The 1 Piece of Business Advice I Got From Elon Musk That Changed Everything Ft. Kamal Ravikant

Years ago, Elon, before he was the Elon, I was at this little private wine bar. Then there were like 20, 25 of us, and Elon and a buddy of mine— hey, you can ask Elon Musk anything. And someone asked him, what is the one piece of advice, the most important piece of advice you would give a CEO? He said, get rid of people.

Get rid of what?

He said, don't ever think you need someone. The more you keep them on, the more they're gonna ruin everybody else. You think of all the things this man has built, of all the things he would say. I was expecting cash flow, this, blah, blah, blah, blah. I never forgot that, and that's like when you feel true love for yourself, you do that in your life.

Give it up, Kamal Ravikant.

Thank you.

Now, if you guys don't know Kamal, he is pretty deep, philosophical, smart, Unique individual. We've become good friends over the last— I don't know how many years when we first met.

God, I don't remember. It's been over the last few years. We've gotten to know each other well.

Yeah. And, uh, and I'm an investor in one of your funds. Yeah, tell everyone like what was not said on the bio. Who is, uh— because I've got some questions I'm gonna ask you about money and about investing and growing a business. And because you've, you know, I mean, you work with some of the top companies in the world. But also what's most intriguing to you is just how you live your life and your philosophy and who you are. You're just a really fricking solid, cool, deep, caring person. He has a book. I've given Kamal's book to a lot of people. It's called Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. I think there's something like 12,000 almost 5-star reviews on Amazon. But who is Kamal Ravikant? And what's the deal with the last name? It's like, it's long.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Look, that's an immigrant dream.

child name. I grew up with a single mom, my brother and I, and graduated high school. I grew up in Jamaica, Queens, which is where hip-hop came from, so it didn't come from a pleasant place. I went to college for a year and just dropped out, joined the Army, and I was in the US Army. And then after that, college. And my brother, my younger brother, who's become very well known in the world as an investor and also as a deep thinker, Yeah. And it's really amazing. Sometimes people ask me, because he's really well known, like, what's it like being Naval's brother? And I was like, look, if you have a sibling that you love and you look up to and admire, and he's my younger brother, right? It's a special thing. It's a really, really special thing. So we were both self-starters. We went off and did our thing. He didn't join. He was smart. He didn't do the Army path. I wanted to. I'm really glad I served my country, especially as an immigrant child. You feel like you want to give something to the country that took you in, and you want to be part of it.

Right.

And this is around the first dot-com boom. I was living in upstate New York. I was working on a book. I wanted to be a literary fiction writer, and he sent me a message saying, hey, listen, check the New York Times, the Sunday magazine this weekend, this Sunday. Why? Just check. And in it was a 2-page write-up of my little brother. He was like early 20s. And I was like, I called him up. He was like, hey. He was building a company in Silicon Valley. It's the dot-com boom. And he was basically Amazon ended up copying pretty much what they did. And that company exited too. And I called him up. I said, I'm so proud of you. And he said, well, what are you doing in— I was in Rochester, New York. It was winter. I had to hack off ice off my car with an ax. He's like, what are you doing freezing your butt up in upstate New York? Come to California. We're building the future. And thought about it, and I sold everything, bought a one-way ticket, and moved out and got involved in the startup world, which is great for people.

What year was that?

That was like late '90s. That part kind of blends in my memory now. It was late '90s, and startups were great if you were not into just one thing. I was always that kid who was— The guy was able to do too many things, where you're literally, as a founder, you're sweeping the floors, you're doing the books, you're making sales, you're doing everything. And I found my calling, like one of my callings. I fell in love with it and been doing startups since then. And then as often happens in my industry, you know, it's like a lot of the people that were my time are now running Silicon Valley. They're the heads of Y Combinator, they're running the top funds or whatever, right? So eventually you start becoming an investor because you have been in the industry long enough and you have enough connections so you can get access to the best deal flow. And so I built a fund. And before that, you know, I was a classic, very driven entrepreneur. My entire ego was purely built on how well I did. You know, it was— and then I built a company for 3 and a half years and it was doing great. And then it blew up and I lost every dime I had. I put everything into it. I was making payroll off credit cards and all that. I'm sure I'm not the only person in this room who's done that. No.

Who actually has done that? You've had something blow up or— I mean, I started out that way.

I mean, it's really part of the entrepreneurial journey. And as I said, you learn more from your failures than from your successes. And the thing was, my ego was so tied up into being this successful entrepreneur, and then all of a sudden I lost everything. And I lost friends that invested, I lost all their money. And I kind of fell apart with it. And it was really dark. It was like dark nights of the soul. And that's actually where this book came from. I never set out to write this book. I wanted to write the great American novel, not the great American self-help book. I was not that guy, right? And this book is about what I did to get myself out of it, where one night I made a vow to myself that I was going to get out of it. I thought I was going to make a vow. to, hey, I'm going to be great, or I'm going to be awesome, whatever. And what came out in this moment of desperation where I was sick of being in my head, I was just tired of what I was telling myself in my head, that it came out that I was going to love myself. And the vow is actually more poetic than I'm telling you, but, you know, and I sat back looking at it and I thought, what have I just done? Because a vow to yourself On writing, I really do think it's a sacred act. Marriage is a vow. Truly, making a vow is a sacred act. So I'd made a vow to myself, and the next step was, well, how do I do it? I got to live this. And as the guy who's written the book, I didn't go read any books or anything. I was stuck in my head so bad. I was like, well, if I'm stuck in my head, the only thing that can free me is my head. No one else can free me. So I just started working on my head inside. And whatever, I was just running experiments, like sample size of 1. I didn't care how stupid it was, how crazy it was, whatever came into my mind. I was broke and unemployed, so I had time.

Yeah.

So I just did all these things, and what worked, I went deeper. If it didn't work, I threw it away. And eventually I came up with this practice that I was just living, all internal, every day. And very quickly my mindset started to shift. Like, I was no longer— I was literally hating myself, the things I was telling myself for having lost all this money, having like let down all these— I had a co-founder who turned down an incredible position from the head of Google. Like the head of M&A at Google called and I thought they were going to buy us. It was purely just to poach my CTO.

