Is This The End Of The Pod?

All right. We need to talk about this. Um, the podcast is either going to end today or we're going to figure this out. Is that dramatic enough for you? Okay. Um, Sam, can we start? Can I start with an apology?

Yes.

And I say sorry. I was— let me check my notes. I was a little pissy yesterday, and you were on the receiving end of me being a little pissy. We had a fight, an argument, a disagreement, a lover's quarrel. I don't know what you want to call it. We had something, and I want to talk about it here, not just because I'm a sicko and I'm like, ooh, this is good content, Jerry Springer, but also mostly because I found it— I thought about it a lot afterwards. I found it kind of fascinating and at first I felt really bad. I don't know about you, but I felt really horrible the rest of the day. So without discussing the specifics, I want to talk about what I learned after that fight. Can we do that?

Okay. Yeah.

Okay. So here's the story. We got in a fight yesterday and I wouldn't even call it really a fight.

It's like a, uh, every 6 months there's just disagreements that we had to work through.

Exactly. And like most things, it starts off as a misunderstanding, turns into a disagreement, which leads to an argument, which escalates to a fight, and then it kind of deescalates into a grumpy agreement and you sort of move on. And can I first tell you why I even wanted to talk about this?

Yeah.

Do you know who JJ McCarthy is by any chance? He's a rookie football player. He's a quarterback for the Vikings. So he's a, he's a rookie.

Yeah. I don't know who he is, but I know the name.

Football. He just got drafted and like any, you know, a team that sucks, they draft a quarterback, they're hoping he's going to turn the franchise around. And he just had their first like preseason game, not even in the season yet. And he threw an interception while he was playing. So after the game, he's doing an interview and I'm scrolling on Twitter and I see this and I'm seeing this after we have our fight. And the interviewer asks him, she goes, JJ, you go out there, you want to perform well. but you know, you throw that interception and I'm sure, you know, that didn't feel great. You know what, just talk me through what was going through your mind and how are you feeling after doing that? And this guy's response was epic. He goes, what was going through my mind? What an opportunity. And she goes, what, what an opportunity? And he goes, yeah, I mean, this whole, my, my success in my career is going to be based, I'm a quarterback in the NFL. My success in my career is going to be based on my resilience, my ability to bounce back from mistakes. I throw an interception. What an opportunity to learn, to get better, and to improve. And I was like, whoa, fucking mindset alert. I pride myself on mindset. I am a student of mindset. And when I heard that, I thought, wow, that was an uncommon response to a very common situation. I would say most guys are down on it, but then they'll lie and be like, well, I just had to focus on the next play. Just put it out of my head. Just get better, but they're kind of bitter about it. And this guy was so genuine when he said, what an opportunity. And so I kind of had that same thought where I was feeling bad after our fight and I saw that clip and I thought, okay, what an opportunity for me to learn here. And the reason I think it's an opportunity for me was we joke on this podcast, I'm generally super laid back. I don't really get easily bothered. I pride myself and have a good mindset, but of course, I'm a human being, I mess up, which is why when I get bothered, it's rare and I suck at it. And so I wanted to tell you some of the things that I reflected on afterwards. I have like 5 to 7 thoughts. Can I just read 'em out to you?

Yeah. And I, I, I might have a few as well.

So first one, fights don't start as fights. And, uh, what I mean by this is you never start in, you never start a conversation intending to fight. Nor do you even really see a fight coming. And the way— the analogy I was using in my head was like, oh, a fight is like a forest fire. When a forest fire happens, the explanation they usually come to is, well, there was like a bunch of the— what do they call it? Like the dry bush or whatever, like the kind of the dead sticks that go on the ground. And it's sort of this accumulation, this pile of sticks that nobody really clears out. And it's not a problem until somebody drops a cigarette on it. And it could be something that you just squish out with your foot right away. You put it out, there's no big deal. But if you don't put it out right away, that accumulated dry stuff can catch fire. It can become a wildfire. It could, it could tear down a whole forest. And so that was my first observation was, man, that the debris on the, on the forest floor is kind of like a hidden danger. It's a dog that's not barking and you have to make sure that if a cigarette does drop on it, you're, you're able to kind of immediately put it out or clear it out ahead of time. That was the first thought.

Which, by the way, the reason why that's very easy for you to say that, that's very hard to address. And the reason it's hard to address is because a lot of times people, particularly me, and I know you do as well, you have this idea where you're like, I don't want to ruffle feathers. I'll just go with the flow. And if you do that too often, then you're like, shit, I've been going with the flow. Now I'm bothered. And that's a very hard balance to implement of like, When do you go with the flow or when do you say that's not my preference?

