Kamal Ravikant: The Inner Game For Entrepreneurs

Hey fastlaners, Ryan, Daniel Moran here. Welcome to Freedom Fastlane. Today we're going to be joined by a dear friend of mine by the name Kamal Ravikant. Kamal has been on the show before, but it's been a long time and we wanted to bring him back because Kamal is up to some really interesting things right now. And Kamal is a celebrated advisor out in Silicon Valley. He runs an extremely successful venture capital fund out there. He's also one of, if not the most connected person that I know. He is good friends with Tim Ferriss. Tim talks about how he ran Tools of Titans by Kamal as he was going through the editing process. Kamal is also buddies with Glenn Beck and also tells the the story about when he met Elon Musk here in today's podcast. So Kamal, Kamal just seems to know everybody and everybody seems to know Kamal and he just so happens to be the author of the book that I recently said on a Freedom Fast Lane TV episode is the must read book from of 2017. And it is not a nonfiction book, it's fiction book. And it's not my style to usually recommend a fiction book as the must read of a year or at any time. It's never been my style. I have recently.

Rediscovered a bit of a respect and a love for fiction and I'll explain a little bit why in today's podcast. But specifically we read to learn and we read to discover. And if that is the goal, then I would highly recommend you go out and grab Rebirth by Kamal Ravikant and read it as your first book of 2017. Because if that's the case, that we read books to learn and to get better and to discover something, this book does that and it was written with that intent. In this interview with Kamal, we talk a lot about the inner game for entrepreneurs. You know, we see a lot of other people's projections and their outsides and what they show up as on social media. But we have no idea what goes on beneath the surface in most people's lives. We really only know it for our own lives. And if we look at our own lives, we know we don't have it all together on the inside. And even from somebody like me, somebody sees just my outsides. They see the successes, they don't see the fears or the failures. So Kamal and I talk about that. This has been really the primary subject on which Kamal has written about in his previous work has been the inner game. And specifically in this chat we talk about the inner game for entrepreneurs and the ups and the downs and Getting through them and what the journey really looks like and what it is all about. And that really is a reflection of what Rebirth, his new book is about. So if you are an entrepreneur at all, you will connect with, you will appreciate, and you will really enjoy this chat with Kamal Ravikant. Hey everybody, welcome to Freedom Fast Lane. This is Ryan Daniel Moran and today I am joined by my dear friend Kamal Ravikant. Kamal, thanks for hanging out with us.

Thanks for having me back. It's great to be back.

Yeah. So it's good to have you back on the show. The last time we had Jan, it's been quite a while and the audience is a lot bigger. I thought we should probably kick off with a bit of a reminder about where you came from and your experiences in Silicon Valley and.

Then we'll get into kind of what you're up to now. But would you tell everybody a little bit about your background to kick things off?

Yeah, sure. So, I mean, when I was 18, I joined the army. I was an infantry soldier in the 10th Mountain Division. Then after that I went to college and then did a bunch of crazy stupid stuff and ended up going to Silicon Valley for the first dot com boom and ended building companies out there. Just threw myself in it. The first company got involved with the first startup. I got involved and ended up like becoming a big company, going public. So I've had the opportunity to experience that and then been involved with a bunch of startups out there, some that did well, some that blew up fantastically and you know, the whole entrepreneur journey and, and I'm also a writer, I've written a couple of books. I've done very, very well. But they're all about the inner game.

Which is something I learned the hard way in entrepreneurship. And now I run a venture capital firm. Being an entrepreneur, I built my own and I invest in startup companies that my fund does very well. I'm an investor in some very well known companies and I get to advise entrepreneurs and invest in them and, and write books, you know, got two very good gigs.

You said something very interesting there about in Silicon Valley, there are some fantastic failures and some amazing successes. And you write about the inner game and entrepreneurs tend to be very well, how do I say it? We fail fantastically and we succeed on a high level. So it's an interesting reflection of the entrepreneur's inner game. Also is kind of the same state of business. It's up and it's down and it's crazy and it's noisy and it's wild. Like your college days. You wrote about your experience in what was, I think, your first book, Love Yourself like youe Life Depends on it, which has like a kabillion reviews on Amazon, and kabillion is a million billions. I don't know if you know that.