Oh, wow.

And out of his loyalty, he turned it down, you know, and instead we lost everything and it was my idea and all this guilt I felt. And, but within a week, week and a half, everything just started shifting where it was no longer about, hating myself, but actually slowly start to be like loving myself, and until it became my prominent inner dialogue. And what was very interesting was that my life started to shift, but it started to shift in a way that I wasn't trying to change it. I just think, just to put it simply, things just started to work, and in a way that I wasn't doing anything. And I was like, I started using the word magic. I said, I feel like my life became magical. Like, I was just walking around and just being me, loving myself, and life was just working. Things just started to work and fall into place, like nothing that I was doing. It was pretty remarkable. And I'm quite analytical, so for me to start to really accept that took some time.

By the way, I have to ask, were any drugs or alcohol involved in this process?

No, none, honestly. I've done— look, I'm from Silicon Valley. I've done ayahuasca. I've done all that stuff. But that was way later. That was way, way later. That was purely the mind. And I've really come to believe that, look, we're stuck in this mind this entire— from the moment we were born to the moment we die, we're in a sample size. This is— no one else sees this. We're stuck with this. And mindset is everything. And we think we have a personality, we have beliefs that are facts, but there are no facts and beliefs.

They're just—

They're just assumptions we made through our life that have been reinforced through our life, and then we start to think of them as facts, as how life works, how people are, how I am, what my capabilities are. Well, look, we can change that. How did we do it before? It was through repetition, through emotion. So I just started doing that, and I ended up doing it for love, which is the foundation for everything. And I was talking to someone, a couple of people here earlier, and I was like, I drove here. It was a 6-hour drive. And half of the drive was at least me just driving and fully loving myself and just enjoying it. And that's like a really good way to be, right?

Yeah.

And you start making better decisions in life and you start just— and I'm telling you, as you change your mindset, as you go deeper down this rabbit hole, you start to do more and more, like things work. Things just— it's like I used to call them synchronicities. I used to call them magic, but I just really come to believe at least from my experience in life, the biblical phrase, as within, so without. That's what it is. That's what the show is. And so I think my— who Kumail Nanjiani is, is a guy who works insanely hard on his inside. Insanely hard. I've been through some really rough times since then, and working on that kept me afloat. And then when I came out of it, it skyrocketed my life.

How many dark nights of the soul where you've like, I mean, you've been very sick at times. I mean, there's been some crazy stuff, and I think you have to resource yourself, but I think what I've learned from knowing you is that you have this practice, and you have these things that you do that kind of bring you back to center, because I often think of success. Like last year, we did a whole survey, and it was fascinating for this book we created that was really written by all the members here that participated in it called Winners Find Ways. It's like, it was 6 questions I asked everyone about how would you define winning. We live in a culture where people tend to look at success as how much money is accumulated or a certain status thing, but it's not the destination. It's who you become along the way. I think you're either on track and life is working and things are going well, and then something happens and you get thrown off.

Right.

pulled off track, but how you can pull yourself back to even maybe just back to quote-unquote success, but usually into a better place, is I think a bit of art and science. You know, that's an amazing thing. And so I, you know, we've had a lot of conversations about that. And what I'd love to have everyone to cover today here is how to get to those outcomes, not just financial success, And to build your business and equity value and all these things that you're an expert in, but really as a person, how to actually enjoy this whole process, because we both know lots of people with shit tons of money that are—

Miserable.

Just miserable. Absolutely miserable. It's almost like they worry about money more than people that often don't even have any money.

Yeah. It's the human condition. We're all going to go through stuff, and it's no different than someone who lived thousands of years ago. It was Maya Angelou. I went to hear her speak decades and decades ago, and she said something I never forgot. She was such a powerful woman. I used to just want to— I wish I could meet her and know her and just lie in her lap, and she could read me poetry and just stroke my hair. She was amazing, right? And she said, thousands of years ago, a Roman poet wrote, I am a human being, therefore nothing human is foreign to me. So anything that's— the scenery changes, the details changes, but the emotions are the same. The inside is the same. It's the human condition. It's part of life. We all go through stuff. No matter how good your life is, you're going to lose people. There's this thing called death that shows its face, amongst other things, right? It's how do we go past it? And I'm a big believer in how do I get through it, but I'm better on the other side? And the only way you can be better on the inside is to really just work on yourself through it. And when you come out, what you've done is you've hardwired these patterns inside of you that now when things are no longer rough, those patterns are running the show. And, you know, I really— like, this book has been so successful because I'm not someone who— really, I'm not a self-help guy. I'm a guy who does things. And I wrote it from that place. But it's also very honest, and it's all about the inner game. We all have the same inner game. I'm a human being, you're a human being. And it doesn't have to be my stuff. It can be anything, right? But something inner, like meditation. There's so many practices out there that people use to keep themselves, throughout history, to keep themselves afloat and make themselves better. And I've really come to believe that is When I wake up, that is my greatest job, biggest job that day because it affects everything. I mean, your mindset is better, your life is better. Even if you don't believe in what I say, like as within, so without, you just make better decisions. When things come, when challenges come or something doesn't go your way, you handle it better. So your life is better anyway.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's It's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. So, you know, it's interesting because you— the question I had for you, which you've covered a lot, is you said life is an inner game. How has your inner game changed since the world's gone more chaotic with AI, politics, media overload? practices still ground you. So I'd be curious to hear kind of what you do on things that people here could maybe learn from, or—

Well, you know, like the show outside is always gonna change and always gonna have drama. It always had, you know, like I was reading this book from this mystic, Christian mystic in the '40s and '50s, he was like, oh, pay no attention to China and Russia, what they're doing, pay attention to your mind. And I'm like, hey, that literally applies today as well.

Right.