Right. That, that describes it to a T. Either avoid confrontation. That's one reason to just like let it go type of thing, but you don't really fully let it go, right? Like 10 to 15% lingers. Or in my case, it's, it's a lot less of I avoid confrontation. It's more of I don't wanna let myself get bothered by something small, so I ignore it. I think I ignore it, but like 10% of it lingers. And if you ignore too many things, that 10% can start to add up. And if unaddressed, it's that stuff on the, on the forest floor. Okay, so here's the second one. Fights are natural. That was the second thought I had. I wrote down in my little diary here, fights are natural. We've been working together on this podcast for 4 years. I can count probably 3 serious arguments or disagreements that we've had that felt uncomfortable to deal with. Maybe there's been some other ones that I'm forgetting, but it's understandable. You work together with somebody for 4 years on a project, you're gonna have disagreements. In the moment, it doesn't feel good. It doesn't feel natural. Logically, you know, hey, this is normal. But in the moment feels bad.

And let's emphasize how bad, like when I argue with you or when I argue with Jordan or Joe, my, my other partners, like it ruins my week. I hate that feeling. I think you are a little more comfortable with confrontation. For people like me, like these Midwestern nice people who have been raised to just swallow, just swallow it. You just, you live life like resenting others sometimes, or like you just don't fucking complain. I hate it. I hate, like, there's been times where I've had to fire someone and I won't fire them for a year because I just don't want, I just don't want to do that conversation. I hate it. It bothers, like, I, like, I, I wake up in the middle of the night.

It ruined my night. I was going to show you my, I'm wearing an Oura ring. I was going to show you my sleep score was terrible. I slept 3 hours last night.

I woke up in the middle of the night at 3 AM and I ate 3 pieces of cookie dough from like a Nestlé's bacon Break and bake, whatever it's called. Break and bake.

Yeah. Break and bake, dude. I wish I had a break and bake. That would've made me feel better. I just woke up feeling shitty and it's, it reminded, like the analogy here is in your diet, you can wake up feeling shitty. I, at least I do this as my, like my evolution from guy with a horrible diet to trying to be better about it is I know when I feel shitty and it's either because I just DoorDash Taco Bell and that was just a bad decision and I'm paying the price for that. But also, even if you do the right thing at the wrong time, if I eat a very, like, full meal, but I ate it at 10:30, it doesn't matter if I had grilled chicken and whatever, if it was a healthy meal. If I eat too late, I'm just going to feel bad, right? So you could do the right thing at the wrong time and get pain. You could do the wrong thing at the wrong time, get pain. And for me, this was surprising because usually if I have a confrontation, it's usually relief because I've been, I've been trying to avoid having it. And when I do have it, I normally feel quite relieved. And this one, I felt awful. I felt terrible. I couldn't sleep. It was such an unusual feeling for me, which made me think I didn't do it right.

All right guys, really quick. So back when I was running The Hustle, we had this premium newsletter called Trends. The way it worked was we hired a ton of analysts and we created this sort of playbook for researching different companies and ideas and emerging trends to help you make money and build businesses. Well, HubSpot did something kind of cool. So they took this playbook that we developed and we gave to our analysts and they turned it into an actionable guide and a resource that Anyone can download and it breaks down all the different methods that we use for spotting upcoming trends, for spotting different companies that are going to explode and grow really quickly. It's pretty awesome that they took this internal document that we had for teaching our analysts how to do this into a tool and are giving it away for free that anyone can download. So if you want to stay ahead of the game and you want to find cool business ideas or different niches that most people have no idea they exist, this is the ultimate guide. So if you wanna check it out, you can see the link down below in the description. Now back to the show.

So that's probably relatable, but not surprising. I'm gonna give you some of the things that I found interesting. The first is about this guy named Dr. Gottman. Let's call him Dr. Gottman, cuz I forget his first name. Do you know who Dr. Gottman is? No. Dr. Gottman is the love doctor. Literally, this is a guy who studied marriages. And his claim to fame is that he could watch a couple for 15 minutes having a conversation about something and predict with 90+ certainty if they were going to have a divorce, end up divorced, or stay together. 90+%. And only watching a 15-minute conversation. In fact, he had something called the Love Lab, which was his research lab where he would bring couples in and he would say, talk about X. And he knew that X would lead into a little bit of a conversation, a little bit of resentment would come up, and he could watch how they handled it. and in just 15 minutes predict 90% accuracy. And by the way, if you let just like a normal marriage counselor or an average person on the street watch that same 15 minutes, their accuracy was about 50%. Just like flip a coin. They had no accuracy essentially, but this guy had 90%. And why is that? Because he had done this a bunch and he was able to identify what are the things to look for that would cause a couple to break up. And so One interesting thing last night was I went down this rabbit hole of like, what did Gottman say? What are these things? And he's got a couple of interesting, very insightful things. So he's got one thing called the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. It basically is like, I look for four things that if a couple does these four things, highly correlated with them not staying together in the long run, low marriage satisfaction and divorce.

It's like the emotions of contempt, resentment, What were the other 2?