It's a technical term.

Yeah, right. And so I'm just curious if your experience in Silicon Valley and being around all of these crazy entrepreneurs that everybody on the outside thinks probably they have it all together or they're doing cool things. I'm curious if that gave you some context for writing about the inner game.

Oh, my God. Yeah. I mean, it's like, look, it's like everyone there is building startups, so talk about being surrounded by no one but entrepreneurs, right? So what training, like, so, like, and startups are all about, you know, you know, you fail fast, you fail often, or you build stuff and so you get to, like, go through, like in a year or two, you could learn. I think, what if a traditional business would take like 10, 15 years if you moved up the corporate ladder? So it's been amazing training. It's been, you know, my own personal journey, as well as all the people around me that I've seen succeed and fail, and these, you know, friends of mine who built very giant companies that we all use that, you know, majority of the world uses. I've been hanging out with them when they were starving, and then I've also hung out with them after they sold a company and they were driving Ferraris, almost ran me over on the street because they know how to drive it.

You learn a lot by being in it, by being in a hyper, especially in a hyper game like that.

But the interesting thing is the fundamentals are still the same. It's like people dealing with their demons, people being human. Money doesn't make you any better. It just makes you more, you know, gets you be more you in a bigger way, I guess, you know, and so you learn. So you learn, you know, what the, what the, what the basics are. And, you know, I learned the hard way by, you know, like, some of the successes and failures I had. And let me tell you, when I started applying them is when my life changed. And it put me in a completely different track in my life and a much better, you know, it actually I feel fulfilled now in a way that I wasn't before, even though I may not have that, that kind of, like big outcomes that I had, you know, that I was working on before.

What would you consider the fundamentals when you say that in the Context of entrepreneurship and the inner game. What does that mean to you? Or how does that, how does that show itself?

Well, you know, there's one, one very interesting pattern. Like as entrepreneurs, like, look, we're on our own. We don't have much of a network around us. Like, say if you work in corporate, you go in, you punch in the clock, you're on your co workers and stuff. You know, entrepreneurship is a lonely journey. It's a hard journey, but it's a great journey to personal transformation because you're being challenged every day in all your insecurities and all your fears, all your hopes, all your desires. But ultimately, I think what it comes down to is, you know, and I've watched this with other people, I know that as they mature, they learn that it's not, look, successes and failures happen. You know, you can put a product out tomorrow and it flops, but the same product six months from now may take off because just the market conditions, you know, or something like Kim Kardashian, founder and tweeted, you have no control over it. But that does not mean that you didn't create a great product. So I think one of the core things is like focusing on what we create, what we put out. As long as we give our best, that's what matters. The results, they come and go. Results are so dependent on so many different factors that we ultimately can't control the results. But what can be controlled is who we are and what we put out. That's it. Once you start doing that, things actually shift because you're not, you know, you don't. That roller coaster of emotions actually gets less and you just. The sense of fulfillment comes from within because as long as you're giving your all to what you're doing, you're. That's all you got, you're fulfilled. And ironically, success comes easier than as well.

So let me ask you this, because a lot of people feel like they're giving their all, and that just means a whole lot of stress. And.

When you wrote Love Yourself, you talked a lot about basically being completely burnt out and then, you know, losing everything and being in a really tough spot and kind of how you mitigated those waters and how you traveled through that. So what's the difference between giving your all and being completely stressed about it and giving your all and it being effortless?

Well, the stress comes from what the stress come from giving your all. This test comes. Stress comes from expecting a certain outcome and attaching.

You tell me that one.

I'll tell you What? For me, it was attaching my sense of self to a certain outcome. You know, what's the stress if.

