, but I think that s actually a pretty common thing.
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It will remove what?
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It will remove anxiety, and it will reduce the number of bad days that you have.
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It s not going to increase the number of great days that you have.
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Really?
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Or if it does, it s minor.
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people will become accustomed to the new house, the new car, whatnot.
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You re never going to get accustomed to like having bad days.
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Like the removal of that is always going to be a positive influence in your life.
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Right.
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But it s different than happiness.
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Now, chasing contentment is worth chasing.
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It s a great thing.
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It s not to say money does nothing for you.
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Like it absolutely does.
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But contentness is not happiness.
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Wow.
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And so that s I feel like that s been for me.
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I ve also my wife and I have always been
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kind of, we found a lifestyle that worked for us and we ve gotten the goalpost to stop moving.
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Because what really matters for us is like time with our kids, going for walks, going kayaking, and the social aspiration of like, oh, we need a bigger house, nicer car.
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It s like, it doesn t really appeal to us that much.
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So in that sense, nothing has changed, but that s by design.
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What is something that you studied before Psychology of Money came out that you talked about with people who had more money or who were making certain money or who took a risk?
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And you talk about this book as well, about taking risks and some luck involved.
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that you had to test a theory when all the success came to you?
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What was that that you researched that then you were like, oh, I m actually living my research?
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And how did you respond?
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I think before the books came out, I would have said, what I just said, money s not going to make you happier.
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But I would have said it, but there was part of my brain that was like, but I want more money.
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And I think then when you experience it, I think for me, it was like, wow, that s really true.
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That s incredible.
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And to say that to someone who is still aspiring to gain some sort of net worth, I think just as I did, it s like, even if you believe that, you re like, yeah, but.
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But it really does make you happy, yeah.
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And I think experiencing it is like, wow, that s actually pretty amazing.
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I mean, I bet you ve had this experience too, right?
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Yeah, I think it s more about like the,
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The thing that makes me happy is knowing I worked really hard to create something, I overcame challenges, I put it out in the world, I overcame my fears, I believed in myself and I was able to alchemize and manifest an idea in my mind and actually take action to create something and it added value to people.
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And if it made me more money, then that s a cool little extra thing that I m like, wow, that s nice.
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I can do more with it now.
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But it s really about the whole journey, I think, of what I had to overcome to make something.
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And thinking about, oh, it actually served another human being well.
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That s what I think about it.
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The other thing that I had never experimented with that we just started to in any meaningful way is giving money away, which I really am kind of ashamed to say we really hadn t done in any meaningful sense until a year or two ago.
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Really?
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And doing it, it s interesting.
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It feels great.
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And if you think like, is buying myself a new watch, even a new car, is that going to increase my happiness?
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Maybe marginally.
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Is helping someone
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for whom this amount of money is meaningless to me, but life-changing to them.
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And then you just see, like, investing is all about, like, leverage and compounding, and you see the leverage of, like, 10 grand is going to do nothing for you, but 10 grand can utterly change this person s life.
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Forever.
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Then it s like, wow, that s a cool thing.
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Yeah.
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And I think there is, once you get to some level of material life, whatever it is,
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at least for, maybe not for everyone, but there is some, like guilt s probably the wrong word, but it s just like, there s a lot of wrong going in the world.
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And like, do I need to like push up my ego a little more or help this person who really, really needs it?
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So that s another thing where three years ago I would have said, oh, I bet that s the case.
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But then when you experience it, you re like, ooh, ah, that s interesting.
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Why do you think most people, based on, you know, history and predictions in the future, why do you think most people will never,
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get out of a scarcity mindset.
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Money is relative, I guess, but at least a scarcity mindset of creating abundance for themselves.
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One, if you are honest about history, the world is very fragile.
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And there s a lot, if you look at history, it s a constant chain of surprise and setback and disappointment and recession and bear market and pandemic.
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Now look, ridiculous amount of progress baked in there.
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But that s not to say that, I always think every 10 years the world breaks on average.
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Once every 10 years, there s some event where you wake up and you re like, the world is not the same as it used to be.
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Everything is different now.
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September 11th was that, COVID was that.
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And historically, it s about once every 10 years.
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And so, when you have lived through a couple of those events, in my adult life, in your adult life, it s by and large been 9-11, the financial crisis and COVID.
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Once you ve lived through two or three of these events, I think it s very natural and healthy and accurate
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to say to yourself, the world is a dangerous place.
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And those are the big events, to say nothing that may have happened in your own life.
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You lose a friend, you get laid off, you get divorced.
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So, I think that level of anxiety is actually pretty, pretty, not only healthy, but accurate.
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How does someone break free of that to have more abundance and peace inside of them, knowing that there s going to be chaos around them unpredictably in the future?
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To me, it s always been this idea, if you look just to focus on finances, save your money like a pessimist and invest your money like an optimist.
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Like save your money with the idea that the world s really fragile and you might lose your job next week.
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You might get divorced next year.
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You might get cancer.
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We might have a recession.
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And by the way, in due course, one of those will happen to you, to everybody.
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Everybody is going to experience some version of something like that.
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At some point.
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At some point.
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And you have no idea when it s going to occur.
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You need to prepare for it to occur at any moment.
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But the most important but is if you can endure that and survive those things, the rewards for those who stick around can be incredible.
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Yes.
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And so, like, I ve been an investor for 20 years.
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I made my first investment in 2003.
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During that period, there has never been a single day in which you could not have pointed to a hundred things going wrong in the world.
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and wrong in the stock market.
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Stocks are overvalued.
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The Fed is screwing up.
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Congress is a mess.
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Companies are going out of business.
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Every day you said that.
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And during that period, the stock market s up fourfold.
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And I think that applies to a lot of it.
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It applies to your personal life, where in any given day, you and I were talking right before we recorded about some stresses I m having in business, some stresses you re having in business.
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Every day is like that.
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But then you look at 10 years or 20 years, and for a lot of people, it s like, wow, the progress over that period is actually pretty incredible.
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Yeah, it s funny.
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I don t know if this is accurate to even say, but my partner, which we were driving in yesterday or this morning, I can t remember, but we were driving in this office building where we shoot this podcast.
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And the parking is so expensive here in Central City, it s Los Angeles, but the parking monthly is the same amount as my rent was in Columbus, Ohio in 2008.
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Like the parking to be in this building is the same as my monthly rent apartment.
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I m surprised it s not more.
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Right, exactly.
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And he was like, man, look how far over 16 years, or I guess 15 years ago, look where you re at now, 2008, 2009, and see how far it s come.
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And sometimes we don t know how much progress we ve actually made unless we really look back a decade and say, okay, where was I a decade ago?
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And where am I now?
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Especially financially, I guess, right?
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Totally.
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One of the points from Same as Ever is the idea that bad news tends to happen very quickly, but good news is a slow compounding over time.
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So bad news can be 9-11, COVID.
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It really happens in one day.
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You wake up and you say, like, what, how did this happen?
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Almost all good news, though, is, you know, a five to 10% improvement per year.
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Now, if you do that for 20 years, you look back and you re like, wow, we ve come a long way.
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But what you re actually paying attention to, because it s in your face, is the bad news that happens very quickly.
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So that s where your attention goes to.
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Even if in the background, there s this incredible slow build of progress.
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What s the biggest thing you realized in the research of Same as Ever about the future, taking risks, and where we should be putting our attention?