Right? So one of the things I do that I just found to be really remarkable is the time when you wake up to it or the time you fall asleep. That's, I think they call it, that's the hypnagogic state where you're almost close to being hypnotized. So usually we let our mind just run amok and do all sorts of whatever it wants to do at that time, but I really work hard to just feel gratitude and love. That's it. It's very easy because we create emotions. Emotions don't— we feel like sometimes they come out of nowhere, but we can actually literally create them. So when I wake up and I snooze my alarm, and when I'm between the snoozes, I'm doing that. And then, hey, if I fall asleep—

So you purposely snooze your alarm just to stay in that state?

No, I snooze my alarm anyway because I'm lazy in the mornings. Okay, got it. But since I'm snoozing it and I'm half asleep and half awake, Right. I'm doing it and also falling asleep. It's directing the mind. I think in Buddhism they talk about the mind is like a wild elephant and you have to direct it. It's the same thing. And it's the mind, the heart, the whole thing. Really, I find that when I'm doing it regularly, I'm just a better version of me. That's just— I mean, it's a very personal experience, but I get so many emails from people and so many messages all over the world telling me the same thing, because I've written about this in the book, right? It's a very human thing, and it's very simple.

Well, you know, so when I first read your book, if I would have read it when I was in active states of addiction, I would have been, this book is bullshit. It's like an affirmation about do I love myself and repeating that. And I had to really get into it till I realized, wow, this is a really deep book. And part of it is, and I'm only speaking from my perspective, so people can take this for what it's worth. The more you hate yourself, the harder it is to love yourself.

Right.

The more negative self-talk you have, the more that you're in reaction versus response. And I always have thought of the word respond and react, and then the behavior of respond and react to respond being responsible, and being responsible for myself and my state of mind and how— when we go to the prisons and visit people in prison, if you were to look at the internal self-talk of most people when they committed a crime, especially if it's a violent crime, and the talk they must have in their own head, not where someone reacts or someone's in a drunk driving accident or something, because there's that, but when someone— really is a violent individual, the self-violence that those individuals have is incredible. And there's, you know, Andre Norman here and Elijah who's here that take people that are incarcerated through this whole process of even building self-esteem and finding gratitude when you're incarcerated and locked up in prison. And I think the people that drive themselves the hardest, the angriest, the meanest, especially to other people, they beat the shit out of themselves, and they oftentimes don't look at their own self-talk. I think your book is a way to reprogram a lot of this just continual— having drive is amazing if it's directed in the right way, but if your drive is driving you over cliffs, driving, running yourself and other people over, that's bad. I think when you can Like gratitude. I know some people, they don't want to hear any of that shit. They're like, gratitude? It's hard for them to comprehend. I mean, no one's going to jump up and say, don't talk about that gratitude stuff. But for years in my mind, I'd be like, a gratitude journal? What are you talking about? I mean, that's just stupid. I mean, I would tell myself that in my head.

Oh, I was that guy.

Yeah.

I totally was like, yeah, I was totally not the love yourself guy, by the way. I was never that guy until I was. Yeah.

No, it's— yeah, I mean, go for it. Now I really— yeah, I get pissed off. I get angry. I whine about stuff. I can bellyache about things, but I'll tell you, I pull myself out of it way quicker and I can resource myself way better. In the past, it was almost impossible for me to integrate any of it. I would have moments of it, and that's why I think a lot of people inebriate themselves and they get high because they're not okay with themselves.

Mm-hmm.

When you feel good with the vessel that you're carrying around, why would you alter it?

Yeah, yeah, no, very true. Very, very true.

So what is— so you're snoozing your alarm, then what happens? You just sit around and just spend all this freaking startup money that you've made?

Well, eventually my dog's like, get out of bed, you got to take me out. But I usually, I'll do like a walk in the morning and I'll just make myself just feel really good and love myself, feel gratitude under the sun. I'll do these little practices because all I'm doing is wiring this belief, this new pattern, and it's not new for me anymore. One thing I've learned is, you know, like if you decide, hey, I'm overweight, I'm out of shape, I want to get in shape, and you get really disciplined, you go all out and you, you know, do all the peptides, do all that whatever, work out every day, eat super healthy for 6 months, and you get in great shape. But then for the next 6 months, you sit in front of a TV and eat bonbons all day. What's going to happen?

Right.

Right? The mind is faster. The mind, we have these patterns that we've created over all these years of our life, since childhood, especially the childhood ones, right? They are strong and they are deep, and they affect so much of our lives that we have to create— what this book was about was actually creating this groove, this just pure groove of love for oneself. Because I couldn't find a deeper groove because it affects everything. And then on top of it, I'll layer other grooves. And one decision I've made, this is not too long ago, but it's really had a huge effect on the quality of my life, is I'm not going to let the world decide how I feel. I'm not going to let social media decide how I feel. I'm not going to let a business decision decide how I feel.

Right.

I'm going to decide how I feel. And I keep that. And oh my God, that's changed the quality of my life. No matter how things are going, because I decide how I feel. Because feeling bad doesn't make anything better.

Right.

You can use anger to channel energy. That's sometimes different, but that's not productive over the long term.

Yeah.

Right? But I'm going to decide, hey, I'm angry. I'm going to change this. I'm going to decide. I'm going to do something about it, but I'm not going to let someone else, whatever they do, make me feel bad about myself or me feel bad about life because life is such a gift. And I was not that guy. Life is such a gift, but I almost died very horribly in 2019 because of a botched surgery. And let me tell you, like when, you know, they say the man who has his health has 1,000 problems. The man who doesn't have his health has one problem.

Mm-hmm.

When you're in a shitty hospital bed, excuse my language, but it really is a Wearing that gown, coming, getting poked all day, all night for like so long and just on morphine and all the pain. It's terrible, right? And I did my best during that time. So there were times when I went through that, it was like when I could, I was really doing my practice and also visualization about just being healthy and being fit and all that. But at that moment, it seemed like never again opportunity, right? So when I got my health back, I don't take it for granted, right? Sometimes you have to go through life and it just whacks you and says, look, man, get over yourself. This is a gift. And then how are we going to use this gift, this gift of this, not just life, but this consciousness, this amazing mind that has the ability to go to the stars, to write poetry, to do whatever, to change the world. What are you going to do with it?

