S1 Ep8: The Biggest Lies About Building Wealth (and The Tiny Habit That Changed Everything) - Sahil Bloom

If you have a 6 a.m. flight to catch to go on vacation, you're going to get your ass out of bed at 3 a.m. But if you have a 5 a.m. workout, you say you can't get out of bed. That has nothing to do with time or energy. That's just desire. You just don't want it bad enough. Waking up at 5 a.m. and working out is very, very hard. The momentum is a hell of a drug. When you get a little bit of it, you just want to keep building it. A lot of us just assume freedom is a byproduct of making money. You're just going to be a slave to the money. The only way to earn lasting respect and admiration is to build the things that cannot be bought.

You're in an unbelievably unique position. One of your real-life mentors is Tim Cook, CEO of Apple. So how did that actually come to be? Right.

You good? I'm good.

What is the biggest lie we've been told about wealth?

The single biggest lie you've been told about wealth is that money is the only type of wealth. In reality, there are 5 types of wealth: financial wealth that you know about, and then time wealth, social wealth, mental wealth, and physical wealth. Not recognizing that there are other types of wealth is damaging your path to happiness and fulfillment. Not recognizing that building those other types of wealth is what is actually going to lead to the life that you want.

What's the one tiny habit you've changed in your life that's made the biggest impact?

I call it my 1-1-1 method. Every night before you go to sleep, sit down with a blank sheet of paper and write down one win from the day, something you feel good about, one point of stress, tension, or anxiety, something that's on your mind that you need to get off onto the paper, and one point of gratitude, something that you noticed during the day that made you feel grateful. It takes 3 to 5 minutes max, and it has an immediate positive benefit on your mental health, on your ability to fall asleep easily, and on your overall happiness to end the day.

So how do you know if you're playing the wrong game in life?

You need to tune into your energy much more. Most people have no clue. They don't pay attention to actually how their energy, how their nervous system is telling them they feel about things, especially about people, by the way. When you're around someone, you need to tune into how you physically feel around them. Your body is telling you things about how the other person is for you, whether they are a positive force in your life or a negative force in your life. Learning to tune into your energy in that way around people and around things that you're doing, whether it's work or personal activities, will inform you very quickly whether you're playing the right games or the wrong games.

What's the most common mistake that people make when chasing success?

The single most common mistake I see people make is that they chase someone else's definition of success. And at the end of the day, you will never feel successful unless you define what success looks like to you. If you're playing on someone else's scoreboard that you've just blindly accepted as your own, you'll never feel successful because you're chasing someone else's definition of meaning, someone else's definition of purpose. You have to define that for yourself if you ever want to do well on that scoreboard.

What's the one mindset shift that's worked for you in your life?

The mindset shift that has had a huge impact in my life is the recognition that you are constantly capable of change, that you are adaptable. I spent so many years in my life focusing on having the perfect plan, on sitting back and being able to perfectly plan out whatever business, whatever relationship, whatever life path I was on. And it took me many years to realize that adaptability is much more important than planning, that when the explorer sets out on a voyage, they are not trusting that they have the perfect plan, that they have the perfect course, and that they're going to make it exactly as they intended. They're trusting in their ability to adapt when the inevitable storms and chaos arrive. And that is the same for your life. You need to trust in your ability to adapt. You need to prepare, not plan.

What is the one question that you ask yourself every day to stay on track?

If I were to repeat my actions of today for 100 straight days, would my life be better or worse than it is now? That question is a massive grounding force in my life because it reminds you that our entire life is just the sum total of our daily habits and actions. And if I were to just repeat the tiny actions that I'm taking today over and over and over again, is my life going to be better or worse? And if it's going to be worse or if it's going to be the same, I need to adjust course today and change those actions if I want to change my future.

So one of your real life mentors is Tim Cook. And so what is the best advice that you've ever had from a mentor?

Lean into your pattern interrupts. Meaning, think about the things that make you a bit different, that make you unique from the crowd. And rather than shying away from those, which is the behavior that we're taught as children, lean into them. Because the things that make you weird as a kid are the things that make you successful and excellent as an adult.

You're in an unbelievably unique position that one of your real-life mentors is Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, which is for all of us would be like the dream for all of us. So how did that actually come to be? How did you meet Tim Cook?

It's a funny story because I met Tim for the first time, uh, at the gym. And this was when I first started working in 2014. Uh, I was working in finance, and so I knew as an analyst I was gonna have really long hours, and the only way I was going to be able to keep up my workout routine was if I went crazy early in the morning. So I started showing up at the Equinox that was in Palo Alto, the town where my office was, at 4:45. Wow. Right at the opening of this place. And there's only about 6 or 7 other people that were crazy enough to show up every single day at 4:45 in the morning. And one of them happened to be Tim Cook, who was just recently promoted into the role of CEO at Apple. He was not nearly as famous as he is today. Obviously, this is 2014. You know, there was no like armed security all over the place. There's no, you know, he wasn't, he wasn't the same level of figure. And to be honest, for the first 6 months, I didn't know who he was. I talked to him in the gym every single day because there were 6 of us there. Like, we would all talk to each other and I didn't know who he was. And someone came up to me and said like, oh, do you know who that person is that you were just talking to? I was like, I don't know. That's the guy. That's one of the guys. And that's Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple. And I just thought, oh, shit, because I've probably been saying the dumbest stuff to this guy over the last 6 months. And it's funny, in hindsight, I think the fact that I had just treated him as a normal human being, like any one of the guys over 6 months, and that I wasn't nervous or tentative around him, probably had a formative effect in our relationship and our friendship that has built over the years. But I have been very fortunate to call him a mentor and friend, and he was one of the people that encouraged me to go down this unique path that I've been down, to, to leave what I was doing before, start playing these different games, to start leaning into my pattern interrupts and has been extraordinarily supportive and is one of the early readers and reviewers of the book, which is great.

That's an incredible story. You're not going to find me at 4:45 in the morning.

Maybe you need to start doing it. I mean, it's an example, by the way. Yeah, maybe I'll meet It is a great example of one of my favorite concepts, which is just this idea that you can expand your luck surface area in life. And people would say, oh, it's so lucky that you met Tim Cook. And like, there's an aspect of it that is certainly lucky, but I was waking up for 6 straight months at 3:45 in the morning to get to the gym at 4:45. And I wasn't doing that because I thought I was going to meet someone impressive. I was doing it because it was an action that was important in my life, and it led to me getting lucky. And it's a reminder that there are 4 types of luck. There's blind luck, that's Type 1 luck, that is the acts of God, the truly random chance occurrences of the universe. But then there are these other types of luck that you can actually control. Type 2 luck is luck from motion. That's what I had. That's hustling. You're creating motion and creating these collisions that lead to you getting lucky. There's Type 3 luck, which is luck from awareness. That's when you start becoming so knowledgeable and experienced at something that you're better able to actually identify lucky opportunities before they come. And then there's Type 4 luck, which is luck from uniqueness. That's when your weird eccentricities and hobbies start actually attracting luck into your life. People seek you out for that lucky opportunity. And the reminder there is like while Type 1 luck governs the early years of your life, where you're born, who you're born to, those chance occurrences, the rest of your life is going to be governed by Type 2, 3, and 4 luck because you control those in a certain way. You are able to actually create that luck in your life.

One of the bits of advice I would always give to young entrepreneurs, and we've talked about this loads, is that it's actually really hard to work smart out the gate. Like you've got to put in the time, you've got to get to the networking events. Because like you say, you know, you're like— luck at the beginning, you know, you have what you're dealt almost. But if you're showing up to networking events or you're creating hobbies or interests that will put you in the right room with the right people, over a couple of years that's going to compound. And so like a lot of the networking I did in my 20s Those people are the reasons that everything is moving so fast now. And so it's very hard to say when young people come and they ask me about advice for business and so forth, they're like, yeah, I'm just working as smart as I possibly can. I'm like, I don't know.