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One of the first chapters, the first chapter in the book is a focus on how fragile the world can be and how the world can hang by a thread in your personal life and throughout history.
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How we look back and when you try to connect the dots in hindsight of how we got here, it will give you so much humility on the idea that we know where we re going next.
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Like there s a saying like, if you know where, like to know where we re going, you have to know where we ve been.
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But the truth is, if you know where we ve been, you realize we have no clue where we re going next.
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One of the stories that I use in here that s always just utterly blown my mind is that back in the Revolutionary War in the 1700s, there was a period, the Battle of Long Island, when George Washington and his troops were cornered by the British.
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And the British were just about to wipe them out.
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The war would have been over.
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All they had to do was sail up the East River in New York.
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They would have cornered George Washington and it s all over.
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it didn t happen because the wind was blowing in the wrong direction that night.
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So they could not sail up the East River.
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George Washington got away and the rest was history.
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Wow.
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David McCullough, this great renowned historian, was asked, he said, if the winds were blowing south instead of north that night, would there be a United States of America?
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Holy cow.
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Without hesitation, no.
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Now, so how do you, when you say there s a million of those kind of stories in your own life and through history, but when you accept that, how do you look at the next 50 years and think you know where it s going to go?
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When literally the entire existence of the United States relied on the winds blowing in New York on some night in 17, whatever it was.
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So, if the world is so unpredictable in the future, where should we be putting our time, attention?
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How should we be setting goals?
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Should we be visioning goals we even want or does none of that matter?
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I think so.
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I ve always been a financial writer.
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And what bothered me for a long time, still does, is how bad we are at predicting what s going to happen next.
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Right.
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And there s always analysts.
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When s the next recession?
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When s the stock market going to fall?
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Nobody has a clue.
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We will keep doing it as we always have, but no one has any ability to do it consistently.
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So there s two things you can do with that.
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One is just become a fatalist and say, no one knows what the hell is going to happen.
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Nobody knows anything.
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The other is, let s focus our attention on the behaviors that never change.
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What were people doing 100 years ago, 500 years ago?
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Okay, let s focus on those things, because we know they re going to be doing them in our future.
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What are those main behaviors that never change?
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Like how people respond to greed and fear and risk, how people are so attracted to stories and narratives, people s tribal affiliations.
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Like those have never changed.
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And if you re a student of history, you can read about what was going on 500 years ago and what will shock you.
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is how many of those things you re like, oh, we still do that today.
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So when you find that, you re like, okay, well, that s what we need to focus on for the future.
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I think it s true in your individual life as well.
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I read this shocking thing just this morning, and this is gonna go in a direction that nobody probably saw this coming.
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The single best metric for whether you are gonna cheat on your spouse is how many people you slept with before you got married.
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Those behaviors don t change.
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Wow.
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If you are constantly sleeping with somebody else every week before you got married, really good chance you re not going to be able to share that behavior in the future after you get married and vice versa.
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And I think that is applicable, that idea is applicable to so many things in life.
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Interesting.
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So, when you re looking at your own behavior, who have you always been?
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What have you always done?
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Yes.
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Good chance you re not going to get rid of that kind of behavior.
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What should we be worried about within ourselves or the people around us when it comes to money and opportunities?
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Should we be worried more about people s desire for power and greed or people s envy?
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Or what are the things that we should be concerned about, the emotions from the past that keep coming up today?
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I think the most dangerous trait in money, whether it s saving or investing, is FOMO, fear of missing out.
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It s if you are susceptible to watching your neighbors or your friends or your co-workers get rich, and that just makes you boil with envy.
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And even if it doesn t feel like envy, you see it and you say, I need that as well.
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that is so dangerous for two reasons.
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One, if you watch someone getting rich fast, there s a very good chance that it s not sustainable, that there s going to be a reversion of the mean and your friend who made 10,000% in Bitcoin, you re not going to be able to repeat that.
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So, if you chase that after the fact, like you re in trouble.
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You re going to lose it.
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The second thing is how fake is probably the wrong word because I think it s innocent, but people put their best foot forward.
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So, what they are showing you
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is usually not indicative of what it is.
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In college, I was a valet here in Los Angeles, and it always stunned me that when people would come into the hotel at work driving a Ferrari, a Lamborghini, a Bentley, when you get to know some of these people, some of them were actually not that successful.
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They were like a law firm associate who spent half their paycheck on a Porsche lease.
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Wow.
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And so when the fake it till you make it idea is so powerful in America that if you see, oh, that guy is driving a nice truck.
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I need to go get one, too, because I m just as smart as I were just as hard as that guy.
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That s really dangerous because you re not chasing their success.
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You re chasing their fakeness.
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Why do why is that in so much?
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many of us where people feel like they need to go in debt, overspend to try to impress the people that don t even care about them.
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I think it s very true that people are naturally wired for status and not for happiness.
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SPEAKER_01
Really?
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You don t, you re like your inner soul, like your evolution does not want you to be happy, so to speak.
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It wants you to be successful.
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Why is that?
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Because that s, what s going to gain the attention of potential spouses.
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Male or female, it doesn t matter who it is.
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It s a competition for resources so that you can climb the ladder to gain the higher social status, to gain the better wife, the better husband, the better friends, whoever it might be.
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It s all a competition.
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And so that s why no matter how rich society gets, I think it ll never be like that.
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We ll never get rid of that.
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Did you ever struggle with this?
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I did, absolutely.
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I don t know if I struggled, but definitely when I was in my late teens and early 20s, I wanted to be the guy with the mansion and the Bentley and the yacht.
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I think every 19-year-old does.
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I think part of the reason is because when you re 19, at least for myself, I had no wisdom to impart.
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I had no knowledge.
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I had no skills to give an employer.
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I didn t know how to love a woman.
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I didn t know anything.
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So when you have nothing to offer the world, I think it s natural to be like, well, maybe they can look at my car and they ll admire me for that.
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I think as you get older, at least for me, it s been, I don t care if you like my car.
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But at least for some people, if there s wisdom I can impart, a skill that I can impart, communicate more effectively, I hope that the small people who I really want to love me respect me for that and not because of the house I live in or the car that I drive.
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So I think when you re young and you don t have any of those skills to put forth, it s very natural to just say like, I want the Bentley.
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It s all you have to offer the world.
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Have you had any concerns internally where you saw this greed, envy, power struggle inside of you come out as you gained more fame, status, and money from your last few years with the books?
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I think I, I think I ve always from a young age been able to suppress that.
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I don t think it s something that I learned or it s, but I ve always, I ve always, since I was a kid, I ve always been the kind of person who it s like, you know, when I was, when I was 10 years old, I had like two really good friends, but, but that was it.
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And as an adult, I feel like that too.
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I feel like my entire, the only people who I want, whose love I care about is my wife, my kids, and my parents, and maybe like two friends.
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And you don t need a big house to impress them.
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No, no.
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Because they love me for things that have nothing to do with the house.
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They love me before the house.
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If you re never around, they don t care about the big house.
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And I think I ve always been like that.
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But I think other people, it s not a character flaw, but their personality is, I need 100 people to love me.
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Right.
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And I think there s nothing wrong with that, but everyone s wired a little bit differently.
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But because my need for love is contained to
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six people or whatever.
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I don t have this desire to go out and show off to any degree.
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I would say once in a while, I ll get, ooh, like, what if we had that car?