Mm-hmm.

And the foundation is how are you gonna feel about yourself? How are you gonna feel during the day? How are you gonna react to life? 'Cause most of our time in our head is either reacting to life or running the same patterns and same conversations in our heads. We often think like, you know, we're thinking, but we're not. We're running patterns. This is one of the things I realized when I was feeling so miserable. They were different thoughts, but they were all the same theme. So I started noticing the theme, so I was like, I got to change the underlying theme. And I really think this is so important. I've met people from war zones. I've met Fortune 50 CEOs, people I have nothing in common with, from different parts of the world, who come up to me and told me what this book has done for them. Why? It's very simple. Mindset, that you're shifting your mindset. You're making your mind the number one priority. And I've really come to believe that that's made me— I've made far more money, significantly more money, if we're talking about entrepreneurship, right? Having this mindset than when I was just killing myself and being driven and being always stressed and so forth. So it actually helps make money too.

I agree. I actually started making more money when I quit going to so many marketing and business seminars that were focused on how much is your time worth per hour, that sort of stuff, and I just started to let my brain wander and do things that I really enjoy doing, because most of my time is not spent with things that make money. Now, if someone was to observe me from the outside, I look like a complete freak because I might spend the whole day and there might be— What are you doing? 30 minutes or an hour of what would be considered productive work, but I often don't go and develop and find those things if I don't give myself a lot of time to let my brain be engaged in stuff. Because if you're not engaged with something, it's very— I didn't talk about it. I was going to open up the session today with what fucks us up. F-O-C-C. What fucks us up as entrepreneurs is when our focus is off, when we're disorganized, when our organization is off, when our communication sucks either to ourselves or other people. That's why I'm excited to talk to Jefferson Fisher and Chris Voss tomorrow about communication. Then connection. If you're disconnected with something, even if you're focused, organized, and you're communicating, if you're not engaged with it, It's all fucked up. So I'm like, okay, when am I all fucked up in my life? It's when those 4 things don't exist, right?

That's great.

And so, now I kind of like, all right, I need to feel engaged with something. And the cliché, all work and no play makes whatever their name is a dull person, a dull boy or a dull girl. And I spent so much time constantly trying to do it right with money that I wasn't engaged with it. And once I stepped away from that for a while, I actually started making a lot more money.

Funny how that works, right?

Yeah, it's totally counterintuitive.

Yeah. You know, one interesting thing I also learned, like when you start to think this way, your standards for what you'll accept from yourself and from others, more importantly, gets higher. And that also changes your life. That actually, if you're an entrepreneur, results in more success. Sorry, go ahead.

No, no. Sorry, this is where a little bit of my ADD brain comes in. Even with what we've been talking about right here, there are people here that would be like, can we just talk about making money? How do we invest? We will. We will. I'll get to that in a moment. I'll tell you though, I think this is way more important because if you have this part right, then the strategies, then the methodologies. So I always try to smuggle in from my perspective, and sometimes I do good, other times it doesn't land, is sell people what they want, give them what they need. I think this is really the most helpful and beneficial, because by all measures, you're a very successful guy financially. If people just— I mean, you've done well. It's this other part that I think is way more important, but to be able to have both, Because some Zen person that's broke as shit doesn't really— that sucks too. So it's like, how do you— because I love Eckhart Tolle and I don't talk to a lot of people who are like, man, I read The Power Now and I went out and wrote a million-dollar sales letter. I just don't hear that a lot, but I love Eckhart Tolle. And so part of it is how do you integrate those into your life so you can have whatever financial success, you can make great impact to whoever you want to and also just Just love yourself. That's pretty cool. That's a great way to live.

Yeah. You just— I'll give you an example, tolerating higher standards. I used to always give people a chance, and I was always— I think part of it was I was a people pleaser. I wanted people to like me. Being honest, right?

Yeah.

Right now, I really don't care because I love myself, so I don't need it. It's funny. It's really— I honestly don't care, but I love people. Right? So, like, it's even better. But before, I used to want people to like me. And there's people I should have not done business with, people I should have fired, right, that end up, you know, really— if you've been in business long enough, you will have had poor experiences with people who work for you or, like, business partners, you know, down to, like, you know, screwing over contracts, embezzling, whatever, you know. Eventually that— you're lucky if it doesn't happen, but in business world, it happens a lot, right?

Yeah.

And if your standards are high about what— because if you put yourself so highly, you don't worry about— you don't think, I need that person. And when you realize, I don't need that person, you will make the right choice for yourself. And that is so practical in business. You know, years ago, Elon, before he was the Elon, right? So in Silicon Valley, it's a tight group. So I was at this little private wine bar. There were like 20— I was the CEO of a company then. There were like 20, 25 of us, and Elon and a buddy of mine, And they'd done this little wine event, hey, you can ask Elon Musk anything. I mean, he was still PayPal, he had started Tesla, SpaceX was very early. But I went, and so we're just hanging out, and someone asked him, what is the one piece of advice, the most important piece of advice you've ever given a CEO? And I immediately leaned in because I was a CEO. I was overstressed, the classic, right? CEO, and I leaned in and you know what he said? He said, get rid of negative people.

Get rid of what?

Get rid of negative people. He said, don't ever think you need someone because the more you keep them on, the more they're going to ruin everybody else. You think of all the things this man has built, of all the things he would say. I was expecting cash flow, this, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever, right? Like work all day. I don't know. Get rid of negative people. That's a good one. I never forgot that. That's when you feel true love for yourself, you do that in your life.

You gave me an idea too, another way to use the word fuck. I'm going to say to people that, go fuck yourself. Go get focused, organized, better communication skills.

That's great.

