Ep 527 | Redefining Wealth with Sahil Bloom

I am here. What's going on, everybody?

There he is.

Happy Friday.

Happy Friday, man. What's going on? How you doing?

I am great. Happy to be home with the family. Been a whirlwind of travel the last few months, so it's nice to be back in the home base.

And you're in New York, right?

Yeah, I'm in the suburbs. Not much of a city guy, so I like my space.

I got you. Well, I am— we're going to just dive right in. Usually we have a few things going on at the beginning of our calls, but I want to maximize our time with you. I am, uh, I've probably been pretty annoying with our group here, uh, sharing my excitement and having you on. I, uh, I picked up your book on February 7th, I think. David, who's on this call, was the one that said, hey, check this book out. I think you'll like it. I picked it up on February 7th. I read like 40 pages, and then I sent you a message on Instagram. And I know this sounds like a funny place to start, but I think there's something everybody should learn or hear from this. I send Sahil a message 40 pages into the book and You know, he doesn't know me from anybody. The guy's got probably a couple million people following him on social, a New York Times bestseller, and his time is in demand. And I know a lot of people are reaching out to you. And dude, I think maybe 5 minutes after I sent you a message saying, I like the first 40 pages, this is awesome, not thinking anything was going to happen, you wrote me back and said, thanks, that made my day. I'm like, all right, someone's managing this dude's messaging, which I can appreciate that. I get it. And then like a week later, I sent you a message and said, hey, I'm going to buy a bunch of copies for some of my friends. Would you want me to use any sort of link? Again, not expecting anything. You respond not with just the message. You send me a video telling me how to save money on buying the copies of the books and then say, hey, if there's anything I could do for you, let me know. I know that sounds funny to start there, gang. But there is something to be said for an individual that his time is in massive demand. I think he's probably the most requested podcaster out there right now. He's got a New York Times bestseller. He's all over the place, and he's responding to me, volunteering to jump on with all of— I just think that's really freaking cool. It's amazing, the awesome people we work with. Are usually really easy to make stuff happen. It's almost like some of the pains in the butt to work with that aren't— and it's just an interesting thing. Funny place to start, but I appreciate you for doing that so much.

Yeah, well, I mean, this is a broader principle for everybody, but— and you're all, you know, on your way in whatever, you know, stage and path you're on. But one of the things that I have always thought and appreciated in my own journey is you can't forget what got you here in the first place. And the second you lose sight of the boring basics of the work that actually got you to where you are, that's when you're bound to fall. And I see that over and over again with these success stories and these people who, like, get high on their own supply. And then all of a sudden you see their downfall and you wonder why. And everyone tries to deconstruct these, you know, collapses. And oftentimes it's because they lost sight of the dirt. They lost sight of the, the gritty work that actually contributed. And we're going to get a cameo from my, uh, 2-and-a-half-year-old here in the background. Uh, hey buddy. Um, you lose sight of the dirt. You lose sight of the things that actually contributed to you getting there in the first place. And in, in a lot of our cases, that's like the boring basics, the unscalable actions that actually drive the scalable results. And I think that over and over again in my own journey that You know, if my goal is to impact and create a scalable impact, oftentimes the most unscalable things are what are going to create that impact in the long run. Maybe not in the short run. Replying to you probably doesn't make sense. Sending that video probably doesn't make sense. But think about now how you interact with my ideas in the world, Brian, and how you are probably the first person to say something nice about my ideas or my work or the things that I'm doing. Because of that unscalable action that I took. And so I think we need to often broaden the definition or like basically like expand our time horizon on how we think about the things that we're doing. Because when we do expand our time horizon, we can often justify and recognize that there's a much, you know, much higher ROI on these unscalable actions than we think.

Hey buddy, you hang out with Mama? You know, for a guy that's going to talk about time, wealth, and relationships, that was the perfect cameo right there, having the kid walk in the background. I totally get it. But well, let's make sure that everybody knows you, Sahil, if they don't already know you. So, I already mentioned you've got this New York Times bestseller. As a matter of fact, I think it's sandwiched right now between Mel Robbins, who's kicking butt with her new book, and Atomic Habits, which refuses to leave the top seller list. That's some good company. Yeah, man. And I think it's been 6, 7, 8 weeks up top that list. That's pretty impressive.

Yeah, it's, it's been pretty mind-blowing just to see the impact that the book is having. And, you know, look, it's one of those funny things. The entire goal when I was releasing the book in the first place was to try to hit the New York Times bestseller list the week of launch, because the way these things work is like you have you get the benefit of your entire preorder period for that first week when you're trying to hit the list. And so everyone assumes like, okay, that's my best shot at hitting it, because after that it's like you have one week of sales, you're trying to compete against the best books in the world. Uh, and so that was always the goal, was like that first week, because I just assumed you'd never be able to hit it again. It's like such a tall order. And so now, uh, sitting where we're sitting, and like it's been, uh, 6 straight weeks now that we've been on the list, it only happens because people are finding value in it. They're sharing it with each other. They're, you know, feeling connected to the ideas emotionally, the actions that they're taking, the ripples that it's creating in their lives. And so I just feel enormously grateful to have the opportunity to continue to go deeper on this, to do the unscalable things, to spend time with groups who are taking these ideas and running with them in their own lives. And excited to be here and have a chance to do that today.

Well, it's fantastic. I know we're going to throw the link in the chat. A bunch today. Guys, I want to see you buy this because I really— the models, the actionable items you give there are just fantastic. You've been writing for a while. Well, before this book, though, I think you've got a newsletter that's read by millions. You've been putting content out for some time. As a matter of fact, I think the way I first learned of you was people forward me different quotes and sayings and like 78% of everything people were forwarding me was was your stuff. So you've been putting material out there for a while.

