Fund Manager Reacts to Life Advice from YouTube

Contrary to popular public opinion, great fund managers have discipline in most, if not all, aspects of their life. So today we're doing a blind reaction to life advice from the interwebs.

I'm going to react to some of these videos we're about to see right now.

Now, as you know, we manage over $280 million of aggregate portfolio AUM, and we help fund managers all over the world. So this is important for myself and fund managers that we work with.

All right, let's dive into the first one here.

A confident person doesn't have to talk fast and doesn't talk high, right? I remember the first arrest I made and I said, stop, this is the FBI. My voice was— nobody was gonna stop. Nobody.

Nobody. I love this.

I— we're only a titch in here.

I believe I've seen this video just on my own thread, so I'm happy you guys queued this up.

I have actually actively worked on my voice, the way I communicate on videos and channels, and I love what he's already getting into here.

The tonality you take to a discussion, to a video drastically changes how that video is perceived.

And I naturally get really excited and talk fast. And just if you see my live events or webinars, which we have fun, we do a lot with that.

But there's also time where I need to slow down, deepen my voice a little bit like this, and really drive a point home, if you know what I'm talking about. All right, let's keep going here.

And the guys that were with me said, Joe, you got to work on your voice. You have to have a command voice. Well, command voice is down. Like, like, stop right there. I'll give you an example. You talk to most executives and you say, no, that's not acceptable. It's too high. No is always said down.

No.

Are we, are we gonna—

no.

That sounds like a complete sentence.

Yeah, I love that. A complete sentence of the word.

Well put. What I've noticed as well, refined people that I look up to, well, they're just old, they're slow. And what I've realized is there's a point in every man or woman's life when they have to figure out how to communicate differently, more effectively. Generally speaking, they slow down, they speak with less words and more precision with the words they use to communicate with.

Absolutely love this video. Well done, content team, for putting this video on my first one as my reaction video.

I think it's important for people to present themselves as they are, which is messy, because to present yourself as perfect, yeah, sets up an unfair standard for other people to live by.

Absolutely.

And usually people present themselves as perfect usually out of absolute fear that they don't want people to know that they're actually imperfect. And I'll say what I said before, to be beautiful is to be human. To be messy is to be beautiful. We don't fall in love.

I'll pause here for a second.

This is— I—

we'll see what he gets into here. This is Simon Sinek, an amazing thought-provoking type of author and/or speaker.

Go listen to his stuff.

I heard an interesting speech years ago that said, turn your mess into your message. See, we as humans gravitate and follow people when we know their entire backstory, the ups and downs, things Think of your favorite athletes or celebrities that you love and follow, or people that you look up to. Generally speaking, I could ask, "Well, tell me about their story," and you would know the whole hero's journey—the ups, the downs, the dragons they slay to get to where they're at—and that's why you love them. And so, when presenting, when speaking, showing that I think is phenomenal. Now, I will say though, I have seen people take this to the far extreme when. All they post or all they share is their crap and the bad and what doesn't work. And I've seen people take this message to a far negative place. And I'm like, why? Why are we talking about your aunt who hates you for the 100th time on your social media? Like, it just— I don't like it. It feels— comes off as a victim mentality. It comes off the wrong way. But if you can show the blocks that made you who you are, I think that's a phenomenal approach to go.

Let's finish this video. Let's keep going though.

With the perfection, we fall in love with imperfection. We fall in love when somebody lets us be imperfect, and imperfection is earned. Do not reveal all your imperfections on day one. Too soon, too much. That's overwhelming.

Yeah, like that's kind of what I was saying. Yeah, too much day one.

Show us at least show us some good for a second, but do the work.

And yeah, small risks that then become big risks. I want to be my messy self with somebody. who loves me for my messy self. And I want somebody to feel that I love them no matter how messy they are. And that is a high standard and a hard thing to find. And if you have a friend like that, you work damn hard to protect that friendship.

Yeah, well put. Again, back to our— my point of I think we like to follow and be around the people that have the mess—

not messiest, but the building blocks of where they got to.