You'Re not attached to the outcome? I mean, I know it's harder to do than say, which is why I'm really. It takes practice, but, man, it really is just. I don't think giving your all is a stressful thing. Giving your all is a beautiful thing. It feels beautiful to create, put things out.

It's attaching our sense of self or our, our emotional happiness or center to expecting a certain outcome. And you know what the irony is that even if you get that certain outcome, it only lasts for a little while and then you're back to yourself, whoever you are, anyway. You know, like the accolades fade or, you know, like lottery winners or people who make a certain amount of money their natural set point, and happiness just returns after a few months. So I think it's more. I don't think stress comes from giving your all. I really don't. And when I say given your all, I don't mean like, working. Look, I, you know, first.com boom. And we were so proud of like, sleeping under our desk and working and working and working. But was that effective, looking back? Not really. You know, you're better off being effective if you, if you do, like, focused, just like I do my writing. The same thing I do when I'm building anything is I do the Pomodoro method in a very focused, short, intense burst of work, you know, throughout the day.

Well, it's my opinion, and if I ever. To make this kind of more practical, I think the difference is fear. Whether you are operating out of fear. Like, if this doesn't pan out, X, Y and Z will happen, or if this happens, X, Y and Z will happen, versus you're just immersed in the process. And there is no fear attached to it. So anything that happens is bonus. You know, like if, if, if you, if a book does really well or a business does really well, that's just bonus, rather than affecting your security. So I, I. What I have not been able to answer, and I'd like to comment on this. The piece that I have not been able to identify is how do you shift someone to feeling secure or removing the fear so that they are in that place? Or does that just have to be a personal journey?

That's a damn good question. Look, first of all, fear is a natural condition we're wired for. I don't think we can fundamentally remove it. We can recognize it. You know, we do have that ability as Humans to recognize our emotions and then where they're coming from. So, you know, we can't make yourself not feel it. I think that just fear just pops up through different doors. It's damn tricky. I think the key is actually just to, you know, when fear comes, recognize it, feel it, then return back to doing the work. Do the work, do the work, do the work. That's all it is. Step by step. You know, I've seen companies build from zero to multi billion dollar companies. It's step by step and it's nothing but a series of making mistakes and recovering from them. If I was to define entrepreneurship, that's what it would be. It's just a series of making mistakes and learning from them to go on and make bigger mistakes.

Amen to that.

That's really all it is. And I think a lot of fear comes from the, you know, like, oh, what's gonna happen? This mistake or that mistake? You know, it's, it's part of the process. I don't think enough people talk about that. You know, you see all these people, they're always like killing and being perfect. I haven't met one in real life. Not one. You know, I think it sells like programs or Instagram, you know, on Instagram and quotes or whatever. But it's so far from the truth, man.

You know, I was watching an interview with Elon Musk last night, and I think my buddy Nathan Latke interviews entrepreneurs every day. And he says 30% of the people say that Elon Musk is the person they're following the most right now. I think he's pretty much kind of the pinnacle of who we all think of as the entrepreneur, at least living today. Right. And. And they asked Elon about the hard times and they asked him about, you know, is it worth it? And he got choked up and he stopped the interview and he's like, I need, I need minutes. And what I saw was this individual who was giving his all and wasn't quite feeling the payoff in that moment. Which, yeah, like, as an entrepreneur, I know that feeling. Like I know what that feels like to be absolutely giving your all and not feeling the payoff right now and for him to be reflecting on his hard times. And also what seemed to be kind of at the time of the interview was a difficult time, at least for him, because he had no idea how to disconnect from work and wasn't sure if he was really making the difference that everybody thought he was. It was just so humanizing to see like that's me like I feel like that all the damn time. And I think most entrepreneurs do and they're afraid to talk about it. And you're right that it certain phrases look good on quote cards that go viral on Instagram, but inside we are, we are kind of all the same. And, and we all might be fighting a different battle or have different demons, but entrepreneurship tends to be maybe one of the fastest portals to self discovery.

I think I said to you earlier that.

Some people go on a trip to India, some people.