Yeah, it is. Um, again, it's like the value of showing up is so underrated. Um, and— all right, buddy, I'll see you in a little bit. The value of just showing up over and over again is so underrated, um, in general by people. It's, um, Sorry. It is. It's one of those things where we overestimate the impact of like perfection and being extraordinary and underestimate the impact of just showing up and being consistently reliable. My grandfather said that to me when I was a kid, that you'll achieve much more by being consistently reliable than by being occasionally extraordinary. You just need to show up over and over and over again, and no one day needs to be dramatic or brilliant or extraordinary. You just need to keep showing up. And it's so funny because so few people are just willing to do that. Everyone, like, focuses all their time and attention and energy on how to hit the perfect shot or how to, like, make the perfect pitch. I played baseball my whole life. Every player I played against— I played at Stanford back in college, and I I was not particularly talented. There were guys on the team that were so much better than me, but I would outperform them simply because I would just keep throwing the ball over the plate. And I wasn't so focused on trying to throw the perfect pitch over and over and over again. Because what happens when you get cute, you like, you try to throw the perfect pitch, you tire yourself out, or, you know, you start getting too fine on the margins and you miss the fact that just showing up over and over again is really where the alpha is generated in life. Whether that's cold calls, cold emails, you know, the workouts you're doing, the relationships, all of these areas of life, the real long-term advantage is generated by just being willing to tolerate uncertainty longer than other people. It's the person who can show up when the rewards are uncertain and just continue to pound the rock, just continue to push over and over and over again in some tiny way, because anything above zero compounds in your life. It doesn't matter if it's not perfect on any given day. It's just that any tiny thing is going to move the ball forward in your world.

So good. And it's not just content that you're consistent with. I mean, you've been building businesses and things of that nature too. So, I want to make sure everyone knows you're not just this amazing author. You're a businessperson. You're an entrepreneur. You're doing what a lot of individuals here are doing, which is scaling aiming to scale and grow big businesses while also flourishing in other areas of your life?

Yeah, I, I mean, just by way of quick background, I spent the first 7 years of my career at a private equity fund. I was co-leading our consumer investing by the end of that time period. Private equity, I assume most of you are familiar with it, but basically we were buying and selling businesses. It was middle market. So think businesses between like $50 million and $500 million revenue. And, you know, taking ownership control stakes in these businesses. So large, significant investments, sitting on the boards of them, generally speaking, trying to direct value creation and drive businesses forward and then hopefully sell them for more than you bought them for. After I left that to kind of pursue this more entrepreneurial path in 2021, I've been building a holding company where I own a number of cash flowing smaller businesses, but all sort of cash flowing businesses that we've built from the ground up. And that's continuing to grow. I have operators that run all of those businesses, so I'm not involved in day-to-day management, but I sit over the top kind of from a strategic perspective. Then I have a venture fund, $10 million venture investment fund that I raised in 2022 where we invest in early stage tech startups. So, you know, everything from sort of like consumer tech to AI, anything in between. And then all my creative work, which is my primary time investment and energy. One of the biggest reasons for that is it's the highest leverage thing that I can possibly do. You know, I can, I can write the same exact newsletter today that I wrote 3 or 4 years ago, but now it reaches a million people versus, you know, a few thousand people a few years ago. It's the same with the sharing of the ideas in the book or any other piece of social content. It's the reason you all, I'm sure, think about the fact that creating content around what you're doing and building as a business leader is really scalable and really advantageous to what you're doing because you can scale whatever it is you're doing. It's sort of a force amplifier for your work. And I'm sure we can get into some frameworks for doing that effectively as we get out into this conversation as well. But that's kind of a general lay of the land of the business ecosystem today.

No, it's great. I just want everybody to make sure that they hear that you're in the trenches building big things in the business landscape while also building wealth in these other areas. We're going to talk about. So bring, bring me back, right? Because I know your story from listening to the podcast and of course reading the book. But, um, and you kind of talked about where you're at today and where you started in private equity. And you went to Stanford, you came out with this vision for what your life might look like. Uh, there was a transition though, there was a shift. There's a story that you tell specifically about, I think, a friend you were visiting with that kind of I think jumpstarted a lot of where your head's at today. Would you mind talking about that?