Yeah. Our friendship is an example of luck from motion, right? Like you had a friend in Eric who I knew and he was coming to an event and he threw your name out there as someone that would be great. And we had never met and it ended up leading to this collision that leads to us sitting here and all of the business and fun things we're gonna do together in the years to come. I am a firm believer that if you want to make a lot of money, you need to recognize that early in your life and career, time is your only valuable asset.

Mm-hmm.

You don't have knowledge, networks, experience, wisdom, or money. So you need to take the thing you have, which is time, and trade it to get those other things. And that's by working hard. You take your time and you convert it into networks, money, wisdom, insights, experience, all of those things. Then you have those. So later in your life, you're able to take those and put them into the only the highest leverage opportunities that you have. That's working smart. But you can't work smart when all you have is time. How are you gonna work smart? You don't have the things that enable you to do that.

So Sahil, how does the 5 types of wealth help people make small actionable steps rather than getting overwhelmed?

Yeah. One of the reasons that people don't make progress in life is because they create this intimidation before starting. They see this enormous wall in front of them, and at the top of that wall is the life that they want. But they're standing at the bottom and they can't possibly imagine scaling that entire wall. So they just don't start. They feel hopeless. They feel lost. And one of the things that this book encourages you to do and actually gives you the tactics to do is to take the one tiny action today, just the one little step, lay the one foundational brick that may not help you scale the entire wall today. But if you do that over and over and over again, you will be able to scale that wall. Every single section of the book has a guide. So for each of the types of wealth, there's a guide at the end that is filled with the science-backed, proven, high-leverage systems to actually go and build that type of wealth in your life. And importantly, none of those systems are intimidating. You can actually get started on them today. This week you can make a start on each of these types of wealth. And that was a big intention in putting together the book in the way that I did. And the structure that I did was I want people to shrink their information-action gap. And you think about the world, the most successful people in the world have a razor-thin gap between when they consume information, when they learn something, and when they act on that learning, when they act on that information. Most of us that haven't made it in life have a big gap. We consume information, we feel all good, we get the dopamine hit, and then we don't do a damn thing about it. And so the whole goal is to say, I'm going to give you a lot of information, but now I want you to really shrink that down by making it very easy to get started. Shrink that information-action gap and your whole life changes.

It's funny, actually, there's like a real-life example, like in this room, in that I obviously teach people a lot now about entrepreneurship and like building an audience and all these sorts of things. And a lot of people would always say like, thank you so much, that you've made a big impact on my life. And I'm always like, well, the dude who made a big impact to my life was you. Because obviously we went on that, that trip that you spoke about, and I remember you being like— it sounds so silly saying this now, but you were like, I believe that you can do it. And it— and sometimes it takes someone else believing in you and then taking small steps every single day towards the goal And now we're like, I don't know how long ago that was now, maybe a year and a half.

Yeah, not even that long.

Not even that long. But like, I've put in the work every day from pretty much then till now, and the compound of that is wild. But to expect this all to happen then is kind of what most people want, you know. And after I've been an entrepreneur for 16 years, people always like, things are going so fast for you, and it's like, but they definitely weren't.

Yeah, I say this in the book, um, your entire life can change in one year.

Yeah.

Not 10, not 5, not 3. One year is all it takes. One year of focused, disciplined daily effort. You are literally one year away from people saying you got lucky.

Yeah.

From there being a whole bunch of haters out there in the world that are going to say, oh, you got lucky. Yeah. And you know, you're the only one that knows the daily actions that actually led to that. But it requires that action. It actually requires the daily effort. I said I believed in you because I did. And I might have started that little ripple effect for you, given you that little bit of permission or momentum that you needed to get started. But you were the one that showed up every single day. I didn't do a damn thing from that point on. And so it's a reminder, by the way, be that catalyst for someone else because it's amazing the ripples that you can create. How cool is it for me now to feel like I was a tiny part of this spark of this whole journey for you? And it gives me, fills me with immense pride. But when someone gives you that, take it and run because the momentum is a hell of a drug. When you get a little bit of it, you just wanna keep building it.

Yeah. And I think, I mean, you are so right, like to, to so many people who want monumental, massive change in their life, like it's, it's not something that ever happens like on a dime. It never happens quickly. And so if you can, I would say what a good one, I'm not saying to people always like don't drink and all the rest of it, but if you can say to yourself, I'm gonna do 6 to 12 months, like no drinking. I'm gonna do 6 to 12 months of exercise. If those two things alone are your base, everything else kind of falls into play afterwards, which again is something that like when I met you, I thought you were a bit crazy cuz you were like, you were doing like marathons, you woke up super early, you were doing like the cold therapy stuff. And I was like, this guy is like crazy. But you kind of had your building blocks for the day sorted. In the morning, like you were done, you were ready for the day.

Yeah. Physical wealth, which is one of the types of wealth, is a catalyst for everything else. Not only is it great for you just as a standalone, it's also a signal to your brain of the type of person you are. I've said this before. There is no such thing as a loser who wakes up at 5 a.m. and works out. It's just true. Mm-hmm. Because waking up at 5:00 AM and working out is very, very hard. So if you can do that for 30 days, if you can get up and work out, you are convincing yourself, you are literally rewiring your brain. So true. That you are a winner, that you are capable of doing hard things. That has ripple effects into every other area. Are you gonna feel better physically? Absolutely.

Mm-hmm.

But also you're gonna feel like a badass. And when you feel like a badass, you do badass things. And nothing bad in life happens when you feel that winning mentality. You go and take on your relationships better. You take on your work better. You take on all of your physical pursuits better. You feel better. You sleep better. All of these things change on the back of that one little catalyst, that one little spark. So it's the first thing that I say when young people come to me and say they feel lost is like, I'm feeling lost. I'm not happy with where I am in life. What can I do to change it? Wake up at 5 a.m. and work out for 30 straight days. And it's like, it has nothing to do with work, but I guarantee your life will be completely different by the end of 30 days.

There's also like such a psychological thing that if you make yourself a promise that you're going to do 30 days at 5 a.m. in the morning and you don't keep it to yourself, that says a lot. If you do keep it to yourself, that says a lot. Because if other people are going to rely on you, like, I know if you tell me you're going to do something, you're going to do it. And I feel like that's part of your character now. but that's built internally, right? That's built because you never let yourself down.

It's also a reminder that a lot of people like to blame things. They, you know, blame their time, blame their energy. The reality is it just comes down to desire. If you have a 6:00 AM flight to catch to go on vacation, you're going to get your ass out of bed at 3:00 AM and go to the airport and make your flight. But if you have a 5:00 AM workout that you have to do to change your life, you say you can't get out of bed because you don't have the energy or you didn't sleep enough. Yeah. That has nothing to do with time or energy. That's just desire. You just don't want it bad enough. And so sometimes you need to hold yourself to the fire. I think that giving yourself a little bit of grace in life is helpful at times. But for most people, you need to do a little bit less grace giving and a little bit more fire holding.

So 3 years ago you realized that you were fundamentally winning at the wrong game. And so can you tell us about the story of, I suppose, your moment where you realized that being super successful as you were wasn't working for you?

Yeah. I mean, so the context on that is I was, I was working in finance. I was kind of like marching on this like upward steady trajectory of what success looks like to the world, which is making more and more money. And it was playing someone else's game. I was defining success on the basis of financial achievement and thinking that one day I was going to wake up and feel good about myself and feel good about who I was. And unfortunately, while I did that, everything else in my life was starting to crack and crumble. My relationships— I was living 3,000 miles away from my parents, who I was so close to. My relationship with my sister had become almost nonexistent. With my wife. We were starting to experience strain, struggling to conceive at the time. My health was suffering. I was drinking 7 nights a week. I was like not healthy mentally or physically. All of these things were suffering in my life. And in May 2021, I had a conversation with an old friend that completely changed my life. I went out for a drink with him. We sat down and he asked how I was doing and I told him that it had started to get tough being so far away from my parents who were getting older and health was starting to be an issue. And he asked, "How old are they?" I said, "Mid-60s." He said, "How often do you see them?" I said, "About once a year." And he looked at me square in the face and just said, "Okay, so you're going to see them 15 more times before they die." And I remember feeling like I had just been punched in the gut.