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It looks like a nice car.
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One thing that I ve done on occasion is when I m traveling and I rent a car, most car companies, you can rent really nice cars.
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SPEAKER_00
They have some cars parked in the back.
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And every time I do it, I m like, oh, this will be fun.
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SPEAKER_00
We re going to rent a Porsche now.
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I get it in and I m like... It s not comfortable.
3
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It s not that big.
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And it s great to have that realization.
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To like, you don t need to dream about something that s great if you experience it.
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SPEAKER_00
Now, I would say here that...
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I don t want that comment to come off as like, oh, Morgan s a miser and he wants you to sleep in a burlap sack.
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SPEAKER_00
Like, there are material things in life that can make you very happy, that I enjoy, that you will enjoy.
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You know, there are people who are like, none of it matters, live in a studio apartment and drive an old Buick.
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And I m like, no, that s not who I am.
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But I think you have to realize the limit of what it s actually going to do for your happiness.
3
SPEAKER_00
How much to success and money is around luck?
3
SPEAKER_00
I think the more success and the more money, the more that luck played a role with no exceptions.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s not to say that people who have extreme wealth or success were not smart, hardworking, industrious.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, of course, they were all those things.
3
SPEAKER_00
But the higher you get, you can say, you know, it approaches 90 percent luck, 10 percent skill for everybody.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s no exceptions.
3
SPEAKER_00
And even if you say something so simple about Steve Jobs was born in the United States in the middle of the 20th century.
3
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Are we going to pretend that if Steve Jobs was born in Cameroon in 1650, he would have been as successful?
3
SPEAKER_00
Of course not.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, like, even just like the very broad macro luck of what s involved, it s huge.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, it s always when luck and an incredible amount of skill meets at the same time.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I think there are a lot of people in the world, a lot of people in the world who are just as creative as Steve Jobs, just as driven as Bill Gates, just as motivated as Mark Zuckerberg.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if they don t meet some incredible stroke of luck in their life, they re going to have a middling level of success.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think that s always the case.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I don t think it s black and white.
3
SPEAKER_00
All of those people who are very successful are ridiculously talented at their things.
3
SPEAKER_00
but it s easy to overlook the role that we play.
3
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Timing, you know, the people around them, the opportunities, season of life, all those things.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you predict the success of your book?
3
SPEAKER_01
No.
3
SPEAKER_01
Did you think, like, this is going to do millions of copies, or what if it does this?
3
SPEAKER_00
Not in a thousand years.
3
SPEAKER_00
And to show that there s no false humility, the first print run was 5,000 copies.
3
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because that s all we thought it would sell.
3
SPEAKER_00
So we are obviously not going to print 5000 copies if we knew it was going to sell 4 million.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like it s the first year was a disaster of trying to print copies to keep up with it, which is a big problem to have.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a good problem to have, but it s a real problem.
3
SPEAKER_00
So never in a million years did I think it would it would do this or did the publisher or did anyone else?
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SPEAKER_00
And I think even looking back in hindsight, it could not have been predicted.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I don t think anyone could have.
3
SPEAKER_00
seen it coming, even the people who read it before it was published, even if they said, oh, great book, was not, this is going to become one of the best selling investment books of all time.
3
SPEAKER_00
Nobody, nobody saw that, including me.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s amazing.
3
SPEAKER_01
What was your investment strategy like before having that much money versus now, you know,
3
SPEAKER_01
passive income coming every single week now in abundance.
3
SPEAKER_00
Hasn t changed one iota, not in the slightest.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s more zeros, but it s the same exact allocation.
3
SPEAKER_00
What is that strategy for you?
3
SPEAKER_00
To me, I keep it as painfully simple as I possibly can.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, my entire net worth is a house, cash, Vanguard index funds, and shares of Markel where I m on the board of directors.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s it.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s nothing else.
3
SPEAKER_01
So, most of it s in an index fund?
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, almost all the stocks that I own are in index funds.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the rest is cash.
3
SPEAKER_00
Cash, or like I have some treasury bonds.
3
SPEAKER_00
I consider that trash.
3
SPEAKER_01
Cash is trash right now, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Freudian slip.
3
SPEAKER_01
But when you start seeing those zeros add up when you have cash, do you think about
3
SPEAKER_01
Why don t I just buy a nice new car for myself?
3
SPEAKER_01
What s the harm?
3
SPEAKER_01
Or why don t I go take more luxurious trips?
3
SPEAKER_01
Or why don t I buy something for my family?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you think about that?
3
SPEAKER_01
Or investing in other riskier things?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, to be blunt, if you looked at our annual spending pre and post book, it s increased threefold, something like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, it s not that we haven t spent any of it, but we still have a very, very, very high savings rate.
3
SPEAKER_00
To the extent that we have spent more money, it s all on things that are going to actually improve our life, that have no show-off potential.
3
SPEAKER_01
Health.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, family vacations.
3
SPEAKER_00
We re not doing it to show off for other people.
3
SPEAKER_00
Saving time that kind of things we ve done a lot on the interior of our house because that s what we benefit from not the exterior of our house that people see Drive the same car and whatnot.
3
SPEAKER_00
So, you know things have gotten better like materially better for us Even if I think it s almost entirely things that are just making us happy rather than showing off to others What has gotten worse for you since making more money?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh
3
SPEAKER_00
No, that s a good question.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think some idea of, can I keep this going?
3
SPEAKER_00
Look, I think if all of this ended tomorrow, I think I d actually be okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like psychologically, it might hurt for a while, but I actually think I would be okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t expect this to last forever.
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I think being an author is very much like an athlete where you might have a couple of good years, but you re not going to have 30 good years.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s just usually not how it works.
3
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Unless you re John Grisham or something like that.
3
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It s pretty rare.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I think I need to keep myself psychologically prepared for this to end.
3
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But there is that thing of like, of course I want it to keep going.
3
SPEAKER_00
So when you want it to keep going, but you need to be realistic about the odds of that continuing, I think that s something where it s like, look, if you have some level of success, great, amazing.
3
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But there is a first world problem of like, look, someday this is going to decline and that might sting a little bit.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is a great quote from Will Smith I use in the book.
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He says, gaining fame is the best feeling in the world.
3
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Being famous is okay, and losing fame is pain like you ve never experienced.
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SPEAKER_01
Really?
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Because what people like is the elevator ride up.
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It s the change in circumstances.
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It s not being famous, it s gaining fame.
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And I think money is the same.
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Like, being rich is okay.
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Gaining money is incredible.
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So let s look at someone who has $10 million.
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Does having $10 million make them happy?
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Maybe a little bit.
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But what really was a thrill that they loved was going from $1 million to $10 million.
3
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That elevator ride up was incredible.
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Now, when you go from $10 million back
4
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Back to a million, you need a therapist as soon as possible.
4
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Why is it so painful to lose even if you still have a lot of money?
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From 10 million to 1 million, that s still a lot of money in the bank, but why is it so hard for people to lose even 10%?
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and start changing their behaviors and habits around how they even got there.
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I think it becomes part of your identity.
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Fame and money is like this.
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In any time in your life where you can say, I am a blank, no matter what comes after that, it s your identity.
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So even if you re not saying this to other people, but in your head, you say, I am a rich person.
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Even if, again, you re not saying that, but in your head, that s what you are.