Yeah, I, um, so this is back in 2021, and I mentioned I'd spent the early part of my career in finance. Um, and one of the things that happened during that period was I had become more and more narrowly focused on financial wealth, status, the accumulation of things as being the pathway to me feeling happy and fulfilled in life. I had started to convince myself that I was going to wake up one day and have made a certain amount of money or gotten a certain amount of things, and that my life was just going to be good, and that the insecurities that I'd had for much of my younger years in life were just going to magically disappear and go away when I hit whatever that number was that I had propped up in my mind as the destination. There's something called the arrival fallacy, which is this idea that We prop up these achievements or goals or accolades as being the point at which we will feel like we have arrived, when everything will just be better once we achieve those things. And it's a fallacy because we get them and we have that momentary sort of drip of euphoria, and then our sights reset onto the horizon. We feel that familiar dread of never having done enough, of needing to do more, and the the sort of the goalposts move. We have that feeling it's just on the horizon again. That had happened to me over and over again. And unfortunately, along that path, a lot of these other areas of my life had started to suffer. My relationships with my parents— was living 3,000 miles away from them, not seeing them. My relationship with my sister had ground to a halt. My wife and I were struggling to conceive at the time, which was creating a real strain on our relationship. My health. I was drinking 6, 7 nights a week. Mental and physical health were going haywire. And it was a time in my life where, frankly, from the outside looking in, it looked like I was winning the game. I was doing the things that you're supposed to want to do. And I started to have this sensation in early 2021 that if that was what winning felt like, I had to be playing the wrong game. And that all came to a head for me in May of 2021. I went out for a drink with an old friend. And we sat down and he asked how I was doing. And I told him that it had started to get difficult living so far away from my parents. They were 3,000 miles away on the East Coast, and I could tell they were getting older. They were slowing down. For the first time in my life, I really noticed it. And he asked how old they were, and I said mid-60s. And he asked how often I saw them. And I admitted that it had gotten down to just about once a year. And he just looked at me and said, okay, so you're going to see your parents 15 more times before they die. And I just remember feeling like I had been punched in the gut. Um, the idea that the amount of time you have left with the people you care about most in the world is that finite and countable that you can place it onto a few hands just shook me to the core. And in that moment, I realized that if something didn't change, we were going to end up somewhere where we didn't want to be, that my entire definition of success and of what it meant to build a wealthy life was incomplete because it was grounded in this one thing of money and missing out on this much bigger picture of all of these other things that contribute to living a good life. And so within 45 days, my wife and I made a pretty dramatic decision. I left my job. We sold our house in California and we moved 3,000 miles across the country to live closer to both of our sets of parents. And in that one decision, there was a really important realization, which was you are actually in much more control of your time than you think. We had taken an action and fundamentally created time. That number 15 is now in the hundreds. I see my parents multiple times a month. They're a huge part of my son, their grandson's life. Um, we had taken an action and created time for the things that we care about most. That realization, that power that we had reassumed in our life was the spark that changed everything.

That, I think you just kind of blew my cover there, Sahil, because everyone hears or knows how into your book and things that I am. And then you touch on that time topic, which my friends here know is a very important one to me. So guys, I know many of you are probably laughing in the chat. Yep, you got me. Like his, his, his story around doing the math around his parents and then taking action. Yeah, that's definitely a driver for me wanting to have Sale here today. The, the interesting thing that I was just thinking about, as you were saying, this was middle of 2021. We're not even 4 years past that point. I mean, we talk about you're kind of 5 years away from accomplishing anything in life that you want to accomplish. You're 3.5, 4 years post that, Mark, and have accomplished an awful lot, not just in business but in life over the course of that time. As a matter of fact, not to get too personal, but I've heard you say it in some other interviews. Your son is how old now?

He's going to turn 3 in May.

3 in May. So I'm not the best at math, but I can— I think that that move and maybe some of the challenges you guys were having Interesting timing around that is all I'm saying.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we, a few weeks after getting into our new place on the East Coast, after 2 years of this fertility struggle, we found out that my wife was pregnant. And it was— I'm not a particularly religious person, but if there was a moment in my life where I felt like God had winked at us, that was it, that when you took the right action, everything falls into place as it should. And, you know, I constantly have to pull myself back into this because even just a few weeks ago, right, like what just happened, my son coming in, I'm trying to focus on something. My son kind of barges into my office and he's, you know, being rambunctious. He's 2-and-a-half-year-old. He wants to play, he's jumping around. And a few weeks ago that happened. I was working on something and I started to have this like train of thought complaining, like I was annoyed. I was like, why is he doing this? This is so annoying. Doesn't he know I'm trying to focus? All of these things that we have go through our heads. And in that moment, I caught myself and I snapped myself back to 4 years ago when my wife and I were struggling to conceive. And I had prayed every single night without fail for 2 years that we would one day have a healthy child. And there I was in that moment complaining about the exact thing that I had prayed for. And it was a reminder to me that sometimes in life, the things you pray for become the things that you complain about if you let them. Over and over again, we find that in our own lives. The house that we prayed for becomes the house that we grumble is too small. The car that we dreamed about becomes the car that we want to trade in. The engagement ring that we lusted after is the engagement ring that we can't wait to upgrade. Over and over again, the things that we pray for become the things that we complain about. But only if you let them. Only if you don't catch yourself in those moments and pull yourself back to gratitude in the present, that sometimes you are literally living out your younger self's prayers. And so if there's a call to action for everybody around that in the week to come, we are all human. It's natural. It's going to happen. It happens to me every single day. But we can catch ourselves and that awareness and then taking action on the back of that so that when my son comes in and does those kind of things, I recognize like there's going to be a day when I wish he would do this. Every single thing you do today is something your older self is going to wish they could go back and do. And to just appreciate these present moments, there is so much beauty to be found in that.

Damn, that's so good. It's almost like I don't want to talk for a minute and let everybody just soak that in. I could see, you know, the chat processing some of this. It's pretty amazing.

Yeah, there's, there's a lot of value. I, the whole book for those who don't have it yet, I'm obviously biased. I think you'll all really love it. Would be honored for you to grab a copy and let me know what you think. Please send me a message if you do, just like Brian did. I love to hear from people. But one of the things of the whole book is these questions, asking yourself these questions that you've been avoiding in your own life. Because the fundamental idea that I have is that the answers you are looking for in life are found in the questions that you avoid. It's the things that you are afraid to confront, the things that you are afraid to ask yourself that actually reveal the answers that you're really seeking. And one of those questions that I would love for people to think on this weekend, which is in the book as well, is if you were the main character in a movie of your life, what would the audience be screaming at you to do right now? We've all kind of had that moment, like watching a TV show or a movie where you just want to jump through the screen and grab the main character, like shake them, chase the girl to the airport, don't go down in that basement. Look behind you, whatever that thing is. You are that main character in the movie of your life, and there is something blindingly obvious from the outside looking in that you are either choosing to ignore or you have yet to create enough perspective to truly see. What is it? What is that thing in your life and how can you take some tiny action in the week ahead to move on that thing? I guarantee if you sit with that question, you'll come up with something. And that tiny thing, that tiny action that you take could be the spark that fundamentally changes your life.