Yeah.

The idea that the amount of time you have left with the people you care about most in the world is so finite, so countable that you can put it on a few hands was terrifying. And in that moment, I realized that I needed to make a change, that I had been measuring my life, measuring my worth on this singular scoreboard that actually wasn't aligned with what I viewed as a wealthy life, what I viewed as a happy, meaningful, productive life. And I told my wife the next morning that I thought we needed to make a change. And we took dramatic action. We— in 45 days, I left my job. We sold our house in California and moved 3,000 miles to live closer to our families. And the story of the last 3 years and the manifestation of that journey is this book. It's this whole idea of defining what really matters to you. And then going and building your life around those things.

And so on a day-to-day basis now, how are you applying the frameworks from the book? Like, how is that manifesting in your day-to-day life?

I mean, every single day I think about how I am filling my cup across all of these areas. So when you think about what the areas fundamentally are that I talk about, time wealth is the idea that you have control over who you spend your time with, and how you spend it, what you're doing, that you have free time, that you have an awareness of time as your most precious asset. Social wealth is all about your relationships, people, connection to those around you, both the deep relationships and then your broader networks and community. Mental wealth is all about your purpose, standing in your purpose, growth, creating space in your life to actually think about bigger questions, connecting with a higher power if you believe in that. Physical wealth is your physical vigor and activity. And then financial wealth is what we know it as, except with the caveat of really thinking about what your definition is of enough and understanding that your expectations are your single greatest financial liability. Because if your expectations rise faster than your assets, you will never feel rich. You will constantly be chasing some more. That will make you miserable. And we know that to be true. We can see it all around us, all of the rich yet miserable people that we— why can't understand. But look, the Forbes top 10 richest people in the world have 13 divorces among them. That's crazy, right? It's completely bonkers to think about. But we know that that exists.

Yeah.

And avoiding that is totally possible, but you have to redefine what you're thinking about on a daily basis.

I actually do think that's one of the most challenging things about success, and I'm, I'm sure both you and I are very aware of that these days, is that you can be super successful, but if you're not careful, your life can slip into becoming so expensive and your expectation of what you want just seems to rise almost proportionately to your success. And suddenly you find yourself just on the hamster wheel of life trying to keep up with this version of yourself that you didn't even want to begin with.

Yeah, I have a, um, I have a dear friend who, uh, works with celebrities. Um, and I was talking to him about one, one celebrity that he works with who is an A-list massive, massive celebrity. And, uh, that individual is, um, going to be going and doing various performances over, over the coming years. And I said, oh, like, you know, the person must really enjoy it. And he said, no, no, hates it. I was like, then why do it? You know, like, he's extraordinarily wealthy. He was like, he has to literally— like, they have such an expensive life now built up that he literally has to do this. He's stuck on the hamster wheel in order to fund the enormity of their monthly expenses, has to do these crazy things that he doesn't necessarily enjoy. A lot of us just assume that freedom is a byproduct of, of making money. That is not the case. It's only the case if that is your goal, if you're focusing on deriving freedom from the income that you make. If you're not, you're just going to be a slave to the money. You're just going to continue making more and more. And I know plenty of people who make astronomical amounts of money, but they are not free. And then I know people who make 1/100th as much that I view as some of the most free people in the world. And so the point is freedom actually has to be the goal, not the money that you think is going to get you the freedom.

That was like one of our, one of our earliest and best conversations that we've ever had, which was we were talking about, I suppose, goals, outcomes, and intentions. And if you reframe it, I mean, I'm all for people making a lot of money, but not if it's gonna put you 60, 80 hours a week working, because then what's the point? Because you will never, you will never learn to spend it in the proper way. You will just buy things like instinctively or on a whim. Whereas if you're intentional about what you want in your days off a year, like I'm trying this thing at the moment, which is can I work 10 months a year, 4 days a week?

Mm-hmm.

And at the moment, like, I am struggling with my day-to-day workload. I'm like, what can I drop? Because I don't need that much more money, but I want that much more freedom. And so if you're intentional about it, you can make that kind of framework. And I think we first had that conversation because ultimately for young people, this is probably not a great thing to hear, but at the beginning you have to work really, really hard to get going. But once you're going, you can be more intentional about the levels that you want, I think, in your life.

Yeah. It also comes down to what is the grounding in your pursuit of the financial wealth. Chasing making money as the end in and of itself is one of the dumbest things in the world, and people that do that end up miserable. If you are working 80 hours a week because you are standing in your purpose, and your purpose is to go and build this incredible world transformative company, or your purpose is to serve the needs of others in the world, or your purpose is to create content that will change the world and you're Chris Williamson, and so you're producing 3 podcasts a week and you're working nonstop and traveling because it's his purpose. He's not chasing money in all of these things. He's standing in his purpose. Then by all means, work 80 hours a week, work 100 hours a week. Find those seasons of unbalance that will unlock seasons of balance in the future. But it has to be driven by the purpose and the meaning, not by the pursuit of money. If it's by the pursuit of money, you're going to end up miserable. I can guarantee it.

So how does someone intentionally go about finding their purpose? Because I always think that advice of like, you know, uh, uh, you know, find your passion, etc., etc., like, it's probably quite hard for young people to hear that. But how does someone go about intentionally finding their purpose?

You have to act. There is no equation or recipe for finding purpose standing still. The way that you find your purpose is by doing a bunch of different things. Acting. You can't talk about the thing. You can't brainstorm the thing. You can't plan the thing. You just have to do the thing. The ancient poet Rumi said, as you start to walk the way, the way appears. As you start to walk the way, the way appears. The answer is found in the action, not in the planning. So you can't sit where you currently are and say, oh, okay, oh, now I figured it out. Here's my purpose. And now I'm going to go act on that. You start doing things, you start uncovering these invisible things that have existed in front of you by acting. And now suddenly you find it. I was 30 years old. I had worked 80 to 100-hour weeks for 7 years and had no idea what my purpose was.

Yeah.

Then I was stuck at home. I started writing because I had more free time during COVID I started to find enjoyment. Energy was pulling me towards it. People were finding value in it. I was creating an impact. Suddenly this invisible opportunity that I didn't know existed, never would've knew existed, had revealed itself because I had taken action. And I found that purpose and it was unlocked for me and I saw it and it was as blindingly clear as anything in the world. And now I can walk in it, I can stand in it every day. But I never would've found it by planning because writing, like I would never would've sat, I was working in finance. I wouldn't have sat down and said, oh, okay, yeah, I'm gonna become a writer. Mm-hmm. And in 3 years I'm gonna have built this platform. I'm gonna be publishing a book. I'll be sitting with my friend, we'll have a convers— It's ridiculous. If you could have given me— in 2019, if you had said 5 years from now, where will you be? Write down 100 scenarios. I would have written down 100 scenarios. Not a single one of them would have been where I am right now because the best opportunities in life are invisible to you. You have to reveal those things through action. It's the only way to do it. And sometimes it's imperfect action. It's not the right action. There's no such thing as planning the perfect action. You take an action. And then you make it perfect through your response to that.

I think it's so true of, uh, entrepreneurship as well. You see a lot of people being like, I want to start a massive company, but I don't have the idea yet. And I always think to myself, like, the best thing that you could do is start doing something. Because if you do that thing, like, come back to me in 100 days, and I reckon you probably will find the answer. Like, you'll know what you want to do next by just simply creating, writing, like, posting online. Even small things will start revealing And so you've said before that what you love about, you know, having an audience and writing is, especially online, is the immediate feedback loop that you get. And so like, how was that experience of, you know, putting content out into the world? And then I suppose this incredible growth that you've had.

Yeah.

And I suppose that must have been very helpful when putting the book together.