We love seeing the journey. My wife right now, like every, every night we talk about Justin Bieber and his story and his lawsuit that he's going through with the one guy.

But she's like, man, Justin Bieber, how he went through and then Diddy got him. He's been silenced by Hollywood and then he's now having kids with his wife, with Hailey. He did the tour and then now they're out of it and she sold part of her company to help him and she just loves the story. And now he's released his new album, Swag 1, and then he's got Swag 2 coming out and it's just like, wow, what a cool thing. It's all about family and how much he loves his wife and He's under the oppression of the Hollywood rule, and the whole mess of Justin Bieber is why my wife, she's like, I mean, I just appreciate that he's made it through all that.

Most people that go through Hollywood just get crushed, and, and he kind of got crushed, but now he's coming out of it, and that journey is kind of cool. So there we go. All right, let's do the third one here.

Why did I have kids? Uh, that's a good question. I thought I'd gamed the system by not having kids. I thought I was smart because I had such an easy life. I thought I was playing a video game of life and I'd found the cheat code, and it was just easy, easy, easy. And then I got to my kind of mid-40s.

What a common thread right now. Jimmy Carr, I love seeing his clips too.

Life's so much easier. Don't have kids. Don't get married. Just be a lone wolf. When you're alone, you can go fast, you can move. But if you want to go far, Go together, and I think I know what he's going to touch on here.

We'll let him say it, and then I'll come back. But we'll see what he says.

I'm sitting at a bullshit low stakes table, and there's a bigger game to be played. And then I had kids, and every other status game seemed trivial.

Hey, Dan, I wish we had more of this clip.

What a good point though! He said it feels like you're at a low stakes game.

Like when I see somebody who's my same age that doesn't have kids or a family or anything, and they maybe they made way more money than me. I'm just like, okay, there's a big asterisk next to that. I'm like, well, yeah, anybody who doesn't, if that's like all you did, but like, where's the salt of life? Furthermore, I love what he said. Things become, seem trivial after having kids. I used to hear this and it made no sense until I had got married and have kids. I have 2 kids right now. It feels like life has more color with children. It feels like things taste differently. A hike has more magic. Going on an airplane is so much more fun to see my son look out the window and see the magic of an airplane and fly flying in the air. Life has way new meaning because you live your life through your children's lives, and it's such an incredible change of perspective. Furthermore, it feels like you're building something much greater than yourself.

I had lunch with a friend a few weeks ago, and he's like, man, it's— and he's single, he wants to be married and have kids, he just hasn't found the right woman. And he's like, man, it must be nice to have something that you're really building for, like a family and kids. And I was Like, yeah, it actually, it means a lot. And he saw that. However, I see a lot of people in society today that don't see that at all. There's no point to have—

why would you have kids? Why would you bring kids into this terrible world? I think a part of the human experience, there's no way to realize it before you just go through it. And if I would have waited till I was rich and successful to have kids, I probably still wouldn't have kids. And me and my wife got married. I was 20, uh, let's see, I was 24 when I got married. My wife was 21. We had kids when I was 26 or 27, somewhere around there. Our first kid.

We just had our second kid. I'm 20— when I was 29, I'm now 30, and we want to have more kids.

And I don't think there's ever a perfect time to get married. There's never a perfect time to have kids.

But I think you have to move.

And if you want to build something worth some salt in this world, the people I look up to the most, have the most success in life, are people who are older. And they have multi-generational success, meaning they have great kids, great grandkids, and in some cases even great-grandkids that are also great, that are also amazing humans that do incredible things. I've mentioned this before, my wife's family has this, my family has some of this. I meet certain individuals that, man, how did you do that? Because you can't buy that, you can't build it in a couple years, you can't even do it alone. You have to do it with a spouse, and it takes like 40 years to put together.

I think it's the biggest flex that someone can have in this life is having multi-generational success through your family. And having kids is so amazing.

All right, here's another one. 3 things you should never do in the morning.

Simple things in the morning to set their day up for failure, what would they be?