You know, it's probably appropriate then to ask you. I know in the book you talk a little bit about just blocking time to think. You know, Bill Gates had his Think Week. We've chatted about that a little bit at different meetings we have here. But you talk around just, just allowing time to process and ask big questions. Why don't you dive a little bit deeper into that?

Yeah. Bill Gates had this idea of a Think Week from— I think he started it in the 1980s, and the whole concept was like just creating enough space to zoom out and think about the bigger picture in your business and in your life. If you think about your own life, um, and this is certainly the case for me, the vast majority of your time is spent in what I would consider management time. Management time is like processing emails, it's meetings, it's phone calls, it's the basic tasks, all of those things that yes, they need to get done. But let's be honest, a lot of them aren't really truly driving significant asymmetric progress in our lives. But we get stuck in this loop where everything is stimulus and response. There's the emails coming in and then the emails urgently that you have to send out. There's the notifications in, the things immediately out, the family pressures, whatever it is, all the things you need to do. And then immediate response to those things. It's this fixed loop that you're in— stimulus response, stimulus response. And what happens is we never create any space to pause and actually think about the bigger picture. We never actually have ideation time in the context of our lives, professional or personal. And when you don't have space to think, how are you ever going to actually set the direction or adjust course or make some of the bigger picture changes or figure out what you truly want? By the way, like so many of us over and over and over again in our lives are like climbing certain mountains or doing things certain ways simply because they've been the default ways that have been handed to us. We've been told that that's the race we're supposed to run. That's the mountain we're supposed to climb by family, by friends, by our peers, by social media. All of these different things have told us that this is the thing that we should be wanting to do, but we've never taken the time or created the space to actually ask ourselves, is that true? Is this actually the way that I need to do this thing, or is there a better way? Is there a slightly different path that I could be taking to this? And so creating a fixed structure that actually, uh, sort of, uh, creates and breathes, ventilates your calendar with that space to think is really beneficial. It is not a reward, uh, for efforts, by the way. Ambitious people like all of you on this call, uh, are the worst at re— at, um, considering free time and rest as a reward for your efforts rather than as a part of your performance. It's one of the most significant challenges that any ambitious person faces is reframing it as a part of your performance. It's not about you getting a reward. Oh, I worked so hard, so now I'm going to rest. It's necessary to create that thinking time to actually drive the asymmetric outcomes that you want in life. None of us are interested in the symmetric outcomes. You like— you wouldn't be on something like this. You wouldn't be part of a group like this if you were interested in the like, okay, I'm just going to time for money trade my way until I'm 80 years old, right? We're all trying to work towards that one moment that gets us the step function change, the 10x, the 100x, whatever that is. Well, that doesn't come by being stuck in this perpetual loop. It comes from being able to zoom out, create, even if it's an hour a month, of space to actually think about some of these bigger picture questions. And so I have this section in the book where I break down a handful, like 8 or so kind of question prompts that you can walk through. Take an hour once a month, get out of your normal headspace. Don't go to your office. Don't go to your like normal places, because when you're in your normal places, your brain thinks in normal ways. Your mind responds to your environment. So if you're in— I'm in my office right now, I'm going to think in patterned ways. Because it's going to be aligned with the environment that I'm seeing. So if I'm going to do this, I want to go to like a new coffee shop or I want to go outside where there's something totally different, totally new stimulus and think about some of these bigger picture questions. Don't check your email. Don't be like processing things. Don't have any stimulus. The only thing should be you, your thoughts, and, you know, a piece of paper, journal, whatever your tool is that you're going to use for that. Enormous value will come from that. Just an hour per month. So when I talk about finding these like asymmetric things in life, these things where like a tiny amount of input can create enormous amounts of output, that one hour can have dramatic— I mean, you can have an ROI that is astronomical off of just taking an hour once a month to just get out of your normal headspace and think.

It is, it is funny. Cause if you ask somebody, where do they get the greatest ideas? Like, what are they doing when they get their best ideas? It's usually when they're working out or driving a car or even in the shower, like when you're on autopilot and your mind is actually at its calmest state, is when you're getting your best ideas. So why would we not crave more of those moments? Which is, I think, a really interesting way that you phrased it was instead of this reward sort of thing, this should be something we are baking into our, our calendar and our world as business people and as fathers and mothers and, and all of that.

Absolutely. I mean, it's just, it's so, it's such a hard pattern to break in your own mind because if you all are anything like me, the second you like take a break to do something like that, your initial reaction is like, oh my God, I'm not doing anything. I'm being lazy. I should be doing more. I should be working harder. Why am I not doing this? So-and-so is probably working right now. Like all of those thoughts start spiraling. It's the feeling you get when you like sleep through your alarm and you wake up with this level of like, oh, like my whole day is ruined. I'm in a terrible mood. Um, we need to fight that. And you need to re— you just need to recognize that structuring this kind of thing into your month is the way that you get past that. Because then you see it on your calendar. It's a thing. Like it is, it is a process that I am doing. It's structured. It's not that I'm just being lazy and I'm just gonna go take an hour. It is part of what I'm doing on a monthly basis.

Yeah. So let's dive a little bit more into the book itself. You break the book— there's 5 different categories: time, social, mental, physical, and financial, as you're talking around wealth. And I want to get tactical with respect to our group. We're all in real estate. The vast majority on this call are selling real estate day in and day out. And in real estate, financial success is a focus, as it should be. It's the primary focus. In many cases. So how do, how do you think we as salespeople, as agents, balance all of the areas you describe in the book without losing sight of our financial objectives, of our income goal? How do you, how do you kind of balance these areas and still thrive?