Yeah. Okay. So let's talk about with that as a foundation, We've had lots of conversations about investments and stuff. What's great, and I really appreciate it, I get pitched probably nowhere near as much as you, but every week someone's like, hey, you want to invest in this? I've made the dumbest mistake, and Jim Doo over here could attest to this, because we both actually invest in your fund. I run things by you, I run things by Jim, because I have Like, this is not my skill. John Raymond's— where's John at? Yeah, John has been nice enough to probably look at probably 50 deals for me because he's one of these people that have this wonderful skill of knowing how to make good investments, where I've learned how to fund a lot of my friends' startups and have pissed away probably $5 million on bullshit that just flat out didn't work at all. Now I've learned, but I've had conversations with Peter who looks at some of these. They're just like charity things. at this point, some of these startups, but there are people that actually know how to look and evaluate and do startups and put money into them. When we've asked the question, how many people are risk takers here, there is something about obsessive-driven entrepreneurs that make them very open to gamble and very open to risk, whatever it is. There are tremendous amounts of people that are always trying to get your money if you're a successful entrepreneur. It comes out of the woodworks. I don't think I could have heard it all, all the warnings. I still needed to get pummeled a lot until I kind of got the message that slow down. Do you really even need to be doing any of this stuff? There is a question in all this.

Yeah.

I know I'm just giving some commentary about this. I say this because I know at least 20 people in here personally that have this disease of being persuaded into putting money into things, and they believe it. They get excited about it. How do you temper that enthusiasm? Because enthusiasm is incredibly important. You want to be a believer. in ambition. Dan did a freaking great talk recently on ambition, and me and him just finished recording an Audible original that's going to come out soon. He talks mostly about ambition, and I talk about connection. Ambition, though, of people that don't have your best interest at heart, have a really kind of a lousy deal, but they can present it a way. My question is, we've talked about betting on people. You bet on the person more than on the— so I'd like to hear your distinction, because people here are constantly trying to pursue— how many of you feel like you're in the middle of a startup right now? Whatever business you're in, you feel like you're in the middle of a startup, right?

Yeah.

Okay, quite a few. So how do you look at where to put— I call it TAMME, your time, attention, money, effort, and energy. Because you actually have helped fund some of what have become some of the most successful companies, and you do it every day. I mean, this is— not maybe every day, but that's your world. That's your brother's world. That's what you guys do. What do you look for? What are the traits of what makes a person or a company successful, builds enterprise value, creates equity, and can make you rich?

I'm going to share 2 things I've learned from 2 very remarkable people that really helped me in this. One was a mentor of mine and one was my brother. So the first, this mentor of mine, I worked for him, Bill Coons. He was the president of Sand Hill Angels, which in Silicon Valley was the early investing group, angel group, that they were just like, he was an engineer at HP and I think he built something that brought in 2% HP revenue. his revenue, like engineers, physicians, people with extra income that wanted to invest in tech startups. He was the one who was the president. He would mentor them, but usually they didn't come to him until he told me on average they'd lost about at least $750,000 to $1 million. Then they would listen to him. He used to say, look, angel investing is the easiest way to lose your money.

Mm-hmm.

It's the easiest, and here's why. Here's the key difference. So, all of us as entrepreneurs, as founders, we're very optimistic people. We look at a problem and we see how it can be solved. Okay? So, when someone's pitching us, we're looking at the problem, usually our mindset is to say, yes, it can be solved. Yes, this can be great. Yes, that. But as an investor, you have to look for all the problems.

Mm-hmm.

It's a very different mindset. It really screwed me when I first started because I came from a founder to this mindset where I just wanted to say yes because you fall in love with every great founder. All these passionate founders building stuff, you fall in love with all of them. You want to write them all checks, right? And you will lose all of it. What you have to do is have a different mindset of finding all the holes, finding all the issues, and that comes from obviously experience, pattern matching. And one thing I always do is I never, never, never make myself the smartest investor in that round. I will find other investors in that round and I will talk to them and I will learn from them why they're investing in that. That's actually very, very helpful. In fact, I won't invest in a deal if I don't know any of the investors because people say they have a record, then they have a real record. So I want to talk to people whose real record I know. Sometimes people invest for other reasons than just, I'm going to make a lot of money. It could be, I want to back a friend. Or, I want to do this person a favor so they will do this for me. There's all these reasons, right? I just want to invest. I want to know what this person's underlying reason for investing in this company is. So that was very valuable advice. You have to think as the opposite of an entrepreneur. You have to find all the holes in it. And still, if you think beyond all that, this thing is going to be amazing. But, you know, a16z, a friend of mine, he's a scout for them. He had a conversation with them where Scout is like, they have these young guys go out and write small checks to startups because a16z can't meet every young founder, but there's all these young founders who can go out and meet their buddies and write small checks for them. He was writing too many checks. They sat him down and said, look, this is how— a16z is probably, them and Sequoia, the most successful VC firms out there. They said, this is all we look at. The founder and the founding team. Don't make us fall in love with the idea because half the time the ideas change, the market changes, you know, which, you know, like one day you were doing, you know, crypto, now you're doing AI, next day you're doing drones, you know, it's the— or the, you know, like markets whack you, you know, there's nothing like being in the boxing ring in the real world of entrepreneurship, right?

Right.

So can this team take this from a $10 million valuation to $100 million to $1 billion to $10 billion? It's so hard and involves so much luck. Can they do it? That's the thing they look for. And then obviously you look at, hey, is the market valuable? What else is available there? But the most important thing, like early-stage investor, I've never looked at financials. I never look at spreadsheets. I talk to the people. And then I look at what are the holes here? And then I throw the holes at them and I see what the answers are. or have they thought this through? If they haven't, okay, that's an issue, right? It's not just like, hey, there's never a build it and they will come, right? It's like you build it and you're going to get whacked in the face, whacked in the face, whacked in the face, whacked in the face, keep building, whacked in the face, whacked in the face. Okay, this whack, what are you going to do? This whack, what are you going to do?

Right.