So it's criticism, contempt, which was the biggest one, defensiveness, and stonewalling. And some of these were gendered. So like, men were typically more guilty of stonewalling, meaning wife is bringing something up, he just kind of shuts down, just cuts, kind of like, in his mind, he's like, I'm not fighting. In her mind, it's like, you're, you're not even, you're not even open. You're closing me down and I'm trying to express something to you. But contempt, contempt was the one where regardless of gender, If you did these things like an eye roll, anything that's hierarchy, which is like, oh, you're such an asshole, right? I'm good and you're bad. Anything that creates, anything that indicates contempt was like one of the worst things that could happen because it indicates a lack of fundamental respect and equality in the relationship. So he's got that. He had another one, which is a magic ratio, which is they would observe an interaction and they would see that. And by the way, the way they did this was fascinating. Couples talk for 15 minutes and he's encoding every minute. I think they divided into like 18 signals in a minute or something like that. And they had this like specific encoding where it's like eye roll, like body language, turn away, phrasing of a thing. Yeah, but like all these little nuanced things that he, they would, they would immediately encode and then they would have a score at the end of it and they'd have positive interactions between the couple and negative, but they're like these micro interactions, right? To the surface, it didn't even look like they're having a huge fight, yelling at each other, throwing and screaming, uh, you know, throwing things across the room.

None of that.

But even in just like a normal conversation, he could get that indication. So he said the magic ratio is 5 to 1, right? Every couple is going to have negative interactions. That's not avoidable. It's what's the ratio of positive to negative. And if it was 5 to 1, the couples would stick together. Uh, below 5 to 1, you start to get into higher likelihood that the couples will not stay together. I thought that was kind of interesting. There's a ton of little micro things that he has in there, like repair attempts. So how do you de-escalate? People who know, like, any couple that stayed together had a good habit of using humor or taking a break or just saying, I'm sorry, that was stupid. I shouldn't have said that. That's not actually what I mean. What I mean is this. A way to de-escalate in a fight was like a huge tool that was very useful. And that was one thing I think I did poorly yesterday. Which was I was not deescalating well, right? Either could have took a break, could have just made a joke, could have said, actually, the way that came out is not actually how I feel. How I feel is really this. But instead it was like sunk cost. Like I said it, now I got to defend it, which is like such a stupid way to go. He's got this whole philosophy that I'm super fascinated by now and really excited to do kind of like a little bit more of a deep dive on. Like, how cool is that guy, by the way?

He's great. I joke with my wife where I'll say, look, I've made my point.

I am dug in. Okay.

There is no retreating here. I'm what you call dug in. I cannot go back. And the reason I'm raising my voice is because that would mean that if I talk lower, I'm losing the argument. Right. And that is not happening.

Yeah. Like, you know, in UFC fights, I remember McGregor would always say, we'll see who takes the first backstep. He's like, oh, we're going to fight. But I'm not— he's not just— his trash talk was not, I'm going to knock you out. He's like, he would get in their mind, like, let's see who takes the first backstep because he's actually a counterpuncher. He wants the guy moving forward. So he'd put that in their mind. If you take a backstep, you're a bitch. And as silly as that sounds, that would describe my behavior in a lot of interactions.

Yes.

Let's see who takes the first backstep, which is not serving me well.

Yeah, I get in trouble a lot for it and it's incredibly stupid. And there's so many times where I'm like, shit, I, I, my ego won't let me retreat, but that is the right decision, right?

Let me give you a mechanic that I learned that I wish I had yesterday when we were fighting. I once took an improv class in San Francisco, and the very first class, instead of teaching you how to do improv, the very first lesson is not here's what you do, it's here's what you do when you screw up, because you're gonna screw up a ton. You are beginners, this is hard. You are gonna screw up a lot. So the first tool we give you, and they would just go, she, she was like, when you say something that was stupid or didn't make sense or was not funny and you tried to be funny, the weight of the world is gonna come crashing down on you. And here's your solution.

Ready?

Whoop. And she's like, could you all do that? We're like, whoop. And she was like, that's it. When it happens, just go whoop. And that just means to everybody, clear the slate. That didn't happen. We're moving on. We're moving past that. It was a whoop. And I wish I had a mechanic like that in so many more areas of my life where a way to eject or abort or pull out of a tailspin of like, I didn't want to go this way. I didn't want to say that. I didn't want that to come across the way it came across. I needed a whoop to just be like, that was like, let's wipe the slate clean real quick. Like Etch A Sketch, just quickly shake it and it's gone.

Yeah. I, uh, you would look really dumb if you did that, but I agree that is a very, that is a very helpful thing. I've gotten, I've I get in more trouble because of this thing more than anything else.

Right. All right. Another observation. My body keeps the score. So I have this coach, he's an executive coach, which is like, you know, business strategy, but mostly like therapy, thinking through, basically helping me think more clearly and be a better person. And he's great. And he has this, he has stuff that he says that's great that I'm like, totally buy it. He has other stuff that he says that I'm like, I get that you buy it. I'm not sure that I buy it yet. And one of the things he always talks about is The Body Keeps the Score.

Have you read that book?

I've read the book, but I don't have back pain and I think it's more of a, it's like a, literally like a back pain book, right?

It's sort of, it's basically like the easiest one are soldiers who have PTSD. They see, they feel things physically. And I, Frank, I actually don't remember the entire premise, but I believe it was if you change your body, you can actually change your mind.