I think it's less about balance and more about harmony, uh, and I'll explain here. Um, balance implies there is a tension and a dichotomy across things. Like when people say work-life balance, you are inherently saying that your work and your life are opposed, that they're on opposite ends of something. You're creating this dichotomy. That does not have to be true in any of these areas of life, actually. That is like one of those defaults that we've been told that we've all accepted. And so we just say it, we recite it. It's just not true. Um, when it comes to your work, when it comes to making money, there's nothing wrong with the pursuit of more, with like growing your business, pushing yourself. It just has to be that you have a clear understanding of why. What is the life that I am actually trying to build? What is the money for? It's not just money for the sake of money. That is the path to misery. The people that are just accumulating money because they think they're going to one day wake up and feel good from that is a path to nowhere. That's the person that goes and makes $1 billion that we write books about. Ignore— we pat them on the back, we celebrate them, we tell them that they won the game. Ignoring the fact that they have 4 ex-wives and 3 kids and don't talk to them. And we're going to tell the person that they won the game. And you have to ask yourself on the call, is that actually a game that I care to win? Because it's not for me. I definitely don't want to win that game. Um, and that is the important point. You need to identify what the money is for. Money is a tool. It is not the goal. Money is a tool for building a wealthy life in all of these other areas. And it is a very good tool for that. In the early years of your life, which most of you are probably through or very close to being through, money directly buys happiness. Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Money allows basic things— food, shelter, take care of the people around you, you know, education for your family, basic pleasures like the first couple of vacations. Once you get beyond that, there is no longer that sort of like linear relationship between incremental money and incremental happiness. These other areas of life are going to be the things that build that incremental happiness in your life. So you have to recognize that and be using money as a tool to accumulate these other things, not as the goal in and of itself. Money becomes a way to build the life that you actually want to live, not a number just on the scoreboard. That mentality shifting from using money as your exclusive scoreboard for how you are doing in life to recognizing that the true scoreboard is much bigger, that we're going to avoid what I call the Pyrrhic victory. This idea of a victory that comes at such a steep cost that it might as well have been a defeat. It is the battle won, but the war lost. That is what the person did who made $1 billion but has the ex-wives and the kids that don't talk to them. It's a Pyrrhic victory. They won the battle, but they lost the war. That is what we're all trying to avoid. We want to win the battle and the war. We want to make a lot of money. I want to— I like money. Don't get me wrong. I didn't— there's nothing in this book that says that money doesn't matter. I actually, in the first few pages, say the exact opposite. Like, I live in a house, right? Like, I like having a house. My version of the life that I'm trying to build has a few houses because I want to be able to create experiences with people that I love. There is nothing wrong with that, and no one should ever tell you that there is. But you have to recognize what it is all for. What is the goal? What are you actually trying to build? What is the life you are trying to build around this?

So, so two things. Um, well, there's a lot to unpack there, but, but two things I observed. Number one, uh, I love the use of the term harmony. Uh, I, I don't think I've really heard it said in the way you, you just described it. You are absolutely right. We constantly talk about balance or counterbalance, and I never thought about it in the way you just described how we've gotta be harmonious or have these, have this harmony between time and social and mental and physical. And financial. It's so good. Number one. Number two, um, your energy just went through, like, you became more animated around this particular topic. Now, I understand it's the crux of the book, but you just dialed it up a whole level. Like, you're pretty passionate about this. What's driving that passion? Are you seeing lots of people doing it, say, wrong? Not that you're the arbiter of right and wrong, but are you seeing people do it wrong? Is it something that, you know, you lived through and now you've— you want everyone to understand, like, the changes you made? Like, what drove— what drives that energy?

Yeah, I mean, I saw this in my own life. Like, that was the path I was walking down. That was going to be me, if I'm being totally honest. Like, I was going to end up divorced. I was going to end up as one of these people that was rich yet miserable. And who the hell wants to be rich yet miserable? You know, when you're young, you think that money is going to be the thing that makes you amazingly happy, but it's not. It is a tool to get a lot of the things that might, but only if you recognize it as a tool, but not the goal. And that is a really important mindset shift for all of us on this journey, that money isn't nothing. It simply can't be the only thing. Your wealthy life may be enabled by money, but it will be defined by everything else.

Yeah. So throughout your book, you talk about momentum. And I want to, I want to, I want to focus a little bit on momentum because sales is, is a momentum game. So when things are going well, confidence starts to build, but when things slow down, and we see this in real estate with market kind of ups and downs, when things slow down, some doubt starts to creep in. How do you think this crew, how do you think our people, um, can create sustain momentum even in the ups and downs, not just of their business, but in all the areas you discuss in the book?