Right? And the second one, this is my brother when he first— and my brother has, I would say, one of the very best investing record in All of Silicon Valley tech investing, which— and I'm very proud of him. He's very helpful. He's very intelligent. Everybody wants him on the cap table. There's a reason for it.

You guys also have a pretty damn good reputation. I mean, there's— at least, I don't know. I don't know if you have—

Yeah. I mean, he does. Mine is I'm very helpful.

I like helping out people. I know a lot of people that are big investors that people talk a ton of shit, how ruthless they are and that sort of stuff. You don't really hear that about your brother. I never heard it about you.

No, I'm a former founder, so I'm very founder-friendly. I've helped people build companies. I've helped them shut it down. When I've shut it down, when they shut it down, I was like, just let me invest in you next time, and the next time made me a lot of money. It's like, hey, I paid for all your mistakes, all your learning. The next time you go, let me bet on the new improved you. The second one, so my brother, when he first started out, You never assume that if it's a new thing you're doing, no matter how good you are at what you do, never assume that you know this, that you're going to be good enough. So, what he originally did was he was very helpful and all he did was take meetings with founders. They all wanted to meet him anyway. And just meeting with founders, learning what they're doing. And then after, I think it was like 100 or a few hundred, he may have gone to 1,000, knowing him, he probably did. Now you have so much pattern matching in your head because by the time you've gone through those numbers, obviously you've been helpful to them, but you haven't written a check. But now you can look back and see, hey, what were my instincts on this person, on this deal, on this field? Were they correct? He did that before he wrote a single check. He was very helpful, so they took his meetings. And then when he started to write checks, all of a sudden he was early in Twitter, early in Uber, like first round of Twitter, first round of Uber, all these, right? He knew what to look for. That's actually patience, and it's better to do with no money than just spray money, and then when the real deals come, you've learned that you have no money. So, you know, investing in friends' startups— I've lost friends because I turn deals down all the time, because investing is something I'm very serious about. It's not a hobby, right?

Right.

So, but I'm very honest about it. So it's hard, but you have to be able to say no to friends if you're going to invest. Otherwise, just consider it you're giving them a gift and never look back ever again. Seriously, it's a gift. Here's $100 grand, please enjoy your life.

Peter Thomas, this guy right here, Peter. Have you met Peter before?

No, pleasure to meet you.

I love your shirt. Very successful guy. He built the Four Seasons Hotel in North Scottsdale. He used to own Century 21 in the entire country of Canada. And we were talking about, yeah, a lot of them, they're just charity things. If someone's hitting me up, it's either— Yeah. So it's exactly kind of what you're saying. It's just, there you go. It's a gift.

It's a very different mindset. You have to, as an entrepreneur, your job is to say yes. Every problem that comes your way, say yes. As an investor, your job is to say no, to find that yes. And even out of those, some are going to fail. It's a numbers game.

Yeah.

So, like, in venture, what I'm lucky is I have a fund, so I have X amount of dollars. So, the yeses I'm doing, I fully expect maybe a certain percentage to fail, but then you know through experience that some of them are going to be base hits, doubles, triples, and then you get your home runs and grand slams. And what's interesting about investing in tech and startups, and this has been historically true and it's still true, the returns are so outsized that your number one hit in a fund will make you more money than all your hits combined. It takes patience because it takes time to go from a company that's— I'll give you an example, Vercel. I invested in Vercel in 2016. I had a tiny fund. It was my first fund. I was building a record. So I was going to show that you build a record, you invest, and then you start getting exits, and then you go on and raise your next fund. That's how that game works. And I talked with the founder. He was in Argentina. We did it on Skype. Remember Skype?

Mm-hmm.

And I was writing small checks. I was writing a $25K check. So I'm like, man, you're so good. Founder. I mean, early on, had no idea this was going to work, but founder was great. So I was like, I'm going to give you $35,000. Right. So, they just raised money at a $9.2— 9 years later, at a $9.2 or $9.3 billion valuation, and they're letting early investors sell on secondary and get the cash out if they want. That $35,000 is currently worth liquid, and we're going to sell half, and we're going to keep the other half until it IPOs. Liquid at $35,000 is worth $6 million.

Mm-hmm.

I did nothing except writing my check in 2016. And now my fund is collecting. And that's what, I don't know, like 200x or something like that, but you can get way beyond that. So, those things, so you never worry about— if you're doing investing, do it as a portfolio. So, I would rather you take, if you're saying, I'm going to invest $250,000, rather write 25K checks and spread it out than just that one check, unless you really— Unless you really know this industry, you really believe in this founder, you really know this inside out. That's another thing, right? If you don't, I do not invest in stuff I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't invest in spaces. There's some great stuff I've passed on that's worth a lot of money, but there's a lot of stuff I passed on that's gone to zero, and I'm okay with that. Investing is a long-term game, and you just, when you find that yes, you write that check, and then you Yes, write another check, but you say a lot of nos. But in tech investing, you can do very, very well with the outsized returns.

Yeah. I mean, I think I've kind of gone through my scratch-the-itch sort of thing stages, because now I hardly invest in almost anything unless I just love it so much that I would be seeking it out. Because what I didn't realize, when you have equity in a bunch of individual companies, is how much Oh, the K-1s, and like your taxes are crazy. It's incredible. Yeah, like I haven't— I have an attorney on retainer just to deal with all the freaking paperwork of all the damn companies. It's like, these are, of course, you know, these are modern problems here, right? But it's, yeah, there's just a lot to it that you never realize, but it's very high. So let me ask you a couple more questions. So this one, I'm just curious what you would— what are some of the signs someone's financial success is about to destroy them?

Oh, that's good. You know James Altucher?

Mm-hmm.

So, I mean, great guy. I've known him for a long, long time. I knew him when he first had his blog, and I was one of the earliest readers of his blog. And he made a bunch of money, and he lost all of it. And when you say lost all of it, meaning like his ATM card was getting declined. He did that twice, right? And then he learned his lesson. He said, you know, one piece of advice he gave was, he gives people, It's like, if you come into— if you have an exit, you come into a good amount of money, do not change your lifestyle for the first year. That's when people start to go wonky.