The single most powerful framework I can share is that money and success is just a byproduct of value that you create for others. Every single person who has made a lot of money, it is because they have created an enormous amount of value for other people. Hmm. So if you're sitting where you are and you're trying to figure out your business idea, the real question you just need to ask yourself is look around you in your immediate vicinity or people globally. What problems do people have? Devise a solution, and then scale that solution. That's how you make money. At the end of the day, it's to figure out a problem, solve the problem, and then scale the solution. If you can do that, whatever way you're going to do that, whether it's with content, whether it's with a business, a service, whatever the thing is, that is how you make money. That is how you find your big idea. But you have to go solve someone's problem. And so as I have thought always about content, it is the most valuable content solves someone's problem. And for me, most of that has been around things related to your life journey.

Mm-hmm.

Questions that we're all wrestling with. And the thing that I have learned is that while the lens through which we view these questions is very unique, the questions themselves are universal. The things that we are all wrestling with, how to find meaning, our time and its impermanence, our relationships and how important certain things are. And yet our chase for these definitions of success that society hands us are getting in the way of those things that are more powerful. Those questions are universal. And so me wrestling with those, sharing ways that I am thinking about them is creating value for people because they are learning a little bit more about how to wrestle with them, how to sit with those questions, how to answer them themselves. And what they give me in return is their attention. And that is value that I am receiving in return. I can build businesses around that. I can sell books, hopefully, to that. And so I think that that is where people need to ground themselves is how can I create value for other people? You can create value from a content perspective through entertainment, through education, through idea sharing. There's plenty of ways to do it, but you need to think about the problem you're actually solving for people if you want to build a real durable business. To your, the latter part of your question on how it was helpful in the book and the feedback loops. Understanding the types of topics that create the most value for people, the types of topics that really resonate, the types of questions and topics that people want to share with others is super important for thinking about putting together a book. Because while the launch is the initial goal, I would love to sell a lot of books and I would love to have it be a bestseller and be able to say these things and make— keep a promise I made to my grandmother about, you know, like All of these things matter. What really matters to me is that 10 years from now, people are still talking about this and something they learned. And the only way that you achieve that goal is if there are things in it that so resonate and sit with you that you just want to share them with other people. And that doesn't necessarily mean it's an enormous, you know, global financial success, but it means that it has to be impactful to people that read it. And you know the types of topics that are impactful if you've been able to test them in real time. So I think that's, it's very useful.

We've spoken a few times about how expectations outstrip, you know, where people are in their lives and therefore they're always chasing them. But I think one of the things I struggle with these days looking at the world is that young people seem to perceive success as what can I show my wealth to be? What can I show my success to be? And so Even to the point where you see people nowadays, like, posing next to cars that aren't theirs. Or the most ridiculous thing I saw the other day, someone sent it to me, was you can hire out a fake private jet and go and have photos.

It's like a trailer that the inside looks like a jet. Exactly. I've seen that.

But it does make me worry a bit about that for young people right now. Like, how do young people find success when I suppose they're comparing themselves to social media?

Yeah. I mean, it's a terrible trend. Uh, look at the, uh, the desire to achieve status, lasting admiration and respect of your peers is a natural human and biological one. Apes have that, right? You like big physical prowess, chest pounding. It's how you set up a hierarchy in society. And it's actually very useful. The unfortunate thing is that many people think that you can buy that. They think that you can buy a fancy watch or a car and have all of a sudden achieved the respect and admiration of your peers. What you learn as you rise up and actually make more and more money is that the only people that are impressed by your fancy things are people that are way below you. Yeah, you are not impressing the people that you are trying to impress. Posing in front of a private jet or a fancy car impresses a poor person. It does not impress the wealthy businessman that you think you are trying to impress and gain the respect of. Because they think you're a joke when you do that. When you post— if you post a picture or video on a private jet, a person that owns a private jet does not post videos and pictures of themselves on a private jet because they're using it for convenience and to save their time to get to the place. And so that realization that you're not impressing people, the people that you want to impress, and it's not lasting, they're just going to move on to the next thing. They don't actually have respect for you. The only way to earn lasting respect and admiration is to build the things that cannot be bought. A fit body confers more status than any amount of watches or cars that you can buy because it is hard. You actually have to build it every day. It takes a long time. And Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk cannot buy a fit body faster than you can get it. You both have to go to the gym. They might be able to get a personal trainer and a private chef, but they can't force them to do the workouts or force them to eat the plain food. It's the exact same. Same thing for a relationship. You can't buy a healthy, thriving marriage. It's built through hundreds of hard conversations and sitting in the mud with the person through challenging times. And we know this. The richest people in the world cannot buy a healthy relationship. They struggle with that. Actually, it makes a lot of problems. So the things that actually confer the status that you want are things that have to be earned. They can't be bought.

And it's so true what you said about you're never impressing the person you think that you are. Because like, if you ever fly business class, the people who are taking loads of photos, that they're the ones that stand out, as you know, that they're either the first time they've been or they're trying to make content to say that they are. Whereas most of the people who sit in those compartments of the planes, or even in first class, like, don't want to do that stuff. They are so far from it. And so I, I think that I often feel a bit bad for young entrepreneurs who do that stuff, because to the people that he truly wanna like raise money from or impress or get as customers are gonna be like, oh, I'm gonna stay away from this.

Yeah. It's an enormous issue in the social media age because there are a load of big influencers who have made a lot of money by posing in front of the private jet or the fancy car with the nice watch and saying, it's so easy to make a million dollars. Yeah. Sign up for my Discord and course. And the way that they made $1 million is not the thing they're teaching you in the Discord or course. It's by selling you the Discord or the course.

Yeah.

And it is not easy to make $1 million.

I'm just— Especially the first million.

It is very much not. You have to create a lot of value. And like, I hire young people onto my team now and they'll come in and they're like, oh yeah, like if I'm not making $1 million by 30, I'm a total failure. Like, okay, good luck. Like you are going to be in the top 0.01% of American household income. At age 30, congratulations. You must have built something really, really cool, Mr., you know, whatever, you know, copywriter, like, you know, researcher, whatever the thing is now. I'm really looking forward to how much value you're going to create on this team in order to earn that and get to that level. Because again, you have to create enormous amounts of value to get to those things. It doesn't just poof into thin air. No one hands you money.

I used to sit on the board for a lot of companies, like in an advisory role. And it was especially the young sort of CEOs and founders. They would hear my story of selling Verb, which took, I don't know, 12 years, you know, 12 years of like sleeping in the office. Yeah.

Like grinding your ass off.

Killing myself.

Yeah.

Anyone who knew me at the time would be like, he was a ghost.

Yeah.

Like super unhealthy was just, I worked myself to the bone and it took 12 years and I was consulting with these companies at that stage in my life a few years ago now. And I would often use examples of Verb And, you know, we sold Vert for $25 million after 12 years and still amazing outcome, right? And yet they were like, it's too long, it's too long. We want to go faster than that and like double the value. So I'm like, okay, so you want double the value in half the time? Like, what is so extraordinary about this? And they're like, but I also want work-life balance. I'm like, you know, I don't know if these things go together. Yeah, but it's that expectation that socials almost set for everyone.

Yeah, there's a lot of great things that social media has done in terms of making education much cheaper, allowing people anywhere around the world to get access to the best information. But there are a lot of bad things, which I think the, the lower expectations associated with what is required to achieve the outcomes that you want. If there's one thing I have learned and there's one thing that I talk about in the book, it's that every single thing you want in life is on the other side of something that sucks. And that suck could be 100 workouts and bland meals. That suck could be 100 hard conversations with someone you love. That suck could be hundreds and hundreds of hours of focused, disciplined effort and work. But no matter what, you have to pay that cost of entry to get to the other side of the thing you want. It's delayed gratification. It's hard now in order to have the easy later. And there's no cheating that. You can't get around that. There's no infinite money glitch. There's no hack. It's not crypto. It's not like any of these things. It's not real. And if you see someone that has achieved that, it is by pure stroke of luck. Mm. And there are gonna be people like that. So then if those people get the most views and you just think that that's the standard, that that's, the reality, you're going to create this unbelievably false world, this like complete virtual reality in your mind about what it takes and what is required to get to the life you want on the other side.