4
SPEAKER_01
And now because your net worth goes down, you start wondering, like, am I anymore?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, am I the person who I thought I was?
4
SPEAKER_01
Or if you said, I am a successful entrepreneur, if that s the bug you have in your head, and then you have a really bad year, you start questioning that.
4
SPEAKER_01
And anytime in life where you have to question your identity, it sucks.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s really painful.
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SPEAKER_00
What can someone do in that time when things are fluctuating up and down to
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hold on to an identity and values that they are a good and enough as a person of who they are versus their net worth.
4
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I think it s really important if you have any kind of success in life that your identity was formed before that success.
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And to the extent that it changed with wealth or fame, like that s what s dangerous.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I hope my wife would say, I m confident she would say this, that I m the exact same person that I was five years ago.
4
SPEAKER_01
Hopefully I m a little bit more mature, but it hasn t changed anything material about my personality and how I treat her and how I treat my kids.
4
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If it did, that s what s gonna get stung on the way down.
4
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I heard the story once that ancient Roman soldiers, when they came home from battle, and they re full of hubris, and they re just like, we re the champion warriors, and they would march through the city as a welcome home parade.
4
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They would hire somebody to walk behind them and whisper in their ears, you are just a man.
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You re not a hero.
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You re just a man.
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And I think that forced humility or going out of your way to shove humility in your face is absolutely critical for everybody.
4
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Forget the rich and famous.
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Everybody needs to remind themselves that they re just a person.
4
SPEAKER_01
And this is where I think having kids, young kids, is so helpful because it doesn t matter how many books I ve sold, my daughter will be like,
4
SPEAKER_01
I m out of juice, get me more juice.
4
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Nothing that matters to them and that s so healthy to see.
4
SPEAKER_00
Wow, how many kids do you have?
4
SPEAKER_00
Two, four and eight.
4
SPEAKER_00
What have you learned as a father around making money and ensuring that you can still raise good kids?
4
SPEAKER_01
My thoughts on this are not fully formed because it s something I m still grappling with.
4
SPEAKER_01
Since my kids are only four and eight, we re not talking about buying them cars or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I m still trying to form my thoughts on this.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I talked to someone the other day who was, he s the child of a billionaire and grew up when his dad was a billionaire.
4
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And he had the most balanced, thoughtful, wise view on money that I ve ever heard.
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And he lived the high life.
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Private jets, mansions, go on down the list.
4
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And it did not ruin him or his siblings.
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SPEAKER_01
And he said it was because his parents never made that big a deal about money.
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SPEAKER_01
And they went out of their way to make sure that their kids knew that just because they have more money than other people, they are not better than them.
4
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To value people based off of their intelligence, their kindness, their empathy, not on the square footage of their house.
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And I think that s very hard to do.
4
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Their parents did a ridiculously good job.
4
SPEAKER_01
But your kids are going to learn your values, not your spending habits.
4
SPEAKER_01
They may get accustomed to some level of spending, and that can be dangerous.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is not black and white, but I think mostly they re going to learn your values.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the point that he made was whenever you see a rich, spoiled kid, a kid who not only has a lot of money, but he s just a brat, just a jerk, that s not because the parents were giving him money.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s because the parents did a really good job teaching him values.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I think that s, I go back and forth between this idea of if you want to raise well-balanced kids, don t give them money.
4
SPEAKER_01
Don t spoil them.
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Versus actually we can give them a great material life if we are going out of our way to make sure that values are first.
4
SPEAKER_01
I go back and forth on this because I think it s just easier said than done.
4
SPEAKER_01
When you say that, you re like, oh great, that sounds, how do you actually do it?
4
SPEAKER_00
How do you actually do this?
4
SPEAKER_01
I also think there s a thing that s really important that it s very kid specific.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I make this point that if Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg, if they inherited a billion dollars at age 18, it would have not slowed them down at all.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were so ambitious, irrespective of money.
4
SPEAKER_01
But if I inherited a billion dollars at 18, I d be a disaster.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like most people need to be motivated by the fear of not making it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And if you tell your kids from a young age, you re always going to make it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m always going to shovel money at you.
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And they don t have that fear.
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SPEAKER_01
That s a dangerous thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
4
SPEAKER_00
So there s a balance there.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think I ve heard you talk about how, you know, most athletes go bankrupt, you know, within a few years after their retirement, even though they have a ton of money.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then there s also
4
SPEAKER_00
lottery winners that commit suicide or go through depression or lose all their money within a few years after, you know, gaining the lottery.
4
SPEAKER_00
What is it about people that lose their money versus people that get a lot of money and learn how to grow it and maintain it?
4
SPEAKER_01
getting rich and staying rich are two completely different skills.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that is what is like so often overlooked because we want to think of just money as one skill, like getting rich is one skill, but the skill to make a lot of money versus holding onto it for a generation or more is totally different.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think the best way to explain it is like getting rich requires being an optimist and taking a chance and being optimistic in yourself, swinging for the fences.
4
SPEAKER_01
Staying rich is the opposite.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s a completely contradictory skill where you need to be like pessimistic and paranoid.
4
SPEAKER_01
Really?
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_01
So being optimistic and pessimistic at the same time and getting those to coexist is so difficult and not a lot of people can do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And you see these in statistics, like the Forbes list of billionaires.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s like 70% turnover every decade.
4
SPEAKER_01
Really?
4
SPEAKER_01
Not from people dying, but from people being at the top and then falling out.
4
SPEAKER_01
Are they taking too much risk at that point?
4
SPEAKER_01
I think that s the biggest.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s not the only point, but that s the biggest.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s the kind of personality that you need.
4
SPEAKER_01
To get there.
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SPEAKER_01
To become a deca-billionaire.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not the kind of personality that s going to say, okay, that s enough.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s cash out and put everything in municipal bonds.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right, right.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re not going to do that.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s more like, I ve said this for years.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s the rush of growth, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like the rush, the high that you see growing.
4
SPEAKER_01
I said this for years that I think Elon Musk, there s one of two outcomes.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s either going to become a trillionaire or go bankrupt.
4
SPEAKER_01
And honestly, I m spitballing here, but I think it s 50-50.
4
SPEAKER_00
Didn t you see that?
4
SPEAKER_00
Did you see his interview he recently did?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think it was yesterday.
4
SPEAKER_00
It was ridiculous.
4
SPEAKER_00
Where he was like, let s see where the chips fall.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Where it s like $44 billion are invested.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it all goes bankrupt.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_00
He said, let s see where the chips fall.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s pretty astounding.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s ballsy, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
But here s the thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
Of course it s ballsy.
4
SPEAKER_01
He s trying to go to Mars.
4
SPEAKER_01
Of course he s ballsy.
4
SPEAKER_00
But he s willing to risk $44 billion in order to get... I mean, it s just crazy, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, he... I might be getting these numbers slightly off, but when he sold his first company in the 1990s, when he cashed out of PayPal, I think he had like $300 million.
4
SPEAKER_01
And he took like $295 million of it and invested in Tesla and SpaceX.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, almost all of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the odds that both of those companies would go out of business were probably 99%.
4
SPEAKER_01
Hugh would probably agree with those odds.
4
SPEAKER_01
The kind of person who has that mentality.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, if I, at age 30, cashed out $300 million, I probably would have put it in muni bonds and gone to the beach.
4
SPEAKER_00
$290 is in the bonds, and $10 million, maybe I ll play a little, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, that s my personality.
