Why Kamal Ravikant Invests In People, Not Spreadsheets.

You're listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. This is your seat at the table. Welcome to the show. This is the producer, Darren Clark, and I have a great episode for you today, one that I've pulled out of the archives, so to speak, because it's just so good. Roland is talking today with his dear friend, Kamal Ravikant. He's the author of the best selling books Love Yourself like youe Life Depends on it and Live your Truth. He's been a US army infantry soldier. He's held the hands of dying patients. He's been the can do guy in Silicon Valley and spoken to audiences worldwide. But in this conversation, Roland and Kamal dig deep into his success and experience in venture capital, investing and more. You will especially like it if you want to know what to do when you don't know people and you can't get in on the insider networks. Sounds good, right? Well, I'll get out of the way in a minute. But first, if you want to go deeper and learn more from Roland, you can go to businesslunchpodcast.com EPIC EPIC stands for Ethical Profits in Times of Crisis. That's the name of the five day challenge that has absolutely blown up for Roland in the last year. So if you're enjoying his podcast, then you will love this training. So go to businesslunchpodcast.com EPIC okay, it's time. Here's Roland.

It's Roland Fraser with Business Lunch and I'm really, really happy to be here with one of my dearest friends and probably the best human being that I know, Kamal Ravikant. Kamal, welcome to the show. Thank you for being here.

Thank you, Roland. I hope to live up to that.

I'm really glad that we get this chance to talk. What I really like to do is start out by sharing an origin story or the origin story of where the Kamal of today comes from. The Kamal of yesterday. So should we start in India and move from there?

One fine summer day in India, I.

Was born a poor Indian child. Yes.

No, I was born in India. And we came here when I was a little kid, one younger brother and my single mom. My mom raised my brother and I and in Jamaica, Queens, outside New York City, you know, where the rappers came from when it really was bad, you know. And so my, you know, both my brother and I escaped. And eventually our mom, we pulled our mom out too. And it was the kind of place you escaped or you just like died there. Yeah. And I went to college for a year and I was bored out of my mind and So I joined the army and I was an infantry soldier.

In the 10th Mountain Division in the United States Army.

U.S. army. Okay.

Yeah.

All right. And, you know, I was an immigrant child and I wanted to start my country. I really felt like a strong need to give. And I felt as an 18 year old, that is the most I had to offer. And the best I could offer was join the military. And so did that. And then I went to college after.

For a year, but for a year.

No, after the Army.

Okay, okay. So you went to college for a year before the army. And then.

Okay, I had a full ride and I just. I was like, this is too boring. I'm gonna go do something more interesting.

Nice. What did you start college wise? Was it like, what were your. What did you think it was going to be when you started thinking you.

Were going to be? I'm going to be a lawyer.

You're gonna be a lawyer. I'm so happy for you that you avoided that. I did not get so lucky. Okay, well, so you were like, I can either be a lawyer or I can put my life at risk out having people shoot at me. And you wisely chose the. The far better choice instead of the. I like that. Okay, so you did the army thing and then came back and decided to go into college. And what was your. What were you going to be when you grew up at that time?

At that time, I was still doing the law thing, actually. I got a degree in economics. And then senior year, I went to this thing of law. All these law schools in one room and talking to all these people. And after talking about half hour, I came out and I was like, I don't want to be one of them. It was literally senior. I was like, what now? And I actually ended up doing. Getting a second degree in biology. And I was going to go to med school. Oh, you know, Dr. Law.

You're very respectable. Mom was happy, I'm sure.

Yeah. You know, but I end up backpacking around, around and doing these things. And then Silicon Valley was happening.

And where did you backpack?

Oh, Asia, Europe, you know, I did.

Like multiple countries, multiple continents.

Yeah. Interesting.

For how long?

For eight months on 2000 or $3000, I think I was living in, like, literally I was sleeping in fields in Spain and ruined castles and just drinking wine from strangers and made a lot of friends.

Favorite short story from that adventures part.

Of your life that turned to a novel called Rebirth, actually.

Is that when you did that?

Yeah.

Okay, so that was. So you are a writer and a really good One and have really worked on your craft, which has been fun to watch.

Thank you.

As well. So Rebirth, which originally was conceived to potentially be into thin air. Correct.

Great memory.

Which I love that title. And then got changed, as things sometimes do. So I didn't know that that was when that was. That that was when you did that. That's really cool. Okay, so I want to come back to that because that story goes with Rebirth. But so you had this adventure on the Camino. Is it Camino de Capistrano. Is that what.

Yeah, the Camino de Santiago.

Santiago.

Okay.

The city is Compostela or somewhere around there. Yeah.

It's a 550 mile long pilgrimage that ends at a city called Santiago de Compostela.

Are you aware that you can just fly over that in, like, almost.

You know, I wish someone told me that I was young.

You took four months, was it?

No. Well, that walk took me about 30, 35 days.

35 days.

550 miles.

It would have taken me four months.

There's a lot of good wine drank, basically. So I had no money, and so I would just basically eat in the evenings when I get into a village to try to sleep. And they had a thing called Menu del Dia, where you get your appetizer, your main course, and dessert for, like, I don't know, five bucks. And you had a choice between a bottle of wine and a bottle of water. Guess what I chose.

I'm gonna guess it was the wine, because that's the smart thing to choose. Absolutely. I love it.

I was drunk every night. You know, that was my pilgrimage. I love it.

I love it.

And you got a.

And wrote about it in the book called Rebirth, which is a great book if anybody who's listening would like to read that. So you did the pilgrimage, the backpacking, and then went to college after that, right?

The pilgrimage and backpacking.

The timeline.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I went to college, then the pilgrimage, backpacking. And then I went off to. And I came back from that knowing that, look, I don't think I want to go to med school. I loved traveling. I have so many different interests. In fact, I had too many interests. And that time the dot com boom was happening. It was the late 90s, and I got a call from my brother, and he said, hey, get the New York Times this weekend, this Sunday. I said, why? He's like, just get it. So I got the New York Times on Sunday. I'm reading it, and I'm going to the New York Times Magazine. There's a two page Write up of my little brother on a company that started called Epinions. And this was like the very beginning of the dot com boom.

What was the year roughly?

Some in the mid late 90s, somewhere between 96. Really, really early. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I call him up and I'm like, dude, this is great, congratulations. And at that time I was working in emergency departments, trauma centers. And he said, yeah, was that Bellevue? That was actually in Rochester, New York.

Rochester. Okay.

And he said, what are you doing watching people die every day? Come out here, we create.

And you were, you were in like the hardcore like you, you literally did watch people die every single day in your job.