And you've said before that you've personally struggled with imposter syndrome in the writing process. And how do you deal with that when you've actually got to go through the whole process? What are the advice that you could give the listeners?

Yeah, the mindset shift that has been really helpful for me is that imposter syndrome is a positive. Imposter syndrome is simply a small tax on your personal progress in life. And what I mean by that is as you grow and as you change, by definition, you are going to feel like an imposter along the way because you are pushing up against the boundaries of your current competency into areas that you have not done yet. You literally are an imposter. Jeff Bezos was an imposter at founding an online e-commerce bookstore before he started Amazon. By definition, he had never done it before. He was a complete imposter. He had worked in finance. He was at a hedge fund. He was an imposter until he wasn't. He went and did the thing. He pushed beyond the boundaries of that, pushed beyond the fear. Everything that you are trying to achieve, that you are trying to do, where you are trying to grow and transform is going to require you embracing the pain of imposter syndrome. And if you can do that, you find gold on the other side, but you have to go through it. There's no going around it.

Why do you think that most people struggle to take those actions? You know, what is the, what is the thing that's holding them back? How do they get beyond that?

Embracing the embarrassment of being a beginner is a very difficult thing for most people. The embarrassment of being a beginner is the cost of entry to build the life you want. I have found time and time again that the most successful people I know love the feeling of being an embarrassing beginner. That embarrassment is actually a positive signal to them that they are about to learn and they are about to grow. A normal person hides from that. They don't want to be the embarrassing beginner because they feel ashamed. They feel like it's a negative in their life. The best people in the world just lean into that. They'll go down the rabbit hole on that thing. And I think learning that, training yourself to actually endure that initial pain of failure, because that pain of failure has a sort of diminishing effect, like with each repeated exposure, the first failure hurts the most, the second failure hurts a little less, the third failure hurts a little less. It keeps going. So if you can endure the pain of those initial ones, that's sort of the cost of entry. To the yes on the other side.

I think you're right also about the cost of entry sometimes is embarrassment because I think when I first, like 21 or something, I'd been doing, yeah, I'd been an entrepreneur for years before that, but I'd kind of done it like secretly. I'd kept it, you know, hidden from everyone. And then at like 21-ish, I sort of, you know, came out a bit to the world about entrepreneurship and I was building a business and all the rest of it. And I, the feedback I got was so bad. From friends that it honestly nearly put me off doing it. And I had a really nice moment the other day, which is, you know, 13 years on, some of my best friends were like, yeah, truthfully, so sorry that we didn't back you at the time, because they were like, you back us anytime we do anything, but we should have backed you then. And I think for most people, that fear of what people will think about you for, for diverging from the normal path, it holds people back so much. And I find that like I find it quite like a sad thing. And so it's quite motivating to me to be like, I'm gonna try and unlock more people to say that it is gonna be a bit embarrassing when you start your first business or venture. Yeah. And it's probably gonna fail.

Yeah.

And so in some ways I would set the expectation that you are not gonna be an out-of-the-gate, uh, overnight success because it will just help you in the long term.

There are two big mistakes in life. Worrying about what other people think about you and believing that other people think about you in the first place. The spotlight effect is this cognitive bias that says that we overestimate the degree to which other people are noticing or thinking about our actions or behaviors. We think everybody is staring at us and judging us when in reality they're not. They're just worried about themselves. And that should be liberating. That should be a reminder to you on a daily basis that no one really cares about what you're doing. Even if they notice it, they've immediately moved on to the next thing. So all of your failures or your fear of failures that you build up in your mind that hold you back from going and doing the thing are completely contrived. They're made up in your head. You just need to go out and do it. It's the so what thing of like, if I fail, so what? I'll go back, I'll be fine. I'll go and do the next thing again. And so just reminding yourself of that, no one cares. No one is really thinking about you. And stop taking yourself so seriously because none of us are making it out of this alive.

And we spoke earlier about the 4 types of luck, which is a fascinating concept. With that in mind, how can someone put themselves into more situations that are gonna result in better outcomes for themselves? What are the actions that they can take from tomorrow after listening to you? What can they do?

I think you have to get off the couch. Is the harsh way of saying it. You cannot get lucky sitting at your house watching Netflix on the couch. It just— it's impossible. You cannot do that. You can really get lucky by going out, by meeting people, by interacting, going and spending time in value-aligned rooms, meaning places where other people that are interested in similar things to you are spending time. If you're really into your physical health. Spend more time in farmers markets and gyms and, you know, cold plunge sauna places. You're going to meet people that are working on similar things, that are interested in similar things. If you're really into art and music, go to gallery openings, go to these events. If you live in a city, those things are happening every single night. But you have to open yourself up to the world in order to expand that luck surface area and invite those things into your life.

You've said previously that the best advice you received from a billionaire was to try and put yourself in the position that you think like the 1%. So how does that thought experiment go? How do you practically do that?

What are the people that I admire thinking about and doing on a daily basis? Put yourself in their shoes. What are they focusing on this morning? What are they prioritizing? On a day-to-day basis. And the important point is that it's not necessarily thinking about what the billionaire is doing. It's thinking about the billionaire you admire is doing, because there's a difference, right? Like, I don't admire many billionaires because their life is not a life that I would really want. But there are some— there are some mega-millionaires that I feel have built a very balanced life, that understand the things that really matter. Their relationships are really strong. Their health is really good. And I want to think the way that they think about how they prioritize certain tasks on a daily basis, how they think about their teams and the way that they're building those things. Oftentimes, if you're asking those questions, you can go and find a lot of that information for free. You don't actually have to go and ask the person to get the answer to those things. There is a lot of things out there you can read, you can listen to. They've had podcasts. They've like— that information is freely available and sitting right in front of you at the touch of a button on your phone. We live in the most amazing era for information gathering. But ask yourself what those people are doing. How are they actually living and what were they doing when they were in your shoes as well? Because what they're doing now is going to be different from what they were doing in your spot. And my guess is for most of those people, the answer is going to be that they were taking action, that they were doing something, they were building. They weren't worrying about the perfect action. They were taking an action and then making it perfect with whatever the follow-on was. So how has becoming a dad Changed your life in every single great way possible. I spent the first like 28 years of my life not really wanting kids because of the fact that I defined my own worth and success around money. My general view that I had tried to sort of implant in my mind was that kids got in the way of that and that having a kid would be a distraction on this pursuit of all of these things that I wanted to achieve. And breaking that down in this process of redefining what a brilliant and wealthy life looked like to me led to me finding so much purpose and joy in becoming a father. Um, getting to see what the real point of it all is. In the growth and development of your child is the most beautiful thing in the world. And he's now 2 and a half and sort of understands things for the first time. And being able to start to explain to him why I am doing certain things has been amazing. You know, one of the things I talk about in the book is just this idea that certain windows of time are more important than others. I have these charts that I share of the time that you have with your children and with kids. There is a 10-year window when you are their most important person in the world. For 10 years, you are literally their favorite person. And after that, they have other favorite people. They have friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, partners, spouses of their own, children of their own, all of these things. They've gone off into the world. But for that 10-year period, you are literally your kids' everything. Mm-hmm. And we live in a world where we're also told that that 10-year period is when we should be hustling and charging and chasing whatever more we've propped up in our minds as the thing that really matters. And so finding your own definition of balance, finding your own way to navigate that tension, to include your children in the why of that journey and why you're working hard on things. In the purpose behind all of it, making them feel like they're a part of that mission. There's so much beauty that comes in that. Like, I want my son to know how much I care about creating an impact, creating value for others, that it's benefiting other people's lives, that it's acting in the service of other people. I want him to know why I think that's important and why it's important to our family and what we are as a unit. and that is just the most beautiful thing to me.