Right. So he'll ask me, he'll be like, I'll say something. He'll be like, where do you feel that when you say that? I'm like, I don't feel like I said it from my mouth. What are you talking about? He's like, no, like, is there a tightness in your chest? I'm like, bro, I don't want to, like, I don't want to do yoga. I just want to say what's going on and then figure it out with a logical solution. And he's helping me learn that. I hadn't really fully bought in until yesterday when I felt terrible after it. Physically I felt terrible after our conversation. And I was like, oh shit, I think he's right. I think the body does keep the score. And I'm more of a believer in that woo woo shit. So that was another observation.

What did you feel terrible because you felt that I was wrong or because you didn't like how the words you used?

I felt terrible because I felt like I did myself a disservice, disservice, which is I don't think I conducted myself well. I thought I actually had a good point, meaning I don't disagree with any of my words and I disagree with all of my delivery. And what a shame because it's like, actually what I did was a total net negative. I undermined my own point. What I was trying to express, I didn't express well. It wasn't effective. And I made you feel not good too, because that wouldn't feel good anyways. And I was like, oh, the other lesson of course is people don't remember what you say. They just remember how you made them feel.

If it makes you feel better, I I think your delivery wasn't as bad as you think.

That does make me feel better. Thank you.

And I agree, and I agree with your points. Like, the points you made were not bad points. You're— the problem with having an argument with you is you are quite logical and you do make logical points. The other problem with you is that most people, myself included, are more emotional than logical, and that's sometimes hard for you to understand.

Yes. And also to give myself more blame here is I am like a firecracker or something like that. It's like you can play with it. You can hold it. Nothing's going to happen for like 99 out of the day, out of all the days of the year, 364 days out of the year. That firecracker is just easy to, easy to handle. But on July 4th, there's one day that like 5% of the time where this fuse gets lit, there was like no, No warning, and it's fucking explosive. And so it's like, that's, I think my problem is I'm extremely tolerant and unbothered until the moment I'm bothered, and then I'm a big whiny baby and I get really upset really quickly, more than I should. And again, what I realized yesterday was, oh, that's just because I don't have many reps doing it. And this is kind of a bullshit, like, my greatest strength is I have no weaknesses, but I think it's honestly true in this situation, which is I'm so rarely bothered that when I am bothered, I'm so poor at handling it. Whereas I think somebody who more frequently runs into situations like this, they become more mature and have better tools to deal with it than I do.

It's almost like because you're pretty emotionally healthy, that is actually a weakness. You know what I mean? Because you don't assume that other people are broken or like that their egos dictate things. Do you know what I mean?

Well, I think you're giving me a very generous bend, but I'll consider that not just a compliment, but maybe something that might be true here. Can I read you a couple more bullet points? Just words I jotted down in my journal here. So there are no winners in war. There's always a benefit to expressing myself, but, uh, and finding resolutions when there's a mix-up. But once it escalates, there are only, you know, there's no, there's no winner and loser. There's only two losers in a situation like that where I think at a certain point the conversation was productive and then at a certain point it was unproductive. And once it got into an unproductive, and by the way, we weren't like cursing each other out or anything. I don't mean to make it sound like that. but just on a relative scale, it wasn't one where I felt, wow, that was super constructive and I feel better about the relationship. It's like, no, I think we did some damage there and there were two, there was only two losers in that interaction. There was no like winner and loser, which is stupid because when you argue, you kind of want to be a winner or a loser. You want to be a winner and that defaults the other person to be a loser in the interaction. But that's a false idea.

Have you read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People? Clearly I should go and reread it.

I read the first chapter about people loving their name and then I was like, this is great.

And I, it's like, he has a famous line in that where he goes, the most beautiful word in the English language is a person's name. So say it a lot. But like right in the third chapter, like one chapter after that, he tells a story about how he was with this influential person who was telling him a story. And the guy got a lot of the story wrong. Like he was like saying, this is a quote from Shakespeare. And Dale was like, Actually, right. You know, that was Thomas Jefferson who said that. Uh, and the guy who he corrected fucking hated him. He's like, no, don't correct me over this shit. And the whole point is like, when you try to correct people or argue with them to prove a point, it doesn't, it rarely ever works your way, which sucks because sometimes it makes you feel good to win an argument or to think you won an argument, but it actually it's more often than not a shitty thing to do.

But didn't Lincoln also say the same thing? Like, never criticize. And I've always had trouble with that idea. I think in the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, it was like, never criticize. I was like, never? Yeah.

Yeah. I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm like, never criticize.

And I was like, never? How, how do you function with never criti— how does that, how do you, how do you hold the accountability? Like, I don't, I don't understand. I still don't understand that.

Like, well, what he said in that letter or in that chapter was he had also said Lincoln would do this thing where he would write an angry letter to someone. And one time he wrote like a scathing letter to someone and he didn't send it. And the reason why he did that was one time he talked shit about this guy and the guy was like, I challenge you to a duel, which was a fight to the death. And Lincoln was like, dude, I'm not doing that. That's insane. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to offend you. I'm sorry. And Lincoln was like, I'm not going to criticize people ever again. And so instead he would write these letters where he would like bitch them out and then just not send them. And then he was like, that makes me feel better.