4
SPEAKER_01
His is not like that.
4
SPEAKER_01
Same with Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, all these people, you know, whenever they make money, they cannot stop.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I so admire that type A personality, even if it s not me.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s more of like a game for them.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s almost like he s okay with being broke because he knows he can make money again.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think all those people.
4
SPEAKER_01
Jeff Bezos talks about the regret minimization framework.
4
SPEAKER_01
What is that?
4
SPEAKER_01
Where every big decision that he makes, he imagines himself at age 100 on his deathbed and he wants to have as few regrets as possible.
4
SPEAKER_01
So he talks about when he started Amazon in 1993 or 4, whatever it was,
4
SPEAKER_01
that he knew it was a very low chance it was going to work.
4
SPEAKER_01
But he also knew that if he didn t try, he was going to regret it for life.
4
SPEAKER_01
So, if he tried it and it failed, he would not regret that.
4
SPEAKER_01
If he didn t try it, he would regret it forever.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, I would say back to myself, I don t have that personality.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think I have the personality that if I quit my job, raised $10 million from friends and family, start a business and it failed, I d be crushed.
4
SPEAKER_01
I d be crushed.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think so.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think it s fine.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think if you just embrace the personality that you have, like I m not a type A entrepreneur.
4
SPEAKER_01
I really admire and I m glad the people who exist, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s a lot of pressure to that too.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, but back to our original point, that s the kind of personality that almost never knows when to stop.
4
SPEAKER_01
Now, there are a couple of examples.
4
SPEAKER_01
Bill Gates is the best example, I think, of someone who was able to take absolutely stratospheric risks and at the same time, on the other hand, be very conservative in what he was doing financially.
4
SPEAKER_01
So when he started Microsoft, he s taking the biggest entrepreneurial swing anyone s ever
5
SPEAKER_00
taken.
5
SPEAKER_00
And at the same time, he ran Microsoft so that they always had enough cash in the bank to make payroll for one year with no revenue, which is like the most conservative way you can run a business.
5
SPEAKER_00
And most entrepreneurs, if they can, if they have the balls to take that swing, are also going to manage the business so it s just hanging on by a loose thread.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when you run like that, you re eventually going to go bankrupt.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so that s why I think it s rare when it occurs, but those are the people, that s why he s been so rich for 50 years now.
5
SPEAKER_01
Crazy.
5
SPEAKER_01
So what I m hearing you say in this is that there s a different skill between getting money and keeping money.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
And if we don t know or learn the skill on how to get money and it s handed to us through inheritance or quickly in a certain way or winning the lottery,
5
SPEAKER_01
Chances of keeping money are very slim.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think the easier it was to make, the easier it s going to be to lose.
5
SPEAKER_00
The more likely you are to lose it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, it s similar when you go to Vegas and you re playing with house money.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s money you just want.
5
SPEAKER_00
Keep going.
5
SPEAKER_00
That money has no worth to you, no value.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s something you can throw around forever.
5
SPEAKER_00
But if you work, if you re digging ditches, that money is valuable to you.
5
SPEAKER_00
There is literal sweat equity in it.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is it more because you realize, oh, I spent 10 years of my time to make this money.
5
SPEAKER_01
So, I need to make sure that I value this money because that money is directly related to my life.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, at Vegas, when it is house money, it means nothing to you.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you lose it all, like, I didn t earn, I didn t put anything into making that money to begin with.
5
SPEAKER_00
But if you ve been building a business for 10 years, that business is your baby.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the money is, you know, what that baby is spitting off.
5
SPEAKER_00
It becomes so meaningful to you.
5
SPEAKER_01
What else did you learn in Same as Ever, this new book, A Guide to What Never Changes, that really shocked you or surprised you?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think what s always blown me away, that is one of the chapters in the book, is the power of storytelling, where the person who has the right answer doesn t necessarily win.
5
SPEAKER_00
The person who says the accurate thing doesn t necessarily win.
5
SPEAKER_00
The person who tells the best story
5
SPEAKER_00
And the story that people want to hear is a person that people line up behind and they re like, yep, this is my guy.
5
SPEAKER_00
You see it in politics all the time, when politicians can propose really bad policies, but if it s what people want to hear, that s the one who s winning.
5
SPEAKER_00
And the policy wonk who s like, well, according to the data, we should do it, that politician is never going to win.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a person who pounds the table who s going to win every time on both parties.
5
SPEAKER_00
It doesn t matter who it s from.
5
SPEAKER_00
Barack Obama, very charismatic.
5
SPEAKER_00
Trump, very good storyteller.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like, on both sides, that s always who s gonna win.
5
SPEAKER_00
But I think you see that in almost every endeavor.
5
SPEAKER_00
In business, in media, the best story always wins.
5
SPEAKER_00
I use the example of the book of Ken Burns, who makes these documentaries about history.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s the best documentarian who s ever lived.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he ll make a documentary about the Civil War.
5
SPEAKER_00
It came out in 1990.
5
SPEAKER_00
More Americans watched it that year than watched the Super Bowl.
5
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
5
SPEAKER_00
And this was for the Civil War.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is not a new topic.
5
SPEAKER_00
Everybody knows how it ends.
5
SPEAKER_00
Everyone knows what happened.
5
SPEAKER_00
They know the story.
5
SPEAKER_00
But he told such a captivating story that you will sit there.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s a 14 hour documentary.
5
SPEAKER_00
And like 100 million Americans watched all of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Ken Burns has talked about what is so powerful in a documentary that s easy to overlook is the background music.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he said that he will literally edit the script so that a certain beat in the background music will match up with a certain word.
5
SPEAKER_00
And- The timing of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
The timing of it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that when this powerful word is spoken by the narrator, boom, there s this beat in the background music to catch your attention.
5
SPEAKER_01
Probably also what s visually on the screen at the same time too.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes, absolutely.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like all of it, creating that emotional connection, reaction.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
So here s the thing, is Ken Burns the best historian?
5
SPEAKER_00
No.
5
SPEAKER_00
Is he finding new information that we didn t know about the Civil War?
5
SPEAKER_00
By and large, no.
5
SPEAKER_00
he is the best storyteller that s ever existed.
5
SPEAKER_00
And because of that, he s the most successful historian who s ever existed.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s telling the story of the past better than anyone else.
5
SPEAKER_00
Better than anyone else, even if all this information is already known.
5
SPEAKER_00
And all of his documentaries, World War II, Vietnam, the Great Depression, all these big events in American history.
5
SPEAKER_00
Every single one of his documentaries, you know how the story ends.
5
SPEAKER_00
And yet, it is utterly captivating.
5
SPEAKER_01
So it sounds like from what you ve learned here, the best story wins.
5
SPEAKER_01
How do we learn to tell better stories if we re shy and introverted?
5
SPEAKER_01
We don t have confidence.
5
SPEAKER_01
We don t communicate well.
5
SPEAKER_01
How do we tell better stories?
5
SPEAKER_00
One thing I ve learned as a writer is just the power of getting to the point.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s easy to underestimate how short people s attention spans are.
5
SPEAKER_00
Whether you re having a casual conversation or writing an email or writing a text,
5
SPEAKER_00
What is your point?
5
SPEAKER_00
Say that point and then be done.
5
SPEAKER_00
Mark Twain has this quote where he says, kids have the best information because they tell you everything they know and then they stop.