I think there's a few things I would think about here. Number one, it is just to recognize that tolerance for uncertainty is probably the single most important trait in life. The most dangerous person is the person who can continue showing up every single day, even when the rewards are uncertain. Anyone can show up when the outcome feels predictable. Anyone can show up like when the market's great and, you know, every single cold call you make gets well taken and every email gets responded to and every sales call goes well and leads to a second and a follow-up. Anyone can do that stuff and they'll all be gone when the seasons change. Right? Like, those are, those are tourists. They are not locals. Locals are the ones who navigate through the winter, uh, who are there when the winds come and when it starts to get cold. And you need to be a local, uh, when it comes to building your business. That's the only way that you can actually build something that thrives across all of the different seasons of your life. Um, if you are not going to be a local, you better recognize that you are just coming in for like the quick hit on something. Because otherwise you're going to get burned over and over and over again. You know, it's the people that like try to pop into the crypto market when it gets really hot and they end up buying the top and losing everything. Real people in any of these markets are the ones who are willing to navigate through those seasons, through the uncertainty. And so reminding yourself of that fact on the days when it does feel like the rewards are not there, like you're pounding your head into a wall, recognizing that that that is a mindset shift that you need to have. The second piece of that is an important one, which is we celebrate as a society people who pound their heads into the wall for a number of years and then break through, ignoring the fact that there was actually more to it than the pounding of the head into the wall. So we talk about MrBeast, right? Like he made, oh, 10,000 videos before he got to a million views or whatever it is. And we from the outside looking in treat that as though those 10,000 videos were all the same and all it was was a numbers game that he just had to do 10,000 in a row and then eventually he would have broken through. So anyone could have done that. That is not true. The reality is that every single one of those 10,000 videos, he was being maniacal in gathering information and data and inform— and insights from what was coming back to him on each of those. And then iterating in tiny ways on what the approach was for the next one. So every single time he was pounding his head into the wall, he was getting a little bit smarter about what the next pound was going to look like. All of us can do that in our own ways. So while the rewards are uncertain, while you are navigating that winter, that period where it doesn't feel good, what you should be doing is gathering more and more information and gathering those insights that allow you to pound your head into the wall a little bit better. If I were to go hit my head into the wall over here to my left, you know, 100 times in a row and the wall doesn't budge, I should probably try a spot slightly to the right or left because maybe that part is not likely to break through. I should probably learn from the fact that it's not even giving a little bit and try something slightly different. That is really the process as you're navigating these challenges. It is keep showing up, recognize that when the rewards are uncertain, this is fortunes are actually made. But also get smarter, be actually circumspect and gather those insights, gather that information to make every single shot slightly better than the last one.

I love it. I love that. And we know that momentum is about stacking these, these small wins, right? Like we've got to compile these small wins and, and we'll get that breakthrough. And to your point, not just put in effort, But do the analysis, you know, iterate, do the things necessary to, to, to pivot such that you're on the path. To go to kind of, kind of double-click on this a little bit more, go a little deeper on this though. What advice would you have for, for some of our crew that they are putting in this work and they are maybe iterating and doing the things you described, but they're still not seeing the immediate results? I like— again, I go back to that self-doubt. It's a hard game that we play. It takes a while to ramp up and build that momentum. If you don't see the immediate results, what sort of mindset shift or even model would you consider?

Zoom out.

Playing that long game.

When in doubt, zoom out. I over and over again feel like I get that. I get stuck in that, right? Like content is very much like that. You have long periods. I call it the valley of stagnation. It's like you get these surges and this growth and everything's great and it's so easy and you feel great and there's tons of momentum. And then all of a sudden you kind of like have this valley, this long, long period where there's nothing happening. You're just like, that's when everyone quits. And you recognize that that is literally when everyone quits during that valley. And generally speaking, the point of maximum uncertainty is right before the breakthrough on that thing. It's very hard to recognize unless you zoom out and see the bigger picture. Because what happens is you get stuck and you're in that valley and you're seeing these like little, you know, ups and downs during this window. And if you were to zoom out, you would recognize that you're here and a year ago you were here. And for those who can't see me, there's a big gap between those two. You've come a long way, but you don't recognize that because you are first person in your own video game. So you are living in the trenches day to day and progress as you know it in your own mind is literally like versus yesterday or versus a few days ago. That's like the scope of our mind on a daily basis. So you need to force the zoom out to recognize that you're actually in a much better position than you were 6 months ago or a year ago, and that you would cringe at your 6-month-ago self because of how much more you know. Whether you're not— you're seeing it on the stat sheet is a different thing versus the actual knowledge that you have in your head to the skills and experience that you've accumulated. So Redefine a little bit how you think about results. Um, there's an important point there. Results as the external world will define it is just going to be about money or sales or whatever your KPI is. You can have some additional KPIs in your own life. Like, have you gotten significantly smarter about the market? Have you, you know, generated an additional list of contacts, network connections, people that may contribute to future growth? They haven't actually driven any of the, like, core today KPI yet, but you've gotten better if you've accumulated those things. So zoom out, see the bigger picture on this stuff, because oftentimes you'll recognize that you're actually doing a lot better than you thought. And sorry, KPI, key performance indicator. It's like the, you know, the metric of success within, within your world.

That's awesome. So We have about 15 minutes and, and, and I have limited time, right? So I have to ask selfish questions that are for me, but hopefully the byproduct is everyone's going to learn something here. I want to talk about social wealth, which is a heck of a pivot from what we've been describing, but it's personal for me, right? Because I'm recognizing that I am so dialed into my business and my personal growth that admittedly I do neglect my social wealth to some extent. I could be better at that. I heard an interview you were doing. I can't remember which podcast it was, but it was an interesting comment that was made around how we wear— like, I wear a Whoop and I, you know, I've got a Garmin. I could tell you every health stat that I have. I can't do that same sort of thing for social fitness. And you— and we talk around this Harvard study of, of happiness, and what do they point to? The happiest people are what? They, you know, they have great social connection. So in our world where we are so focused on, on building, yet social wealth is important so that we are happy, how do we— how do we— I was about to say balance— how do we operate in harmony there? How can we make certain that we have these deep relationships that lead to happiness, yet still be successful entrepreneurs?