Yeah, I was getting this. I was trying to get the research experience to go to med school. And I thought about it and he's like, yeah, just come out and be creating the future. We're doing what no one's done before and this kind of opportunities never come. I thought about it and I was talking to a friend of mine, Larry Rapoport, in the basement of Goals Gym. I was trying to decide and he's like, Kamal Leap and the net will appear. I was like, I like that. So I bought a one way ticket, sold everything I had, which wasn't much, and had like I think 800 bucks and moved out to Silicon Valley. And I just started applying for stuff. And at that time, so your brother.

Was not come work with me, it was, dude, this is the opportunity. Come to this place and you will find something that fits you.

Yeah. And actually that was very wise, you know, like, you know, because then I had to go set off my own path. Yeah. And so I was applying and I was like learning and turns out that time no one knew what they were doing. It was like the very beginning.

You had what was your degree in?

Economics and biology.

And biology, which obviously means you can program and do Internet stuff, right?

Yeah, Bingo.

Right. So you had no experience with that. You go out and you're just applying and saying, and you're applying for online company type jobs, all startups, programming, all startups.

So I'm like, whatever it takes, I'll do.

Right.

And all of a sudden I, for some reason there were a bunch of health startups starting and I had this healthcare experience and. And so like all of a sudden they're like, we need someone to like run these things. And who actually has experience was not a doctor who's kind of like more like a go getter, you know, and so end up joining this company called Healtheon. And Healtheon became WebMD and went public. So I started off as a product manager. So I built. I'd led teams of like 50, 60 people. You know, what would you would need now? Like maybe one or two people now with aws, so much easier. Yeah. Insane, right? But I built products that were used at that time by millions of people. And that time you were going on 24k modems, right. And it was something. And going public and being worth a lot of money, then the crashing and being where, you know, worth not as much money. Actually, I think I broke even with the irs. But by the time I left, I was running monetization for WebMD, which is a big public company. And I got known as a can do kid because it was like, oh, this is happening. We don't know what to do. Pull in the can do kid. Figure it out. I got you.

Yeah. And.

And I think that's where the military, that's where the backpacking and all that came into play because I wasn't intimidated by new things. But everyone else came from. They were hiring people from consulting and pharma and corporate, and they do not do well with just brand new frontiers. And they're like, we don't know how to monetize. Throw Kamala at it. He'll figure it out. He'll just try different things. And so that was a great education. That was my mba. So I'm very grateful for that. And then after that, I just stuck with it. I started consulting. Actually, the market crashed. And while everyone was crying and people moving on the Bay Area, I kind of looked at the rent I was paying and I thought, you know, I could go live in Paris by the same amount. I'll just come back when things are better. So I did.

You went to Paris? So you lived in Paris?

Yeah.

I didn't actually know you lived in Paris.

I had an apartment in Paris and every day I would go out, get my baguette and get my saucy song.

I can see you with a little red beret and the whole.

Got drunk at every barstool Hemingway drank.

At, you know, Is that the one in the Ritz? Is that the Hemingway bar?

Now I've been to all of them. I don't remember which one. I've been to all of them.

I don't remember a lot of them.

There was a lot of champagne. I would go there. I was like, so now I finally had money because I'd been through Paris. When I'd done the backpacking trip before, I literally. I was living on $3 a day in Paris. Now I had some money in my pocket. I was like, let me just enjoy this. And you know, you don't need money to travel but. But it's always nicer.

Yes, it is. I have traveled both ways and I will say indeed, yes.

People treat you better.

They do, they do. It's a different experience. Although that kind of not having anything is an interesting thing to look back on and say as long as you remember that that maybe wasn't necessarily the best time of your life. Right.

Yeah.

So you did that and then is that when you kind of went back and got into the domaining or was that.

No, no, no domaining. That was later on. So all I did was I worked with startups. I would come in, I would basically be the gu, become like Fortune 100s and like work with the CEOs and the VPs and I would take over their teams and get stuff done and go out. I really enjoyed being like a gun for hire. Yeah. Because I wouldn't get bored this way.

Right.

So did that for years. Okay. And you know, got to be part of some pretty spectacular stuff. And literally like, you know, they would have like big companies like Ogilvy come in and they would, you know, charge like $30 million project. There'd be six foot behind schedule. They fly me in, I hire fire people, pull a bunch of all nighters, two weeks later we ship products.

Can't do kids strikes again.

Finger. Right. And really that training, that's all military, that's all travel. You don't learn that in school. And then I was building, helping build companies and then I ended up building an ad network based on domain traffic. I was never a domainer, but I saw that Google and Yahoo. The reason why all those parking pages existed was because Google and Yahoo monetized them.

Yes, absolutely.

And made them a couple of billion a year. And I'd had meetings with the senior teams because I'm in the valley. So I know people, I know all the players there. And it was like the redheaded stepchild of Google. They never talked about it. They would actually give ask.com their search feed and ask.com with power so Google could keep their hands off and be clean, quote, unquote. You know, Google is the least good.

They do no evil. Come on.

Don't you think they're beautifully evil? They make you think they're not evil. That's why they're beautifully evil.

Right.

And so I looked at this industry, I thought this is garbage. There's ways to actually make it better. And one thing I've learned is you don't transform things by just trying to convince people, especially if there's money involved, you just make them more money in a better way. That's how you transform industries, you create things more efficiently. Look at Uber for example. You don't try to change a taxi industry, which is all mafia run, this monopoly, you just create a better, more efficient alternative. That's what I set out to do with the domain industry and I actually pulled it off. I was taking money from Google and Yahoo, which no one had done in this space, and I got whacked pretty badly.

What caused that was that just the.

One was choosing partners. So I started off, I'm very mission driven. I started off, I built a whole, I built one of the best tech teams in Silicon Valley. I got known for that. And it was always by mission we were going to change this dirty industry and we were actually going to make a lot of money doing in the process. And the partners that I brought on later on, a lot of whose traffic we were actually selling, they got very seduced by the money. And so we used to spend a lot of time together, travel with them, and I started getting seduced by the money. So instead of motivating my team by and everybody, what we're doing, the mission, I started motivating by money. And when you do that, you choose partners based on money. And when you do that, those are not the right people because when things go sideways, they're the first ones to actually like just cause problems.

I agree.

And all of that came to an head and the whole thing blew up and collapsed. And I had actually self funded this myself with the money I'd made over the last decade for three years. And I lost everything, literally. I was making payroll off credit cards. I fell apart, my life fell apart, my health fell apart. Basically, in a nutshell, I fell apart. And people ask me, oh, were you depressed? I'm like, being depressed would have been a good day, it would've been like doing great, you know, like. And so from there actually I think my life changed.

Okay, in what way?