5
SPEAKER_00
Whereas adults will be like, well, let me stretch my legs and like tell you a backstory that s going to ramble and go down all these rabbit holes.
5
SPEAKER_00
So getting to the point is really critical in storytelling.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is that what Ken Burns did though?
5
SPEAKER_01
It sounds like he was creating more of an experiential... Well, here s what s interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
Even for Ken Burns in a 14-hour documentary,
5
SPEAKER_00
Not a single word is wasted.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s always interesting.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s intentional.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s intentional.
5
SPEAKER_00
So there are a lot of hundred-page books that are 90 pages too long.
5
SPEAKER_00
There are also thousand-page books in which every single word needed to be there.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so brevity doesn t mean short.
5
SPEAKER_00
It just means that every line you re like, oh, oh, oh, you re always captivated by what is there.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s getting rid of the fluff and getting to the point.
5
SPEAKER_00
So at every moment in Ken Burns  documentary, there is a point and he is telling you about it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when he s done with that point, he moves on to the next point.
5
SPEAKER_01
Wow, you talk about a chapter about competitive advantages, how eventually most of them die.
5
SPEAKER_00
What does that mean?
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there are very few like sustainable competitive advantages.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there are some things in your personal life or in business where for a temporary moment, you have this incredible edge.
5
SPEAKER_00
Give me an example.
5
SPEAKER_00
But it has a shelf life.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I ll tell you what happens to a lot of founders.
5
SPEAKER_00
They are very good at building a product.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s why early on they build a successful company.
5
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe they re good at raising money.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re good at raising money.
5
SPEAKER_00
But let s say they re great engineers and they build this incredible product that people want and it s a successful startup.
5
SPEAKER_00
And we have this competitive advantage.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then the company grows.
5
SPEAKER_00
Now that the company has grown and they re the CEO, they need to be an expert at HR.
5
SPEAKER_00
They need to be an expert at legal.
5
SPEAKER_00
They need to be an expert at marketing.
5
SPEAKER_00
And they re probably not.
5
SPEAKER_01
Manage people.
5
SPEAKER_00
So, the skill that they had in building this product is not what you need to grow the company.
5
SPEAKER_00
Perfect example of this, Uber.
5
SPEAKER_00
Travis Kalanick.
5
SPEAKER_00
No one else in the world could have built Uber from day one and build it into the product that he did.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because he was so ambitious.
5
SPEAKER_00
He was so just, everyone get the hell out of my way, I m going to build this.
5
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There was no worse CEO for Uber once it became a good company.
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And so, that s an extreme example, but that happens a lot with competitive advantages.
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It s the same between getting money and keeping money.
5
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Exactly.
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And some people can do it.
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Bill Gates ran Microsoft for 35 years.
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Started and built it and maintained it, yeah.
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But it s pretty rare.
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So, I think a lot of companies are like that.
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And a lot of companies don t know it because the CEO, their ego and pride is wrapped up into, I m the leader of this company.
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And they can t identify when they meet somebody else.
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This is my baby, I found this, y all and stuff, yeah.
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There is an alternative history.
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I don t, I m not confident that this would have been true, even if we could have a time machine and figure this out.
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But let s say Steve Jobs had not died in 2011, and he was still the CEO of Apple today.
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I actually think there s an argument to make that Tim Cook was the leader that Apple needed for the last 10 years.
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That rather than the crazy visionary genius that Jobs was, they needed someone who was just going to keep the trains on time, as Tim Cook was.
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So you could even say for that, that
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Even with Steve Jobs more humility in the last kind of five to eight years with knowing that he had hurt people in the past and he had this illness, he was starting to become more of like compassionate or at least what it looked like that, right?
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I still think now this is what made Apple successful.
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So this is not a flaw, but what made it successful is his ability to say, no, we re doing it my way.
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Like not the regulators way, not the number geeks way.
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We re doing it my way.
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Yeah.
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I don t care what you think, how you feel.
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It doesn t matter.
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That s what made it successful.
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But I think you could argue that as Apple became a $3 trillion company,
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that what they really needed was an operator like Tim Cook.
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So even in that example, like what made you successful to begin with, at some point you might have to let go of it.
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Wow.
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Yeah, that s crazy.
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I think it s true for me and you too.
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What brought you and I to this level might not be the skill that we need to get us over the next 10 years.
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What is that thing for you that you think is going to need to get you over the hump for 10 more years?
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I think when I was a young writer building an audience, I could take a lot more risks because people were more forgiving.
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And so, for a lot of my early days, I was really experimenting with different voices, different formats, different, what if I write this way or that way?
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I think if I did that now, it would have much more brand damage than it did back then.
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People were way more forgiving back then.
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Because they re used to how you write now and they want to see that same style.
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Yes, they want a consistent product.
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The best definition of brand
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is consistent.
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And so when you don t have a brand, you can just throw things at the wall and see what works.
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When you have a brand, you can.
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And I think there are a lot of authors and artists, musicians who will do that.
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Now, some of them pulled off very successfully.
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Taylor Swift went from country to pop flawlessly.
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But other people I m trying to think of a musician.
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Oh, you know, a good example of this offspring, the best like punk band back in the 80s and 90s,
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and then they became pop and I think 80% of the fans were like, not for me, not for me.
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So I think that experimentation that made you successful can really hurt you if you re not careful about it.
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Wow.
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So what is your fear moving forward with, you know, this book, other books you re going to write?
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Do you have any fears or insecurities around the future of your work?
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I think I ve always admired, and I write about this the same as ever, I ve always admired people who quit while they re ahead.
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People who say, look, I ve reached heights that I never thought I would, and I have a lot more opportunity in front of me, but I ve had enough.
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And to me, the best example of that was Jerry Seinfeld.
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Like, the absolute top of his game in 1998, 1999, NBC offered him $100 million to him personally for one more season.
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And he said, no, no, we ve had enough.
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The other recent example is Cameron Diaz, who a lot of people don t even know this, but she doesn t act anymore.
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Crazy to me.
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And I think she basically said, she s like, I achieved everything I wanted to, like, I m done.
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I m ready to move on to the next phase of my life.
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You know what?
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The other person I heard recently, Freddie Prinze Jr., is now a race car driver.
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He just said, I ve achieved everything I wanted to in acting.
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I m gonna move to something else.
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And I think you would contrast that with people who hang on well past their welcome.
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The best example of this is The Simpsons, which was the greatest show in the 80s and 90s.
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My childhood, it was all so good.
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They still make new episodes.
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And from what I understand, they suck.
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So that s what s sad.
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They re hanging on way too long.
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Compare that to Seinfeld.
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You can imagine a world in which Seinfeld held on for another 10 years, and the show just got slot.
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Same with Friends, I guess, right?
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Yeah.
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Friends stopped after 10 years.
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They stopped.
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They quit when it was still great.
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And they were at the height.
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Yes.
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So I really hope I can do that.
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I hope I don t overstay my welcome.
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Man, it s kind of sad, but what s the...
6
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Ted Lasso, I don t know if you watch that show.
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Three seasons, done.
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I m sad.
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I m like, this is such a good show.
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If you re a producer and you want to leave your audience with one feeling, it s sadness that it s over.
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I think that s kind of hard to swallow, but I think it s true.
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Especially when it s like, you have a big community, you can make more money, you can inspire and reach more people, and you just cut it off.