Go through a midlife crisis and some people become entrepreneurs and they're all personal journeys kind of to the same place. That was a long rant, but I don't know if you want to comment anything on that.

No, I do. I really listen. You know, all growth, you know, in a business, if a business is just, if you look at a growth curve for a business and it's just flat, that means the business is dying. If it's not growing, it's dying. Same thing with us as human beings. If we're not growing, we're dying. And I think entrepreneurship is such a way to be challenged because you're literally making your own way in the world and you're with your own crazy ideas and dreams and you're going to be challenged. But man, what personal growth, you know, of course it's going to be rough. Like I have, you know, a couple. I was talking to you about a Navy SEAL buddy of mine earlier. I mean look, they go through buds, they go through all this. One Navy SEAL buddy of mine, he was telling me I think his original class was 200 something guys. And he said by the time he graduated from in the sealed school, they were like 20 something of them, right? I mean, but it's not easy. But man, look at who those guys become, right? Like I don't think, you know, you just sit around and it just, just happens. You can sit, you can have the intention, but you got to do the work. And the work you will have challenges. And in the challenges and how you, how you step up to meet them or how you get beaten by them, but step up again and meet them and meet the bigger ones is how you grow and who you become. The end. It's who you become, you know, which is why like repeat entrepreneurs are great to invest in because they've learned some of the basic mistake lessons, right? I'll tell you another important thing, and this is a very basic one. This is actually something came from Elon Musk. I was fortunate enough to be invited to a little private event a buddy of mine threw who's close friends with Elon.

To come and just talk with him and just hang out and ask him questions. They were like maybe 20 something, maybe, I don't know, maybe, maybe a dozen or 20 of us in a little wine bar in Palo Alto in California. And so my buddy Matthew, he, you know, he, you know, he and Elon were sitting in the middle. We're standing around having wine, and he said, you know, let's, you know, you just ask your questions and Elon and I'll answer them. And it was very informal. And someone asked this one question, said, you know, of all the companies you built as a CEO, of all that you've learned, what is the one piece of advice you give to CEO? So at that time I was a CEO, and man, I was like, yes, I want to hear this. The advice he gave me was not what I expected. But I tell you, man, it's a big one in life and in entrepreneurship. Want to hear it?

Maybe a little good tease. Go for it.

So he said, always get rid of negative people fast.

That was his advice. Of all the things he could have said, that's what he said. He said, they're never worth it. They always poison the team. They get them there. You think you're worth it. They never are. Get rid of them fast.

Did you ask in your. And how you interpreted that? How did you give context to a negative person? Just somebody who makes the. The day difficult.

It can be anything, man. But it's, it's like, I think to be negative people, you, you know, it's. It's energy, man, who you surround yourself with. You want to be around people who are not bringing things down. You know, if they are, you know, you're gonna have a harder journey. It's never worth it. No one's that talented that they at the negativity. Because I've had that as a CEO, man. You know, like, you know what it's like. You had to let people go and stuff, and, and always the negative people, when they're gone, it's just things. You can. Things get better, you breathe better. And then it also opens up the space then to bring in positive people. But I find it fascinating of all the things he could have said, you know, by this point, he was successful. He had, you know, SpaceX, he had Tesla and all this. And that's the piece of advice he gave to, like, a very select, small group of, like, Silicon Valley, you know, people. I never forgot that.

Yeah, that's pretty amazing.

I think that's great for life as well. Man. It's like, go ahead.

Well, you, you've made this interesting pivot like of, you know, your first two books were nonfiction that were very kind of granular and how to there was, I mean they were kind of story based, but you were basically talking about tactically how you navigated through difficult times and, and the inner game process. And you've now moved over to writing fiction, which is timely for me because I've, I have realized how many stories there or how many lessons there are in stories. How many lessons there are in fables.

Yeah.

Part of, part of this transformation is actually my, my religious journey, my religious transformation and, and spoiler alert, where I am right now is finding a lot of truths in I guess my religious background without having to be married to whether or not they are true or not.