It's actually, I mean, we, we are actual friends, you know, and therefore like I, I follow you like I follow a friend. So like I don't, I don't follow you for all the content necessarily, which I love, but I follow the stuff that you share every day about your family. And I actually feel like so many people talk about the idea of work-life balance and I feel like what you created, and I feel like I've been super inspired by it, is like intentionally designing your life in a way that allows you to have all the family time. Because I follow your stories and stuff, and it's just you playing with your kid, like having fun, like having a really balanced day. I mean, obviously you don't necessarily see the, the camera on you, like putting in the 3 hours in the morning, the 3 hours in the afternoon. But I feel like that is very inspirational, that you've managed to build a life that allows you to have so much intentional time with your family. I think that's incredible.

Yeah. I mean, when I break down my day, you can see it like there's those blocks where I'm like, I am with my family and it's hard to create that compartmentalization to turn on, then turn off, then be there, then not be there. And especially now that he understands when I leave, it's harder. When he was a baby and I would travel, he didn't get it. Like he didn't have a perception of time. He didn't understand that I was gone for a few days. Now he gets it. Like when he sees me with my suitcase, he gets sad. And when we FaceTime, he's like, "Where Dad at? Where Dad at?" You know, he gets it and that makes it harder, but I can also explain it and I can instill in him this idea that I'm working hard on things that I really care about that are lighting me up. And that means something to me. I also, I see and feel the impact that sharing that part of my life has on creating this ripple where other people feel inspired to do the same. And recently I had an experience. I was in Boston with my wife and son. We were at this carousel in downtown Boston and a guy called out to me and he was with his young son and he came over and said, I'm actually here right now because you inspired me to take more time with my, with my kid. He had had heart surgery and he was like, I'm spending more time with him. Rather than working today, I'm out here. I'm taking him on a dad and son day. And he left. And my wife was so touched by it. Like the idea that that's not social media likes, that's not followers, that that's real impact. Someone took real action to change their life in a way that I think is so unbelievably meaningful that he's going to have a deeper bond, that his kid is going to grow up feeling a deeper level of connection. And if I can be a tiny part of that, if I can share things with the world in this book, in the content that I put out that inspire people to ask that question and then take a tiny action to do that kind of thing, to prioritize these other things that create so much meaning in your life. I can't imagine a better use of my life than doing that.

I was reading about Warren Buffett the other day and how he thinks about giving money to his children and he, you know, he's putting all these rules in place. He said he only wants to give them 10 million each, uh, which is quite funny. But then I suppose in the magnitude of his wealth, nothing.

Yeah, 10 out of 130 billion. Yeah, it's pretty small inheritance.

But like, how do you think about that? Because I think that it's something that plays on my mind a lot now that I'm thinking of having kids, is if you, if you do have a lot, how much do you give them at the start to create hunger? How is hunger formed?

Yeah, I won't give him any money. And that is because there are things that are much more valuable than money that he will have, which is knowledge, experience, access to people, these networks that are worth so much more than any amount of money that I could give him and will not damage him in the way that I think having this like floor set for you at several million dollars will. I will obviously endeavor to pay for his education. I'd be happy to support him in starting a business if he decides not to go to school and wants to start something. But the idea of like give your child $10 million, I fundamentally don't understand. My parents didn't give me any money. I have never— I've never received money from my parents as like as a thing. But I have received an unbelievable amount of support and love and access to people. My dad's a professor at Harvard. I had access to some of the smartest people in the world as a result. The dinner parties that my parents would host were filled with incredibly intelligent people. That is like, that is real. That is real access that I was getting to something, building my mind. And I always knew that I was going to be supported. Like my son is never, knock on wood, going to struggle for basic needs in life. And beyond that, like if he's super rich or he decides to be an artist and he's poor, like I just want him to know he's loved and supported. and that's not about money. That's about me giving him my energy and being present with him during that. Um, but there are things that are much more valuable than money that you can give your children and that don't have the same damaging effects that the money might have.

I think it's also really important that an individual, whoever they are, learns how to make money and learns that at the beginning it's so hard to make any form of money. And I feel like if you bypass that early stage of the hustle to make, you know, your first minimum wage job, for example, or, you know, your first job that's not enough money to pay your rent and live. You know, those moments in time, I feel like they're teaching, you know, you're, you're gaining so much of your instinctive character through those moments. And so if you're given so much money up front, you never have to go through that.

Yeah. I mean, my, my experience with this is also just informed by my parents. Like, we were, you know, upper middle class, probably. Um, I grew up in a town that was very wealthy. All my friends' parents worked in finance and were like very, very rich.

Yeah.

And, you know, my dad's a professor, so like he made good money. We always had what we wanted. We went on vacations, but we were, you know, probably poor by the town standards. Realistically, I didn't— I never felt poor, but we probably were just on like a household income. And when I turned 14, and in Massachusetts at 14 you're allowed to work, it was just the assumption in my house that I was going to go get a job that summer. And I wasn't going to sit around and play and just get an allowance from my parents. That was not a thing in our house. And so I went and got a job and I worked at a gas station and I pumped gas at this local gas station and I did oil changes and I pumped gas and I cleaned windshields for people. And I never remember it being this crazy struggle, "Oh my God, my parents are—" It was just like, it was the first time in my life that I went and did work and then they paid me. And I was like, "Oh, this is great." And I would go and work like overtime. You know, he was like, "Oh, he'll pay me a time and a half," was the thing. Like you get time and a half if you work overtime. I was like, "Oh, so if I work 12 hours today, for 4 of it, I'm gonna make $10 instead of $6?" Like there was crazy stuff like that. And I was making no money. Minimum wage I think was $8 or something in the US at the time. But I really did learn a lot of powerful lessons from that. I also, frankly, just learned probably the most important business lesson of my entire life that summer working at a gas station, because a man came in in a Rolls-Royce and I filled his gas tank and he gave me a $20 tip at the end of filling his gas tank, which like that was half my day's wage. And he left. And I said to one of the guys I was working with, I was like, man, I got to give you a $20 tip. I wonder what he does. And the guy was like, oh, he owns all the gas stations around town. And I was like, huh. So I'm making, you know, $40 today working the entire day. The guy that owns the gas stations is driving around in a Rolls-Royce tipping people $20 casually. It seems pretty good to own things. And so I remember learning the lesson of the power of equity during that summer.

I always say this, that people always will say to me, you must have been so brave to start a business so young, because I started at like 19, you know, 18, 19, and already had a business by then. But I don't know if I would necessarily say that it's brave. I just feel like I probably had that sort of, you know, light switch flipped by my dad, who is an entrepreneur. And so I always believed it was possible. I always believed it was completely doable. You know, I played a lot of rugby when I was younger. So did my brothers. My dad never missed a game and yet made an incredible income, like built his own business. But he was like the only parent that was at all the sports games. And so like when I think about what I wanna do for my kids, I, I don't know if you can do that having a, a normal job. And so I feel like those quite early formative experiences are key to, mm-hmm, you know, your message, which is like, if you can intentionally design your life. Mm-hmm. Entrepreneurship probably has to be— if you're going to be that intentional, if you're going to be at all your kids' games, entrepreneurship is probably the way forward rather than a more traditional job.

There's this funny thing you notice with kids once you have them, that if you're at a restaurant with your kid and they get up to start exploring the restaurant, they walk like 10 feet away, they'll look back at you and make eye contact with you. And once they realize that you are watching them, they turn around and they go way, way further. And there's a powerful insight there, which is they want to know that you have their back. And once they know that, once they're comfortable in the fact that you have their back, that you're watching their back, they explore and go so much further. And the insight I glean there is just that is the point of being a parent. It's for your kid to know that you have their back. That you support them, that you love them. It's not to carry them 100 feet away from the table. It's for them to know that they're supported so that they can go 100 feet away on their own so that they can explore it. And that's how I want to be as a parent. That's how I want to live. That's how my wife and I have aligned around this. It's be that supportive figure in our child's life so that he can go off and build his own beautiful life on the back of that support.