Yeah, maybe I need to try that. I still don't fully understand how you do the never criticize thing, but I think they're right, which is rarely does it do any good. Okay, let me give you a couple others. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and convincing them otherwise is a fool's errand, myself included. I recently heard this when I was in Canada at Andrew Wilkinson's event. I was sitting at a dinner table with Chris Sparling. Chris is Andrew's business partner who's more under the radar, but a super fun guy. He's one of my, I don't know, top 3 dinner party guests. The guy is just electric at a dinner table. And one of the things he said was he brought this up. He goes, isn't it funny? He's like, I have never met a person who does not view themselves as acting. I forgot exactly how he said it, but acting good, acting just, no matter what they're doing. And he's like, I think everybody from serial killers on views themselves as the hero of their story and justified. Either what they did was right or the wrong thing they did was justified. He's like, isn't that crazy? I was like, that is actually crazy. And it was so true. Like, I felt like when we were arguing yesterday, I was the hero of my story and I had done all these valiant things that were, you know, um, you know, my, my protagonist moves. And then you were like, aha, but I am the protagonist. And I'm like, you know, in the, as it escalated, I was like, you're the villain. I'm the hero. And you're like, I'm the hero. You're the villain. And it was like, wait, We are both idiots is actually what we both are. We're neither the heroes nor the villains in this scenario, but it was just a good reminder of, man, I'm guilty of that. If I'm guilty of that, everybody's guilty of that. And I looked it up. There's something called narrative identity, which is like the psychological name for this phenomenon that even, you know, Hitler on believed this about themselves.

And the problem is that then you go and like you ask your wife or your close friend, about any situation and you explain it and oftentimes they'll say, you are right. But the reality is, is like, you're not probably, you're probably not explaining the situation like to where you can truly get wonderful advice. Do you know what I mean?

Right. Well, there's another one I looked up when I was, when I was talking to ChatGPT about like, what is the name for this? Me and my buddy just had this argument. What's the name of that syndrome? What, what is, what was I doing? And what is that called? One of them was called mistake and attribution. And what it, the principle was this, when I'm wrong, it's because of the situation. When you're wrong, it's because of the character. And if you do that, it's a very unhealthy mindset to have, or a bias to have. It's a misattribution bias. And we all do this, which is, oh, those things that I did at the wrong, well, that's just because that this was what was going on in the situation. However, if you don't give that same benefit of the doubt to the other person, that their actions were situationally dictated and not from any poor intention, then you end up with this, the same problem as like in investing. It's like when I win, it's skill. When I lose, it's bad luck. And in the same way in a fight, it's if I'm wrong, it's situational. If you're wrong, it's character. It's your, you just, you, that was a choice. That's who you are.

So someone told me this years and years ago and it kind of changed my life and I try to use it all the time and I'm a human and I fail and I failed on it a little bit. Uh, or I failed on a lot of it yesterday, but basically it's the idea where we judge ourselves on our intentions, but we judge other people on their actions.

Right.

And I try to remind myself constantly, and that's really, that's another thing that's very simple but hard, but it is like very important, I think.

Truly. And dude, during our conversation yesterday, it was like, well, you know, I didn't, There was no malintent in this, right? Yes, I know that. And it's like, and you, I know that you had no malintent in what you did, right? You're like, yeah, of course. What we should have done at that point was be like, then what the fuck are we talking about? What does this matter? None of this matters at that point. What are you mad about? What am I mad about? How does this even make, how does this even make sense? If there's, if we both agree that the intentions were correct, then we could deescalate this down to, oh, we just weren't clear about XYZ, or, oh, we had a miscommunication, misunderstanding. I thought you meant this. You thought I meant this. Oh yeah, silly mistake on my part, but didn't mean to make that mistake. It's just a natural mistake, you know, because I'm not a perfect person. So I think there was a moment in there where we could have deescalated that we didn't properly do it.

That's how every argument actually should start. That's actually what I'm going to do is like, can you explain your intentions and I'll explain my intentions and then we'll break down the actions to see like if there's alignment or whatever.

Right. I once argued with my wife and then I had a training session with my trainer right afterwards. And he could tell I was like a little off at the beginning. Like my vibe is usually like good vibes only. And I did not have good vibes only, but I was just quiet. And he was like, what's up? And I was like, oh yeah. You know, and I started to explain the situation and he goes, oh, I got the solution for you. And I thought he was going to be the solution to the argument, to the problem, the issue, quote unquote, that we were discussing. And he goes, no, no, here's what you do when you're in that moment. Just remember, I love you, right? You love me.

Cool.