Wake up and stay in bed. There are good reasons to stay in bed in the morning, but once those are completed, then staying in bed, curtains drawn, just passively scrolling on social media. There are neurobiological data showing that when you are upright, You actually are stimulating this area of the brain called locus coeruleus, whereas when you recline, you actually are less alert. And the postural stuff is really bad too. This is so common now, this C-shaped human thing, that it almost feels strange to be upright. I would say in bed, so people are on their—

Then it shows him crouching. Did you see that? It showed all of you go back. He's talking about the C-shape. It points at him sitting up straight, and then it shows him hunched over a little bit. I don't know who edited this. Did they mean to do that? Anyways, I love the message. I just thought that was a funny edit.

All right, let's keep, let's keep going from Huberman and Chris.

People are on their phone, they're not getting enough light, or they're trying to get the sunlight through the window. Terrible. They're drinking coffee too early in the day, but it's mostly about this sort of randomization of activities, sort of making a cup of coffee while texting. Then they're scattering that in with like a little bit of work, but then something hits that's stressful and they're diverting their attention. They're sort of building in this attention deficit-like disorder.

They're not being deliberate or intentional with the things that they're doing. They're just allowing the morning to kind of come and take them wherever the wind blows.

That's right.

I mean, you can read any success book on earth and a lot of 'em talk about mornings, how you set up your day.

They can be quick, they can be long. I do like what Hormozi has said over the last few years of some people get, have gone extreme with morning routines. I do get that. I would tell people to pick 1 or 2 things that are just non-negotiables in the morning that you do.

Find 1 or 2 of those habits that you love.

And just stick to them and follow through with them. I had a mentor, very successful individual, multi-hundred million dollar, whatever, successful individual. He said he put his phone on airplane mode when he went to bed, meaning texts and calls, things like that would not come through, but he would still have a clock and an alarm. Social media wouldn't work. And so when he woke up, he would make sure that those things were delayed because I don't want someone coming and blowing up my morning. If I read that one email that comes, if I just pop open You know how you just check your phone quickly because you're getting out of bed? You just quickly, and then that, wait, hold on. What was that? You open that email and the world's on fire and now you're right into work mode and you're into the, you're fixing all the crap in your business. He goes, guess what? Whether I answer that email at 6 or 6:30 or 7 or 7:15 or 7:45, most of the time it doesn't change the outcome of that. And I can, 99% of the time I can deal with that. When I get into the office by 8:30, and I will deal with that problem much better if I can wake up and hit my one or two things that I do every day. For me, make fun of me. I'm still on the cold plunge trend of like five years ago. I do a cold plunge pretty much every day of the week.

I've done it for about three and a half, I think going on four years now. I love it.

I do about two minutes every day, and I just do it. I just make it happen. I do some sort of workout every day. Sometimes it's. 5 minutes. Sometimes it's 45 minutes, but I do a workout. I make sure my body's up, I'm moving. And then I try to eat a very high protein breakfast. Those are my like 3 things.

I guess lastly, I'll say I've now introduced, I read, uh, I try to read a script, a book of scripture in the morning as well in that. So I guess you could call it 4 things that I do every morning to try to hit.

I've had different stages in my life where I couldn't hit all 4 of those things. I hit like one of those things. The current stage I'm in, I can hit those 4 things in a day. But I do love what he says. It really sets up your day well. You read any health self-help book, I do believe morning Change your life. They set up successful people over and over and over again, have successful mornings. I do like what Hormozi says though, don't conflate a successful morning with success, right? Just because you did your morning routine doesn't mean you're going to be a billionaire, but it does help you, I think, live a much better life and be very intentional with what you're doing.

Those are a few things that I've liked. I love the airplane mode idea to make sure that your morning doesn't get destroyed by one bad email that comes through.

All right, Adults Don't Exist.

Let's see this one.