And so we've talked a lot about the impact that you are aiming to have on the world, on, on other people. And I suppose the, the clearest manifestation of that is the book. And so what would success look like for the book? You know, if you were to fast forward a year from now, we always talk about like expectations versus reality, what your goals are. What is the impact of this book for you?

In my mind, if people are still talking about, thinking about, sharing, coming back to the ideas from the book a year from now, it will have been a success. We often get tied up in these, you know, the so-called arrival fallacy, like you prop up something, some big achievement as the destination, and you feel like if I achieve that thing, I'm going to all of a sudden feel happy and feel like I made it. And what we inevitably learn is that you get to that thing and you feel good for a second, then you immediately reset to whatever the next height is, whatever the next summit is. And With a book in particular, there's so much that pushes you towards thinking about the launch success and the bestseller list and getting these accolades or whatever the thing is. And I want those things, don't get me wrong. But what I keep saying to myself and trying to remind myself of is that the success of the book before anyone has read it is on the basis of like marketing. That's— can I market something? Can I go and talk about it? But the real success of the book is 6 months, a year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years. The best books in the world just keep selling. People keep buying them because they've created so much value. They've created a movement. They've created a community. Susan Cain is one of the early readers and a reviewer of my book, has been a mentor and friend of mine. She wrote a book called Quiet, which is all about the power of introverts in an extroverted world. It's been 10-plus years since she published that. She continues to sell an extraordinary number, number of copies. There are quiet ambassadors in companies all around the world. She gets invited to the most extraordinary events to speak and talk about this topic. She has a TED Talk with 75 or 80 million views on it. She created a movement of people understanding that they could be powerful even though they were introverts in a world that had told them not. And that to me is the real goal. It's like to create something that lasts beyond yourself that just keeps rolling.

It's fascinating for anyone who does write a book in the future, because I've just done a book deal as well, and everyone is so obsessed with the launch and the pre-launch. However, I had this moment the other day where my friend, I was going on holiday and he was like, oh, I just read this book. Like, I think you're going to absolutely love it. It was like the Untethered one. It's about understanding your inner voice and like how you can connect better with your inner voice and be more intentional in your day. And I literally read this book. Oh, it was like we flew to the Caribbean, so it's like an 8-hour flight. I read the book on the plane. It was so good. And I have now gifted, bought for countless people that book. And that is way better than any book launch, than anything else. And so I feel like—

and by the way, that probably wasn't a New York Times bestseller. I've never heard of it. Yeah, yeah. Uh, and clearly it actually is creating an impact on people's lives.

I looked it up, like, it didn't have a big launch. Yeah. But it has become a huge book. Yeah. And I think that's the, the, the message, I think, in, in your book, which is, you know, small action, understanding, and, you know, intentionality, prioritizing the right things. Things don't happen overnight. I think all of that will ring true, especially now when I think we live in like the, the biggest comparison bubble you've ever witnessed ever in the history of the world. And I feel like you need these simple lessons to guide yourself out of that. So I'm so excited for so many people to read it. So you've actually said before that treat your body like your house and you'll live forever. So how does that manifest itself in your life today? And what do you think that others can take from that?

Yeah, I think this— so this lesson came from an 80-year-old man who I asked what advice he would give to his 30-year-old self. and he said, treat your body like a house you have to live in for the next 70 years. And the lesson there is you have to make the daily investments in a solid foundation. You have to make the minor repairs along the way because minor issues become major issues if you let them fester. We all need to make the daily investments in our physical health, and that's why physical wealth is such an important one. It's even more important because it naturally decays every single day. You are dying in some slow or slight way. Your cells are literally dying and you are fighting against that natural entropy. The fact that your body wants to decay, you are fighting that and you can make yourself strong in that fight or you can allow yourself to be weak in that fight. And the unfortunate thing is that in the social media era, you are fed a constant drip of information that feels intimidating and complex about what it takes to do that. But the fanciest diets and the fanciest workouts and the fanciest recovery, cold plunges and saunas and red light therapy and all these millions of things. And what I talk about in the book is just the idea that that might be level 100, but you don't have to do level 100. You just need to start at level 1. And level 1 gets you 80 or 90% of the benefit. And it's much, much easier. Level 1 to me is Movement, nutrition, and recovery. And all it is is move for 30 minutes a day. Doesn't matter whether you want to walk, jog, run, lift, dance, ski, whatever, whatever you like. Move for 30 minutes a day. Nutrition. Eat whole, unprocessed foods at about 80% of your meals. Simple. Just like real ingredients, things your great-grandmother would understand what was on the ingredient label. And then recovery. Sleep for 7 hours a night. No fancy cold plunges needed. Just sleep for 7 hours a night. If you do those 3 things, that's level 1 of the game. You'll get 80% of the benefit. You'll be better off than the vast majority of people out there. And it's simple. You can start today. You can do those things. You don't need fancy gym equipment. You don't need a fancy diet plan. That's it. From there, you can start to improve and you can start to play level 2, play level 3. But the point is, if you're at level 0, you don't need to think about level 100. You don't need to think about whatever, you know, protocols Bryan Johnson's doing or that Peter Attia is talking about or whatever the, you know, the highest levels of those games are, you don't have to worry about that. Just start at level 1 and build from there.

In a world where I suppose cold therapy came, you know, cold plunges came, it was the biggest trend. It was everywhere on social media. You're still doing it every single day. Yeah. And I, I mean, that's very you, but like the— can you give us the science from your perspective?

Yeah. The science from my, my perspective on cold plunges, I have no idea whether the physical health benefits of cold plunging will be proven to be true by science in rigorous study, meaning there are all sorts of purported benefits of cold plunging, like impact on your metabolism, on brown fat, on energy levels, on all sorts of things. I don't know if those things will be proven to be true with more rigorous study, but I know how cold plunging makes me feel every single day. I know that it drives a massive improvement in my mood when I start the day with it. And I know that I feel like an absolute savage after doing it to go and sit down at my desk. And that has ripple effects into every single other thing that I do. And I know when I don't do it, I don't feel as good. So to me, I'm like, why would I not do the hard thing that I know makes me feel good to start the day? And I know it has an impact on my mentality and on how I feel in that way. So if the physical benefits prove real, that's just upside to me. I'm just like, oh, okay, that's great. That's gravy on top of the thing that I know I get, the thing that I know I benefit from it with.

You know, you talk about level 1, level 2, you know, the effectively the scaling way that someone can improve their health and life over time. You talk a lot about sleep and, you know, you talk a lot about the 4-7-8 method for sleep. Can you give us some flavor on that?

Yes. If you have trouble falling asleep at night, try the 4-7-8 method. What it is is a breathing method that engages your relaxation nervous system. All you have to do is inhale for a 4-count, hold for a 7-count, and then exhale for an 8-count. 4-7-8. This is a breathing method that special ops in the military use to fall asleep anywhere at all points in time whenever they need to get sleep. And it works for someone that's struggling to fall asleep at night. It engages that relaxation part of your nervous system. It has been hugely beneficial for me whenever I've struggled falling asleep. I used to really struggle with insomnia, helped me a ton. Whether you wake up in the middle of the night and struggle to go to sleep, or if it's just lying down in bed and your mind is racing, it relaxes you. If you do 3 rounds of that, the 4-7-8, you'll see an immediate benefit.

I wasn't lucky enough to know you like in your 20s. Like we didn't meet until a little bit later.

We would've had some fun together. I was a lot more fun, at least on a traditional scale then.

Well, as in you were very you know, you're very intentional. You've got incredible frameworks for how, you know, you live your life and dictate your life. And I think that is incredible, and there's so much to learn from that. But did, did you start as a disciplined person? Because you were like an athlete and, you know, like a high performer growing up. But like, what, what was life like then? Were you disciplined? Yeah, I'm just trying to— for those watching who are not starting from a point of incredible discipline, like, what were you like growing up?