And we want to be happy. All right, then we're good. Like he was just like, cool, then nothing else matters. And what he was saying, he is like, what I mean by that is, do you want to be right or do you want to be happy? And he is like, I have a lot of clients that are like you, Silicon Valley types, businessmen, you know, logical left-brain thinker types. There is a desire to be right and it is sometimes at odds with the actual outcome you want, which is happiness, harmony, you know, cooperation, feeling good. And if you remember what the thing you want really is, you wanted the happiness, harmony, cooperation. You don't want— you want that more than you want to be right. You will act totally differently. So just remind yourself of that as the argument starts.

You know, it's funny, we were talking and we were arguing and 30 minutes in, your newborn started crying. Yeah. And when I heard that cry, it broke my frame. I was like, I don't want, I don't want him to be upset. Like, you want to, like, is there any, and I'm, I wasn't there physically, but if I were, like, is there anything we could do to like make him happy? Like, can we hug in front of him? Like, I remember thinking like, I don't want this kid to be upset. Like, that's the only thing that important, that, that's actually the important thing is like, oh, he's upset. Like that. That's unacceptable.

My podcast dads are fighting.

Yeah. I remember thinking, I'm like, oh, like let's, let's tend to, you know what I mean? Like it totally broke my frame where you're like, for some reason making him not cry just for 2 seconds is significantly more important than any like large business conversation. I thought that was like kind of interesting.

100%. Um, all right. I have a couple more and then we can, we can stop, you know, hugging each other. So. I wrote a category, what did I learn about myself? Because I noticed as I was doing the, you know, my coping mechanism was like, ooh, this research is fascinating. Ooh, this framework is cool. And I was like, all right, all right. But I'm kind of distancing myself from the cold hard facts of my own behavior and my own mistakes. And I want to tell you what I wrote under what did I learn about myself? I said, I made the cardinal sin. The cardinal sin in any relationship is measuring. I remember, um, once meeting, uh, this guy Stan Chernovsky. Stan Chernovsky is a very successful businessman.

Facebook and Google?

Uh, not Google, but Facebook. Yeah. So he first was an entrepreneur. He created, uh, him and his buddy James Currier have been business partners for like 20 years and they have like a great business marriage. And I was hanging out with Stan once and he was telling me about like what they did with Tickle and how they sold that for whatever, to $100 million just to Monster. And then they created this other company, this other company, this other company. And then Zuck recruited him and Zuck recruited him for like 10 years. And finally, he finally went and worked with Zuck and he ends up running Facebook Messenger and he's had an amazing career. I said, and one of the cool things was when he went to Facebook, I was like, how did James handle that? Now he's doing all the work for that. They co-founded NFX, this fund in this incubator. Accelerator, and now you're going and taking a job at Facebook. Like, doesn't that put some stress on the relationship? And he kind of laughed and he was like, it's not that that's not an issue, but like, you know, we have such a strong partnership that like, it's great. That worked out great. And I was like, how do you guys do that, man? I was like, because I want to work with somebody for 20 years. Like, that's a, when I think about winning, what winning looks like in my life, that's what winning looks like. Find somebody amazing, just do projects with them for 20 years, find a handful of people that I could do that with. And he told me, he goes, oh, the secret's very simple. He goes, the first thing is turn it into a giving contest. He said 98% of the relationships you are in are taking contests, meaning you are trying to get out as much as you're asking, what am I getting out of this relationship? That's the fundamental underlying question is what am I getting from this other person? What am I getting out of this? You don't realize it, but you, you don't realize it until you get into a tit for tat scenario, meaning they didn't do this, so I'm also not gonna do that. They did this to me, so I'm also gonna do that to them. And you get into this tit for tat contest is measuring and basically it makes the pie smaller. He goes, the beautiful thing about James is that James is constantly trying to figure out how to make our relationship pie bigger. Meaning he's just thinking, how do I give more to this relationship? And he doesn't measure even when I'm not giving as much. He just gives, he just keeps asking himself, how can I give more? He goes, the beauty is that if you, if you're with somebody who's wired that way and you start to do it too, your relationship pie grows like crazy. And I remember hearing that and being like, this is the way, that is the wisdom. That is the fundamental truth about how to do this. Tony Robbins has a very similar framework around 4 levels of love. One of the, he calls the tit for tat thing, he calls it whoring. And he is like, I'll give to you if you pay me. Basically, it's like, I'll put out for you if you put out for me. And he is like, most of us run around our whole lives whoring. And most of the relationships we have there, and that is the root cause of why you get into these patterns, these negative patterns with people, because it's in game theory terms. If every time one person even accidentally shortchanges the other, and then you intentionally shortchange back, and then they pick up on that and then they shortchange back, like, what are you left with at the bottom? Very little. Um, but it is very common. And I think that was the cardinal mistake was I was measuring what I was getting instead of focusing on what am I giving and how do I give more? Because that's just who I am. Whereas what I was doing was saying, how can I give so much? Because then I'm going to get back. And that's fundamentally like a measuring scenario where instead it should just— I want to, I want to roll differently. So I think that was the probably the biggest mistake I made. I think.

Is that your list?