Right.

You know, emotionally.

That's actually great advice.

Right? That comes from his experience where he did that. He was living la vida loca, right? Like crazy, crazy, crazy. And then all of a sudden, he doesn't have money to buy like food for his kid, right?

I have a friend, I won't mention his name because everyone here would know who this person is. He's pretty well known. And he had called me up, and we'd known each other for, you know, we've known each other a long time. And he was living in a really high-end apartment in LA where a bunch of celebrities live. And he calls me up, he's like, can I, I need to borrow some money. Can I? And I'm like, I don't really loan people money unless they're Like, freaking, it's life or death, and they have to be very close to me, 'cause it almost always ruins relationships, right? And in most cases, you're not helping them. You know, it's just enabling. And he's— I'm like, what do you need money for? He's like, he wanted to borrow $250,000, because his $25,000 a month apartment— was he couldn't afford it. And I'm like, fucking move out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like, there's a lot— I mean, and this is over 10 years ago. I mean, and he could not— like, his whole status was so wrapped up in this thing that it was like a life or death thing in his mind. Like, I can't lose this apartment because— and I'm just like, oh my God. And I'll tell you, I mean, even to this day, he's a nice guy, but he's His perspective is just so in what I would not consider healthy.

You know what, one sign, actually this fits here, is if someone comes with a lot of money and you see the people they spend time with change. And those are usually the people who are in it for because, hey, because now you have money. That happens so often. Oh my God, it's crazy. And when you see that, it's like, dude, please just— Yeah. Tony Hsieh, so sad.

So sad.

Such a smart guy, such a good guy. Literally was hanger-oners and embezzlers and just enabling his bad habits. Yeah.

He was an addict.

Which ended up killing him. And even after his death, they're all coming for his money. So when you see that, when you see the quality of the people that you have versus the people who are like, you see certain movie stars, they only hang out with their childhood friends. That's the person, he'll be fine, or he or she will be fine. It's all of a sudden, if you're the Hollywood celebrity crowd, you're picking up the tab for everything, and it's a different, shallow, vapid life.

Yeah. The Tony Hsieh thing, that's a cautionary tale because when I was interviewing David Bach this morning, Tony didn't have a trust, he didn't have a will.

Wow.

You're talking billion dollars. Who's it go to? And it's just a bunch of people trying, you know, it's just kind of there in limbo being, it'll be eaten up by attorneys.

Yeah.

And, and, uh, yeah, I mean, and, and it's interesting too because I, I knew Tony. I have a great interview with him from, I mean, hell, back in 2009. But yeah, everyone around him just supported, you know.

Yeah, so that's a big sign if you change to people, all of a sudden you're out like popping bottles in Vegas and Miami and all that. Yeah, you know, it's— that's why I think it helps to be a little mature in life when you come into money, or be married and have a stable spouse life, like a family life. Those people tend to do much better.

Yeah, I was talking to Sheree the other day. We have a friend where, like, we're like— Sheree said, I think he needs to get a dog. Just needs to get a dog.

Who does?

Sheree. Well, a friend of ours. I think could be really tremendously helped by just having a dog.

Oh, dogs are the best.

Yeah, just—

I love my dog.

Just because there's a— it'll help with connection.

It'll help with connection.

It'll help just having to attend to the dog for taking walks and having— she's like a little dog would be so great for this person.

I've made so many life changes with my dog. I used to live in this condo building, 33rd floor. Single guy life. I got my dog. She's a Belgian Malinois, like 63 pounds. I'm like, we're just sitting in my condo just staring at each other. I'm like, this dog deserves better. So I literally moved to— got a house for her. And I've never been happier. I'll never live in a condo ever again, but I never would have done that for myself.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, and by the way, like in case it's a surprise to anyone, this whole thing is about connection. This whole— my Genius Network is really a connection network. What does that actually mean? Because there's good and bad connections, right? So, it's just connecting with yourself, and then if you're really connected with yourself, everything else in your life becomes way better. The deeper the relationships, the ability to evaluate something, not pursuing something just because you can make a lot of money in it. Because, I mean, if there's anything you've honed, it's being able to walk away from a lot of really great opportunities, but they're not the greatest opportunities that you want, and then being able to hone in and And knowing that even if you do everything right, a lot of these are not going to work out. But the fact is, the ones that do, they really do. So let me see, because of timing purposes here. Wow, let me see. There's a lot of talk about human optimization. What do you think needs to die in us before we can actually live well? And that'll be my last question.

To die in us? Honestly, what I've been working on is, I think I'm pretty successful at it because I'm pretty obsessive about it, is I was reading this guy named Neville Goddard. I've talked about him, right? And he talks about the old man versus the new man. He said for the new man to exist, you have to kill off the old man. The old man has to die. And the way I look at it is who I am. He used the term man. It was from the '40s. It's obviously a blast to everyone. It's the old self, the fears, the one that— I used to live in so much fear when I was an entrepreneur. I was terrified of failing. I was terrified of looking bad. I was terrified of this or that, hoping I got that contract or this or that. Just like, those are patterns. If you look and realize, it's a choice.

Mm-hmm.

worked on the, basically the new version of myself internally, you know, who just knows, I've created this belief for myself and it's fantastic, is everything works out great for me. Everything works out fantastic for me. No matter what news I get, I just remind myself, oh, it's gonna work out fantastic for me. So let's say even if it doesn't, how's my mind been? How's my day been that day? How have I made decisions that day? But I'll tell you what, it does.

Mm-hmm.

It really is, you know, just creating this new mindset. And how do you do that? Reinforcement, reinforcement, reinforcement. Just like, it's like dog training, reinforcement. You know, we're even like, you know, we're very, in our mind, it's funny, we think we're very complicated, but fundamentally we're simple. Especially for inner changes, it's actually very, very simple and it's so transformative. And it's not just me. Like, you know, what's been, you know, more people I meet that talk about this, and I'm pretty private, you know, but when I do, Everyone has their own story how they've done it, or especially I see people who've been very successful in life, and when I say successful in money, but also in other parts of their life, and you start to see this.