Yeah, there's two things I would, I would say here. First off, we gotta stop saying later. Um, later is the most dangerous word in the dictionary. Uh, we say, I'll spend more time with my kids later. I'll prioritize my relationship with my, with my spouse, with my partner, with my friends later. I'll focus on my health later. I'll find my freedom and purpose later. The sad thing is that later just becomes another word for never, because those things are not going to exist in the same way later. Your kids are not going to be 5 years old later. Your partner, your friends, they won't be there for you later if you're not there for them right now. Your health will not be there for you later. You won't magically wake up with freedom and purpose later. So either you find some tiny way to design those things into your life right now, or you're just going to end up regretting it later. My grandfather used to say, later we'll be dead. It's very true. We got to stop saying later with all of these things. The follow to that of how you stop saying later is you stop viewing life as existing on on-off switches. What we have to do and what I talk about in the early part of the book, as you know, Brian, is this idea of a dimmer switch mentality for your entire life. Traditional wisdom has said that all of these areas of your life exist on these on-off switches. So you have your career, your financial wealth. That is a priority. That's something that you're trying to build, especially early on. And so that switch is switched on. And what you say in the traditional wisdom is, okay, I'm really focused on this during this season of life. So too bad health flipped off, too bad family and friends flipped off, too bad purpose flipped off. I got to, I got to do this one thing. And the sad thing is that that is that later mentality. And what happens is if you leave a switch off for too long, you cannot turn it back on. It becomes nearly impossible to turn those things back on. If you don't invest in your health in your 30s, 40s, and 50s, it won't be there for you in your 60s and 70s. Same with your relationships, same with your purpose, same with all of these areas of your life. So the flip side mindset and what I propose in the book is this idea of your entire life existing on dimmer switches. Meaning during any one season of your life, you are going to be focused and prioritizing one major thing. It's going to be your focus during that season of your life. Most of us, we're in the financial wealth building focus season. I get that. Totally makes sense. That dimmer is turned up. The other dimmers, these other areas of your life, your relationships, your health, your mental health, all of these other areas, you can keep them on, have them turned down low. They don't need to get shut off. What it means to have a dimmer on low is that you do some tiny thing every single day that is going to compound and stack positively because of what I said earlier. Anything above zero compounds. The tiny action is better than the no action. Ambitious people are the absolute worst. We allow optimal to get in the way of beneficial over and over again. Optimal gets in the way of beneficial. Oh, I don't have an hour to work out. So I'm just not going to work out today. I don't have an hour to call my mom, so I'm just not going to call. I don't— I can't get together for a date with that friend, so I'm just not going to even text them over and over. I don't have 2 hours to deep work, so I'm just going to send emails instead. Over and over and over again, we do that. We allow optimal to get in the way of beneficial. Keep the dimmer on low. Do the tiny thing that compounds positively. When it comes to relationships, sending the text to the person when you're thinking about them is dramatically better than doing nothing. It takes 2 seconds to send a text to someone and let them know something positive that you were thinking about them or some funny memory or some funny thing. I have a habit with— iPhone has the like photo memories feature. I just have a trigger where when I see one of those, I text it to the person who's in the picture with me. It's like an automatic, super easy way to continue building these momentum in these relationships. It's an automatic trigger that comes where I just know that I'm going to do this. I'm going to send it. Prompts continued growth in these relationships. And so the point there is the tiny thing is better than nothing in all of these areas of life. You don't need to say later. You can just do the one small thing that keeps the dimmer on low, that keeps stacking wins, pushing the thing in the right direction.

How did you learn all this stuff? Like, I know life experience played a significant role, um, but I also know you do a tremendous amount of research. You have mentors, you have people you look up to. And I'm asking that question sincerely. That was not on our list of questions for the day, but you've had so many nuggets here that you've shared.

I am a student of the human experience. When I first started thinking about writing this book, the first thing I did was I started reading everything that I could get my hands on, like from, I don't know, I've probably got 30 books on my desk right here that I just pick up and read random pieces of. Everything from like ancient wisdom on through kind of modern self-help stuff. And I found very quickly that to understand something human, which is very human, this whole idea of this book and what it means to build a wealthy life, I actually had to immerse myself in the human experience. You can't read a book to figure those things out sometimes to distill it for people. And so I ended up just spending time with thousands of people over the last 3, 4 years as I was diving in on this. Everyone from all walks of life, you know, people 100 on the very, very end of their life through, you know, younger people all over the world, different walks of life, different stories, different experiences, different backgrounds. And when you spend time with that many people, when you sit with that many people, you get to benefit from the collective wisdom of thousands. And to me, wisdom is a lot more about the willingness to sit with questions than it is about having the answers, because the truth is that No one really has the answers for your life. No one on this call. I don't have the answers for your life. The book doesn't have the answers for your life. You already have the answers within you. You just haven't asked the right questions yet to uncover and act upon them. And that is what the book endeavors to do, is help you ask those right questions so that you can come to those answers for your life. And those answers will be different now than they're going to be in 20 years. During different seasons of your life, you're going to want to come back to these questions to reconsider, to think about what has changed, what has shifted, how do I want to take actions differently? But those questions are really universal. The questions are universal. The answers are what's going to differ.

When this journey really ratcheted up for you, call it 4 years ago, you know, you learned quite a bit, you tested a bit, you changed belief or mindset around a variety of topics. It sounds like time obviously was the trigger. Then there was kind of this waterfall, it sounds like. Was there any belief or mindset that you were really anchored to that no matter what you read, you're like, I just don't know if I believe that or I buy into it. And then you, you know, you changed your mind about it. Is there anything that sticks out to you that you were just anchored to?