I have one last one, but it's a positive one, so I'll end on a positive note, which is the best relationships are bigger than you. So me and my wife used to argue a bunch when we were dating. We actually ended up breaking up right before we finally got back together and ended up getting married. And we broke up because I was like, dude, you're just upset all the time and I don't really know what to do. Like, I'm just being me and like, if that upsets you, we shouldn't be together. And she's like, no, I'm not upset. I'm just— I'm like, you're upset. We're upset a lot. We're fighting a lot. This is too much. I don't want to do that.

How long were you dating when you broke up and how long did you break up for and then how long until you got married?

Okay. I think something like we were probably dating for 2 years, I guess. Broke up for 1 month exactly and then got back together and it was, it's been amazing ever since in an unbelievable kind of way. Meaning, you know, most people are like, oh, people don't change. And if my friend was in a relationship and I'm like, okay, so y'all were fighting all the time. You broke up for a month. She got back together and was like, no, no, now I'm going to be cool about everything. I'd be like, dude, come on. Are you serious? What are the odds of that? Like, what are the odds that like, it'll just all turn around? And then it actually did. And one of the things that I would say it turned around like, uh, a 180 is let's say a full turn. It turned around like 130, which was great, huge improvement. And then when we had kids, it's now a full 180 where I told my wife the other day, I was like, dude, when's the last time we fought? And she's like, I don't know. Do we have time to fight? And I was like, exactly. I was like, the best thing about kids is that both you and I have an unspoken agreement, which is, okay, first of all, we no longer doubt each other's intentions. I know you were trying to be great for me and I'm trying to be great for you and we're not perfect. That's okay. But second to that is when we do disagree or have an argument, we only let ourselves suffer for like 90 seconds. Whereas you were saying like, dude, when I have a conversation like that, it ruins my week. It used to ruin our week. Then it started to ruin our couple days. Now it ruins literally 90 seconds, but it's like, yo, we gotta be awesome parents and we gotta like function. We gotta go to gymnastics right now. It's like, are we really gonna like make this car ride uncomfortable? Like, dude, let, how about we just agree to this? Like totally let that go and just get back on the good foot. We've been doing that now for the last like 3 or 4 years and it has been amazing. It is a miracle. It is something I would not have believed. And if my friend told me, yo, that's how it's gonna go, I'd be like, um, oh, you're bullshitting yourself. But I think the principle is the best relationships have something that's bigger than just yourself in it. You can't really be selfish as a parent. You know, your selfishness goes down when you have kids just because it's really about, at least for me, I should speak for myself. Life is very much in service of them. And I, I, I will give up so much I used to never give up for them. Um, and that, and I feel like in a way the podcast thing is great for us because it's something bigger.

Than us.

Like, let's say we didn't have the podcast. I probably, after that last interaction, probably wouldn't have talked to you for a few months just out of like, well, we don't have to talk, so why would I talk? Whereas the podcast is like, no, I gotta make this right, which made me think, what can I do better? Which made me grow up and be a little bit of a better person today.

Before you, uh, put a bow on it, let me say one thing. So when we had that argument, also when I have any argument with anyone in business, I like this little thing gets in my head where I'm like, I like, sometimes I'm like, you know what? I don't want to do business ever again. I don't want to, like, I don't want confrontation. Like, you know, it's like when you're losing a board game and you're just like, fuck this game. And you like flip it upside down. Like sometimes I'm like, I don't want any of it. I'm out. I don't want any of this. I don't want any drama. And the reason I like reading history and biographies is I'm able to see people I admire and like some of the issues that they've had. And I think I've said a bunch that like all great men are bad men, meaning anyone who you admire, like who's achieved greatness, whether it's a president or a CEO, like there's people who dislike them because they've had to kill like someone, like, you know, like in war, but you're like, that war was unfortunately good, but there's huge downsides. And I think about like to do anything interesting in life, whether business or whatever, it involves confrontation and it involves tension a lot of times. That is such an uncomfortable feeling, but it's sort of like working out where it's like you got to do that to make your muscles strong. But I— and I, and I hate it when it's happening, and I have to remind myself like, don't burn it down, don't walk away from everything. Like, you can achieve what you want you just have to go through some arguments sometimes, but it's sort of like when you had, let's say you had a company with 100 employees and let's say 26% of those employees are unhappy. That's like a pretty good ratio. So you have roughly 75% of people who are happy, but that means that every single day, if there's 26 days in the work week or in the month, work, work days in the month, someone's going to bitch to you. Do you know what I mean? And someone's going to bitch to you every single day. And what it does to you is it makes you think everything is bad. And it's really hard to switch your psychology to be like, no, not everything is bad. I need to compartmentalize these two things. And it is a— I've gotten better as I've gotten older, but it's— that is a huge issue for me personally. And I think it's an issue for a lot of people where they they face some adversity and typically human adversity, like tension between people is, I think in my opinion, the hardest one and the most common one. And the reaction is fuck it.

Yeah, I have that reaction.

I have that reaction super fast.

I think even on the thing yesterday, I was like, oh, forget the whole thing then. Not the podcast, but like the situation we were arguing about. I was like, oh, forget it. Who cares? Even then I do that all the time.