That's where I'm personally on that. And, and so I've rediscovered kind of a, a love for fiction, which, and you've just written. What you just described was like you've taken lessons and now you've crafted them into a fiction story. And what made me think of that is you're talking about energy in the workplace and how it gets freed up and isn't that true for life? So you have this ability to find the golden nugget and now you've decided to weave it into a fiction story. And I'm curious about your thought process behind that. And also the transition to actually going and writing fiction book. It's kind of uncommon in the entrepreneurial world. So I hope you would comment on that.

Yeah, yeah. It's also, man, it's one of the hardest part of the hardest thing I've ever done, the most amount of work I put in and it's also the most gratifying thing. Like, look, fiction. The reason why fiction, I think ultimately we learn best through stories. You know, human beings before the written word. How did look at any culture, how do they pass down wisdom? It's a storytelling. It's through the old, the old stories told and lessons we woven into it. And you know, kids, what do they do? They make up stories. You know, you sit around and you tell them stories and that's how they learn ethics and values and life lessons woven into all these simple stories. So I've always been a fan of.

Wise stories that actually by the end you're done reading them, you're actually better for it. Unfortunately, it's not done very well. Paula Coelho is one of the very Few who's pulled it off over the Alchemist. And there's a few, but a lot of them tend to be just people trying to cram self help into. Into basically just some story. And it ends up being all exposition, just people lecturing each other. You know, that's not a real story. A story is actually whole narrative arc. So, like. But we humans, I think our brains actually respond to stories. If you look at a great talk, it's actually stories. And so I originally started off writing fiction. Most people don't know this. And for it, while I was building companies for a decade or a decade and a half almost, I was like, writing instead of going in my free time writing and rewriting and sending stuff out, getting rejection letters. And that got better over the years, like, all the way from form letters to personal phone calls. And.

That'S where I learned the craft of writing was actually like trying to write fiction.

But, you know, nonfiction was where my first, you know, my first book, which was actually came from a place of just having to share some life knowledge came from. But I've always wanted to go back and take that art and really just weave in so much, because you can weave so many life lessons that interact in a very interesting way and also show the growth of a person as they learn these. And ultimately, as you experience that as a reader, you kind of absorb. You can't help absorb some of it into your own. So actually, fiction and storytelling is. Is incredibly powerful way to share life lessons.

Yeah, it's interesting just because so few people look like, I'm a. I'm a nonfiction junkie. Like, I'm always reading something nonfiction, and it kind of feels like work. Like, I'm always. I'm always forcing myself to. To grow at something. I had a coach tell me once, he's like, we need to get you a hobby that doesn't require growth. And I was like, great, I'm gonna take up poker. And then I ended up buying all these poker books. He's like, you're trying to get good at something again. You need to go learn how to enjoy things again. And the thing I ultimately did was, you know, I bought a scooter that I could just ride around, right? Because I had forgotten how to have fun.

And that's awesome.

Well, I feel. But I feel that way about, like, about books. Like, I had forgotten how to enjoy learning. I had. I had forgotten how to enjoy the story and the lessons to be taken from that. And in our entrepreneurial world especially, I'm sure in the Silicon Valley world, where it is all about how do I get investors, how do we get more users, how do we get xyz? What's the growth hack behind this? That there probably is a lost art of story. And it's just unique for an entrepreneur to think outside of.

Outside of kind of the non fiction world. And I'm curious where in your being surrounded by all entrepreneurs, where did you pause and say what this group really needs is a story? Where did that start to pop up?