What didn't I ask you that I should have?

Dude, you asked a lot. Anybody out here have something?

We can take one question if we do that to the mic, not more than that because we're already behind time, but Peter, can we— Bring Peter a mic unless we have to make him walk up to the— there are mics that are in the stands, but— oh, Adam, right here. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mr. Peter, at the ripe old age of 87.

Kamal?

Yes, sir. Approximately how old are you now? I am 54.

What would the 54-year-old Kamal say to the 30-year-old Kamal?

Love yourself. Fucking— excuse my language, but fucking go all in.

Love yourself.

Yeah, like go all in. Man, the misery, like the bad decisions. You're talking relationships and business and health and everything. Honestly, I'm like, man, I figured this out later and I wish I had earlier because my trajectory of my life would've been much more like this rather than this. And then once I figured— just go all in on yourself. Like making yourself the best you possibly can on the inside.

Thank you.

You're welcome. That's a great question.

And is there anything, be it a book or blog or anything that you are currently looking at or have read recently that you think would be really like a game changer or just very helpful? I mean, The Almanac of Naval Ravikant is a great book.

It is. Everyone who reads it just loves it. He didn't even write it.

Right. It's just a compilation.

Some guy took a couple of Trump's tweets and interviews, and I read it. It's really good.

It's fantastic.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, you mentioned Chris Voss, and I love his book.

Where's Chris? Did he get up again? No, he's back in the back.

Okay. I love his book. I've given it to so many attorneys because I'm like, you people know nothing about negotiating. This is like, just learn from this.

Do you guys hang out in Vegas together? Do you guys ever hang out in Vegas?

No, we should. What the hell?

You guys live in the same town.

Yeah, yeah, Tim Harkins. Yeah.

So he's got his DJ voice that's not amplified right now. And Evan, thank you. I mean, Evan Carmichael. Give it up for Evan Carmichael. He's just such a—

And so now I got the mic. I want to ask I got a question. Because, you know, you're talking about where you were, and then you're talking about how you should be where you are. But there was a trigger. Because the people that are where you were, or those of us who are struggling with not being where we're kicking our own ass, where our chatter is negative, where we're blaming ourselves for all this shit, and you do a great job of embodying how amazing it is to get to the other side. But something happened in between that kicked you up. And here's why I say that. Everybody, you know, everybody talk basketball. Don't get Michael Jordan mad, because you get him mad, he's gonna go off, he's gonna score 70 points. But every time he's doing one of those amazing moves, his tongue is out, the look on his face is pure joy. So the anger triggered him to another emotion. So anger energized him, But to get to the next level, he had to get out of it. So the anger is a trigger. What was your trigger from the guy who was kicking his ass to this dude that everybody's like, how do I be like this guy now who's sitting in front of us? What was the trigger moment? Do you remember what it was?

Well, honestly, I didn't expect I would be this guy. I didn't know what was to come. But that's a great question, by the way. I'm not surprised you're having such a great question, being who you are. I would say I was sick of myself. I was sick of being where I was in my head. And, you know, but the interesting thing is I tell people, it's like you can hit bottom and then you have 2 choices, sit there and wallow or go up. And often, you know, like it's like being a phoenix, you go up. Or you can just, which is why I really believe in the power of personal commitment. Like make a vow to yourself. Like truly believe, like a marriage vow, like a vow. This is a vow between you and whatever you believe in.

That's what you said earlier, the vow.

Do you remember what you said to yourself?

Do you remember what the vow was?

Yeah, it was a vow, you know, this day— oh God, it's in the book. It was a long time ago, but it was literally a vow. Like, I didn't sit down to write a vow to love myself, but that's what came out of me in that moment. And then because I believed in the power of personal commitment, I had to live it. So this is a little trick I do. Like, whenever I want to up myself in life, I will sit down and I would really think about where I want to be. And what will it take internally to get there? And I make a vow to be that person. Then every day I read it and every day I do my best to live it. And I fail spectacularly every day, but I'm doing more than I would if I hadn't. And then it gets me there internally.

Thank you.

That was great, Chris. Thank you. Thank you. So, you know, you don't— I know you don't do a lot of this stuff, so I greatly appreciate you driving out here, doing this. Will you do, for the right— what would be the criteria if anyone here, because we have a lot of people that are podcasters, have YouTube channels. I always love to try to amplify people's messages that I like and I think have really unique things to say. I mean, I have a great interview with Kamal from the 100K Group that's more about money and stuff. So if you liked what we talked about today and you've not seen that interview, watch it. It's on YouTube. What would be your criteria to do like an interview or a podcast with someone?

Honestly, I was staying pretty private for a while because I was just focused on living after I got my health back. But now, like, you're making me come out of the closet, you know, like, being more open.

Yeah.

And one thing I was talking with Aaron, who works for Mike, great kid, like, great guy, that I was telling him, you know, like, he's a fan of the book, and I wrote the book that would have helped me, like, truly turn me around, right? And it's obviously gone and done its thing. But I'm also the world's worst marketer. I don't market. It's kind of funny, you know, being in a marketing group, right? So if anyone's interested in talking about the book or the lessons from it, I'm very happy to do that because look, it's not like I'm— it's HarperCollins makes most of it. You know, I get like, I don't know, 10 cents a book. So I'm not doing it for the money.

No, yeah, you don't make any money off this book relative to what you actually—

Yeah, yeah, I do fine, right? So, but to help spread it, if anyone wants to talk about that, I'm in. Whatever it is, I'm in.

Great. And I want to— during the break, I'd love to walk you over to the Genius Youth room and introduce you.

I'd love to meet them.

Yeah, that'd be wonderful. So the title of Kamal's book is Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It. Kamal Ravikant. And what'd you guys think?

Yeah. Thank you.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that'll be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here.

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.