I was incredibly disciplined in a very choice select few things. I've always been and had somewhat of an OCD streak, like an undiagnosed OCD streak. And so when I get locked in on something, I get very locked in on it. And my family will hate me and my friends will hate me because I'll be so laser— like, if I am going to— baseball, this happened to me. Like, I decided when I was 16 years old that I wanted to go to play Division I baseball in college and get a scholarship. And I didn't miss a workout for for 3 years. I mean, realistically, I didn't miss a workout for like 8 years during my whole career at that point. My mom would be like, want me to go on vacation? I would need to find a hotel that had a baseball field so that I could still get my throwing. I mean, I was a pain in the ass to deal with because I was so dialed in on this thing, but I was massively disciplined in some areas and then wildly undisciplined in others. So like I would, you know, be super focused baseball-wise, But then I wouldn't do anything when it came to school. Like I would skip classes, I wouldn't go, I, you know, I was drinking 7 nights a week. Like I was all over the map in terms of the, like, my wave. Like I would have these massive swings. Now I've found a way to be sort of disciplined across all areas, but in a way that feels great to me. Like I get excited for my day, you know, my daily life. And part of that is just informed by this theory I have, call it like my average Tuesday theory, which is that how you feel on an average Tuesday is a good proxy for how your life is going. Because if you wake up on an average Tuesday morning and feel so excited to take on the day, you're doing pretty great because Tuesday normally kind of sucks. And so it's like the week hasn't started, so you don't have the energy, but you're not close to the weekend. And if you can feel good about an average Tuesday, about what that day looks like, life is going pretty well.

In the book, you also talk about relationships quite a lot, uh, and I love reading what you, you write online about relationships, but also the time versus relationships, uh, graphs and diagrams that you've shared historically. I, I remember when I first saw that, I was like, fuck, like, how many more times am I gonna see my dad? And then if you work it out over a period of time, you're like, wow, I've got to see my dad more immediately. Like, this second I need to fly home. Um, and so I feel like relationships for you is something you're so intentional about. Uh, and I think for other people, I think they allow it to sort of flow around them without addressing things. And you talk quite a lot about the concept of quiet quitting in relationships. Um, so how can people avoid these like natural distractions of life? How can people avoid quiet quitting in a relationship?

Quiet quitting is the idea that people are slowly breaking up in relationships without knowing it. They are walking away from people with their actions or inactions and not actually vocalizing these things and the challenges that they're encountering. This is fundamentally a byproduct of the avoidance of hard conversations. And my perspective is when you avoid hard conversations, you are taking on a debt that has to be repaid with interest at a date in the future. You cannot avoid hard conversations and build a meaningful relationship. You have to engage in those because otherwise you're going to pay for it in some way. Time does not heal anything when it comes to relationships. It just gets worse. So actually being willing to lean into those hard things in your relationship is a way that you avoid quiet quitting, uh, actually being able to vocalize the things you are struggling with, the things that are challenging in your relationship, so that you can either solve those problems as a team or recognize that they are not going to be solved and create a separation. But avoiding those things leads to a slow bleed that is not in anyone's best interest because it just ends up taking more time than it should to either address the issue or recognize that it's not going to be solvable.

And the other thing I read was you were making quite a clear distinction between, like, falling in love and growing in love. And, like, what perspective has that given you in your own life?

Falling in love is very easy. Growing in love is very, very hard. Falling in love is what you see on social media. It's the beautiful Instagram, vacation, the perfect date night, the filtered images and pictures of your life. Growing in love is the things you don't see. It's the sitting in the mud with someone. It's the hard conversations. It's the struggle that you have to endure. It's the part of a relationship that is real but not sexy. It's not the thing that anyone wants to share or like. But the reality is that the most beautiful things in life are built through that growing. It's the people that you're willing to sit in the mud with, the people that you are willing to just be there for during their dark times. It's the people that you're willing to just do nothing with when you need to. And if more of us focused on the growing rather than the falling, we would find much happier, more fulfilling relationships and lives on the other side. I focus much more on the growing than the falling. You're relationship with your partner, who the person you choose to spend your life with, is the single most important decision that you will ever make. It will dictate all of your happiness and misery in life. So learning to grow with that person rather than thinking that your entire life is just going to be this like beautiful, sunny honeymoon day is important. Most of life is just sitting on the couch doing nothing. Before I got married, my friend asked me how I knew that Elizabeth, my wife, was the one. And I said, because I love doing nothing with her. Hmm. And what I meant by that was I had realized that 99% of life was just sitting on the couch doing nothing. It wasn't the vacations or the glamorous moments or those perfect images. It was the growing. It was the struggle. It was the nothingness. It was the sitting in silence with someone. And when you find someone that you love doing nothing with, that is your person.

I thought the other thing that you said that I really took a lesson from was, like, the fact that love and the enjoyment of love actually has quite a lot to do with proximity. And so I feel like until I moved closer to my parents, I would see them for events or afternoons, and we would have great conversations, but we would never really spend that much time just sitting together and doing nothing. And so I feel like, you know, you moved across the country to be near to your family, and that proximity, I think that people have forgotten. We feel like we're close because we can text the whole time, but actually sitting with someone, even if we're saying nothing, I think is so underlooked now. Yeah.

Proximity to people you love is worth more than any job will ever pay you. No single change has had a greater positive impact on our lives than moving across the country to live within driving distance of our families. Because the people that you surround yourself with create your entire life. Mm-hmm. Your environment dictates your reality. The people that you choose to spend your time, to spend your life with, create that life. If you choose to spend your time around people who lift you up, you will be uplifted. If you choose to spend your time and to allow negative, pessimistic people to occupy your space, you will feel negative. You will feel down about who you are. There is scientific evidence to show that the people that you surround yourself with impact your outcomes. The Pygmalion effect is this psychological phenomenon where people rise to the level of expectations. So if people that you surround yourself with have high expectations for you, you will rise to the level of those expectations. If they have low expectations for you, you will fall to the level of those expectations. So what better reason to surround yourself with people who are lifting you up, who have those high expectations, and they're going to support you to go and meet those? That will literally change your life if you just make that change, if you're more deliberate about the people in your space.

So you've introduced the concept of darkest hour friend. What does that— what does that mean? And how has that manifested itself? Here's a harsh truth.

Most of your friends aren't really your friends. They're just along for the ride when it's fun, convenient, or valuable. And they'll be gone when it's none of those things. Your real friends are the ones who are there for you when you have nothing to offer. In return. When you're down and out, when the business failed, when your relationship ended, when you're broke, when you're under the bridge. Those are your darkest hour friends. Find them, cherish them, and be one to someone else.

And so you've been on this journey now. 3 years ago, your life looked very different. You have intentionally redesigned almost every aspect of your life. And I think for you, you know, what's been the most rewarding part now looking back? What is the thing you are happiest about?

Every single day I get to create positive ripples in the world through work, through my content, my words, the things I put out into the world, through my relationships, the way that I interact with people and hopefully lift people up. Through really everything that I do, I get to feel like I am creating these ripples where other people are going to go out and live slightly differently and hopefully more positively and engage with their worlds in a more positive light. And that to me is very rewarding. Uh, and I just have so much gratitude for it because I know where I was mentally 4 years ago. And to think that I get to be sitting here in London having a conversation with a friend and call it work is just an amazing thought to me. And I feel immense gratitude for it, and I need to pause and recognize it more frequently.

Before, you've said to me, like, the book is almost like the starting line, you know, for the next chapter of your life. So what does the future hold for you?

I don't know. And I'm happy that way. Yeah. I mean, I said it to you earlier that 5 years ago, if you had asked me to write out 100 scenarios for where I would be today, I could have written 100 and not a single one of them would have been right. Because the most beautiful opportunities in life are inherently nonlinear. They are asymmetric. They are invisible to you. And you only discover them as you walk the way, as you start to move and as you start to take action. And so I don't plan that far into the future anymore. A year from now, I can kind of tell you what I'm going to be working on, making sure that community and the connection and in real life interaction around this. But 5 years, I just have faith that those dots will connect as I continue to walk the way. Well, I can't wait to watch.

Thank you very much for coming on.

Thank you. This was a pleasure.