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Yes.
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Is that a good thing?
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To diminish your potential?
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Yes.
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I think it s going to leave you, the artist, the writer, the producer, happier.
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That you re going to look back and be like, I achieved something great.
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Versus looking back and saying,
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At one point I achieved something great, but then reality caught up to me.
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And I got forced out rather than leaving on my own terms.
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Imagine Jerry Seinfeld quitting on his own terms versus getting canceled 10 years later and what that would have done to his identity.
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Or just people not watching him anymore, not caring.
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So I think going out on your own terms.
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Dave Chappelle is similar too.
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It s less about quitting on top than it is leaving on your terms.
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Interesting.
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So how does that relate to you?
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What do you think?
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I kind of have a plan for this that when I write another book at some point in the future that s already kind of planned out, I might say like, that s it.
6
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I m done.
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Really?
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I m totally fine with that.
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It might be three and done.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Really?
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And I want to go out of my way, therefore, to be like, my identity is not as an author.
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That s incredible.
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It s my profession and it s a passion, but my identity is father, husband, friend.
6
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That s my identity.
6
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Wow.
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And that I m never going to quit.
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But since that s my identity, I m fine leaving everything else on the table.
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So what s your purpose?
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Father, husband,
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friend, that s it.
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That s amazing.
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I know it s kind of cliche to say that, but what does your career matter if you don t know your kids?
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But isn t there a world where you could have both?
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You could have great intimacy and relationship with your partner, your kids, your friends, and show up fully present and have time, but also have a different purpose where you use your talents and skills to serve people, your community or a large group or a small group.
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And I think someone like Seinfeld did that.
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He quit the show, but he still did stand-up.
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He started another show, Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.
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So he s still doing his thing, but it s important at the top to be like, for this thing, I m done.
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So you might write one other book and be done.
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I don t think there will be a world in which... I m definitely writing another book.
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But will I write 10 more books?
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I don t think so.
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And I think I m actually really proud of that.
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Now, I really admire someone like John Grisham who s written 70 books or whatever.
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I m glad these people exist.
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But I think when I look back at my life, I think I d be really happy and content being like, I had this thing, I gave it my all, I quit on my terms, and then I devoted my life to what my purpose was.
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And I can t imagine a world in which I m never writing.
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But doing it full blast, 10 out of 10, I think is a limited series for me.
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You re freelancing or doing it on your own terms or you re a blogger for New York Times once in a while or whatever it is you want to write, I guess.
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That s kind of the vision for you in the next 10 years, it sounds like.
6
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I remember seeing Liz Gilbert.
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I don t know if you re familiar with Liz Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love.
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And I can t remember if it was a TED Talk or some video where she talked about
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how in her mind she realized her biggest hit was most likely behind her.
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Selling another book with 10-20 million copies in the future is highly unlikely and how to wrap her mind around that.
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How do people train themselves to get successful and realize that success is not always going to keep going until you die?
6
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Well, I ll say for me, I think that s certainly true with psychology money.
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I mean, I think the odds that I surpass that are very low.
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They re not zero, but they re very low.
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I think I ve come to terms with it.
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And I think if you can say, look, if that s your biggest problem in your career is that you are ultra successful when you re young, like cry me a river, you re going to be just fine.
6
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But it can kind of sting.
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But a lot of people who get famous or rich or successful when they re young have really messed up adult lives.
6
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Child actors, stars, you know.
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Michael Jackson, famous since age five.
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And you look at his life, it s a complete disaster.
6
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And I think a lot of childhood celebrities are like that.
6
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If from the time you were a child, every person, including adults, bow to you and treat you differently.
6
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I think that is a form of mental illness that you will never, never... I m sure there are counter examples to this, but not many.
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It s a really tough thing.
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And so I think if your identity is not your career,
6
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I think I d go out of my way to do that.
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And it s also possible that once I try to step back, I realize it hurts more than I thought.
6
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My dad was a doctor for 25 years, retired, and about six months later said, I want to go back part-time and in a different form of medicine.
6
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But he said being a doctor was his identity.
6
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And when he retired and he woke up the next morning and said, I m not a doctor anymore, he said, I don t like this.
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So, I think it s possible that this vision I have of pulling back is going to be much easier said than done.
6
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Yeah, and I think also you get a lot of value after creating something that impacts and inspires others.
6
SPEAKER_00
So, if you stop that and you just focused on your immediate family only, there might be limited joy to that too, right?
6
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Yes, absolutely.
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So, it s important.
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But also, if I think about what actually gives me a lot of joy in life,
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It s my family and friends.
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That s really what it is.
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Now, I love writing.
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I love researching.
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I genuinely do.
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It doesn t feel like a job to me.
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I genuinely love it.
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But it completely pales in comparison that I would get from other things in life.
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Man.
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And there are so many people who I would look up to and consider heroes for their profession.
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And you look at what that singular focus did to their personal life,
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And again, I m glad they exist, but I would never want it for myself.
6
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And for virtually, like name any A-list business, investor, celebrity, the reason they re successful is because they devoted 24 seven of their career, which meant that they had no time for their kids or their spouse or whatnot.
6
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So I wrote the other day, among the top 10 richest men in the world, there are a cumulative 13 divorces.
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And I think seven of the 10 have been divorced at least once.
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Now it s a small sample size, like I don t know how much we re getting here, but I think there s truth to the fact that they are successful because they put everything into their business, which came at the expense of everything else.
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Yeah, of caring about others and being there and showing up and being available.
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And talk about regret minimization, that would be mine, sitting on my deathbed and saying, I don t know my kids because I was trying to make money.
6
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Yeah, I got a billion dollars in the bank, but my kids don t love me.
6
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Right.
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I saw someone, I think in their 70s, maybe 80s, a successful business owner,
6
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probably worth a few hundred million, I can t remember what his net worth was, but it was hundreds of millions.
6
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And someone asked him, what is your definition of success?
6
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And he said, my kids still wanting to spend time with me as an adult, on their own will.
6
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Not because I have money, but because they like you and respect you.
6
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I think I would regret life
6
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if I had kids and they didn t want to hang out with me when they were adults.
6
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Of course, yeah.
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That your kids don t respect you and look up to you for your wisdom and your love and your devotion, that kind of thing.
6
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Totally.
6
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There s a quote from Warren Buffett where he says, the definition of success is when the people who you want to love you do love you.
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So if you look at it and you re like, I said earlier, I want my wife, my kids, my parents,
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to love me.
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If they do, I ve checked nine out of the 10 boxes in life that I need.
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If they don t, nothing else is gonna matter.
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I m excited about both your books, but the most recent one, Same As Ever, a guide to what never changes, will give you a lot of insights on so many things in this world.
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And I think people need to check this out.
7
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It s about a book of stories about what never changes in a changing world.
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And I think people are always trying to predict the future, predict how to plan better.
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But what you talked about is like really looking at history and seeing what we ve seen in the past can give us some insights, but we re still, it s going to be very unpredictable in the future.
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Always.
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There s a quote from Voltaire that I use at the beginning of the book, which is, history never repeats itself, but man always does.
7
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The specific events never repeat themselves, but behavior has always been the same and always will be.
7
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And those key behaviors are what?
7
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How people respond to greed, risk, fear, and opportunity are the big ones.
7
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It s the exact same.
7
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So when you look at like the history of the stock market, read about what people were doing during the crash of 1929.