In the way that I actually just started working on myself on my inside. I was stuck in my head and I just decided I'm going to get out of this or die trying. I can't live like this. I can't live in this internal misery anymore. And so I got up one night and I wrote a vow to myself that was going to change everything and I don't know why. The vow that I actually wrote was a vow to love myself. Okay, I don't know where that came from, but it was like from a deep, visceral place. And I sat down, I looked at this vow and I thought, okay, I just wrote this vow. And I'm a big believer in the power of commitment, Especially a vow to oneself, I think is a truly sacred act in life. Like, you're in. There's no. I'm going to go back. So here I am, sick, broke, miserable, alone, you know, in my dark apartment. Literally, it was night, dark apartment. How am I going to do this? I had no idea. And so I just started trying things using my clinical trial experience. Funny enough, I started doing things in my head and what worked, what made me feel better, I did more. If it didn't work at that some point I threw it out. I just kept doing it until like my whole state of mind started to shift.

Right.

And what was interesting was, and you and I had conversations about this. It's like life is from the inside out. When you shift from the inside left shifts on the outside. Yes. And things really turned around within a month. I was great and life was working. My company still shut down. That was beyond it. In fact, I was burnt out. I was done.

Probably the best thing that could have happened in retrospect, right?

Yeah. Because I was six months away from selling from a big exit. And looking back, the life I have now is far more fulfilling than I would have with a big exit. And I'm having wonderful exits now, but it's in a more fulfilling way.

And you wrote about all this in the book Love Yourself like youe Life Depends upon it, right?

Yes. And I wrote this little book, self published on Amazon and I thought it was going to be the biggest laughing stock of Silicon Valley. And within a month, it was the number one self help book on Amazon. It's still one of Amazon's big success stories. It's like, you know, I get emails every day from people. It's either saved their lives, changed their lives. It blew my mind. It completely blew my mind. You share your real self to the world in a way that you're really afraid of, but you know that you need to share this nugget.

Wonderful, authentic, all of those things. So rare, right?

Well, it's whatever your nugget, your thing is, your truth is if you share that right. I think the world gives you way more than you ever gave it. You know, putting that book, I changed my life. It really let me just be myself rather than try to be this guy who was always killing in a startup or be the can do kid, always parachuting in, taking over, just be myself, you know, like. And so that was my first book. And after that I decided, you know, this actually was thanks to my brother. We were actually visiting our mom and I said, I don't want to start another company anymore. I'm worn out. And also, to build a company, you have to care about something deeply, a problem you want to solve, at least in Silicon Valley, the way we work. And there was no problem I wanted to solve that badly anymore. And he's like, well, you know, you're always helping your friends getting great deals, and you're always helping, like all these great startups, you know, like everywhere from YouTube, whatever, when they're first starting, you're helping these people out and everyone does really well, and you just get to be the guy that helps. But you don't ever ask for anything, right? He's like, you're basically a VC without the carry. He's like, why don't you formalize it? So when I thought about it, I realized there was a problem I wanted to solve, and which was that whenever you have a VC investor, they're always, if they're trying to get in there, it's like, oh, we're value add. We're going to do this, we're going to do that. You know, 99.9% of the time. Not true. You know, they give you advice, which is meh. And I thought, you know, what is the real thing? I need, I need. If I was a CEO, I would run messenger. Say, hey, you want a thousand customers tomorrow, I'll get those for you. You know, you need this. I'll get that for you. So I actually, and this is very. Actually, you, Ryan and Perry were very helpful. You guys helped me raise my first fund.

Yes, that was super fun. Ye decided to start a fund.

I decided to start a fund.

How did that work? I know you had a background in the Valley kind of stuff, but you had never done that before, right?

Yep, yep.

So it's kind of a big step, right? You're gonna take money and put people in deals and stuff like that. Tell me what made that happen.

Well, there's two ways you can do it, right? One is you can join an existing fund, which is easy. It's like joining a company. Right. And I have the network where I could do that. Or the second is more painful. But you, you chart your own destinies where you create your own. And so having built stuff on my own, all this time, that was just the natural, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm a builder, right. And so basically. But fundamentally, people get very intimidated by a VC fund is they're fundamentally very, very simple. Like people like you give me money, then I keep it in a pool. And then when I come across a great startup that is raising money and I usually invest in the seed round, which is the very first money. Okay, so for example, the seed round, Uber, our friends of mine invested there, you know, the founder is a friend of mine. 25k in Uber would worth be about 60 million now, right? So seed rounds, can I give you.

25,000 now to invest in Uber and you give me 60 million back?

Of course. That's how it works. Good, good.

You heard it here. He said he would do it when.

We had that time machine built. We're going to definitely do that.

So we had.

So I had.

It was fun because when you were doing that, we were chatting and we had an opportunity to kind of help and be a part of that, which was really fun and have had some good things that came out of it. Right. Some pretty cool things that we invested in. One of the things that I love hearing you do on the phone that directly applies to your ability to have a successful fund, I think, is your skill in vetting companies. Like, the questions that you ask when you're drilling down in a new company that you're talking to are just awesome. And you gave me one tip that I thought was really, really cool that I've always remembered and I share with people all the time, which is you said, I always like to see the company. I always like to talk in person to the people that are, are owning the company before I make an investment. And I go through the offices and if there's a whole bunch of brand new Mac computers with all the latest stuff around, I'm like, these people might not be the best investment because they're spending money on. They've got the cool office and there's a football field in the middle and a dream wall and a bunch of graffiti and these brand new computers that everybody has. And. And you like a scrappier startup, right?

Very much, Very much.

Tell us about that. What are some of the things?

Well, here's the thing. One of the problems is people think that raising money equals success. Raising money does not equal success. That's just the starting line. And what a lot of people do is if you give them a lot of money, if you give some young kids like $30 million, their instinct is to spend it and by spending it, they feel like they're building something. And I've seen this happen again and again.

It's kind of like the people in a really small business that feel like they need to do the logo first and then buy the URL and all that. All the stuff that doesn't actually make money.

Yeah. In fact, one of my favorite investments for the fund actually had to mark it down to zero recently. And it was a very good one. And Kleiner came in and John Doerr joined the board. It was huge. But then I noticed the founders stopped responding to my emails and they were just too busy just being on talking by themselves. And then one day I was in New York City and on the subway, I saw ads for that company and I couldn't figure out what the company did by looking the ads. I went home and my spreadsheet wrote off to zero.

Interesting.

And it did become zero.

Did it really?

I've learned this again and again. Like when people raise too much money, they think spending equals success.

It's really interesting. So I see that, particularly in the Valley culture, that the very first thing is we need to go and raise a bunch of money.

Yes.

Before maybe they test an idea, certainly before they get profitable. I think some of that has to do with the fact that it takes a bit of money to build a platform. Like if you're doing a software or an app or something like that, it can cost quite a bit to develop at the beginning. Right.