Actually it didn't pop up in that way. It popped up because I had this story inside I wanted to tell. I had these life lessons I wanted to share. I could have made it into how to book. But I think what I wanted to do was I wanted to do in such a way that's layered in because we remember stories. And also you can create emotion in stories in the reader. And really that's how the brain works. When you create emotion is how you actually remember things better rather than just reading lists or so forth. So I set out to create a very human book of life lessons. But it's all fun. It's all the same, man, like the like. Look, my other books, a lot of entrepreneurs use them, but they're fundamental, basic life lessons of the inner game. So you live life from the inside out. So when you do that it just, life just works better. It's really that simple. Rather than from the outside and looking for a lot of us looking for validation, whether validation is like number of downloads or money or this or that. You know, the irony is it all comes if you, if you do from the inside out. Is that easy? No, because we're not wired for it. Like no one teaches us that. So we have to work at it, we have to learn it and we have to practice it. You go to the gym if you want to be fit. Same thing with your inner game.

And I really do think that there should be more fiction book but more helpful fiction books written for people. I'm not a fan of just stories for the sake of stories. I want to be better. If I'm not better by the time I'm done reading it, I feel like I wasted my time.

So tell me, tell me a little bit about the story. Because I mean, I received an advanced copy, I'm already going through it. I have a couple questions I want to ask you about it, but give a little bit of overview and then I want to dive into a few specifics.

Yeah, the story is actually about a guy in his 20s, late 20s.

Who'S walking a route in Spain called the Camino de Santiago, which is a 550 mile route and old pilgrimage in Spain. It's 11th century pilgrimage, pilgrimage. And he's not religious. He's like, you know, he been New Yorker, former army guy, you know, I just base that on myself. And after the death of his father and the people he meets along the way and he's lost, he's trying to figure out what to do with his life. Very classic entrepreneur stuff, actually. And as he goes step by step, he walks across the entire country and the people he meets along the way and how they share with him the stories of their lives and what he learns, how he grows. And it's ultimately about, you know, like what he learns about love, what he learns about being fulfilled, about hitting bottom and rising. It's about saying yes to life. It's about forgiveness. It's. It's like I'm wrapped in a lot of like core principles that I really believe that transform our life into that book. So he learns all these and then you get to see how he gets to grow and shift. And you feel that within yourself by the time you, you know, you're done taking the journey with him. And.

I chose the pilgrimage because it's perfect world. I walked it after my dad died and I'm not religious.

But it's also great metaphor because it's just every day you get up step by step by step, you just do step by step by step, which is the case creating anything, creating a business, writing a book, anything like that. It's just step by step. You just get up every day and do the work, do the work and one day you're there. That simple.

So I have a couple questions for you. First of all, as you were talking about that, I was thinking about my life. And if we look at life in.

The frame of a journey and we look at it that way.

That implies that there's a destination. And I think the only destination is really the end of your life. Right?

Yeah.

So I'm curious. Entrepreneurs are so good at putting off pleasure until later. And then the end they go, what was all of this for? Reminds me of Creed Bratton from the office saying, if I can't scuba, what has all been working for? What have I been working toward? And I'm curious, in a world of people who talk about crushing it and hustling and making it rain, wherein reality, they're just putting off pleasure until later, when do you pause to enjoy the journey rather than think about the destination?

You know, That's a great question. You know, honestly, I think.

It'S. There's seasons for everything, you know, and when I say seasons, like let's say you're building a company, there's a season where you just got to work your butt off. That's all it is. That's like it has. If you have to go in 100%, you know, that's. That's your life. Then there's seasons where you do pull back and you rest. It's like running a race, man. Sometimes you sprint, sometimes you walk, sometimes you jog at the. You have to for, you know, otherwise you burn out or you're unhappy. Now how do you recognize when, what season, what's what one season is? The only way is to surround yourself with people who watch out for you. One can only decide for themselves. Like, I can't tell another person what's the right season for them. I can tell myself what's the right season for me. Like for example, when I wrote this. So I sold this book to Hachette in the fall last year, and the head of Hachette Books, he himself wanted to be the editor for it, which is quite an honor. And you know, they gave me.