Yeah, I mean, I, you know this, I'm a new parent. Um, I was very anchored to the idea that I could teach my son things. I had this belief before he was born that, like, I could sit him down with a list of, like, here are the 20 things that I'm going to teach him, and I'm just going to teach him these things. And my mind has changed significantly on that. I don't think you can teach your kids anything. I think that you embody the things that you want them to learn. You have to live by the things that you want them to embrace. And That has been an enormous mindset shift for me in recognizing that I have to live by the things that I'm talking about if I want my son to understand them. I mean, if I want my son to treat my wife like a queen, I better damn well treat my wife like a queen every single day. If I want him to understand the power of delayed gratification, which I believe is the key to life, he better see me work hard on things. Now for a reward later, over and over and over again. He better see me do that because the only way that I can hope for him to live by and to embody these principles is if I embody them myself. There's this quote that I love. Mario Quintana wrote, "Don't waste your time chasing butterflies. Mend your garden and the butterflies will come." And that is to say, all of the things that we are trying to create in our external reality, start in our internal reality, in our actual ability to live these principles out on a daily basis. We have to embody these things if we want to see them in the external world.

We talk so much about leadership on these calls and all the calls we have at, we have at PLACE, and we constantly are saying that if you want to make a difference in leadership, the single greatest thing you can start doing today is model the behavior expected of those around you. And it's interesting how That's where you landed with that too. You can't necessarily teach it, but we can model it. And I think you nailed it. You know, we bounced all around today. We've covered so many different topics. And in the last few minutes, I wanted to ask you, is there something we didn't cover or something that you think, you know, you want to leave this group with? Maybe one thing that we just didn't get to, but you're like, this has got to be said before we leave here today. What comes to mind?

I, um, I would just say I really want people to take the time to, um, think about what they truly want. I have found over and over again in my own life and in people that I've spent time with that so much of the path that we're on and the mountains that we're climbing, the things that we're doing, the way that we're approaching them specifically is done by default. It is because we are afraid to question some of those defaults that we've been handed, because it's much more comfortable to not, to just accept them and to just live that way. But there's so much beauty to be found by being willing to endure that little bit of discomfort, to navigate through that to the other side, to actually question those things. Sapere aude is a Latin phrase that means dare to know. It is the idea of daring to think independently, to actually think for yourself, to come to your own conclusions, to question those defaults, reject them. And I think that that is really the most powerful meta point of the book and of the message that I want to get across is just take the time to question those things because it's very easy to become obsessed with speed. Everything in our entire life is about how fast can I get from point A to point B. We're convinced that that's what matters most. How fast can I make this much money or get to this promotion or get to this title or whatever the thing is? And what you find is that life is about direction, not speed. It's much better to climb slowly up the right mountain than it is to climb fast up the wrong one. But you need to take the time to think about the mountain that you're on. Whether it's the one you want to be on and whether you care to be at the top of the mountain that you're currently climbing.

We're going to have to replay this a few times so everyone gets these concepts down and can think through them. Sahil, I think you've absolutely crushed it today, and I am so appreciative of you spending your time, your hour with us. I want to make sure that our group here is supporting you. How do we best go about doing that? How do we get behind you? How do we support you? I'll say right now I want everybody to buy Cil's book. I wanted you to buy it before this, but after this, I think it's a no-brainer. So I'm guessing the link's probably in the chat a few times. If not, just get on Amazon and buy his book. But how else might we be able to support you, Cil?

Yeah, no, I truly appreciate that, Brian. I would love for everyone to grab a copy of the book. The hardcover is filled with some pretty impactful visuals that are really going to bring a lot of these concepts to life too, that I really think are incredible. So I would love for everyone to check that out and please send me a message, email me. You can get me at sahil@sahilbloom.com. Brian, you can share my email address with everyone. I, I replied to your message because it's me on all my accounts. I don't have anyone managing all my stuff. Like no one manages my email or my accounts. So if you send me a DM, That's me seeing it. If you tag me in anything, that's me. Again, doing the unscalable things, I believe, is the way that you actually create the impact that I'm trying to create in the world. And I would love to, to hear how you're taking and running with these different ideas in your life. Anything that I said during the course of this conversation, you can probably find in some way, shape, or form within the book. So if there are things that you feel like you missed or didn't highlight, you'll You'll be able to find them, I promise. And I would just love to hear from everyone. I want to see what you're doing with all of this stuff and what changes you're making or what ideas it sparked in your life because that is truly what gives me energy to continue sharing all of these things. But I'm just very grateful for everyone's time Friday afternoon. I know everyone's got a lot of things going on. It means a ton to me that you gifted me with your attention for this hour.

Well, your podcast, you have a couple things out there, you're showing up everywhere. So, I want everyone in the to plug in there, your newsletter. You guys can get on that. And I would actually challenge you to buy a copy of the book for yourself, but we all have clients and peers that would benefit from this too. So, you might want to pick up an extra copy or two and maybe be reading it alongside somebody else for that peer accountability.

[Speaker:RYAN] Yeah. And if you send me, I should have mentioned this, if you send me an email with your receipt, so just send out my email, Brian, if you have an email for the group or something like that, I can also just put it in the chat. If you send me an email with your receipt, we'll send you a— this— it's like a 50-page companion workbook that goes along with the book that sort of allows you to go deeper on some of the book's most important exercises. It's super helpful. And just there's some stuff in the book where, like, you'll want to go deeper on it because it really requires more thought. And the workbook will really help with that. So if you just send me— email me a copy of your receipt and I'll send you back the companion workbook.

I don't have that. I need to get that.

Yeah, yeah, I think I can get you one. I know a guy.

All right, man, we loved having you here. Thank you so much for your time, gang. Everybody, appreciate you being here.

Thanks. Thank you.

Take care.