Not even that these days are stupid cheap. If you're building an Uber, for example, you have to basically subsidize it. You can't compete against the car companies if you're just basically running as a P and L business. Basically. Uber, until last year was completely. Our rides were subsidized by VC money. That's why they were cheap. Cheaper than taxes. If you notice now, because Uber's going to probably IPO next year, the prices have gone up, the VC subsidies are gone. So companies like that are of Facebook. You can't build a company like Facebook to what it became trying to do P and L business, doing advertising from day one. You build a platform, you get the users, you just focus on making it so sticky and everyone's on it, and then you can monetize the hell out of it.

But Facebook was scrappy when it started. Yes, it started as. What was. What was it originally? I know it was the Facebook Facebook. I thought it was one thing before that, but it was kind of almost like a hot or not. Like you swiped or something like that, right? For. For when it first came about and then it evolved, but it had already caught fire in terms of a virality. What is it, the viral coefficient of how many people are in the network effect and all that kind of stuff. So that kind of business, even for you, would you invest in that if you didn't see it catching fire? Like, would you? Somebody comes and says, come on, I got this great idea. And then insert idea here. Do you invest in that or.

I invest in people.

Okay, you invest in people.

I don't invest in ideas.

Okay?

Ideas are diamonds. And so I'll give you an example. One of the best exits I've had from my fund so far is a cryptocurrency project called zcash. And I met the founder. My brother introduced me to him. My brother was an investor, and I talked to him, and I could understand one out of ten words that came out of his mouth. He was basically in this world of cryptocurrency where you just have all these people who can't code their way out of a paper bag trying to build really complicated projects. He was one of the ones who actually could, and it was going to solve a very, very hard problem cryptographically. And this was someone who had actually before been living in his car, trying to do it like he was born to. I actually told him, you were born to build this, weren't you? He's like, yeah, I'm like you. I think I have a 1% chance of this succeeding, but I want to back you, okay? And I backed him, okay? And it turned out great. And in fact, if you talk to a lot of smart investors, you back people because ideas, you know, as, you know, like when boxing, when you get hit in the face, you know, like, things change. As an entrepreneur, it's not a vertical line, you know, it's nothing but mess. It's like sideways all the way. So you need people that can actually pivot and change and keep things growing and really are vision driven. One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was from Mike Maples. He is one of the hidden successors of Silicon Valley. I think probably the most successful angel of Silicon Valley was in all the big ones. And really good Texan guy, actually a really good guy. And he said the best companies are always led by the founders. For the long haul. Is like, look at Google, look at Facebook, look at Amazon. It's like, you want to. You want to go for those kind of founders. Like, those are the ones that are going to build a Massive big things. And in venture, you know, most of your investments fail.

Right.

So what you do is you go.

For you always the percentage, like what's, what's reasonable for you to expect. Like, you're like, yeah, no, I'm, I'm totally cool with that.

I think 60, 70%. Because your returns.

Yeah, right.

Because your returns are so massive when the ones that succeed.

Exactly.

No one cares. Right, Right. It's a return on capital that you care about, but that's where you go for these big ones. That's why like if I think something's going to be a 5x and when I first started I was very tempted to. But I Talked to like VCs, they're like, no, if 5x is the upside and the downside is zero, you don't do it. And VCs is, it's binary 01, you're either going to have an exit or it's going to go to zero.

Right.

So I mean it has to be something I think is going to be huge. And if you're smart about it and you have invest with really smart other investors, that's very, very important. By the way, never try to be the smart one at the table when it comes to investing. Never, never. Because you're not, you're just not. Invest only with the best smart. Bring in people smarter than you, co invest with them, keep your mouth shut, just add value and slide your chip in with them. You know, it works really well.

How do you do that if you're like me, if you're just like an average person, that you're not an average person.

Roland.

But I don't know all those investors, Right. That you know. So if I saw them investing, I don't know that I'd be able to get in. Right. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah.

And I know that like Angellist now has these.

What are they?

They're the syndicates. Syndicates. Right. That, that allow you to do that a little bit more than you used to even a few years ago. Correct. But, but the people that you're investing with, those are generally closed opportunities for.

Correct.

For somebody like me, if I didn't know you.

Right, Correct.

Yeah.

So yeah, unfortunately in private markets they are opening up, but it's still a big insider network. If you want to get in the seed level, it's lateral levels that people can get in, but seed level, it's like they got to know you, you got to be known quantity, you got to have a record. So you got to, I mean like.

Your fund is a way into that. Right. Like a fund like yours. There's not many of those because there's just not many of you. In fact, there's only one of you that I know. But that, that would be.

Yes.

Is there any other way in other than you either know those folks or you go through a fund or angel.

List and you could join the syndicates.

Okay. If, if that syndicate is open for that deal.

Correct.

Mostly it's not.

Correct. Right, Right.

Yeah.

Or even like I see people like you doing really, really smart investments in space outside of Silicon Valley, which you know, the rest of this country was built outside of Silicon Valley. You know, there's a lot of opportunity there.

Tell Silicon Valley.

You know, so like there's insane amount of opportunity there. So I see like you with your network like investing in really great stuff, but also stuff that venture funds won't. One thing people don't realize is venture funds don't want cash flow businesses.

Right.

Because otherwise that means I got to pay dividends to my LPs to the day I die.

Right.

I just want an exit and be done and raise my next fund.

Right.

And, and so but for yourself, you can almost have like little PE funds where you just like buy companies or like become part of a company.

That's exactly, as you know, that's exactly what we do, right?

Yeah, that's exactly. And you add such value and you grow the company and everyone gets cash out, which is an amazing model. So that I think is. Is available to the average person.

Yes.

But they have to know people like you, right?

Yeah. And we have a fund for that as you know.

Which I think is, which I think is really smart.

Yeah, I think it's really cool. I like the combination of what you've got and what we've got. Because what we have and what you have is deal flow. And a lot of average folks, I mean a lot of. And I say average. I mean a lot of people that don't. That aren't connected to a big network like we are like you are, don't have the opportunity to invest on their own because they're just not exposed to the opportunities. Right.

Well look, the name of the game in investing is having an unfair advantage.

Yes.

I will never invest. That's why I don't buy real estate. Because there's plenty of people who have understand better than I do and I don't play that game.

Right.

Versus startups. I have an unfair advantage. I'm part of that world. I understand them. I can cut through the Bull.

Yep.

Can I say you can.

You did.

You just did. I just did. Yeah. You know, but like, like you see me in phone conversations, I can cut through the bull. So on someone's. That's what I like.

I'd really love to. I don't know if I'm going to be good enough at it, but this vetting of people thing and your ability to kind of cut to the chase, would you role play with me a question? Like, if I'm one of these startup companies, I'll see if I can come up with enough of a thing to make it worthwhile and I'll have to.

Pretend you're not the Roland Frazier who's this badass.