A lot of really aggressive work to do this year and I had to pull it off in a certain amount of months. So what I did, I just basically disconnected from everything in my life. I became completely antisocial and not antisocial, just non social. I did the, you know, just ran my fund and I. And I wrote I would only go out like once in the morning to go have breakfast at this cafe and read and just go out to the gym. That was a. No social, not a drop of alcohol, no nothing, no dating. I just went all in to create this book to give it everything I had. And that was like, like four to five months of that intense work. Man, that took everything out of me. But then it was done. I created the book and the editor, you know, reached out to me. He's like, my God, you pulled it off. What you've done is really special and it needed that because I had there on the deadline, the book was going to be published regardless of whether I had it done or not. So it needed that level of intensity. Then after that it came back to balance. So sometimes you need to sprint, sometimes you need to go all in when the work needs it and sometimes you don't.

So I don't think it has to be because, you know, honestly, sometimes the work is a pleasure too, you know, to sit back and look at what you're doing is a pleasure in itself to give. But no one forces us to do this. We get to do this. That in itself is a great pleasure.

The other question that came to mind was you're writing about someone's physical journey. It's an actual journey, but it's a journey of transformation. And I said before that the entrepreneurial experience is essentially the same type of journey. It's the same type of experience. So to you, what crossovers or what lessons apply to the entrepreneur who is basically going through the long journey? And look, no one likes to talk about it, but entrepreneurs, I think more than anyone, especially those in my generation, are trying to find themselves, are trying to discover, like, what am I doing with my life and career? This comes up all the time. I mean, I know I start a business and then I say, where's the result? And so I start another business. This happens all the time. And I'm probably less bad than most of my peers at it. Who start something, don't get the immediate payoff, start something else. And now they got two half built bridges and now they're just stressed. So I'm just curious, what life lessons does. Does rebirth connect with that apply to entrepreneurs?

My God, so much, man. Because I wrote this as a guy who's been an entrepreneur all his career, right? So I can't help but like weave all that in. But ultimately it's, you know, the stuff in there that I think connects to entrepreneurs is it's all the inner game. It's like working, you know. One of the things is the book is really about something a monk once told me. And I actually wove that into the book. I remember I was at this monastery once and I met this monk and I asked him, how do you find peace? Because I was really struggling at the time. And he said, he laughed. He said, that's you asking me a simple question. I'm like, yeah, well, that's all I got. He's like, okay, you know, because he seemed very, very calm. He seemed very calm, at peace. So I want to know, like, how. How did he. How did he find it? Right? I was expecting some long complicated thing. And he said, it's very simple. Here's what I do. I say yes to all that happens. I say yes. And that mean literally, man, if you live that, it transforms your life, especially as an entrepreneur. Because it's saying, when it's saying yes, it's like to the outcome, whatever the outcome of what we do, if you say yes, rather than Struggle against it and cry about it. Yes. Because yes, you say yes and then you say, okay, what do I do from here? And that's actually what a lot of the book is about is a yes and now want, right? That's where the power is. Now if we say the no comes from wanting our results to be a certain way and the world is not showing it that way. I mean, listen, we are human. We all deal with it. I deal with it, you know, every day. It's not something that you just wake up one morning and you've heard the, you know, this thing and now you're going to be transformed. It's every day reminding yourself and saying, yes, I do that. I walk around and like, you know, and it actually really helps. I've noticed my state of mind is better when I deal with my investments, whether they succeed or fail. It's, you know, this is, it's part of the game, you know, it's whatever. Like if you're building a company, you know, whatever happened, you know, things are going downhill. Say yes. Like, yes, this is what's happening. Say yes and then go from there. Now what? Now what do I do? I think it takes away a lot of the stress. A lot of stress comes from the inner fighting of wanting things to be a certain way and they're not. That's what it's, what is it? I think all of that unhappiness comes from reality minus expectation. Yeah, right, right. So it's basically saying yes to reality and then saying, okay, now what do I do with this? That's what the only power we have is as, as human beings, as entrepreneurs. What do I do with this? Who do I become? Who do I be? What do I create? That's, that's all it is.

I think a lot of the stress and or confusion for a lot of people comes at that point of now. What do I do? How do you suggest someone navigate the second half of that? Because I think, yeah, most people have done any sort of self development work, know that the, the pain is in the resistance. And when you have no more resistance and you say yes to it and then it becomes process of now what that becomes where hard decisions sometimes have to be made. So how do you suggest someone navigate that process?