One of my favorite, favorite friends and favorite writers. He's got this essay, Adults Don't Exist. Steve Jobs delayed 9 months of medical treatment of pancreatic cancer to try a carrot juice diet and acupuncture. Mozart overspent his income, lived miserably in mountains of debt, and regularly wrote letters to friends begging for money. Friedrich Nietzsche lost his virginity in a brothel and caught syphilis. He only saw his work sell 300 copies in his lifetime. Martin Luther King had extramarital affairs with over 40 different women, including spending his last night alive with 2 women and physically attacking another. Isaac Newton spent 30 years of his life writing 1 million words on the pseudoscience of alchemy, hidden for years by his heirs because they were too embarrassed to publish it. Don't put any adult on a pedestal. Kill your gurus. Or, a more useful belief, the adults aren't going to save you. They don't even exist.

What an interesting perspective from that. One of the other quotes I absolutely love is, no one really knows what they're doing.

Everyone is kind of making things up as they go, all the way from the top to the bottom. And that one fact should give you and me an insane amount of confidence. Most of us try to find the 99-step path to get to the top of the mountain. And in reality, you're never going to find a 99-step path that tells you how to get to the top of the mountain. Most of the time, it's, hey, here's 2 steps in the future and there's a fog. But if you take the 2 steps, things will start to become more clear. And you take another 2 steps and things become more clear and you'll figure out your path. And only looking back, there's a famous speech by Steve Jobs that you only connect dots in the past. You never connect dots in the future. But looking back, we go, oh yeah, those are the 99 steps that I took to get success. But in the moment, it's like walking through fog. And I love, uh, back to what he said here, what Chris said. Most of these people as well that we look up to as these heroes aren't heroes at all. And I take away 2 things from that. Number one, be selective with who your heroes are and/or only take advice from them in a certain category.

And number 2, I already mentioned it, but most people are making stuff up anyways as they go.

And if they can make it up, you can make it up too. And you, you can actually go and work on stuff and build a big business. You can actually go do cool things. There's nothing that different between you and me and some successful individual over there. I think that's an interesting, interesting point.

Uh, back on the first one of select good mentors, this could be in a religious sense, like, you know, like Jesus Christ or a prophet that you look up to make, you know, follow good mentors and/or people in your life currently that you take advice from on social media.

Try to look more in depth at their entire life. As I've gotten to know more social media people, I have an okay social media following. I am ever surprised about how much problems they have throughout their entire life. And I'm like, you're giving advice on relationships on social media, and your marriage is horrible, absolutely horrible. But people look up to you as this person online that has great marriage advice. Be selective of your mentors. Be careful who you plug into your ears. And then also have a ton of confidence because if everyone else is kind of making stuff up, why not you? Why not me? Why couldn't we go out and do the same thing?

Really cool quote here though. I love that.

All right. So this next one, there's no perfect way to live in your 20s.

Let's see what this one's all about.

Can you read the quote once more?

There's no perfect way to live your 20s. You either live them up and become an underskilled 30-year-old, Or you work them up and become an underlived 30-year-old. You just have to figure out which you'd rather be, accept the trade-offs, and know that there are no do-overs.

I love the music behind there. It's very epic.