No, I'm a founder and I'm one of the folks that you get referred by some of the folks you know and you call me out or I know from time to time I'll say, you know, Mal, you're the amazing. You're the best vetter of that kind of stuff that I know. Would you mind talking to these people? And you've been kind enough to do that. Let's do that for a minute and see if it's helpful to people. And if it's a terrible failure, then witness the failure right here.

I'll say one of the things is listen to people. And when they use a lot of big words, that's a sign, that's a flaw. When they actually talk about like, oh, we're just budgeting all this for X and Y versus just focus on building and distribution, that's a flaw. If they haven't built anything before in this space, that's usually like a sign. Also, you look for who they're surrounding themselves with, who are the people helping them. That actually matters a lot. Those are kind of like the things I look for. And then when they just start throwing things around and saying if they're outsourcing their work, that's a sign. Because you bet on builders. Builders build, outsourcers will build, maybe small companies, but they'll never come back to you. Yes, but in the startup world, less and less because look, Zuckerberg, you have all these really great projects built recently in cryptocurrencies that did very well. So there I look at who's backing them. That's the thing. What are the smartest investors I know. And so, for example, in your case with the regular business, I would look at what's Roland? How can I put my chip at Roland? I think that's the smartest thing. People try to be Smart. And I think the smartest thing you can do is be dumb investing. Say, I'm just coming to the best people and put my chips alongside and learn and just be of value. I like it, but let's role play.

Okay, so here's the deal. I see you in the crypto world and I think there's a tremendous opportunity there. I've hooked up with some folks who are going to create a coin for a market that seems to be underserved. They have the largest Christian website around. I think there's about 32 million followers right now. We've partnered together and we're going to launch a coin. It's going to be a Christian based coin. We haven't come up with a name for it yet, but we've got the programming team that has done a couple of other things like that. And I don't want to say what they are right now because I don't want to tell you the people. This is kind of like a quasi.

Yeah, right.

And so we have a market to do this to. We're in this hot sector of, of coins and crypto and we're raising some money. We need about $600,000 to get started with our, our programming team so that they can leave some projects they're on and, and come forward. What do you think?

Actually doesn't sound so bad so far.

Okay.

I would actually continue on. I would.

So I'd want to know, like, I have $600,000. No.

You know, it's basically all right. Who else is investing?

Well, you would be the first one. It's a kind of a ground floor opportunity. You're the first person that I talk to.

I'm never the first investor.

Okay, all right. So that's great. Right? So you don't ever want to be the first investor?

Never.

Okay, never. Now for most people that might be like, well, but it's a ground floor opportunity. I get to be the first person. What do you say to them?

That's when 99.99% you'll lose your money.

Okay.

Like I said, don't be smart. Like be to be an investor. Like, you got to actually be like, just, you got to be a little dumb. You say, I'm going to really? It's like, is this a chip I'm going to bet on? So what you told me so far, okay, who's your competition?

There's bitcoin, there's zcash. You're familiar with them.

Yeah.

There's all the other coins that exist, but you Know what? This niche, there isn't any competition.

Fair enough. And what's your distribution for that? How are you going to get people to actually use it?

So to use the coin, we have a suite of products that are made available through the site that we're talking about that community to use the coins in connection with buying and selling products in that and also in making donations to charitable causes.

Why wouldn't they use the US dollar?

One of the reasons would be the benefits that we will build into the coin, that a portion of all of the currency that comes through will be going to a ministry kind of function. So one thing that's important to this particular audience is spreading the word. And so they actually, many of the businesses in the Christian space measure their success in terms of souls saved, not in terms of dollars raised or something like that. And so there is an actual metric that a soul save. The cost to save a soul in terms of media and reach is actually fixed at an amount. And so for every transaction that comes through, a percentage goes to spreading the word and saving souls.

So how will I say 100x my money here?

The way that you would 100 extra money is that when these coins launch, let's say that there's a billion dollars worth of coins. My understanding is that about 10% is held back or used to give to the folks who are the exchange promoters and things like that to create a market similar to stocks. And so you have the opportunity to receive in exchange for your investment at a significant discount to market that the coin will be established at a significant quantity of the coins so that when the coin launches, you'll 5x immediately.

You're pretty good, Roland. I'm making it all up. I'm like, you're pretty good. But honestly, I wouldn't invest in it. A couple of reasons for first of all, the consumer base is not tech savvy enough. In fact, the average American or the average global citizen is not tech savvy enough to actually use cryptocurrency to buy anything. That technology is really hard. So this is a cash grab.

All they need to do is have a wallet that accepts a bunch of different currencies and then put that with one of the exchanges, et cetera, et cetera. Right?

It's hard.

Yeah, I agree. This is a cash grab. I'd be like, look, man, let's be honest, this is a cash grab and you're doing it off this community, right? And if you believe you have serious inroads and you can do it, great. But it's still a cash grab of a portion of the population. And one thing I've learned is when you're doing things like cryptocurrencies and so forth, you want to have something that affects the entire world. Because a lot of the actual and also not just a particular religious. Even though Christianity is dominant in the world, in the world, you just want something that has, like zcash, for example. Privacy. Privacy is going to matter to every citizen, regardless of what your faith is. That's a bet I'd like to make. Okay, Bitcoin, same thing.

Right.

So for something like this, I wouldn't because there's too many other opportunities.

But if you said that to me and I argued, well, so now here's the deal. There are 150 million Christian. I'm making all this stuff up still. Right. There's 150 million Christians in the United States alone. And worldwide there are 6 billion. They can use bitcoin and not achieve any of these things that they want causewise to achieve, or they can use this coin and they can. So I would argue that the market is smaller than global, but the market is the entire world of people who have faith in this particular religion. And they will definitely receive all of the same benefits that you said. There's privacy. All of the things that make you want to invest in zcash and Bitcoin should make you interested in this and they get the additional benefit.

Look, honestly, I think early investors might make money, but this is a cash grab and it's a sc. Here's another thing.

I love the cash grab and I want to drill down into that.

Yeah, most cash grabs fail. They're basically dependent on the market. If the market's a bull market, everything's working. Cash grabs work, but that's timing markets. I don't invest in that because you can't time that. Just ask people who bought bitcoin in December. You just can't.

All you have to do is watch when I do any of these things and then bet against it, you're going to make billions of dollars.

Actually, I would hang on to it five years. You'll be very glad you did. Another thing is anytime a founder says to you, look, the market for this is 1 trillion. We're just going to own 30. We're worth 1 trillion because its market's worth 1 trillion. Who in the world actually ends up capturing an entire market? No one can.

It sounds similar to another industry's pitch, which is, Kamal, I'm going to let you in on a Ground floor opportunity of a multi billion billion dollar industry currently experiencing hyper growth. That's the network marketing pitch. Isn't it funny?

Yeah.

And now please join my Amway down. Yeah.