I do that all the time. And I have to, I ha— it's a really hard thing. To say, is my future self going to be happy or sad that I made this decision in this particular moment? It's really fucking hard to nail that.

Do you also read the kind of history and biographies? Because it's like the problem is 100 times bigger than your current problem. Like whatever the tiff is with your wife or with your neighbor or whatever it is, it's like, well, I just last night spent 4 hours reading about these guys who were shipwrecked and like, you know, that's one of the reasons why. It's like, oh, okay. Problems are relative.

I read it for that reason too. It's sort of like when I used to box and I used to get my ass kicked in the morning, I was like, oh, everything else, the volume's way turned down. Like I just got beat up and it's okay. Like I don't mind. Like, and that's sort of why I like reading biographies. I also like reading them because I like seeing this is a normal feeling that I am having. It is, it is okay. And that is like a cool thing about reading about these people. Is when I'm in these moments, I think, don't burn it down. Don't walk away. Don't, don't do these things. It is normal to have this. And you have to accept that, like, in order to do anything interesting, conflict is part of that. And oftentimes conflict or constraints is where beauty in art is created. Do you know what I mean?

Yes. Um, 100%. That makes a lot of sense to me. And I think is That's pretty wise, to be honest. Let me ask you a question. Have you ever heard the phrase, somebody say the slang, skill issue? You're not a gamer and you're not like 17 years old, so you might not be like part of this like subculture where one of the like common internet slangs is just skill issue. And what skill issue means, like somebody will describe like a huge problem. They'll be on Reddit typing like this whole thing about how this is bad and this is hard and this this thing out of my control, whatever. And then somebody will just— skill issue. And I think it started with gaming, which is like they're complaining about the game and then somebody who's better at the game will just say skill issue. And what it fundamentally means is like there are so many things that we describe as outside of our control or just fundamentally hard or impossible that's actually a skill issue. Meaning if you had the skill, you wouldn't be bitching and whining about this. That's how I felt about yesterday. Meaning when I started reading the Gottman stuff, I realized, oh, skill issue. Disagreeing and arguing is a skill, and I have a skill issue. I am not as good at it as I could be. And the reason why is when I'm reading his stuff, he's got all these different words to describe things. He's like, I was reading his encoding of the arguments. It's like cross-complaint. I'm crossing. What's a cross-complaint? I'm like looking it up. I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, he just did that. He did a cross-complaint. Like, that's what that was. That's why that didn't feel good. And he's like, yes, but I was like, oh dude, yeah, I did a yes, but where I agreed, but then I like undermined my agreement right afterwards by the next sentence I said. And I realized in the same way that I once read, like, intelligence is the number of distinctions you have on a subject. What that means is if you talk to Eskimos about snow, snow, we like, I have one word for snow. Snow. They have like 15, 18, 21 different ways to describe snow. The snow that's a little bit runny, the snow that's really hard, the snow that falls fast, the snow that like behaves differently because they live in the snow. They had to become intelligent about snow. They had to create a vocabulary that described the distinctions because they mattered in their life and they were familiar with them. Whereas somebody who's not so skilled and familiar with snow only has one word. In the same way, as this guy was describing argument dynamics, I realized, oh, skill issue. There are a bunch of words for snow that I don't know when it comes to arguing and arguing well. I think he's even got a book called like Fight Right or something. I haven't read it yet, but it's like, I'm going to go read that. And so that was the last interesting takeaway, which is Yet again, skill issue. So many things in my life just come down to that. Oh, losing weight is hard. No, no, no. Skill issue.

I used to have this asshole friend in college who used to say, the only way you get good at drinking and driving is through a lot of practice. I'm like, you're a horrible human being, but you might be right. And that's sort of, that's kind of like this. That's kind of like this. You got to fight a lot in order to like, I'd learn how to do it correctly.

Okay. Well, Sam, I'm sorry for all of those reasons that I just said.

And it's mutual. You prepared this, so it's going to sound like you're—

well, you are.

It sounds like you're being the bigger man. And I want to let you know that everything is mutual. I feel like It sounds like you, well, it sounds like you're in some ways you are, you're, you're sort of acting that you didn't blame me for anything. You only blamed yourself. And I, and I want to let you know that it, that's not actually the reality. You just, you just used more words than I did. Your word count was higher, but that doesn't mean that the, the feeling is different.

Okay. I understand perfectly what you're saying. That's it.

That's the pod.

By the way, we get to use the one-time and one-time only YouTuber thing to do where it's like, it's all over. I'm shutting it down. We quit. Uh, we're breaking up. Like the one time you can fake, you could fake your own death. You could fake retirement. You could fake your breakup and everybody wants to click to see the goss. And then they, you know, it's the boy who cried wolf. You can only do it once, but you get a hell of a lot of clicks that time. So I think we should use it this time. We should title this. Whatever, you know, the, is it over podcast or yeah, it's over. Sorry guys. You know, you know, Sean's apology or like, uh, we're breaking up.

Here's why.

Some, some version of that.