You can either live it up or you can work it up. I think it's an interesting frame for your 20s. I took the perspective for me was the work it up 20s, and I would tell anybody listening within earshot of my voice, go do the Work it up 20s. In your 20s, you will never have more energy, more testosterone, more drive, more fight, less to lose, and a larger, larger asymmetrical trade the rest of your life. I'm a firm believer the way you live your 20s will set up your life all the way till you die. Now, if you have a bad 20s, can you change in your 30s and 40s? For sure, of Of course. But if you set your 20s up right, people will wonder when I'm— I just turned 30, man. Bridger, it just feels like you're an overnight success, man. It feels like, wow, you drive such a nice car. You have a great house. Your kids are great. You have a family. You got a wife that loves you and you have a great— oh my gosh. People will call you lucky. People will call you what— and they can call you whatever you want. But I think living your 20s with intention, like I tried to, is such a great result. And guess what? Now I can live it up in my 30s if I want, or 40s, or 50s, or 60s, or 70s because of how I've set up my 20s. Much better way to live life than trying to play catch-up when you're 30, 31, 32, 35, and you wonder why life isn't good to me. And you'll be one of the people that's, ah, those guys got lucky. They didn't earn it. They stole it. They whatever. You have some excuse of why you didn't make it. When you were 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, what did you do? What risk did you take? What did you go learn? When I was 22 years old, I spent $30,000 of my own money on a mastermind, like went into debt. I went another one, $17,000. I just started like plowing any of my life savings, any dollars I made in a business back into educating and getting in the right rooms. At 23, 24 years old, I ended up dropping out of college the same year I got married. So think about that marriage and I'm dropping out of school with Mason to start up on a little startup. Because I believed this is a great time to take a big risk. If I waited 2, 3, 5, 7 years, I'm gonna have kids, I'm gonna have a mortgage. The risk profile is gonna be much higher to take the same amount of risk. I might as well take this asymmetrical trade right now. And so far it's turned out pretty good. We've got, had extreme success in our businesses. I mean, multiple 8-figure companies. We just hit the Inc. 5000 of fastest growing companies in America. Our aggregate portfolio AUM is over $280 million between all of our portfolio funds.

And we're still in the game, by the way.

I believe I've set up my 20s in a way that work it up is a great way to go and live it up in your 30s, 40s, and 50s. And furthermore, I got through my 20s with no addictions and no, none of these trailing chains that hold people down. I meet people that are my age, 30 years old, and they They've got a drug or, and/or substance abuse problem that they're just stuck on. They're addicted to porn. And because they're addicted to porn, it makes it really hard for them to build a relationship with a spouse and/or kids and/or things around them. Some of them had children with multiple baby mamas out of wedlock, and now they're paying child support. They're trying to figure that out. Think about the level of risk-taking they can now take when they're 30 years old. It's a way different profile for someone like me at 30 years old. Now, life's crazy. Things can happen. But in a sense of where you can choose your future, which the majority of people actually can in their 20s. I'm a big believer in the work it up mindset of your 20s. What you practice in private, people will celebrate and reward you in public.

What a beautiful quote they just shared here.

All right, here we go.

This one's titled Just Go. Have you learned about how to deal with and overcome fear.

Go.

Go. Yep. When all that, all that, uh—

Gosh, I love Jocko. We're gonna pause right here. Jocko could say anything black and white with that sound audio behind him, and I'm gonna be like, yeah, yep, let's do it, Jocko. Like, he's just that guy.

If you don't know Jocko, go look up Jocko.

We're gonna keep going here, but I love this.

Fear that's in your head, all the what-ifs and the scenarios that you create inside your own mind that are way worse than anything that is actually going to happen, they all disappear when you go. So just, just take action and start moving forward.

Well put, Jocko. Go look up Jocko. I'm ready to run through a wall when Jocko speaks.

Just move, just go. Action removes, I think, a lot of Anxiousness. Anxiousness comes out of multiple scenarios in the future that you're all trying to figure out. Action is picking a route and just going down that lane. There's a chance you hit a dead end, but guess what? You can come back to the beginning and start again.

I wholeheartedly agree. Action has moved me a lot.

Great book, Think and Grow Rich. One of the best principles I ever learned from that book was wealthy people make decisions quickly and tend to not sway or change their decision once they've made them. Boom. For me, that was someone who was an indecisive person for a long time, had a hard time making a choice because I didn't want to make the wrong one. I read that and I said, I need to change the way I act and think to be decisive, to just go. And someone who has all go and confidence with half the intellect will beat someone else with All the intellect and half the confidence. Now these videos we make for free for y'all. If this impacted you in any way, shape, or form, please share this with somebody else that can help move their life forward. Because I know videos like this have helped me in the past. So comment down below, let us know what other videos we should react to. We can do funny videos, other stuff like that. Comment down below though what style or genre we should do. Thank you all so much. Like and subscribe, this will push this video out to more people.

And we will see you on the next one. Bye-bye.