The simplest thing, man, step by step, just, just do the night next right thing that you feel is the next right thing. Then do the next right thing. Then do the next right thing. I think often, you know, we get lost in, well, what the results will be or how this will work. Out long term. We don't know what is the next right thing. What is the next right thing? Because that we have control over. You know, we all can figure out what the next right thing is. And honestly, even if we do don't. What do I think the next right thing is? Because, you know, we got to. You can't be afraid to make mistakes because this is a journey about making mistakes. I wish people talk more about that. You know, it would take away a lot of the fear that comes up in entrepreneurship. We realize this is what's expected. You can't. Like, I've never, you know, even I'm sure Elon Musk would sit there and talk all day about the mistakes he's made, you know, but he recovered and learned from them and made. Went on to, you know, fix them and make bigger and better mistakes.

That's a great way to put it. He went on to make better mistakes. Yeah, that is true. Well, Kamal, I want you to take a couple minutes and talk a little bit about Rebirth. You're a humble guy, and I don't think people realize how big of a deal the book is. So I want you to take at least 30, 60 seconds to talk a little bit about Rebirth.

Oh, man. Thanks. I mean, it's a very special book. I'm getting really, really good feedback from pretty impressive people who have read it now. And I really, you know, my goal with all the books I write is that, you know, long after I'm gone, you know, someone picks them up, and by the time they're done, they're better for having read it. They're like a better version of themselves. And I'm. I believe I pulled that off here. And I. You know, it's a journey. It's written as a journey to create a journey with the reader that as the main character grows, they grow, and they're better off having read it. And I think, you know, and I really, really believe in this book. I'm very, you know, that's the beauty, man, of, like, doing what we do. Like, we can give our all. We can give up periods of our lives, but then we have something beautiful to share with the world. You know, whatever it is. That's the magic of all it all. So that's, for me, is, you know, rebirth. And.

I hope people read it, and I hope they enjoy it.

Well, they better have, because I already endorse it as the one book you need to read in 2017 on Freedom Fastlane TV. So they know about that. But, Kamal, it is. It is Always a privilege to bring your message to my audience and I genuinely hope people go and grab it on Amazon or in a bookstore because I think this is kind of a game changer in 2017. So thanks for sharing with the Freedom Fast Lane audience.

Thanks so much, man. I really enjoyed it. And you know, people can always reach out. Me, I'm happy to be able to help. My email addresses are in all my books. You know, I enjoy that.

I learned recently that there are essentially seven different storylines that work in Hollywood. There are basically seven different plots and stories that really will engage the human mind. And what that really shows is that there really are only a few journeys that we all think take. And some of them, some of us take different paths to get there. As I joked with Kamal, some of us get into relationships, some of us start businesses, some of us go do the eat, pray, love thing. But the end of the day, we're all looking for basically the the same end result. And we get there in a myriad of different ways. And it's why I've enjoyed his book Rebirth so much is because it is the story of a literal journey, but it reflects kind of the journey that we are all on of some sort of a discovery. If you enjoyed this chat with Kamal, please let us know over at the show notes@freedomfastlane.com or on social media. And I also want to do a quick plug for if you're liking these podcasts. If you've been listening to it for a while, you will want to check out FFL tv. So head over to either search for it in itunes, you can search for it on YouTube, you can watch it on Facebook. But we do a case study, answer questions and go into things that are working and topical right now on every episode, and we do them every single week. You're really going to enjoy them. It's where I get a little bit more animated and let my hair down a little bit more and you get to see a little bit of a peek into what we're doing on a regular basis here at Freedom Fast Lane and capitalism.com so head over to Freedom Fastlane TV, check that out. Subscribe to it on itunes and on YouTube and I know you're gonna enjoy that one. As always, I appreciate you listening to and supporting the show. I'll talk to you guys in the next episode.