When people that kind of tells you also, either they don't have respect for you as an investor, or they fooling themselves, they think, oh, it's a $1 trillion market, and so we're going to be worth at least half a trillion dollars because we're going to own half the market.

Okay, so we've established you're not going to invest in my amazing idea that I created right here, which actually, on.

Business lunch, it wasn't bad. It wasn't bad. Like, you could actually, if you had the connections and the inroads and this was like, you could actually probably make this work. What I, what I, what I love.

Though, about what you said is it helps people who are listening think about how can they vet these opportunities that are coming at them all the time. That sound amazing. Like, to me, that sounds kind of compelling. Right. It's like, oh, this is a giant market and blah, blah, blah. Right. You know, you've got this mark, they've got this subsection of the market that we kind of own. There are, there are 32 million people or whatever that are on that site.

So.

You want to follow the smart money.

Yes.

Right. And that and betting on people are those kind of your two big, big, big things?

Very much so. And, you know, like, another thing is I pass on good projects every day because I don't want to bet on good, I want to bet on great.

You know, I do the same with business opportunity.

Right?

Yeah.

Because it's like this. Also, you need discipline as an investor. And running a fund, let's say you have a $10 million fund, every $100,000 you put somewhere is $100,000 less you could put somewhere. I learned this lesson the hard way. A month before Uber launched, Travis, the founder, was at my apartment for dinner. And it was a few friends of mine and like, you know, and a couple of guys at that table, they raised their first run angelist, I think, at a 6 or $8 million valuation. I don't know what their valuation is now, but it's not that.

It may be slightly more than that.

Yeah, like 100 billion or whatever it is. Right. And so a couple of guys at that table put in 25k a piece. And I didn't because I was building my company at the time, and I was like, there was another guy at the table who didn't he was building this company at the time. We were putting our money in our own company. And that 25k for those guys at the table have actually made them and their kids and their grandkids wealthy, right? So I look at it this way. Every. Even down to 25k, every 25k I invest is a 25k less for a future Uber. So it doesn't mean that I will find a future Uber. But I like, I want things that I just like, this is a founder I would bet on. There was an opportunity I was offered early this year. It was a crypto opportunity. It was with someone. It was like, it was a cash grab. I got approached by a group of investors. These are guys I respect.

So you invested in a cash grab? No, they actually, they were like, presented the opportunity, right?

And I was like, look, I know this guy. Let me tell you, I'm on the record, but like, I know this guy and this is a cash grab. That's how it works. And they're like, no, no, but look at his team. I'm like, that guy is some. His team was like all like these. These people, like, who weren't even developers. And it was going to be a hardcore tech project that's also a big flag, right? And they're like, yeah, but we're getting such a discount. Whatever. I'm like, look, so I came home and I asked myself, if I invest in this and it makes money, how would I feel? Okay, but if I invest in this and I lost money, how would I feel? Now, if I bet in a founder or a team or a mission I believe in, I will never regret backing it because that's the kind of stuff you want to back. But if I lost money on this, I'd be pissed at myself because I knew what this person's about. Right?

Okay, fair enough.

So my thing was, if I'm going to be pissed at myself if I lose money here, don't invest, okay? So it was that simple. And you know what? And the market tanked. And those guys are like crying about how they lost all their money. And I was like, look, ultimately you bet on people. You can't time markets, right? You just back good people. Like people. And I don't mean just like good human beings. You want good human beings, but people who can execute, who have executed, who care about something, who care, who are like, driven, you know? Like, now for your example, if you were a driven Christian who, who's built tech stuff and really passionate about this, I'd take a closer look at this. Because it would have more of a chance versus a cash grab.

Right. I like it. That's really a helpful distinction, I think for folks. So you wrote your love yourself like your life depended on a book, which you're updating right now. Correct to the extended expanded version. And had success with that. And it really helped you. This was kind of probably cathartic to express it and document it in that thing that you share with everybody in the form of the book. Then you go back kind of into the world that caused you to have the challenges that you had any post traumatic stress experience of that as you went back into that world after kind of going through all that, like now that you're not like crazy building a company bootstrap or betting the farm or anything now, but you are back a bit in that world. Does that create any.

Well, I learned one important lesson. Don't bet the farm on retro building.

You know, one of the hardest lessons to learn and my father did this and I watched it and I'm hoping that I can keep this lesson is when people. He came from nothing. He was son of a preacher in Covington, Virginia, Mountain town, paper mill town, 5,000 people, no money less than broke. And put himself through school, became an attorney, started investing. And he bet the farm when he had a very, very small farm. But as an investor entrepreneur, he then leveraged the farm by betting it and now he bet the new bigger farm and then he bet the new bigger farm and then he bet the new bigger farm and then he lost the farm.

I'm seeing where that's going.

Yeah, right. And it's kind of interesting that I think a lot of folks forget that they aren't the version of themselves as an investor that they were when they had to bet the farm because the farm was so small. And then as they get it's like, well, that worked before and it worked before and it worked before and they forget to kind of split things up. So does that factor into your learnings from that experience at all?

I'm also very stubborn. I kind of like going all in on things. You know, there is that. You know, I actually earlier today I met up with my co founder from that company.

Oh yeah, you mentioned that.

Yeah. And he is a legend in Silicon Valley. This guy wrote the very first browser before browser exists. That level of talent.

Right.

That's what I consider genius level. Because before something exists and you create something new, you know, that's, you know, out of thin air. Those are geniuses. Right. He's a Genius developer. And we were actually like, talking about love yourself. And I said, look, man, look. What came out of that, from that experience was what I did was I wrote what actually I did to get out of it, and I shared it with the world. And that's so important. You share with the world, company. Anything is sharing with the world. And it changed my life. I could have kept it myself. Yes, right. That's the thing. I could have kept it to myself. And. But that book, putting that book out changed my life because I was broke. I was living off credit cards, and that little book started to pay my rent. And it's because of that book I could build my fund because I didn't have to go get a job, you know, because otherwise I would have gone and become VP of something, some company. Right.

You've not been as happy as you are.

And it's purely because I shared with the world. And that's what we do also as entrepreneurs, as business people, if we care about what we're doing, we're sharing with the world. And that's where magic happens.

Absolutely. So did you, when you got into the fund, have any kind of butterflies in your stomach from the first experience?

Oh, yeah, yeah, of course. Because like, I had actually, at the end, some people invested money, including family. I lost their money, and I went to each one of them, looked them in the eyes, and that's hard. I'd say, I'm sorry, you know, I worked my ass off, but I lost your money. That, and I was terrified of losing money, people's money. I could have built a 10x size fund. I built a tiny fund because I was scared of losing people's money. But now sometimes it's not bad to do a stepping stone, to just prove to yourself you can do it, and now really prove to myself. And I have this new level of confidence now. I'm building a larger fund.