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The feelings that they had, the fears that they had, exact same as they would today.
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Hasn t changed one single bit.
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These are all just the caveman part of our brain responding to threats and opportunities that literally haven t changed in millions of years.
7
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This is just a core of who we are.
7
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Well, you saw, you know, when COVID happened, it was a different event, but you saw, like, all the grocery store toilet paper was, like, sold out.
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That hoarding has been around forever.
7
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It s the same, like, whenever there s a hurricane coming, if you live in one of those areas, Pop-Tarts are gone in two seconds.
7
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Pop-Tarts.
7
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People love it.
7
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They re like, we re gonna be locked in our house.
7
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We need some, like, non-perishable, cheap calories.
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Pop-Tarts.
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It s always a thing.
7
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And it s almost just become, like, almost a meme of, like, hurricane s coming, Pop-Tart section completely wiped out.
7
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That s crazy.
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There s all these weird things, but it s always been like that, and I think it always will be.
7
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What else do we need to know about this?
7
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Anything else that we ve missed here today?
7
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I think the biggest thing in both of my books, there s two grand takeaways from it.
7
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One is a plea for humility, that in your individual life and at the society level, stop pretending that you know what s going to be in the future, because you don t.
7
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I don t, you don t, nobody does.
7
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The other is a plea to look inwards in realizing that the right financial solution, the right career solution for you is going to be different than it is for me and vice versa.
7
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Not because we disagree with each other, but because we re different people.
7
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Yes.
7
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And so there is no one size fits all solution for almost anything in life.
7
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You have to spend a lot of time looking in the mirror, so to speak, to figure out who you are and what you want and to play the game that you re playing.
7
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Wow.
7
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What are you going to see in the mirror at the end of this year when you reflect on any change you might need to make next year?
7
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I think I ll look in the mirror and say, I gave it all that I had.
7
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I gave it my best shot.
7
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It wasn t always perfect.
7
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I didn t always do the right thing, but I tried my damnedest and I m pretty proud of that.
7
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And I think I ll also realize this year that I probably went a little too hard.
7
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It was probably too much.
7
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I traveled too much.
7
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I spoke at too many conferences.
7
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I spent too much of time away from my kids.
7
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Just on the flight down here this morning, I was looking at some old videos of my kids from a year ago.
7
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And every parent will relate to this.
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I m just utterly shocked at how much they ve grown.
7
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And then I m like, well, how much was like gone in the last year during this period when they grew six inches and their voices changed and might mean other different people.
7
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And it also made me kind of sad.
7
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So I think that it s a healthy realization to say, look, I want to be ambitious in my career, but that was probably a little bit too much.
7
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Mmm, gotcha.
7
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It s good lessons before I become a father in the future.
7
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It s good to know these things.
7
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Same as ever, a guide to what never changes.
7
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Make sure you guys get a copy or two.
7
SPEAKER_02
Give it to a friend.
7
SPEAKER_02
Also, where can we follow you online and how else can we support you?
7
SPEAKER_00
Most of my time online is on Twitter, for better or worse.
7
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That s my drug of choice.
7
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My handle is Morgan Housel.
7
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It s my first and last name.
7
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I also have a budding, aspiring podcast called The Morgan Housel Podcast.
7
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Still experimenting, playing around.
7
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I don t have a studio quite as grand as this, Louis.
7
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You don t need it, you know?
7
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You re doing a little bit better job than me, but I m just still experimenting with it.
7
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But it s a lot of fun.
7
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It is a lot of fun.
7
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That s good.
7
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We ll make sure to check that out and link that up as well.
7
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I ve got two final questions for you.
7
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Before I ask,
7
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The final two questions, I want to acknowledge you, Morgan, for your values.
7
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Because I think a lot of people who become very successful, what looks like a lot of success overnight, which obviously was 17 plus years of doing something every single day, a lot of people seem to lose their values.
7
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So I really acknowledge you for speaking back into that and making that really your foundation.
7
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Thank you.
7
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Being a good person, being kind to people, having humility,
7
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looking inwards, being a good husband and father and a good friend.
7
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So I really acknowledge you for focusing on that as your identity and not your success in your work.
7
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And when people ask me who I am, I say I m a loving, passionate, wise man, because that s who I want to be remembered as.
7
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That s who I want to be known as by my friends and hopefully my peers and everyone too, right?
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And I m not perfect all the time.
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I m sure people don t always say that about me, but
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That s who I want to be.
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That s who I want to show up as.
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Knowing who you want to be remembered as is really important.
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Buffett has this thing where he says, write your obituary and then live up to it.
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What do I want people to say at my funeral?
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It s kind of a weird thing to think about.
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No one s going to say, Morgan s house was this big and he had this many cars with this many horsepower.
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What I want them to say is, he was a good father, he was a good husband, he was a good friend, he helped his community.
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So how can I live my life up to that?
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So at my funeral, that s what they actually say.
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They say all those things that are true.
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Yeah, that s beautiful.
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Well, I acknowledge you for that.
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I think it s really cool that you re living this way with all this success coming your way.
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Appreciate it.
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Thanks.
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These two final questions.
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This is called the three truths.
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So imagine a hypothetical scenario.
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You get to live as long as you want, but it s your last day on Earth.
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You get to accomplish or retire at any time and stop when you re ahead or keep going for as long as you want.
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And you accomplish all your wildest dreams and live the life you want, personally, professionally.
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But it s the last day on earth, and you have to take all of your work with you.
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So all your books, all your articles, every audio, video conversation you ve ever done is gone.
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Goes to the next place or goes somewhere else.
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But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, and this is all we would have as your information or content.
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What would those three truths be for you?
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One would be, the luckier you are, the nicer you should be.
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There has to be a direct correlation between those two.
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And I think most people are luckier than they know, and therefore they should be nicer than they are, even if they re great, nice people.
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That would be one.
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The second would be really think hard about the game that you are playing in life and realize that the game that society tells you that you should want to play might not be the game that you want.
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And so society tells you that you want to be rich and famous, that you want to live in the big house, that you want to do.
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And maybe you do.
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I m not saying that those are bad things, but you really have to be introspective and say, what is my game?
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Define the game that I m playing and realizing that games are very different for other people.
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The other would be,
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It s good to have people in life where you don t want to disappoint.
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It s good to have really close friends, really close family that you want.
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They are the ones who are pushing you to be the best person that you can be.
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And I think if you always have those people in the back of your head with every action that you do, okay, I m making this decision.
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Would it disappoint this person in my life who I want to love me?
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I think that s a really powerful
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That s beautiful.
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Those are great three truths.
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I love that.
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Final question, Morgan.
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What is your definition of greatness?
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Mine is waking up every morning and doing whatever the hell you want with whomever you want for as long as you want.
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It s being independent and autonomous.
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And for most people, what they want to do is wake up and do their best work.
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The important thing is that you re doing it on your terms without someone else telling you what to do or how to do it.
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Now, this doesn t mean everyone should be an entrepreneur.
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But I think the ability to be yourself is where almost everything great in life comes from.
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Both in your individual happiness, but also the amount of companies, innovations, everything good in life came from someone who was doing it because they wanted to do it.
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Not because somebody told them to do it.
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So, independence and autonomy is a really key aspect of success and greatness.
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I hope today s episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today s show with all the important links.
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And if you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.
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And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now it s time to go out there and do something great.