Short YouTube monologue (by Nate Tilley) arguing that people prioritize appearing rich over building long-term wealth. The speaker advises focusing on multi-decade strategies rather than short-term gains, using Amazon’s decade-long early losses and eventual scale as an example of successful long-term investment and payoff.
People don't want to get rich, they want to be rich. If you're focused on making as much money as you possibly can right now, you are going to be leaving a huge amount of money on the table. You want to play in decades, not in years. Look at Amazon. They lost money for over a decade before they started making money. They had such a long term perspective that would allow them to reach the scale that they are today. That required a significant investment. Because they were willing to do that, they get to reap the big, slow money. The payoff for those things is going to be infinitely more than the whole pool of people that are playing for the quick, small money.