That's kind of smart. So you dipped your toe back in the waters and worked hard and worked hard and worked super, super hard and removed yourself from the things that were causing you all the stre before, because you knew you had identified them and you'd taken the time to document it as you shared it with the world and your story. So you knew kind of what to avoid as well, right? What were the things you avoid?

Oh, my God. One thing. Well, two things. One is negative, people. You know, I was in this private thing meeting Elon Musk years ago. It was maybe about 20 of us at a small wine bar. A friend of mine's close friends with him. And he said we were all like CEOs at the time. He's like, we're just going to get together, hang out with him and just ask him questions. And so we're doing this and one guy asked him, you built all these companies. What is the single biggest piece of advice you give to CEO? And so I mean, I naturally like, lean in. This is the man, right? And he says, fire negative people. He said, you can't get rid them fire fast enough. Interesting, he said, you know, because sometimes you may think this person's too valuable. No one's valuable enough because they're poisoned. It's a poison.

I Exactly, exactly the word that comes to mind.

And like, oh my God. And I learned that the hard way. And also the other other thing is I look at people's ethics. You know, one of the mistake I made was I and you know, I brought in partners whose ethics were questionable. And you guess what? You know the story of turned out the story of the monk who gives a scorpion a ride and the scorpion stings him. He's like, why did you sting me? Both going to drown. Well, I'm a scorpion, right? Scorpions do what scorpions do, right? Yes. So like you can't. Rather than get angry, you just like. It's like one thing I tell people, just because that person screwed over five people in the past, don't think you're a special snowflake and they won't screw you over.

You know, what I tell my wife and I talk about this a whole lot is that if you see someone treating other people in a way that is not right, your turn will come. Yeah, your turn will come.

You know, especially in business, I think people evolve. They may become better human beings with their family, with their friends, but in business brings out every single insecurity you've ever had. Money, power, all this, everything you got to deal with. So that's where the least are you going to grow the like you're going to become a better human being the slowest.

Yes, yes, yes. Right. And money and fame, I think, are the two things that make people craziest. And as an attorney for several years, the things that I saw people fight, they'd come into the office and it'd be mother, daughter, father, son, best friend since second grade. And they'd come in and everything was wonderful. And then they'd come back and it'd be five years later and somebody wanted to sue somebody because of money or fame. And a form of fame is credit, right? Yeah, so it's really interesting to watch that dynamic. So those are. That's a pretty great takeaway from a guy that's been fairly successful, right? This Musk guy, he might make something.

He might know a thing or two. Yeah, that's pretty cool. I never forgot that. And I wish I'd listened to him back then. You know, sometimes we learn.

So ethics and negativity.

Get rid of negative people. Never worth it, especially if you're the leader. You are the captain of the ship, and if there are rats on the ship, you're responsible. You got to get rid of them.

That's a pretty good set of filters to use. So now you've also. Then after you did the first fund, you took a book that you had written. Was it notes that you had written while you were on the Camino?

It was like. I think I'd written, like, eight or nine drafts of a novel about being in the Camino.

And you decided to really go all in on the craft of writing.

Correct.

How was that journey?

One of the hardest things I've ever done. I had to basically become a monk and just write something. Because the craft in anything you do matters, because it serves the piece. The story may be good, but if you don't do the craft properly, you don't serve the story, then you don't serve the reader. So I got an agent. We sold it to one of the biggest publishers in the world, and then I just had to deliver.

Right, so you sold it first. You had, like, a query letter or a proposal or something that you.

Yeah, I had a draft written that I sold it to. And here's a very interesting lesson I learned. I sold him a draft that was 110,000 words. And so the publisher came back to me, and he said. The editor came back to me and said, okay, here's what I want you to do. I want you to cut out 40% of the book and get rid of two thirds of characters.

Go.

And I remember you're like, but Dostoevsky.

Has all these characters, and he did.

Okay, I'll translate Russian, you know? So, like, I walked around for two days in a stupor thinking, how the hell am I gonna do this? And I was like, I'm just gonna give them their advance pack. Excuse my language, but, kid, it's not worth it.

Right, right. I'll just.

I'll just go build a venture fund. This is way too. And then I think I was walking somewhere, I saw a billboard, and I don't know what it said, but I Realized, wait a minute. It does not have to be the best book ever written. It just has to be the best book I can write right now.

Interesting and liberating, I think.

Yeah. And I was like, well, the best book I can write right now. Well, that I can do. That's in my power. So I literally went back and I replied back, said, okay. And then I sat and blocked myself for months and figured out how to do it.

Were you initially not happy with that suggestion or that requirement?

I was terrified. I'm like, what do you. How do you even do that? But none of this is my book. It's like, how do you do that? No, no.

I mean, it's my story, I should say. Right? So all those people and all those pages, that's part of the story, which obviously you felt was important enough to be there. Now, is it a better book because you did it?

It's much better book, yeah. He was wise and we met for dinner, like after I had submitted it, and he said, you know, I told you that because I had faith in you that you could pull, that you would go there and figure out which characters belong, which didn't, what to cut. He said, you went above there. But it was because I realized I had permission to write this book because I was like walking around thinking, well, that book's great. That book's great. My book is gonna be a bunch of. I was like, no, the best book I can write right now, it's like the best. It's in anything. The best thing I can do right now. That's in my power. I can do that. And it was liberating.

That's really an important distinction to come up with.

Yeah.

So now you've been worked crazy hard, lost your way a bit, wrote the book, love yourself back into the world of venture funding and then back into the world of writing. And those are two kind of interesting and different fields that require some different skill sets because one is this insightful, self exploring, spiritual kind of path, and the other is this kind of brutal world of investing and deciding who's going to live and die company wise and stuff like that, based on who gets the funds to make things happen. And I'm not at all bitter that you didn't invest in my idea that I pitched you a few minutes ago.

Not at all. No.

So how do you reconcile those two different kinds of personalities and skill sets to be a great writer and be a really good fund manager?

I struggle with that. Yeah. And what I do is I sometimes separate chunks of the Day or separate days where I work on either.

Do you have two personalities that you call on for those things?

Well, writing, you basically have to go, you know, Hemingway says the loneliest art, you have to go, go in. You have to be a monk, you know, and either that. But a professional, like all the great writers are professionals. They wrote every day. You set up a time and you just knock it out. You're just punching in the clock, doing the work. And some of those times you get gold out of it. Sometimes you don't. But with the venture stuff, you know, ultimately what it is, it's a people business. I'm not investing in spreadsheets. In fact, when an investment sends me a spreadsheet, I don't even look at it because I want to know the team. I'm going to bet on the team.

So is it that you're. You're betting on the team in the venture funds and you're betting on the team which is the characters in your books?

Is that a common maybe in the books I'm betting on myself, on what I can create. I never thought of it that way before. It's a pure expression of me to the world.

Right. Interesting.

But it is. Sorry, but you had a great point. It is very different mindset because I don't write about entrepreneurship or whatever. And I do struggle with that, juggling those balls sometimes. Honestly, I could build a massive fund if I wanted to, but I would have to. That's all I would have to care about. And I don't. I like helping entrepreneurs and I run a small, medium sized fund. I get to help them. Exits happen, my LPs are happy, I get a nice chunk of change and I get to write books. It's also about life. What kind of life do I want? I think at one point I was caught in the race. Like I wanted some big kind of exit. I never stopped to ask why, like, what would that give me?

Right. No kidding, right?

What would that give me?

You know, we just, we exited a company recently, as you know.

Yeah.

And my wife looked at me when, when the deal was signed and she said, now we can finally have nice things. Now we can finally travel. Now we can finally, you know, it's like, it's like, well, we already have all those things. It's not going to change your life.

Yeah.

So don't sacrifice your life to have more things. Things just to have more things. Right.

Yeah. So it's like what fulfills you? Yeah, like both things fulfill me a different way.

You wouldn't Be happy doing either one all the time.

No, because I think if I was a full time writer, I'd probably end up like, you know, you go crazy, you know, because you got to go.

Like a lot of really famous writers.

Yeah, yeah, I totally understand. Because you got to go deep every day in places most people spend their lives avoiding you to get to emotional truth.

Right.

And with the fundamental. I don't think it would fulfill me if that was my life because then it would become more about finance. I would build a bigger fund and I would be managing people and all that. I just like being that helpful guy walks in a room. And if I really like what you're doing and the right people involved, I'll help you out. And here's a check. Right. Not a bad gig.

You have a new lady in your life. I do for some a little bit of time now. And by in your life at this point, I mean that you guys have moved in together recently. And how does I know? We talked about a lot of the things that. Don't worry, I won't throw you under the bus here.

If she's.

Go for it. No, he only says great things. But that's a new challenge and a new set of circumstances to kind of figure out as you're blending lives together. Especially being together all the time when you're in one place and in New York City, they're not as big a place as you might be in other places. How does your experience in VC investing and these spiritual explorations help you in your relationship?

Oh, they have nothing to do with relationship. Relationship is, you know, they're their own different subset. Right. Especially to go deep with someone.

See, I would argue that your negotiations.

Oh, you can never negotiate with a woman. Are you kidding me? Lose men. You know, I don't know why women don't rule the world. It's so much better a strategy than us.

You know, they do.

That's.

That's the big secret is they do actually rule the world.

I mean, like, you can never out strategize a woman ever.

Yeah, yeah. They play a whole different level. Yeah. Shared some of that with me. Of like, no, you don't understand. When they said this, this means this, and I was like, oh my gosh. I mean, you know, we're just guys. Like, dude, yeah, you know, how's the football game? You know, what kind of car are you? Like, you know, that's. We're pretty simple creatures. That's pretty funny. So you don't though think that. I mean, obviously you are the sum of all those experiences that you've got and those skills that you've got through those things. But you don't find yourself, if you think about it, drawing on any of the VC stuff or the spiritual stuff as you come into the relationship, you're just kind of coming in, this is me. I'm the amalgam of all those things.

Well, the spiritual stuff in the sense. How can I be better here? That's what I work on.

So that helps you. I mean, that is my. You know, my M.O. in the relationship is how can I be better?

Yeah. Because that's the only thing we can control. Yeah. Can't control the other. Yeah. You know, that's a very interesting lesson, by the way.

Yes, it is.

Right. And that's a very interesting lesson in life. What can we control? The only thing we can control is ourselves. Yes. And that's it.

Yes. And you can influence other things.

Yes.

But one of the best things I ever took out of a book was Stephen Covey's circle of influence concept that there is a circle of concern and there is a circle of influence. And if you are trying to influence things that are outside of your circle of influence, the things you can actually have an impact on, and you're trying to influence your circle of concern, it's a fool's errand. And you will only be disappointed and frustrated because you have no influence there, by definition. But if you focus on things that you can actually influence, things in your circle of influence, then you will expand your circle of influence, and it will ultimately subsume your circle of concern.

That's brilliant. It takes emotional discipline. Do that. Yeah, it really does, because it's so easy. Especially these that get caught up in everything around us that we have no control over.

Yes. Interesting. So what's next for you?

I'm raising my next fund. I'm working on expanding Love Yourself and then the next book and advising a bunch of companies and probably adding something else to that mix these days. Just focus on how can I make myself better? That's the most important thing for me.

So what would you say before I tell people how to contact you or before you tell people how they can get a hold of you? What would you say the best advice you can give on making yourself better here as we. As we close out?

Oh, that's a. That's a great question. You know, literally, I think this is the one thing I've learned in life. It makes the biggest difference, is like, remember that vow I wrote to myself? And when I Said, you know, that's a sacred act when you, when you commit to yourself. And I think the best thing we can do for ourselves, like, you know, we said, we all said, I want to be healthy, I want to do this versus when you do a full on commitment to yourself, we say, look, I just made a sacred act, like life is going to be different and I'm going to hold myself accountable to my sacred act, whatever it is that makes all the difference. It's like the power commitment to oneself. Yes. And make it sacred.

Yeah. And you pointed out a really good thing too because you said I want to versus I will or I'll try versus I will. One's an aspiration, one's a commitment.

Yeah. And when you commit, that's when life just unfurls the sails.

That's awesome.

So for those who would like to.

Get ahold of you and find out more about any of the stuff that we've talked about, because you have a wide range of interests and things you're doing, what are all the ways. Let's do it. In order for those people who might be interested in investing in the fund or in receiving an investment from the fund, what would the best place for those folks be to go to get you?

You can just email me my name, Kamal K A M A L at Evolve. Evolve VC as Adventure Capital.

Nice. I like that. Okay. And then for those of us who would like to know more about ourselves and be better and get deeper and explore your literary works and such, what would be the best way for those people?

Just go to Amazon and you can search for my name, Kamal Ravikant.

And that's R A V I K.

A N T. Okay.

And the books are Love yourself like your life depended upon it.

Love yourself like your life depends on it. Live your truth and rebirth.

Okay, and do we have a title for the one that's that you meant that you kind of leaked here might be coming out?

Well, I'm expanding Love Yourself so it'll just be an expanded version of it. You know, five years later. I think it's time to actually, with all the feedback and questions I've gotten to make it bigger and more. Even more practical than it is.

Okay, awesome. Thank you so much for joining us.

Oh, it was great.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

You've been listening to Business Lunch with Roland Fraser. If you're enjoying the show, let us know by subscribing and leaving a review. And for more information, go to businesslunchpodcast.com thank you for listening.

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